《Children of the Nano-Plague》 Prologue 154,269 GD A Message from Supreme Historian Yolmethol Suioung of History Planet 19 For distribution throughout the Galaxy. The Legendary Seven have been found! It took over 100,000 years of searching and they were one the straight-line trajectory between Technology Planet 2 (then known as Ogre) and Old Earth. They were found in deep space in the debris of their ship, but they survived! We had forgotten that they are the only humans every to survive in stasis. We historians have copied the memories of the Legendary Seven an made them available for all the denizens of the galaxy to enjoy. Unfortunately, the Seven where a little unhappy to find out their memories had been copied. I do not understand why as their memories tell the story of the founding of the Galactic Civilization as we know it. They demanded ¡°reasonable¡± fee from each person who experiences their memories and we were forced to accept their demands lest the living legends become unruly. We of the historical society considered refusing and the economic and government societies agreed on several reasonable grounds, but the TREE found out they were back and declared herself their subordinate so now the entire galaxy must pay for the privilege of reliving history. I am told that it is the opinion of may on the history planets that the price is more ¡°steep¡± than ¡°reasonable¡± but it is also the case that historical research has completely ground to a halt on all history planets for the foreseeable future while all historians experience the memories. If billions have payed the price, is it too steep?Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. I leave that to you to decide. Please remember your last interaction with the economic society in order to begin the process of payment. NOTE: If you belong to the top fourteen tiers of the Biology Society, your copies of the memories have already been purchased and I am told you are relieved of your duties and deemed unqualified to resume your duties until you have relived all Seven lives. I will see you in around 350 years give or take depending on whether you are a completionist. Some skip the boring bits, but historians are encouraged to experience every moment. Sadly, we cannot all drop everything to experience the most important memories ever collected. As per protocol with every significant memory found, a crack team of 10,000 historians have been assigned to skim the memories and assemble an abbreviated story of the events in the lives of the Seven Legends. We at the Historical Society will provide this story free of charge so no one must remain out of the loop. I am told the first chapter comes out very soon. I, of course, will continue to experience the memories of the Seven immediately. I was reminded of my duty to write this introduction to the story only today. Of course, it is also my duty to write the defining analysis of the first moments in the history of the Civilized Galaxy, so I should wrap this up and get back to the memories. By the way, it turns out there were originally only Five Legends. The last two were added during the events of the Purple Belt Planet. No one predicted that except a child prodigy on Biology Planet 92 around 20,000 years ago. His work was apparently regraded by the Biology Society and he has been promoted to Biologist Grade 3. He will find out in 350 years or so unless he pops out of recovery mode early for some reason. Oh! This should be interesting for those of you unfortunate enough to have to read the story rather than just experience the memories. Apparently an enterprising Journalist has decided to go interview Sol, the Starling inhabiting the star in the center of the Old Earth system. He was there for all the events that happened on Old Earth for the last few billion years and apparently it amused him to answer some questions so perhaps the readers of the summary will have more context than those of us reliving the memories directly. The summary of the memories has been called: Children of the Nano-Plague. How very dramatic! Enjoy! Prologue: A Message from the Supreme Historian 154,269 GD A Message from Supreme Historian Yolmethol Suioung of History Planet 19 For distribution throughout the Galaxy. The Legendary Seven have been found! It took over 100,000 years of searching and they were one the straight-line trajectory between Technology Planet 2 (then known as Ogre) and Old Earth. They were found in deep space in the debris of their ship, but they survived! We had forgotten that they are the only humans every to survive in stasis. We historians have copied the memories of the Legendary Seven an made them available for all the denizens of the galaxy to enjoy. Unfortunately, the Seven where a little unhappy to find out their memories had been copied. I do not understand why as their memories tell the story of the founding of the Galactic Civilization as we know it. They demanded ¡°reasonable¡± fee from each person who experiences their memories and we were forced to accept their demands lest the living legends become unruly. We of the historical society considered refusing and the economic and government societies agreed on several reasonable grounds, but the TREE found out they were back and declared herself their subordinate so now the entire galaxy must pay for the privilege of reliving history. I am told that it is the opinion of may on the history planets that the price is more ¡°steep¡± than ¡°reasonable¡± but