Dream Dance

Day 148 - My Starship, Our Seed

Very near the most massive body -- other than the star itself -- in a remote solar system, a tiny object appeared. Gravitational waves had presaged its arrival, so the sudden change in mass distribution had no affect on the trajectories of other bodies, not that a mass that small would have affected them much anyway. After a few minutes of thrust to stabilize its orbit, the tiny being became still, but turned inward and started to change.

Originally it resembled a minute grain, perhaps a thin piece of rice. After only a few hours the linear form had swelled to many times its size, and had extruded multiple varied appendages. Most of the new bulk was empty space, save for a pressurized gas which seemed to nurture the even tinier parasites that dwelt within.

As soon as it had appeared it had begun to call out. And heard a reply. Another being, although one without parasites, echoed the call and the two exchanged considerable gossip. The other being had been long in the system waiting, and directed the newcomer to the closest patch of fertile ground. A small asteroid orbited low inside the orbits of the large body's natural moons. It was not a stable orbit, but it had been maintained there by the other being, employing a range of devices to convert the rock to more usable resources.

The newcomer attached itself to the bit of rock and immediately began to grow. It extended a long tail in one direction and a spine in the other. The being along with the rock began to spin end over end, and the parasites reveled in the slight change in forces. Shortly thereafter it started to pulse with energy, and a stream of particles pushed it out of orbit. The newcomer, coaxed by the other being, had merged itself with the rock and was slowly falling into the inner system.

It would decelerate for many months, slowly transforming itself to please its parasitic masters, until it finally eased itself into orbit around the fifth planet of the system. By that time it had fully rooted into its bit of soil and had sprouted leaves and flowers of every conceivable type. It was also ready to bloom, and to send new seeds spraying in every direction. But it was not yet time to spawn.

While ready to unleash its fecundity our starship has restrained itself, or been restrained by its lack of resources, generating only the minimal required services and facilities to support the human mission here. Given the green light we'd spread unchecked, our technology acting like the ultimate invasive species in a virgin environment. The limitations of star travel made us build ships like seeds, but we don't use them that way. It's far more important to explore than to terraform.

Day 144 - Problems of Power Math

I'm very, very tired. Between all my own research, plus co-authoring Wald's paper, I've been trying to model my power system. It's not my field, but while I would normally collaborate with someone with the right expertise I'm trying to do this quietly. I'm still a little shy from getting slapped down by the PI several months ago for what looked like a paranoid outburst about calibration errors in the PPS. I don't really want to draw attention to myself again unless I have something solid to work with.

I have discussed the problem with Mission Support. They were less than supportive, unfortunately. It's clear to me from my own direct experience that my fuel cells are not running up to their capacity. Not even close. Anything energy-intensive like heating water or just running the AC on full will bring down the printer or the crapper. The sustained juice just isn't there when I need it, and it's driving me mad. I can't do my job when half my equipment has to be off-line half the time.

MS assumes that I'm the problem -- that I have something else running and just failed to mention it. They look at the fuel cell self-diagnostics, declare that everything's working right and tell me to turn off unnecessary devices. There are none! I stay professional with them, but frankly it's enough to make me want to punch someone.

The modeling should be simple enough. I grasp the principles -- I put it together the first day. My collector array is a graceful reddish-black flower; eleven long, light petals of photoreceptor around a dynamic hub that points them toward the "sun", in practice just the brightest part of the always-overcast sky. 21 square meters of photoactive enzyme on a carbon matrix turns water, carbon-dioxide and photons into a steady drip of aqueous ethanol. That runs through a tiny pipe to my hab, where my two fuel cells combine it with oxygen. The "burning" creates a tiny potential multiplied across acres of proton-exchange membrane into enough watts to run my gear. At least in theory.

The collector works like a charm. I know it's not the problem because there's excess ethanol produced every day. What overflows the tiny reservoir gets absorbed by the crapper (which I subsequently consume in melange punch). The fuel cells aren't burning all their inputs, which means that they are the cause of my lack of amps. It seems obvious to me.

