Some of the remaining humans wouldn't listen. The colonies were setting off from Earth in a hurry, but some of the humans stubbornly thought they'd be fine. Some of them simply didn't make it to the space ships in time and were left stranded on Earth. The breakdown of the biggest fusion power plant was causing a grave threat to all of life on Earth. The radiation would completely cover the atmosphere in a few months.

The colonists left, and approximately 30,000 humans remained on Earth. The first six months went along gathering the stranded humans, building shelters to protect themselves from the radiation and to establish an infrastructure - after all, most of the humans maintaining the society surrounding them had left. But then, something started to happen.

First people started noticing a huge variety of almost alien animals and insects - it was like another Cambrian Explosion. Over time, bigger and bigger animals started growing shells, hair, eyes, all sorts of new limbs and organs that were either completely alien or similar to that found in other animals. After the first year the mutated animals started to invade human shelters, and ultimately, humans started to mutate too.

After three years from the fusion reactor breakdown, most beings classifiable as somewhat human weren't capable of thinking any more - they were fueled by pure instinct. The radiation had killed a number of living beings, but the beings that survived had new genes injected to their system as a combination of DNA material released into the air from the dead beings and the strange radiation. There were now millions of species, yet with the population of only one. John was the only human to physically go through this mutation, but not turn into an animal. He recorded the degeneration process: how he grew a shell, new pair of eyes and hands of pure muscle, how other humans started to change to drooling knuckle draggers, and finally to mad, feral beasts. The last rational being he met spoke to was a woman rooted to the ground as a tree. After 10 minutes, John witnessed her last gasp of air as her heart stopped beating. John wandered alone, recording everything he saw.

750 years after the events, the first investigators arrive to find a dead, barren planet. They find many skeletal remains, but one of them was found protecting a book. The investigators look at the book, and are astonished by the historical accounts - written by a being who was transformed to an animal, yet who retained his humanity.