"I know you're way ahead of me now. You're saying, 'That means human beings are the Earth's gonads.' And I am saying that, but the analogy is weak at best. In time, Gaia would probably have sacrificed everything on Earth —all her ecosystems—to promote human beings. Because we're more than gonads. We are the makers of spores and seeds, we are the ones who understand what Gaia is, and we will soon know how to make other worlds come alive. We will carry Gala's biological information out into space, on spaceships.

"You know, this idea puts a lot of problems in perspective. Gaia has nurtured us, but she has also goaded us, and sometimes tormented us. She's used all of her resources to make sure we don't feel too comfortable. Diseases that used to help regulate ecosystems have suddenly become stimulants. We're working hard to control all the diseases that harm us, and in doing so, we're understanding life itself, and coming to understand Gaia. So Gaia uses diseases to stimulate and instruct. Is it any real coincidence, you think, that in the twentieth century, we've been hit by so many retrovirus and immune system epidemics? We can't solve these epidemics without understanding life to the nth degree. Gaia is regulating us, regulating herself, making herself ready for puberty.

"Because that's what would have happened. Gaia would have sent us out, and we would have carried her within our spaceships. Maybe we would have made Earth unlivable, and that would be one more reason to leave the seed pod, because it's all dead and shriveled. But that would only be natural: Maybe we would have preserved Earth and gone outward. It's like the dilemma for parents who either make life a hell for their kids to get them out, or the kids have enough gumption to get out on their own, to break loose. Not that I know these problems firsthand, as a parent. . . but I remember being a kid.

"Of course, Gaia isn't the only planetism. There are probably billions of others, some of them part of seeding networks—planetisms with parents. Some are independent. And when they get out into the galaxy, they find they are in competition. Suddenly they're part of an even larger, much more complex system—a galactic ecology. Planetisms and their extensions—intelligences, technological civilizations— then develop strategies to compete, and to eliminate competition.

"Some planetisms take the obvious route. They exploit and try to spread rapidly. They're like parasites, or young diseases that haven't learned how to live harmlessly within a host. Other planetisms react by seeking and destroying the extensions of these parasites. Eventually, I suppose, if the galaxy itself is to come alive—become a 'galactism'—it's going to have to knit together the extensions of all its planetisms, put them in order. So the parasites either fit in and contribute or they are eliminated. But in the meantime, it's a jungle out there.