I will discuss a class of scalar models that, once coupled to gravity, lead to cosmologies that smoothly and stably connect an inflationary quasi-de Sitter universe to a low, or even zero-curvature, maximally symmetric spacetime in the asymptotic past, strongly violating the null energy condition at intermediate times. The models are based on symmetries, both exact and approximate, that give rise to the quantum robustness of the whole picture. The resulting cosmological backgrounds can be viewed as regularized extensions of the galilean genesis scenario, or, equivalently, as 'early-time-complete' realizations of infation.
