Grayson had a headache. He had been worried that his creations would get away from him, but those time estimates actually made him feel ineffective. With the thoughts circling around in his mind, Grayson furrowed his brow and tried to get some sleep.

Several hours into the night, he finally quieted his mind enough to drift off. His sleep was far from restful, though. Grayson dreamt of vast forests of chalk and pearls. He saw unrecognizable animals doing unfamiliar things, the likes of which he couldn't even describe. There were even other human-like races who treated environmental stability the way humans had treated economic growth.

The people were unafraid of technology, but all of it had multiple uses and all of it worked towards regaining the old days of environmental stability. The megastorms so familiar to Grayson from his days growing up above the atmosphere were smaller. The temperature was stable. The land was green and other shades, but barely any brown. The oceans were shifting back to the blue of the history books instead of the multihued plastic colors of his experience.

There was a sort of peace that had been missing in the age of humanity. Humans still existed, but they couldn't adapt as fast as these new races. They weren't the only game in town when it came to technology and intelligence either. Humans seemed to have their best brought out by the competition of parallel species.

Of course, there were conflicts, but intelligent life never needed much reason for that. The benefits seemed to outweigh the detriments.

The night passed at length this way. Grayson woke with some small recollection of his dreams. It reminded him of some old fantasy novels. Maybe a bit too idealistic, but given the time lines he saw in his quest, it might be worth it to have some help.

After all, a single human burning all the fossil fuels he could find in as big a conflagration as he could manage could not have damaged the planet to this degree in several millennia. Why would he think there was ever a possibility that he could reverse it alone in any less time?

It was time to throw caution to the wind and let whatever he could imagine happen. The worst he could do is create one more apocalyptic scenario. With the count up to two or three at this point, did it matter?

There were Humans still living on Earth, but it was no longer the only basket in which the species placed its eggs. The Ring had allowed humans the ability to cheaply bring large amounts of payload into orbit and construct habitats which could then be sent into their own trajectories around the Sun. Every major culture on the planet had been making use of this for at least a century.

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The first few major powers had constructed mining ships first and hauled or demolished near Earth asteroids for construction of every kind of Sci-fi habitat Humans had ever devised. Some of those projects were far from complete but when 10 billion or so Humans gain access to new territories and easy to get resources, the true nature of the tool using instincts goes wild.

There were some who immediately built colony ships and set off to colonize other parts of the solar system. There were O'Neal cylinders constructed. Their paired cigar shapes dotted the sky if you had the means to look. Some of which were used purely as habitats for the genetic preservation of the other species on the planet. Food for the Human race was entirely produced in space now, as the climate on Earth was rapidly increasing in instability. Temperatures were swinging wildly all over the globe, but always the average was going up year after year.

In short, nothing Grayson did could wipe out humanity. Doing nothing at all would inevitably still drive those who remained off planet. The other major species of Earth were also carefully managed elsewhere as well. He could not cause an extinction event worse than the one that he was standing in. It was time to get serious.

There were certainly other people doing what they could to change things, as well. With the undeniable climate effects having started a parabolic trajectory, the governments of the world had themselves moved off world. No system of government had been able to keep up with the demand for speed required by the human-made catastrophe.

It was through the effort of some singularly disgusted billionaires and trillionaires that the starting point of the orbital ring had been launched. It all started with a thin copper wire encircling the Earth at low orbit. Launch after launch it had been added to and added to. The cost was estimated at tens of trillions of old world dollars. Luckily new forms of money had been developed to bypass governments. Wealth was entirely owned by the people, though not at all equally.

A conglomerate of a few hundred had devoted themselves to a plan of dying without a single trace of wealth left to their name. Instead, they traded their markers of wealth back and forth to each other to purchase the services and technologies needed to get humanity out of our hand-basket to hell. Nobody works for free, so the wealth of those few was portioned out to the employees of their various companies.

This, of course, just created more wealth, so in order to keep their goal of dying broke, they invested in the riskiest of adventures, asteroid mining and the technologies needed to do it. That still made even more money, though.

Growing old by this time, the fathers of our future devoted their last to building habitats for large populations. Those habitats, known as McKendree cylinders were continent sized affairs. They could hold a billion or so Humans in relative comfort. These structures are large, however. It would take more than a century to construct each one, but when each is finished it would bear the name of one of those great men who finally found a way to win at the game of wealth accumulation. Spend it all on the shade of trees you will never sit under.