The Silk God

It wasn't long after eir reintroduction to the rest of the Terragen Sphere that some in the Red Star 'M'pire became disappointed. In eir travels the lums had heard emselves referred to as "the Zoeific's poor cousins." What's more ey found out that two other biopolities had been wiped out. The denizens of the 'M'pire did not share the tenets of the Biovirate or the Soft Cathedrals but ey felt the loss just the same (which was only natural for a culture with such a strong bioism memeticity). What came out of this loss was a small group of lums who decided to run an experiment in eir own version of Technological Taboo. Ey wished to see just how far a fully biotech polity could go. Could ey create a lasting biopolity without falling back on drytech? In the 'M'pire there were already whole biocities, but could ey extend the concept beyond that? Throughout the Terragen Sphere there were examples that biotech could do just about anything. There was even talk of turning the Ecotopia system into a "Green Matrioshka."

Of course the real failure of the Biovirate and Soft Cathedrals was not eir technology but eir toposophics. The Softbots were only a clade of superiors and the Biovirates not even that. Ey were simply too aggressive in the face of greater AI minds. So the real question the lums had to ask was whether or not ey could create eir own biobrain god. Farview perself used organic substrates for much of per processing but only in concert with computronium megastructures. On the other hand thanks to Farview's godmod there were some among eir number who were already first and second toposophic bio-intellects, so ey knew that much was certainly possible. 

The lums work best in teams, every team needs a plan of action and every good plan should be backed up with research, so that is the first thing this small group did. Ey searched the Known Net for biotech that ey could use while paying special attention to transapient bionts and quickly compiled an impressive database. Perhaps the oldest example of organic transapient AIs are the vat-based DNA and bionano computers, the most advanced vatbrains are currently produced in the Zoeific Biopolity and are often hyperturing capable. In fact the Biovirate used vatbrains of Zoeific design on a very large scale (and eir biowars still roam the spaceways today) while the current Hon'Kken Sovereigns are SI:1 DNA computers actually based along old Biovirate lines. In both cases these are living beings; they are alive and grow like any other organism. Sometimes they even reproduce. The Sovereigns themselves still have eir original Hon'Kken bodies even though ey have become vestigial. It must also be noted that even though the Biovirate artificially limited eir vatbrains to subturing levels eir biowars later autoevolved back into transapience, thus proving the capability of this tech.

Farther up the toposophic ladder are the administrators of the Alchemists. While most are only SI:1.5 some of the very oldest have broken through to the second toposophic. For some reason Alchemists like to outsource eir bodily functions to eir organic habitats and those in the administrative caste have permanently linked eir brains to the hab's wetware processors and memory banks through umbilical cords.

 Special note: In 8,153 a.t. the Alchemists would embark on eir Sol Niger Project that would result, in 8,611 a.t., in a SI:3 biobrain (but the lums would know nothing of this, nor its fall into madness, until eir own project was well underway).

 The only bio godling the lums could know of with certainty was Gloriously Bright of the upstart Organic Ascension Alliance. The lums were very interested in the Alliance. The reason being that the New Shoot Freehold had also tried to create a fully biotech polity - and failed. However, the lums had learned that the Freehold began eir "biofication" program after a disastrous attack. It was the strain of rebuilding while also trying to replace all drytech with organic-based technology that caused eir economy to collapse. The Freehold had to fall back on using some drytech and that worried the lums. Ey weren't worried about an economic recession because ey knew that ey would be starting with biotech from scratch and building up from there. What really worried the lums was knowing that dry nanotech and even picotech had been added to the core of the Alliance's sentient bio-habitat Eternity just before it underwent ascension. Was this drytech used only as a tool to effect changes in Eternity's mental architecture or had it become a part of it? In any case the new Gloriously Bright had reaffirmed the goal of "achieving singularity with biotech as the dominant tool" and had created some form of "biopicotech," so perhaps any picotech in her core could have been replaced. The lums took heart in this for the 'M'pire had already developed a form of bionano that was so refined that it was quantum effective.

