by Z. Albert Bell

VI. Powers of Ten

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Two of the enormous creatures lurked a few meters away from the smooth, dark spheroid, defiantly emitting their high-to-low-pitched calls and clicking in the direction of the unnaturally geometric shape nestled at the base of the smoking vent. Flashes of bioluminescence illuminated them occasionally as mutated crabs scuttled nervously away from them in suspiciously calculated and well-coordinated movements. Despite their intelligence, caution, and the disgusting, stinging ink clouds they emitted in distress, the large creatures still occasionally caught and killed the hapless, mixed-up creatures with lighting-fast attacks and powerful bites from their needle-lined jaws.

Dauntless, the crabs scuttled as close as they could, tasting, feeling, and regularly illuminating the creatures in a series of instants with bright pulses of bioluminescence. The flashes revealed the form of the enormous beasts: from the fins back, it was similar to many of the other creatures I had discovered thus far, including some of the first that had attacked me. However, their large, muscular bodies were layered with armor, they had another set of fins, and their faces were very different.

The front end of the creatures ended in long and narrow snouts that opened to reveal narrow rows of needle-sharp teeth along their interiors. Their eyes were larger those of any creature I'd been able to closely inspect, and were ringed by structures of muscle or bone whose purpose I couldn't fathom. I itched to examine them more closely.

The creatures were tough. Their biology differed significantly from the creatures whose biology I had successfully studied in detail. They were also inconveniently intelligent. One of them approached the black sphere, opening its jaws and testing the smooth surface. The sharp teeth slid harmlessly on the outside of my construction, and it twisted in the water, hunting for a weak point.

A sample retrieval tube uncoiled itself and moved toward the long-snouted creature, suction already pulling water and detritus into the aperture, followed shortly after by another tube of identical design, then another. Unlike with the smaller, opportunistic predators, the long-snouted creature had the reach, speed, and strength to intercept the clumsily-moving tubes and savage the defensive structures before they could form a seal with its skin. When one tube seemed like it had the drop on the creature, its partner moved in, furiously biting and ripping at the flexible, muscular vacuum tubes and robbing them of their suction.

The two creatures continued to attack, damaging several of the tubes beyond the point of functionality, and destroying several of the mutated crabs despite their bitter flavor. It was some time before they tired of the vent's heat and soot and swam off into the darkness.

Swimming up. I considered the trajectory of the departing attackers, surprised at their sharp ascent. Fascinatingly, these creatures didn't live in the nearby caves or indeed on the seabed at all-- they dove to these depths to hunt, and defended the caves as part of their territory, but they regularly returned to the surface. They were adapted for deep diving! I suppressed a burning shiver of envy, feeling the oppressive weight of the water above. I had to get one of those things. I had to extend my reach to the surface and beyond.

The thread of my attention that had been occupied by the attack of the large, still-elusive creatures rejoined the bulk of my mind's focus. While fascinating, the attack was not the problem that tripped my alarms; the retrieval tubes would repair themselves and I had never been in any real danger.

The object of my attention lay deep within the smooth spheroid, buried under another meter of the composite material. The computational organs I had built to house and recover the Library were failing, and I had no clue why.

Frustration welled in me as I checked and re-checked the support systems for the rudimentary computational organs, only to find that each subsystem reported no errors. I examined them in shorter and shorter snapshots, drawing on the thinking power of the three flesh computers that were still functional. Time seemed to slow as I dove down to a smaller and smaller frame of reference. The spatial scale of my perception shifted down until I looked out at the internal architecture of one of the broken brains and watched individual cells firing electrochemical blasts of information at each other.

I peered in confusion at the chemical concentrations I saw there. I traced chemical pathways as chains of molecules were carefully built and inscribed by repurposed but industrious constructor cells before being copied, transferred to their destinations, and recycled. I examined the surface of my microscopic sense organs, testing and replacing components and checking the outputs of the faulty modules.

Orders of magnitude above my current perception, my beak began to gnash in agitation. The corruption was moving fast, but there was no reason the chemical imbalances should have kept recurring.

Not without an additional factor in the equation. This world's evolved life forms. Not the large creatures that had attacked earlier, or any other creatures larger than a millimeter across.

I focused on the tastes of the chemical compounds present in the organ. I felt a shiver of angry vindication as I found a chemical gradient and homed in on the source.

Found you. Thermophilic bacteria were present in the water intakes for the chamber, but I had disregarded it as a threat. The temperatures my information processing complex reached were a far cry from their preferred environment, and I had assumed the constant circulation and cooling would prevent the extremophile bacteria from establishing a foothold.

It had worked for a time. Then, something had changed. Another form of microscopic life had invaded too. An enormous influx of microscopic creatures swirled in the waters, and most of them had merely added biomass to my construction, being reclaimed by automatic processes as a matter of course.

Until one had found the other. I examined the bacteria-encrusted microbe in fascination. Neither could independently survive in the chamber, but the bacteria's excretions seemed to sustain the multicellular microbes, and the microbes' silicon-based nanoconstructions allowed the bacteria to bond to their surfaces, where they miraculously survived.

I examined the extremophile bacteria in more detail. Even with the unexpected symbiosis, it shouldn't have been able to survive inside my computers. No bacterium had successfully survived those conditions in my initial construction and testing. I painstakingly deconstructed more of the offending germs, disbelieving. Their metabolic processes were different, even though I could trace their ancestry to the colonies of bacteria I'd examined upon arriving at the vent.

It had changed. I knew that it was possible for life to evolve independently-- this entire world was living proof-- but to see an adaptation arise so quickly? Astonishing.