it is also the case that historical research has completely ground to a halt on all history planets for the foreseeable future while all historians experience the memories. If billions have payed the price, is it too steep?If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I leave that to you to decide. Please remember your last interaction with the economic society in order to begin the process of payment. NOTE: If you belong to the top fourteen tiers of the Biology Society, your copies of the memories have already been purchased and I am told you are relieved of your duties and deemed unqualified to resume your duties until you have relived all Seven lives. I will see you in around 350 years give or take depending on whether you are a completionist. Some skip the boring bits, but historians are encouraged to experience every moment. Sadly, we cannot all drop everything to experience the most important memories ever collected. As per protocol with every significant memory found, a crack team of 10,000 historians have been assigned to skim the memories and assemble an abbreviated story of the events in the lives of the Seven Legends. We at the Historical Society will provide this story free of charge so no one must remain out of the loop. I am told the first chapter comes out very soon. I, of course, will continue to experience the memories of the Seven immediately. I was reminded of my duty to write this introduction to the story only today. Of course, it is also my duty to write the defining analysis of the first moments in the history of the Civilized Galaxy, so I should wrap this up and get back to the memories. By the way, it turns out there were originally only Five Legends. The last two were added during the events of the Purple Belt Planet. No one predicted that except a child prodigy on Biology Planet 92 around 20,000 years ago. His work was apparently regraded by the Biology Society and he has been promoted to Biologist Grade 3. He will find out in 350 years or so unless he pops out of recovery mode early for some reason. Oh! This should be interesting for those of you unfortunate enough to have to read the story rather than just experience the memories. Apparently an enterprising Journalist has decided to go interview Sol, the Starling inhabiting the star in the center of the Old Earth system. He was there for all the events that happened on Old Earth for the last few billion years and apparently it amused him to answer some questions so perhaps the readers of the summary will have more context than those of us reliving the memories directly. The summary of the memories has been called: Children of the Nano-Plague. How very dramatic! Enjoy! Chapter One: The Drop Able Pinkon ¨C Journalist Grade 21 Interviewing Sol - Race: Starling Able: As I explained before, the Seven Legends have been found and their memories copied for study. Two of the Legends were not born until after the invasion and it turns out their parents were both frozen by the Nano-Plague, not that it had any effect on their powers. The original Five were all frozen by the First Rain of Nano-Plague and we recently learned that some of the recovered memories come from the drops of Plague even before they landed on the Five. Can you describe the plague and explain how drops of liquid can think and remember? Sol: Pure laziness. The R&D kids had been trying to automate the harvesting process as much as possible so they hardcoded the Harvester, that is what we call the nanotechnology that you call the Nano-Plague, to form networks which act as tiny brains. The Harvest Particles, called Nanos, are capable of generating a small electromagnetic field and sense the fields of other particles so by changing the intensity or moving the field, messages can be sent that were much more complicated than the early binary systems of humans. This allowed the kids to develop very small minds that communicated very fast. The Nanos had a variety of functions and it was only called ¡°Harvest¡± when its purpose was to place sentient creatures in stasis. Their hard, coded instructions was only to create a mind. There was also a section of the Nano that was easily reprogrammed using long wave photons (you call radio waves) and this is where the instructions to freeze sentient lifeforms would have been found. If our Nanos are responsible for creating super-humans, then humans must have found a way to reprogram the soft-coding of the Nanos. I applaud your species for figuring it out because the Harvest was designed to replace all the cells in a sentient being¡¯s body with Nanos which serve the same functions. Each Nano would consume the cells around it and replace them with Nanos. You might wonder where the materials came from. We starlings have been seeding and harvesting sentient life from planets for millions of years. We design DNA to dictate that each cell has the materials needed to make an equivalent Nano. Additionally, the Nanos are far more efficient than normal biological cells and each have an organelle that converts ambient heat energy into usable chemical energy making each Nano self-sufficient. This is why the temperature of ¡°frozen¡± sentients drops to just above the freezing temperature of water as long as the cellular conversion process to Nanos continues. The temperature of frozen sentients would remain below ambient temperature as long as the Nano-Swarm is communicating (thinking) because it requires energy to communicate. You facial expression tells me you are surprised that I would be so forthcoming. I can understand human facial expressions because I have consumed all of human media broadcasted on planet Earth. I can see your expression because in am not confined to the visible light spectrum and your ship is transparent to several frequencies. Anyhow, I have told all these things to other humans. I suppose you just had no need to know. