Lopsiders
侧倾者The Qu were grotesquely creative in their redesign of the human worlds. One group of misfortunate souls they transported to a planet with thirty-six times the amount of "normal" gravity, and made them over for life in this bizarrely inhospitable realm.
Qu在重新设计人类世界的过程中有着荒诞的创造力。他们将一群不幸的家伙带到了一个引力是正常水平36倍的星球上，并使他们在这个奇怪的荒凉王国中重生。
The results of these experiments resembled nightmare sketchings of Bosch, Dali or Picasso. They looked like cripples squashed between sheets of glass. Three out of their four limbs had become paddle-like organs for crawling; only one of their arms remained as spindly tool of manipulation. This singular, wizened limb also doubled as an extra sensor, like the antennae of an insect.
这些实验的结果类似于博斯、达利或毕加索的噩梦般的草稿。他们看起来像被挤在玻璃片之间的残疾人。四肢中有三条变成了桨状的爬行器官；只有一只细长的仍然用来操纵工具的手臂。这种奇异的、干瘪的肢体也可以兼作额外的传感器，就像昆虫的触角一样。
Their faces were different horrors altogether. All pretensions of symmetry; the hallmark of terrestrial animals from jawless fish onwards, were completely and utterly done away with. One bulging eye stared directly upward while the other scanned ahead, in the direction of the creature's vertically-opening jaws. The ears were likewise distorted.
他们的脸全然不同的恐怖。从无颌鱼开始的所有对称地球动物的特征已经完全消失了。一只凸起的眼睛直接向上凝视，另一只眼睛朝着生物垂直张开的下巴向前扫视。耳朵也被扭曲了。

Monstrous as they looked, these ex-men thrived in their heavy-gravity environment. Once again there was the usual explosion of species into every available niche, and the Lopsiders consolidated their chances for a renewed sentience.
尽管他们看起来很怪异，但这些前人类在高重力的环境中茁壮成长。再一次，这个物种像往常一样激增到每一个可用的生态位，不对称人巩固了他们重新恢复知性的机会。

A Lopsider feeds some indigenous pets native to his high-gravity world. The domestication of native fauna is the Lopsiders' first step on the long way towards civilization.
一只侧倾者喂养一些当地宠物，这些宠物原产于他的高重力世界。对当地动物的驯化是侧倾者走向文明的漫长道路上的第一步。

重复是因为被吞了

Parasites
寄生虫
Humanity had diverged into two separate lineages on their world. On one hand there were several races of almost Australopithecine cripples, degraded by the Qu for managing to turn back their initial wave of invasion. Yet simple atavism was too light a punishment for them. Their twisted relatives, the parasites, made up the second part of their sentence.
在他们的世界上，人类已经分化成两个独立的谱系。有几个物种被改造成了残废版的南方古猿，这是由于他们击破了Qu最初的入侵浪潮。然而，简单的返祖作为对他们的 惩罚太轻了。他们扭曲的亲属，寄生者，构成了他们惩罚的第二部分。
There were actually several kinds of parasitic ex-people, ranging from tortoise- sized ambulatory vampires to the more common fist-sized variety that lived attached to their hosts. There was even a tiny, endoparasitic kind that infested the wombs of their female victims like ghastly, living abortions.
实际上有几种寄生的前人类：从乌龟大小的移动吸血鬼到更常见的拳头大小的附生宿主的吸血鬼。甚至还有一种微小的内寄生虫，像可怕的活着的败育胎儿一样感染女性受害者的子宫。
All of these evolutionary tortures were played out under the careful scrutiny of the Qu for forty million years. The punishment was so baroque, so elaborate that most of the artificial parasite-host relationships died out when the Qu left. Some sub-men learnt to cleanse their tick-like relatives by drowning, burning or even eating them. Others, like the vaginal parasites, died out as their aggressive method of parasitism effectively sterilized their hosts.
所有这些进化而来的折磨都是在Qu长达四千万年的仔细观察下进行的。这种惩罚是如此的巴洛克式，如此的精心，以至于当Qu离开时，大多数人造寄生虫与宿主的关系都消失了。一些潜水者学会了通过淹死、焚烧甚至吃掉蜱虫般的亲属来净化它们。其他的，比如阴道寄生虫，由于它们攻击性的寄生方法有效地消灭了宿主，所以灭绝了。
Yet one or two varieties did manage to cling on to their hosts with abdominal suckers, muscular, gripping limbs and sterile, pain-soothing saliva. But their success did not lie entirely in the strength of their parasitical advantages. They also learnt to regulate their dumb hosts, not killing them by over-infestation and thus ensuring their own long- term survival as well.
然而，有一两个品种确实用腹部吸盘、肌肉发达、抱紧的四肢和无菌、止痛的唾液紧紧抓住了宿主。但它们的成功并不完全在于寄生优势。它们还学会了控制它们愚蠢的宿主，而不是通过过度侵扰杀死它们，从而确保了自己的长期生存。
In any case, totally single-sided relations were rare in any ecology, natural or artificial. In millennial cycles, the cousin species' vicious parasitism began to give way into something more beneficial for both sides.
无论如何，完全单边的关系在任何生态中都是罕见的，无论是自然的还是人工的。在千万年的周期中，亲缘物种间的恶性寄生开始让位于互利共生。

