AND so we come to the garden, the end of the tour, where we wander past the experimental greenery and the last displays of misguided ingenuity.
There exist two paths humanity can now follow to avoid stagnation. One is to entrust ourselves into the care of the SIBs and their successors; or to improve upon ourselves, expanding our abilities and intelligence, perhaps to the extent of losing ourselves and our bodies. Are we nearly in that post-Darwinian phase? The quest of my generation seems to be to become unfazed by the forces of nature and time, now that physical changes can be dictated by whim rather than external infl uences and random change.
Perhaps I am just too sentimental about my tired old body to fret that there will be no more ‘humans’ – no more like me – just protoplasms and energized-goo matrices. Of course it is likely that I simply fail to understand the nature of identity in these new forms. I am my mind and my body, but soon there will be no more like me. They will reside in protean forms, their minds able to intermingle and communicate in electricity and photons. It is, quite literally, beyond me.
SO AT the end of my tour I would invite all to contemplate what they had seen within, have a cup of tea and get to know some of our more sociable residents.
There were many curious curios in the garden: extinct species such as the dakosaurus on plate 43*, now restored to the world without a place to go; museum members and pieces of ambiguous classification who permanently stationed themselves on the grass and benches to soak up the gentle sunlight.
* Incubation conditions and diet are merely speculatory, thus the malformation and not living as long as they might. This re-species is still in progress.
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