As things stand now, the 2043 Kentucky Derby is going to be won by Hi Falutin, which is a pretty silly name for a horse, but by the time his career is over it won't seem any sillier than Swaps or Tim Tam or Seattle Slew. He's going to win by a neck in two minutes one second flat on a fast track, and Barfly, who will finish third, will be disqualified and placed last for interfering with three other horses in the homestretch.
Exactly seven thousand one hundred and fifty-six years later, the star known as Antares will go nova.
And two million and three years after that, the first glimmerings of intelligence will be noticeable among the strange little mollusks that inhabit the tidal pools on the fourth planet of the star known as Spica.
I'd tell you my name, but you probably couldn't pronounce it and I probably wouldn't spell it the same way twice in a row--it changes a lot, you know (or maybe you don't know, which really isn't my problem anyway). I think I will tell you where I come from, though. It changes a lot too, but these days we're calling it Quiggle. Or maybe Quabble. Anyway, it's the sixth planet circling the star you know as Betelguese. Or, at least, it used to be. I don't think it's there anymore. Just as well. Seeing it would only depress me--especially the spot where I'm buried.
But now I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
Once upon a time I belonged to a race of humanoids that inhabited the sixth planet of Betelguese, which we used to call Profff in the old days. Also, I use the word "humanoids" only to give you a point of reference. Actually, I always thought we were more the human type, and that you guys were the humanoids. But why quibble? (Say, that's not bad! I think we'll call it Quibble starting next week.)
I lived during the golden age of my planet, although we called it the mauve age since gold wasn't all that hard to come by. Huge skyscrapers covered the surface of our fair world, except where there was water, in which cases enormous bubble-domed cities floated atop the mighty seas, plying their commerce between the many majestic continents.
In a matter of a few centuries we achieved space flight, converted all our appliances and factories to sunpower, eliminated completely and forever any taint of racial prejudice, outgrew all of our superstitious old religions, and began probing the secrets of the universe in earnest.
Unfortunately, all this took a little while to accomplish, especially the part about the secrets of the universe, and while our medical science had progressed far beyond anything you are ever going to achieve, we nonetheless aged and died, albeit at a far slower rate than any other life form in the galaxy.
Well, to cut through all the palaver, one of the secrets of the universe we sought to unlock was the secret of eternal life. We already had lifespans of more than a millennium, so that seemed the next logical step.
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