The Ephemeral Species

Illustrations – One scene from every chapter

(WARNING: Spoilers below!)

Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 1 - Nisha discovers the origin of signals
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 2 - Nisha sees spacecraft near Moon
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 3 - Priya and Sophie are hypnotized
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 4 - Astronaut inspected by drone
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 5 - Priya and Sophie are abducted
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 6 - Nisha has Broken Heart Syndrome
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 7 - Sphere discovered in the Mojave Desert
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 8 - Aliens walk up to Nisha and Rachel, but are not interested.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 9 - Nisha sees Priya and Sophie entering alien city.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 10 - Alien Child, Bok, learning chess.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 11 - Nisha sees children with aliens. No interaction with alien adults.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 12 - Bok creates terminal for communication.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 13 - Bok creates verbal communication with humans.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 14 - Bok Tells Nisha and Rachel that the abducted children have been improved.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 15 - Nisha and Rachel see exponental growth in the Omanji alien colony.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 16 - Nisha and Rachel learn about the Omanji home world, Oma. Gliese 667Cc.
An interstellar high-speed Omanji caravan has a lead ship with a magnetic shield, to protect the ships behind it.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 17 - Nisha talks with her husband Quinn and her son Sanjay who are home in Pasadena.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 18 - Nisha learns about the dark ages on Oma.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 19 - Bok and Nisha visit Priya and Sophie at the Omanji domestication center.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 20 - Bok learns that Yoova is very intelligent and an artist.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 21 - The Omanji release the 25,000 modified human children and the Yoots.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 22 - Nisha and Rachel learn about the genetic modifications to Priya, Sophie, and the other 25,000 abductees recently set free.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 23 - The Yoots are musical, so they put on concerts to raise money for a homeland for themselves.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 24 - Priya and Sophie return to school and get perfect scores after little studying. Their friend Amy is shocked.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 25 - Priya joins the chess club and beats the champion. He's not happy.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 26 - Priya and Sopie win the chess tournament, causing protests due to their advantages.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 27 - Amy sets up a private social network for the 25,000 modified children. Priya and Sophie watch.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 28 - In school, nobody wants to sit near Priya and Sophie. They're afraid.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 29 - Bok moves out of the Omanji colony. He likes freedom.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 30 - Priya and Sophie do homeshcooling. Amy on the Monitor looks at them.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 31 - Bok takes Nisha and Rachel on a cruise in his speeder.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 32 - Priya, Sophie, and Amy watch a 6,000 foot tall Omanji tower get built in a day in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 33 - The Yoots put on a concert. Quinn, Sanjay, Priya, Sophie, and Amy watch on a big screen.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 34 - Nisha and Rachel return to Nisha's house in Bok's speeder, after a long time studying the Omanji.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 35 - Modified kids on the network from around the world complain of abuse and other problems.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 36 - Bok likes a female Omanji, Beedee. He writes a note by hand tto give to her o avoid detection by the Omanji. Beedee is scheduled to mate with a genetic match. Bok wants to stop that.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 37 - Bok gets Beedee to join his new colony.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 38 - Priya, Sophie and the other modified children will attend a special school at Stanford. Amy realizes she is losing them.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 39 - Quinn drives Priya and sophie to Stanford. Amy is sad to be losing her best friends.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 40 - Bok gets paper books to avoid Omanji detection and learn about human freedoms so he can set up his new colony.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 41 - Boks parents visit Nisha and Rachel. They get upset and push Nisha to the ground. Bok helps her get back up.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 42 - Priya and Sophie make new friends at Stanford. Warren, Raven, Pablo, and Ian.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 43 - Bok takes Nisha and Rachel on a 30 minute trip to Bora Bora in Tahiti.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 44 - At Boks colony, workers move magnetic eggs, each containing more antimatter energy than the largest atomic bomb. They are used for energy.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 45 - Omanji Elder Zon visits Bok. He pushes Nisha to the ground and again, Bok picks her up. Zon is worried about Bok's colony destabilizing Omanji society and the dangers of unsupervised high technology. Nisha stands up to Zon.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 46 - Bok starts meditation and other practices to keep the colony peaceful.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 47 - A mass migration to Bok's colony causes more problems.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 48 - A gray goo disaster is barely avoided. Self-replicating nano-machines almost turned the Earth's surface into gray goo. The new colony is dangerous. Zon is right.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 49 - Bok imposes safety rules and millinos of Omanji leave his colony for a new and more dangerous free colony.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 50 - Inventions at the new colony cause chaos.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 51 - Due to the danger, the Omanji arriving to Earth have stopped moving to the main Omanji colony. They remain in orbit. Nisha notices and is worried.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 52 - Drones from the free colony cause more chaos and destruction. Runaway AI is getting out of control.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 53 - Runaway AI begins to take over the Earth. Omanji leader Zon is forced to destroy the free colony. All antimatter there explodes creating the largest explosion by far in history. No radiation, since it's antimatter. It blows a hole in the upper atmosphere for a few minutes.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 54 - Bok shows Nisha and Rachel that the Omanji are leaving Earth to make a home on Gliese 581g, anothe Earth-like planet. Their society was too disrupted by the freedom of Earth. A warning about runaway AI.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 55 - With the main Omaji colony empty, Nisha and Rachel pack up to leave the Mojave Desert location. Bok's colony remains there.