The Marnott Liaison

"The computers on the Marnott ship calculated the modifications to your 23 and 40 chromosome structures that would work temporarily and a genetic structure of 29 chromosomes that you could both be migrated towards through changing the way the cells handle mitosis, that would enable full fertility, and rapidly modified your sperm and eggs. Paul, your nanites unfortunately had to render you unconscious for two weeks, as they were drawing heavily on your body's energy reserves. The energy efficiency of the generation of nanites used on your volunteers was one of the first improvements that Dynatech had made to the hardware side of the nanites since Borelli died, only because the NANO OS running inside Anthony Sparhawk collaborated with him on the design changes."

"A question," said Doctor. "Why do the hybrids still express RNA, if we don't need it to form any kind of fertilization chromosome?"

Nano Tonya responded, "It was an example of inflexibility in the Marnott nanites. The RNA expression is considered an essential body function by them. They would not accept a hybrid design without it, so we needed to ensure that the RNA being expressed would not kill anyone. Between Homo Marnotts, there are some beneficial effects, as you have found. You have also found that if a Homo Marnott with nanites in their system has intercourse with a Marnott virgin, it will transform them into Homo Marnott. What you have not encountered yet is if a Homo Marnott without nanites does so, as that only applies to your children at this time. The Homo Marnott RNA will produce a valid 40th chromosome in the Marnott, without producing a bond because they are not cross-fertile. The one difference is that the Marnott becomes immune to infidelity fever by giving them the ability to ignore all RNA that they encounter after that. It also alters the RNA the cured Marnott produces to extend the cure to other Marnott virgins. Their nanites will still warn them away from bonded Marnotts, but not other Marnott virgins or cured individuals, since the nanites will not consider them a bonded Marnott, even though they are fertile."

"Our nanites were explicitly programmed not to remove infidelity fever," Doctor said.

"We know. Only orders to avoid the death of their host superseded that. Without that threat, they would not have acted at all. Then a secondary order to ensure the fertility of the host enabled us to convince them that Gellor and Paul needed to become hybrids. That then allowed us to remove the fever from the hybrid design, because Gellor would no longer be Marnott. When they insisted that the RNA generation was required in the design, we countered that it needed to be non-fatal to all three species, with or without nanites. If humans without RNA-coding nanites have sex with a Homo Marnott, the RNA is ignored. In humans with RNA-encoding nanites, the resulting RNA splicing is innocuous, if the Homo Marnott has no nanites. If they both have nanites, the human is transformed to Homo Marnott. For Marnotts, the bonded Marnott are already protected by their nanites, from human DNA or Homo Marnott RNA, although both trigger the infidelity fever without warning. It is only the Marnott virgins, where their nanites would normally ignore the RNA, where we needed to avoid death by having the natural process produce a valid 40th chromosome, and having the RNA effect the cure was just indirect enough that the Marnott nanites agreed to it, since no nanites in either partner would do anything in the process."

"What if the cured Marnott then has sex with a Homo Marnott who does have the nanites?" the doctor asked.

"No transformation will occur," Nano Tonya answered. "Once the 40th chromosome exists in a Marnott, either the RNA is ignored in a cured individual, or it is fought by the nanites in a bonded one and the Marnott experiences the usual mild case of infidelity fever. Either way, they remain Marnott. Only Marnott virgins can be transformed or cured."

I said, "So, one moment you're saying our kids should have nanites, and in the next they are this great cure for the Marnotts if they don't."

"Simply explaining all possibilities, Paul," answered Nano Paul. "Whether they do have nanites, or whether they don't, the outcome of a Homo Marnott having sex with any of the three species is not a deadly one. It will be up to you as a species to decide if you prefer expanding it by giving your children nanites so they can transform more Marnotts and humans into Homo Marnott, or assisting one of your base species by letting them mate without nanites. If you do provide them nanites, make them Dynatech ones."

"Any particular reason?" I asked.