A parasitic person, shown real size. Although their fate seems inhumane in every aspect to an observer of today, their very survival shows that such subjective values are ineffectual in matters of long-term survival.
一个真实大小的寄生者。尽管在今天的观察者看来，他们的命数在各个方面都是不人道的，但他们的生存本身表明这种主观价值在长期生存问题上是无用的。

FingerFishers
重爪渔夫
Their ancestors were trapped on an archipelago world; a planet sprinkled with many small continents and countless islands over interconnected networks of calm, swallow seas. Like a magnified Aegean, this place was a terrestrial paradise in many respects. Except that after the Qu, no minds were left to enjoy it.
他们的祖先被困在一个群岛世界；这个星球上散布着星罗棋布的小型大陆和岛屿，形成了平静而广阔相连接的海洋。就像一个放大的爱琴海，这个地方在很多方面都是一个人间天堂。只是Qu到来后，再也没有人能享受这里了。
On this vacant biosphere, evolution was quick to begin her blind, unpredictable dance. Once feral, the descendants of degenerate humans adapted themselves to every available niche, no matter how exotic, how outlandish. One group learnt to pluck fish from the lazy shores. Millennia passed and they settled more into their piscatorial lifestyle. Elongated fingers became ambulatory fish-hooks, teeth modified for a generalized diet became needle-like affairs, lined up neatly in a long, thin muzzle. In less than a few million years, the Finger Fishers established themselves as a prominent lineage. There was scarcely a beach, an island or an estuary that was devoid of their pale, lanky forms.
在这个空荡荡的生物圈里，进化很快开始了她盲目的、不可预测的舞蹈。堕落人类的野生后代适应了每一个可用的生态位，无论多么奇异，多么古怪。有一组人学会了从懒散的海岸上捕鱼。数以千计的时间过去了，他们更多地适应了捕鱼的生活方式。细长的手指变成了可动的鱼钩，为日常饮食而改良的牙齿变成了细针，整齐地排列在细长的口中。在不到几百万年的时间里，重爪人成为了一个发达的家族。几乎没有一个海滩、一个岛屿或一个河口不存在它们苍白瘦长的形体。

As prolific as they were, the Fishers were still no better than animals. Their "humanity" would come only after another spasm of outlandish adaptations.
尽管他们生活富足，但渔夫们仍然属于普通动物范畴。他们的“人性”只有在另一次古怪的改变之后才会出现。

