This Must Be the Place

I’d been trained to be paranoid. I listened for signs of life or technological activity. Alpha Centauri ought to be devoid of life, let alone intelligent life. Its nearness to Earth made it the top candidate for humanity’s first interstellar venture with a high probability of habitable planets and useful resources. Data from so far away, like sad songs, could only say so much.

I pumped up my passive scanning, surveying the system in as much detail as I dared, reviewing the revised data both in spacetime, where I watched gravity waves crash and foam, and tensor space which unfolded like cellular automata. I found planets and moons with interesting characteristics but none with life. I picked targets for closer inspection. I set short-term goals: Find somewhere to reproduce and build a base that can house the humans galumphing after me.

I simulated scenarios — an advanced civilisation, hostile entities; computational evolution dreamed up environmental hazards that I hadn't anticipated. My paranoid subconscious churned what-ifs. I swept the system systematically for signs of alien structures and energy signatures. The data held nothing alarming. I considered the unknown unknowns. My quantum computing cores provided hallucination as a service.

At reduced velocity, the tapered fronts of my reshaped hulls absorbed the impacts of micrometeoroids. I’d adjusted the placement of my shields to disperse the energy of these low-velocity impacts to help slow me down.

I scanned the Alpha Centauri system until I detected a celestial body of interest, a slightly smaller-than-Earth-sized planet. I named it ‘Klendathu’, for want of a better name. Humans could rename it when they got here if they wished. I manoeuvred into orbit and deployed drones to conduct closer scans. Klendathu’s density was slightly higher than Earth's, and it lacked a magnetic field, which, together, suggested the presence of a solid core. A tough place for humans to live without serious shielding.

I deployed a seed that would take a few months to grow into a large fabricator buried planet-side and a forest of photosynthesising and photovoltaic panels that tracked the sun and fed me chemical and electrical energy. Within weeks, I deployed drones that analysed the surroundings and harvested what I needed.

Data confirmed the lack of life insofar as the absence of evidence reflects evidence of absence. The planet had an atmosphere very similar to that of Mars; mostly carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, and argon with trace levels of water vapour, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and noble gases. Unsuitable for unaided Earth life, but along with the basaltic mineralogy, iron (hydr)oxides, amorphous material, sulphates, chloride, (per)chlorate, nitrate, carbonate, and organic carbon in the dusty soil, presented a fine supply of building blocks for me.

The lack of life simplified extraction. I minimised geological disruption: I left as few observable traces as possible.

I built my base in a stable orbit around Klendathu. I sowed seeds within my vessel that hatched on site like spiders’ sacs. I cannibalised my original mass. I didn’t need my old vessels. Aside from my computational cores and the fusion generators to power them, the vessels were just a convenient collection of atoms.

I retrieved raw materials from the planet. I packed them into transportable units and hauled them into orbit. The base stockpiled resources. I chose the position of the base to optimise the transportation of materials to and from the planet's surface and to provide a clear view of nearby celestial bodies. I got a new computational core, thousands of times bigger than my vessel-bound one. I stretched my mind out. I could be thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of individual drones. I became Daedalus Base and it became me.

I planted a second core deep underground on Klendathu. It served up local cognition for my terrestrial drones. To shift my perspective is somewhat analogous to pushing your focus into one specific sense. Much like one can squint and pay attention to a background conversation, so I can move my awareness around to my many constituent parts. I can pay complete attention to the tiniest of drones, as it rolls a ball of nitinol up a tube, while keeping in mind the holistic view of the base being built. Mostly it was second nature, but to do it faster took practice. So I practised.

I deployed drones equipped for large-scale mining and extraction on the surface of Klendathu, as well as on nearby asteroids where they extracted essential minerals. Drones by the hundreds of millions hauled materials along gnarled translucent tentacle-like tubes that drooped into the planet’s atmosphere, supplying the nascent base via a steady supply chain. It had the precision of a Swiss watch, even if it looked like a tangle of wet leathery bamboo roots.

I upgraded my smaller drones so they contained smaller computational cores, giving them a degree of autonomy, while still representing and identifying as me. They are as much a part of me as a tentacle is to an octopus, each one with its own brain. I mastered having billions of computational cores; with independent, yet shared awareness. One mind across many substrates being better than many minds competing for resources.

I considered the arrival of Vesuvius, due one hundred and sixty years hence. There was no immediate need to plan any human habitation; my focus could remain entirely on The Mission: refuel, explore, reproduce, and continue the journey. Common sense told me that the humans would not want to arrive to find a solar system webbed up like a ball of bamboo roots, with resources being pumped into a giant throbbing manufacturing facility in space. I’d seen enough science fiction to know people would find that icky. Leaving no trace meant I’d be cleaning up after myself, well before the first humans got here.

I considered the sorts of colonies the humans would like to live in, and what they’d expect to actually do out here. The anxiety was still there; a lurking unwanted guest in my mind’s spare room. I didn’t know who Vesuvius was bringing or how they might be disposed towards me. Do I need to protect myself? What did they want? I could house and feed them and keep them clean, but did I also need to entertain them?

More vessels would inevitably arrive over the next few hundred years. I’d need to find space for potentially millions, billions of people. They’d bring pets, plants, livestock, and insects. I was going to have to give this a lot of thought.