So, I've come up with an idea for research that I think could dramatically change our thematics, and help round out our forces and capabilities as well. Plus I think it would be pretty cool.
Black Market Event Design
Human Tech (plant tech):
When we were first sifting through the database of available technologies from the watchers, we thought it would be prudent to check under 'acquired' technologies to see if there was anything we could steal from our rivals. To our surprise, we instead found a listing under our own names.
Human tech: Acquired in year: 14833 BC
Our team were bewildered by this cryptic entry. The flying pyramids from our video archives were largely thought to be false. Could we have been wrong? It seemed unlikely. There was general agreement that pursuing this listing would be riskey, unpredictable, and largely a bad idea.
We picked up the dead drop for "human tech" less than a week later. None of the team knew what to expect. A data cache? A working prototype? A team of alien experts? Whatever we thought, no one expected this.
It was a small station in locked orbit around our star, and inside was nothing but a small garden. All of the plants seemed to be of earth origin. We even recognized a few. Other than the fact that they recovered abnormally fast when cut, they all seemed completely unremarkable. They seemed that way at first anyways.
The breakthrough came when one of the arborists assigned to the station had an accident. While attempting to remove a bit of ivy that had gotten stuck in one of the trimmer robots they managed to slip and, in true gaian fashion, fully impale themselves on the robots trimming blade. Bleeding profusely, they collapsed to the ground and lost consciousness in a matter of minutes. Viewing the security footage, medical teams at first presumed the individual dead. The rate of blood loss was too high. Nothing could have saved our gardener. When they got there however, they found a different story.
The wound was covered in a spongy green mass, with vines trailing out into the flesh. The victim was stable even, and after treatment even managed to regain consciousness. The garden it appeared, was more than it would seem.
Preliminary research with this new discovery was groundbreaking. The ivy stuck in the robots was not spare trimmings, it was fixing the robot, anchoring broken joints, or oozing sap to lubricate hinges. The vegetation was a mutualist, capable of adapting to a host, organic or inorganic, and stabilizing the system. Broken bones are wrapped in ivy and sealed in harwood. Burn scars becomes little fields of clover. Entire missing limbs become tentacles of plant matter. The garden seems to have no limit to it's adaptability. In fact, even the station itself seems to be interwoven with the plants, if not a metallic outgrowth entirely.
Our biologists are left bewildered and a little frightened. While theoretically, something like this could be possible, it shouldn't exist like this. The tradeoff for such adaptability should be enormous. The plants should barely be able to support themselves in optimal conditions. Even then, what we expect from these theories seems to have little basis on how the plants operate. It's genetics and inter cellular systems seem simple. It just works somehow, and no one can understand how. Not all efforts to manipulate it however are in vain. Much to the chagrin of our existing biology team, it's not the doctors and scientists that make progress, but our gardners. The ever mystic "green thumbs" who seem to just be able to coax the plants into doing what they want.
It's only a start, but it's existence, and the proof of concept for it's manipulation has our engineering team salivating. What wonders could be built from such a tech, properly harnessed!? Consider, they beg you, Death Marines growing like rows of potatoes. Bore appatures in literal bloom. Decades old capital ships covered in ivy scars.
Their promises are endless. Fighter wings deployed like a cloud of spores. Self regulating terraforming, that grows into the planet. A photosynthetic pacemaster. This would let us do the impossible, they say, If only we should choose to pursue it.
OOC, It think this would make an amazing aesthetic. A seamless blend of traditional high tech sci-fi and a mystic overgrowth of vegetation. Two opposite sides of the spectrum, brought together.
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Topic: The Gaian Regime Empire Thread | Terrans | GalactiRace (Read 47130 times)