Going to sleep for the 6th week in Galapagos, Grayson couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by this goal thrust upon him of making global changes all by himself. How was he supposed to save the planet, or even make a significant dent in the problem all alone? Maybe rapid evolution and speciation and breeding need to be a big part of his designs... Thinking such, Grayson drifted off to sleep.
---
The next morning, the sounds of scraping of some sort from outside woke Grayson. He got up and went to the door of his drop pod/bedroom. Outside he saw that a visitor had come to investigate his production setup. A large tortoise was scraping its shell across the edges of his solar panels as it explored his camp. This thing was massive. It has to be 400 kilos or more. Probably hundreds of years old. It was a very handsome tortoise.
The biomass reactor seems to have gotten the attention of more than just the bugs. Another, younger tortoise was picking through the grasses and leaves looking for fresh tidbits. Seeing two of the island's mega fauna in the same place with the state of the world being what it is, struck Grayson as interesting. Maybe these guys were onto something having a slow, low metabolism sort of life. The heat didn't seem to bother them and their dietary needs were small compared to fast mammals and heavily exercising birds.
"Egg, what's the plan for when I have done all I can on this island?" Grayson suddenly asked.
"At that time, you will have earned the points to advance your skills and speed of production by buying time from the Ring's manufactories if you so choose." Egg informed.
Thinking that was good to know, Grayson could stop worrying about the future for now. He needed a starting point. He pondered about the conditions of the Earth as it was now.
The way this all started was the 20th century's heavy use of fossil fuels, carrying on into the 22nd century. Even though they knew they had reached the point of no return in the early 2000s humans wouldn't stop consuming until every last drop of oil or deposit of coal that could be reached was gone.
The interesting thing for Grayson's train of thought was what he knew about the history of the planet that even allowed such fuels to exist. At the early stage of the evolution of true trees, when they first evolved a molecule called lignin, there was nothing that could break the stuff down. For millions of years, trees took the abundant CO2 of the carboniferous era and grew their bodies with it. Wood is a carbon rich material bound up with lignin. This made it inedible to all forms of life for quite some time.
So over the eons, carbon dioxide was reduced in the atmosphere and allowed the average temperatures to drop. Tropical plant fossils are found in the same locations that the tropical climate region has shifted to now. Setting fire to all the sequestered carbon from the carboniferous has, of course, allowed the Earth to return to the same climate conditions.
The only problem is that the plants have evolved for a much cooler climate now and the heat is killing them off. The second problem is that there is no shortage of microorganisms who can happily consume lignin now. So there is no chance of once again sequestering carbon into the geologic layers in the same quantities with that molecule.
'What options does this leave me?' Grayson questioned himself. 'I could at least get some greenery back by reverting some plants to their more ancient varieties, like the way I could get the chicken to grow teeth.'
'I think I will start with that.' Grayson thought. 'Then maybe work on developing a new molecule that makes wood inedible again for a long while.'
Having a plan of action, Grayson checked on the printer and found it about 10% done with the queue he'd left it. So instead of interrupting a print in progress, Grayson returned to his pod and pulled up the design feature of the system. He already had several sequenced plants thankfully. He pulled a sort of tropical fern up and started playing with the sliders.
After a brief time, Grayson had discovered that several plants had ancient counterparts, but the fern was among the most prolific propagators. You couldn't swing a dead velociraptor without hitting a fern fossil.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
So Grayson pulled up his design feature and began sorting through the fern species he had stored already. There weren't many yet because of the enormous backlog he had tasked the system with. He found that he could scroll through his list of gathered samples and reorganize their order in the queue, so he did that with every type of fern and then small plant he could find.
After reprioritizing his gene sequencing list, Grayson now could begin designing. He selected one large tropical fern he remembered sampling earlier in the week and brought it up as a holographic image in his vision. He reached forward and manipulated the sliders until it looked more like the ancient fossils he had seen online. Just to be sure he was on the right track, Grayson connected with Ring and searched for images of fossilized ferns and their reconstructed images.
