Velan Drones

Excerpts from Introduction to Xenology by A. Segin.

Introduction

Nearly one hundred million orbits ago, life emerged from the oceans onto exposed and barren rock. It seemed a cruel and absurd place to live, but it was a necessary part of achieving the next step in development, of overcoming animal instinct and building a new world of faith and reason.

So it is with us today. Mankind has begun to use those two tools to lift himself from the comfortable but entrapping cradle of his birth into the new world beyond. It falls to us to continue this work and bring him yet another step closer to union with the Divine. The challenges facing us are enormously greater than those that faced our distant ancestors on old Earth, but we have three advantages that they did not: The tools of faith and reason with which to build, and the privilege of access to those that already live in the world we seek to reach.

To be a xenologist is not just to develop new weapons for our soldiers, or new techniques for construction. It is a sacred duty to the forefathers that gave us the blessed life we have and the successors who will pass beyond us into the next world. It is a profound honour that places one in the presence of those who live closer to the Divine than we have ever touched. It is both scientific field and religious commission, the union of faith and reason and the gateway to ascension.

This book gives a broad introductory treatment to the biology and ecology of Velan drones.

Drone Biology

Nanomachines

Mechanocytes

The fundamental element of drone technology is the mechanocyte (also called a 'drexler'), a tiny nanomachine. Every drone or drone structure contains many trillions of mechanocytes which together form a viscous fluid called gel, which is analogous to the drone's blood. Mechanocytes are 10^-9m-scale molecular machines, consisting of six effectors arranged at right-angles around a control and power core. Each effector can act as an atomic manipulator, connect to another effector to exchange energy and commands, or reject all connections and allow the mechanocyte to move freely. This ability to select connections means the viscosity and conductivity of mechanocyte gel can change drastically as required, and control of temperature expansion and electrostatic potentials in the gel enables it to move autonomously if free from external pumping.

It is rare for a task to be performed by a single mechanocyte. For most functions, thousands or even billions of nanomachines will link together to create a computing network and factory floor, often going on to construct, control and then dismantle an intermediary device that performs the work itself. This degree of emergent and flexible computing, especially in such small machines, is far beyond modern human technology and the clearest indicator of how far it is we still have to go before we can match our forebears.

Mechanocytes, importantly, can reproduce. Groups as small as a ten machines have been observed to be able to autonomously construct new ones given access to materials. Fortunately for those who worked with xenotechnology before mechanocytes were properly understood, this process is too inefficient to lead to 'grey goo' disaster scenarios outside of certain special situations.

Nuclei

Mixed in with the mechanocytes are the nuclei, 10^-7m-scale nodes of instructions, data and conventional computing architecture. Every mechanocyte collaboration with structure larger than a few hundred machines will contain (or share with another such structure) at least one nucleus that organises and directs the action of the entire apparatus. Involved nuclei will also communicate with others and the drone's hard physiology via mechanocyte chains to create a distributed computing network to manage the task at hand.

The instruction set of a drone nucleus is, appropriately, analogous to the drone's DNA. The nuclei do not (contrary to popular misconception) exert any direct influence over the drone's actions, but the control they exert over the mechanocytes is what builds the organs the drone has to act with and the brain it uses to control them. However unlike their biological namesake, nuclei cannot reproduce. The only known source of new nuclei is the ovary of a Queen, which produces the 'royal jelly' of pure nuclei that is so famously valuable a prize for whaling crews. The gradual depletion of its nucleus count through direct destruction and loss of gel through injury is one of the central causes of drone aging.

Nuclear study is one of the most important areas of xenology today.