All Tomorrows feats, power & lore thread

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All Tomorrows is a science fiction book written and illustrated by C. M. Kosemen (under the pseudonym of Nemo Ramjet). Taking place over a timespan of a billion years, it focuses on the speculative evolution of different subsets of humanity across the galaxy. An extended edition with updated illustrations is currently in the works, with plans to release it physically.

 

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First of all, All Tomorrows can be legally read in its entirety online.

Wayback Machine

There's also a video summary which has the direct blessing of the author.

 

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Humanity (when it's still recognisable as humanity) colonised Mars over a timespan of centuries, using genetically tailored microbes, as well as knocking several comets towards the planet to give it water. The remnants of Earth's fauna and flora were altered and sent to live on Mars.

All through the decades, traveling to, and later settling on Mars had been envisioned as quick, relatively easy affairs; complicated but feasible and manageable in short term. As the push finally came to a shove, it was realized that this was not the case. It had to go step by step. Atmospheric bombardment by genetically-tailored microbes slowly generated a breathable atmosphere in a cycle that took centuries. Later, a few cometary fragments were knocked off-course to bring forth seas, oceans; water. When the wait was finally over, remnants of Earth’s flora and fauna were introduced as specially-modified Martian remakes. When everything was ready, people came from their crowded world. They came in one-way ships; fusion rockets and atmospheric gliders, packed to the brim with colonists, sleeping in dreams of a new beginning. The first steps on Mars were taken not by astronauts, but by barefoot children on synthetic grass.

Inevitably, Earth and Mars go to war. The war was a slow series of precise attacks enacted autonomous machines that spelled out destruction on biblical scales.

Most thinkers (and fantasists) of previous times had imagined interplanetary war as a glorious, fast paced spectacle of massive spaceships, one-man fighters and lastminute heroics. No fantasy could have been further from the truth. War between planets was a slow, nerve-wracking series of precisely timed decisions that spelled destruction on biblical scales. Most of the time the combatants never saw each other. Most of the time the combatants were not there at all. War became a duel between complicated, autonomous machines programmed to maximize damage to the other side while trying to last a little longer.

During this conflict, Phobos was shattered and rained down on Mars as a meteor hail. Meanwhile Earth received a polar impact that killed a third of its population. After the war the peoples of Earth and Mars made peace, after more than eight billion souls had been lost.

Such a conflict caused horrendous destruction on both sides. Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, was shattered, and rained down as meteorite hail. Earth received a polar impact that killed of one third of its population. Barely escaping extinction, the peoples of Earth and Mars made peace and reforged a united solar system. It had cost them more than eight billion souls.

 

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After the Earth-Mars war, humanity united. As living on Mars for a thousand years had caused the Martian humans to grow taller, they decided to merge both new humanity and old humanity together into a new race called the Star People via eugenicss.

The answer was a new human subspecies, equally and better adapted not only to Earth and Mars, but to the conditions of most newly terraformed environments as well. Furthermore, these beings were envisioned with larger brains and heightened talents, making them greater than the sum of their predecessors. Normally, it would be hard to convince any population to make a choice between mandatory sterilization and parenting a newfangled race of superior beings. However, memories of the war were still painfully fresh, and it was easier to implement these radical procedures in the wake of such slaughter. Any resistance to the birth of the new species did not extend beyond meager complaints and trivial strikes.

The Star People rapidly terraformed Venus, the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

In only a few generations, the new race began to prove its worth. Organized as a single state and aided by the technological developments of the war, they rapidly terraformed and colonized Venus, the Asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Soon the Solar System grew too small and they sought to go beyond it. But even with all their advancements, they still couldn't take a large amount of people and resources to even the closest star, and they had no method of faster than light travel, only being able to send ships a "percentages of lightspeed." Generation ships where conceived built, but they succumbed to technical difficulties or onboard anarchy after a few cycles.

Simply put, it was impossible to take a large number of people with enough supplies to even the closest star to make colonization feasible. The existing technologies could only slug along at mere percentages of lightspeed, making the journey an epochspanning affair. Enormous “generation ships” were conceived and even built, but these succumbed to technical difficulties or on-board anarchy after a few cycles

Instead of taking people there, they would send small & fast (abet still sublight) ships to other stars, which housed semi-sentient machines which terraformed the destination and "constructed" the colonists from the genetic materials stored on board.

The solution was to first go there, and make the colonists later. To this end, fast and small, automated ships were sent forth to the stars. On board were semi-sentient machines programmed to replicate and terraform the destination, and “construct” its inhabitants from the genetic materials stored on board.

Half of these colony ships failed (as the colonists began to worship the robots that made/grew them), but the other half went on to colonize the entire Spiral Arm of the galaxy.

Even then, however, the remaining half was enough to fill Humanity’s own spiral arm of the galaxy.

Humanity would soon come to it's first golden age, exceeding their Solar forbearers.

Right after Mankind’s colonization of the galaxy came its first true golden age. Reared by machine prophets, the survivors of the Oedipal plagues built civilizations that equaled and even surpassed their Solar forbears.

Humanity connected across the stars via electromagnetic communication, allowing for great advances in technology across planets seperated by astrologically vast distances.

This diffusion across the heavens did not mean a loss of unity. Across the skies, steady flows of electromagnetic communication linked Mankind’s worlds with such efficiency that there was no colony that did not know about the goings on of her distant siblings. The free-flow of information meant, among other things; a vastly accelerated pace of technological growth. What couldn’t be figured out in one world was helped out by another, and any new developments were quickly made known to all in a realm that spanned centuries of light.

The Star People lived in a utopia where individuals had more luxury than entire nations currently.

Not surprisingly, living standards rose to previously unimaginable levels. While this did not exactly mean a galactic utopia, it was safe to say that people of the colonized galaxy lived lives in which labor; both menial and mental, was purely compulsory. Thanks to the richness of the heavens and the toil of machines, each person had access to material and cultural wealth greater than that of some nations today.

 

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During this golden age, a discovery of a creature much like a therizinosaur on Pre-Historic Earth. It also differed to all other large land animal on said planet in limb number and bone makeup.

