Editing Absolution Gap (section)

====Epilogue====

The epilogue reveals that the woman is in fact an older version of Aura (with her guardian implied to be Scorpio), reflecting on the events that happened after the battle on Hela. Scorpio turned out to be right; the race - known as the Nestbuilders - that wiped out the Scuttlers had been watching humanity and aided them. The Nestbuilders advised humanity to hide with them between the stars, but the humans instead used Nestbuilder weaponry to defeat the Inhibitors and cleanse human space of them. However, in doing so, they created a greater problem: the so-called "Greenfly" machines, self-replicating terraformers programmed to destroy every object in a solar system and reorganize them into trillions of vegetation-filled habitats that orbit the local star (behavior that is exactly the same as the threat described by the Shadows). The Inhibitors had kept them in check, but without the Inhibitors, the Greenfly are now out of control. Nothing the humans or Nestbuilders can do has stopped them. As such, humanity is evacuating towards the [[Pleiades]]. Aura reminisces on the decision she made not to invoke the Shadows. She decides that, before she returns to the ship, she will swim with the Pattern Jugglers and warn the people they have assimilated about what is coming. She enters the ocean as the novel ends.

The Greenfly threat is described in detail in the short story "[[Galactic North#"Galactic North"|Galactic North]]", from its origins until the year 40,000, by which time it has spread to such an extent that humans are forced to abandon the Milky Way Galaxy.