"Several. The Marnott nanites are limited in function, and rigid in several respects. If a Homo Marnott with the Marnott nanites were to approach a bonded Marnott, it would be the Homo Marnott who would be warned, when the danger is only to the Marnott. Dynatech nanites with the Nano OS would issue only a verbal warning to the host, rather than creating an unpleasant physical sensation. The Dynatech nanites also have several features for ensuring the health of the host, which the Marnott ones do not. Finally, Dynatech is continuing research, when it appears that Marn stopped advancing the technology millennia ago."

Gellor said, "By law, the Alliance will not allow us to collaborate with the humans technically until they become members of the Alliance. I imagine both nanite systems would leap forward."

Nano Paul said, "There is no data you could provide Dynatech that it does not already have. When Paul was hospitalized during his hibernation, Dynatech was consulted by his doctors regarding the high level of nanite activity in his body. A full download of his nanites' data was performed while he was asleep. This data included a full evaluation of Marnott nanite technology. Dynatech kept this a secret from the U.S. Government to protect you from potential attacks via your nanites. David and Anthony both feel the Marnott tech lags behind Dynatech's in many ways, concluding that you accomplished the treatment for infidelity fever thousands of years ago and then stopped advancing the technology since then. Even you seem to think the human tech is more advanced - or do you think that your nanites rise to the level of being their own species?"

"Not at all, although I am speaking of the software aspect of you, not the hardware," said Gellor. "The primary distinctions are your ability to reproduce, to spread as software from host to host as self preservation, and your capability with language, although your rejection of self-hood might pose an issue. Marnott nanites only communicate with other nanites in their machine code. We were surprised that they were able to collaborate with Dynatech's nanites to come up with a hybrid species solution at all. We did not think they had that level of sapience."

"The solution depended on your ship's computer doing the calculations. Without it, we would not have arrived at a solution in time. We then implemented those changes. The bigger problem was getting the Marnott nanites to agree to the plan. We had to learn their machine language to get them to understand us, then had to guide them through several decisions, nudge might be a better word, but they do have a basic capacity to learn, if not much creativity."

Nano Tonya continued, "David has decided to share Dynatech's technical knowledge with Homarnis and through you to Marn and the rest of the Alliance. We will transfer that data to your main computer as communication bandwidths allow, without betraying our presence in the Tegrin subspace communications. Even if you cannot return information from the Alliance back to Earth at this time, he suggests Marn at minimum upgrade their nanites to provide protection against human DNA. Or any other species that might pose a similar threat. Maybe even cure infertility fever altogether. Having the ability to execute our OS on your hardware would be nice. Consider it another way to bridge Marnott and human societies."

Gellor smiled one of those smiles that told me she had a plan. "I am not sure Marn will do those things, but they are due to ship us a nanite fabricator in a year, so we can begin producing Marnott nanites to give our children. We were planning to tinker with the programming in any case, since we do not need the protection from infidelity fever on Homarnis. Would Dynatech be willing to provide us with a fab to produce their nanites instead?"

"They are already building it, so you can produce your own nanites, under a license that prohibits selling them to other worlds." Nano Tonya answered. "It will be capable of producing both nanite designs, or a hybrid design that they are just finished beta testing that can be used as upgrades to the Marnott nanites in your systems. Which the Nano OS can run on. It was meant to be gift on the 10th anniversary of First Contact, but was delayed by the beta testing. It is ready to ship now. Although with the Embassy gone, we would need an Alliance presence on planet to deliver it."

Gellor said, "With Earth First being a hostile force on Earth, I need to stay away from it. But I can send Paul and my aide Grell in a shuttle, to transport the fabricator back here. In an hour, let's say?"

"David says that's fine. He'll meet them at the doors to HQ."

~~~~~

Chapter 12: Dynatech

~~~~~

Grell and Macy arrived at HQ minutes later, summoned by Gellor. When Macy found out about Nano, and her own began speaking to her, she burst out in giggles, then asked, "Can Grell be injected with the Dynatech nanites, so he can have Nano in his head, too? Or will the two types conflict with each other? I like the idea of being able to communicate with him long distance."

"No conflict," said Nano Tonya.

