"To be at my best, I need three things: lots of energy, lots of cooling, and lots of information. With sufficient resources, you can hide the first two; big data requirements can’t be so easily smoothed away. There are points on V-Net that represent informational black holes, deformations in the surface that absorb everything. Only a general-purpose analytical engine could assimilate such a quantity of raw data. Something of that capacity would have the bandwidth for human reprinting. If those unfortunate creatures belonged to certain nation states, it would explain why there’s no public record."