A B'tari astronomer discovers the first sign of the temporal eradication wave. He believes this stems from an experiment by the inventor of Local wormhole technology, Torbin Lindau, a man apparently driven insane by his work. But someone else may bear ultimate responsibility, the one who unleashed something very similar to this phenomenon before humans were ever supposed to discover it. And now it seems the originators, the so-called Keepers, have decreed all sentient life should be returned to a more primitive, less threatening state.