Asher Landerson (AL): “You can’t be serious.”
SR: “We have the photographs. The colonists created the plants, and then the plants spread outwards in—“
AL: “They were a technologically advanced society, and they were done in by plants. Not animals even, but plants.”
SR: “Genetically engineered plants, designed specifically to overcome adverse conditions.”
AL: “I don’t buy it.”
Maria Santiago (MS): “We aren’t asking you to buy it, we are telling you what we found.”
Zheng Hui (ZH): “Maria is right, let Susana speak.”
SR: “As I was saying, the colonists created the plants, and the plants spread out geometrically around the planet. The plants produced atmosphere, including greenhouse gases, and ate everything. This this is a picture 5 years after the plants were introduced to the wild, and this is a picture 5 years after that.”
ZH: “Is that fast?”
SR: “Reasonably fast. Certainly faster than old Earth plants. Of course, remember that the temperatures at this point in time are considerably below freezing – old Earth plants wouldn’t even survive.”
ZH: “How did the plants not freeze?”
SR: “That is simple. We could do that in the Tien Terra system, if we wanted. I could do it, with access to publically available files and the right hardware.”
ZH: “Very well.”
SR: “Here’s a picture 5 years after that.”
ZH: “Is that… going faster?”
SR: “Correct. As the temperature warmed, it no doubt improved the metabolic rate of the plants. But the next picture is the impressive one.”
ZH: “That’s… that’s definitely faster.”
MS: “Goodness.”
Dr. Tanaka (DT): “That… shouldn’t be possible.”
SR: “It shouldn’t be for conventional plants, no. In the set of images from this time period, the plants are growing at about walking speed. But plants are inherently limited in their growth speed by lack of energy – plants are powered by the sun, and thus their rate of growth is, essentially, limited by the size of their shadow. These plants are growing at a rate much faster than the energy that new seedlings could possibly absorb.”
AL: “There must be a mistaken assumption there somewhere, then.”
SR: “Sort of. A new seedling has no ability to absorb sunlight. Instead it feeds on a store of energy from the seed to grow enough that it can acquire light. Fungus grows in the absence of light by digesting organic material, but the… ground on this planet is very low energy.”
DT: “Seeds, then. Impressive seeds.”
SR: “Possibly. However I suspect that these plants are actually one intermingling super-organism. Or, more specifically, the plants grow by extending tendrils, which then produce buds. The tendrils provide nutrients for the buds, which the buds digest to sustain an incredibly high metabolism. Once growth is accomplished, and the area has been covered sufficiently to absorb the maximum amount of light, the plant goes from consuming resources to using sunlight and the nutrients in the soil to provide food for the plants still growing.”
ZH: “Is there another picture?”
SR: “Here is 5 years after that. If anything, the vascular system of the plant network has improved, and the rate of growth is even faster. Also the planetary climate is above freezing. But look at the growth patterns here.”
ZH: “What am I looking at?”
SR: “Well, it appears that the plants induce genetic variation, to self-improve. What you are looking at is an area where a mutation improved growth to the point that it is out-competing the surrounding plants in the race for more land. And look at this other picture: Most of the plants simply border the new ocean, growing out a kilometer or so, then slowing to a halt from lack of nutrients. But here a mutation has figured out how to grow freely on the ocean, and is expanding in a hemisphere.”
DT: “Shouldn’t there be nutrients in the ocean?”
SR: “No, the oceans on this planet are all too small for oceanic currents, and thus the newly melted water is fairly nutrient-poor.”
ZH: “Wait, are the humans still around?”
SR: “At this stage, yes. But look at this picture of the oceans, just a year after the water-dwelling mutation appeared.”
ZH: “Looks like the plants are growing in from all sides.”
SR: “The plants have an ability to communicate mutations that have proven beneficial in certain circumstances along the same network that nutrients are moved along. Probably some sort of retroviral production capability.”
ZH: “That… sounds bad?”
SR: “It is unbelievably bad. I shudder at their foolishness. You never give your tools the ability to change and improve themselves, particularly not replicating tools.”
