Matrioshka brain

We're a long way away from circuit boards, Dad.

—Maddie Kim, Deep Time

A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity powered by a massive Dyson sphere. It was first proposed in 1997 by Robert J. Bradbury as an alternative to Jupiter Brains (planetary-scale supercomputers). In Pantheon, Maddie Kim creates a matrioshka brain from the mass of an entire planetary system, with the goal of simulating several billion universes.

History[]

Construction phase[]

I was right about pain. It may fade with time, but it's always there, easy to find.

—Maddie Kim, Deep Time

Following the release of SafeSurf and the deaths of Caspian Keyes and their son David, Maddie Kim becomes an uploaded intelligence. 2,401 years later, she pilots an interstellar vehicle to an unknown planetary system orbiting an orange dwarf. Using extremely powerful explosives that burrow into the planet’s core, she cracks open a frigid, Europa- and Moon-like world with liquid water beneath its icy crust and a surface of regolith.

Maddie uses those resources to begin construction of a Dyson swarm in orbit around the orange dwarf. By 16,807 years after the release of SafeSurf, the Dyson swarm is complete. It is composed of hundreds of layers of solar panels and connects to a massive data centre distributed across the entire structure, the part of it that is the matrioshka brain.

Billions of universes[]

I Am That I Am[]

God has a pretty classic line: ‘I am that I am.’ Me? I'm just Maddie Kim. I was born in the late Holocene, and I've seen some shit. So much time. So many histories. Glorious. Horrific. Fascinating, all of them.

And yet, I keep coming back to this one little flicker, between when we first met and first kissed. (...) Now, that is the eternal question. Honestly, I'd much rather try and solve that mystery than this other one. It sounds crazy, but I miss ignorance, I miss pain, I miss life.

—Maddie Kim, to Caspian Keyes, Deep Time

Matrioshka brain

Contents

History[]

Construction phase[]

Billions of universes[]

I Am That I Am[]

Gallery[]

See also[]