On a newly colonized world, engineers had stumbled across the remains of a puzzling creature, considered so because it had every hallmark of terrestrial animals on an alien planet. Justifiably named Panderavis pandora, the colossal fossil belonged to a bird-like creature with enormous claws. Later research determined it to be a highly derived therizinosaur, from a lineage of herbivorous dinosaurs that died out millions of years ago on Earth. While every other large land animal on that colony world had three limbs, a copper based skeletal system and hydrostatically operated muscles; Panderavis was a typical terrestrial vertebrate with calcium-rich bones and four extremities. Finding it there was as unlikely as finding an alien creature in Earth’s own strata.

Although some saw this as a sign of divine intervention, others saw it as a sign of another intelligent lifeform out there, ancient and powerful enough to move creatures between star systems, and sought to prepare (humanity had discovered lots of aliens but no intelligent aliens).

Others saw it differently. Panderavis had shown humans that entities; powerful enough to visit Earth, take animals from there and adapt them to an alien world, were at large in the galaxy. Considering the time gulf of the fossil itself, the mysterious beings were millennia older than humanity when they were capable of such things.

Although humanity prefered a peaceful contact, they knew better than to take chances, and started stockpiling weapons, capable of destroying stars and wrecking whole star systems. Even these would prove to be ineffective against the coming threat.

Silently, humanity once again began to build and stockpile weapons, this time of the interplanetary potency. There were terrible devices, capable of nova-ing stars and wrecking entire solar systems. Sadly, even these preparations would prove to be ineffectual in time.

The Qu arrive, and humanity is almost rendered extinct.

In humanity’s case, this “culture shock” meant the complete extinction of mankind as it had come to be known.

The Qu are a terrifying and fanatical alien race who have been around for a billion years, having mastered genetical manipulation and nanotechnology. They travel from spiral arm to spiral arm in their self-imposed religious mission to "remake the universe as they saw fit."

Almost a billion years old, the alien species known as Qu were galactic nomads, traveling from one spiral arm to another in epoch-spanning migrations. During their travels they constantly improved and changed themselves until they became masters of genetic and nanotechnological manipulation. With this ability to control the material world, they assumed a religious, self-imposed mission to “remake the universe as they saw fit.” Powerful as gods, Qu saw themselves as the divine harbingers of the future.

To the Qu, humanity is merely a transmutable object. Within a thousand years, every human world was destroyed, depopulated or changed. Humanity could do nothing save a few temporary resistances. Humanity went extinct...though not humans.

To them humanity, with all of its relative glories, was nothing more than a transmutable subject. Within less than a thousand years, every human world was destroyed, depopulated or even worse; changed. Despite the fervent rearmament, the colonies could achieve nothing against its billion-year-old foes, save for a few flashes of ephemeral resistance. Humanity, once the ruler of the stars, was now extinct. However, humans were not.

 

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There was little in terms of "raw materials" when the Qu arrived on the human worlds, as humanity had erased most of the native ecosystems.

The worlds of humanity, gardens of terraformed paradise, seemed strangely empty to the Qu. Often there were no raw materials available other than people, their cities and a few basic niches of ecology, populated by genetically modified animals and plants from Earth. This was because humans had erased the original alien ecologies in the first place.

The Qu took this as blasphemy, as only they had the rights to remake life as they saw fit, so they remade humanity to their whim, erasing their sentience (with a few unlucky exceptions) and turning the humans across the many different worlds into strange and unusual races.

Offended by another race trying to remake the universe, the Qu set forth to punish these “infidels” by using them as the building materials of their vision. While this led to a complete extinguishment of human sentience, it also saved the species by preserving its genetic heritage in a myriad of strange new forms.

The Qu turned humanity into all sorts of forms, from animals to pets to tools, and ruled the galaxy for 40 million years, setting up colossal monuments kilometers high, and changed the surfaces of entire worlds to their whims.

Populated by ersatz humans, now in every guise from wild animals to pets to genetically modified tools, Qu reigned supreme for forty million years on the worlds of our galaxy. They erected kilometer-high monuments and changed the surfaces of entire worlds, apparently to whim.

After the Qu left, the thousand worlds which had once been humans were left behind. Most died right after the Qu left, with only a precious few descendants of humans surviving.

Behind them the Qu left a thousand worlds, each filled with bizarre creatures and ecologies that had once been men. Most of them perished right after their caretakers left, others lasted a little longer to succumb to long-term instabilities. On a precious few words, descendants of people actually managed to survive.

An example of a Qu monolith, which stands a mile tall. Structures like this exist on every habitable world the Qu pass through.

Spoiler

A mile high Qu pyramid towers over the silent world that once housed four billion souls. Such structures are the hallmark of Qu, and they can be seen on every habitable world they passed through.

 

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Among the subspecies of humanity that now exist are the Titans, huge peaceful creatures that can grow over 40m long.

On the endless savannah of a long-extinguished colonial outpost, enormous beasts roamed supreme. More than forty meters long by terrestrial measurements, these behemoths were actually the transmuted offspring of the Star People.

The Qu could breed other species to act as living recorders, as they did to the Mantelopes.

They had been bred as singers and memory-retainers, acting much like living recorders during the reign of Qu.

The Mantelopes retained near-human levels of intelligence, but not the physiology that allowed humans to prosper, but couldn't do anything about it. They lived centuries mournfully, forming oral traditions and religions around this crippling racial disability.

The Mantelopes, equipped with full (if slightly numbed) Human minds and completely disabled animal bodies, lived agonizing lives. They could see and understand the world around them, but due to their bodies they could do nothing to change it. For centuries, mournful herds roamed the plains, singing songs of desperation and loss. Entire religions and oral traditions were woven around this crippling racial disability, as dramatic and detailed as any on bygone Earth.

The Qu turned a large number of humans into a vast away of aquatic animals, from whale-like behemoths to brainless wallowers to eels.

Perhaps because their life cycle involved an aquatic larval stage, the Qu had transmuted a large number of their human subjects into a bewildering array of aquatic creatures. Taken care of by specially-bred attendants, these post-human water babies came in every shape and size imaginable. There were limbless, ribbon like varieties of eel-people, huge, whale like behemoths, decorative people who swam by squirting water out of their hypertrophied mouths and horrifying multitudes of brainless wallowers that served as food stock.

