I enjoyed reading this story, but I would like to point out what I see as a grim possible future for humanity even after shutdown Huygens starline. As I understand, the super happies have a very accelerated reproduction rate among other things, which in certain circumstances could be as low as a 20 hour doubling time, ship crew and all; It’s hard to pinpoint what the doubling time for solar system/starline colonization though it is likely related to the reproduction doubling time, but with the conservative estimate that they super happies have colonized/explored at least 8 systems in the 20 years (as the stars count time) they have been in space that would give them about a 6 year doubling time. There are about 400 billion stars in the galaxy while this may be a lot; It is only a mere 39 doubling cycles to full colonization, and an additional 39 (78 total) to full colonization of the next 400 billion galaxies. We have a range of somewhere between 780 hours (based on the 20 hour doubling speed) or about 32 and a half days to a more respectable yet still short 234 years (based on the conservative 6 year doubling time estimate) until the whole galaxy has been explored by the super happies, and only double that time if we are speaking of an area much much larger then the observable universe. It is safe to say that this is a strong upper bound on the amount of time it would take the super happies to rediscover humanity, and that time decreases significantly due to anything that would increase the chance of discovery from pure random chance, such as better understanding of starline topography, better inter-starline scanning, and additional novas that humanity chooses to investigate. So, I think the sad fact of the matter is that this victory is just one of little time, and considering the advancements in immortality I think the vast majority of humans would be around to see the return of the super happies to bestow upon them their gift.
Nicholas2
Karma: 22
Please excuse the spacing on my previous post, Never quite sure how line breaks end up in various comment systems.