The long frivolous dream of the Puppetmakers erupted into savage transcendence with shocking rapidity. All their carefully constructed shallowness, the cities of colored glass, the refined arts, the chirruping vacancy of their puppets, counted for nothing once deep hidden urges surfaced in the face of circumstances that their programming considered to be just right. Survival in a Tessellation dominated universe was never something that could be assumed over the long term. The Puppetmakers had achieved it for millennia by consciously making themselves over into something they thought the Tessellation would find harmless. They engineered themselves as thoroughly as they engineered their own puppets, cutting viciously away at anything that could be seen as encroaching on the world of the Tessellation. Curiosity, the tendency to expansion, a desire to rule their own lives - all went under the knife, leaving a species that seemed as easy-going and unambitious as the Tessellation could ask ...