The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz

Destry pressed her bare fingers into the soil, spreading them wide, establishing a high-bandwidth connection with the local ecosystem. Thousands of sensors welcomed her into the planet’s network, their collective perceptions knitting together from shards of cached memory, fragments of recorded sensation and perception. In this state, she too was a sensor, processing data through her eyes, nose, tongue, skin, and ears.

Verdance had paid to build this planet, including its biological labor force. Everything here—other than rocks, water, and the magnetic field—was part of Verdance’s proprietary ecosystem development kit. And that meant every life form was legally the company’s property, including Destry and Whistle.

At this stage, it was hard to tell how the city of Angst would look when it was ready for the owners. Maybe the trellises would grow cellulose exoskeletons or biofilms threaded with neurons and metal. The architecture might look like furry skyscrapers; or it might be partially subterranean, connecting to the mesa’s ancient sinkholes. It all depended on what the city owners ordered.

Emerald bought everybody out. They did it on Gleise 581c too, right after the first settlers got it rotating again.” “Yeah, I remember that.” Slim frowned. “Huge land grab after it wasn’t tidally locked anymore. A few of the original settlers got rich, but most of them—well, let’s just say they couldn’t afford to live on the planet they terraformed.”

you can’t perceive the whole network. How the trees speak to the fungus wrapped around their roots, which speaks to the minerals in the soil, which speaks to the rivers, and so on. It’s my job to monitor ecosystems as a whole. I’m the only person at La Ronge with this configuration.

With enough maintenance, they’d be able to keep it up for a few centuries. Long enough to make some money. The trellises rose over everything—bones for the materials that would grow into floors, windows, water and energy systems. Right now the city was still unreal, a 3-D blueprint of domes and spires surrounded by low-density residential neighborhoods.

At that moment, when they knew he was reaching out with his mind to touch the ecosystem bursting out of the planet’s collapsed crust, Sulfur realized that Misha was beautiful.

wow. chapter 27 - hotttt

“Should we report this? I don’t think it’s legal to build people like that and take their milk.” As if to mock Sulfur’s point, a hologram winked to life over the road and flashed the words: WELCOME TO NATURAL MILKY! JUST ONE CLICK OFF EMERALD WAY, EXIT 10!

The urge to do something about the Natural Milky atrocity was itching at Sulfur’s mind and wouldn’t let them go.

There’s no worry about rebellions if you dial everybody’s InAss ratings way down.”

Why would she single out cows?” “My guess? Cows are part of the city’s brand. The perfect symbol of H. sapiens’ domestication of nature.”

Sasky is supposed to be exclusively for re-creating Pleistocene Earth, right? Nobody was part of the Great Bargain before the Farm Revolutions.”

“The whole InAss system is toxic.”

“It’s the main reason I left La Ronge. In Spider City, there’s no intelligence hierarchy. You’re either a person or you’re not. And even if you’re not, you still have a lot of rights.”

“At some point during the Farm Revolutions, a bunch of H. sapiens decided which life forms would get to be part of the Great Bargain and become people.”

The crisp was thin and perfectly round, embedded with a scattering of tiny edible ball bearings. It tasted exactly like a sweet strawberry, in a form factor the tongue would never expect. That’s probably what made it so valuable, Sulfur reflected. It wasn’t so much the flavor as the surprise.

I see that your heading has you passing through Lungs, which offers a model of privatized city transit. You should consider it the end goal of our train plan. Public transit should gracefully wither away to make room for more efficient, flexible private solutions.

A government’s job is to recognize people, to help them make their own agreements with each other—and if you do your job well, those people become your political allies.”

If only she could tackle this problem with the serenity of a Blessed. Obviously, that was nonsense. If she were Blessed, she’d never be able to understand anything beyond work. Life would probably be pretty boring.

“Cooking is different—in other places. Food is different.” Cylindra laughed—it was the answer of someone who was incredibly stupid, which was exactly what she’d expected. “That’s not a good reason to travel. We have every kind of food here in Lefthand.”

Company authorities wouldn’t acknowledge that a disaster was happening. It was bad for their brand. But the locals would accept ERT assistance—partly out of respect for the ancient organization, and partly because desperation on the ground was always more powerful than denial at the top.

First, they extended the sapiens-only policy to all new renters. And now they are destroying our houses! We’re losing our homes, and we won’t be allowed to rent new ones. You and I built this city! So did you! And you! We’re the reason Emerald is getting even richer! Lefthand is our home, and it should be our right to live here!”

People who are vulnerable to manipulation and enslavement because of limiters on their minds! Workers who cannot speak for themselves! We need a government that answers to us, not a corporation that throws us out on the street!”

Suddenly, everyone in the area was slammed with an emergency message from the city’s command center, relayed instantly to the ERT bubble: We will begin clear-cutting residential blocks Three through Seven immediately for revitalization. You have five minutes to evacuate.

Still aloft in the air were flurries of toys, foam figurines, fancy costumes—all the priceless baubles people accumulate over a lifetime of tiny celebratory moments to counteract their days of drudgery. And of course, there were more dead. Headless, footless, limbless, faceless—clothes and fur torn from their backs by the impact, sweetness torn from the hearts of everyone who loved them.

This is our new Western Destiny Experience. Land purchases will allow the Emerald Cities to stretch across the entire continent, so that customers can journey from the eastern cities to the west coast without ever leaving Emerald properties.

“Compost and pus! They’re trying to turn Spider City into a resort?” Moose rolled over and stood up, tail fluffed to twice its normal size. That is pure untreated sewage, they sent.

hilarious that their curses are all waste related

Nobody is really sure what the biobank was for, but archaeologists think it probably had some kind of ritual use. Back then, people had all kinds of superstitions about their genomes. They would send their genetic material to this biobank, and analysts would tell their fortunes by grouping them into categories like ‘West African’ or ‘European’ or ‘Indigenous American.’ ”

The important part is where they got the germline from. This is a public museum, and the biobank is part of their archive. That means these germlines are publicly owned.

When the ERT presented their train plans to Cylindra, they explained that the fleet would be self-governing. I warned her, but she didn’t give a fuck. I’m sure she didn’t bother to read it because she’s a lazy idiot, but that doesn’t matter. She signed off on it.”

It’s solid evidence that she knew a public entity was forming on the planet. And she agreed to it!

Maybe the battles are more exciting. They make for better superhero stories, like with Wasakeejack and Muskrat. But the revolution is actually happening in the boring details, like how you manage housing and water, or who is allowed to speak. In a way, the Farm Revolutions are still ongoing. We’ve barely started to realize what the Great Bargain could be.”

Instead of a virgin Pleistocene frontier, Sasky was like every other planet that Earth people had occupied—a chunk of rock and biomass, stolen and re-stolen so many times that even its humblest microbes were of decidedly sketchy provenance.