Saw the headline, immediately thought of the same short story. Excerpts where they encounter said brain: "It's a monstrosity." "Not to us," she said sharpl

Saw the headline, immediately thought of the same short story. Excerpts where they encounter said brain: "It's a monstrosity." "Not to us," she said sharply. "We see a thing of wonder and beauty." "No," I said firmly. "Let's be clear about this. What you're showing me here is a human brain, a living mind, turned into some kind of slave." "No slavery is involved," Weather said. "The mind chose this vocation willingly." "It *chose* this?" "It's considered a great honour. Even in [our] society, even given all that we have learned about the maximization of our mental resources, on a few are ever born who have the skills necessary to tame and manage the reactions in the heart of a [star]-drive." … "The degree of concentration is quite intense. He can barely spare any resources for what we might call normal thought. He's in a state of permanent unconscious flow, like someone engaged in an enormously challenging game. But now the game has begun to get the better of him. It isn't fun anymore. And yet he knows the cost of failure." … "It'll be more like one very long dream. Someone else's dream, certainly, but I don't doubt that there'll be a certain rapturous quality to it. I remember how good it felt to find an elegant solution, when the parameters looked so unpromising. Like making the most beautiful music imaginable. I don't think anyone can really know how that feels unless they've also held some of that fire in their minds. It's ecstasy, Inigo, when it goes right." "And when it goes wrong?" Definitely worth reading.