Able Pinkon – Journalist Grade 21

Interviewing Sol - Race: Starling

Able: As I explained before, the Seven Legends have been found and their memories copied for study. Two of the Legends were not born until after the invasion and it turns out their parents were both frozen by the Nano-Plague, not that it had any effect on their powers. The original Five were all frozen by the First Rain of Nano-Plague and we recently learned that some of the recovered memories come from the drops of Plague even before they landed on the Five. Can you describe the plague and explain how drops of liquid can think and remember?

Sol: Pure laziness. The R&D kids had been trying to automate the harvesting process as much as possible so they hardcoded the Harvester, that is what we call the nanotechnology that you call the Nano-Plague, to form networks which act as tiny brains. The Harvest Particles, called Nanos, are capable of generating a small electromagnetic field and sense the fields of other particles so by changing the intensity or moving the field, messages can be sent that were much more complicated than the early binary systems of humans. This allowed the kids to develop very small minds that communicated very fast.

The Nanos had a variety of functions and it was only called “Harvest” when its purpose was to place sentient creatures in stasis. Their hard, coded instructions was only to create a mind. There was also a section of the Nano that was easily reprogrammed using long wave photons (you call radio waves) and this is where the instructions to freeze sentient lifeforms would have been found. If our Nanos are responsible for creating super-humans, then humans must have found a way to reprogram the soft-coding of the Nanos. I applaud your species for figuring it out because the Harvest was designed to replace all the cells in a sentient being’s body with Nanos which serve the same functions. Each Nano would consume the cells around it and replace them with Nanos.

You might wonder where the materials came from. We starlings have been seeding and harvesting sentient life from planets for millions of years. We design DNA to dictate that each cell has the materials needed to make an equivalent Nano.

Additionally, the Nanos are far more efficient than normal biological cells and each have an organelle that converts ambient heat energy into usable chemical energy making each Nano self-sufficient. This is why the temperature of “frozen” sentients drops to just above the freezing temperature of water as long as the cellular conversion process to Nanos continues. The temperature of frozen sentients would remain below ambient temperature as long as the Nano-Swarm is communicating (thinking) because it requires energy to communicate.

You facial expression tells me you are surprised that I would be so forthcoming. I can understand human facial expressions because I have consumed all of human media broadcasted on planet Earth. I can see your expression because in am not confined to the visible light spectrum and your ship is transparent to several frequencies. Anyhow, I have told all these things to other humans. I suppose you just had no need to know.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

We starlings are not the enemies of humanity as your popular media made us out to be. The Government Society and we starlings have made an agreement. Everyone gets their needs met.

A green drop fell from the sky onto a green world, on a green day.

As it fell it thought small thoughts because if it thought too much it would freeze and it could not serve its purpose while frozen.

Its purpose was to land on an object made of cells, of a certain complexity threshold, and convert those cells into additional Nanos. They would not have the command organelle, but they would respond to commands and function nearly as well as the original Nano’s comprising the drop.

The drop sensed the appropriate air pressure and increased its surface be becoming hollow in order to slow, then stop its fall. It hovered in the air for a while waiting for the expected frequency to reveal itself to the special organelle within the cell it did not know how to duplicate. When it sensed the frequency, it changed shape using surface tension and glided down toward the source of the frequency. When it touched the source, it found cells. Per programming, the first Nano to touch became the origin and bonded with the cells near it beginning the conversion process.

All other Nanos were forcibly expelled away from the origin point until they could also touch cells, bond, and begin the conversion process. This way the drop could expand across the surface of the object as fast as possible. Why was speed so important? No one knew and there was not enough heat in the area to think about it. Eventually the expanding edge of the drop met the expanding edge of another drop and nanos were propelled parallel to each other to find additional surface to convert.

Another drop of Nanos fell on the already covered surface. Its mission was to wait for the touch of an unconverted cell (emitting the correct frequency) and begin the conversion process on that surface.

A drop of cells fell onto the surface and froze in place. There was no programming that dealt with cells that were not part of the original surface and these cells were not emitting the frequency, so they were ignored.

The Nanos greedily consumed ambient heat in the process of converting the cells of the object into additional Nanos. The nanos were only a few hundred layers deep when the conversion process slowed to a but over time, all the cells of the object were converted to Nanos.

The primary function of each nano was to convert non-nano cells to nanos which would add their communication capacity to the group mind increasing its maximum intelligence.

The secondary function of each nano activated when there were no more unconverted cells nearby. The nano would form ionic bonds with all nearby nanos rendering the entire system of cells in stasis.

The third function of each nano was not defined. Two functions were enough.

After a while the system warmed. The primary function requires a massive amount of heat energy to accomplish so the entire system of Nanos was cold for the duration of the process. Once the system warmed, each group of nanos could begin to think.

Sadly the life of a sentient grouping of nanos was very boring.

NOTE: From outside looking at the solid system of Nanos it would look like an obsidian statue with a hint of green.

Each nano perceived only what the nano next to it was doing. The nanos next to every nano was doing nothing, so there was nothing to experience. The nanos could experiment with the organelles inside it, but that was all.

The object formerly comprised of its own biological cells was now comprised of multiple groups of nanos. Each group served as a separate mind. These minds could communicate signals to each other but the signals had no meaning because the nanos were not programmed with language. Thus, after some effort, the groups gave up talking, gave up thinking, and just waited.

Some time later, something happened.