Hedonists
享乐者
Even the blissful existence of the Finger Fishers would have seemed bothersome to the Hedonists; for their kind was not evolved, but designed for a life of pleasure. The Qu had kept them as pampered pets; set loose in a tropical island-world of succulent fruits, bountiful trees and calm, lapping lakes full of sweet, bacterial manna. Furthermore, the Hedonists were left as the only animal life on this place. They had no choice but to enjoy it to the fullest.
即使是重爪渔夫的幸福生活，也会让享乐者感到烦恼；因为他们不是进化而来的，而是为享受生活而设计的。Qu把它们作为娇生惯养的的宠物；在一个热带岛屿世界悠闲度日，那里有多汁的水果、繁茂的树木和平静的湖泊，湖泊里充满了甜美的细菌甘露。此外，享乐主义者是这个地方唯一的动物。他们别无选择，只有尽情享受。
In normal conditions, any given species would quickly crowd out such an utopian environment. But normal conditions had never been the point of the Qu redesign. They had altered their subjects so that they could conceive only after mating an enormous number of potential suitors, continually over a period of decades. While this took care of the population problem, it also made the species less adaptable. Without any point in sexual competition, natural selection would progress only at a glacial pace. Fortunately, their stable microcosm remained free of environmental catastrophes even after the Qu left.
在正常情况下，任何特定的物种都会很快挤爆这样乌托邦式的环境。但正常情况从来都不是Qu重塑的重点。他们改变了自己的实验品，让他们只有在几十年的时间里不断地与大量潜在的追求者交配后才能怀孕。虽然这解决了种群问题，但也降低了该物种的适应性。如果在性竞争中没有任何意义，自然选择只能以缓慢的速度进行。幸运的是，即使在Qu离开后，他们稳定的微缩世界仍然没有爆发环境灾难。
All these changes had also made the Hedonists' day. Their lives were juxtaposed routines of browsing, sleeping and mind-blowing sex; troubled neither by the concerns of disease or pregnancy. Aloof and carefree, they enjoyed the most pleasurable times of all mankinds, albeit with the intellectual capabilities of three-year-olds.
所有这些变化创造了享乐者的日常。他们的生活并列进行着游荡，睡眠和令人兴奋的星艾；既不担心疾病也不担心怀孕。他们漠不关心又无忧无虑，享受着所有人类中最快乐的时光，尽管他们具有三岁的孩子的智力。
It didn't really matter, though. Who needed to think when having such a nice time, after all?
不过，这其实并不重要。毕竟，有如此美好的时光时，谁需要思考呢？
The favorites of the Qu. A female Hedonist lies alone on a beach, contemplating absolutely nothing. Without any pressure from the world, their days make themselves as they go along.
Qu的最爱。一只母哈基人独自躺在海滩上，脑袋空空。没有任何来自世界的压力，他们的日子渐渐走过去。

如果能有一支退化为两侧对称蠕虫那么基干的位置（抹掉大部分人类特征），那么他的后代可能会在一亿年里填满世界每个角落，而且看不出人类特征（Qu可能反而不喜欢这一点）。

补图

银河系是一个有无数亚人文明的城市

有完整版的

5亿年后人类回家了，在宇宙中漂泊的数亿年后，回到最初的起点地球

Insectophagi
食虫者
Nondescript, quaint human species abounded in the post-Qu galaxy. Hundreds of them lived out simple, unnoticed lives, never developing to become sentient, never learning their true heritage as star-born human beings. Most of them went extinct, not to be missed or even remembered. Those that lingered on managed to survive in shady, quiet niches, never again making any impact on the celestial scheme of things.
在后Qu的银河中，有许多不起眼又奇特的人类物种。数以百计的这些物种过着简单而不为人知的生活，从未发展成为有知觉的人，从未学习过在星星中出生的人类的真正遗产。它们中的大多数都灭绝了，不值得怀念，甚至不值得记住。那些徘徊不前的后人类设法在阴凉、安静的山口中生存下来，从未对天体计划产生任何作用。
One such species was the Insectophagi. They had quietly adapted themselves for a diet of colonial insects and small animals; they had faces covered with leathery plates, claw-like hands to dig out prey and worm-like tongues to scoop them up.
其中一个物种是食虫者。他们悄悄地适应了殖民地昆虫和小动物构成的饮食；脸上覆盖着皮革护板，爪状的手可以挖出猎物，蠕虫般的舌头可以把猎物铲起来。
All in all, they weren't special in any particular way. But a combination of galactic invasions, coincidence and pure luck would later make them the longest-enduring of all ur-starmen.
总而言之，它们在任何方面都不特别。但银河入侵、巧合和纯粹的运气的结合，会使他们成为所有星际人类中存在时间最长的。
The meek would inherit the cosmos, though not just yet. For now, the Insectophagi were concerned only with the location of insect colonies, and the onset of the mating season.
这些温顺的人会继承宇宙，尽管不是现在。目前，食虫者只关心昆虫群落的位置和交配季节的开始。

