One group of these kids develops some astounding super-science and takes delivery of a blob of quark matter from the future. Childhood's End meets A Clash of Cymbals . It's all suitably staggering, with thoughtful and moving touches interspersed. One of the best of these is a final glimpse of those spacegoing squid, who during humanity's last 200 years have colonized the entire asteroid belt, mined Jupiter for fusion fuel, and are now accelerating away from the solar system at relativistic speed, followed by a wavefront they can never quite outrun. The sheer fun and technogeeky exuberance of this apparatus is nicely counterpointed by greater and more plausible attention to character than Baxter was known for in earlier work.
People feel, bleed, worry and generally matter.
But the squid still steal the show. First published in Foundation 77, Autumn 1999.