Aberrant: In the Beginning - March 23, 1998 00:01 AM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

[Titan]

Darkness covers Europe. In Asia, people are getting ready for a new day. North America settles into its collective recliner with a beer, ready for prime-time television. The Earth is poised on the brink of...something.

In New York City, at Rescue 1 Manhattan, six firefighters are playing poker. Randel Portman is down eleven dollars, and is considering dropping out of the game and ordering a pizza.

In Zwickau, Germany, an old, old man lies in a massive bed, his body almost completely obscured from view by tubes, electrodes, and medical machinery keeping him alive. August Herrmann has seemingly come to the end of his long journey.

In Kaohsiung, Taiwan, a young actor blearily rubs sleep from his eyes, and considers the model in his bed. They had both drunk too much the night before, but Chu Jing Tian has an early shoot and wonders just how impolite he must be to get her to leave quickly.

In San Diego, California, USA, an eleven-year-old girl pants with exertion after soccer practice. She barks a laugh at one of her friends antics, and shoulders her bag. She pulls her red hair out of her pony-tail as she walks to her mother's minivan. Jennifer Landers is thinking about the shower she is going to take when she gets home.

And, on the experimental space station Galatea, Lt. Commander Cheryl Wilson yawns and rubs her eyes. Her watch has ended, and she pushes gently off of the bulkhead towards the residential module. She is up for some well-deserved rest. She will spend nine of the remaining twelve hours of her life asleep.

All over the globe, people go about their lives, unaware of the monumental change that is on the horizon.