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 56 - Priya and Rachel return to be be professors at Cal-Tech in Pasadena. Bok teaches a lesson on the dangers of runaway Artificial General Intelligence, based on Omanji history.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 57 - At Stanford, Priya, Sophie, Raven, Warren, and Pablo realize they may be a new species.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 58 - The group attend a concert in the Northern California redwood forest put on by the Yoots.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 59 - Protests against the mods begin at Stanford.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 60 - Raven creates an automated coffee house, while protests increase.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 61 - Priya and Sophie graduate from Stanford undergrad in just a year. Most modified kids are equally gifted.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 62 - Protests against the mods get violent, at Priya's genetics company, Genomaly.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 63 - Priya leads a counter-protest.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 64 - The genomes of the mods is stiolen and babies are being born with slow physical development but rapid mental development. They inheret many Mod traits but have no implants.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 65 - Priya testifies in Congress, connected to Sophie and Warren, to say that modified peopel have rights like anybody else.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 66 - Like an ICE raid, Priya and all 25,000 modified children are arrested simultaneously and sent to a camp in California's Central Valley.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 67 - They want to sterilize Priya, but she is in control of the US financial system and threatens chaos of she and the Mods are not released.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 68 - The group celebrate being released from the detention camp.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 69 - Reality hits hard when protests resume.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 70 - Bok advises the group that an AI probe from the AI singleton planet that threatened the Omanji home world, has been spotted near Jupiter's moon, Europa.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 71 - Priya has a dream about a black hole being dropped into the ocean fro the AI probe. It swollows the Earth and she wakes up.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 72 - Congress passes the Human Species Preservation Act, which puts all modified people out of jobs. They form their own companies in response. Priya already has her company. Now they all will.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 73 - Priya celebrates her 21st birthday with a view of San Francisco.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 74 - Raven invites Priya and Sophie to have sushi in her fully automated but inepensive sushi restaurant.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 75 - Bok informs the group about the dangers and unknown properties of the planetary AI singleton who sent probes to Oma and now our solar system.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 76 - The US government incarcerates the Mods again after fortifying their systems from attack. . This time, Priya lets them be sterilized, but their eggs another other genetic material have been backed up.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 77 - Boks shows the locations of the AI singleton home world and a new AI singleton just discovered.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 78 - Raven invents a self-evolving and super-intelligent robot.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 79 - A population explosion of babies with enhanced Mod genetics is unstoppable. Parents want the babies but society rejects them.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 80 - Raven's super-intelligent robot, V, is getting out of control and is creepy. Raven loves it but is scared too. She hesitates to turn it off because it may do something dangerous to defend itself.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 81 - Protesters break into Raven's robotics lab. V is destroyed but survives on millions of computers and robots worldwide. In this scene, V is messaging the group.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 82 - Bok learns more from the Omanji database. Planetary evolution follows a pattern. An era of organic life, and era of technology, and an era of a planetary singleton.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 83 - Priya and the group worry about ever many increasing problems on Priya's 23rd birthday. They are aging very slowly.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 84 - Vs robots are out of control.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 85 - The US government and others implement 'The Final Solution' Incarcerate the Mods for the rest of their lives in order to save humanity. They are loced 1000 feet underground in a salt mine near Detroit.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 86 - The guards leave the salt mine and they return to ground level to discover that society is in chaos and robots are loose. V is to blame.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 87 - The group returns home to discover their lab is wrecked and their cute GMO smart rats have escaped. V is eventually dismantled.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 88 - New species kids are growing slowly. They are very smart. The Mods are happy and worried simultaneously.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 90 - The US Supreme Court decides that Mods have no human rights, since they aren't human.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 90 - The Mod group gets increasingly worried about the new generation with their genes. They are smart and kind, but have no implants and many will grow up and be dangerous, even if by accident.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 91 - Priya and the Mod group watch a protest against them.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 92 - Priya's new hardened Genomaly HQ is attacked by a deadly virus that only infects new species people at first.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 93 - The Mods try to help society, but are still hated by many.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 94 - Bok advises the group on how to respond to increasing threats, violence, and AI takeovers.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 95 - A new virus to kill the Mods is created, but it spreads and mutates, killing millions of both species.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 96 - Warren asks out Priya after many years as friends. They are still physically developing slowly and feel like 16 year-olds.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 97 - Priya and Warren go on a date, above the fog on a typical summer day on Mt. Tamalpais.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 98 - Raven's lab is visited by a drone from the planetary singleton. It gets in, destroys the lab, and steals Raven's technology to learn about it.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 99 - A drone from thr planetary singleton goes dead, as the group has a beach get-together in Santa Cruz. It turns out, a second AI singleton destroyed the singleton home planet 558 years ago and the lack of signals.just now reached Earth.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 99 - A memorial ceremony was held For Nisha many decades later. She lived a long and healthy life, but Priya and the Mods will live at least another 200 years or longer.
Scene from The Ephemeral Species, chapter 100 - Priya celebrates her 300th birthday with the same group picured 280 years earler. They still have more life to live.