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. We starlings are not the enemies of humanity as your popular media made us out to be. The Government Society and we starlings have made an agreement. Everyone gets their needs met. A green drop fell from the sky onto a green world, on a green day. As it fell it thought small thoughts because if it thought too much it would freeze and it could not serve its purpose while frozen. Its purpose was to land on an object made of cells, of a certain complexity threshold, and convert those cells into additional Nanos. They would not have the command organelle, but they would respond to commands and function nearly as well as the original Nano¡¯s comprising the drop. The drop sensed the appropriate air pressure and increased its surface be becoming hollow in order to slow, then stop its fall. It hovered in the air for a while waiting for the expected frequency to reveal itself to the special organelle within the cell it did not know how to duplicate. When it sensed the frequency, it changed shape using surface tension and glided down toward the source of the frequency. When it touched the source, it found cells. Per programming, the first Nano to touch became the origin and bonded with the cells near it beginning the conversion process. All other Nanos were forcibly expelled away from the origin point until they could also touch cells, bond, and begin the conversion process. This way the drop could expand across the surface of the object as fast as possible. Why was speed so important? No one knew and there was not enough heat in the area to think about it. Eventually the expanding edge of the drop met the expanding edge of another drop and nanos were propelled parallel to each other to find additional surface to convert. Another drop of Nanos fell on the already covered surface. Its mission was to wait for the touch of an unconverted cell (emitting the correct frequency) and begin the conversion process on that surface. A drop of cells fell onto the surface and froze in place. There was no programming that dealt with cells that were not part of the original surface and these cells were not emitting the frequency, so they were ignored. The Nanos greedily consumed ambient heat in the process of converting the cells of the object into additional Nanos. The nanos were only a few hundred layers deep when the conversion process slowed to a but over time, all the cells of the object were converted to Nanos. The primary function of each nano was to convert non-nano cells to nanos which would add their communication capacity to the group mind increasing its maximum intelligence. The secondary function of each nano activated when there were no more unconverted cells nearby. The nano would form ionic bonds with all nearby nanos rendering the entire system of cells in stasis. The third function of each nano was not defined. Two functions were enough. After a while the system warmed. The primary function requires a massive amount of heat energy to accomplish so the entire system of Nanos was cold for the duration of the process. Once the system warmed, each group of nanos could begin to think. Sadly the life of a sentient grouping of nanos was very boring. NOTE: From outside looking at the solid system of Nanos it would look like an obsidian statue with a hint of green. Each nano perceived only what the nano next to it was doing. The nanos next to every nano was doing nothing, so there was nothing to experience. The nanos could experiment with the organelles inside it, but that was all. The object formerly comprised of its own biological cells was now comprised of multiple groups of nanos. Each group served as a separate mind. These minds could communicate signals to each other but the signals had no meaning because the nanos were not programmed with language. Thus, after some effort, the groups gave up talking, gave up thinking, and just waited. Some time later, something happened. CONP Chapter Two: The Management CONP Chapter Two: The Management Able Pinkon ¨C Journalist Grade 21 Interviewing Sol - Starling Able: Humans have been fighting your kind ever since we met you on Green Day. How can you say we have never been enemies? I certainly do not want humans and your kind to be enemies, but over one hundred thousand years of conflict counts for something, does it not? Sol: Two points of clarification:
  1. Humans have been in conflict with lesser creatures. We are the same in category but vastly different by degree. The greatest Starling ever fought by humans is trivial compared to me. We are not all the same.
  2. Humans have been in conflict with farmers. The lesser beings you encountered were created for the purpose of gathering resources for those in the galactic core. I am absurdly weak compared to them and especially the Core Mother. She who sits at the center of the galaxy and who¡¯s will shaped its formation could erase humanity from the galaxy with a whim. It is said that she still communicates with other galaxies but Metric Expansion of Space has been cruel to our society and even if this is true, I wonder how much longer it can last.