 The next thing the lums did was consult the godwatchers' database, which said that high transapients were "very diverse, but the distinctive bio-, alife-, ai-, and/or animin characteristics may sometimes converge." Sometimes, but not always. The database also says of godlings that "the distinction between ai and non-ai blurs... but the ai quality tends to dominate at megastructure scales" while for the higher minds it said there is "no distinction between ai and non-ai... but the ai quality tends to dominate at megastructure scales." The lums choose to believe there was no distinction in the "thought processes" of ai and non-ai at these toposophic levels and that it might be possible to run a SI:3 (or higher) living AI on a CHON substrate if the mechanical stresses of the organic megastructure could be overcome. In fact Gloriously Bright had done this by spreading herself out in a quasi-snowflake pattern, thereby reducing the effects of her own gravity well on her internal structures. The final thing that the lums needed before ey could get started was a star system -- and ey knew just where to find one.

 Because Farview had no wormholes of Per own at this time E had turned to comm-lasers, data freighters and beamrider technology to handle the data flow. This allowed Farview to build J-nodes out to within 50 ly of Maximum Air before the vasting effect became too great for comfort. As a result there were many star systems outside this bubble which, although still connected to the beamrider network, were only being mined for resources. One proved perfect for these lums' needs. It was only 57 ly out and after the drytech infrastructure was removed it would still have two beamrider routes running past, but not through, it. This meant that the lums could get to the system with relative ease while maintaining a "no drytech" quarantine. It also meant that Farview could stay linked to these lums and eir biospheres, which were still to be a part of per social and ecological nodes. All E had to do was "hot beam" the cycler ISOs in those routes. The only problem with the system was that construction vecs had just finished disassembling all the major planets and were moving to the minor ones. Even this was more of a plus than a minus because with no deep gravity wells the lums would not be tempted to become planetbound. A "stop work" order was quickly sent.

 What was left in the system, which the lums renamed "The Grove," was an Oort cloud, a Kuiper belt, two asteroid belts, some leftover Trojans, the usual assortment of stray asteroids and comets and of course the primary (a small K-type star like the original Far View star, only cooler). By 8,030 a.t. the lums were ready to go. Ey "cleansed" emselves (removed or replaced) of whatever drytech augments ey still had and off ey went on eir great adventure. After launching from Maximum Air in a small fleet of bioships and traveling Dyson trees ey dropped out of the booster beam in 8,145 a.t. and were in orbit around eir new sun by 8,151 a.t.

 Having used eir time in transit to finalize eir plans ey wasted no time getting to work. A few of the bioships stopped in the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt to begin the long, slow process of dropping the smaller snowballs into lower orbits and seeding each with Dyson trees and a colony of giant, vacuum-adapted, provolved spiders. These Vac-spiders, like Hobo Superior's Hobo Sapiens, could spin buckytube and other carbon fibers. The rest of the bioships headed into the inner system where they herded the planetoids into one central, dense asteroid belt. The Dyson trees which took root in the belt would be under constant light and temperature levels and so they could be of the tropical broadleaf type but those from the outer system would have to deal with long elliptical orbits. They and their Vac-spiders were given the ability to sleep through the long winters. Planted alongside the Dyson trees were arrays of "radio flowers." Radio flowers grow beneath the canopy and almost never see direct light. Instead their petals form parabolic dishes that focus longer wavelength EM onto central stalks to gain energy. They can also be made to send energy as raw power or modulated for information.

 Even in the low gravity field of comets Dyson trees can only grow so big (about 100 km across). This is due to the low gravity field itself rather than the lack of resources in a tree's core. Like most plants the growth zone of a Dyson tree is in the tips of its branches. As the gravity field of the core falls off to the inverse square of the distance from it a point is quickly reached where the tree's geotropic sense can no longer tell up from down and it simply stops growing outward. A tree with such a small diameter wouldn't have the surface to collect enough sunlight for the lums' project so ey geneered two new plants to extend this collection area. One is a type of climbing vine that is phototropic and the other is a bamboo-like grass with its growth zone in its base. Because this "pole grass" senses gravity from the weight of its own leafy stem above it the growth zone is always under pressure to grow upwards until it runs out of resources. Only when the pole grass is growing on the comet's equator can this change; if the stem grows past the comet's Clarke orbit and puts enough mass above it to counteract the pull of gravity it will stop growing. For its part the vine climbs up the stem and once past the Clarke orbit can continue to grow under the pull of angular momentum. It's the Vac-spiders who take over at this point. They use the pole-grass and vines as spars and rigging for large carbon fiber sails. The Vac-spiders are skilled sailors and use the sails to finalize the orbits of the Dyson trees.

