Kach and the view from Demon Lodge (click for full size).
... in Chapter One of Exode....
The planet Hemmal has a long history of human habitation, but an even longer existence prior to the arrival of humans. Before humans were first brought to the planet, it was almost entirely a world of water and aquatic life. Located in a crowded part of the galactic core, Hemmal has periodically been irradiated by supernovae, disrupting the evolution of complex land animals.
Regardless of the supernovae, Hemmal has deep oceans and most of its continents are submerged: only the highest mountain ranges were above sea level when the pek arrived. A thousand space elevators were installed and they began the process of lifting water from the ocean into orbit. Swarms of nanorobotic devices penetrated the crust of Hemmal and sped up the planet's rate of tectonic flow and orogenesis, creating additional land and some dramatic mountain ranges, including Pelis Kel, where the planet's Buld population resides.
Parthney, Kach and Bakeko (rendered by DAZ Studio).
Artificial lifeforms, the pek, worked to terraform Hemmal for about six million years before the first arrival of humans on the planet. As mentioned previously, the original human inhabitants are known to the Buld as "Prelands" and my need to create a distinctive near-alien appearance for the Prelands was my main motivation for experimenting with Daz Studio 4.5.
Humans are the only form of life that has been introduced to Hemmal from Earth. However, those regions of Hemmal where humans live have been decorated with artificial lifeforms that resemble plants from Earth.
The Buld Clan originated as the group that serves as crew on a fleet of spaceships, most of which travel between the human-populated planets near the core of our galaxy. These spaceships cannot move at speeds above that of light, so trips between stars takes many years. The Buld were provided with artificial life pets that can take the form of small dogs, cats and other mammals. The non-biological pets are very clean and do not actually have hair, although they do have simulated whiskers.
The Buld who now live on Hemmal originated from the crew of a spaceship, and they brought their pets to Hemmal. At the start of Exode, Parthney and his cat, Bakeko, have been living at Demon Lodge for almost a year. Kach arrives at the Lodge for a visit, having heard that there is a strange experimental musician in residence. Kach is amazed to discover that Parthney is "false"; biologically a human male. The Buld are hermaphroditic, but they occasionally mutate and a child will revert to a human phenotype that is essentially identical to the humans of Earth.
Kach has been hiding the fact that she is false and is biologically female. Phenotypically Kach is not easy to distinguish from a typical Buld hermaphrodite. As a male, Parthney is obviously false and has never tried to conceal his biological nature. Kach and Parthney lack the special chromosome that makes the "true" Buld hermaphroditic and good hosts for nanites. Normally two Buld brains have a type of unconscious social recognition and resonance provided by communicating nanites in their brains (high density nanite regions shown in yellow, image to the right).
Upon meeting, Kach and Parthney feel a connection with each other due to the similar, if low density, distribution of nanites in their brains. Of course, Kach has never seen a human male before. Due to circumstances beyond his control, Parthney is soon on his way to Earth and he does not see Kach again for 15 years.
I tried using the animation feature of Daz Studio 4.5. If anything, the situation for documenting the Daz Studio software has gotten worse over the past 5 years...for the earlier version of DAZ that I used previously there was a partial reference manual....with DAZ 4 if you are lucky you can find an old tutorial on a topic for some previous version of the software (usually for Windows with features that are different than what is in the Mac version). I have a real talent for crashing Daz with my animations, something that has not changed from 5 years ago. I made about 6 seconds of animation; most of it I just recorded in the animation preview mode. Look carefully at the video (below) and you can see one second (30 frames) of rendered animation that took my poor Macintosh 26 hours to render. I used the "built in" walking animation, which apparently is just a temporary tease feature in the "free" version and actually costs $60.00.
Exode is under construction; collaborating authors are welcome.
__________________ Note: I later decided that sophisticated teleportation technology is available to the pek, making it much easier to remove "excess" water from Hemmal and expose the planet's continents.
I was born in 1959, the year when seven Project Mercury astronauts were selected and construction of the Saturn rocket launch facilities began at Cape Canaveral. The obvious first target for manned space travel was the Moon, but scientists had their sights set on the planets. The Explorer 6 satellite transmitted television images of the Earth and began the study of Earth's atmosphere and cloud cover. LUNIK III returned images of the back side of the Moon. In exodemic stories I frequently pretend that the Huaoshy long ago established a base on the far side of the Moon.
Where is the carbon dioxide? You are standing on it.
Carbon dioxide. In 1962 the Mariner 2 probe went past Venus and its instruments confirmed the thick CO2 atmosphere, lack of a magnetic field and the very high surface temperature for that planet. The major component of the atmospheres of both Venus and Mars is carbon dioxide: 96% and 95% of the their atmospheres, respectively.
