Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 39

VISOR, Venus Initial Station for Operational Research. An orbital facility planned as the headquarters for the terraforming of Venus. The facility is expected to be mothballed shortly, thanks to the financial backlash of the K-Crash.

Von Neumann Cyborg Cl.u.s.ter. A partially living von Neumann system. Such a cl.u.s.ter might, for example, include a life-form genetically programmed to build seeds.h.i.+ps. The life-forms raised by the seeds.h.i.+p would be bred to build more seeds.h.i.+ps and to deposit fertilized ova aboard the s.h.i.+ps.

Von Neumann Machine. Any machine that can precisely duplicate itself. A Swiss army knife that included a Swiss-army-knife-making attachment would be a von Neumann machine.

Von Neumann Tour. A star travel technique in which a von Neumann s.h.i.+p travels to a new star system and duplicates itself a few hundred times, sending each of its replicates out to travel to new star systems.

Worldeater. The Charonian term for the ma.s.sive life-form known to humans as Landers.

Wormhole. A link between two points in s.p.a.ce, formed by creating two identically tuned black holes. The wormhole in effect renders the two points contiguous across a flat plane, no matter how distant they actually are from each other.

The Life Cycle of the CharoniansThe Charonians are a s.p.a.cefaring life-form, a multi-species comprising ten or twenty widely different species, devices, and robotic constructs.

The biological components of the system may at one time have been "intelligent," as the term is usually understood by humans, but no longer are.

Charonians are capable of problem solving, task ordering, directed research, synthesis, but are very weak in what humans would regard as creative or independent thought. They can think of how to do things-how to work around problems, for example.

They are not as good at thinking of what to do, or why. They work in large part by rote. In the old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase, they are hard-wired, relying on a communal heritage memory of the experiences of previous generations.

It is likely the present-day Charonians started out as seeds.h.i.+ps for a colonization venture, bearing the original biological Charonians to new homes in the sky, but either by ill chance or deliberate decision on the part of the robotic guardians of the germ plasm, things changed.

The machine-intelligent components of the system redesigned the system, repeatedly modifying both themselves and the genes of the living components. The result: the Charonians have become a form of von Neumann machine, capable of endlessly replicating themselves.

Humans have spent lifetimes studying the idea of von Neumann machines, but the concept, however appealing, has always been out of reach because the cost and engineering challenges were too great. No one ever considered a simple, elegant solution to the problem: that life is a von Neumann machine. We humans can endlessly duplicate ourselves. If our DNA were modified so that we instinctively built a certain type of s.p.a.cecraft, and that s.p.a.cecraft automatically carried our germ plasm to another world, then that would be a von Neumann. It is, after all, not the machine itself that must beduplicated and spread across the galaxy for the idea to work, but the plans for the machine.

Several types of life-form and robot compose the Charonian multispecies. The living and robotic components rely on each other in the processes of reproduction and replication. Neither the biotic nor the mechanical Charonians could survive without the other.

The Charonians have proved that faster-than-light travel is possible, but only between points linked by black hole transit pairs and the "wormhole" connecting the transit pair. Natural black holes do not work in wormhole systems-a s.p.a.cefarer must build his own. Therefore, before faster-than-light travel between two stars is possible, sub-lightspeed vehicles must move between the two stars, building black holes on arrival at the star to be visited. Unfortunately, a device the size of the Ring of Charon is required to form a black hole.

The Stages of the Charonian Life-Robotic Cycle Robot s.p.a.cecraft called seeds.h.i.+ps are grown and manufactured by Dyson Spheres. Each seeds.h.i.+p leaves its home Sphere, carrying the location of its home Sphere in its heritage memory.

The seeds.h.i.+ps travel at sublightspeed out from the Dyson Spheres and move between the stars, searching for life-bearing planets. When appropriate planets are found, the seeds.h.i.+ps land.

They gather needed chemicals and compounds, and clone the first living stage in the cycle, which can be thought of as larvae. With the help of the larvae, theseeds.h.i.+p constructs simple s.p.a.cecraft.

The larvae are large creatures at birth (or, more accurately at decanting), the smallest the size of an elephant. They grow rapidly, and later develop into various specialized types. By virtue of their great size and rapid growth, they can quickly wreck the biosphere of a life-bearing world. Their behavior is in large part hardwired, in some part controlled by the seeds.h.i.+p, but in small part volitional. The first few generations of the creatures simply breed as normal male-female pairs, bearing about six to eight offspring per mating. As they mature, most of these larvae are set to work building additional s.p.a.cecraft, under the guidance of the seeds.h.i.+ps.

