New Machine (All Tomorrows)

The New Machines were a robotic posthuman species that was created from the Gravital by the Asteromorphs.

When the Asteromorphs won the war against the Gravital, they repopulated the milky way with Subjects and Terrestrials, While they planned to destroy the Gravital at first, they ultimately decided against it because they saw the value in the Gravital’s ability to survive in otherwise inhospitable environments.

The Asteromorphs remade the Gravital into the New Machines by removing their ability of gravital manipulation, giving them shorter lifespans, and slightly numbing their imagination to prevent another uprising like that of the original Gravital. However, they gave them nanotechnological bodies that were able to constantly remake themselves as they wished or needed for their jobs.

Even though they were widespread in the new empire, the machines were always rare and treated as second class citizens by the biological citizens, as past events gave them a deep distrust of their mechanical relatives.

As the new empire was spanning the whole of the milky way, the humans tried to make contact with the indigenous folk of the surrounding nebulae, while still being cautious because of their history with alien invasions, remembering the Qu as well as the invaders that attacked the Bug Facers.

After a time, they found another civilization in the form of a diverse empire ruled by the Amphicephali. Like the posthumans, the Amphicephali had a rich and diverse history and were cautious, but both species finally proved to be mature enough to make contact peacefully. They were the first species to peacefully make contact with humanity, but not the last.

Together, the united galaxies eventually defeated the Qu, cradled their suns with artificial shells, crisscrossed interstellar space with wormholes and made travel a thing of the past. One day, a researcher rediscovered the Earth, humanity's ancestral home, which had been abandoned 560 Million years ago because it was too far away from the main centres of population.

By the time of the All Tomorrows afterword, all of humanity has disappeared for unknown reasons. Maybe it went extinct through a war, or the empire slowly fell apart, leaving individual colonies to face their own fates. Maybe, it was a mass migration to another plane of existence. The Author of the book doesn't know.

Appearances

 * All Tomorrows, by C. M. Koseman (2006)