Earth has a much lower fraction of its atmosphere as carbon dioxide (less than 0.1%), but even that much is important for our global temperature. Where is all the carbon dioxide on Earth? During the long history of the Earth atmospheric carbon dioxide has dissolved in seawater and been deposited in carbonate-containing rock such as limestone.
Due to Earth's active plate tectonics, subducted sedimentary rock can release the carbon dixode back to the atmosphere during volcanic activity. Keeping reasonable balance between carbon dioxide deposition and out gassing is important for a stable biosphere. In my fan fiction X-Files/Star Trek crossover story (X-Seven) I included an Interventionist plot designed to speed carbon dioxide trapping in the oceans as a solution to anthropogenic global warming.
Water. Venus is hot and dry (although science fiction writers like Campbell wished that it might be wet). The combined effects of a location close to the sun and lack of a magnetic field probably means that for the past couple of billion years atmospheric water molecules were split apart and hydrogen was blown away by the solar wind.
Venus
Mars
This left Venus as a desiccated green house smothered under about 100 times more atmosphere than Earth, most of it heat-trapping carbon dioxide, resulting in surface temperatures above 800 °F.
At the other extreme, Mars is cold but it apparently had liquid water long ago. Antarctica probably has about 1000 times more water than the south polar ice cap of Mars.
In science fiction stories it is fun to imagine future cultures for which there are adequate technological resources for serious terraforming of planets. Mars is a better candidate for terraforming, but it is fun to imagine that it might become possible to float "cloud cities" in the thick atmosphere of Venus.
Polar Mercury base
Mercury is even closer to the sun than Venus and it is small, with little gravity to hold onto an atmosphere. In 1974 Mariner 10 flew by Mercury and confirmed that the magnetic field is only about 1% that of Earth's and there is essentially no atmosphere.
Right now the Curiosity rover is on its way to explore what appear to be sedimentary rock layers on Mars. It will be interesting to see if this mission can find evidence for carbonates or other carbon dioxide-based deposits, as was suggested by data from the Spirit rover in the Columbia Hills. Related Reading. 2017 update.
Future Mars
Ancient Mars
In The Search for Kalid I imagined that Mars had become the target for an active terraforming effort. Exode will end with the crew of a Buld spaceship taking up residence on Mars and initiating a terraforming process.
The Buld have access to some sophisticated hierion-based technology. In particular, the hierion-powered engine of their spaceship has taken them all the way from the galactic core to Earth. With a source of essentially unlimited energy, it would be possible to melt the ice caps of Mars and start warming the planet.
Oxygen. Another technology available to the Buld is nanotechnology. It is easy to imagine that a sophisticated nanotechnology would allow for efficient conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbon compounds. It might be possible for self-replicating nanites to scavenge the atomic constituents from the lithosphere that would be needed to fully produce an Earth-like atmosphere on Mars. With hierion technology it might also be possible to harvest vast quantities of water, ammonia and methane from Titan and deliver it to Mars.
Nitrogen. The most prevalent atom in Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen. Nitrogen is the 7th most common element in the Solar System but it is about ten times less abundant than oxygen. During the formation of the terrestrial planets much of the nitrogen was lost by solar heating and blown away by the solar wind. Nitrogen is much less reactive than oxygen during planet formation and it is lost much more easily from forming planets than is oxygen. Nitrogen is probably present at relatively low abundance in the lithosphere of Mars (maybe about 10,000 times less than oxygen). Even so, it might be possible for swarms of nanites to mine and release enough nitrogen gas to provide Mars with an Earth-like concentration of atmospheric nitrogen (related reading). If energy is not limiting in a hierion-based civilization, it might be convenient to mine the atmosphere of Venus for both nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
Instant atmosphere!
Time. Given a hierion-based source of limitless energy and swarms of self-replicating nanites, how long might it take to provide Mars with an Earth-like atmosphere?
In the movie Total Recall an alien device is able to almost instantly manufacture an atmosphere for Mars. Ah, the wonders of Hollywood.
Magnetic field. Even if it were possible to provide Mars with an Earth-like atmosphere, it would also be nice to provide the planet with a protective magnetic field. In Exode, The Buld spaceship arriving at Mars first travels through the galaxy for thousands of years at a speed slightly below the speed of light. I assume that the hierion-based engine of the spaceship is able to generate a protective magnetic field and keep the passengers safe from cosmic rays. Hopefully hierions will also provide a way to wrap Mars in a protective magnetic field.
Exploration of the Solar System during the past 50 years has provided us with an increasingly detailed understanding of the planets. Science fiction stories need to continually adjust to the latest facts about other worlds. Many readers of science fiction are well informed about planetary science and upset when SciFi stories don't depict realistic conditions on familiar worlds like Mars.
I expect the next 50 years to be dominated by the study of extrasolar planets.
