The metabaron containment has been sealed and the fire has been contained at 63 percent. The transhuman has been able to save Orne--but only because she refused to help him. She has been re-engineered, and her wounds have been healed. She is totally autonomous, and probably a new techno-techno creation. The narrator tells us that the universe itself is destroying the entire techno-civilization. He wonders if the human brain is superior to the transhuman's, and wonders if it is time for him to leave. He tells the narrator that the metabarons family tradition is that a child has to kill his father in order to become his father's heir. This means that Orne had to raise her son far away from him, so she could not have a child of her own. She had no choice, she tells us, but to raise the child far from him.