The Star People had imported fish and crustaceans from Earth before they were wiped out (although likely they imported the genetic materials of these creatures).

For millennia they swam the oceans of their ecologically stunted world, feeding on diversifying kinds of fish and crustaceans; survivors of the food stock originally imported from Earth.

The Lizard Herders had their physical forms unaltered, but their sentience was removed by their brains being addled with.

They were the lucky ones. Instead of unrecognizably distorting them as they had done to most of their subjects, the Qu had merely erased their sentience and stunted the development of their brains.

The Lizard Herders form a symbiosis with the large herbivorous which are descendants from creatures from Earth.

The dumb people eventually settled in a symbiosis with some of the other creatures that inhabited their planet. They began to instinctively “farm” some of the large, herbivorous reptiles, ancestors of which were brought from Earth as pets.

The Colonials hailed from a world which manages to fend off the Qu attack twice, but were overcome the third time. For their defiance, the Qu had a particularly cruel punishment in mind; turning them into patchworks of human skin with all of their sentience intact.

Their world had given the toughest resistance against the Qu onslaught. So tough, in fact, that they had turned back two successive waves of the invaders, only to succumb to the third. The Qu, with their twisted sense of justice, wanted to make them pay. Even extinction would be too light a punishment for resisting the star gods. The humans of the rogue world needed a sentence that would remind them of their humiliation for generations to come. So they were made into disembodied cultures of skin and muscle, connected by a skimpy network of the most basic nerves. They were employed as living filtering devices, subsisting on the waste products of Qu civilization like mats of cancer cells. And just to witness and suffer their wretched fate, their eyes, together with their consciousness, were retained.

Examples of what Colonials look like.

Spoiler

Some flying human races could fly at supersonic speeds.

Not that the flyers were going to reclaim their sentience right away. Instead, they literally exploded into skies, filling the heavens with anything from bomber-sized sailors to impossibly fast predators that raced with sound. Their world was pristine and there were plenty of niches to play in. Intelligence could wait a little more.

The humans who would become the Bind Folk hid in underground bunkers the size of continents, hoping to wait out the Qu attack, but the Qu found them and altered them effortlessly.

When the Qu came they dug in, and dug in deep. Inside several continent-sized shelters under their besieged world, they waited for the invaders to pass them by. It was a futile gamble. The Qu located the shelter-caves and remade their inhabitants without effort.

The ceilings of these shelters where kilometers tall.

The kilometer-high ceilings of the shelters glowed in the dark with protean constellations of bioluminescent fungi, and in some cases, animals.

The Lopsiders where moved to a planet with 36 times the gravity of the Earth and modified to live there.

The Qu were grotesquely creative in their redesign of the human worlds. One group of misfortunate souls they transported to a planet with thirty-six times the amount of “normal” gravity, and made them over for life in this bizarrely inhospitable realm.

On one of the Jovian moons lived the Striders, due to the low gravity being a mere 5th of that on the Earth, this allowed the creatures who were formerly human to grow to colossal sizes, along with other fauna and flora. The grass alone grew almost 10m tall and the trees grew only to be match by the skyscrapers of antiquity (implying the ancient skyscrapers where taller than even mountains). The forests are said to be leagues tall (a league is 5.556km). The Striders could even change their colours to reflect light and keep cool.

While the Lopsiders were redesigned to live under extreme gravity, another species had been adapted for life under the exact opposite conditions; on a Jovian moon with one fifth of Earth’s gravity. It was a world of wonders, where even the grass grew almost ten meters tall and the trees were beyond belief, towering to sizes attained only by the skyscrapers of antiquity. In these surreal forests lived equally spectacular fauna; the descendants of pets, pests and livestock of humans, who in turn had been reduced to animosity as well. One could see them in the league-tall forests, almost dancing among the trees as they reared higher and higher to browse. Their arms, legs, and necks had been stretched impossibly thin, great flaps of skin blossomed throughout their bodies to dispense waste heat. Sometimes they would even change their color in order to reflect light and keep cool. Overheating was a great problem for their grotesquely tall, thin bodies.

Despite their colossal sizes, the Striders where very fragile, with a mere slip and fall being able to break their bones or even kill them (similar to an elephants mass making it unable to jump, but more extreme).

Although imposing, these Giacomettian wraiths were over-developed as to be sickeningly fragile. Even on their gravitationally forgiving world, a fall could shatter their bones, and slipping down from a branch would prove to be fatal. Sometimes, on the open plains, even a strong wind could bring them down like the toppling masts. They survived entirely due to the merciful conditions of their garden world, which were about to change drastically.

The Hedonists were created to be the pampered pets of the Qu, who made it so they could only reproduce after decades of a huge number of suitors.

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.

 

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Although almost the entire population of humanity were wiped out or turned into something cruel or unusual, not all humans were affected by the Qu. The remaining Star People fled the Qu by escaping onto generation ships into the void of space, and became the Spacers.

ions. While their worlds fell away one by one, some Star People took refuge in the void of space. One after another, entire communities scrambled into generation ships and cast themselves off into the darkness, hoping to go unnoticed by the beings that had overrun their galaxy. Desperate times made for desperate measures. As the Star Men had observed during their initial colonization of the galaxy, life in generation ships inevitably lead to mass insanity and anarchy. This time however, humans had to adapt themselves -or face extinction.

Whole asteroid fields were taken and hollowed out to make huge spaceships. Within these ships were bubbles of air and water, but no artificial gravity. Living in zero gravity allowed these humans to evolve longer and spindlier, and they could navigate open space by farting.

Entire asteroid fields were confiscated and hollowed out to make space-ships of unseen size. These hollow shells cradled bubbles of precious air and water, but no artificial gravity of any kind. It was discovedred that a purely ethereal existence would ease the stress of interstellar exhile, provided that its inhabitants were adapted for life inside such an environment. Furthermore, people were forced to change themselves. In an atmospherically sealed, gravity-free environment, their bones were left free to grow longer, thinner, spindlier. The circulatory and digestive systems were pressurized to avoid heart problems and congestion. The latter change had another advantageous side effect; humans could navigate through the void with jets of air -expelled from modified anuses.

These spaceships formed of hollowed out asteroids were the size of moons, and with them they evaded the Qu.