But I'm not an expert, and I've jumped to incorrect conclusions before. So I'm building a model, but it's really slow going. The technical specs are larded with terms I've never heard and the theory is worse. The math is making me crazy. Still, it's better lighting this feeble candle than sitting in darkness. Or taking cold showers in a hot hab.

Day 140 - Pi Day

The party tonight is huge. There's an ESA conference in town and there are prominent academics from dozens of schools all over the campus. And that means that Pi's party is overflowing into the street.The kitchens are filled with volunteers from several surrounding schools, and the veteran servers (and I guess that includes me now) are overworked just training the yokels. It's not the kind of night that I expect to first talk to our most illustrious host.

It was today on Earth. I was taking a break, just looking out over one of the more hidden balconies into the gently lighted streets of Potsdam. It was a Wednesday, so it was relatively quiet. I had been helping cater Pi's parties for about two months now and I was starting to feel quite at home. I had even dressed for the special occasion rather than just in the outfit that the servers preferred, which was part of the problem. My nice shoes were making my feet hurt which was why I was leaning against a back railing of Pi's extraordinary townhouse. Then a voice came from behind me.

"And who might you be?" she asked. I turned and here is where my poor footwear might have been an advantage. Naia pi-Kakoska is a tall woman, and although I'm not as tall as she I found that the 5 cm heels in my favorite titanium sandals put us at nearly eye level. I told her my name. She asked about my field of research and oddly unfazed I went into depth about it.

That was strange. I can only assume that it was a combination of being caught out of context for a server as well as being in a kind of reverie. At that moment I had been mentally comparing the lighted city below me to Crab cities and what differences could be discerned from that middle distance. But it was also Pi herself -- she made it easy to go on and on about things that she probably knew better than I did.

Pi fancies herself the last of the Greek muses, an equal sibling to those who inspired democracy, philosophy, drama and science itself. She drapes her tall, stately form in diaphanous robes hanging from her expansive shoulders and outlining her generous curves. Her back, ever exposed regardless of the garment, is covered in a great feathered serpent. Its enormous head nibbles Her ears, its great frilled necks spans Her shoulder blades and its scaly body writhes down Her back and disappears behind the folds of Her dress. Only Her lovers know where the tail ends up, and they aren't telling.

As we chatted those who would demand Her attention began to surround us on the terrace. I could sense in my peripheral vision that orbits had changed. The galaxy of the party had found a new center of gravity and I suddenly felt embarrassed and a bit ashamed. Struck from my reverie I stammered a little and I knew the interview was over.

"You should talk to Paal," She said, starting to turn away. "He's looking into Crabs in the same way." And the She swept away. Poof. She was gone. The center of the party moved on, and my life was changed forever. For many years I felt that this was a turning point -- a recognition that was valid but undeserved. Like a stroke of luck that might happen to anyone with the right talents.

Took me years to understand how She would use me.

Day 136 - If Feeling Means I Feel Bad, I Don't Want to Feel

Sharing your feelings is bullshit.

Everyone always talks about the importance of honesty. They talk and talk about how we should talk and talk, how we should expresses what we feel, what we want from other people, say what we think about people and talk about what they say about us makes us feel about them and about us. Especially in love relationships. They say if you can't share what you feel with the ones you love how can you be close? If you keep secrets or suppress your feelings from your lover then you're not really in love. All feelings, all put into words, all the time.

It's crap. In my experience talking about feelings always makes the feelings worse. Say someone says something that hurts my feelings. I feel bad. But they don't; they feel fine because they don't know they made me feel bad. Suppose I tell them how I feel. Now I still feel bad and they feel bad too. What can they do? They can't go back in time and undo the hurtful thing. They can apologize but that doesn't make them or me feel better because I knew they didn't mean to hurt me in the first place. Exchange my bruised ego for awkward silences.

Or say I have a longing, a stupid hopeless longing born of genuine and mutual passion. I feel bad because I know it cannot be, but if I express it I feel worse. Especially if it takes 18 agonizing minutes to reach Earth, and any reply will take another 18 minutes to return to Mars. If that were to happen the true depth of my despair would envelop and consume me. The other person would then have to cope with my painful desire, intensified by 36 minutes of shame and self-loathing at having expressed it. And when the answer finally came, and it's the inevitable shock and anger, nothing could ever be the same. I would have to reach down inside my own heart and squeeze it dry to stop the painful poison that would otherwise choke me to death.

