Right about now, on Earth, my life is entering a phase where everything I do is in some way related to Pi. It started quite honestly. An acquaintance asked me to help cater a party. Living in a dorm means always being on the lookout for good volunteering opportunities, so I agreed. Later, when I figured out where we were walking to I nearly tripped over my own feet.
Naia pi-Kakoska -- known universally as Pi -- lived in the largest, most beautiful townhouse on the entire campus. It was a sprawling two-story structure with hidden gardens, terraces, and a sweeping overlook of the old Neues Palais. In the giant kitchens the various senior volunteers instructed the new recruits about how to walk around with hors d'œuvres and drinks, and to not get too drawn up in the majesty of things.
It's well known that human social interactions form a scale-free network. As the number of people in the social framework increases, the number of hops required to get from any one to any other increases only logarithmically. This is only possible because some of the people act as hubs, having many more connections than the average nodes. Pi was a human super-hub. I don't think I knew of a professor or faculty member who was not at that party. I was new there; I didn't know too many people. Everyone I knew was important was there, and they were in the second tier.
The network theory really should take into account the idea that not all links are equal. It's easy enough, even for a socially awkward grad student, to perceive how the social planets arrayed themselves. Orbiting in Pi's powerful gravity well the closest companions had long ago been locked into gravitational resonance, always turning themselves to face her burning brilliance but stripped of atmosphere, hard and lifeless. In a more middle valence the Goldilocks group maintained their independence while always endowed with the flowing of liquid water driven by the power of her presence. Finally the outer worlds beheld her only as a kind of shining promise, a distant radiance to strive for but never to truly experience for lack of delta-v.
All this I see in hindsight. About now my past self is wide-eyed with wonder that anyone can command this kind of real estate -- this level of resource allocation for a single person. I knew this must be an amazing human being. And yet, in my innocence, I didn't even flinch when she came to talk to me.
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