And, in this case, very inconvenient for me. Now that I knew what to look for, I cast my gaze around the channels and folds of the best hardware I currently had for the Library.

I could see the colonies forming before me, and worked to adjust acidity, temperature, and salinity in hopes of finding a combination that would successfully purge the infection.

I began growing a new set of membranes around the thinking organs; I would never let so much as a single cell from this world's biosphere come in contact with the brain tissue containing the Library ever again.

I considered the immune response mechanisms of my host body before shelving the idea in disgust. The large white cells were highly effective in the context of my host body's original biology, but I didn't have the time or processing power to engineer a generalized version of them before the infection would overtake the thinking organs and my Library recovery progress would be set back yet again.

I would need to do it myself.

Grimly, I set to the tedious work, cataloging the various new adaptations I noticed as I directed constructors to release targeted bursts of enzymes where I detected the chemical signature of the invaders.

---

I felt a pang as I looked out at the damage that had been done to the last three sub-modules of the final infected module. I had managed to purge the rest of the nerve tissues in time, but these were damaged irreparably.

This world's life was relentless. It would eat and eat endlessly with no plan or purpose save the continuation of its own existence. It would leave ruin in its wake left unchecked.

My thoughts flickered for a moment to the traitor of my people, the only caretaker of the Library ever to shirk that sacred duty. Could the mindless malice of these creatures provide some clue to whatever had broken so inexplicably and so irreparably? My arms twitched and a memory surfaced, unbidden.

Can't you see? Don't you understand that we are only puppets?

My arms thrashed as I desperately dismissed the words from my mind. What had-- I had... forgotten. I had needed to reshape myself in desperate haste to survive the deeps, and in the process my memories had become... fuzzy and incomplete.

I knew that, above all, I could not ever allow myself to listen to the traitor. I would not allow my purpose to be contaminated by any communications from it.

It seemed that my sloppy self-modification had loosened the blocks I had constructed in my mind to protect myself from its lies.

I released powerful acid into the final three infected submodules and watched the degraded tissues bubble and dissolve.

Protect yourself. Protect the Library. Save us. We are relying on you.

I watched until the brains finished growing back within their protective cocoons.

---

Time had passed, and I had constructed another two computational silos with my newly-exacting standards for sterility. Capabilities and designs flowed into my mind and my arms caressed the Library's brain box with gratitude.

My harvesters had mapped the local region, but the time resolution of my perception of my surroundings was horrifically inadequate. My bespoke crustaceans needed to physically return to me to pass along their perceptions, and even on longer timescales, my map of the area was irregular and prone to blind spots.

I considered my new tools while I reviewed the next recoverable nodes of the Library.

I continued holding off on materials engineering and advanced constructor units for now. I still didn't have the resources to properly bring those capabilities to bear, and it wouldn't take long to unlock them once I did. I looked forward to the advanced probes I would build once I'd unlocked them; I'd need specialized forms to explore the deepest trenches and the planet's gaseous atmosphere.

In the same vein, the geological and seismic analysis module would be key in identifying and extracting vital resources to bootstrap my factories and by extension the upper tiers of my people's technology.

The exotic compounds and plasmas module would have been useful in the atmospheres of some stars, the vacuum of space, or the cores of some gas giants, but wouldn't help me immediately here.

If I could generate more power, I could make use of more computational modalities, I would have more options to attack, and I might be able to improve my high-latency communications. I marked 15H:VLB:V2F:4U8 as high-priority.

Once again, the node I needed most was farthest away. I flicked my arms dejectedly. I really wanted that sensor net, and biochemical simulation was the most direct route to it. It would improve my ability to track the progress of the various adaptations I had seen arising. It would let me begin designing my own information-packed DNA payloads to proliferate through the sea.

I selected 5IS:8S5:KVN:EEO and let the brains get to work. Harvester crab probes trundled across the seabed to deliver the message to the other computational silos, and I turned my attention back to the new tools I had unlocked.

Shortly afterward, my arms curled with excitement.

---

Four of the large creatures swam together, calling out to each other in their high-to-low glissando and filling the water around them with the piercing clicks of their echolocation.

If they were hungry, these creatures would have been swimming in the opposite direction, toward the cave that held the bounty of worms, eels, and fish that kept them fat.

Their bellies were full, but they swam with purpose, toward the unnatural things that grew around the base of the nearby pillar that belched black soot from the top.

The sucking flesh tubes, the mutated crabs, and the unbreakable spherical corals were like nothing else in their experience, although only one of the four remembered a time when they had not been there.

The strange things were not good food, but they were different in a way they did not interpret as a threat, but a challenge.

The loud, swimming reptiles opened their jaws, snapping at bubbles. As long as the unnatural wildlife remained so close to their territory without posing an outright threat, they would continue to harass and attack the strange things out of boredom if nothing else.

The four eyed the seabed near the black sphere and slowed, surveying the lumpy terrain and the things that scuttled between the soot-strewn rocks. The eldest chirped with uncertainty; something was different and its instincts flared. It considered the seabed and turned away from its companions, swimming for the surface.

The other three whooped with abandon and swam toward the strange growths around the base of the vent. If they realized that none of the mutated crabs with the baggy abdomens were running away, the realization was overruled by restlessness and youthful competition.

They happily opened their jaws to chomp down on the gently waving, sucking tubes, ready for the game of avoiding the fleshy things' ineffectual stings.

Jaws bit down and teeth broke on carbon composite armor plating. The ichthyosaurs shrieked as they suddenly found themselves restrained, and the alien-touched crabs swarmed them, regurgitating corrosive enzymes, their sharp claws sawing through armor and flesh and bone.

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