The world ended abruptly and without fanfare. With naught more than a few hastily arranged words cast waywardly backwards to those luckless few alive at the time of the apocalypse as warning. They read:

Gestation Phase Completed. Beginning Phase One of Integration into the Universal Whole.

James Meade was one such unlucky soul cursed to see them. One whose life, unbeknownst to him, was about to become distinctly and viscerally unpleasant in their wake.