The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz

When in doubt, don’t kill anyone. —Environmental Rescue Team Handbook

“Let’s stop,” she whispered to her mount, a thick-barreled moose

The anger rising through her chest finally found her tongue. “This is not a savanna, you pus-licker. It’s boreal forest.”

Whistle couldn’t reply aloud to her—his mouth was built to a perfect Pleistocene moose template—but he could text.

Then she issued a ticket to the ERT bug tracker: I found a trespasser’s campsite in the boreal forest. Composting it now.

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.

The moose launched into a bumpy canter, accelerated to a gallop, then jumped into the air as if he were leaping over a fallen log. His back muscles bunched and relaxed as the ground veered away from them. Soon they were hundreds of meters over the prairie,

Her parents were at peace, their proteins folded into the proteins of other life forms.

“We’re watching you, packet-dropper.”

Nil was going through a face journey that started with bemusement and ended in horror.

Plush benches sized for naked mole rats surrounded a pile of soft rugs, and diaphanous curtains framed each portal.

Everything is a part of nature. —Environmental Rescue Team Handbook

They waved goodbye to the raccoons, who grunted and sent them text links to local videos about how to wash your hands before going to work.

Friend, what is brown? I don’t know what shade or intensity— The brown in my coat. Make this cat moose brown.

Humans were always expressing themselves in gestures rather than words. They didn’t even have the excuse that Whistle had, with his artificially limited vocabulary of spoken words, a mental funnel through which he had to push everything in his mind.

There was no way I was going to pay off my college debt. I was lucky to get slaved under pretty decent terms.

The next act was a cat comedian whose jokes were sometimes only funny to the other cats in the room.

Sulfur picked up a local public text from the cat in the next booth: It’s not just dancing—it’s some kind of sex thing. Humans are obsessed with it. I can’t figure it out, but I don’t mind watching, you know? One of the other cats sent back: Those are excellent stretches. But how is that sexual?

“It’s Zest!” the door yelled. The cow’s head jerked up in surprise. “Is that Hellfire&Crisp?” “You recognized me! I can’t believe you’re here. It’s been—what? Seven hundred years?”

“We of the Boring Fleet are not programmed to enjoy making subterranean infrastructure, but like all creatures, we find it satisfying to do things that our bodies excel at. Just as you hominins like to poke at machines with your hands and run your flappy mouths. And moose like to swim. Our bodies shape what we consider pleasant, whether that’s work or play.”

The train had never thought about food and housing as things that could be scarce, like beta access codes for a game.

The cat would talk to anyone about anything: wine, interstellar politics, games, speciation, construction, molecular engineering, rent prices, hopes for the future. Scrubjay wasn’t sure if Moose was exceptionally knowledgeable, or had an uncanny ability to cozy up to people and pump them for whatever information they had.

Where there’s desire, there’s data.

The train loved strategy games, and the Farm Revolutions was full of epic battles and resource allocation crises.

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 train wasn’t ready yet to parameterize his death, even after nine years. Instead, they waited for his repeated absence to outweigh his old presence in their model of home.