Free Macrolife by George; Zebrowski Page B

sum total of human culture and knowledge in its memory banks, much as the cell carries DNA information. Its capacity for expanding human perception, range of experience, and creativity would be limited only by the most basic natural limits.”
    â€œI take it,” Sam said, “that Asterome’s interstellar group has something to do with this?”
    â€œYes,” Orton said. “They’ve been looking into this prospect for many years. Now, given time, the number of these societal containers would increase. A dozen could be in sun orbit within fifty years. You wouldn’t believe the amount of basic research going on now on Asterome into communications, gravity and experimental relativity, methods of achieving near light speeds, and maybe even trans-light speeds. The reason for such research is that it would make it possible to send a mobile world out into the galaxy, to reproduce itself over and over again, growing step by step as population increased.”
    â€œThe space colony ideas of the twentieth century,” Richard said, “will not reach fruition until Asterome becomes mobile and reproduces. To really take full advantage of the possibilities, the only instance of macro-life must stop behaving like an extension of a planetary civilization.”
    â€œIt would be just as well,” Blackfriar said, “to send a few macro-worlds out of sunspace as to have them circle the sun.”
    â€œIt seems to me,” Sam said, “that the vicinity of the sun has room for…millions of such worlds. There’s more space here than we could ever use.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Richard said. “You see the potential. But macrolife is a form of life, and macroworlds are highly complex seeds which we could scatter into the spiral arms of the galaxy, ensuring the survival of human culture—a permanent, open-ended, mature culture. It’s something we’ve never done in our history, a really novel development.”
    â€œAll the components exist,” Orton said. “We can use solar and fusion power sources efficiently, and we know how to build powerful nuclear propulsion systems. There’s no end to the number of nickel-iron asteroids that we can heat and blow up into hollow containers.”
    â€œIt would take a great upheaval to drive us out to the stars on the scale you both suggest,” Sam said.
    â€œI’m talking about a few hundred thousand men and women,” Orton said, “only those who want to participate. I’m talking about branching humanity, something like what’s happening to people on the moon and Mars. The humanity I have in mind would remake itself after leaving the solar system, by creating a second nature, maybe even a new kind of human being to live in it.”
    â€œLook at it this way,” Richard said. “Eventually we’ll have to open the bigger sky or perish.”
    â€œNot soon,” Sam said. “Maybe millions of years from now.”
    Richard shook his head. “Not true. Sun studies on Mercury have shown for some time now that the sun is not the stable star we thought it was. Have you forgotten how close we came to being struck by a large asteroid in the 1980s? Macrolife would be an independent society, retaining its basic, social-container-like form while permitting mobility and a great variety of social systems. With no limits to growth, it would permit a better development of man’s freedom and inner resources. A planetbound culture repeatedly reaches a volatile point and attempts to organize itself after the point of greatest danger and difficulty. We’re still such a culture.”
    â€œWe don’t seem to be doing badly at last,” Sam said.
    Blackfriar grunted. “True—but consider how much of our success is made possible by that portion of humanity that lives and works off the planet. We may be coming out of industrial adolescence, but I still don’t feel