And yet here they were. He looked at Aurora's assistants, hovering over the bank of machines against the wall. He hoped the treatment would work, that it would not kill or derange him. They slipped their preparation into his blood using a hollow needle that they inserted painlessly into his skin-an ugly little experience. He held his breath as they did this, and when he finally exhaled and inhaled, the world ballooned. He saw immediately that he was thinking several trains of thought at once, and they all meshed in a contrapuntal fugue that his father would have very much enjoyed hearing, if it were music, which in a sense it seemed to be: a polyphonic singing of his ideas, each strand taking its part in the larger music. To a certain extent his thinking had always felt that way, with any number of accompaniments running under the aria of the voice of thought. Now these descants were choral, and loud, while at the same time architectonically fitted to the melody. He could think six or ten thoughts at once, and at the same time think about his thinking, and contemplate the whole score.
( Kim Stanley Robinson )
[ Galileo's Dream ]
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