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biochemically mediated events.
Centuries ago, Martian biochemists had devised a means to prolong human life by sixty or seventy years on average.
Mars was a radically constrained ecosystem, ruled by the scarcity of water and nitrogen.
Human reproduction had been regulated for centuries, pegged to sustainability
Why? Question
Tailored viruses performed a sort of systemic update,
while lab-grown bacterial phages flushed out toxic metals and plaques and repaired obvious physical damage.
Most subjects reported at least some long-term memory loss.
The brain, restored and rewired, became a subtly different organ.
a tutelary discomfort.
Not only was the transition difficult, stiff social penalties had been written into their longevity laws.
Haha - then what the advantage? I wouldn’t want another 60 years without sex and without political voice.
Until such research had been banned.
Chilling. Question
Simile
They conquered death. But no: as a species, terrestrial, Martian, in all our years on both our planets, we had only engineered reprieves. Nothing was certain.
Aji.
Chilling - who is this woman? Question
After a ten count I followed her in.
Anytime you feel threatened, you do your detached thing.
watching life like it’s the evening news, like it’s some sorry war on the other side of the planet where all the people have unpronounceable names.”
a little Drambuie usually helped shut down the nagging interior monologue,
Haha
the so-called Martian archives.
Replicators. Ice-eaters. Seeds of an inorganic biology.
the Oort Cloud,
I knew about the Oort Cloud
from the speculative novels I still occasionally read.
Haha
their total mass equaled twenty to thirty times the mass of the Earth, mostly in the form of dirty ice.
Haha
Martians smile when they speak from the heart.
What you hold in your hand has the power to substantially transform not only our own solar system but many others.
And of course the outcome is uncertain.
“They will evolve, and unpredictably. But we’ve placed some limits on that. Or we believe we have. As I said, controversy abounds.”
Haha simile
in the hypercold environment for which they had been designed, submicroscopic filaments in the replicators would begin a slow, painstaking metabolism.
Sinile haha
in its senescence as a complex machine,
Our days would encompass their years by the hundreds of thousands and a decade of our slow time would see them infest most of the galaxy.
assuming the Hypotheticals keep the spin going. Question
In effect we would be wiring the galaxy for a kind of rudimentary thought.
This wasn’t just an act of exploration; it was an intervention, an imperial reordering of the galactic ecology.
With luck the replicators will tell us something important about the Hypotheticals, or atleast the extent of their work in the galaxy.
“Haven’t we failed already? The sun is very old now. You know that, Tyler. Nothing lasts indefinitely.
Chilling
The mortal star that was the mother of all life had passed into bloody senescence and would kill us without conscience.
“Maybe the best we can hope for is a little understanding before the curtain comes down.”
Questions
Simile
a ray-trace program
Simile question
You don’t understand a lie,