Such experiments were numerous, and usually plagued with failure. Yet they did succeed in creating a future. Sealed tight in their moon sized, air filled, weightless havens, the descendants of the Star People managed to evade the scourge of Qu.

Spacers are the only truly sentient humans to survive, and do not seem to be concerned by their earthbound cousins. Only a few hundred billion Spacers are around at this time with a few dozen arks.

Forty million years from today, Spacers like this individual are the only truly sentient human beings that survive. They are so comfortable in their weightless refuges that the fates of their bestial cousins elsewhere do not concern them. They are also painfully rare; their entire population in the Milky Way Galaxy does not exceed a few dozen arks and a hundred billion souls.

The Ruin Haunters lived in the shadows of ancient ruins of the Star People and the Qu, and were able to advance at an expodential rate by studying the ancient technology which had survived even the millions of years of neglect.

They had gotten through the Qu invasion with relatively little degradation; yes, they had been reduced to the level of apes, but their recovery had been quick. Apparently, the Qu had not worked as hard at suppressing their intelligence. Nor had they made a comparable effort to wipe away the material traces of the Star Men. Even after millions of years, enormous ruins of the global urban spaces littered the continents of their world. Thus did the Ruin Haunters earn their names.

The Ruin Haunters were able to decipher and build upon the secrets of the Star People until they almost equaled their galactic ancestors in wisdom and skill.

With developed minds and unrestricted access to the wisdom of the ancient cities, the exponential pace of their development was only natural. One by one they deciphered and built upon the secrets of the bygone Star People, until they almost equaled their galactic ancestors in wisdom and skill.

All of this happened in an "unnaturally short" period of time, and the Ruin Haunters didn't even understand all the old technologies they replicated. The stress this put on social and political structures led to five world wars, two of which were thermonuclear.

All of this development happened in an unnaturally short period of time, and sometimes the old technologies were not even understood as they were blindly replicated. Needless to say, such a pace of development put premature stresses on the social and political structures of the Ruin Haunters. They barely survived the five consecutive world wars that raked their planet, two of which were thermonuclear exchanges.

This happened in a period of what seems to be a mere thousand years after the Qu left.

Only a thousand years after the Qu departure, a Ruin Haunter wanders among the shattered remains of a city of the Star People. The dominating form of an even greater Qu pyramid can be seen in the background.

 

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After millions of years, the many forms of humanity evolved back into people (although few of them resembled anything human). The many different societies of the galaxy formed in different ways with their own cultures, politics and religions. To start with, the Snake People had cities that resembled glass domes kilometers across.

Though their knotted architecture differed from region to region, these settlements generally looked like kilometer-wide balls of glass, metal, plastic and cloth, wrapped so tightly that a human of today would find it impossible to move inside them.

The Tool Breederrrs evolved not only to be smarter, but to manipulate the life of the sea around them into tools.

Fire, the cornerstone of industrial engineering, was almost impossible to sustain and use underwater. But the Breeders simply choose another path when complex toolmaking proved impracticable. They began to breed their tools and machines for them.

The Tool Breeders created vast cities of organic technology, from medicine to TVs to powers systems. Modern Tool Breeders didn't even need animals and used cultured tissues and stem-cells to solve just about any problem.

A modern city of the Breeders was a sight to behold. Huge, heart-like creatures pumped out nutritious fluids to a network of self-repairing, living conduits. This was their equivalent of a power grid, and it reached every single one of the Breeders’ huge, exoskeletal dwellings; “powering” bioluminescent lights, flickering cephalopod skintelevisions, medicinal sea-squirts and countless other devices that had been bred from living creatures. The advances in biology had risen exponentially, until genetic engineering was completely mastered. Modern Breeders did not even need to use animals; a simple manipulation of cultured tissues and stem-cells could give solutions to any problem at hand.

The Tool Makers would even use their organic technology to reach other planets and the stars.

The mastery of genetics had conquered many obstacles. The yawning ocean depths, as well as the Planet’s few tiny landmasses were now firmly within the Breeders’ grasp. However, they were not contempt with mere planetary dreams. New forms and bizarre creatures were still being developed, in daring attempts to conquer the one realm that was most hostile to life. Sealed in their living ships, the Breeders wished to return to the stars.

An example of a Tool Breeder equip with organic technology.

Spoiler

A Breeder huntress on a garden reef. Living tools are an indispensable part of these beings’ daily lives; she manages to breathe underwater through an oxygen-filtering crustacean fitted over her blowhole. She holds a mollusk-derived rifle that shoots out specially-modified fish teeth, and her companion is a brain-augmented fish that has been hardwired to return kills. Buildings made from calcified shells glitter in the background, ablaze with bioluminescence.

Although the Colonials were made into a cruel and unusual form as punishment, they eventually evolved into super-organisms where each mat became a colony, and each colony became a creature unto itself. These composite beings were known as the Modular People.

As time passed, they began to organize themselves in differentiated colonies instead of homogenous mats. In the colonies, each human “cell” could perform a singular function and benefit from the union of others. Thus began the great age of organization, during which different colonies competed with each other by developing specialized human-cells that would give them an edge in the struggle for life. Some colonies grew enormous tap-roots that were able to siphon resources from far away. Others abandoned roots altogether and began to move themselves on starfish-like foot segments. Some colonies came up with units equipped with claws and poisons, taking competition to a brand-new, deadly level. Others responded to the threat with armor-plating, or watchercells equipped with enormous eyes.

Different Modular People could swap or combine parts as saw fit.

Living in fully-industrialized megalopoli, they came in an indescribable variation of shapes and sizes. Anything from castle-like guardian forests to diminutive, scuttling couriers was a member of the Modular whole. They could combine with each other and split up, or exchange parts as needs presented themselves. The only thing constant in all of their protean existence was their mental and cultural unity.

The Lopsiders regained sentience and sought to colonise the other planets in their star system, which had similar conditions but far less extreme gravity.

They lived strange lives, but the Lopsiders were human in all of their virtues and evils. Thus, it was only natural for them to expand outwards and look for new frontiers to colonize. Fortunately, their solar system harbored other planets, similar to the Lopsider homeworld in almost all respects, all respects except gravity. But they weren’t willing to let such trivial details stop them.

