And in the meantime, she realized with growing excitement, the processors lodged in the refrigerating wormhole had come to a conclusion about the destiny of her star. New Sol.
She called up a Virtual image of the star; it rotated before her, a crude onion shell.
Already, she knew, oxygen was burning in pockets throughout the star, depositing the more complex elements — carbon, silicon, neon, magnesium — for which the wormhole was designed to trawl. With time, the helium-burning core of the star would contract, leaving a mantle of cooling helium and ash around a center growing ever hotter.
At length — perhaps in half a million years, the processors concurred — oxygen burning would start in earnest in the core…
With growing excitement Lieserl watched the Virtual diorama, ready to learn how she would die.
When oxygen burning started in the core, the star would become immediately unstable.
The mantle would explode. The rotating star would start to collapse, asymmetrically.
Then the core would implode, precipitously.
The giant star’s gravitational binding energy would be converted into a flood of neutrinos, billowing through the collapsing core. Some of the neutrinos would be trapped by the implosion of the core. Others, in the last few milliseconds before the VMO’s final collapse into a black hole, would escape as an immense neutrino pulse…
She remembered the first seconds of her life: her mother’s hands beneath her back, a dazzling light in her eyes. The Sun, Lieserl. The Sun!
In the last moments of her long life, a neutrino fireball would play across the bones of her face.
Lieserl smiled. It would be glorious.
35
Time passed.
After a certain point, even the measurement of time became meaningless. For Michael Poole this moment arrived when there was no nuclear fuel left to burn anywhere, and the last star flickered and died.
Already the Universe was a hundred thousand times its age when the Xeelee left.
Somberly Poole watched the stars evaporate, through collisions, from the subsiding husks of galaxies, or slide into the huge black holes forming at the galactic centers. Then, as the long night of the cosmos deepened, even protons collapsed, and the remaining star-corpses began to crumble.
Poole wearied of puzzling over the huge, slow projects of the photino birds.
He sought out what had once been a neutron star. The carbon-coated sphere, drifting in orbit around a gigantic black hole, was being warmed — at least, kept to a few degrees above absolute zero — by proton decay within its bulk. Poole, as if seeking comfort, clustered his attention foci close to this shadow of baryonic glory.
Maybe there were other baryonic sentients left in the Universe. Maybe there were even other humans, or human derivatives. Poole did not seek them out. With the closure of the Ring, the baryonic story was done.
Michael Poole, alone, huddled close to the chill surface of the neutron star. His awareness sparkled and subsided.
The river of time flowed, unmarked, toward the endless seas of timelike infinity.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Ring concludes the Xeelee Sequence.
The novel stands by itself, although events in three of my previous novels, as well as in related short stories, are referred to.
The high-gravitation alternate universe mentioned in Chapter 32 is explored in my novel Raft. The career of Michael Poole, first referred to in Chapter 2, is the heart of my novel Timelike Infinity. The neutron star colonization project discovered in Chapter 29 is described fully in my novel Flux.
The complete timeline of the Xeelee Sequence follows. Novels and stories in the Sequence are included, novels in capitals.
Be assured that, although Ring is the chronological end of the Xeelee story, there are tales left to be told…
TIMELINE
Singularity: Big Bang
ERA: PRIMEVAL
20 bya (billion years ago): First contact between Xeelee and photino birds. Xeelee timeships begin modification of Xeelee evolutionary history.
5 bya: Construction of Ring begins. Birth of Sol.
4 bya: Assault on Ring by photino birds begins. Life on Earth emerges.
1 bya: First infestation of Sol by photino birds.
ERA: EXPANSION
A.D. 3000+. Opening up of Solar System with GUT and wormhole technology. First human extra-Solar expansion begins.
A.D. 3621: Birth of Michael Poole.
“The Sun-Person”
“The Logic Pool”
TIMELIKE INFINITY
A.D. 3717: Launch of GUTship Cauchy.
A.D. 3829: Invasion of System by Occupation-Era Qax.
A.D. 3953: Launch of GUTship Great Northern.
“Cilia-of-Gold”
“Lieserl”
ERA: SQUEEM OCCUPATION
“Chiron”
“The Xeelee Flower”
A.D. 4874: Conquest of human planets by Squeem. A.D. 4925: Overthrow of Squeem.
A.D. 5000+: Second expansion begins.
“More Than Time or Distance”
ERA: QAX OCCUPATION
A.D. 5088: Conquest of human planets by Qax.
A.D. 5274: Return to System of GUTship Cauchy.
“Blue Shift”
A.D. 5407: Overthrow of Qax. Humans acquire Spline and starbreaker technology.
A.D. 5500+: Third expansion begins.
“The Quagma Datum”
“Planck Zero”
ERA: ASSIMILATION
A.D. 10,000+: Humans become dominant sub-Xeelee species. Rapid expansion and absorption of species and technologies. Launch of Xeelee timeships into deep past.
“The Gödel Sunflowers”
“Vacuum Diagrams”
ERA: THE WAR TO END WARS
A.D. 100,000+: Human assaults on Xeelee concentrations begin.
RAFT
“The Tyranny of Heaven”
“Hero”
FLUX
A.D. 1,000,000: Final siege of Solar System by Xeelee. Defeat of Man.
ERA: FLIGHT
A.D. 4,000,000+: Migration of Xeelee through Ring. Sol leaves Main Sequence. Destruction of Ring by photino birds.
A.D. 5,000,000+: Last humans return to Sol in GUTship Great Northern, and travel to Ring.
RING
ERA: PHOTINO VICTORY
A.D. 10,000,000+: Virtual extinction of baryonic life. Michael Poole is last sentient human.
Singularity: Timelike Infinity
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Document version: 1
Document creation date: 24.03.2010
Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FB Editor v2.0 software
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Ring xs-4 Page 47
