Spore tech is most notorious
for its
military uses (q.v.),
but is much more common in ordinary industry or
research. It is frequently used where environments are hazardous and
the risk
that an individual unit or individual will be destroyed is high.
Extreme heat,
particle radiation, or strong kinetic energy such as an orbit within a
planetary ring system or placement in a stormy atmosphere or
hydrosphere are
just a few examples of such environments. Spore tech is also used when
a large
number of bots,
neogens
or vecs
is needed in very short
order; in such cases they are “seeded” in large
numbers into the appropriate
environment. The resulting units usually produce additional spores when
they
are mature, usually with a very short generation time. The effect of
sporetech
in any case is that the population is either stable in difficult
circumstances
or else grows and spreads rapidly from a small number of initial units,
according to the design of whoever deployed the devices in the first
place.
A “spore” is a
biotech, dry nanotech, or
syntech device (more rarely, a picotech or femtotech device) that is
extremely
small but is capable of “growing” into a full sized
bot, vec or neogen. The
result may be anything from the equivalent of a simple plant or
semi-sentient
machine to a sentient but non-sophont bot or organism or even a full
fledged
person. Most spores preserve the programming or (if applicable) the
mind-state
of the parent model. Spores are usually as small as the local
technology
allows, and are extremely resistant to whatever hazards the
spore-bearing unit
is most likely to encounter. Spores with extra protective layers and a
significant “start-up” package of materials are
sometimes called seeds instead.
If the spores or seeds receive the proper signal (or, in some cases,
cease to
receive such a signal) and are in contact with a suitable substrate,
they will
begin to grow a new unit. In the case of nanotech spores, the
developing body
will search for appropriate elements, either by developing a
“larval” form and
moving about or by growing extensions resembling fungal hyphae, or by
growing
some other collecting and or harvesting device. Energy for continued
growth is
gathered in a variety of ways appropriate to the environment: anything
from
solar panels to generators that exploit movement in the atmosphere or
hydrosphere, tether tech for orbits around planets with magnetic
fields, to
whatever else may be appropriate. Once it has grown large enough, a
spore
device may even grow/assemble a small fusion plant. The developing body
may be
camouflaged (in the case of military or surveillance spore bots) or may
be
otherwise protected from hostile beings or a hostile environment until
it is
fully developed. The pace of growth varies considerably according to
the
purposes of the designers. Some spores are designed to develop rapidly,
either
so that they can to accomplish a task quickly or so that they can
overwhelm an
extremely unfavourable environment or some form of sophont opposition.
Others
may “lurk” half-developed until an appropriate time
and then take action,
sometimes en masse.
Spore technology is
widely used
in the
initial stages of terraforming, and of course biotech spore technology
is
essential in the later stages. It is also used in the more hazardous
sorts of
mining operations on rocky bodies. Sporetech balloon devices are used
to
harvest elements and compounds from the more turbulent gas giants. A
sporetech
swarm of synsects is often used to gather information where the
mortality rate
for individual units is high. Security devices often use sporetech,
since if
somehow an intruder destroys the original units their descendants will
survive
to report whatever they have recorded and possibly to take other
appropriate action.
Sporetech devices
are often
vectors for
biotech, dry nanotech or synanotech “goo”, whether
that be “grey”, “khaki”, or
“blue”. Most notoriously, primitive early spore
tech devices were a factor in
advent of the Nanoswarms,
and according to the records that have been pieced
together they may well have been a major factor in prolonging the
Nanoswarm
era. Some seem to have “gone bad” through accident
or when those supervising
them were killed or driven away, but it appears that others were
maliciously altered,
or were designed in the first place for alternative military or
terrorist use.
For instance the macroscopic delivery system for the troublesome
“grey goo”
that was resident in the atmosphere of Venus, and threatened other
parts of
Solsys as a result, had its origin in early sporetech that had been
intended to
be the first stages of a terraforming project. There have been many
similar
incidents in the millennia since.
Some vecs
and sybonts with
Neumann
capability reproduce using some variant of the spore technology. Often
these
are the descendants of military or mining vecs, and some of them are
capable of
prodigious reproduction. Such beings can quickly overwhelm a
system’s resources
if they do not restrain themselves.
The creation,
design, and use
of
sporetech
devices of any kind is usually heavily regulated in civilized
societies, even
more so than the release of other kinds of self-reproducing
machines or
organisms. Historically, sporetech has led to many unfortunate
accidents. Some
of the most interesting, especially those resulting in
“wild” mechosystems, or botworlds,
have been preserved, either for study or as a warning. Ordinary
citizens may be
entirely prohibited from from designing or deploying sporetech by local
authorities. Any user or designer who is permitted to operate is likely
to be
subject to oversight by the local polity, and may need to meet some
rather
strict licensing standards regarding in terms of eir personal skill and
maturity and in terms of the range of devices allowed.
Related Pages
Military
Spore Technology
