Children of Memory (Children of Time, #3)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

unleashed an electronic attack that was transmitted out into space to shut down humanity wherever it could be found.

On Nod dwelled a composite microbial life form capable of recording all its past experiences within its cells. After discovering and analysing Earth biology, the Nodan organism then colonized Lante and her fellows, devouring and rebuilding and becoming them. In a tragedy of misunderstanding, the entity next spread to Damascus and destroyed the Octopus civilization there while trying to understand it, leaving the Octopuses living in orbit and space, and in crisis.

the transmission, outwards in all directions from Earth—a killer virus that had only one purpose: to shut everything down. On Earth that was just the last nail in the coffin. It was worse for everyone else, all the people in the colonies on Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or floating in the pea-soup atmosphere of Venus, the space stations and orbital habitats. Everyone else was still inside the coffin that was being nailed shut.

That signal continued to rush outwards from Earth, poisoning every ear that heard it. Each terraforming crew, diligently listening for word from

home, heard and succumbed. Across the light years, one after another, their little efforts dimmed and died like defective Christmas lights. Out, out, brief candle. Freezing or asphyxiating, burning up on unplanned atmospheric entry, exploding in momentary fireworks in the cold of space. A handful survived that initial cataclysm and turned the helm for Earth, trying to go back. But i...

“You are minds incorporated into bodies in the physical world

simulation with the real.”

sentient,