Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter

These excerpts from Stephen Baxter’s Vacuum Diagrams chronicle a sprawling evolutionary history of humanity and other sentient life across millions of years. The narrative follows various characters, such as Michael Poole and Jim Bolder, as they interact with the Xeelee and the Silver Ghosts while navigating a universe shaped by dark matter and quantum physics. Key plotlines involve the construction of wormhole bridges through time, the discovery of mathematical lifeforms, and the struggle of isolated human colonies on worlds like Pluto and Mercury. As the timeline progresses, the text depicts humanity's transition from a spacefaring empire to a species struggling for survival against the photino birds during the final cooling of the cosmos. Ultimately, the sources meditate on the persistence of consciousness and the grand architectural projects of advanced civilizations facing the inevitable end of the universe.