Apocynthion
an excerpt

Julien had decided that the lighter was still useful, and was beginning to use it for the purpose of sporadic waving to punctuate salient dramatic points. "Hence!"
"Hence what?" Sterling said, looking up from a busy examination of rapidly cooling coffee.
"We're dealing," she continued with pointed ignorance directed towards his question, "with one of several possible things by sheer force of pattern recognition and historical accounts. First, there is the single omni-cidal maniac, who rather than going to a nearby psychiatrist or some other actually practical idea like that, decides that the one logical conclusion to his personal problems is to become a nihilist dedicated to destroying as much of the multiverse as possible."
Sterling raised his hand half-heartedly. "Objection. I used to be one of those, you know."
"Of course," Julien said with a cheerful smile, "that's why I made the example ostensibly male and not genderless or something. The second type could be some form of artifact which has become destabilized and/or curiously fragmented, resulting in distortions in the fabric of space and time due to their status being connected in some way."
Mona decided at this point to begin offering her own commentary. "Why would something like that even exist? I mean, any race who made it would have to be either completely insane or overconfident enough to qualify as insane in any event. And any creator with that kind of malice could find more efficient methods of being malicious to begin with."
Julien dismissed this with a shrug. "Or three: we could be dealing with a natural phenomenon." She opened her eyed and looked down at the audience. "In which case, er, we're pretty much doomed anyhow, and it was fun while it lasted."
"Or a combination of the above," Sterling added, "in which case we're even more doomed."
"Yes." She crossed her arms again, returning to her default 'vaguely defiant' general expression, and sat down.