Swimmers .......................................................................................... 28
Lizard Herders .................................................................................. 30
Temptor ............................................................................................ 32
Bone Crusher ................................................................................. 34
Colonials ......................................................................................... 36
Flyers ............................................................................................... 38
Hand Flappers ................................................................................. 40
Blind Folk ........................................................................................ 42
Lopsiders ......................................................................................... 44
Striders ............................................................................................ 46
Parasites .......................................................................................... 48
Finger Fishers ................................................................................... 50
Hedonists .......................................................................................... 52
Insectophagi ..................................................................................... 54
Spacers ............................................................................................... 56
Ruin Haunters ................................................................................... 58
Sentience Reborn ............................................................................. 60
Extinction ........................................................................................... 61
Snake People (Descendants of the Worms) ................................. 63
Killer Folk (Descendants of the Human Predators) ..................... 65
Tool Breeders (Descendants of the Swimmers) .......................... 67
Saurosapients (Livestock of the Lizard Herders) ........................ 69
Modular People (Descendants of the Colonials) ........................ 71
Pterosapiens (Descendants of the Flyers) ................................... 73
Asymmetric People (Descendants of the Lopsiders) ................. 75
Symbiotes (Descendants of the Parasites) .................................. 77
Sail People (Descendants of the Finger Fishers) ........................ 79
Satyriacs (Descendants of the Hedonists) .................................. 81
Bug Facers (Descendants of the Insectophagi) .......................... 83
Asteromorphs (Descendants of the Spacers) .............................. 85
Second Galactic Empire ................................................................... 87
Gravital (Descendants of the Ruin Haunters) .............................. 88
Machine Invasion ............................................................................ 90
When Considering the Invasion .................................................... 92
Subjects (Many descendants of the Bug Facers) ....................... 93
The Other Machines ........................................................................ 96
The Fall of the Machines (Return of the Spacers) ...................... 98
The Post-War Galaxy ...................................................................... 100
The New Machines ......................................................................... 102
Second Contact ............................................................................... 104
Earth Rediscovered ......................................................................... 106
Return ................................................................................................ 108
All Tomorrows ................................................................................. 110
Finger Fishers
Their ancestors were trapped on an archipelago world; a planet sprinkled with many small continents and countless islands over interconnected networks of calm, shallow seas. Like a magnified Aegean, this place was a terrestrial paradise in many respects. Except that after the Qu, no minds were left to enjoy it.
On this vacant biosphere, evolution was quick to begin her blind, unpredictable dance. Once feral, the descendants of degenerate humans adapted themselves to every available niche, no matter how exotic, how outlandish. One group learnt to pluck fish from the lazy shores. Millennia passed and they settled more into their piscatorial lifestyle. Elongated fingers became ambulatory fish-hooks, teeth modified for a generalized diet became needle-like affairs, lined up neatly in a long, thin muzzle. In less than a few million years, the Finger Fishers established themselves as a prominent lineage. There was scarcely a beach, an island or an estuary that was devoid of their pale, lanky forms.
As prolific as they were, the Fishers were still no better than animals. Their “humanity” would come only after another spasm of outlandish adaptations.
Hedonists
Even the blissful existence of the Finger Fishers would have seemed bothersome to the Hedonists; for their kind was not evolved, but designed for a life of pleasure. The Qu had kept them as pampered pets; set loose in a tropical island-world of succulent fruits, bountiful trees and calm, lapping lakes full of sweet, bacterial manna. Furthermore, the Hedonists were left as the only animal life on this place. They had no choice but to enjoy it to the fullest.
In normal conditions, any given species would quickly crowd out such an utopian environment. But normal conditions had never been the point of the Qu redesign. They had altered their subjects so that they could conceive only after mating an enormous number of potential suitors, continually over a period of decades. While this took care of the population problem, it also made the species less adaptable. Without any point in sexual competition, natural selection would progress only at a glacial pace. Fortunately, their stable microcosm remained free of environmental catastrophes even after the Qu left.
All these changes had also made the Hedonists’ day. Their lives were juxtaposed routines of browsing, sleeping and mind-blowing sex; troubled neither by the concerns of disease or pregnancy. Aloof and carefree, they enjoyed the most pleasurable times of all mankinds, albeit with the intellectual capabilities of three-year-olds.
It didn’t really matter, though. Who needed to think when having such a nice time, after all?
