Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

It was unfortunate timing, to say the least. Just as the news of the Great Metaphysical Breakthrough was bringing a strange hope to the beleaguered Thirteenth Empire, the nothings appeared and swiftly devoured reality as the humans had known it, except what little could be saved by the hastily developed stasis generators. Human reasoning, being what it was, found it impossible to separate cause from juxtaposition and to dismiss the idea that the two events were related. The enemies of the metaphysicians made great play of this, openly accusing them of unleashing the demon.

A survivor of the destruction of Climnestra described one of the first appearances of the nothings thus: 'It started on Philo Boulevard right outside the Harbingers. It was a glittering patch of air, like dancing dust motes, that hung some four feet above the street. Very slowly it grew into a dazzling, pulsing sphere some six feet across. It remained like that for maybe ten minutes, and then, without warning, it expanded at an amazing speed. Everything it touched smoked and became nothing. Even those of us who were lucky enough to be inside the field of the stasis generator feared that we would parish as the terrible miasma engulfed us, but the ground beneath our feet and the air around us remained, and we alone were spared.'

The theories regarding the origins of the nothings are many, and the debate continues among historians to this day. Initially they were blamed on some alien superweapon, a product of the conflict with the Draan. Later more fanciful and complex explanations were evolved. The nothings were the first phase of a cataclysmic matter/nonmatter evolution. They were a uniquely disastrous residue from the process of stuff synthesis. One particular favorite of metaphysicians, trying to divert attention from the accusations of their political foes, was that humanity itself, fleeing the potential created by the Great Metaphysical Breakthrough, had willed The nothings into existence as a form of perverse self-protection. They were the physical (or maybe counterphysical) manifestation of collective fear and depression. There was also the matter of their extent. For those who survived the destruction, it was impossible to tell whether the nothings had engulfed just their home planet or half the galaxy.

— Pressdra Vishnaria