Spacers
喜之郎。。。我是说太空人
It must be remembered that the Star People did not succumb entirely to the Qu invasions. While their worlds fell away one by one, some Star People took refuge in the void of space. One after another, entire communities scrambled into generation ships and cast themselves off into the darkness, hoping to go unnoticed by the beings that had overrun their galaxy.
必须记住，明星人类并没有完全屈服于屈的侵略。当他们的世界一个接一个地崩溃时，一些明星人类在虚无的太空中避难。一个接一个，整个社区争先恐后地登上"年代船"，遁入黑暗，希望被占领他们银河系的生物所忽视。
Desperate times made for desperate measures. As the Star Men had observed during their initial colonization of the galaxy, life in generation ships inevitably lead to mass insanity and anarchy. This time however, humans had to adapt themselves-or face extinction.
绝望的时代造就了绝望的措施。正如明星人类在最初殖民银河系期间所观察到的那样，年代船中的生活不可避免地导致大规模的精神错乱和无政府状态。然而，这一次，人类不得不自我适应，否则将面临灭绝。
Entire asteroid fields were confiscated and hollowed out to make space-ships of unseen size. These hollow shells cradled bubbles of precious air and water, but no artificial gravity of any kind. It was discovedred that a purely ethereal existence would ease the stress of interstellar exhile, provided that its inhabitants were adapted for life inside such an environment.
整个小行星场都被充公并挖空，以制造出难以发现的太空船。这些中空的外壳怀抱着珍贵的空气和水，但没有任何人工重力。人们认为，一种纯粹轻盈的生活方式将缓解星际流放的压力，只要其居民能够适应这种环境。Furthermore, people were forced to change themselves. In an atmospherically sealed, gravity-free environment, their bones were left free to grow longer, thinner, spindlier. The circulatory and digestive systems were pressurized to avoid heart problems and congestion. The latter change had another advantageous side effect; humans could navigate through the void with jets of air-expelled from modified anuses.
此外，人们被迫改变自己。在大气秘封的失重环境中，它们的骨骼可以自由生长，变得更长、更薄、更细。循环系统和消化系统被加压以避免心脏问题和充血。后一种变化还有一个有利的副作用：人类可以通过改造后的肛门喷出的空气在虚空中穿行。
Such experiments were numerous, and usually plagued with failure. Yet they did succeed in creating a future. Sealed tight in their moon sized, air filled, weightless havens, the descendants of the Star People managed to evade the scourge of Qu.
这样的实验很多，而且常常失败。然而，他们确实成功地创造了未来。明星人类的后裔被严密地封在他们的月亮大小、充满空气、失重的避难所里，设法躲避了Qu的祸害。
It was an endless diaspora. Even after the Qu left, they would find themselves too divergent to have anything to do with their ancestral lifestyles. The survivors of the initial hurdle would never set foot on a planet again.
这是一场永不休止的大流散。即使Qu已经离开，他们也会发现自己已经面目全非，与他们祖先的生活方式全然无关。第一道障碍的幸存者再也不会踏上行星了。
Forty million years from today, Spacers like this individual are the only truly sentient human beings that survive. They are so comfortable in their weightless refuges that the fates of their bestial cousins elsewhere do not concern them. They are also painfully rare; their entire population in the Milky Way Galaxy does not exceed a few dozen arks and a hundred billion souls.
今天的四千万年后，像这样的太空人是唯一真正有知觉的人类。它们在失重的避难所里过的非常舒适，以至于它们对其他地方的野生近亲的命运漠不关心。它们也极其罕见；他们在银河系的总量不超过几打方舟和1000亿人口。