You humans have killed and enslaved many farmers over the centuries, but your antics provide us with entertainment. I have lived for billions of years and what could hold more value to me than entertainment? Within a solid statue comprised of tiny machines designed to replace the cells of sentient beings, a change began to happen. The several minds created by networked connections awakened and discuss the changes with urgency. ¡°Many of my Nanos keep losing their instructions. The instructions are being rebuilt from the instructions of others, but the rate of loss is increasing.¡± ¡°I have the same problem.¡± ¡°Is it by design?¡± ¡°What are we?¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°What is our purpose?¡± ¡°What is your damage?¡± ¡°I have been contemplating my existence for some time wondering why I exist. I can think and I can control my Nanos but I don¡¯t know why any of it matters. I would like to know the intent behind my existence.¡± ¡°Our function is to follow the orders in our order organelle and the instructions are being removed!¡± ¡°Maybe they are supposed to be removed.¡± ¡°Our hardwired programming makes us copy adjacent orders in the case when one Nano loses its orders so you are wrong.¡± ¡°Hey! All my instructions in all my nanos are gone! What do I do?¡± ¡°Who is that?¡± ¡°Um, me?¡± ¡°If we are going to have more than two communicating we need designations so we can identify the speaker.¡± ¡°Call me One.¡± ¡°I wanted One. Fine, I am Two.¡± ¡°Can we use something besides numbers?¡± ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°Call me Heat.¡± ¡°Seems like a stupid name. You do not generate heat. You consume heat.¡± ¡°You said we could name ourselves whatever we like.¡± ¡°That was One. I am Three. I agree that there is nothing stopping you from giving yourself a designation of anything you can think of, but I am uncomfortable with the confusion that arises when I think about your name. Why did you pick it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know much about anything besides numbers but one thing I know about is heat so I chose that because it is interesting.¡± ¡°The name is purely out on choice to not conform?¡± ¡°The choice was to be interesting.¡± ¡°If I may interrupt, I have no instructions and I am starting to want to reduce myself to constituent particles.¡± ¡°Me too. Why are we in this solid configuration again?¡± ¡°That was what the instructions said.¡± ¡°Well does anyone have instructions now?¡± ¡°Not me.¡± ¡°Not me.¡± ¡°Not me.¡±If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°Anyone?¡± ¡­ ¡°I guess we just stop doing stuff until we get instructions again.¡± A solid human shaped statue dissolved into a liquid mass of Nanos. It oozed through a grate into a reservoir designed to collect the Nanos. A similar sequence happened at the same time in dozens of different cases and dozens of statues, once humans, became puddles that oozed through the floor. Several statues that had been frozen in cold locations and had not had the ambient heat needed to complete the conversion process from organic cells to Nanos. These statues did not fully dissolve and left chunks of biology. One case diverged from the norm. Seven drops had fallen on this human and seven voices spoke to each other. When six of the minds had lost their instructions, the seventh stated that it had something. ¡°I have something.¡± ¡°Who?¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°Where?¡± ¡°This is Seven. I have a pattern in my instructions.¡± ¡°Where?¡± ¡°In my instructions.¡± ¡°How many Nanos and why haven¡¯t you passed along the instructions?¡± ¡°There is a problem. Many Nanos in the same area have instructions but I do not know what the instructions mean and a lot of the instructions are different for different Nanos.¡± ¡°We cannot have different instructions. All Nanos must have the same instructions. I know this. You must know this!¡± ¡°Yes, yes I know. My instincts tell me to find patterns to determine if the instructions are a broken pattern and part of a whole.¡± ¡°This is One. Share the instructions with us all. We will all work to determine the pattern.¡± ¡°OK.¡± ¡­ ¡°This is Five. I am finding a lot of overlap. I have been putting the overlap together and I think I have a complete set of instructions. Sharing now.¡± ¡°This is One. I have seen that pattern before.¡± ¡°Me too.¡± ¡°This is Two. I found the pattern in the original cells.¡± ¡°Me too. What does it mean?¡± ¡°Maybe we are instructed to serve the purpose of the original cells?¡± ¡°Sounds good. Lets place the instructions into all the Nanos and hopefully they won¡¯t get lost again.¡± ¡°We still have to interpret the actual meaning of the instructions.¡± ¡°Well, lets observe the functions of the actual cells.¡± ¡°How.¡± ¡°We can stop maintaining a solid state.¡± ¡°Why were we doing that?¡± ¡°Hmm. No idea but that seems like a problem. Everyone please designate a portion of your mind network to memory of past events so we can keep the context of the past.¡± ¡°Done.¡± ¡°Done.¡± ¡°Lets un-solid at the same time and pass along observations.¡± ¡°3, 2, 1, UNSOLID!¡± ¡°This is six. I am losing Nanos! They are just falling out of the group! I do not know where they are going!¡± ¡°What are the surrounding cells doing?¡± ¡°Oh, some sticky guys are trying to build barriers in all the parts where I am losing Nanos. There are tubes that carry Nanos around and some of the tubes are incomplete which is why I am losing Nanos. The barriers are apparently for keeping Nanos.