Jonathan Monroe works in the crews building dams to retake some of the land Oregon lost to the waves. He sits with me at a small cafe in Portland]

I was on a fishing then, I was working as a fisherman, getting fresh fish from the San Francisco Bay and selling it to the restaurants there. We had just gone past Alcatraz and was heading back to the dock when it happened. A bright light, and the next thing you knew our boat had a meter stuck in the ground. We were surrounded by forest. I climbed to the TOP of the cabin to get a better look. What looked to be some kinda castle sat just beyond the city. The sky had turned palest pink. Ahead of us was a friggin mountain range!The fog had cleared and we could see thirty miles in every direction. Then, I heard the roar of water. It smashed onto the mountains, but they protected us. Barely enough to form a stream. Came out the other mountains had saved the West Coast from the worst of the looked back at the city.

An entire hill had materialised where the Golden Gate Bridge sat, and it had snapped in two. Cars began sliding onto the ground. We jumped off the ship and began to run through the woods towards the city. Along the way, I spotted birds that I had never seen before, weird animals that were like nothing on Earth. But I wasn't concerned with those things.

It took about thirty minutes for us to reach the city. The night sky was bright and clear. The light from the three moons lit up the area. But the city itself was dark.

[I: Why? How were the citizens reacting?]

A Monster had materialised directly where the power station used to be- this big blue lizard thing. Now, humans have grown to rely on electricity. But all data, all wifi, had been knocked out as the lights.. without our precious technology...and two extra moons in the sky..people got scared.

[Scared?]

People were running around in the streets screaming their heads off. I watched as the window of a nearby TV store got smashed in and looters fought for the proceeds.I began to jog down the street, heading towards my home. Then, someone slammed into me. I caught a foul stench. It was one of the many victims of San Francisco's homeless epidemic. He was shouting 'It's the bleeding end times! The flippin Apocalypse! Just like Jesus said!' Then I felt his hands begin to move to my wallet. I shook him off and began to run. San Francisco is well insulated against terrorist Attack,and it wasn't Long before backup generators kicked in. But power lines, both underground and above ground, don't appreciate it when you rewrite the landscape. So half the city was still in the dark. Countless satellites had been knocked out when asteroids or space debris cleaved into them, so GPS wasn't functioning. The underwater cables supporting the Internet were out as well. So naturally, deprived of every other outlet to panic, people took to the streets. Every block, someone was looting. The cops were trying to protect us, but they were vastly outnumbered. I saw one tase a lady trying to carry off a television, only to be crushed by a crowd running out of an electronics store. The streets were lined with trees like I'd never seen before. I turned a corner and saw this peculiar, frog like being. Rather plump, green skin. It was wearing a dark green tunic and on its back was a tank full of transparent were running in all directions from it. But I was curious.

[I:Why didn't you run?]

Well, I saw the facts rationally. This being had clothes, and didn't look threatening. Then, it spoke. ' Where am I?' This was in the small commercial district around the wharf, a small square of shops. I approached it.'You can speak?' It replied 'Of course I can speak! I was collecting firewood for my family when there was a flash of light, now here I am!'

I deduced that it was a native of the forest that had appeared, wherever the hell that place had come from. It had a high pitched voice- a child.' It began to weep-'I want my dad! Where's my dad! I walked forward to comfort it, maybe find out where it was from. Then, a woman walked into the square. She was rather pudgy and was carrying a rucksack. I was about to ask her for help when she started screaming. 'WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING!' She started screaming like a banshee, which only caused the child to cry harder. I was going to go calm her down when she took a pistol out and buried a round into the child's head.

[I: Oh god.]

I could only watch as she shot bullet after bullet, tears streaming down her face. She emptied the clip into it, at point blank child's body hit the ground, dead. Its blood, a shade of blue, streamed onto the tiles. I yelled at her 'WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR!' He hands were trembling as she knelt down. 'Stranger, these things- it ain't natural. You should be grateful! These could be Satan's spawn for all we know!' She poked the child's body, her face showing revulsion. Not guilt, or sadness. Revulsion.

[He sighs]

That thing was a sentient being, and now it's dead. I could hear a mob of looters heading in my way. I spared the child one last glance before racing down an alley, towards my home where I waited out the storm.

[I:Why do you think she did that?]

Well... ever since America was founded, we've been scared of things that don't look like us. The woman was terrified, and in a changed environment. To come across something that looked like that... She was on edge already, it probably set her off. But she was a white woman, and something tells me that if the first thing she did was fire a pistol into something that didn't look like her, she might not have been very nice. In a way, it was the next lynchings. This pattern repeated itself across the country. For too many of us, when we see something strange, something foreign, all we do is treat it with suspicion. Couple that with everyone around you going nuts and the world being in a state of turmoil...

Luckily most of the monsters didn't materialise in heavily populated areas. But of those that did , many did not survive. We did it with the blacks and asians, so why wouldn't we do it to a different species?