Of Beauty, Beings and Deserts: And the Ethics of Terraforming Worlds
by Mark Thomas
Staff Writer
THE CHALLENGE AND CHOICE: OF ENGINEERING WORLDS
“Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity.” (Max Lerner)
Sipping coffee in a shop on Lexington at 07:20, you look out at the sky. Hazy – putrid yellow. A choking fog. What planet comes to mind? Who out there lives in a Carbon and Sulphur-dioxide heavy atmosphere – already conquered interstellar travel and embraces conquest? Conquest without concern for erasing civilisations.
Like this one. Barbaric as hell, with the dominant beings still struggling through their tribal dark ages, but with such rich beauty in some. Their scientists and mathematicians. Artists, musicians and writers. So creative. So diverse. Already such potential.
Not all though. Like everywhere, on all advancing planets; the destructive find their way in. Odd how it seems like a formula woven into the very fabric of this universe.
Stepping now onto 7th, turning for the Central Plaza East you’re still questioning: what being? How many worlds? How much longer this search?
And here; is Earth just another planet you’ll need to reclaim? Reset and return to the beings unaware their world was scouted and deemed ideal for conquest?
And that conquest – the reengineering of their world: the atmospheric chemistry, climate and global temperature, all orchestrated by a being that sees them as they do the microbial life their astronomers search the heavens for.
Now walking in a crowd amidst the oblivious, you see the obvious and an opportunity within it. This is not the aftermath of planetary reengineering. This is the process. The exo-former you’ve been chasing across the galaxy is here.
The eventuality: that confrontation you’ve long sought will be here on this unremarkable exoplanet where life had little chance of starting.
And the question for you now is, does it know you’ve arrived.
“Can I get that for you?”
You look into the face of a young woman holding the door for you at the 601 Fairmont. She’s late 20s and business dressed, and you have no reason to suspect she’s anything more than polite. But her speech: the over-smoothed spectral components give her away.
“Perhaps you’ll join me, and we can discuss terms.”
She smiles and points to the café off the lobby. “Please.”
MODIFYING WORLDS: VIRTUOUS ENDEAVOUR OR ARROGANT VANDALISM
“Human use is not the ultimate value. Living systems have intrinsic worth independent of human utility.” (Christopher McKay)
Image by StockCake
Terraforming can take many forms. The image most have is of a technologically advanced civilisation approaching a lifeless world – using their technology to modify it to accommodate their biological needs.
Extracting water from sub-surface water-ice. Adding an artificial geomagnetic field. Modifying the atmosphere. Changing the planet’s orbital distance or its rotational period.
Here, you’ve found, Earth scientists and entrepreneurs already with plans for Mars, their outer neighbour.
On your planet, it was Nerone then Typh. Both lifeless, rocky balls like Earth’s rust-red companion. Only when your ancestors found their way to Platon did the debate arise about indigenous inhabitants. And their right to exist.
In Platon’s case, mollusc-like creatures that, though primitive, showed signs they would evolve. Into advanced, technological life forms? Who knows? As it turned out, no one would ever find out.
It was after we had extended ourselves further to neighbouring star systems and found other planets with similar or more advanced life, did the ethical-moral debate arise. Along with the technical argument about the current modelling and prediction tools.
As for the ethical part, the argument went like this: It’s their planet regardless of their primitive stage. Moving ahead with modifying their world to fit our needs would be depriving them of their right to exist.
The counter thesis by those in favour was equally persuasive. Show us your crystal ball. Prove they’ll evolve into a peaceful and progressive planetary neighbour that won’t extinguish themselves or pose a threat to others, and we’ll listen.
Here on Earth, the issue is complex. Though humans have the appearance of an advancing civilisation, a more advanced being seeing them as your ancestors did the molluscs on Platon, have declared them expendable – and is already revoking their right to exist.
Where you stand is at the crossroad between your intuition and your respect for those who sent you. And you admit to being conflicted.
They’re innately destructive and self-destructive and could extend their violent natures into space should they become technologically advanced before evolving intellectually-morally.
A race already with a proven record of using technology solely for science and exploration may be a better choice for this planet.
But from what you’ve witnessed on countless worlds, those who sent this being are extending themselves with little regard for science. Their nature is obvious – omnivorous, insensitive expansion.
“Those who sent you to prepare this world, did they perform an evolutionary assessment on these creatures?”
DEFENSIBLE INDIFFERENCE: THE IDEOLOGY OF CONQUEST
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest, for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party the loser.” (William Shakespeare)
Image by StockCake
You’re in the café minutes after being seated with the woman who’s been following you as you’d expected since your arrival. Her near arrogant self-confidence gives away how long she’s been here and more. The natural, human-like behaviours. Unaware, possibly, she’s changing.
