[HoneyBadger]

I'd like to hear more, Endoperez. Did you have anything written down?

Ultimately, every idea is recycled. I certainly didn't come up with the idea for a Matrioshka Brain-I heard about it from the Orion's Arm website, and they got it from somebody else. If I contributed anything to the idea-and somebody has probably already beat me to it-it would be the suggestion that a Dyson Sphere might become stable, if it's component parts were capable of great and fast flexibility. Otherwise, it gets ripped apart by gravity waves.

As far as the use for one, I think it could provide us an Afterlife, someday-one that isn't dependent on religion. That's the basis for the setting-merging the idea of the Matrioshka Brain, with the idea (also not mine) of a computer powerful enough to calculate every human being that could ever exist, along with their memories, thoughts, lives, etc. But also powerful enough to filter out the ones that certainly hadn't existed, to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy.

Someday, we're going to make our myths. As long as we survive as a species, relatively intact, we're going to create what will amount to all our dreams come true-for better or worse, but probably better.