Prologue

It was nearly two hundred and fifty thousand years before the birth of Christ. If a calendar were kept in space, it would have been marked with red circle to commemorate the momentous event taking place. The explosion of radiation that accompanied the quasar began its long trek across the empty universe, expanding and strengthening as radioactive material burned.

As the behemoth raged through galaxies, it vaporized all solid matter in its wake. Space metals, unknown on Earth for millennia to come, disappeared in the blink of an eye as the massive wave brightened and grew hotter. At its core, it burned hotter than a hundred suns. The solar, radioactive wave traveled nearly the speed of light, bending the rules of time and distance as it ate its way across space.

A time would come when this star-eating mass would reach its zenith and begin to ebb. During the reign of Nero, the energy field began to draw into itself, curling at the edges as it fought against the gravitational field that accompanied it. By the time an Italian named Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the massive wave was well into its death rattle, contracting into a mass roughly the size of Jupiter. It would evolve into a simple energy field that affected relatively few forms of matter. Metals and most solids, were unaffected. But softer carbon life forms still suffered from its monstrous solar radiation.