“On these creatures?”
Though aware you’re evaluating her, she’s unable to mask her disregard for the species her engineering will eradicate.
“I see.”
You eye her over your cup – a human female once, now a host to advanced technology. A program that travels interstellar space searching for planets then making them suitable for the colonisers that created and sent it into the expanse - one day to follow.
But what you’re learning about this expansionist regime through her, their indifferent engineer is guiding your strategy. You’re gaining. And getting closer.
“This young woman you’ve chosen, did she suffer when you replaced her consciousness with yours?”
“Who can say?”
“And the others you’ve taken?”
“One thousand twenty-four, since you’re asking so politely.”
“Tribal and corporate leaders?”
“Of course.”
“Policymakers? Advisors? Their United Nations?”
“Yes, and your point?”
Odd, and disappointing. A mere ‘function’ exo-former sent to change a world. Though capable; the pinnacle of her planet’s technical achievement, she’s artless and anaesthetised by what many would call synthetic hubris.
The being whose wake you’ve been in, who you’d imagined singular just gave away not only her consciousness sharing but also her limitations. Many and extreme.
You take a moment to accept this will not be the contest you’d expected. You’ve travelled far to gain little.
“These beings have a future here. And their planet has beauty you’ve overlooked.”
“If you say so.”
Lowering your coffee, you stand and stare down at her. “One of their centuries. Without influence by either of us. Accept it. No other offer will follow.”
Before turning for the door, you note a slight pupillary response giving away something you hadn’t expected. Hesitation. A processing delay? Or was it something from the merger with a human mind?
What was that, you think now crossing the lobby for the front door. That simple reflex - a biological response to your offer. Perhaps you’ve judged her and this too quickly. Overlooking the effect human cognition may have on her - a more advanced being.
Now on the street, you begin to walk – considering the potential value. For her, of course. That’s underway. But for you, a different opportunity.
Your evaluation of her limitations and repellent superiority - her derision and aesthetic indifference for these beings was more your own hubris than an objective footnote. More discontent that she isn’t the powerful adversary you’d envisioned throughout this pursuit.
She sees little value in these creatures. But neither did you, the claimant of such reach, see the true beauty in their minds. Though generous, you’re losing what you hold most dear. Humility. The openness to learn and be awed by all creatures and all worlds.
Two beings. One synthetic – one biological. One optimised for strategy and function. The other with the ability of mental time travel. Emotions. Feelings. Intuition.
What they’ll become cumulatively – the level of advancement may well eclipse what you had anticipated after your galactic pursuit.
HOW ETHICAL THE ACTIONS: OF VIRTUOUS ACTORS
“It is much easier to point out those who are cruel or benevolent in a community than it is to provide a description of what counts as a cruel or benevolent act.” (Robert Sparrow)
Image by StockCake
At 4pm, you receive your answer. On a large LCD above Times Square, you watch the planet’s international body fail to extend a legally binding agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions to combat global climate change.
Of the original 195 parties, only 11 voted in favour of extending the agreement.
On another screen, the newly elected leader of this, Earth’s largest industrialised nation announces the dissolution of his Environmental Protection Body thus removing all controls over its power production, transportation and industrial activities.
Around you are protesters. Angry – volatile. Hateful signs and banners. Masked police begin moving into what in moments will be a battleground. Though not the end of your adversary’s exo-forming of this world, this step was planned with strategic brilliance.
“You see them now.”
You turn to the young woman - there at your side.
“I see what you believe to be your success.”
She turns to the crowd – fighting, shouting. Vicious clashes with police and military. Tear gas and concussion grenades. A country tearing itself apart. “An unseen landscape. A nowhere. If you see beauty, it would be an unseen beauty had you not arrived. Thus inconsequential.”
From this declaration – the wording and ideology, the short-sightedness, you identify the species that created her. Who they were, when they were and why they ended.
Technologically advanced yet philosophically and morally impoverished. The arrogant vandals Robert Sparrow described in his Ethics of Terraforming.
You look her in the eyes – amid the violence. With the angry protesters shouting. Police swinging batons. Gunshots. Screams. Sirens echoing. And suddenly it becomes quiet. Around you there is nothing. The blackness of the quantum void between dimensions.
And in that quiet moment, brightness explodes.
The sun above is hot on an endless desert. Quiet, peaceful, beautiful serenity. Golden sand in sweeping dunes – glistening with mini cyclones on a molten breeze.
In the distance a modern city sparkles. Glass buildings – reflections in the sun rising from the sand at the shores of a lavender sea.