He found what he was looking for in short order. Comparing what he had designed with the fossil record, Grayson was pleased with how close he had gotten from memory. Now it was time to try to improve on nature a little.
Just having greenery that could withstand the heat wasn't enough. Very few birds were leaf-eaters. Grayson decided to splice in a berry growing feature from a barren bush he had sampled. As Grayson manipulated the image of the fern in his vision to add berries, his HUD displayed a DNA helix model that he could "grab" and edit. The image fuzzed when he added an unknown trait, representing the uncertainty. A progress bar showed the gamete creation status. "This could work," Grayson thought.
He selected [create] in his menu and went on about his day. The system gave him a completion bar at the bottom of his vision for the project.
[Completion of gamete: 1%]
[Time to complete: ~1 day]
[Production modifiers: plant cell- time x1.5]
[Increased metabolic load(fruiting)- time x 1.1]
[Gametes for this design will be excreted from pustule on left wrist. Please provide this material to a printer for zygote production.]
Grayson read this update with a little disgust and said out loud, "Well, that's weird. I am now a gamete factory for all the things I design? And it oozes out of my pores?"
Egg replied, "Yes, your lymphatic system is well suited for transporting unknown cells and substances to the surface for removal. It also happens to have a great deal of biological machinery that can be tasked with helping modify foreign genetic material. It took a lot of work to develop, but the nanomachines are up to the task and it is perfectly safe. You will just have some severe acne on occasion."
"I must admit, I am a little disgusted by this." Grayson moaned.
"You might find a way to develop other options," offered Egg.
Rubbing his chin, Grayson pondered that idea. He might be able to do just that, eventually. "So how many starter seeds is this going to produce? Am I supposed to repopulate the Earth with these new species the slow way?" Grayson asked.
"No Sir. The scope of the project is already worked in by default. Everything you design will have a set number of generations where it will reproduce extremely rapidly before tapering off again. Once the printer has your initial blueprints by way of a selection of gametes, it can produce millions of copies of each variation and then fertilize them. You should have something like millions of seeds for the plants and hundreds of eggs for the animals." Egg explained at length.
[Quest: update 3D print production queue: Egg incubator, seedling trays]
-------------
Grayson woke to a blaring system alert. Bleary-eyed, he activated his interface to find the source - a Category 4 cyclone bearing down on his location!
Panicked, he pulled up monitor feeds. The massive storm dominated the displays, whirling bands of thunderclouds and lashing rains. Grayson's heart sank realizing how vulnerable his basic camps were.
"Egg, give me emergency priorities! What can we secure before it's here?" he shouted over the wind roaring outside. Time was short.
Egg immediately prioritized actions:
1. Strengthen shelters - deploy storm anchors, seal openings.
2. Move critical supplies to most protected building.
3. Get air/seaborne drones to safe hangars.
4. Backup all current data off-site.
5. Ride out storm in the shelter pod - it is hardened.
Dashing through heavy raindrops, Grayson dispatched construction drones to start barricading entrances while manually hauling backup drives and emergency rations to the hardened shelter.
It was a desperate scramble, but they managed to button up the camp just as the cyclone's outer bands lashed the coast with battering winds. Grayson watched helplessly through monitors as months of progress was torn apart.
Safely sealed in the pod, Grayson reviewed damage reports streaming in - coral strains wiped out, reactors overturned, cultivated fields ravaged. It was a major setback, but the mission must press on.
Egg reassuringly calculated they had enough supplies to rebuild the basics until manufacturing could be restored. And Grayson had off-site backups of all genetic codes and data. Still, watching the storm's fury, he felt very small and alone.
Finally, the wind died down. Opening the pod hatch, Grayson stepped out to survey the aftermath. Uprooted trees, twisted debris, and topsoil scoured clean met his eyes. He took a deep breath.
"Where do we even start?" Grayson asked quietly.
"At the beginning, Sir. Always at the beginning," Egg replied gently.
Nodding grimly, Grayson began the long process of cleaning up and making fresh plans. There would be setbacks, but he must persevere.