Generally, the seeds.h.i.+ps are cannibalized for parts long before the larvae are ready to leave the planet.

Typically, the invasion of the larvae results in major depopulations and ma.s.s extinctions, combined with serious climatic and ecological damage.

Powered by gravities, the s.p.a.cecraft built by the larvae lift into s.p.a.ce-with luck, before the planet's ecosphere is utterly ruined. With one larva aboard each vehicle, the s.p.a.cecraft can be compared to hermit crab sh.e.l.ls-temporary homes to be used as long as they fit. If the larva dies or grows too large for the craft, the vehicle will be cannibalized for parts. Nine-tenths of the larvae die upon arrival in s.p.a.ce. Their corpses serve as sustenance for the survivors.

Each surviving larva battles it out with its rivals to ama.s.s as many of the dead bodies and abandoned s.p.a.cecraft as possible. Eventually, thirty or forty thousand ma.s.sive creatures, in the pupa phase, are left. Each consists of the components of several derelict s.p.a.cecraft and one individual pupa that has fed on the bodies of its littermates. s.h.i.+p and creature merge with each other and become indistinguishable. Each is the size of a small asteroid, being several kilometers across withproportionate ma.s.s.

One or two pupae land on the nearest non-life-bearing world and burrow into it. Should a pupa survive this effort, the machine parts of the creature will build and breed a Caller Ring. A Caller Ring is buried deep in the Earth's Moon.

However, most pupae enter a chrysalis phase, becoming dormant, their outer skins hardening into the consistency of rock. Thus, not only are they the size of asteroids, they precisely resemble them.

These creatures, which become Worldeaters, go into hiding. In Earth's Solar System, they hid in the Asteroid Belt and the Oort Cloud. At this stage, all the Charonian creatures, both living and robotic, are dormant, waiting for a signal.

A signal to the Caller Ring stimulates a new phase of great activity. The Caller Ring can be activated in one of two ways: by signal from the home Dyson Sphere, indicating that the Sphere has a sufficient surplus of energy to a.s.sist in the construction of a daughter sphere; or, by outside interference: pulsed gravity waves generated by some other cause-for example, gravity experiments performed by an intelligent race.

When the Caller Ring detects a burst of controlled gravitic energy, it performs its basic function-opening a gravitic contact, a Virtual Black Hole transit pair, linking it to its home Dyson Sphere. The Caller Ring then sends a pulsed-gravity-wave signal to the Worldeater chrysalides sleeping in the star system.

Linked to the home Dyson Sphere, the Caller Ring attempts to get the life-bearing world out of harm's way by s.h.i.+fting it to the artificial star system surrounding the home Sphere. If the Sphere initiated the call, or if it has at least some surplus of energy available, it permits the transit to take place.

Earth's sudden arrival is not the first unplannedgrab of a world-the Dyson Sphere knows how to handle such things.

As soon as possible, the Sphere s.h.i.+fts an Anchor black hole through the temporary Virtual Black Hole, providing a more powerful and stable link to the home Sphere.

The Multisystem of habitable worlds...o...b..ting the home Dyson Sphere can be thought of as a field lying fallow. The Charonians acc.u.mulate life-supporting planets that can be sent to where they are needed.

If a seeds.h.i.+p has visited several unsuitable solar systems and is near the end of its operational life when it arrives at yet another lifeless system, it can call the home Dyson Sphere and give up the last of its energy to have one of the stockpiled worlds s.h.i.+fted to an otherwise suitable solar system.

Replaced by a new seeds.h.i.+p s.h.i.+fted in with the new world, the life cycle can then proceed.

The Dyson Sphere begins to beam energy through the Caller Ring. The awakening chrysalides emerge from their long sleep as adult Worldeaters.

Their robotic components link with the Caller Ring and begin to absorb power. The Worldeaters head toward the major worlds of the solar system and start ripping them to shreds, forming them into the materials needed to form a new Dyson Sphere.

Their work can take hundreds or thousands of years, but at its end, a new Sphere is ready, able to breed and build its own seeds.h.i.+ps and begin construction of its own empire of captive worlds.

THE END.