"It was ever thus." That statement took Suudva 17,200 years to utter. Moglu pondered Suudva's response for 205,300 years. Then he spoke: "What about this one?" That question took 23,400 years to utter. The Qul race was extraordinarily long-lived, and glacially slow. They were slow, but that was their pace. They had existed for many iterations of the universe's Big Bang, expansion, contraction, then the Big Collapse. The technology they had exceeded anything any other race could expect to ever achieve. Moglu gestured, an act that took 40,300 years, then said: "Oh, this one? A very quick flash in the...