The New Space Opera 2 by Gardner Dozois Page B

did to those we left behind.
    Fifty-nine thousand kilometers per second, the chimp says. How far can the signal move through that membrane in a tenth of a corsec? How thinly does I spread itself across the heavens?
    The flesh is huge, the flesh is inconceivable. But the spirit, the spirit is—
    Shit .
    â€œChimp. Assuming the mean neuron density of a human brain, what’s the synapse count on a circular sheet of neurons one millimeter thick with a diameter of five thousand eight hundred ninety-two kilometers?”
    â€œTwo times ten to the twenty-seventh.”
    I saccade the database for some perspective on a mind stretched across thirty million square kilometers: the equivalent of two quadrillion human brains.
    Of course, whatever this thing uses for neurons have to be packed a lotless tightly than ours; we can see right through them, after all. Let’s be superconservative, say it’s only got a thousandth the computational density of a human brain. That’s—
    Okay, let’s say it’s only got a ten -thousandth the synaptic density, that’s still—
    A hundred thousandth. The merest mist of thinking meat. Any more conservative and I’d hypothesize it right out of existence.
    Still twenty billion human brains.
    Twenty billion .
    I don’t know how to feel about that. This is no mere alien.
    But I’m not quite ready to believe in gods.
    Â 
    I round the corner and run smack into Dix, standing like a golem in the middle of my living room. I jump about a meter straight up.
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing here?”
    He seems surprised by my reaction. “Wanted to—talk,” he says after a moment.
    â€œYou never come into someone’s home uninvited!”
    He retreats a step, stammers: “Wanted, wanted—”
    â€œTo talk. And you do that in public. On the bridge, or in the commons, or—for that matter, you could just comm me.”
    He hesitates. “Said you— wanted face to face. You said, cultural tradition .”
    I did, at that. But not here . This is my place, these are my private quarters . The lack of locks on these doors is a safety protocol, not an invitation to walk into my home and lie in wait , and stand there like part of the fucking furniture …
    â€œWhy are you even up? ” I snarl. “We’re not even supposed to come online for another two months.”
    â€œAsked Chimp to get me up when you did.”
    That fucking machine.
    â€œWhy are you up?” he asks, not leaving.
    I sigh, defeated, and fall into a convenient pseudopod. “I just wanted to go over the preliminary data.” The implicit alone should be obvious.
    â€œAnything?”
    Evidently it isn’t. I decide to play along for a while. “Looks like we’re talking to an, an island. Almost six thousand klicks across. That’s the thinking part, anyway. The surrounding membrane’s pretty much empty. I mean, it’s all alive. It all photosynthesizes, or something like that. It eats, I guess. Not sure what.”
    â€œMolecular cloud,” Dix says. “Organic compounds everywhere. Plus it’s concentrating stuff inside the envelope.”
    I shrug. “Point is, there’s a size limit for the brain, but it’s huge, it’s…”
    â€œUnlikely,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
    I turn to look at him; the pseudopod reshapes itself around me. “What do you mean?”
    â€œIsland’s twenty-eight million square kilometers? Whole sphere’s seven quintillion. Island just happens to be between us and 428, that’s—one in fifty billion odds.”
    â€œGo on.”
    He can’t. “Uh, just…just unlikely .”
    I close my eyes. “How can you be smart enough to run those numbers in your head without missing a beat and stupid enough to miss the obvious conclusion?”
    That panicked, slaughterhouse look again. “Don’t—I’m