"Yes. We wireheads—or, rather, Senior Mechanists, to give us a name not tainted by Shaper propaganda—we have our own modes of dataflow. News networks. At its most intense it approaches telepathy. I’m the local stringer for Ceres Datacom Network. I hold citizenship in it, though legally speaking it’s sometimes more convenient to be treated as wholly owned depreciable hardware. Our life is information—even money is information. Our money and our life are one and the same."