Via millenia of eugenics, the Lopsiders turned themselves into the Asymmetrical People.

Throughout their history, humans had always risked changing themselves to preserve their future. It was a risky gamble, but it had paid off since the days of the Martian-Americans. But re-engineering the flattened Lopsider body for a benign gravity was a monumental task indeed. Suffice it say that the experiments took millennia to achieve even limited success. After countless attempts, the Asymmetric People were born, or rather made.

Similar to the Mars-Earth War of eons forgotten, the Lopsiders and the Asymmetrical People had an interplanetary war. However, this one ended with the Asymmetrical People ruthlessly wiping out the Lopsiders.

Their social development also parallelled that of the bygone Martian-Americans. Once again there was a golden age, followed by increasing tensions and interplanetary war. But unlike the Martians, the Asymmetrics ruthlessly exterminated their parent race and went on to rule the solar system alone.

The Asymmetrical People discovered the ruins of the Star People and the Qu and advanced further, before turning their gaze to explore the stars.

On the way, they stumbled across the remains of the Qu and the Star People and advanced immensely. Triumphant on their own realm, they turned to the heavens for further exploits.

On the world of the Symboites (and many others), the still working millions of years old ruins of the Qu and the Star People were being discovered, along with the radio towers that connected the different worlds of the galaxy.

And perhaps, on the olfactory television, he would smell news of the excavations of the million-year-old Qu ruins, of the marvelous discoveries salvaged from the Star Men wrecks, or of the enormous radio arrays that rose everywhere to listen to the stars.

 

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The Bug Facers faced and fought off an alien invasion off of their own, but not from the Qu (said alien race left behind alien fauna and flora of their own). Due to this, the Bug Facers would become xenophobic of other races, even fellow formerly human ones. In a twist of fat, this would actually save them from the horrors to come.

Although millennia-long in itself, the development from stone ax to spaceship was an eyeblink in geological time. Like many other species, the Bug Facers passed through consecutive cycles as agrarian (in their case hivefarming) empires, colonial endeavors, industrialization, massive world wars and finally, globalized world-states. But there was one thing that set their development apart from all other post-human species. They faced another alien invasion. History does not record much about the invaders, except that unlike the Qu, theirs was a singular effort and it was beaten off in an intense cycle of orbital and terrestrial wars. Although vanquished, the invaders did succeed in leaving behind their traces. They introduced their own flora and fauna, which flourished on the Bug Facer home planet long after they departed. More importantly, they imbibed the poor Bug Facers with a pathological inter-species xenophobia, to the point that they were fearful even of their post-human cousins on other stars. Through an ironic twist of fate, their fears would be more than justified, though not just yet. The Bug Facers still had time.

The Spacers evolved into the Asteromorphs, and merged many of their arks together into a massive ark big enough to contain entire worlds.

Initially refugees, the Spacers were quick to master the vastness of interstellar space. Their isolated space arks joined together and multiplied to form a gigantic, interlocked artifact that was large enough to contain entire worlds. But no planets lay inside the Asteromorph capital; only cavernous, gravity-free bubbles where the inhabitants could finally develop to their fullest.

Living in zero gravity, the Asteromorphs brains could grow to huge sizes, allowing for immense developments in philosophy art and science, thinking in concepts scarcely comprehensible to modern people.

With no hindrance from gravity, the human brain could grow into unprecedented sizes. Each generation devised experiments that produced offspring with greater cranial capacity, giving rise to beings who went through their everyday lives thinking in concepts and structures scarcely comprehensible to people of today. The physiological limitations of the human mind had been long since debated. Now, it was established that these limits were indeed real, and individuals who could break them would likewise conquer new grounds in philosophy, art and science. Everything changed.

The Asteromorphs set out globular sub-arks to spread their influenceacross every stellar cluster and every star system, and within less than a thousand years the galaxy was straddled by a new Empire of Man (which given the size of the galaxy and the speed of the expanse, would imply faster-than-light travel had finally been achieved).

Yet some aspects of humanity, such as the basic desire to expand, remained. To this end the Asteromorphs built great fleets of globular sub-arks and spread their influence across the heavens, into every stellar cluster and every star system. Within less than a thousand years, the galaxy was straddled by a new and far more alien Empire of Man.

Although they spread out across the entire galaxy, they didn't interfere with any of the planets of their distant relatives, instead watching from the edges of star systems.

Strangely enough, its dominion included none of the newly emerging post-human species, for its masters had completely lost interest in planets; those stunting, gravitychained balls of dirt and ice. The newborn arks settled comfortably in the outer rims of star systems, quietly observing the lives of their struggling relatives.

All of the people of human origin (and in the case of the Sauros, people of not-human but Earth origins) eventually reconnected via the ancient Star Peoples radios (with the Tool Breeders connecting via living radio arrays), and the Second Galactic Empire formed, starting just of a million years after the Qu left, with most other races joining over the coming millions of years. The final race to join was the Bug Facers after 40 million years.

The contacts, all established by radio communication, were not spread out evenly. The Empire began little more than a few million years after the Qu left, with the first dialogue between the earliest Killer Folk and the Satyriacs. A few thousand years later they were joined by the Tool Breeders, hailing out from the ocean depths through living radio arrays. The second wave of sentient species joined in during the following ten million years, as the Modular Whole, Pterosapiens and the fledgling Assymetrics contacted their celestial cousins. Finally, in the next twenty million years, newly evolving civilizations such as the Sauros, Snake People, Parasite/Symbiotes and the Sail People successively contacted the burgeoning Galactic Empire. The Bug Facers were aware of the whole process, but due to their xenophobic experience, they only opened up after a staggering forty million years of silence.

Although these races could settle their respective star systems (and maybe even neighbouring star systems), they couldn't physically meet, and so connected via radio, exchanging information and experiences. The Empire focused on two main issues; political unification (but not homogenization) as well as galactic awareness of possible alien invasions.

This union was an empire of speech, for actual travel between the stars was too difficult to be practical. Like the bygone colonies of the Star Men, the posthumans cooperated through the unrestricted exchange of information and experience. Although covering every aspect of an astonishing variety of cultures, the Empire’s efforts focused on two main issues; political unification (though not homogenization) and galactic awareness; constant readiness for possible alien invasions. Everybody had come across the remains of the mysterious Qu. Nobody wanted a repeat of the same scenario.

