Trying to foresee what future lies ahead of humanity (or her successors).
After the time of gadgets like mobile phones, night vision goggles, and so on, came the time of implants - built in computers, radios, and so on. It was followed by the time of genetic "improvement" - which rid humanity of practically all diseases, even most weaknesses. If the brain stayed intact, a human could survive nearly any blow.
Even that was topped in the age of virtuality, were human brains were melted with machines until humans weren't much more than complex computer programs anymore. This Homo ex Machina could be a microscopic probe, or a giant supercomputer.
The computers grew more and more in size. Pretty soon, the biggest were as large as Asteroids or whole Mountains. Later, they became as big as moons or continents. finally, they took the size of planets. Even gas giants and brown dwarf stars were transformed into giant human computers. The stars too big to settle were usually the energy source of the smaller intelligent units, while the larger planets produced enough energy in their cores to last for billions of years.
Those planetary human beings calculated their paths for millions of years in advance, using minor corrections of their path and stellar events out of their control (like fast moving stars) to go wherever they wanted to go, coordinating their efforts with the other beings.
There were still wars - sometimes, a being tried to turn another being into an "offspring" of its own instead of searching for an empty planet, which could hardly be prevented whenever the victim was considerably less advanced. Groups of planets sometimes tried to force other planets into submission by bringing them into situations where they couldn't avoid falling into a star or a black hole. As it was not taken very well if a planet actually died this way, the being was usually given a chance to transfer into an asteroid and try to find another planet far away, so that the now empty planet could be saved by the intimidators. Nuclear bombs and other weapons were also used.
Only when a group clashed with another group did it sometimes happen that the majority of the more peaceful planets wasn't able to keep greater harm from happening.
There still were some planets which hosted quite a few human minds - even billions in some cases, usually just as simulations. Virtual beings. But many humans wanted their own planet, even assembled Asteroids or forced stars into paths which made them tear apart.
Whole clusters of planets or stellar systems with planets were leaving the galaxy to move to other galaxies or the vast empty space inbetween, usually by using the power of two or more black holes or large stars spinning around each other.
The galaxies inhabitated by "humans" usually quickly became dark places, as stars were mined or torn apart within a few million years to create new planets for additional beings. Radio signals and "search lights" eventually became the only "light" travelling through those systems.
When the Milky Way merged with the Andromeda Galaxy, not a single stellar object crashed into another one, except where it was desired. Both together merged into the largest and most undisturbed globular cluster in the history of the universe. Like a giant clockwork, all the planets and asteroids always found a way to avoid unwanted clashes - usually by following a path which avoided collisions without needing any corrections.
Thus, hundreds of billions of "planetary humans" roamed the universe, billions of them exploring the vast reaches of the universe, hoping to find another race, maybe even one that could challenge them...
Any better ideas of the maximum possible development within the known laws of physics?
After the time of gadgets like mobile phones, night vision goggles, and so on, came the time of implants - built in computers, radios, and so on. It was followed by the time of genetic "improvement" - which rid humanity of practically all diseases, even most weaknesses. If the brain stayed intact, a human could survive nearly any blow.
Even that was topped in the age of virtuality, were human brains were melted with machines until humans weren't much more than complex computer programs anymore. This Homo ex Machina could be a microscopic probe, or a giant supercomputer.
The computers grew more and more in size. Pretty soon, the biggest were as large as Asteroids or whole Mountains. Later, they became as big as moons or continents. finally, they took the size of planets. Even gas giants and brown dwarf stars were transformed into giant human computers. The stars too big to settle were usually the energy source of the smaller intelligent units, while the larger planets produced enough energy in their cores to last for billions of years.
Those planetary human beings calculated their paths for millions of years in advance, using minor corrections of their path and stellar events out of their control (like fast moving stars) to go wherever they wanted to go, coordinating their efforts with the other beings.
There were still wars - sometimes, a being tried to turn another being into an "offspring" of its own instead of searching for an empty planet, which could hardly be prevented whenever the victim was considerably less advanced. Groups of planets sometimes tried to force other planets into submission by bringing them into situations where they couldn't avoid falling into a star or a black hole. As it was not taken very well if a planet actually died this way, the being was usually given a chance to transfer into an asteroid and try to find another planet far away, so that the now empty planet could be saved by the intimidators. Nuclear bombs and other weapons were also used.
Only when a group clashed with another group did it sometimes happen that the majority of the more peaceful planets wasn't able to keep greater harm from happening.
There still were some planets which hosted quite a few human minds - even billions in some cases, usually just as simulations. Virtual beings. But many humans wanted their own planet, even assembled Asteroids or forced stars into paths which made them tear apart.
Whole clusters of planets or stellar systems with planets were leaving the galaxy to move to other galaxies or the vast empty space inbetween, usually by using the power of two or more black holes or large stars spinning around each other.
The galaxies inhabitated by "humans" usually quickly became dark places, as stars were mined or torn apart within a few million years to create new planets for additional beings. Radio signals and "search lights" eventually became the only "light" travelling through those systems.
When the Milky Way merged with the Andromeda Galaxy, not a single stellar object crashed into another one, except where it was desired. Both together merged into the largest and most undisturbed globular cluster in the history of the universe. Like a giant clockwork, all the planets and asteroids always found a way to avoid unwanted clashes - usually by following a path which avoided collisions without needing any corrections.
Thus, hundreds of billions of "planetary humans" roamed the universe, billions of them exploring the vast reaches of the universe, hoping to find another race, maybe even one that could challenge them...
Any better ideas of the maximum possible development within the known laws of physics?