 Although the very smallest and lightest Dyson trees can levitate over the poles of the new sun most are simply too heavy for anything other than using the sails to control an otherwise unstable orbit. The way the lums were planning things orbital precession would have caused the paths of the Dyson trees to eventually touch, so the Vac-spiders were tasked with seeing that this didn't happen. The final orbits of outer system Dyson trees, also called comet-trees because their orbits are elliptical, follow a complex orbital format that is sometimes called a Jenkins' Dyson swarm. In the Jenkins' format a string of comet-trees is sent inward to fill each orbital path. (much like a Klemperer rosette) A group of orbital paths each have the same period and tilt but rotating the major axis of each orbit around the star in a plane and tilting the minor axis off this plane causes the group to form a donut-shaped swarm. Orbit groups with different tilts and/or periods can be nested inside each other. The advantage of the Jenkins' Dyson is that the comet-trees keep their orbital neighbors, do not collide at high speed and fill a 3D volume around the star.

 Each of the Dyson trees (whether they were in the comet-tree swarm, in halo orbits over the sun's poles or in the central belt) had a vatbrain growing in its root system. This brain is a DNA computer that the lums guide into transapience as soon as possible. These new hyperturing AIs form an active community whose members communicate with each other via the radio flowers and trade energy through the same network. Of course it was never the lums' intent to stop at mere hyperturings; ey were chasing godhood. The next step was to augment the vatbrains, something ey had planned well in advance for. In fact the germ of eir idea came to em 300 years earlier when ey heard of pspyders and their web-like neural nets.

 A basic pspyder is a sub-sapient, colony lifeform and only about as intelligent as a baseline raccoon. This would appear to be an emergent property as psyders do not have the inter-colony social structure needed to pass on or share knowledge. They range between 1-3 m in size but even when the web fully covers the limbs of the largest tree forms it does not gain intelligence. This limit is a direct result of the weavers' fairly large size; their size range is about the same as terrestrial spiders, their webs are thus very gross in feature. They have a fairly coarse weave, with threads thick enough to support the weavers' weight and survive in what could be adverse whether, so it only achieves its complex interconnectedness in a large volume. The lums reasoned that a much smaller weaver, in a protected micro-gravity environment, could create a much denser neural net with a corresponding increase in ability for a given volume. In time ey would settle on geneered spider mites. 

In each of the geneered climbing vines the main stem has seven hollow tubes running its full length, six arrayed around one in the center. This central tube has branch tubes that slip between the surrounding tubes and out to inflated spherical leaves. The outer walls of the vine and its leaves are thick and saturated with water to provide radiation shielding. The average leaf is large enough to house a small family of lums and the central tube acts as a transit corridor. The vine serves as additional living space for the free-breeding lums, but it is the six surrounding tubes that the vine was truly grown for. These six tubes are sealed from the rest of the plant but not from each other. Their walls are impervious to attack from within and light from without but also lined with feeding stations and gills to make these cavities a perfect home for the spider mites. The spider mites spin a silk with special properties; it transmits light. The spider mites spin a web of optical fibers and where the fibers join they build optical logic gates. In other words they have been geneered to spin an optical computer. The spider mites have some simple positive responses to light flowing through these fibers that make them spin a web of increasing complexity. Because the tube walls block all sunlight from entering the interior of the vine the only source of light that the spider mites can use is the lums. 

The lums are both internally and externally bioluminescent. As ey move through the interior spaces of the vine and the Dyson trees ey light eir own way. The only connection between the spider mite cavities and the living spaces of the lums are a series of fisheye lenses set in the walls of the transit corridors. They act to focus light on to a collector that the spider mites attach their silk lines to. Also living in these cavities are tiny, silk eating flatworms that have negative responses to light. They multiply only in areas of darkness and venture out only to feed on the silk lines. This they do by folding themselves over a thread and moving along it. They only digest a minute amount off its surface with each pass and so act to slim the optical fiber. If they spend too much time in any one place they create a surface fault which leaks light and sends them running elsewhere (and also causes the spider mites to rush in and generate new silk lines and logic gates). A little used fiber may be slimmed down to the point where it becomes a quantum channel while one that has gone dark because its logic circuit has become obsolete will be fully eaten to make room for new circuit pathways. This positive feedback from the spider mites and negative feedback from the flatworms works together to autoevolve the network. The network is linked through a bionano interface in the vine's root systems to the vatbrain in the Dyson tree's roots. This provides extensions that may augment the hyperturing. As the spider mites' web gains the necessary mass and complexity the lums in the Grove gather to guide the SI:1 hyperturing through another ascension.