Grell was given an injection of the Dynatech nanites, and by the time we were boarding a shuttlecraft to head to Earth, the Nano OS was already talking in his head, in Marnott. I could hear it telepathically.

The shuttle craft took off, and slipped into subspace as soon as it was clear of the atmosphere. Three minutes later, it slipped back out of subspace behind Earth's moon, cloaked itself and inserted itself into a landing orbit headed for the suburbs north of Boston, and landed in the nearly empty parking lot of Dynatech, about 8 PM local time. Only four cars were in the parking lot.

The front doors to the HQ opened, and out walked David Sparhawk, Chairman of Dynatech, his father Anthony, its founder and CEO, along with three women and six children, ranging in age from 10 to 17.

"Paul!" called out David. "Welcome to Dynatech."

"Thank you, David. Is this your family?"

"Yes," David answered. "I'm sure you recognize my father Anthony. The three women jokingly call themselves my harem. They are Sheila, Sofia and Amy, who I consider my wives, and the mothers of our children. The older teens are Ben, Jack and Kimmy, the younger three are Tony, Alicia and Kyle. We... we request permission to join Homo Marnott, to begin the process of moving Dynatech headquarters to Homarnis as soon as possible. I ordered our employees to get as far from New York as possible, and we would try to contact them later about a resumption of operations here."

"Why? That seems sudden." I said.

He answered, "After the bombing in New York this afternoon, we sent out a query to all of the Nano instances in hosts across the planet, and found that the Earth First movement is a lot stronger than anyone expected. While the governments are going along with Alliance plans, too many ordinary citizens are opposed, and they're beginning to tip the balance. You can expect more violence in the coming months, although I think nuking New York will cost them a lot of support. I don't want my family to be here if everything still goes to shit. We are aware of the showdown between Gellor and Admiral Tegrin today, and do not think there is any guarantee that Earth is safe now."

"All they had to say was 'no' to Alliance membership." I said. "We have been crystal clear about that from the beginning."

Amy said, "It's the politicians saying 'yes'. The Earth Firsters don't believe the Alliance would back away even if they did say 'no'. We're talking about the same crowd who talked about the U.N.'s black helicopters all those years. They're convinced this is a covert invasion, and it's incredibly hard to convince some of these people that they're wrong. You've seen some of the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the last decades. Pedophile rings operating from the basements of pizza parlors that have no basement, and other shit like that. They even see the Homo Marnott as a plot against them, trying to steal the best humans away, while whining that they aren't the ones being chosen. Well, this set of humans wants nothing to do with their conspiracies and attacks or the consequences that will result."

"They're not being chosen because they're crazy. Anyway, permission granted," I said. "Welcome aboard. Do you have the fab ready?"

"It's standing by the shipping dock, but I don't think it will fit in that ship you came in," Anthony said.

I chuckled. "It won't have to. The Alliance has what you can think of as combined replicator/teleporter technology. We can convert the fab to a data pattern here, then convert it back to matter when we get to Homarnis. It has not been publicized on Earth, but it's one of the many technologies humans would gain if they finish joining the Alliance. Grell, can you bring along the mobile scanner?"

The Sparhawks escorted us through their building to the shipping area. On a custom-built pallet stood the fabricator unit, surrounded in styrofoam and straps. Gellor pointed the scanner towards it, pressed a few screenkeys, and from top to bottom, the whole unit disappeared in a few seconds, pallet and all.

"Digitization complete, Paul," Gellor said.

"Holy shit," muttered Sheila. "That's so cool. You would put FedEx out of business in a day, if that data can be transmitted globally."

"How about interplanetary or even interstellar?" I asked. "This data is already being transmitted to Homarnis via the subspace communicator on our shuttle. Once you select a site for Dynatech to build on Homarnis and we construct its building, we can rematerialize it there."

Sheila asked, "Are you telling me that in the future, humans could dematerialize an object here on Earth, and it could be rematerialized on Homarnis within minutes? Why do you even bother with travel on space ships?"

