Geoflex Computing: early days on Enceladus

Clade Troel

Geoflex Computing

The early days of its development on Enceladus

It was late in the century After Tranquility that geoflex computing first entered the public mindscape when a science fiction author called K.G. Trout wrote a follow-up to his story Venus on a Dollar a Day. Although that book was titled as if it were some kind of hitchhiker's guide it was actually a story of mankind's forced exodus from the planet Earth by an angry god; an ironical a foreshadowing of later real events. The second book, Ice Nine, turned the story into an epic sci/fi saga and featured geoflex computers as a plot device. 

To quote the book; "One common trait of the gas giants is they have moons, lots of moons. And when you have lots of heavy objects passing each other in short period orbits like in these systems you get lots of gravitational tidal stressing. The objects are pulled and squeezed so much they heat up. Io is a classic example of this; she's a hotbed of volcanic activity. And then there's Europa, a world with a 100km deep ocean under its surface of ice. But really all these moons have some degree of tidal heating and where you have heat you have an energy source, and where you have an energy source and rocky material (like the cores of these moons) you have a place you can build computers. Nanites were injected into the cores of these moons and used the matter they found to make pockets of computronium. Layers of piezoelectric ceramics and nano-flywheels surrounded these nodes. The piezoelectric ceramics converted the tidal stressing into electrical energy and the flywheels stored it to provide the nodes with a constant power flow." 

Although Mr. Trout provided a very detailed description of the technology (in fact it was so detailed he could have applied for a patent on the idea) it was technology that just wasn't available at the time. Even when the tech did become available there seemed to be no great reason to implement the plan. At least, not until the year 2200 c.e., the year the Jupiter colonies united to form the Jovian League. 

Having already lost the Mars colonies when they became independent, and fearing the colonies in Saturn’s Rings and on Titan would go the same way, Earth and the Cislunar orbitals planned to leapfrog these new polities by emplacing a presence in the Saturn, Uranus and Neptune systems. Using the space elevators on Earth over a hundred AI seeds were launched within just five years with most targeting the larger regular moons to ensure fast conversion. These seeds had the best AIs of the time, which meant they had greater than human equivalent artificial intelligence, and had been extensively vetted for loyalty to Earth's interests. Even so, in the rush to get the job done the screening was not perfect and three of AIs did develop ahumanistic tendencies when they later ascended. 

This program was not merely a land-grab. The Earth based megacorps had financed the enterprise and they wanted their money's worth. Even with the long time delays that were inherent in the moons' great distance from the Earth/Luna system they were a huge resource of computational power and the AIs soon provided a windfall of profit. They also provided something unexpected - a new shelter for life. 

Even when such moons did have liquid water hidden under their ice it was cold water, often cryogenically cold, and kept liquid only because it was under pressure or because of high concentrations of salts or ammonia. However the introduction of computronium into its core changes the nature of a moon. In its natural state the heated core of such a moon loses heat globally, and thus diffused the temperatures are very low. On the other hand the new computronium nodes had built-in cooling systems that concentrated the release of heat to a small number of vents, providing hot spots under their icy mantles. These hot spots became very important when GAIA forced mankind from Earth, becoming oases for the survivors. The Saturnian moon Enceladus is a great illustration of this. 

In the wake of the Great Expulsion many of the survivors followed the comm-lasers of this network and set up habitats on, or just under, the surfaces of these moons, tapping hot-spots for pre-melted water and the nodes for data-trading. These moons, unlike those in the Jupiter system, also provided a safe haven from the nanoswarms. Being so far out and never having a large human population before this they were not targeted. Most of these surface habitats were simply copies of the type long used in the Jupiter system, but back on Enceladus there was also a new shelter for life. The cooling water for its nodes exited their vents at higher temperatures; where once Enceladus had pockets of liquid water maintained at cryogenic temperatures now the water had a more "arctic" temperature range. As such the oases of Enceladus were warm enough not just for exotic life but also for Earth-like life. Still this was a new environment to the hu of the Solsys, and a harsh one at that, and they had to be quick to adapt themselves to it. 

In a way Enceladus was now a lot like Europa in that it had pockets of relatively warm water but they were just that - pockets - and nothing more. Enceladus had no world-spanning ocean beneath its ice and because of that the settlers would have felt no need to become aquatic like the Europans even if they had known of them. Of course even if they had known about the success of Jovian Genetics & Adaptation's AI the research would have done them little good. Without a global ocean the best way to move about the moon and reach another oasis was by tunnelling through the ice. The pockets of water were used more like wells and the real Enceladian civilization was built around them in a network of ice burrows. This guided their choices in genemods; influenced by the Genetekker culture they would use DIY gengineering to adapt to their world, always choosing genemods that make it easier to retain body heat in the cold air of the tunnels. Staying out of the water was a wise choice as it is easier to keep warm if you can keep dry, so the settlers had less of a problem keeping their warm-blooded metabolism. Had they chosen to become aquatic they most certainly would have had to become cold-blooded like the aforementioned Europans.

