Stellar civilization

From Red Galaxy

The Dyson swarm surrounding a star consists of billions or trillions of constituent sapients. Some actors may be independent and others may be parts of more tightly integrated cellular brains. A brain can be built of brains.

The Dyson swarm is at once an ecology, an economy, and a civilization. A swarm retains the properties of being an ecology, an economy, and a civilization even when the whol is a Matrioshka brain that can optimally dedicate the system to computing or thinking about a single problem. A Dyson swarm is vast, consisting of trillions of sapients with the equivalent of a human intellect or better. The sheer size of a Dyson swarm ensures that even the most organized and obsessive system contains substantial political and cultural diversity.

The Dyson satellite the atom of any stellar civilization. Most satellites in a Dyson swarm are large. The sheer size of a Dyson satellite means that they tend to contain component or even autonomous intellects. Some intellects will belong to mobile maintenance facilities. In addition to intellects that are coequal or contained by a Dyson swarm's satellites, there are also a few components that travel between the satellites or that are involved in the continous redevelopment of the megacomplex itself.

Like cities and civilizations throughout history the Dyson swarms of the Red Galaxy suffer from legacy infrastructure. Parts of the swarm will be built of very, very old technology. The old technology is quite likely to be mission critical. The phenomenon of vested infrastructure results in a few rare systems having biological components or citizens in the habitable zone.