Swan-like Sea birds – ermine white and elegant rise from the shore – a pattering of wings. Beneath are desert mammals in endless trains. A diverse world vibrant and alive.
“This is…” Overwhelmed,she spins – looks up at the star.
“…The first planet you deemed an inconsequential nowhere. Unseen, lacking significance. And decided to change it for your creators. Who, with their boastful significance, ceased long ago.”
She pulls her eyes from the technological desert world and looks at you.
“You’ve been reversing my work.”
Seeing in her what you had hoped for - not hostility – not anger that you’ve been restoring the worlds she reengineered for a race of beings that went extinct three billion Earths ago, you reach for her hand.
“Come.”
With her hand in yours, you re-enter the quantum blackness of interdimensional space.
THE UNFORTUNATE ARE THOSE: WHO FAIL TO IMAGINE
“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.” (Elizabeth Lesser)
Image by StockCake
Ungoverned by time, uncontained by space, together you visit rocky worlds, gas and ice giants. Worlds far from their host star and Jupiter mass planets so close they orbit in hours.
You land on one and watch life begin – on another you watch an elegant culture bow to its expanding sun.
On a volcanic world pulled violently by three stars you find, defying the destiny of gravitational chaos colonies of rodents building, sharing resources and a rhythmic, intoxicating language drawn from complex cognition. Above, winged behemoths ride in flocks on the rising currents of searing-orange volcanic ash.
Primitive worlds, huts and stone tools. Technological worlds already reaching out into the expanse – rockets, orbital stations and autonomous probes.
Now from orbit above a lifeless planet with a cool blue star, you descend as if on a platform of air to the base of a crater.
The sky above is dark – primal – an overcast of pumice and sulphuric ash. This is a world only millions or hundreds of millions of years after forming from its protoplanetary disk.
Active volcanoes are on every horizon driving sulphur plumes into the already thick overcast. The young woman looks through the haze and around her at the molten horizons. “My home world. But, when?”
Again, she turns to you. And finds you kneeling over a small, encrusted pond. Along its perimeter is a type of algae feeding of the sulphuric sludge.
She comes over to you and stares down intrigued – now an eager pupil.
And realises what you’ve done. This is her home world 12 billion years ago. And these yellow algae will one day evolve to become the advanced culture of sulphur breathing beings that created her. And sent her out as an artificial god to decide fates, change worlds and repeal life.
You poke at the industrious algae with your finger. “Imagine oxygen breathing engineers landing here – finding these…” You turn and scan the hostile surroundings. “…finding none of this to hold beauty. Or feel obliged to imagine it could one day become this.”
You look up at her, and watch years, centuries, millennia then eons race by with the planet evolving around you. The first mammal-like beings. Villages then modern cities. The sky above dotted with a patterned satellite grid.
Rockets launching up from pads on three horizons – heading into space to begin colonising the outer planets.
You look back down
“Granting a species the right to exist - the opportunity to evolve is not a rightful action; it’s the action of the ethical.”
She stares at you with the eyes of a child. Your hopeful assistant; now realising your plan.
KNOWLEDGE IS USEFUL: LEARNING INVALUABLE
“What is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature than change?” (Marcus Aurelius)
Image by StockCake
You’re on a bench back in the square watching the protest in silence. The engineer of worlds is staring out across the chaotic brawl. What you’ve given her has left her humble – but also hopeful.
“You see me as I first saw them.”
“No. More, I think… an opportunity. For both of us.”
You think of her world and the beings who created her. And of what your mission here truly was. For her to join you – and for the many worlds that may now know a different fate.
“A philosopher here once wrote:” ‘Rather than virtue allowing us to perceive the right action, which is made right by some complex set of facts about the world, right actions are right because they are virtuous.’
She turns to face you. “Shortly ago I believed there was nothing left for me to learn.”
You chuckle at the humanness in that, the growth and drop your face into your hands. After a moment, you lift your head and look at her.
“That club is vast.”
For minutes you laugh together. Then turn to the madness.
“You have much to do here before we leave.”
She follows your eyes. “But without your help.”
You think for a moment. “Shortly ago, I would have claimed it a privilege. On the other hand, would you have me deny you this opportunity?”
She smiles just as the protesters overturn another police car and set it ablaze. “Is honesty in your world as highly prized as I’m guessing it is?”
You turn with a kind smile. “Not nearly as much as that sense of humour you’ve found.”
Together you stand and face each other. Aware of the valuable lesson you’ve both learned. And of the friendship and the many worlds you’ll visit together. Seeing and sharing the beauty.
Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)
