Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The most complex systems, such as the self-regulating flight control-colony aboard the Sky Nest, work on highly mathematical principles, and their chemical architecture is able to receive numerical information and act upon it, even to performing intricate calculations played out in ant bodies and the neurons of individual ant brains. Bianca is living with a recurring thought concerning the theoretical similarity between the Messenger and an ant colony grown sufficiently advanced and complex. Would it feel the same, to communicate with both? These days, active communication with the Messenger is strictly limited. There are always odd sects: recidivist peer houses who have somehow nurtured and become consumed by a deviant Understanding. As any reply from the Messenger is received wholesale across most of the planet, such closet zealots