Originally Posted by
Mr Cochese
Basically, the only way on for the post-humans of Earth is to ascend, or risk that a scavenger civilisation will one day raid the solar system for Celestial leftovers. Ascending means being subsumed into a galactic scale group intelligence, so the Nimbus World Mind is, in the fishing metaphor, the bait to attract such an intelligence to Sol. Nimbus itself is a machine intelligence based on the minds of 100 post-human minds, upgrading itself to planet size by self-replication, but its importance as an artefact in its own right is actually secondary to its role as a lure.
The arrival of the Phalanx, now a mature group intelligence rather than a pest, indicates that the bait has been taken, and the Phalanx now take interest in the civilisation that creates the world mind they have now absorbed (or “eaten”, as they put it). Except, of course, this is what the Earth civilisation is after.
It’s all very 2001: A Space Odyssey.