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In fact, von Neumann got the original idea from studying living systems.”
“I had just such a gadget when I was a kid. Do you know what Zagadka really is? Just the cosmic equivalent of the good old Swiss Army knife!”
Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men—or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness.
As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.
And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of s...
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The great dinosaurs had long since perished when the survey ship entered the Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years.
For years they studied, collected, cataloged. When they had learned all that they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destinies of many species on land and in the ocean. But which of their experiments would succeed, they could not know for at least a million years.
But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.
This book was written on an Archives III microcomputer with WordStar software and sent from Colombo to New York on one five-inch diskette. Last-minute corrections were transmitted through the Padukka Earth Station and the Indian Ocean Intelsat V.
