primates, the lot of them. Progress is what matters. Fulfilling the potential
of humanity, and of all other life. She had always been one of the fiercest
opponents of the growing conservative backlash most keenly exemplified
by the Non Ultra Natura terrorists. If they had their way, we’d all end up
back in the caves. Back in the trees. The whole point of civilization is that
we exceed the limits of nature, you tedious little primitives.
‘We stand on others’ shoulders, of course.’ The proper line, that of
accepted scientific humility, was, ‘on the shoulders of giants’, but she had
not got where she was by bowing the knee to past generations. Midgets, lots
and lots of midgets, she thought, and then – she could barely keep back the
appalling giggle – on the shoulders of monkeys.
At a thought from her, one wallscreen and their Mind’s Eye HUDs
displayed the schematics of Brin 2 for them all. She wanted to direct their
attention and lead them along with her towards the proper appreciation of
her – sorry, their – triumph. There: the needle of the central core encircled
by the ring of life and science that was their torus-shaped world. At one end
of the core was the unlovely bulge of the Sentry Pod, soon to be cast adrift
to become the universe’s loneliest and longest research post. The opposite
end of the needle sported the Barrel and the Flask. Contents: monkeys and
the future, respectively.
‘Particularly I have to thank the engineering teams under Doctors Fallarn
and Medi for their tireless work in reformatting –’ and she almost now said
‘Kern’s World’ without meaning to – ‘our subject planet to provide a safe
and nurturing environment for our great project.’ Fallarn and Medi were
well on their way back to Earth, of course, their fifteen-year work
completed, their thirty-year return journey begun. It was all stage-setting,
though, to make way for Kern and her dream. We are – I am – what all this
work is for.
A journey of twenty light years home. Whilst thirty years drag by on
Earth, only twenty will pass for Fallarn and Medi in their cold coffins. For
them, their voyage is nearly as fast as light. What wonders we can
accomplish!
From her viewpoint, engines to accelerate her to most of the speed of
light were no more than pedestrian tools to move her about a universe that
Earth’s biosphere was about to inherit. Because humanity may be fragile in
ways we cannot dream, so we cast our net wide and then wider . . .