When the Second Empire inevitably ran into the Asteromorphs, they feared worst, but these godlike beings were no interested in their earthbound cousins.

When the Second Empire ran into the Asteromorphs, (who had silently saturated the galaxy with their own Empire of Man,) they feared the worst. But luckily for them, the godlike beings were not interested in the Second Empire, nor any of its worlds. The Asteromorphs were given a wide berth and accepted as they were; incomprehensible, omnipotent forces of nature.

The Second Galactic Empire lasted almost 80 million years, during which the component races gained previously unimaginable levels of culture, welfare and technology, with each race colonizing a few dozen worlds of their own (with nations and cultures of their own).

This coordinated effort lasted for almost eighty million years, during which its member species attained previously unimaginable levels of culture, welfare and technology. Each species colonized a few dozen worlds of their own; in which nations, cultures and individuals lived to the fullest potentials of their existence.

All of this was made possible via constant and open communications with the rest of the galaxy. However, not all of the races of the galaxy were willing to reunite or communicate, which lead to the darkest era the galaxy had seen since the Qu.

Needless to say, all of this was possible only through constant communication and a total openness to the Galaxy.

 

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Although the Second Galactic Empire kept a careful eye out for alien invaders such as the Qu, they did not keep an eye out for threats within their own galaxy from their distant relations, which lead to their downfall.

After the lesson of the Qu, Second Galactic Empire kept a constant watch against alien invasion. Ironically, they neglected to look among themselves. The second great invasion of the galaxy came not from outside, but from within.

The Ruin Haunters inherited the secrets from the Star People and the Qu and returned to being people when the other species where just animals, and experienced huge advances in technology. They were equal to, if not greater than, the Asteromorphs of outer space.

The Ruin Haunters, who were lucky enough to inherit the secrets of the Star Men and Qu when other species were mere animals, had experienced a tremendous advance in technological prowess. All in all they were as sophisticated as, if not more, than the Asteromorphs of the void.

However, their rise to power wasn't a sane one, and they assumed themselves to be the only heirs to the Star People, refusing to communicate with their distant relatives across the stars.

But their ascendancy was not a sane one. Recall that most Ruin Haunters were already deranged with a twisted assumption of being the sole inheritors of the Star Men. They refused to communicate with their relatives on other planets, and kept to their own affairs. This neurotic hubris assumed truly dangerous proportions after the Ruin Haunters modified themselves.

The Ruin Haunters star began to undergo a rapid expansion phase, and the species was unable to stop the process, so instead they changed their bodies from organic ones to mechanical ones, becoming floating spheres of metal that could mold their environment via subtle manipulations of gravity fields.

The infernal conditions of the solar expansion meant that a biological reconstruction was totally out of the question. Thus, the Haunters replaced their bodies with machines; floating spheres of metal that moved and molded their environment through subtle manipulations of gravity fields.

Originally, the spheres held the biological brains of the Ruin Haunters, but eventually they evolved beyond even that, housing their minds inside quantum computers, completing the evolution from Ruin Haunter to Gravital.

In earlier versions the spheres still cradled the organic brains of the last Haunters. But in successive generations, ways of containing the mind within quantum computers were devised, and the transformation became absolute. The Ruin Haunters were replaced by the completely mechanical Gravital

The Gravital retained their human nature, and had machine bodies that allowed them to cross space with ease.

While not even organic, the Gravital still retained human dreams, human ambitions and human delusions of grandeur. This, combined with mechanical bodies that allowed them to cross space with ease, made interstellar war a frightening possibility.

The Gravitals spent ages perfecting their propulsions and new bodies that could withstand interstellar jumps were designed. When the time came for war, nothing would survive.

It took a long time for the Gravital to prepare. Propulsion systems were perfected and new bodies capable of withstanding the interstellar jumps were devised. But when they finally decided that the time was nigh, nothing survived the slaughter.

The Gravital blocked out the target worlds stars with million-mile sails, and if the worlds managed to resist then asteroids were sent their way to finish them off. Enormous invasion fleets were build but rarely deployed, as the machines had caught their distant relatives completely off-guard.

The invasions followed a brutally simple plan. The target worlds’ suns were blockaded and their light was trapped behind specially-constructed, million-mile sails. If the dying worlds managed to resist, an asteroid of two finished them off. Enormous invasion fleets were built, but it was rarely necessary to deploy them. The Machines had caught their cousins completely off-guard.

The Gravital invasions of their interstellar neighbours all lasted a ten thousand year period which "stretched the boundaries of genocide and horror." Almost all the human species were rendered extinct, whereas even the Qu had allowed the other races to live (abet in horrific forms). Despite this omnicide and their views as heirs to the galaxy, the Gravital didn't bear any hatred for their organic cousins; they simply didn't acknowledge them as life. With that, the galaxy was plunged into another dark age.

The great dyings, all of which occurred in a relatively quick, ten-thousand year period, stretched the boundaries of genocide and horror. Almost all of the new human species; unique beings who had endured mass extinctions, navigated evolutionary knifeedges and survived to build worlds of their own, vanished without a trace.

An example of when a planet was able to fight back against the Gravital, in this case a direct war with the Killer Folk.

Spoiler

A rare instance of a direct invasion by the Machines, on one of the shore cities of the Killer Folk. Most of the time the inhabitants of the Second Empire were wiped out globally, without the necessity of such confrontations.

The Machine Invasion brought on the greatest wave of extinctions the galaxy had ever seen.

The Machine Invasion brought on the greatest wave of extinctions the galaxy had ever seen; for it was not a simple act of war by one species against another, but a systematized destruction of life itself.

Although an individual Gravital coud condemn a billion souls to die, it wasn't something something cold or calculated, but simply an inability to understand the right for organic life to live.

They had surrendered their organic heritage but their minds were not the cold, calculating engines of true machines. Even after giving orders that would destroy a billion souls, a Gravital would have a home to go to, and, as incredibly as it might sound, a family and a circle of friends towards which it felt genuine affection. Despite being endowed with compassion, their harsh treatment of the organics was the result of, as mentioned before, a simple inability to understand their right to live.