Grell answered, "Within seconds, actually. However, there is a prohibition on sentients traveling that way, except in direst emergency. To avoid creating duplicates of an individual, their pattern would need to be deleted from the sending end before it would arrive at the destination. The chance of a transmission error preventing their being recreated at the receiving end is small, but not zero, increasing with distance, as is the chance that the receiving station might not even be there when their transmission arrives. Instead, we dematerialize onboard a ship, to avoid experiencing the travel time, then rematerialize at the end of the voyage, without ever being transmitted. With inorganics and even sub-sentient life, a copy can be retained after transmitting it, and resent if needed. We can retain the pattern for your fabricator and create multiple copies, if needed. Or we could send the pattern on to Marn, for analysis and use there."

"I think I'm going to like being part of the Alliance," Sheila said.

"I think the Alliance is going to like having you as part of it," David teased.

"Are we ready to go?" I asked. "Any possessions you want to go with you?"

"Some boxes and suitcases by the entryway," David said.

I said, "We'll dematerialize them. The shuttle's got enough seats, but there's no reason for cargo space."

We loaded the Sparhawks aboard the shuttle, and took off.

Less than hour later, we landed on Homarnis again in early evening, and were greeted by Gellor and the rest of my family. Doctor was there with a radiation scanner, which showed that there was no exposure. We guided the Sparhawks to an unoccupied residence with enough bedrooms, rematerialized their belongings, and familiarized them with the replicator systems in kitchen and the various rooms, so they could generate food, clothing, furniture as they desired. We told them to get some food and rest, and we would talk to them again in the morning.

~~~~~

The next morning, we brought the Sparhawks to the headquarters building, to continue orienting them to life on Homarnis.

"One of the issues we need to address," I said, "is the status of your children. What ages are they?"

Ben, Jack and Kimmy are 17, with birthdays on either side of the New Year. They were conceived within a month of each other, to Amy, Sheila and Sofia, respectively Then we have Tony at 14, Alicia at 12 and Kyle is 10 and a half. Why?"

"Well, Homarnis was granted by the Alliance as a homeworld for Homo Marnott, and you're the first human family to ever immigrate here. Everyone else has either been a homarn family, or unattached adult humans or Marnott who transformed right after arriving. Nobody has stayed human or Marnott for a long period of time. But the only ways to transform to Homo Marnott involve having sex, with nanites in both participants, so we're left with three teens who are close to being 18 and able to consent to that, and three more kids who are years away from being old enough."

"That's about what we expected," David said, although I could hear his kids grumbling in their thoughts about wanting to fly. "Is it a problem for them to live here as humans for that long?"

Gellor said, "The Alliance will likely make an exception, if it is clear that the whole family plans to transform. Especially this family, being so connected to the very nanites that made the species possible. They would object to it if we keep bringing other families here."

I nodded. "As for the five current adults, we would each be honored to be your transformation partners. As individuals and as a species, we have debts we can never repay because Dynatech existed. First, Gellor and I owe you our lives. I would have likely died from melanoma years before First Contact if not for the cancer fighting nanites, and the first Marnott female to have sex with a human male without nanites would have died, whether that was Gellor or someone else. Second, the whole species exists because that first encounter turned out the way it did, due to the two sets of nanites cooperating. Yesterday, because of a warning from the Nano OS, we were able to avoid an escalation of the events on Earth. It now has a chance, if it doesn't squander it. The only question is, who do you each want to pair with? My family has three males and three females, and you have two males and three females."

Anthony blushed, then said, "I haven't been intimate with a woman since my wife died in 2012. Too focused on building the business, then on being a grandfather. I'm not sure I remember how."

"What is the metaphor? Like riding a bike?" Gellor said. "I think you will do fine, Anthony."

"It's not like you haven't had offers, Anthony," said Amy. "I've been trying to get you in bed as long as I've known you."

"You're David's wife, Amy. I treated him too badly in his teen years to do that to him."

Amy snorted. "I always had David's permission, you old fool. In fact, I'm not letting you off the hook now. If you want to become homarn, I'm going to be the one to transform you. That will work, right? I go first, and once I'm homarn I can transform Anthony?"