249. The Solemn Initiative

Solemn represents a great opportunity in the form of a great problem. The exoplanet's unique ecology devours metals and plastics, and with them the foundations of most transhuman technology. Solemn is therefore of interest not only to scientists, but bioconservatives and neo-primitives, who see it as a new Earth, and the best chance for a natural life.

Protection in the form of repair swarms and anti-microbe swarms is sufficient for the short-term, and with improvement, might allow for indefinitely functional tech. Firewall, however, has decided that it would be better for transhumanity to solve the problem the hard way. Firewall, with the help of Argonaut agents and sympathetic bioconservatives, has been pushing a plan for Solemn based on new forms of biotech, recreating the functions of synthetic technology in organic forms.

In the far-future, Firewall envisions a biotech-based transhuman society, distinct from the more synthetic mainstream, with different strengths and weaknesses and therefore subject to different modes of failure and existential threats. Anything that could wipe out one would not likely be as effective against the other.

Plot Hook: Firewall's plan is much more appealing to bioconservatives and neo-conservatives than to most scientists and explorers. The player characters discover that Firewall supported the recent neo-primitive attack on the Solemn science station, as part of an earlier version of the plan to establish a new outpost of transhumanity. It is up to them to decide how to handle this sensitive information.

229. A Plan for Ceres

The Hidden Concern maintains a stranglehold on the extraction of water from the Hidden Sea to the surface 100km above, a grip granting them both wealth and control. The neo-octopus cartel has played their position into greater and greater degrees of wealth and control, becoming one of the wealthiest and most powerful groups in the system, and the masters of the dwarf planet. The neo-octopuses do not collect wealth and power for its own sake, they have a dream, a grand plan for Ceres.

The Hidden Concern intends to contain the entire dwarf planet within a planet-sized greenhouse, raising the temperature, melting the ice, and creating an aquatic paradise for cetacean and octopus mercurials. Ceres will be contained within a translucent self-repairing bubble halfway between plastic wrap and denim. The bubble will be kept inflated by an Earth standard atmosphere, simultaneously preventing atmospheric escape due to Ceres' low gravity. Supplemented by a solar mirror, the bubble will be the basis for a greenhouse effect, melting the planet from the outside in. If all goes well, the result will be a tropical ocean more than 100km deep.

This endeavor is on the scale of the terraforming of Mars, and arguably more difficult. The Hidden Concern do not currently have a definitive plan for the creation of their atmosphere. Even if the atmosphere can be created, the length of time to melt even a portion of Ceres' massive ice sheet cannot be calculated with precision, but centuries is likely. The Hidden Concern are in a position to begin, but who can predict the next decade, let alone century?

197. Stratification and Speciation

Transhumanism is a verb, an act of progress towards something that it would be better to be. The paths that can be taken are determined by the paths that have been taken. The solar system is small, and although transhumanity is reeling from the Fall, competition is once again accelerating among exhumans, posthumans, ultimates, mercurials, infolife, and singularity seekers. Those who abstain from direct pursuit of transcendence differentiate slowly but no less certainly.

A mind that has achieved posthuman intelligence through psychosurgery is unlikely to think like a genetically improved Menton. Infomorphs may find less and less reason to remain in-step with the rest of transhumanity and increase the subjective speed of their simulations, out-thinking all others by virtue of speed. Forking is more likely to be experimented with by those in cyberbrains, if only due to convenience. The ability of biomorphs to heal and replicate still surpasses those of synths, could these be the building blocks of more social forms of intelligence? Each step allows for steps in new directions, directions other steps would not have revealed.

Eventually each train of development may come to its goal (if any), to local maximums too difficult to overcome, or to states of pleasing stability. In the deep future the self-improvement of individuals might give rise to lasting, identifiable types. There is not necessarily any reason to assume that "more advanced" types would erase those that came before: like in evolution, new forms can co-exist with the old in an ecosystem.

92. The Precociousness Problem

Transhumanity has many offspring. Engineered smart animals, AIs and AGIs, loose beta and delta forks, yet, fewer and fewer children. Fertility rates among transhumans are low. It is expensive to bear and raise a child, requiring space, time, and bodies that not everyone has access to. It is only natural to want the best for your child, and the plasticity of children's  brains and bodies take very rapidly and naturally to augmentation. The lost generation were only the beginning.

The agōgē promises to raise Ultimates with an ideological purity and an adoption of transhuman technology and capability that overshadows their old-fashioned seniors. To the members of an ideology prizing self-improvement above all, to become obsolete and irrelevant is worse than death.

This is the precociousness problem: any children raised to the fullest transhuman potential will very thoroughly surpass their parents. Those children will create and raise their children better than their parents could. Then their children will overcome them, and so on. It is a long term singularity, carried out over generations. Bio-conservatives fear an inevitable specialization leading to exhumanism, hyperelites fear the loss of their position, most others fear irrelevance.