EXCERPT I can trace my decline. That is one of the bittersweet benefits of survival. I can locate the exact moment in time when I joined the theatre of the unwell. I was a high-school dropout, pinballing between dead-end jobs. Once a bright student, I’d squandered my ambition, melting like a fuse under excessive voltage. No one knew why, let alone me. I turned inwards but nothing held my stare. The void was too deep. I lost sight of myself within an interminable fever dream. I awoke inside an anomalous world. Something was waiting, oddly familiar. Another version of me. A clone, threatening me with erasure. I was left with no choice but to spark an internal war. The mission: take out the clone. But the fight would expose me to interdimensional radiation. I became sick with time, unable to distinguish between the past, present and future. What’s more, I was unskilled in psychic combat, asking the wrong questions and opening the wrong doors. The dark matter burned me from inside.…