Koen watched their hostess depart, not by crawling, but by pulling threads which released counterweights, which pulled her along the rails she had built into the ceiling.

"I wonder," he said. "That spider is big, but not that big. Her body can't weigh more than a hundred grams."

Mark knew his input was not needed, and so didn't give any.

He was right. "How is it possible for a brain that small to run a sapient mind?" Koen mused. "Swarm intelligence? Superconducting neurons? Pocket universes? Or maybe this is the source of rumors about that non-sapient Convention member."

This raises an issue in which the reader might take interest: how does someone determine the sapience of someone else? On what basis does Convention law bestow the rights and privileges of personhood?

One might examine an organism's neurology and empirically prove that it can feel things. One might ask it, "Are you aware of your own awareness?" And receive the answer "yes." Neither method is at all satisfying. A rat's neurons light up when the rat is injured. A blade of grass releases chemical signals when cut. A rock cracks when struck. What's the difference?

And as for self-reporting, here's an experiment: decide that if the crack on a rock goes left, that means "yes." If it goes right, "no." Ask the rock "Are you aware of your own awareness?" and strike it hard with a hammer. Half the time, the rock will claim self-awareness.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness1 might have derailed the whole project of interspecies government, but fortunately the Convention of Sophonts was born out of war. The Tensors began their expansion with the assumption that anything that fought them off successfully must be intelligent. The Quotidians were more generous, and granted personhood to anything that suggested a good way to fight off the Tensors.

In the end, the Convention was founded based on the following principle: if we contact you and you join us, you must be intelligent. There were many subtle tests along the way, but the basic standard of sapience was the ability to build and operate a particle accelerator.

This rule pleased everyone,2 but there could always be edge cases. There were non-sapient animals that farmed, weren't there? And made tools, and communicated with sophistication. Nuclear reactors could form by simple geology, with no need even for living things to get involved. Particles could find themselves accelerated in thunderclouds, Van Allen Belts, and above the poles of black holes. Extracting a contact signal and conducting the conversation necessary to build a transport accelerator were much less likely to happen by chance, but the multiverse is a big place. Wasn't it inevitable that you'd eventually find a non-sapient universe-traveler?

But the Neurospastics were not one of these.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Here you are, two basic paps." The hostess did not bother with her Quotidian-puppet this time, but simply lowered a net containing two fist-sized bulbs. "Now, which digestive enzymes would you like?"

"Huh?" said Mark.

"Uh, we prefer to use our own enzymes?" Koen said.

"Of course, honored human. Will there be anything else?"

"Actually, yes." Koen looked up into the darkness. "You're a restaurateur. Where do you get your supplies? Not from your home earth."

The bulbs of pap shook from side to side. Already, the spider was picking up Koen and Mark's body language. "That would be ridiculously expensive. We source our protein from mixLaundry-Hole's, an old and well-regarded supplier of cloned tissue products. The precise genetic recipe is ours, however, and an old family secret."

"Of course," said Koen, still watching the spider.

Unlike most orb-weavers in his experience, which sat perfectly still on their webs, this one was in constant motion. Most of the time she didn't go anywhere, just twitched the tips of her legs, plucking at the threads of her web. Some of these were thick and heavy, some thin and light. Some were bound to bits of wood or stone, which changed the frequency of their oscillation. A thread plucked in question would activate several others, which would trigger yet more, creating a hash of criss-crossing waves, all canceling out except for one, which would deliver the answer.

The proprietor of Healthy Brain and Bowel pulled herself to sideways, lining up her primary forward-facing eyes with a lens. Further plucked commands tugged other lenses into position, focusing on the untouched bulbs of pap. Neurons sparked behind her eyes, sending messages through her legs to the threads hooked at their toe-tips. The threads vibrated complexly as waves of thought spread and echoed through the web's deep structure.

"Aren't you going to try your paps?"

Koen and Mark watched the bulbs sway in their net. Mark thought of every movie he'd seen where someone grabbed a dangling lure like this and got themselves dragged up into the darkness and torn apart.

"Oh. Of course." Koen took a bulb in his hand and freed it from its net. It was a hollow gourd filled with room-temperature liquid. He brought it to his lips.

Mark watched him closely. Overhead, another lens slotted into place.

"It's not bad," said Koen. "Tastes a bit like, uh, chicken." He considered. "It could use salt."

"Salt! Of course, honored human." Threads pulled against each other, counterweights dropped, and a net dropped, containing a thimble-sized container of boiled brine.

Koen added the brine to his bulb of chicken soup and took another sip. It would be better if it was warmed up, but he didn't want to be one of that sort of customer.

1 See Chalmers, D.J. “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness.” In Journal of Consciousness Studies 2: 200-19, 1995.

2 Everyone who could build and operate particle accelerators.