Although the Gravital formed a pan-galactic entity, within it there were many different factions.

Furthermore, the Gravital did not constitute a singular, indivisible whole whose entire purpose was to wreck the universe. True, their technological advancement had allowed them to form a pan-galactic entity, but within itself the Machine Empire was divided into political factions, and even religious faiths. Superimposed over these fault lines were the daily lives and personal affairs of families and individuals. Like any sentient being, they had a sense of identity and thus, differing agendas.

 

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For unknown reasons, the Bug Facers where the only race to be spared by the Gravital, but their DNA was edited to the whims of their robotic masters. The Gravital possessed almost as much skill at genetic engineering as the Qu did, and viewed it as no more than reassembling a computer or recycling trash. Thus the Bug Facers were turned into the Subjects.

Whatever the reason, the Bug Facers endured. But they hardly resembled their original ancestors anymore. Genetic engineering, the lost art of the galaxy-threading Qu, (and later, the Tool Breeders as well,) was mastered almost as comprehensively by the Machines. Not hesitating to warp the beings which they did not really consider to be alive, they spliced their way into the Bug Facer DNA, producing generations of literal abominations. Would a woman or man of today show any apprehension towards reassembling a computer, or even recycling trash? Such was the attitude of the triumphant Gravital.

What the Gravitals did to the Subjects made what the Qu did to the Star People look "comparatively timid." The lucky ones became servants, caretakers and manual laborers, while those who were less lucky were reduced to cell cultures, molded into artificial ecologies or turned into living works of art.

Thus, multitudes of Subjects were produced, distorted to such an extent that even the meddling of the Qu seemed comparatively timid. Most of them were used as servants, caretakers and manual laborers. These were the lucky forms. Some sub-men were reduced to the level of cell cultures, useful only for gas exchange and waste filtering. Others were molded into completely artificial ecologies; baroque simulations that served only as entertainment. Some machines, with their still-human ambitions, took this practice into a new level and produced living works of art; doomed, one-off creatures who existed purely as biological anachronisms.

The Gravital ruled the galaxy for 50 million years.

Be it as tool, slave or entertainment, Humanity narrowly held on to its biological heritage, while its Machine cousins reigned supreme for an unbelievable fifty million years.

There were many different cultural, political, religious and social groups among the Gravital, and it was from these the first galactic civil war came between the factions who where tolerant of biological life and those that weren't.

The seething intolerance between the two factions finally broke when some Tolerant Machines wanted so set several worlds aside for the unrestricted development of biological life. All hell broke loose and the Machine Empire; the apparently seamless monolith of the galaxy, experienced its first short, bitter civil war. The war did not cause any lasting damage, but it plainly illuminated one fact.

The Gravital are the greatest entity the galaxy have ever seen (or at least equal to the Asteromorph Empire, which we'll get to shortly).

The greatest entity the galaxy had ever seen was not without its problems.

The Gravital and the Asteromorphs lived in nervous peace for ages, as both had the power to destroy planets en-masse, so any war would result in mutual destruction.

Power was evenly balanced between the two rival Empires. Moreover, this balance involved forces strong enough to destroy planets en-masse. Each side knew that any kind of war would result in mutual annihilation, and only insanity could start such a conflict.

War does eventually break out, with the Gravital using the Asteromorphs as a scapegoat for their own internal struggles. The war rages for millions of years and the resulting loss of life utterly dwarves the Machine Genocide.

It is unnecessary and nearly impossible to describe the carnage that followed. The conflicts lasted anywhere up to a few million years, and the resulting loss of life (both mechanical and organic) made the initial Machine Genocide seem irrelevant.

The Asteromorphs win the war, and have continued to evolve their brains. Despite loosing a substantial number of their own race, the Asteromorphs almost entirely wipe out the Gravital.

When the cosmic dust settled, the winners displayed themselves. The conquerors were the Asteromorphs, changed beyond recognition after fifty million years of continual self-perfection. Their grossly hypertrophied brains stretched out like wings on either side, and their finger-derived limbs had formed an intricate set of sails and legs. Endowed with superior technology and limitless patience, these beings almost completely destroyed the Machines, despite losing a substantial number of their own species.

Some of the Subjects also survived, and the Asteromorph repopulated the galaxy with the Subjects genetic heritage.

With the Machines gone, it was up to the Asteromorphs to clean up after them. They took up the Subjects and used their genetic heritage to populate entire planets.

This age of reconstruction lasted two million years, in which many Asteromorphs displayed their god-like abilities by creating inhabited worlds almost from scratch.

During this age of reconstruction, which lasted for another two million years, many Asteromorph world-builders emerged as true Gods, creating inhabited worlds almost out of scratch.

The Asteromorphs did not wish to directly interfere, so instead they produced terrestrial versions of themselves who could survive in the gravity of a planet. Although they had smaller brains, they were still demigods who guided the earthbound races. These were the Terrestrial Spacers, or Terrestrials.

The Asteromorphs, watchful but ever transparent, did not want to interfere directly. Instead, they produced terrestrial versions of their own kind to regulate the galaxy. They adapted their delicate, ethereal fingers into spidery limbs, and shrunk their brains considerably to re-adjust to the rigors of gravity. The resulting sideline was stunted by Asteromorph standards, but still it produced demigods in every sense of the word. These beings, known often as the Terrestrial Spacers or simply the Terrestrials, nurtured and controlled the development of the post-war civilizations on many planets. They acted as caretakers, prophets, kings and emperors, but also as grim reapers as the occasion dictated.

Many newborn races who rebelled against their Terrestrial mentors would be punished with extinction.

The endeavor did not always proceed as smoothly as planned, of course. Most of the time the newborn races refused to heed their mentors and in several cases even rebelled against them. Needless to say, this crime was always punished with a swift extinction.

Populated by the descendants of the Subjects, managed by the Terrestrials and overseen by the Asteromorphs, the New Empire lasted longer than any galactic empire of their predecessors put together.

This way or another, organic sentience reclaimed its dominance in the galaxy. The New Empire; managed by Terrestrials, populated by a myriad descendants of the Subjects, and overseen ultimately by the omniscient Asteromorphs, achieved greater progress and a longer-lasting calm in the galaxy than all of its predecessors combined.