Not every Dyson tree has the chance to become a godlet/power. The spider mites and their web are dependent on the lums bioluminescence and some of the comet-trees have winters that are too long for the lums' comfort and so have lower occupation rates. Ultimately only about one in a thousand Dyson trees becomes a power, which would be a good rate in any polity but once again the lums were chasing godhood.

The Grove had long since become a green Dyson (intercepting nearly 40% of the star's light) in the form of nested donut swarms. With the outer donuts occupied by hyperturing DNA vatbrains and the inner donuts the realm of the giants the central asteroid belt was left to be coaxed into a godling or maybe even an archai. The belt had been the first part of the system to be seeded and the trees here had grown the fastest because of their proximity to the star. With the largest trees, longest vines and most mature AI minds it was soon ready for its giants to merge. The long wavelengths that the radio flowers used also gave them a low bandwidth, so the SI:1/SI:2 vatbrains could not simply merge at distance into a greater intellect. They would have to be physically linked.

On command the Vac-spider sailors slowed the rotation of their trees and shifted their orbits. With the gray sails facing the sun they maneuvered the Dyson trees so that either six or four of the equatorial vines linked up with one such vine from each of two neighbors. The belt became a "ribbon world" with hexagon segments while the optical networks in those vines linked up to become a single circumstellar network. Furthermore they teased the polar vines to grow towards and away from the sun, to form a gravity-gradient stabilization structure braced by Vac-spider buckytubes. The Vac-spiders did a good job of maintaining the position of each element in the ribbon with their sails but the vines helped by pumping and storing fluids at different points along their length to shift their centers of gravity.

The lums had set out to create a biobrain god but for some reason ey have become quite coy about the results, other than the fact ey do call eir megastructure “the Silk God“. What is known is that on two occasions the lums turned off the optical network in the ribbon. This ey did by shutting off eir own external bioluminescence and flooding the spider mites cavities with an anaesthetic gas. Without light the network could not function and with the spider mites and flatworms asleep it could not change or adapt. In both cases operations were only continued after a swarm of Farview's biobot dust mites were sent into the cavities to map the optical fiber pathways. There followed an intense exchange of data between the Grove and the two beamrider routes, which pass near by, and the destruction of some small segments of the optical network, which others have called "editing." Only then would the lums shine again. The first time this happened was in 9,206 a.t., 163 days after the link-up of the belt. The second time was in 9,961 a.t. after the mass-shifting fluids in the gravity-gradient vines was infused by quantum-effective bionano and whole clusters of the spherical leaves were given over to this special bionano, forming networked vatbrains. Some outside watchers believe that these two events marked two additional ascensions (SI:2 to SI:3 and then SI:3 to SI:4) but there is no proof one way or another.

However, within weeks of the second event the smaller dyson trees light-levitating over the star's poles also began their own merging process. Linking up like the trees in the ribbon they formed rafts thousands of kilometres across. There are now scores of these rafts over each pole and it is believed, by some, that this was done to maintain the toposophic pyramid of the Grove. With networked, quantum-effective bionano, vatbrains spread among their vines these rafts may be SI:3 biobrains in their own right.

The other question the lums asked was whether ey could create a lasting biopolity without falling back on drytech. The answer to that would appear to be "yes." It has been over 2,300 years since ey first entered the Grove and eir work continues apace. Some bioships still shepherd the smaller Oort objects inward and some others provide transport between the comet-trees but most now graze material off the larger, unmovable Oort planetoids and ferry it inwards to feed the still growing Dyson trees.

Over a ten year period around 9,550 a.t. the Grove launched a dozen gray sail seedships to three nearby but unused star systems to mark the 5,000th anniversary of the founding of the Red Star 'M'pire. This was done by dropping the bioships into a perihelion maneuver and then using the radio flower arrays of the Dyson tree swarm to boost them to 0.2 c. Recent reports by new biolasers bring good news - the Silk God has children.

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