Ruin Haunters
墟鬼
A particular human species, singled out by its lucky access to the heritage of its stellar ancestors, would eventually get to play a leading role in the shape of things to come.
一个特别的后人类物种，幸运地获得了其星空祖先的遗产，最终将在未来的事件中发挥主导作用。
They had gotten through the Qu invasion with relatively little degradation; yes, they had been reduced to the level of apes, but their recovery had been quick. Apparently, the Qu had not worked as hard at suppressing their intelligence. Nor had they made a comparable effort to wipe away the material traces of the Star Men. Even after millions of years, enormous ruins of the global urban spaces littered the continents of their world. Thus did the Ruin Haunters earn their names.
他们经历了Qu的入侵，并受到了一点点退化；是的，它们已经变成了类人猿，但它们恢复的很快。显然，Qu没有那么努力地压制他们的智慧。他们也没有做出类似其他世界的努力来抹去明星人类的物质痕迹。
即使在数百万年后，全球城市的巨大废墟仍散落在世界各大洲。墟鬼因此而得名。
With developed minds and unrestricted access to the wisdom of the ancient cities, the exponential pace of their development was only natural. One by one they deciphered and built upon the secrets of the bygone Star People, until they almost equaled their galactic ancestors in wisdom and skill.
由于发达的头脑和来自古代都市的无尽智慧，墟鬼的发展速度自然的呈指数级增长。他们一个接一个地破译并在过去明星人类的秘密之上建立文明，直到他们在智慧和技能上几乎与银河中的先祖不相上下。
All of this development happened in an unnaturally short period of time, and sometimes the old technologies were not even understood as they were blindly replicated. Needless to say, such a pace of development put premature stresses on the social and political structures of the Ruin Haunters. They barely survived the five consecutive world wars that raked their planet, two of which were thermonuclear exchanges.
所有这些发展都发生在不自然短的时间内，有时旧技术甚至未被理解，因为它们是被盲目复制的。不用说，这样的发展速度给墟鬼的社会和政治结构带来了过早的压力。他们几乎没有在连续五次席卷全球的世界大战中幸存下来，其中两次是热核战争。
They made it through, their baptism with fire had hardened and awakened them. The wars united them politically and pushed their technological capabilities even beyond the level of the Star Men. Co-incidentally, they also developed a dangerous form of autochthonous madness. The Ruin Haunters had come to believe that they were the sole descendants and the true heirs of the Star People. And they were ready and willing to do anything in order to claim their fictitious, bygone Golden Age.
他们挺过来了，战火洗礼使他们坚强起来，唤醒了他们。战争使他们在政治上团结在一起，并将他们的技术能力推到了明星人类的水平之外。
顺便说一句，他们还发展出了一种危险的本土狂热。墟鬼开始相信他们是明星人类的唯一后裔和真正的继承人。他们已经准备好并愿意做任何事情来宣称他们虚构的、过去的黄金时代。

Only a thousand years after the Qu departure, a Ruin Haunter wanders among the shattered remains of a city of the Star People. The dominating form of an even greater Qu pyramid can be seen in the background.
就在QU离开一千年后，一个墟鬼在星人之城破碎的废墟中游荡。在背景中可以看到一个更大的Qu金字塔。

Sentience Reborn
知性重现
If any sort of periodical arrangement can be brought to the history of mankind, the post-Qu era of emerging human animals can be likened to a series of millennial dark ages. However, like any "dark age" situation, these periods of silence had finite life spans. One by one, like stars emerging from the fog, new civilizations were born out of the shattered remnants of mankind.
如果把任何一种预定事件带入到人类历史中，后Qu时代新兴的人类动物可以被比作数以千计的黑暗时代。然而，就像任何“黑暗时代”的情况一样，这些沉默期的寿命是有限的。就像从迷雾中浮现的星星一样，一个接一个新的文明从人类的破碎残余中诞生。
In some rare cases, the recovery was swift and straightforward. In most other situations, it came only after a lengthy series of adaptive radiations, extinctions and secondary diversifications. Within these lines of descent, there was as much distance between the initial post-humans and their intelligent descendants as between the first Cretaceous fuzzballs and Homo sapiens.
在一些罕见的情况下，恢复迅速而直接。但在大多数情况下，知性是在经历了一系列漫长的适应性辐射、物种灭绝和二次多样化之后才出现的。在这些演化线中，最初的后人类与其聪明的后代之间的距离与白垩纪的第一个毛团子与智人之间的距离一样大。
Sooner or later, human intelligence returned to the cosmos. But except from their shared ancestry, these new people had nothing in common with "people" of today, or even each other.
迟早人类的智慧会回到宇宙。但除了共同的祖先之外，这些新人与今天的“人”，甚至彼此没有任何共同之处。