Although the Asteromorphs considered total genocide, the fact that the Gravital could live and operate even in the most inhospital conditions made them useful.

For millions of years they had perfected the interface between mind and machine to such an extent that they could live and operate in the most inhospitable conditions. Such beings, deprived of their galaxy-straddling power, would make invaluable contributions to research and exploration in the New Empire.

The Asteromorphs took away the Gravital ability to manipulate gravity around them, and numbed their imaginations and gave them finite lifespans. Despite all this, the machines were allowed to keep their sentience. Thus the Gravital were made into the New Machines.

To begin with, the Asteromorphs completely scrapped their ability of self-contained gravitational manipulation; the very force that had rendered them invulnerable in the first place. They were given finite life spans and slightly numbed imaginations, so that history would not repeat itself.

The New Machines were endowed with nanotechnological bodies that they could continuously remodel into every shape and size imaginable (and some unimaginable). A Machine could live in the void of space conducting research, then transform into a completely different body to go on a holiday on a planet or comet.

Unlike their ancestors, the New Machines were endowed with nanotechnological bodies that could remodel themselves continuously, which meant that they could come in every shape and size imaginable, and then some that could not. A machine citizen could live for some time in the void of the space, conducting research, and then transform into a completely different body plan for a holiday on a cometary halo, tropical jungle or a methane ocean.

A New Machine could even grow temporary hyperdrives or ramjets.

He or she would also make the trip personally by growing temporary hyperdrives and ramjet engines!

An example of a New Machine.

Spoiler

 

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The New Empire grew exponentially with machine-aided colonization and discovery.

With successive waves of machine-aided discovery and colonization, the New Empire grew exponentially.

The New Empire was so advanced that describing it to a modern audience would be as futile as describing modern geo-politics to hunter-gatherers.

Such was the growth of wealth and progress that its description would need the use of concepts that remain unexplored today. To talk with a man of today about the comings and goings of the New Empire would be akin to giving lectures of 20th century geopolitics to a hunter-gatherer.

The New Galactic Empire probed nearby galaxies and nebulae with the intent of making peaceful contact (and keeping an eye out for threats like the Qu).

This magnificent entity was not blind to the universe around it. It tuned in its eyes, ears and sensors, and probed the events of the surrounding galaxies. The New Galactics suspected that the surrounding nebulae might also have their indigenous folk, and it was wise to contact them before a misunderstanding, or conflict could occur.

The discovery of sentient life in a neighbouring galaxy was made, and peaceful bonds were made. This was the galaxy of the Amphicephali, who had just as interesting a evolutionary journey has humanity had.

The discovery was eventually made. One of the neighboring galaxies was showing patterns of activity that were the unmistakable signs of a sentient organization. Some thinkers reviled in the discovery of a new civilization, while others feared a return of the Qu. Fortunately, this second encounter with an alien species proved to be a peaceful one. Perhaps the intelligences of both galaxies were finally mature enough to meet without quarreling.

An example on an Amphicephali and Amphicephali spaceships.

Spoiler

An Amphicephalus ambassador with spaceships typical of their kind. Her strange body plan betrays an evolutionary history as complicated as that of humanity.

The Galactic Citizens progressed limitlessly, re-encountering and subduing the Qu themselves, as well as cradling stars in artificial shells (dyson spheres) and filling space with wormholes to travel interstellar distances instantly.

The purpose of this work is not to describe the limitless progress that followed the cross-galactic contact. One could go indefinitely, chronicling how the united galaxies reencountered and subdued the Qu, how they cradled their suns with artificial shells, multiplying their inhabitable zones a billion-fold, how they criss-crossed interstellar space with wormholes and made travel a thing of the past.

Descendants of the Galactic Citizens even conquered Time itself and prolonged the existence of their minds indefinitely via rejuvenating technologies.

Ultimately, descendants of those beings even conquered Time itself, prolonging the existence of their minds indefinitely via rejuvenating technologies.

During this time, all men were gods.

For a time, all men were gods.

During this time, the Earth was rediscovered.

Compared with gargantuan achievements like the taming of space and the construction of the star-shells, it was a mere blip, a revelation of long-forgotten trivia. This was the re-discovery of Earth; the birthplace of humanity, where the omnipresent Asteromorph, the star-gliding Machine, and the millions of humble resident races could all trace their origins.

Eventually, humans (abet far different from the humans who lived on Earth long ago) finally returned to Earth after 560 million years.

When the explorers stepped out, human feet trod on old Earth once more; after an absence of 560 million years. Mankind was back home.

Although there is no longer any sentient life on Earth (and there hasn't been for eons), life still perserveres.

Spoiler

With the epilogue, we discover the truth; that Nemo Ramjet is infact an alien from aeons in the future, writing a billion years after humanity is gone.

I must conclude my words with a confession. Mankind, the very species which I’ve been chronicling from its terrestrial infancy to its domination of the galaxies, is extinct. All of the beings which you saw on the preceding pages; from the lowly Worm to the wind-riding Sail People, from the megalomaniac Gravital to the ultimate Galactic citizens, lie a billion years dead. We are only beginning to piece the story together. What you read was our best approximation of the truth.

Where humanity disappeared to is unknown, with some theories claiming it was an unimaginable war, others that it was a gradual break up and a return to primitivism before fading away, others still that humanity did not go extinct, but infact transcended and to another plane of existence.

Why did they disappear? Perhaps it was a final, unimaginable war of annihilation, one that transcended the very meaning of “conflict”. Perhaps it was a gradual break-up of the united galaxies, and every race facing their private end slowly afterwards. Or perhaps, the wildest theories suggest, it was a mass migration to another plane of existence. A journey into somewhere, sometime, something else. But the bottom line is; we honestly don’t know.

Humanity had ultimate dominion over a thousand galaxies.

The tale of Humanity was never its ultimate domination of a thousand galaxies, or its mysterious exit into the unknown.

The author of the book with a billion year old human skull.

Spoiler

The Author, with a billion-year old human skull.

 

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Calcs for All Tomorrows. So far there is only one blog (and some of the FTL stuff may be contestable although it's still within the boundaries of the story to be very slow). I think that is it, or at least until the physical edition is released. Thank you for reading!

all_tomorrows

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