'Hub.'
'Ziller. Good evening. Are you enjoying yourself?'
'No. How about you?'
'Of course.'
'Of course? Can real happiness be so ... foregone as that? How depressing.'
'Ziller, I am a Hub Mind. I have an entire - and if I may say so - quite fabulous Orbital to look after, not to mention having fifty billion people to tend to.'
'Certainly I wasn't going to mention them.'
'Right now I'm observing a fading supernova in a galaxy two and a half billion years away. Closer to home, a thousand years off, I'm watching a dying planet orbiting inside the atmosphere of a red giant sun as it spirals slowly down towards the core. I can also watch the results of the planet's destruction on the sun, a thousand years later, via hyperspace.
'In-system, I'm tracking millions of comets and asteroids, and directing the orbits of tens of thousands of them, some to use as raw material for Plate landscaping, some just to keep them out of the way. Next year I'm going to let a big comet come right through the Orbital, between the Rim and the Hub. That should be pretty spectacular. Several hundred thousand smaller bodies are speeding towards us right now, earmarked to provide an over-the-top light show for the first night of your new orchestral work at the end of the Twin Novae period.'
'It was that-'
'At the same time, of course, I'm in simultaneous communication with hundreds of other Minds; thousands, over the course of any given day; ship Minds of every type, some approaching, some just having left, some old friends, some sharing interests and fascinations similar to my own, plus other Orbitals and university Sages, amongst others. I have eleven Roving Personality Constructs, each one flitting over time from place to place in the greater galaxy, rooming with other Minds in the processor substrates of GSVs and smaller vessels, other Orbitals, Eccentric and Ulterior craft and with Minds of various other types; what they will be like, and how these once identical siblings might change me when they return and we consider remerging, I can only imagine and look forward to.'
'It all sounds-'
'While I am at the moment hosting no other Minds, I look forward to that, as well.
'-fascinating. Now-'
'Additionally, sub-systems like manufactury process-overseeing complexes keep up a constant and fascinating dialogue. Within the hour, for example, in a shipyard in a cavern under the Buzuhn Bulkhead Range, a new Mind will be born, to be emplaced within a GCV before the year is out.'
'No no; keep going.'
'Meanwhile, via one of my planetary remotes I'm watching a pair of cyclonic systems collide on Naratradjan Prime and composing a glyph sequence on the effects of ultra-violent atmospheric phenomena on otherwise habitable ecospheres. Here on Masaq' I'm watching a series of avalanches in the Pilthunguon Mountains on Hildri, a tornado whirling across the Shaban Savannah on Akroum, a sworl-island calving in the Picha Sea, a forest fire in Molben, a seiche bore funnelling up Gradeens River, a firework display above Junzra City, a wooden house frame being hoisted into place in a village in Furl, a quartet of lovers on a hilltop in-'
'You've made your-'
'-Ocutti. Then there are drones and other autonomous sentients, able to communicate directly and at speed, plus the implanted humans and other biologicals also able to converse immediately. Plus of course I have millions of avatars like this one, the majority of them talking with and listening to people right now.'
' ... Have you finished?'
'Yes. But even if all the other stuff seems a bit esoteric, just think of all those other avatars at all those other gatherings, concerts, dances, ceremonies, parties and meals; think of all that talk, all those ideas, all that sparkle and wit!'
- Look to Windward, Pg 224
