We've got language and speech centers hardwired into our brains. That gives us a common starting point. Gels don't have anything like that. Speech might just be one giant conditioned reflex to them."
a few months ago it would have driven him crazy. But Yves Scanlon was finally starting to see his place in the universe, and was discovering that he could afford to be tolerant. Other people's pettiness didn't bother him nearly as much as it used to. He was above it.
Brander holds up a finger. "Self-replicating information strings evolve as a sigmoid-difference function of replication error rate and generation time." Two fingers. "Evolving information strings are vulnerable to parasitism by competing strings with sigmoid-difference functions of lesser wavelength." Three. "Strings under pressure from parasites develop random substring-exchange protocols as a function of the wavelength ratio of the host and parasite sigmoid functions. Or something like that."
starfish," Acton tells her, "is the ultimate democracy."
Clarke stares, quietly repelled.
"This is how they move," Acton is saying. "They walk along on all these tube feet. But the weird thing is, they have no brains at all. Not surprising for a democracy."
These people pay her salary not because she does anything useful, but because she doesn't. What's the point of being rich if you only buy the essentials?
