3. Self-replicating machines—a dawning reality. It is not by our rocket technology that expansion into the universe is limited, but by the current (primitive) state of our computer and robot technology. Between 2005 and 2008, terabit computers— easily trainable ones—should become readily available, and from that moment we will be on the verge of creating robots indistinguishable, in their movements and behavior, from colonies of smart insects. The development of self-replicating machines will make possible giant engineering projects previously deemed prohibitively expensive—including solar arrays on the Moon capable of beaming all of the Earth’s power needs down on microwave lasers (i.e., clean electricity for all mankind*) and arrays of linear accelerators (also on the Moon) dedicated to producing the many tons of antihydrogen propellant necessary to power crewed Valkyrie starships.

Pierre Noyes, who brought a breath of fresh air to the Valkyrie brainstorming sessions in 1994 (and who worked with Freeman Dyson on Project Orion), cautions that once machines reach this ant-like level of intelligence, mutation among their replicants—and an evolutionary process far more rapid than anything the Earth has seen in biological organisms—may commence. “We may not be able to prevent it,” he says. “Try to imagine a million years of evolution taking place in very smart ants overnight. You need not look to the stars for your Intruders. It is not inconceivable that we will create them right here on Earth.”

*This, of course, presumes a civilization wiser than today’s, for if people must worry about those same microwave lasers being turned against nations as weapons, their construction will be prohibited.

4. Alien contact, given hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, and the ease with which carbon compounds can be nudged to protocell evolution, and assuming a galaxy more than twelve billion years old—a statistical certainty. Fortunately, results from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest a universe that may be only eight to twelve billion years old, and possibly closer to eight. If this is true, then according to the Genesis and Galactic Blight Theory (re: Pellegrino and Crick in Time Gate), at the time enough heavy elements had accumulated to allow the formation of life-producing, Earth mass worlds, Earth (aged 4.6 billion years) was among the very first, if not the first, to form. If this is the case, the reason for the pervasive silence in the galaxy is that most Earth-like planets have not been around long enough to sprout civilizations and (unless old ice worlds are a wild card in the equation) we are alone out to a radius of more than 1,000 light years, and hopefully altogether alone. It would be nice to know that the stars belong to us.

5. The artificial boosting of human intelligence— probably more real, and more near, than you think. According to the latest laboratory experiments, one or two simple brain proteins seem to determine the efficiency with which nerves fire and thoughts are connected. Already there is talk of genetically “tricking” bacteria into manufacturing these human brain proteins, meaning that the first in what will undoubtedly be a series of recombinant, brainboosting drugs could become available in as few as five years, more than seven decades before they came into use in this novel.