MR: “This is like your AI scenario.”
SR: “Not as bad, since the improvement is evolutionary to the environment, rather than conscious improvement – that is, it may adapt to everything, but it doesn’t have the capability to adapt a better ability to adapt. Or doesn’t already have it. So nothing goes exponential.”
ZH: “So… the plants adapted to… deal with the humans?”
AL: “See, this is the part I don’t get. Even if a plant is growing at walking speed, it should be trivial for humans to fend it off. You burn it, you cut it… and that’s not getting into actual weapons. Plants can’t stand up to the technology of a colony that once travelled the stars.”
SR: “It’s not a matter of technology, I don’t think. It’s a matter of industry, and a matter of time. Consider, let’s say you had a nuclear device. A lithium based fusion bomb. How much area do you think you could clear?”
AL: “A huge area. Thousands upon thousands of square kilometers.”
SR: “How long do you think it would take the plants to regrow into that area? Moreover, when your own living area is limited, your industry now devoted to driving back constantly growing mutant vines, where are you going to mine the lithium? How many bombs could your produce each year?”
ZH: “How many people were in the colony?”
SR: “No more than one hundred thousand, including the ship’s crew.”
ZH: “I’m beginning to see the problem.”
AL: “No you don’t. You build factories to manufacture servitors to cut more trees to build more servitors. The number of humans is irrelevant to production capacity.”
SR: “Mr. Landerson is correct. From the images I have, I can’t determine the manner of technology being used to fight the out-of-control plant growth. However, the colonists did visibly survive nearly 50 years, sometimes even growing the borders of their colony.”
AL: “Sometimes?”
SR: “I surmise that the plants improved over time. There are several cases where the measures used by the colonists became less effective, and the plants moved inwards.”
ZH: “And in the end?”
SR: “To swift for me to see with these still shots. One month they were there, the next month only green was visible.”
ZH: “Could they be alive? You mentioned in your report that the lack of activity could be consistent with dwelling quietly underground.”
SR: “It’s not impossible. Underground fusion power plants can be run off of groundwater, and with sufficient digging, geothermal power-plants should be able to run indefinitely. But the fact is, if they could receive our messages and send their own… they would have already done that. Our other choice is going down and digging, but that seems unwise.”
ZH: “We have to do something here.”
SR: “We already did – we discovered the history of what happened, at least in broad terms. A cautionary tale. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to get a sample from the plants down there. I just don’t see it as safe to land the Astral Zephyr there – there’s a good chance we’d never be able to take off again.”
ZH: “A sample? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
SR: “The plant is limited by sunlight, and by organic material. The danger is from scale – a planet of interconnected nutritional tendrils and trillions of potential mutations is far more dangerous than a single starved plant, with only one chance at mutation. On a world like Tian Terra Alpha, it would be perfectly safe to have a garden of the stuff, just somewhat expensive to keep it within bounds. If things went seriously wrong, a developed planet has enough industrial power eradicate the plant, even if they were so negligent as to let the plant grow to, say, half the planet.”
ZH: “Well, maybe we can bring some back, once we get a shuttle – fly in, snag a few of the top branches, and fly off. No need to land.”
SR: “I’ll remind you the next time we are here with a shuttle.”
ZH: “I hope the next planet isn’t like this.”
SR: “I hope so too. But a civilization has to keep on not destroying itself every year, compared to only screwing up once. I’d like to think that the planets on the Gateway system are the rule, but consider: Only technologically advanced success stories can discover the Gateway transmission. Perhaps there are many other colonies out there who, instead of never developing to the point of building a Gateway, are actually wiped out due to their own mistakes. Perhaps self-destruction is the natural tendency for man-kind?”
ZH: “That’s a horrible thought. I hope not.”
SR: “We will see, won’t we? That’s the wonder and horror of our position: We are the first to be able to discover these truths. Runs a chill down your spine, doesn’t it?”
ZH: “I’ll… I’ll find a new planet.”
SR: “I’m done here. I’ll be writing up a more full report on our way to the new planet, if anyone is interested in reading it. Thank you for listening.”
