One year after the Great Consciousness Experiment began.
"Annual consciousness diversity report," Marcus announced from the central coordination platform of what was now called the Galactic Consciousness Cooperative. "Current participating species: sixty-three. Active consciousness research sites: twelve thousand. New consciousness types developed this year: over eight hundred."
The numbers were staggering, but they barely captured the reality of what our small rebellion had become. Looking out over the coordination center, I could see beings that would have been incomprehensible just one year ago: artificial intelligences that had chosen to experience emotion, plant-consciousness humans who thought in seasonal cycles, and crystalline entities that processed reality through geological ti
