Self-replicating machines were one of the less known but persistent ideas in science-fiction: a robot that can build other robots from basic materials, which in turn could build more robots and so on. This terrible vision finally came to pass in the mid-26th century, after the Nanosphere completely changed human and silical perception of reality. There was no boundary between physical and virtual, no difference between mind and machine; every single piece of human culture was becoming a part of one mesh, stretched between the far reaches of consciousness. The continuity that had encompassed all people, from the neolithic gatherers to the spacefaring societies of the late Diamond Age, was broken; what was emerging instead couldn't truly be called human anymore, or even transhuman. New forms of consciousness lived on the planet Earth now, perhaps incomprehensible to their ancestors, but sharing their hopes and fears as they gazed into the awaiting Eternity.