Thursday, April 9th, 2037, started like any other day.

  The sun rotated the Earth. Legions of birds chirped in Brazil. The skies in California were perfectly blue. In London, it rained. Mumbai was heavy with smog, but what else was new? Corporate Tokyo was hard at work even before their solar day had begun, as were farmers the world over. And yet, it would prove to be anything but a regular day.

  On Thursday, April 9th, 2037, at exactly 9:42 pm GMT, every human's state of existence was irrevocably altered by the sudden and apparently random appearance of a blue box occupying the centre of each human's field of vision.

  Even though no one could see anyone else’s box to confirm, the fact of the matter was that all boxes were indeed exactly identical. They read:

  To be honest, the timing could not have been worse for you. Or maybe, it could not have been better. Because exactly 0.000391649 quarts later you were the first to trigger the next screen: