The Audubon Engenerator
The
corporate logo of the Linnent Engenerator megacorp
|
|
|
|
The Audubon EngeneratorThe
corporate logo of the Linnent Engenerator megacorp
|
The second wave of expansion by Jupiter Transystems, Takicorb and other exploration companies included missions to every F, G and K- type sun within 50 ly, mostly automatic. As earth sized and smaller planets were detected by improved telescopic interferometry some manned missions were able to set out even before the robot explorers arrived. The J T colony ship "Phillip Henry Gosse" set out in 1226 for HR 8501 near Gamma Pavonis, twenty years after the autonomous explorer "Karel tchapek". At an average of speed 0.15 c the Gosse would arrive at HR 8501 in 1522 AT, one hundred and thirty years after the smaller and faster "Karel tchapek". The enhanced human crew of the "Gosse" (all geneered to an extent and some cyborgised, with profound interface to the ship AI and all somewhat bored) began to experiment with new real life nanobiocopy techniques purchased by the parent development company from Eden and transmitted to the ship by comm laser.
The CaptainCEO of the "Gosse" and his team designed and sent an augmentation programme to the basic nano assemblers on the Kareltchapek, which were originally designed only to build solar collectors and a long-range antenna. With this the crew tele- constructed a Nanobio-Engenerator at a distance of nine LY, then sent copies of fifteen crew members ahead to assist in creating habitats in HR 8501 orbit.
A Nanobio-Engenerator creates a thin armature the same basic shape as the organism to be reproduced, and over the course of a few days grows and constructs tissue of the appropriate type, while introducing the memories and instantaneous mindstate of the original (acquired by non destructive uploading) into the developing brain tissue, thus creating a functioning adult copy only a few days old. Finally cybernetic enhancements (if required) are added and the armature dissolves harmlessly (in most cases).
When the "Gosse" arrived the copy crew had been constructing asteroid orbitals for forty years, and had established a pressurised blister 100-km long by 20 km on Audubon, a 4000km Arean-type planet. With this advantage the rest of the five thousand settlers, once brought out of bio-stasis, were quickly able to establish a successful local economy, and able to increase the population by natural reproduction and by engenerated copies.
Some members of the original crew were resentful of the success of the copy crew and established a ghetto on a dry moon of Linnaeus, an 18,000-km microjovian at the edge of the comfort zone. Rivalries caused limited but bloody conflict as both factions attempted to bring water from the outer system and from asteroids in orbit around HR8501B.
The Linnaeans in 1780 gained the contract, financed by the Terranova Foundation, to set up experimental colonies on systems further out from Sol using the Engenerator augmentation package, for which they still held the copyright. The resulting colonies were never visited by any relativist ships carrying living beings, until the well-known difficulties with the Engenerator system began to become evident. Because the engeneration process was complex it was generally supervised by an expert subsystem belonging to the local transapient; in many cases the local transapient decided to modify all the engenerated individuals to suit er own goals. In particular at the Bolobo system the transapient known as Zak (originally the interstellar probe mind Sir Isaac Newton) modified all er citizens with a mind control subroutine, essentially eliminating free will in that system.
Since the early days of the Audubon Engenerator such long distance copying has become much more reliable and accurate, either using picotechnology and quantum information to 'teleport' unique instances of individuals from location to location at light speed or slower, or using classical information to make multiple emulations of sophont minds and bodies in several different locations at once.
Related Pages
On the Boat - a short story about the engenerator system
