Domophobia: Prologue

Someone was running across the desolate fields that stretched before the huge black structure which had been the most inspiring muse for many poets and artists. The sheer unbelievable dimensions, the idea behind it, all of it made a single man feel small and unimportant.
Some felt threatened, enclosed by this fact.
One of them, which were classified as having a disease called "domophobia", was currently following the inevitable course of his illness: trying to escape from that which threatened him. A cure for the disease was available, theoretically, but it only worked in the rarest of cases, of the cases which survived.
This one specimen suffering from domophobia had a name; he even had work and a place to live, but due to his illness, his home was empty beside him. Domophobes rarely had any success in finding partners due to the paranoic factor of their disease; in the rare instances where one successfully managed to find a partner, it usually was another domophobe who understood him entirely.
Partnerships with a known domophobe were forbidden by law. The government reasoned that, due to concern for the children such arrangements might spawn, fearing the distorting effects of having effectively psychopathic parents, it was in the best interest to forbid such interaction. Victims had the right to receive free medical treatment for their disease, but the offer was seldom accepted, out of fear.
Our subject was reaching the apex of domophobia: the instinct to pursue escape, by all means possible. In his flight, he had already reached the walls of the dome. Few managed to get that far.
He was looking upwards, head laid back, barely being able to make out where the solid fortification, the wall, ended, and the web of supporting beams and power lines for the force field began.
The man felt dwarfed by the sheer height of the structure. From the distance, one could see only the wall; the patchwork above it was so filigrane that one couldn't make it out. The construction was still dominating; it looked as if someone had supplanted the Great Wall of China. The force field which stretched all around was opaque, but without specific colour. It just reflected whatever light it catched.
Electronically amplified shouts ordering him to stop came from behind - he couldn't stop now, after having come that far. Can't they see that?, he asked himself.
Shaking off the awe inspired, he went on, remembering why he had come to that place.
Exit. Exit. He knw that it had to be somewhere near him.
There! The faint red light that had been mentioned! He saw it clearly; the shouts were coming closer, too.
He ran towards the light. Everything was exactly how they had told him. He fumbled with the controls.
"FREEZE!"
He glanced back, saw one of them shouting at him. He panicked, and started typing the passphrase for the door controls; his supporters had hacked those and given him the passphrase.
He never finished typing, though. Something hit him in the back, and he fell over. Before his vision faded to black, he glanced up at the letters on the control panel.
"E D E" was written in green, luminiscient letters.
Just one more was his last thought before darkness embraced him.