Count to a Trillion

the long version

"John C. Wright burst upon the SF scene a decade ago with the Golden Age trilogy, an innovative space opera. He went on to write fantasy novels, including the popular Orphans of Chaos trilogy. And now he returns to space opera in Count to a Trillion. After the collapse of the world economy, a young boy grows up in what used to be Texas as a tough duellist for hire, the future equivalent of a hired gun. But even after the collapse, there is space travel, and he leaves Earth to have adventures in the really wide open spaces. But he is quickly catapulted into the more distant future, while humanity, and Artificial Intelligence, grows and changes and becomes a kind of superman"-- After the collapse of the world economy, Menelaus grew up in what was once Texas as the future equivalent of a hired gun. He is recruited for a manned interstellar mission to investigate the Monument, and artifact of alien origin. He awakes two centuries later from cryo-suspension to find Earth transformed in strange and disturbing ways-- and that the Monument still carries a secret he must decode to determine humanity's true fate in the universe.