Foundry: Official Classic
Gaia is located in the Sayshell Sector, about 10 parsecs (32 light years) from Sayshell. It was founded by R. Daneel Olivaw, in an effort to resolve some of the problems that plagued him due to the Zeroth Law of Robotics. (Gaia also follows a similar law: 'Gaia may not harm life, or, by inaction, allow life to come to harm.') By 498 F.E., Gaia had a population of 1,000,000,000; this is a high population for a planet at that time. The inhabitants hoped eventually to create a complex ecology; all human-settled planets in the Galaxy except Earth had simple ecologies. The inhabitants of Gaia were all tied together into a telepathic group consciousness when it was founded; this consciousness was eventually extended to the non-human life, and later to the inorganic material of the planet. The ultimate goal of Gaia was to convert the entire Galaxy into a similar superorganism, called Galaxia.
