“It’s a supernatural prison break.” This was the idea that hooked me. Ever since Todd pitched me the premise I couldn’t stop thinking about it. We had teamed up on several projects over the years, but this had something I could sink my teeth into. We spent several months nailing down the major plot points and turns, and exploring the characters that would honestly live in the skin of the story. Having been raised by a physicist, we wanted its universe to have a concrete plausibility, though the juicey stuff delt with the world just beyond our reach. We poured over the outlines, trying to weave momentum into the plots. But we spent most of our time developing characters that we could invest in. We wanted characters with compelling contradictions, struggling through inner-conflicts that resonate with the broader scope of the story.
The moment when the the story seemed to take on a life of its own was when we realized it all revolved around the storm. We were fascinated by the concept that several people from different backgounds are compelled to journey into a city, while tens of thousands evacuate.
Something is different about the storm, though. It has a consciosness. The rules of the universe are transformed in a place that is utterly cut off from the outside world. The fugitive story of the Latimer Brothers became our point of entry into this larger narrative. They became the web that weaves all of the stories together.
We wanted to tell a big story, that is, a story that deals with massive, universal themes and shifts in paradigms of science, religion, and world culture. But tell it from an intimate, personal perspective. We seldom see the world changing from where we stand. Mostly, we only see traces of evoltion in our own lives. Ripples from the great causes. These are stories of people riding the waves in the wake of a cosmic event. This is the universe from the inside out.

--Paul Linsley