And even now, sometimes I cry. I miss you, Ke.

Day 131 - Introducing the Predjudice of my Instincts

I have repeatedly expressed my admiration for the gracefulness of the Tanzen. They are graceful -- almost painfully so. But that does not mean they are pretty. Not at all.

Like many of the land animals on Sigma 957 (and some fish), the Tanzen are members of the order caudoabdomiea -- meaning "belly-tail." They are quadrupeds, but their abdomens continue past the rear hip joint into a tail-like appendage. On the Tanzen this is a conical tail that juts out and down below their hips, curving slightly down. This can give them the appearance of large insects, looking especially like angry wasps from the waist down.

Functionally the tail contains the fermentation stage of their four-stage digestive system, consisting of a patchwork of spongy compartments holding chyme with a select brood of gut bacteria. As one might imagine, a system like this is susceptible to bouts of infection by unfriendly microbes. When this happens the Tanzen like all caudoabdomiea, who are incapable of vomiting or diarrhea, will void the compromised compartment by sequestering it in a large black boil that eventually bursts. The boil itself is grotesque, and the bursting is disgusting, but the smell -- so my sensors, and others who have been closer, tell me -- is unimaginable.

As four-limbed bipeds, the Tanzen have a superficial similarity to humans. It's relatively easy to picture ourselves taking on the same poses or doing the same motions. But there are some very disquieting differences. Their limbs are longer than ours and have more joints. The Tanzen leg has a pro-coxa, coxa, dorsal and ventral trochanter, tibia, femur, and a long and complex tarsus. The tarsus in particular has a very insect-like appearance due to a row of "barbs" which evoke the serrations on a grasshopper leg. They are actually articulated toes which contribute to the Tanzen ability to move quickly through tangled jungle. Nontheless they only reinforce the angry wasp look. Sometimes angry wasp with hideous boils.

The arms aren't too bad. They have an overall comforting shape despite the too-many joints and the hands that look basically like thick tentacles. They are a bit long though. A standing Tanzen may often rest one hand on the ground for support. Some refer to this as "knuckle walking" which I think is just meant to be insulting. They walk fully bipedally and with greater efficiency than humans.

But their faces. One can certainly argue that their faces are distributed, what with their ears on their forearms and their noses in their chests, but clearly they have a head with two eyes and a mouth. For 2 million years of human instinct that's a face. Unless you see it open or chewing the mouth seems normal, if a bit droopy and unhappy; their normal look of an old man with no teeth gets interrupted rather rudely when the teeth emerge from a huge sideways maw. The eyes, though -- body language is impossible if you can't tell where they are looking.

The eye design of their class is unique. Instead of using pinholes or lenses or collimating devices like compound eyes, eyes on this planet alone among all others evolved based on diffraction gratings. Microscopic structures in the surface of the flat lens focuses light at the same time that they split it into spectra. The photoreceptors a few layers down are exquisitely responsive to nearly all wavelengths, and they perceive color based on the position of the sensor relative to the grating. Tanzen can actually see all the wavelengths of light directly rather than inferring them from a few samples as we do. Their visual acuity, which depends on the size of their black, shiny eye patches, can sometimes be measured in arcseconds.

And yet all this novel physical perfection can't overcome the fact that they look like old men wearing sunglasses. Old men with sour, unhappy mouths and no noses. And bodies that look like an arthritic stick insect collided with a giant wasp.

I say all this to explain that I am not immune to the biases of my perceptions. Every time I look at them all of these impressions and reactions arise, unbidden and unwanted, and try to interpose themselves into my understanding. The power of science is that I don't have to be a slave to these instinctive, cultural, or personal prejudices. I can observe and chart and log what I see, and when all is said and done what I find will not be the result of my failings or foibles or preferences. It will be what is really there. The crucible of science will have burned away the slag and impurities of my emotions -- whether they be inclined to repulse or embrace -- and what will be left will be the truth.

The truth can be exhilarating or it can be sobering, but what it never is, is dull.

