Cholois fled their home is correct. They planned, initiated, and may have completed, an intergalactic leap.
Surviving members of the species still exist on the home world. They are few, and have been reduced to a state of near-savagery. None have been found with any memory of their former greatness, save in their myths.
Recent investigations support the view that the inhabitants of the space station at Beta Pac III witnessed the destruction of their world by an Omega cloud, and chose to die in space rather than return to a devastated homeland. Investigation continues.
Attempts to inspect the Omega clouds (which were not named for Angela Morgan) have been uniformly unproductive. Strong electromagnetic fields are believed to contribute to the clouds' ability to retain their structure, but no one has explained satisfactorily how this could be.
They have turned out to be much less numerous than formerly supposed. It was something of an aberration that the Ashley Tee found two of them simultaneously in the same system. They are nevertheless uncomfortably plentiful, and there is no realistic hope that the solar system will not receive one or two unwelcome visitors in its own distant future.
Conferences have already been convened to plan a strategy, and to ensure that future generations are warned of the danger.
The central processing unit recovered by Maggie Tufu from the space station has been a trove of information about the so-called City-Builder era. The natives of that period were aware of their early exploits. But rather than serving as a source of pride, they provoked a sense of lost greatness and decay which slowed development, promoted decay, and induced dark ages.
The existence of the Omega clouds has raised deep-seated philosophical questions about the position of the human race in a universe now seen by many to be actively hostile. Return-to-nature movements have sprung up around the world, and there has also been a resurgence of fundamentalist religious groups, which had been in decline for decades.
Project Hope has proceeded successfully, and it now appears that the first human settlers will arrive on Quraqua well ahead of schedule.
Six additional monuments have been found. The Braker Society (named for its founder, Aran Braker, who died of a stroke during a demonstration outside the Smithsonian) has led a strong effort in recent years to recover the Great Monuments, and place them in Earth orbit. This effort has been encouraged by technological advances which would render the project feasible. Although the idea has found considerable popularity among the general public, opposition has come principally from the Academy and its allies, one of the more vocal of whom has been Melanie Truscott. These have been characterized as «Arconuts» by the Braker Society.
Starship design has improved significantly as a result of the experience of the Winckelmann. Secondary life support systems, capable of full manual operation, are now standard features.
Melanie Truscott's career went into eclipse for several years, owing to the Richard Wald incident. She came to the public's attention again in 2207 when she opposed an effort to resume massive logging in the Northwest. She lost that struggle, but was elected to the Senate in 2208.
lan Helm, who was Kosmik's director of southern icecap operations on Quraqua, escaped all blame for pushing the button. He has served several agencies and corporations in high-level posts, and is currently Commissioner of the NAU Park Service.
The Great Telescope in Beta Pacifica shares many of the characteristics of a living organism, although it is not quite precise to say it is alive. It was once fully capable of collecting data across the spectrum. Its signals have never been translated satisfactorily into optical images. It is now believed that the software, whose methodology is only dimly understood, has malfunctioned.
Henry Jacobi died in Chicago after a long illness. His last years were embittered by a series of simmy versions of the rescue at the Temple, all of which portrayed him as reckless and blundering.
Frank Carson never did take the job with the Academy's personnel division. And despite his resolution after the deaths of Maggie Tufu and George Hackett, he returned to Beta Pacifica III, where he headed the Working Group for six years. He received full credit for leading the original expedition, and ranks in his own lifetime with Champollion, Larimatsu, and Wald. He married Linda Thomas, from the Temple mission, and is now the father of two redheaded girls. He is also Chairman of the Margaret Tufu Foundation, which provides research grants and educational aid to budding mathematicians.
Tourists at the Academy in Washington, D.C., often visit the George Hackett wing of the main library. A striking photograph of Hackett, superimposed over a copy of the Casumel script which he helped rescue at Quraqua, dominates the west wall.
Maggie Tufu's brilliant account of the search for the meaning of the inscription at Oz, Philological Aspects of Casumel Linear, was published several years ago to unanimous acclaim. Edited by Janet Allegri, it is already recognized as a mathematical classic.
Allegri is now teaching at Oxford.
Priscilla Hutchins continues to pilot the Academy's ships. She has established a reputation of her own, and people meeting her for the first time are always surprised to discover that she is not quite as tall, or as beautiful, as they had expected. That comes later.
— David Emory
