Solaris Rising 2 by Ian Whates Page B

homo sapiens to us Neanderthals. The way forward. The next step. Evolution has given them to us, and now we need them. So let’s use them.
     
     
    I REMEMBER WHEN it first sank in – the news that the march of the von Neumann replicators could not be retarded or contained. They would just keep copying themselves, turning everything they touched into more of the same, for ever and ever.
    It was supposed to be safe. The perfect way to clean up an oil spill. The BP supertanker Tony Hayward foundered in a mid-Atlantic storm, her hull was breached, her cargo began to leak out, and a plane was despatched to lob a canister of dedicated ecophages into the water. The nanotech machines were designed to eat crude oil, multiply, and then, when their work was done, disintegrate harmlessly, converting back into carbon and hydrogen. There would be no slick, no cordoned-off black beaches, no fish floating belly up, no seabirds tarred as well as feathered.
    Only, someone had contaminated the replicators with a code virus that was triggered the moment they were activated. The automatic shutoff did not kick in. An oil-only diet would not suffice. The replicators had been transformed from short-lived, self-destructing monovores into relentlessly self-perpetuating omnivores.
    Earth Abides, the extremist eco-activist group, proudly claimed responsibility on their website. Some guff about rampant fossil fuel usage. Pollution. Proving a point. Striking a blow.
    More like scoring an own goal.
    And we hoped, oh God we hoped, that the pundits’ direst prophecies would not come true. That someone would be able to put an end to it. That what human ingenuity had set in motion, human ingenuity would halt.
    But time went by, the nanomachine cluster kept expanding, and everyone’s best efforts were in vain.
    Even detonating a low-yield nuke at the site made no difference. The von Neumann replicators sucked up that thermal energy and thrived, like manmade molecular-scale cockroaches.
    Slowly it dawned on us. This was Twilight Time. The nanomachines would not give up. They would eat on, reproduce wildly, until there was no Earth left, only them. A planet-sized ball of twinkling blackness, floating in space, adrift, lifeless. Nothing but that.
    Accepting fate – a fait accompli – the governments of the world got together, pooled resources, and commissioned the building of Pandora . The International Spaceship Pandora . Furnished with nuclear pulse propulsion engines. Able to achieve something akin to light speed. Pointed at Gliese 581g, an extrasolar planet just inside the Goldilocks zone of a red dwarf star. A new Earth, habitable, with landmasses, oceans, atmosphere.
    Sophisticated onboard systems would control navigation, waste recycling and life support.
    But who should be the passengers?
     
     
    I T’S ALL A front, a scam, this programme of recruiting the autistic. That’s just what we’re being told by the powers-that-be. Actually, all the places on board Pandora have been bagged by politicians, billionaires and their families. They’ve all cronied together and they’re going to bugger off and leave the rest of us poor sods behind to die. This is no conspiracy theory. It’s how it is. I have proof. They get the lifeboat, we all go down with the ship.
     
     
    “D AD ?”
    “Yes, Martin?”
    “You’ll feed Tyke after I’m gone?”
    The cat. Tyke, short for Tycho. Named after Tycho Brahe, the sixteenth-century Danish astronomer, a hero of Martin’s.
    “Of course,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
    “Oh, I’m not worried. I’m just confirming. He likes his wet food in the morning, no later than seven, and his dry food in the evening, no later than six.”
    “I know.”
    “Sometimes you forget.”
    “I’ll try not to.”
    “Martin?” said Claire. I could tell she was about to say something she shouldn’t. Something that wouldn’t get her the answer she wanted. “Will you miss us? When you’re up there? Off in space?”
    “I