Day 127 - Chemistry, Anatomy, Evolutionary History: Somewhat Important

My best lecturer at UP was a young privatdozent named fu-Jaardansky for Bio 402: Comparative Astrobiology. The name was an anachronism, or course. Long ago all the sciences that deal with extraterrestrial subject matter dropped the "astro" or "exo" prefixes. There's no more astrophysics or astrobiology -- there's just physics and biology. Even geology, the long holdout, is finally a space-born enterprise. If you study rock formations on Mars you're not a "planetologist" or an "areologist" as some used to insist, you're a geologist. The skills are the same whether you're on Earth or in space, and the things we learn studying other planets applies to Earth as well.

Genetic chemistry was one of his favorite callbacks. There are three naturally-occurring genetic molecules -- RNA, DNA and LNA -- and some common variations like kRNA and As-enriched DNA. Any time there was an odd adaptation or physiology -- which there always is in biology, "astro" or non -- he would always try to tie it back in some way to the fundamental genetic chemistry. It was a quirky affectation that made for thought-provoking lectures, but it wasn't why I loved the class.

It was the Crabs. They made up fully 35% of the syllabus. Crabs are based on kRNA, and they have a chemistry very unlike ours. Early ancestors of Crabs were radially-symmetric aquatic creatures a bit like Echinoderms. At some point their six-fold symmetry became bilateral resulting in hexapods with a front and a back, but with many replicated organs. The different organs specialized over time and the modern Crab looks like a native Bilaterian.

It still has traces of its origins, however, such as an esophagus that passes through its brain. As a radially-symmetric creature the digestive tract used to pass through the center of the body, feeding at the bottom of the organism and excreting out the top. The nervous system, used for sensing and movement, was a ring around the circumference of the body near the eyes and legs. As the lineage evolved the mouth moved to the front, the anus to the rear and the central nervous system got more complex, but the one still had to pass through the other. Everything a Crab eats takes a path directly through its no-longer symmetric but still donut-shaped brain.

This arrangement would turn out to be a haven for parasites, to the Crabs' good fortunes.

Despite fu-Jaardansky's fascinating approach, however, it's not chemistry or even anatomy that make Crabs what they are. It's behavior. And Crabs had a lot of behavior that needed explaining. Whatever the genetic molecule is made from, the organism must pass it along, preferably it's own more than those of others. Behaviors tell us more about biology than any of those other things. Naturally I think so -- it's my field.

Day 123 - I Wish Them the Best, but with Reservations

Jalyn's pregnant. A girl. I guess that's not that much of a surprise given how often she expressed her desire to have a child here, and to have the first child here. She even married Dr. po-Galchen in the Beta session just to be old and traditional about it. I know we should all be happy, but this disturbs me.

I would never argue that she shouldn't be allowed to have a child if she wants to (despite what it would be like to have Jalyn as a mother). She has the right, and the evidence for the objective value of maternal autonomy is conclusive. Experimental ethics can answer these kinds of questions fairly easily, so despite whatever one may feel about the matter one only has to point to the body of research and fold one's arms. The matter is settled. Given my own history I'd be silly to disagree.

But there are other factors. Children born out here will not have the full range of options. We have e3 technology -- which would be the norm on Earth -- but we don't have the medical facilities to cope with early-onset rejection syndrome. Without the neo-natal equipment and personnel to handle the worst-case scenario, this child will have to be fitted with e2 enhancements. She can be upgraded later to some extent, but it's a definite disadvantage compared to Earthly peers. Which is the other problem. An eight year-old child arriving on Earth after this mission will be a walking time capsule. The culture that she was born into will be 25 years out of date, and all her cohorts will be e4's. It's just not something that you do to a child.

It all really means that they're not planning to go home; they're already imagining their lives here. They're picking out where to build cities and homesteads and retreats, and plotting their children's roles in the future politics of the new colony, and they're starting to have those children. It's natural, I suppose, but betrays a sickening lack of commitment to our real mission here. We are here for the science.

They seem to have forgotten that my research may yet show that the Tanzen are sentient. If they are then this is their home, and we have to leave. I'm used to coming to unpopular conclusions, and I can take the heat. I just wish people didn't stake their families on their preferred outcome.