Technology: Gaia Seed

The Gaia seed is the most advanced piece of A-Life technology in existence. While only Genetica knows the true figures, it has been estimated that a single Gaia seed may contain as many different organisms as 5% of earth's total natural biodiversity.

The exact workings of the Gaia seed are a closely kept secret and each seed is unique. We do know however that they fall along this general procedure.

1) Deployment

The first step (and the simplest) of the procedure is to deploy the cocktail of organisms contained in the seed. To do so, we simply let the 1 ton payload crash into the surface of the world we wish to terraform. In the case of Giesel 1061 b, this impact would have been done at near 20% the speed of light, giving a yield of 2 giga tons of tnt or about 4 times the energy of all nuclear bombs ever detonated.

Even this powerful impact would not be enough to kill the extremophiles that live in the seed. On the contrary, the impacts energy serves to wake them from their long hibernation.

2) Geo-plankton deploys

The firsts of the organisms to thrive will be those belonging to a group called geo-plankton. These tiny creatures were designed to reproduce extremely rapidly and sustain themselves only on what sunlight and inorganic material they can find. Some of these early plankton are so simple in design as too barely be considered living creatures.

As their population grows and spread around the planet, their diversity and complexity will grow too. These plankton will serve as the primary food source for most of the early life forms on the planet.

3) Atmospheric geo-engineering

By far the most difficult and longest step is the transformation of the planet's atmosphere into something more conductive to life. The first and most important step of this is to either increase or decrease atmospheric pressure as necessary.

If the atmosphere is too thick, then a form of sky-bound algae is released that form an opaque layer in the upper atmosphere. As the planet cools down, its atmosphere begins to condense and fall either in a from of rain or snow. When atmosphere approaches the desired pressure, conditions become unsuitable for the algae which dies off, letting sunlight through once again. Meanwhile, ground based bacteria have absorbed the atmosphere's precipitations, ensuring they do not return to gas form once the planet heats back up.

In the case that the atmosphere is too thin, predatory micro-bacteria that feeds on the plankton is released. As part of their digestion, these bacteria produce a large amount of acidic byproduct which results in acid rain all over the planet. This acid reacts with the soil to release gas, thickening the atmosphere. Once again, as the pressure approaches the desired level, the introduced lifeforms die off, leaving a stable environment. Since this process is harder than the later, a lower pressure that is merely survivable once oxygen rich enough is aimed at rather that a comfortable 1 atm.

This process would normally take at the very least thousands of years. But thanks to Genetica's top secret Gaia tech, the Gaia seed exploits the natural process of evolution and aims it so that organisms evolve to accomplish their tasks as efficiently as possible. This itself is possible thanks to Gaia tech's ability to accelerate evolutionary cycles to break neck speeds. It is a process that is also applied to the rest of the steps.

4) Plant colonization

The atmosphere created by the Gaia seed does not start breathable. To bring it to such a state, it must be filtered of toxins and supplied with oxygen. While more plankton do the former, plant life is introduced to do the later through photosynthesis. Since the soil lacks the required nutrients to sustain plant life however, plants must instead get them from the plankton itself. This in effect means that early plant life on the planet is carnivorous. As more plankton dies however, their bodies begin to fertilize the soil, allowing for more regular plant life to take hold later on.

6) Hydrosphere geo-engineering

The first plants to be introduced can survive on minuscule amount of water. These however are very inefficient at producing oxygen and must therefore make way to more water dependant plants. To do so, more micro-organisms are released into the atmosphere. Through a complex series of reaction, these manage to make water out of the oxygen produced by the more robust plants and hydrogen naturally found in the atmosphere. This process continues until sufficient amount of water has been produced to form a stable hydrosphere.

7) Osiris eggs deployment

Once plant life has firmly taken root into the planet, it is time to introduce animal life. Since, even with the Gaia tech's accelerated rate of evolution, waiting for animal life to evolve from bacterial life would take too long, Osiris eggs are introduced.

These spores are loaded with the DNA of animals when created in the lab. After the Gaia seed impacts, they float around in the air dormant until the environment becomes suitable. Once they awake, they will deposit themselves on a surface where they will begin to grow a large egg shaped fungus. Just as their name and shape suggest, these act as a sort of egg for an embryo of the animal whose DNA had been loaded in the spore. The animals that emerge are identical to their normal peers, including in how they reproduce. The Osiris eggs only serve to introduce the first generation of animals and finally answer the question of who came first; the chicken or the egg.

8) Termination

A-Life technology can only predict the behaviour of an ecosystem so far, after which chaos theory rears its ugly head. In order to prevent Gaia tech from mutating life forms past what would be recognizable or suitable to human life, the components responsible for rapid evolutionary cycles are designed to become inert once terraforming is complete. At this point, the planet is left with an ecosystem that will be stable without intervention for at least a million year.

In the time it takes to do so, it is possible that the earliest plant life will have mutated into new species, but not to the point of possibly being detrimental. Animal life for its part will now have been around long enough to undergo more than small invisible genome changes.

It should be understood that these are gross simplification of the processes involved. The Gaia seed is the most complex invention made by mankind and each of these steps contain in and of themselves many parts and can overlap each other.