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| grow:� most ships carried frozen cargo.� with the time frame of human activity approaching geologic or even planetary scale (most political systems stabilizing, the immediacy of scientific discovery waning in the absence of ecological or cosmological threat, and life spans extended indefinitely), and with the capacity of plank-scale neuromodels increasing the speed of consciousness ten orders of magnitude of their electro-chemical precursors (making time pass 10 billion times slower), most interstellar passengers opted for cryogenic sleep, or at least neurological slowdown, to make the light speed limit bearable in the isolation and vacuum between distant suns.� There are those, however, who as a matter of principle refuse to squander even one nanosecond of computational firing, who insist on riding the lonely waves of unfolding consciousness through untold eons of relative time. Because, they say, the greatest challenge a sentient being can face is to keep from becoming bored. |