 The first such genemod was for larger size (more mass per surface area means slower heat loss) and the settlers soon began calling themselves Gigantes, at least in the beginning. In Greek mythology the Gigantes were a race of giants, and the children of Gaia, who rose up against the Olympian Gods with the giant Enceladus being mortally wounded in the battle. Of course, isolated as they were beneath kilometres of ice each oasis was free to develop its own culture and there were some who preferred the Norse folklore and called themselves frost giants. In truth, calling themselves giants at all was overstating things, the average Gigant may mass about half a tonne but they are only as tall as a small Goliath so most of their great mass has gone into making them much wider and rounder. This great mass is no hindrance to them as the ice dwarfs on which they live typically have a much-reduced gravity well and as a result they are as spry as any baseline hu athlete. Some of the later genemods produced a large nose to warm inhaled air, stocky legs, a thick layer of fat and a heavy overcoat of long body hairs, giving them an appearance that often resulted in them being called Trolls by outsiders. However once the Gigantes joined the interstellar migration and settled on new ice dwarfs the myth of Enceladus lost its meaning and they were quite happy to take that epithet and make it their own.

 In the modern era Geoflex Computing is just another tool, one of those techs that is used whenever computronium is needed and the conditions are right for its use.

The Tro'els are a clade of hu tweaks that have been optimized for arctic and sub-arctic climates. Originally refugees of the Great Expulsion, they settled on an ice moon in the outer system and used genemods to adapt themselves to living in ice caves beneath its surface.

 Physical

Tro'els are large nearbaselines; up to 2.5 m tall with a round muscular body that weights about 500-700 kg. They have a large, wide nose with a rich network of blood vessels to warm inhaled air and recover heat from exhaled air. Their arms and legs have length proportions more akin to a great ape than a human but each is much thicker than in either of them to retain heat. Thick layers of fat and hair covering their bodies from head to toe further enhance heat retention. Even the palms of their hands and the bottoms of their feet have special pads that act as thermal breaks between them and the ice. Tro'els are so well protected from the cold they can use a slab of ice as a comfortable bed and a bucket of snow for bathing/scrubbing down. Nor do they need protective clothing and Tro'els often go about their business au naturel. (Of course this doesn't mean they are exhibitionists as their hair covers anything of interest.) Interestingly, these changes were achieved with only minor genetic alterations, mostly those that guide the degree and timing of growth hormones, and as a result Tro'els are fully interfertile with baseline humans.

 Psychology

Tro'els have a reputation for being anti-social or misanthropic. Nothing could be farther from the truth; Tro'els simply like to live in an environment that humans and most other nearbaselines avoid. Those whom have braved the cold dry air of a Tro'el warren have found them to be quiet but friendly and generous even to strangers. Tro'els are particularly fond of showing off their folk art; a style of large-scale ice carving that highlights fine detailing and often tells a locally known story.

 Culture

Culturally the Tro'els are very diverse. Their preferred environment is a network of ice tunnels deep beneath the surface of an ice dwarf moon or frozen planet. As such they form small communes around some local heat source or pocket of liquid water and each commune is free to develop their own culture. They mine for ices and meteorite debris and may trade with the outside world but their isolation protects them many foreign memes although they do take on the general meme-sets of the local polity. Some warrens are closer to the surface/outside world than others and the Tro'els of these communes often like to maintain the illusion of them being the trolls of old Earth folklore. Tro'els are aware of their appearance to outsiders and of the race memories they invoke in some baseline hu and this has become something of a cultural in-joke to them.

 Technology

Tro'el technology is like-wise very diverse. They dig their habitats, and carve out the furnishings, directly out of the ice but other tech may use any substrate they can get their hands on. Tro'els are modosophont so their day-to-day tech can be anything from prim to high and dry to biotech, depending on their commune's culture. Also, when Tro'els set out to settle another ice dwarf they sometimes carry a geoflex computer seed with them. If the new world is suitable the AI associated with this seed may be anything up to a third toposophic hyperturing, which often gives the Tro'els access to ultra, transapient and low godtech.

Home | Search | Site Map | Glossary | Encyclopaedia Galactica | Intro | Timeline | Galactography | Sophonts | Topics | Voices from OA | Extras | Community | Top of Page | Parent Node

Unless otherwise specified,
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.