Terra Farming

"Doctor, care to explain ??" asked the stern voice of Lord Cas Te of The Board, looking at my design of the new Self Destructors (Models 22X and 22Y ).

I took a deep breath and looked at the models. Extremely supple dipods with a capacity to expand exponentially under short notice. Ergonomically designed for maximum productivity. I couldn't find a flaw. But Lord Cas had a point. He was still miffed at my failure last time. But let us just wait a second and look at you. You, the reader, blinking like a captain caught in a radio-active ionic storm with a cargo of nano-atoms. You people from the past, so primitive. Let me jog you back a few millenia and refresh your memory.

The Board. A body containing the most powerful men in the planet. A group of individuals who have made life possible after the population implosion of the 860's. A group that had turned around the fortunes of this planet when almost everyone else had given up or just died.

With the teeming millions literally trampling on each other, it was The Board that came up with an intuitive solution. Terra Farming. Considering the infinite size of the universe and the invention of economical space travel, Terra Farming was expected to address the expansion problems. Once the survey vehicles find planets that are big enough to accomodate substantial portions of colonies, the job of the Cleansers would be to find a way to make the planet inhabitable. While a majority of the Cleansers community developed solutions that left the planet wholly uninhabitable after Cleansing, I came up with a solution that swept the industry by storm. Self-Destructors. Or SDs as everyone else started calling them. The process was fairly simple. Understand the terrain. Design an SD. Deploy it. Wait for inhabitational levels on the planet. Let the SDs self destruct. Voila, A whole, fresh planet ready for colonising without any of the harmful biological agents that left behind. With my innovativeness and resourcefulness, The Board was able to reap planet after planet and establish settlements. Until now.

Recently, The Board's survey vehicles that scan the outer rim of the galaxy had found a planet large enough to handle the population explosion for the next million years. I had jumped at the opportunity, but only to fail. Terra Incognito was entirely uninhabitable, but it didn't pose problems of radioactive gases like Deepstar IV or an excessively salty atmosphere like Abyss XL. It was just filled with waste. Tonnes of it. On it. Inside it. Around it. It seemed to be a fairly docile planet which prompted me to design the Quadropod model of SDs (Models JP1 to JP9) which were best suited for this. The solution was straight forward. The Quadropds would clear the planet of the huge quantities of waste by eating it (bravo, bravo) and then self-destruct (hear, hear). Only, not.

"Certainly, My Lordships. At the stroke of dawn, we are going to deploy our two models into Terra Incognito. These models are programmed to consume just about anything and everything Terra Incognito has to offer. I had equipped them with the usual CG chips that worked for us in the planet of Oceanus. As you all know these chips would find and create new needs for the models to devour just about every kind of geological waste that the planet has. This would complete Mission I of our Cleansing, making Terra Incognito inhabitable for our people by clearing out the planet's debris on, around and inside of it."

"The last time you made models that looked visibly different from each other, so that they would fight for supremacy and self-destruct after the Cleansing is done. After deployment, the models became friendly despite all your assurances that they would finish each other off. It took some nano-missiles for The Board and some gimmicking by you to clear that mess up. This time, you show me just two models with absolutely minimal difference that we can't distinguish one from the other and you expect them to finish each other off ??"

Ah, my moment of triumph comes now. It is always a pleasure to be asked to show your genius on demand like an art gallery rather than just displaying it for everyone to see like an street magician.

"Gentlemen, I present to you, RG I. I am going to add RG I into the genetic structure of both these mdoels. Once fully developed, RG I would exhibit traits of aggression and irrationality that would finish them off without any external intervention"

"The JP models had a very small brain which you said would make them terribly slow to think and decide, not know right from wrong and hence become extinct. As far as I remember it didn't work at all. This time you have given them almost 100 times as much brain power as before. Don't you think these models would be sentient enough to avoid such an aggresive gene and develop an antibody against it ??", asked Lord T Eror Ism.

A second chance to prove my worth. Keep them coming, you all. I am loving this.

"That is where you are all going to appreciate my touch. RG I is not a gene sequence that exhibits mindless violence and insensibility at the outset. It in fact is designed to exhibit the exact opposite. RG I would invoke the senses of oneness and camaraderie as a smokescreen and indirectly touch the genes of deep hatred and hypocrisy. It would entwine with the SDs so much that they would protect it overzealously. The SDs would never know that they were all capable of such deeds and it would all be done before they even knew it. Once the planet is cleared of all wastes, we can remotely enable the RG I gene in the body and the SDs would be reduced to destroying themselves, all the while considering them as sentient beings with higher levels of responsibility."

"Doctor, do you think it would work ??"

"Believe me my Lords when I say this. This model can be extremely resilient. But I don't think it can beat RG I. Not now. Not in a million years. Not ever."

"Splendid Doctor. Splendid. I have to say The Board is impressed at your craft. We just have a small question. We all know your hyper successful CG chips were named after your great-grandmother Cons Umer Ism. What is with the unusual name for this gene ??"

"Nothing much, your Lordships. Just a mask of respect to my great-grand father, the late Re Li Gion".

The standing ovation and the applause continued till I left the great hall.