<table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td>(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/1/1f/ManoftheCentury.jpg)<br/></td><td><tt class="bbc_tt">By Ellison Grant, Contributed by Reuters, AP, BBC and CNN<br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 40pt;">"</span><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 28pt;"><strong>December 22, 1992--Johannesburg, South Africa.  The greatest calamity to befall mankind came in the form of an asteroid 562 miles in diameter, carrying an extra-terrestrial ebola virus that has, to this day, wiped out nearly 1.5 billion people.</strong>.</span><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 40pt;">"</span><br/>Utilized with permission from <em>How the Empire Fell</em>, by Ellison Grant, 1993, Penguin Books.<br/></tt></td></tr></tbody></table><hr/><br/>In a dimension very similar to ours, men and women very similar to us looked up at the sky in abject terror.  An asteroid with the destructive potential of 500 Hiroshimas was hurtling towards them.  Yet, learned men of the greatest scientific institutions had foreseen this event many years before and worked tirelessly in search of a solution.  The solution came hours before impact:  these men and women transported the asteroid out of their dimension, and into ours.<br/><br/>The impact of the asteroid shook the planet and half-a-billion lives were lost instantly.  Millions of lives were lost to the natural catastrophes spurred by the impact, like earthquakes, typhoons and volcanic eruptions.  However, an invisible destroyer in the form of an extra-terrestrial, super-intelligent ebola virus became the culprit of the largest extermination of life that our world had ever seen.  Those who could not escape Africa were doomed, except one.<br/><br/>Tycho Portala was sixteen years old at the time.  A tall, lanky teenager, he never struck anyone as abnormal.  And, for the most part, he wasn't except for a small mutant aberration:  an immunity to diseases.  The symbiotic roles reversed, Portala managed to assume control of the virus.