One year ago, in what would be the Earth month of February; a flotilla of Dominai interstellar ships reduced speed below that of light outside of Earth's solar system.  This instantaneous drop below the speed of light caused a reverse "above the speed of light wake" in any particle of matter in the vicinity.  As they dropped below the speed of light, every particle of matter within a 20,000-kilometer radius was immediately obliterated.  The resulting conversion to energy was spectacular, emitting an intense pulse of light that streamed out around and behind the Dominai craft as a wake behind a sailboat. Visible light and faster than light emissions occurred.  Of course, only the emissions in the observer’s frame of reference are visible. 

     If space wasn't devoid of most matter this reverse wake reaction could destroy large sections of the galaxy.  A transparent two-layer shield protected the Dominai's ships.  The first shield layer vibrated at above light speed in relation to the ship regardless of the ship's relative speed.   It transformed energy back into the basic sub-light particles that human's were familiar with.  It was this energy to matter reaction that protected the Dominai and their ships from being obliterated by their own wakes.  This layer was only "kind of visible", since you could only see the sub-light energy emanations caused as the Energy State of the bleeding edges of the field dropped sub-light.   Actually, whenever humans viewed a Dominai ship dropping into normal light, the images are so foreign to their mental experiences that the images perceived were ghostly and unreal.  The experience varied drastically from individual to individual, almost as bad as trying to get crime scene eyewitnesses to agree on the account of the crime.  For some humans the experience was nauseating.  For other humans the experience was euphoric, and addicting.  A sort of rapture occurred in these people.

     The Dominai intercepted the meteor showers, called the Perseid, and introduced virus spores in their midst.  The virus spores were encased in ablative armor that burned up in re-entry.  It sort of operated like the ceramic heat shields on an early Earth Space ship called the “Shuttle”.  The armor was even designed to look like meteors just so that the “primitive” humans supposedly would be fooled.  To make absolutely sure that the virus contaminated all of Earth the Dominai also seeded two more meteor fields that were to shower down on Earth that year; the Orionids in October, the Leonid meteor storm in November, and the Geminids in December.  If they were noted for no other trait, the Dominai were thorough.