the widely separated lifetimes of Christian Brannock, Laurinda Ashcroft and Mikel Bolev;
a later event in the existence of the Christian Brannock upload;
one further generation of Terrestrial human beings;
a one-page chapter - Chapter IX - about Sol orbiting the galactic center in two hundred million years.
Thus, Chapter IX, transcending Wellsian and Heinleinian time scales, enters a Stapledonian realm where artificial intelligences protect Terrestrial life from:
asteroids;
comets;
cosmic clouds;
nearby supernovae, gamma bursters or colliding neutron stars;
the close passage of another star;
a few threats unimaginable to humanity.
A disc of interplanetary material larger than Earth protects Earth from the radiation of supernovae etc. A million years are necessary to prepare for the close stellar passage and three million to deal with it.
The intelligence on Earth manages or mitigates Terrestrial quakes, eruptions and climate changes until it decides instead to observe how life adapts to them. No human life is mentioned in the chapter.
Self-evolving consciousness spreads among the stars which are also said to be evolving. We know that stars go through a process from condensation to explosion and its aftermath but does "evolving" (p. 97) here mean something else? Are they somehow being naturally selected for sensitivity to the cosmos? I don't think so but then what does this "evolving" mean?
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