Conception: Starship Reproduction, part 1

The word conception or the act of conceiving has a variety of meanings. Most people think of it in relation to pregnancy first. Some people think of an idea that is rendered into a form that other people can visualize. It can also relate to a single idea or the beginning of a process which dovetails nicely into the definition of making a baby.

The most common use, reproduction, any higher order Earth-bound animal species can accomplish. But the second is uniquely human. Taking ideas or inspiration from disparate forms and combining them into a completely novel form.

Yesterday, I gave you my conception of the starship MINIMCOM's idea of conception in the reproductive sense. I didn't spend much time describing the details. In fact, in the novel The Ark Lords, MINIMCOM dismissed the hows and wherefores in a single sentence. Here was the starship's exchange with Rei regarding the subject:

     First OMCOM’s livetar vanished then before their eyes the all-white ship shimmered and disappeared. In its place was a smaller, gray ship that looked like a miniature version of MINIMCOM. It was approximately the length of the original space tug before it became MINIMCOM.
     “What is that?” Rome asked, pointing at the smaller spaceship.
     The mouth slit of MINIMCOM’s livetar curled upward into a smile.
     “I had to do something with the mass I gave up,” said the all-black livetar. He nodded and suddenly a small gray livetar, barely two feet tall, appeared beside him. The eye holes and mouth hole were round instead of the normal slits. “I would like you to meet MINIMCOM Junior,” MINIMCOM said proudly.
     Rei started laughing. “You gave birth? You’re a mother?”
     “Although I do not have a gender, I would prefer to think of myself as a father.”

So what is this? What did MINIMCOM do? There are actually four possibilities.

The first is parthenogenesis. This is an actual egg developing into a living being without being fertilized. Kind of an immaculate conception. It's not so odd. Spiders and bees can do it. So can some species of fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles. Only mammals cannot. There was no egg so this method does not apply.

The second possibility is that MINIMCOM generated a clone. Cloning is where you take a cell from an adult animal and introduce DNA and coax the cell into developing it into a full-grown organism. But neither of these are actually how MINIMCOM had a baby. More on that tomorrow.