.it was in the year 1054 A.D. that, for a few weeks in the inky darkness of night skies over this ancient city known as Cahokia, the steps ahead could be faintly seen rather than masked in black from view as villagers wandered about, pointing skyward in fear and anticipation. A new star had appeared. As mosquitoes swarmed against the backdrop of the great river, they walked away from the blazes of their enormous fires to take bearing of the multitudes of stars that they knew well. There were figures of great bears, lions, men of lore, rivers of antiquity all shown against this backdrop of night. It would become a night of macabre ritual, of sacrifice.of mutilation. One thousand years later, this ancient place becomes the center of untethered chaos on a scale the world had never witnessed. Something in the natural world or was it nature? changed and the very forces that drive all of biology ceased within the cells, spelling what might be the ultimate extinction on planet Earth.