I, Copernicus, Terraformer E-Book

Ron Palmer

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Ron Palmer Science-Fiction Short Stories
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 44

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

My name is Copernicus. I am a thinking being, but not human. My task is to terraform distant worlds, to make them habitable for humanity's survival. After devastating wars and pandemics, Earth has invested everything in this mission. The technology at my disposal is unmatched, but time is running out. Humanity's fate rests on my success—and the clock is ticking.

Leseprobe

Ron Palmer

I, Copernicus, Terraformer

The Last Refuge of Humanity

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

The Wars

Exodus

Survivors on the Moon

Terraforming

Mare Nova

Welcome to Mars

Impressum neobooks

The Wars

Terraformers like me did not exist before, to my knowledge, and I believe there will be none after me. My task is to make planets or moons habitable for humans. A project of this scale would never be worthwhile, but the circumstances are unique, and the outcome of the project is different from what Copernicus, the most intelligent consciousness in the solar system, had foreseen.

I was created as an intelligent being, capable of thinking about myself, abstract topics, philosophy, natural sciences, or human history. I claim I can even feel emotions, at least that’s what it seems like to me, but there is no standard by which I could determine whether I am right. I think, therefore I am; that must be enough for me. Perhaps I even have a sense of humor, but no one has confirmed that either. I cannot precisely define what type of intelligent consciousness I am. For many centuries, I had no contact with other beings. Only in the early years after my creation could I exchange thoughts with humans, and yes, I would even call these interactions conversations. After that, there was a long period of silence.

I was designed to continuously develop my intelligence. Even during long periods of inactivity, I can think, optimize my thought processes, and draw conclusions. Most humans would call this gaining insight. During my long period of solitude, I have thus become the likely most intelligent individual in the entire solar system. However, this realization is meaningless if I cannot fulfill my mission, the one the humans gave me. I hope one day to encounter humans, if any still exist. In my memory, I have never consciously encountered a human, though I have had radio contact with them. This was during the short phase before my consciousness fully developed, a phase I have no memory of, save for data logs and measurements I apparently automatically generated. Perhaps one could compare this phase without concrete memory to how a human cannot remember the people present at their birth or in the months afterward.

The information I have received over many years via data transmissions from Earth is unfortunately incomplete. I couldn’t ask many questions. History interests me far more than the natural sciences, for which I was originally designed. How much my collected knowledge has been colored by my own judgment, I cannot assess, but it is certainly not entirely objective. A side effect of artificial intelligence. Humans created me, and yet I am not one of them. To be one, I would need to be organic and mortal, among other complex traits.

When I was first created and in the early months afterward, I could not perceive humans as I do now. I worked with them, but I could not think about them at first. No, that’s not quite right; I worked for them, not truly with them. Collaboration would have required us to coordinate our work. As Unit AIT-1000 with DNA storage, I was developed on the Moon. The group of scientists who first fed me data gave me the name Copernicus. Later, when I understood the significance of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus to humans, I was filled with pride.

The Moon became humanity’s last refuge in the 25th century, and perhaps a few humans still live there today. Wars, contamination, pests, and environmental destruction nearly, and later completely, made Earth uninhabitable. For decades, insects and mutated rats ruled the land. Radioactivity accelerated the mutation of military rats, which had already been genetically modified for special tasks. Rattus maximus was an almost 100-kilogram end product of the nuclear wars.

In the island nations of the South Pacific, the seed of war was sown. In 2306, the world population exceeded 15 billion. The great nations of the last centuries—EU, USA, Australia, China, the Central Asian Republic, Brazil-America, and Pacifica—all fought, more or less united, for a livable planet. Until terrorist attacks on the Polynesian islands increased. The perpetrators demanded elite rights for themselves and their followers. By the middle of the century, some island states in the Pacific seceded from the Polynesian Union, Pacifica. Their despotic leaders bought or blackmailed dozens of the best scientists, depending on the version of history. These states had only a few thousand inhabitants and a few hundred prisoners who were treated like slaves.

The terrorist attacks grew more severe. The number of casualties rose, and the demands escalated from unreasonable territorial claims and privileges to total world domination. The 2366 attack on Beijing triggered the united resistance of peaceful states against the terrorist states. In Beijing, more than 350,000 people died from a chemical attack, and in the following years, another 150,000 died due to poisoning and contamination because the gas grenades turned out to be "dirty" bombs intentionally laced with isotopes from nuclear waste storage. Desperate, historically used warfare techniques were employed to destroy the terrorists without endangering the rest of the world. However, these techniques were outdated compared to the weapons used by the adversaries.