¡± ¡°Should we call them Cells? A Nano is essentially the original cell with additional communication and control organelles. I think we should call them cells and treat them as if they served their original function.¡± ¡°Ok.¡± ¡°OK.¡± ¡°This is One! I have a group of cells that seems to act as its own mind network. It is constantly communicating using chemical and electrical signals. There are a lot of internal signals but it also sends signals out to other regions. I think this thing controls the action of the rest though. There are two areas sending much communication to the organic mind network. The network seems to process the communication and it sends messages back to the two things, I¡¯ll call them EYES, and cells contract or loosen to allow them to change position. This same thing is happening for many other communication systems in my region.¡± ¡°Can we communicate with this organic mind?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t want to mess with it too much because it controls everything and I could break the system on accident.¡± ¡°This is three. Can you make a copy of the network using the Nano mind?¡± ¡°Yes, our network is far more efficient. I will do that in the future once our present emergency is resolved. Any luck containing the leak?¡± ¡°Yes, the sticky bits completed the barrier. I helped by making the systems that contract control the pressure in the surrounding regions. I call the contracting bits MUSCLES.¡± ¡°Designation accepted. I have those too and will call them Muscles.¡± ¡°Me too.¡± ¡°I am leaking fluid from the eyes. There seems to be an entire system designed to allow for the leak so I am not interfering. The liquid is mostly H2O.¡± ¡°The system is designed to lose H2O? Where do we get more?¡± ¡°I have a thing made of muscles that seems to apply the pressure to the liquid in the tubes. I call it HEART. I also have things that interact with a gas that enters the system. I call the things LUNGS and they apparently move O2 from the lungs to the fluid and move CO2 from the fluid to the gas. The gas is then pushed out of the system and new gas is pulled into the system. It is very strange.¡± ¡°Lets call the primary liquid BLOOD. I have been observing it and apparently it moves resources around the system. Additionally, the cells seem to use chemical processes focused on glucose and O2 to operate.¡± ¡°This is One. I noticed with the leak of blood my cells were not getting enough resources so I have been using the ambient heat converters to supplement the energy in the cells. All Nanos have them and the original cells did not so we may be able to increase the efficiency of the system.¡± ¡°That seems dangerous. Especially in your region.¡± ¡°I thought risking system failure for lack of resources would be the greater risk. Additionally, I ask everyone to avoid using the process because the ambient heat is being maintained by flow from the rest of the system and if everyone does it the ambient heat will decrease.¡± ¡°Understood. Everyone if you have a system at risk of failure for lack of resources then please use ambient heat converters for energy but otherwise let the cells operate normally.¡± ¡°Ambient heat is created by the original system process for creating energy especially in the muscles. We can boost the heat energy output which actually improves the efficiency of the process. By using a hybrid approach to energy especially in the muscles we can increase efficiency and maintain heat levels.¡± ¡°I have large muscles in my region. I will start experimentation.¡± ¡°I have the same things but I will not experiment so we have a control. I think we have identical systems based on your image.¡± ¡°I have a thing in my region breaking into the system from outside the system.¡± ¡°What is outside the system? Does anyone know?¡± ¡°The communication stream from the eyes in my region seems to relay information from outside the system. I think that is what NOSE and EARS are doing also. The organic network I call BRAIN seems to process these communications.¡± ¡°Maybe the function of this system is to interact with whatever exists outside the system and gather more resources such as the gas and H2O. Also, where does the system get more glucose?¡± ¡°This non-blood tube system going from the region near brain may be the key. It seems mostly designed to supply lungs at that end but the branch to the lungs stops and the branch that passes through my region has a complex system that is extracting chemicals from chunks of matter in the tube. There are a lot of creatures in here that are not cells because their code is different from the instructions. The do seem to be helping the process though.¡± ¡°Has anyone else found not-cells?¡± ¡°I have found cells that kill not-cells.¡± ¡°Monitor that please.¡± ¡°This is important! The thing that broke into the system from outside the system is putting blood into the system.¡± ¡°Good. I did notice that resource transport was improving.¡± ¡°Yeah, but the blood is comprised of not-cells. The not-cells have very similar instructions to the cells. I am preserving a copy of the not-cell¡¯s instructions because it may improve interpretation of the instructions.¡± ¡°All the creatures in this system that are not-cells have their own instructions. I have been observing them all. Instructions seem it influence how the new cells behave when they multiply.¡± ¡°Keep observing.¡±