From the introduction: Eight months ago, a visitor arrived from space: a glowing Baby, plummeting through the atmosphere, leaving a large crater in its wake. It doesn’t move, has no discernible sex, and does not openly communicate. It does speak to people in their dreams every so often – strange instances of crystalline imagery and long-dead memories – and, most importantly, it generates immense amounts of radiation that has blanketed the entire town. This radiation has had a curious effect: some people have gotten very sick, some people haven’t noticed anything, while some people have... changed, in ways subtle and overt.