The Matrix is alive as no other living thing can be, like evolution stuck in fast-forward, changes happening at the speed of light. New data churning forth from the dark depths, a primordial soup of bits from which arise larger and more complex forms: programs, systems, networks, regional grids, a whole worldwide ecosystem of information stretching feathery pseudopods of light up from the surface to the growing and expanding network of satellites and orbital habitats. It stretches out past them to lunar mines and planetary probes, out, out into the darkness toward the distant light of the stars.