Starts with the birth of an orphan “orphanogenesis” in a post singularity world. Citizens live in polises, and experience in ways completely foreign to us (gestalts and linear modes). There are no limits on individual expression, connection, and creation of new individuals.
The development of a mind is similar to what I remember in Permutation City of the development of the various levels of simulated worlds (very automata like). The creation of minds and what is and isn’t natural in the development of a being reminds me of the cognitive science and psychology stuff in Blindsight, though the tone is more positive here.
Has Egan’s classic style of having cool thought experiments and math stuff in here, like Schild’s Ladder and Permutation City.