Design Monologue 12: Adaptation

When the Abelites landed on their frozen homeworld, they had a choice to make.

Do we just rough it out on a world with year-round sub-zero temperatures, insufficient oxygen, and a massive difference in lighting between day and night?

Or do we adapt?

Genetic engineering and nanotechnology were alive and well in 2088. The original missions anticipated some need to adapt humans to their world, where terraforming failed to adapt the world to the humans. The colonists hoped to avoid, for obvious reasons, tampering with their own genetic code, but at least they recognized the need to bring the requisite technology on board.

Abel is an Earth-like world, currently in the midst of a global ice age. The atmosphere is thin, but the colder temperature means there is enough oxygen for humans on the surface. Far less water vapor exists in the atmosphere than in Earth's, due to the extreme cold, which makes for a very clear sky in both day and night.

At first, they stayed on their ship, visiting the planet to try to find suitable building sites. The first thing to build were farms, as the ship's ability to provide food and water wouldn't last forever. Agriculture, while not as easy as on Earth, was a relatively simple affair; they built sprawling complexes on the ice shelf, covered by panels which allowed in a certain amount of light, as a greenhouse, and absorbed the rest for energy. The combination of light, abundant fresh water (albeit a little frozen), and existing biological mass gave them the possibility of renewable food and water production.

The support structures for these farms grew, and became the first planetside cities. They colonized the planet in much the way they'd have done for an airless, arid moon, with the advantage of abundant ice and a breathable atmosphere. Abundant minerals, including silicon and aluminum, were to be found underneath the ice where it capped land, so there was no shortage of material to build cities.

They soon perfected methods of carving the cities out of the ice itself, allowing for a much grander scope of construction, as the flow of minerals, and their industrial capacity, were not very high at first. With this method, they need only hollow out a cave and build smaller structures within it. The high-density glacial ice served well enough as a foundation.

The canopies of their cities were built to capture as much sunlight as possible for solar energy, as it would be some time before they could begin building new fusion reactors, and they had neither the fissile material nor the ready liquid water for a fission reactor. Of course, it goes without saying that they had no fossil fuels.

Underneath the canopies, it was quite dark. Above, it was terribly bright during the day, with the reflection of the sunlight off the sheer sheets of ice. Even at night, the thinner atmosphere meant much more starlight. They adapted mainly with technology, wearing lenses which blocked light in the day and enhanced it in the dark of the cities.

When the Koruunite invasion came, the Abelites dug deeper. They'd long ago mastered burrowing through the ice to explore the ocean below. They realized they had little ability to defend themselves on the surface, so they began building new cities on the underside of the ice sheet, in the ocean. The technology was much the same. It was no more difficult to insulate the cities, as the exterior temperature, greater than the freezing point of water, was far more livable than the deep sub-zero temperatures above.

By this point, they had the resources to build fusion reactors, so powering these new cities was not a problem. They still had farms on the surface, but they were far less vulnerable than the cities, as they were too vast to thoroughly bombard, and were more valuable seized than destroyed. They also began building solar farms on the surface, which harvested the light itself, transporting it through fiber optic channels to the cities below, for agricultural operations below the ice. This meant less expenditure of energy to retrieve the food and water.

In the darkness below, while they had plenty of artificial light, they found that the lack of an "outside" with day and night was taking a psychological toll on their population. Rather than compromise their defense, and abandon their new cities, they decided to adapt.

They modified their genetic code to greatly increase their light sensitivity. They engineered a better eye, with extreme sensitivity to light, but not overly vulnerable to normal lighting conditions. They augmented their genetic engineering with nanotechnology, to help power these improved ocular organs.

The result is that Abelite can see as well in a dim interior as a normal human in bright sunlight. A moonless night on Earth, well away from city lights, would be no challenge for them. A day on Earth would blind them, but the nanomachines in their eyes filter the majority of the light, so they would have no trouble adapting.

They can even sense the infinitesimal glow of the ice sheets when the sun shines on them. Most amazingly, though; they discovered a whole world below. Where life abandoned the frozen surface, it flourishes in the icelocked ocean. Warmed by the core of the planet and the fluid friction of water molecules, the ocean hosts a vast ecosystem unto itself, complete with a variety of bioluminescent plants which make a wondrous show for those with the eyes for it.

Once they had a taste for it, they were hooked on the possibilities of genetic engineering and nanotechnology. They found it quite convenient to lower their metabolism, as they had robots to do most of the heavy lifting, and had less food per person than their counterparts on greener worlds. Similarly, adapting their bodies to the cold reduced their dependence on heating, which had always been problematic, as the heat could spread to the ice and cause it to melt.

The ethical unease with which humans had approached genetic engineering in previous centuries began to erode for the Abelites as they achieved mastery of the technology. They began to improve their genetic code, removing defects from embryos, and emphasizing the traits they valued most, such as intelligence.

All this tampering with DNA began to unlock new facets of human potential. By the time of the Earthgate wars, all Abelites possessed superior intelligence and sensory capacity, to the point where they demonstrated abilities eerily similar to that of so-called "psychics".

The comparison was not lost on the genetic engineers, who continued to experiment, with no shortage of willing volunteers. The first thing they discovered was that humans could alter their consciousness, changing their very patterns of thinking, and gain tremendous ability to solve mental problems. Previous generations of mankind observed these mental patterns only among those with "mental illnesses" such as autism, or those under the influence of psychotropic chemicals. The Abelite geneticists found ways for "normal" humans to induce these mental states under their own power.

The applications were limitless. The computational abilities of such gifted people were truly amazing. It wasn't long before every Abelite wanted to be a genius, or at least for their children to be.

But there were limitations. Reaching these mental states required certain unique genetic characteristics, which they could not induce with anywhere near 100% success. What's more, once the talent was in place, it required years of training, and mental discipline which most children were incapable of, due to the maturity of their brains; to overcome that limitation would essentially destroy the concept of childhood in the human brain, something that, even if it were possible, seemed deeply disturbing to the Abelite ethicists.

It was decided that a nominal amount of genetic improvement would be applied and maintained to the Abelite genome, and the small percentage of the population born with the possibility for exceptional mental abilities would be allowed to train in special schools, meant to bring out those abilities.

In the end, the culture became much like modern Earth; most just go about their lives, though some gifted children are pressured into special programs in order to harness their potential genius. Of those, some wash out, some just mosey on by, and some grow up to become great scientists, leaders, or artists.

Unlike modern Earth, there is a possibility, for a very small fraction of the gifted population, for far greater mental acuity.

But that's to be discussed in another monologue.