Jack of Harts

The Branan’s short-lived bodies broke down in a matter of five or six decades at most, but while we sought to lengthen our lifespan, the Branan sought immortality through a different route. They copied their minds into the computer networks and cut the cord to their old, dying meat bodies. The Branan heroes and elders lived in the networks, where they spent two millennia traveling between their stars at lightspeed. They built major electronic presences around every star within one hundred lightyears of Betelgeuse by sending out tiny probe swarms on solar sails. Those probes built numerous fully functional computer networks at their destination stars, and those networks built physical, industrial civilizations where no flesh and blood Branan had ever traveled. Then we made Contact.