Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 292
voices became clearer and clearer, until he seemed to be there
with them.
The words seemed to emerge from his own mouth.
Whenever that happened, Jordan felt almost as though they
were his own thoughts he was speaking, and he invariably
remembered them with perfect clarity later. Just now he was
saying, "The stars in the night sky have their retinue of planets.
Millions are inhabited, but if you gaze up at them tonight,
know that only one in every thousand you see has people living
by it, there are that many. Millions have been visited and
explored, but for every one of them a million more are still
mysteries.
"Humans like yourself moved into the galaxy a thousand
years ago. Your ancient homeworld is now a park, where few
can go except by special permission. All the other worlds in
the home system were settled centuries ago, and are
overflowing now. The’ve even dismantled the minor planets
and smaller moons and built new habitats with them. The
population of that star system is now over seventy trillion.
"Many other stars have similarly huge civilizations. Add
to that the dozens of alien species, genetically altered humans,
cyborgs, demigods and gods, and the peace you see in the sky
seems more and more like an illusion."
"What are these things?" asked the queen. "Cyborgs?
Demigods?"
"Mecha," said Armiger curtly. "But designed by people
for the most part. Some people have had themselves
transformed into mechal beings, so that they can live in hostile
environments, like open space, or the crushing depths of giant
planets’ atmospheres. The boundary between human and
nonhuman began to blur centuries ago, and now it’s completely
gone."