Down to Earth

The Earth was little more than a memory for them - a memory stretching over time and the black abyss of space; a memory kept alive by the huge, three-dimensional images sent up to save them from the madness of their isolation. Everything had been arranged to protect their bodies and their minds, this family of four, alone on a tiny planet in the outer galaxy. But one day, first insignificantly, then ever more unmistakably, the elaborate machinery began to show flaws. And what had at first seemed inexplicable accident, inexorably began to reveal itself in all its grotesque, horrifying truth.