The next step up the evolutionary ladder are Type-II civilizations, which harness energy solely by way of their suns. They have colonized other planets and have begun the exploration and possible colonization of nearby solar systems. Able to manipulate their environment, they will no longer be in danger of facing extinction by glaciation or asteroid impact, but will still be vulnerable to supernovas, whose eruptions could irradiate nearby planets.

Type-III civilizations are the pinnacle of advanced societies. They have exhausted the energy output of their suns and must reach out to other star systems throughout the galaxy. Their starships approach the speed of light, and perhaps, have even mastered ‘Planck energy,’ the energy necessary to violate the very fabric of space and time.

In other words, Jacob, they can manipulate wormholes.

When I left Earth in 2012, our species was still a struggling Type-0 civilization. Our people were hopelessly divided, enmeshed in petty conflicts of equality, religion, and politics. Our technologies focused on making war, and we very nearly destroyed ourselves in our quest of ego and self. Type-0 civilizations are always prone to disasters, whether self-induced, or, as our predecessors learned, through the fury of Mother Nature.

What scientists had left out of the equation was hominid evolution. Homo sapiens was not the last stop up the evolutionary ladder; it was merely the beginning … and love was our key to survival.

As this knowledge was imparted to me, I found myself staring at my own genome. The spiraling ladder of DNA was changing, continuing an incredible metamorphosis that had begun the moment the first drops of alien water had passed across my lips.

And though I was dreaming, I knew the vision was real, that I was actually changing, evolving into something more efficient—something superior. Another layer of brain tissue, a hypercortex, was growing over my neocortex.

I was becoming … Transhuman.

The transhumanist school first surfaced at the turn of the twentieth century when science fiction gave rise to serious futurism. The term ‘transhuman’ implies our species as being transitional, that Homo sapiens does not represent the end of our evolution but rather its true beginning. Through bioscience breakthroughs and technological advances in nanoscale engineering that enabled telomeric augmentation, proliferated nanoimplants, genomic editing, and mitochondrial genetic preservation, individual humans could prepare themselves as transhumans to reach our ultimate goal as a species: Posthumanism.

A posthuman was imagined to be an augmented super-brained person no longer merely human. It was believed that posthumans could end up as completely synthetic organisms, living far beyond the human body’s limitations—or as some imagined, as exobody consciousness, programmed within some futuristic biochemical computer.

As I watched my genome evolve, my hallucination instructed me. It showed me how my brain was growing. Taught me how to program my own neurological pathways simply by using streams of conscious thought. My dream guided me toward understanding how my biological processes worked and how they could be manipulated.