SLIDE 5.
Twenty million years
pass, and the galaxy slowly lights up with a glare of coherent
light, waste energy from the communications traffic between the
inhabited worlds.
The first generation
colonies have long since guttered into senescence and extinction;
so have the third and fourth generations. Of the first generation,
barely one in five prospered—but that was sufficient. Those that
live spawn prolifically. Planets are common, rocky terrestrial
bodies far from rare, and even some of the more exotic types (water
giants, tide-locked rocky giants in orbit around red dwarfs, and
others) are amenable to human purpose. Where no planets are
available, life is harder, prone to sudden extinction events:
nobody survives the collapse of civilization aboard a space colony.
But the tools and technologies of terraforming are well-known, and
best practice, of a kind, develops. Many of the dwellers have
adapted to their new habitats so well that they’re barely
recognizable as primates anymore, or even mammals.