In the beginning....

Void.
It was as if all Earth had been cancelled. The world - as those who inhabitated it, knew it - ceased to exist - in virtually a millisecond. Gone were all the worldly accouterments of wealth, power, status and position. No skyscrapers, asphalt parking lots, cement highways, telephone poles, smoke-belching factories, gasoline-powered vehicles, oil refineries, government buildings, palatial homes, pipelines or dams existed anymore - and there was no evidence that they had ever been there. Few things that man had made - stayed.

Peace.
Planet Earth was calm, quiet, serene, pristine. It was as if the entire globe had transformed into a mythical Garden of Eden where plants flourished, animals ran free, and mankind shared the Earth's bounty with all other living creatures. And there was bounty....unbelieveable bounty. Waterfalls; streams; brooks; trees; meadows; wetlands; mangrove forests; millions of plant species; millions of animal species; endless fields of corn, wheat, sorghum, and rice grew with unbridled fervency. All the land that man had quelled into roads and bridges now blossomed with all the beauty and goodness of nature.

Love.
The remaining human beings - those three billion or so who survived an unknown, and unremembered, invasion by silent silvery, almost-invisible flying objects - were filled with an undescribed feeling of love and compassion for their fellow man, an unprecedented respect for all of nature, and a sense of wonderment about their world. In their minds, they had no recall of what the world had been like just a heartbeat ago. But in their hearts they embraced a sense of gratitude for their salvation. Without physical recollection, they only felt a sense of tranquility; an indescribable inner joy.

It was a worldwide condition of sine qua non - an absolutely indispensable and essential thing.

The world had been reborn.

How?

Why?