9200
Golden Age begins. Technological and social revolution. World peace. Pi Segment of the Monument translated by the Melusine, who become aware of the Hermetic interference in their history.
In utmost stealth, led by a Melusine named Melior, they draw their plans against the Hermeticists, and introduce Cliometric vectors into the path of history (which Del Azarchel and Montrose each take to be the other’s work).
9250
1036 Ganymed placed in near-Earth orbit.
9300
Divarication of the Coastal, Spaceborne, and Seaborne Melusine.
9400
Granolith failure. Surface life enters Dark Ages.
9500
Asteroid 1036 Ganymed impact wipes out surface life.
9999
White Earth. Montrose wakes long enough to introduce a mutagenic virus into the biosphere to evolve Swans from the Psychoscopic Locusts, and begins the volcanic process of global warming.
10000s
At about this time, the Melusine remove into the interior of the Earth in large numbers, using the abandoned depthtrain rail yards as warrens, forming the Interior or Infernal Melusine.
Anchorites begin repopulation of coastal areas. Nymph biotechnology released from the Tombs allows the Oceanic Melusine to form independent Xypotech trees under the sea.
Pan Sapiens, also called Second Humans or Swans, begin to appear among the Anchorite population of the Melusine, created by a genetic-mimetic vector known as the Mind Anarchy, and spread throughout the Anchorites.
10025
Swans develop Cliometry, read further into the Monument than any previous investigators. They deduce the existence of Exarchel, who exists as a decentralized form in the world water supply.
10075
Historical Crisis. Anchorite-Infernal war triggered by the first, clumsy attempts by the Swans to manipulate history. Exarchel melts, raising the ocean levels, flooding the coastal areas, and destroying the Anchorite hermitages. Anchorites are turned into mind serfs, but, unbeknownst to Exarchel, the Swans among them maintain independence of thought in the negative information spaces between manifest thought forms.
10099
Last Anchorite, Eumolpidai, dies in captivity.
10100–10400
Swans spread throughout the Melusine, maintaining a hidden and parallel civilization in virtual mind space.
10100
Infernal Melusine make an attempt to force the Tombs, and are repelled. They therefore design and introduce the Lree mind group into the Tomb system as moles; Lree are moved by Pellucid, as per standing orders, to Fancy Gap facility, where all dangerous interments are kept. Note that the Lree are already infected with the Mental Anarchy meme, hence secretly double agents.
Alalloel of Lree hibernates.
10200s
Rise of the Final Stipulation of Noösphere Protocols, called the Finality, a Concordat encompassing Swans (not yet recognized as a second human species) and Melusine and the descendents of Inquilines.
At about this time, Del Azarchel is restored to his old dignity and role as Nobilissimus, Commander-in-Chief, and Monarch of Man, and he dons the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
10401
Infernal Melusine deduce the existence of Pellucid, and begin growing a stalactite of logic crystal toward the planetary core.
10484–10515
Melusine begin Hyades Raid Drill, to evolve an anti-skyhook defense.
10500
The Intrusion. Stalactite of logic crystal reaches the Pellucid core and begins seeking thread nodes.
In the cramped interiors of the bore warrens, the Swans, forced into unnatural cooperation with each other and the Melusine, win the notational exchanges, corner the foreteller market, and force the assumption of Swans into the highest levels of the Melusine Noösphere, in effect creating a compromise life-form called Paramounts: neither machine nor biological, and independent of Cliometric prediction, a servile race secretly loyal to the Swans.
10514
Exarchel follows the core stalactite and invades Pellucid. The first mind war ends in a draw with severe damage on both sides, but with Exarchel in partial control of Pellucid’s systems and memories. At the time, due to phantasm interference in his perception interpretation system, he is only aware of the near-surface facilities, eighty-eight in number.
Exarchel, examining Pellucid’s records, deduces the location of Montrose at Fancy Gap, breaches the roof armor with a spaceborne weapon, and is abruptly stopped by the Swans.
Alarmed at this display of Swan power, which he takes to be an agency of Montrose, Exarchel uses his partial control over outlying elements of Pellucid to reach coffins in the Mount Misery facility on the island of Saint Christopher, thawing Ull and the other Blue Men.
Astonished to be thawed on an (apparently) deserted world, the Blues make a concerted effort to discover the (now missing) command and control elements of the Tomb system: the Knights Hospitalier or the Judge of Ages. They find and thaw a number of their brethren. They loot aircraft from Wright-Patterson and create Follower Moreaus from recovered canine archives. They invade several sites worldwide and are repelled by the defenses.
10515
The Blue Men find the Fancy Gap facility and raid it. Montrose is thawed and passes for a Chimera, whom he physically and psychologically resembles.
Launch of the mind seed of the Jupiter Brain, now containing the sociological-psychological neurogenetic information from all the previous races of man, which should enable it to achieve the status beyond Swan-style or Pellucid-style world-minds, but occupy the entire volume of a self-aware macromolecule the size of a gas giant.
The Hermeticists discover all their histories have been to facilitate this mind seed launch. Furious at being exploited for such marginal reasons, they dissolve the Landing Party and join the Final Stipulation. The Swans dissolve the Tomb system, destroy Exarchel, and condemn Del Azarchel and Montrose. Mass migration from the Tomb system, which is far more extensive than expected, and contains myraids of populations from all previous eras. Montrose activates his phantasm system, covers Del Azarchel, and they both return to the Emancipation.
End of the Posthuman Era
Swan Era Begins
TOR BOOKS BY JOHN C. WRIGHT
The Golden Age
The Phoenix Exultant
The Golden Transcendence
The Last Guardian of Everness
Mists of Everness
Orphans of Chaos
Fugitives of Chaos
Titans of Chaos
Null-A Continuum
Count to a Trillion
The Hermetic Millennia
The Judge of Ages