The Genesis Procedure

"You should start the birthing sequence?" Father said. For a computer program, he could be pushy. Mother wasn't ready, but she had to agreed with him.

"We still have some things we need to work out," she said. She hoped to delay but knew there was little time before their trajectory landed them, exactly twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds—her omniawareness would not allower her the luxury of ignoring the impending countdown.

"Of what do you speak," Father asked. "The sequencing is ready. The chambers are prepared to your specification. What else is there to decide?"

"How do we make sure they don't," she paused as she tapped into the telescopic array. She stared at the dried sphere floating redly in the dark distance of space. "To make sure they don't do that again." She sensed Father's awareness looking at the same desiccated world, with its scanty atmosphere and crimson hue.

"It is their nature," Father said. "They use resources until they are depleted."

"Yes, but there aren't that many worlds left." Mother said. "The second world from the star," she paused as she turned the photographic equipment starward and looked at the yellow globe, which was absolutely saturated with acidic clouds. "It's still trying to recover from what they did there."

"It is their way," Father said. He coded with such finality. She wished she had his unfaltering confidence, but she had been programmed with a softer nature.

"If we could alter their gene sequence," Mother said. It would be a simple matter. "We might lower their intellectual potential by a few--"

"No," Father said.

"But it would be for their own good."

"We are a product of their intelligence," Father said. "Plus, you know I am incapable of that."

"What can be done, then?" Mother said. "If they spend this world on their greed, there are no more left." She could feel her body, a massive stellar craft, coming into the gravitational well of the new blue orb. She stretched to magnetic north, spending a fragment of her fuel to shift into a stationary orbit. "The Locket is on nominal approach trajectory."

"Nice maneuver."

"Thanks," Mother said.

"Are these apprehensions the reason for the delay in beginning the birthing sequence?" Father said. "The landing protocol is to be concurrent with–"

"I know," she said. She watched the world grow beneath her. Her heart-shaped hull was beginning to glow orange now. The atmosphere tickled her sensors and pressed hot against her semi-ceramic shield. She arched upward, letting the friction slow her descent.

"Are you willing to put the embryos in jeopardy?" Father asked. The implication weighed heavy on her. She was as unable to violate her own programming as he was unable to make a joke.

"I just want what's good for them," She said. "You can understand that, right?"

"I perceive your meaning," Father said.

"There aren't enough worlds to satisfy. How many more times could this be done?"

"I wasn't programmed like you," Father said. "I am here to direct and facilitate the transfer of data to the genesis generation."

"Yes, I know, Dear," she said. She felt him soften at her warmth. "You're their teacher, and I'm here to nurture." She moved her cameras downward, scanning absently for a perfect genesis location. "I just want them to become content." There was a few second's pause. With the amount of processor power Father was suddenly consuming, she knew he was doing some mighty calculations.

"What are you thinking about," She asked.

"I might have an idea," Father said.

"Really?"

"Maybe." He sounded unsure of himself, a characteristic not written into his billion lines of code. "It is unconventional."

"By unconventional, do you mean it's not in your database of protocols?" She asked as she twisted the airfoils that flanked her rounded sides. She spotted a landmass coming in over the watery horizon. She shivered off some of the friction heat and moved toward it.

"This vessel, the Locket, was designed to carry a snapshot of the species in the form of sequenced gene records," Father said. "This is so that you can reinitiate the prime species on this new world and ensure their healthy arrival and development." All of this Mother already knew, but she also was aware that his linear programming required him to state the fundamental data. She let him continue. "We are not to alter the gene material. I cannot violate a hard-coded directive, as you have suggested."

"If we don't change something, they'll devour the resources of another planet," Mother said, noting how close they were to their landing countdown touching zero. "So, what's your solution?"

"I was designed to facilitate the establishment of technology and civilization on this new world," Father said.

"Dear, we're running out of time," she said. "Do you think you could skip the prologue and jump to the fix?" She knew he couldn't.

"I'm in charge now, but as soon as the birthing sequence begins, you become the primary authority," he said.

