----------------------------------------
I beheld the vague, shimmering outlines of titanic entities rippling
in the distance.
Their sentience I could sense immediately; their power and purpose
ruptured all human scales. I could no more comprehend the scope of
their existence than an amoeba could look back up a microscope and
fathom the human mind.
"Are they Gods?" I asked.
"Your descendents," said the Caterpillar. "Several million years
hence."
I adjusted the focus to my present time.
Before me I saw the human family, all 6 billion of us, and I saw quite
clearly that we were poised on the edge of an evolutionary event as
signficant as the Cambrian Explosion.
There would be no "Homo superior." There would instead be hundreds,
maybe thousands of new species evolving out of the current human
population. The segmentations were already appearing; within 100
years, it would be impossible to speak of "one human race." We would
diversify.
Some of us would remain on the planet.... Others would move
offworld. Some would go to live on the Sun. Others would migrate to
places nearby but invisible. Some would open holes in the fabric of
spacetime, and step through doorways where no doors were previously
known to exist.
I watched the phantom futures lap over each other like waves; none
constant, none fixed, all of them melting and solidifying in a swirl
of probability and potential.
Humanity's future was uncertain, but this much I knew: any action I
took would ripple out across the eons to have enormous impact.
Entire posthuman civilizations millions of years hence would rise and
fall on the choices made by me, now, in the present.
Evolution, I realized, is not an impersonal force. You and I are
participating in it at this very moment.
You and I are the butterflies, flapping our wings, only dimly aware of
the hurricanes we're setting in motion.
And not one of us is insignificant.
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Patrick Farley, Chrysalis Colossus
http://www.e-sheep.com
(Otherwise a seriously cyberdelic cartoon, but inspiring nevertheless.
Several of his other cartoons have transhumanist ideas, although with
his own take on them. Be sure to check out his Apocamon - the anime
version of the Book of Revelations)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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