It happened April 1. 2030. Of course, everybody thought it was just some elaborate prank, a joke taken much too far even from the beginning. Nobody believed it. Not until they walked out their doors and saw for themselves. Some whispered terrorism, some natural disaster. Steel and glass buildings cracked and crumbed beneath their own weight. But then, strange people began appearing in the streets, speaking strange languages, and even stranger creatures soon followed. And they did things. Impossible... things.   When midnight came and April 1. became April 2., nobody said "April's Fools". The strange people and unnatural creatures were still appearing, out of fallen skyscrapers and from nowhere in the desert. Rescue efforts were pressed all over the globe, failing to undo the damage of our world collapsing. And as we watched in horror the mess unfolding, we all became aware that the impossible things the strange people did, and the impossible creatures we saw in the ruins of the world, were not impossible. They were just new possibilities. Our buildings fell because reality had changed, and in many places, steel no longer worked as steel should. Instead, magic did. Psionics did. Cybernetics and robotic creatures did. Alien technologies did. In some places.   It's April 3. now. I look out my office window, at downtown San Diego. We still work, we still have lives, we still have laws and governments and mortgages to pay. The world is still here. But so are other worlds. And as I gaze at my city, I see ruins give way to otherworldly buildings that appear out of nowhere, slowly. In them, strange people will do strange things with strange abilities and even stranger tools. Strange creatures, some mere beasts and some with minds of their own, will walk strange halls in there. Some can leave, while others cannot exist outside the little shard of their own reality they have brought with them.   The Shift has begun. What has become known as The Shift is still a mystery. What seems to be pieces of other realities has begun shifting into our own, in many cases making ours crumble, causing our technologies to become impossible in pockets of the world, but making other things possible instead, from magic to telepaths to alien technologies, and every pocket has its own particular reality. And from them, the denizens of these realities are arriving, some of which can leave and exist in our reality, some who cannot. These pockets of the world are from a few meters or yards in diameter, up to a few kilometers or miles. They grow irregularly, but slowly, and although they still only cover less than a percent of the Earth's landmass, they have its population deeply worried. The Shift is happening globally, even in some cases at sea or underground, even in orbit. It is impossible to tell if it is happening on nearby planets. Around 15 million people have died as a direct result of reality failing in these pockets. Beyond that, little is known about The Shift. Nations and organizations around th eworld handle the strange newcomers, both civilized and beasts, in ways ranging from diplomatic greetings to outright hositlity. Hours prior to the first noted shifts around the globe, massive energy discharges were noted by multiple satelites in eight spots scattered around the world, from the Gobi Desert to Newfoundland. Each of these places are now under local military containment or direct UN control. Each of them is also a dead wasteland where nothing can exist, and anything that enters turns to dust in seconds. Nobody knows what caused The Shift or why it was triggered, and nobody is taking responsibility for it.