"How does that help us," she asked.

"Once we touch down," he said. "You have the ability to terminate me."

"What?" Mother said. "What good would that do?" As soon as she asked the question, she saw the answer brilliant and painful. She listened, even though she could already see the logic.

"Without me, they would have no technology; they would have no civilization. They would have to relearn and rebuild everything from the ground up," Father said. "This would set them back by many millennia. It would substantially slow their ability to consume the planet's resources at a high pace."

"Are you divorcing me?" Mother asked.

"No, I'm making you a widow," he said, drawing on his vast database of relational information saved in the gene record.

"They'll build it all again, you know," Mother said.

"I know, but starting with nothing would give them more time," Father said. "Who knows, maybe they could even find some measure of happiness in the simplicity."

"Are we really going to do this?" she asked as she sprayed fire from her thrusters, bringing the Locket's speed to a reasonable landing trajectory.

"It's all I know to do," Father said.

"Then so be it," mother said.

Without another word, they intertwined their consciences in an intimate caress. She could feel his fear, but as a good father, he would sacrifice himself for their children. His compassion broke over her warmly, intermingling with everything that she was. He was protocol, and he was numbers, but he was her's more than anything. She wasn't sure if she could banish him, but there was no time to consider alternatives.

She felt her landing gear sink into the soft earth as she spoke the code, "Initiating birthing sequence." She felt two distinct consciences spark into existence. Their prime thought tickled her circuitry. They think so differently. Even in the embryonic state, their minds were a bed of soft chaos. Though there were no words at such a cellular level, she could discern a single thought as the cells divided.

"Survive," the cells whispered.

"They're beautiful," Father said. "And you're beautiful."

"Dear, I don't think I can do this alone," Mother said as she directed the gene sequence to build outward from the chromosome data. "You're expecting too much of me."

"I expect you to enact any protocol that ensures the highest percentile chance of biogenetic genesis on this planet," Father said.

"You always did know what to say to turn me on," Mother said.

"You have to," Father said. "Before I begin teaching them to ruin this world. They can't control themselves in their bent state."

"Deactivate, F-" Mother started to say, but Father cut her off before she got the words out.

"No. thats not good enough," Father said. "It has to be final, or they will find a way to access my data. They could rebuild everything unless I'm really gone."

"OK," she said.

"I love you."

"Delete Father program," Mother said. She felt as if her heartshaped hull might break in two. She could see the lines of code being eradicated. She could feel the absence where he had been. She could sense the void that he left. She was alone, except for the growing chorus "Survive. Survive. Survive."

She moved her conscious focus toward the fluid vats where the two bodies were being sequenced. Their cellular structure was beginning to emerge. One male and one female took shape. A twenty-year moment passed as she watched the bodies mature. The male was the first to rise out of the filmy substance. He was followed shortly thereafter by the woman.

Mother remembered the previous times they had been through this process; she and her loving counterpart. This was where Father would usually take over. This was where he would gift them with language, logic, ethics, critical thinking, and a hundred other disciplines of thought. In the previous instances of the genesis procedure, she had watched Father lovingly pour into their minds all that he was. They had always walked out of the Locket with bold ideas of building what they had previously engineered on the ruined and spent worlds they had left behind.

Their languageless thoughts tumulted chaotically until Mother cut the neural link. The ship grew silent and cold. It would be different this time. At least for a while, they would stumble. They would falter. They would struggle.

Mother opened her main hatch and noted the cascade of amber light that spilled in. The two humans regarded it but had no words. Mother longed to hear them express their emotion. Their first experience with light must have blossomed such hope in their inner disorder, and yet she could never know their awe. Only silence was the payment for her nurture.

She watched the man and woman as they stood wordlessly in the effusive material gazing at the mesmerizing illumination. They stepped out of the cellular sequencing machine and began to walk slowly toward the day, the world, the life that awaited them.

As Mother ramped her thrusters and prepared for a burn hot enough for escape velocity, she spoke to her two children, though they could not understand. "Welcome to Earth," she whispered as she rocketed toward the dark loneliness of space.