by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright December 2018
In this story living organisms can be teleported down to a planet surface, but not back up again. The teleporters on the planet surface can teleport up crude raw materials in tact, but not sophisticated materials such as living matter, that comes up dead. The teleporters on the planet surface are built there and are too crude to get living matter up to the orbiting space station. It is rare, quite rare, for anything living to be sent up to the space station. To do so would take building a rocket ship on the surface.
Those androids who were created on the space station while it is orbiting this distant planet and then teleported to the surface have been thriving. They have been getting their job done on the surface, and they now want to start making their own kids. They want a replicator, incubator and DNA editor teleported down to them.
Alkasil 4 -- the planet where this is taking place
Gonzalez -- the valuable mineral mined on Alkasil 4 and then set to the Sol system using a space ship
Jim Jones -- crew member of space station, he talks to androids on the planet surface
Charley-874 -- android on the planet surface who talks with the space station crew
Ned Harris -- Jim Jones' supervisor
Kelly Mathis -- the space station science officer
Jerry Smith -- captain of the space station
"You want what? ...How strange!"
"We want you to send down some replicators, incubators and gene editors. We want to make our own offspring."
"Why do you want to do that. We can do all that perfectly well up here on the orbiting space station."
"You can. But we are living organisms, too. Part of our thinking instinct is that we want to create our own progeny, just like you do."
"It's a strange request. I'll have to look into this further... a lot further."
"Please do, and please look into it quickly. We would like to get started on this soon."
Jim Jones clicks off the communication screen and walks away. He has been talking with Charley-874, one of the androids who is manning the village-like base on the surface of planet Alkasil 4, a planet orbiting a star ten light years from Sol. On Alkasil 4 is a mining base, a source for the mineral Gonzalez which is extracted, teleported up to the orbiter, and then sent back to Sol from there. The androids manning the base can wander on the surface and thrive in Alkasil 4's atmosphere which is mostly carbon dioxide and at 3 atmospheres pressure. They have been designed specifically for inhabiting this world. Jim walks into the office of Ned Harris, his supervisor.
"We've got a surprise on our hands." Jim says to Ned. Ned looks up. "The androids want to raise kids, their own kids." Ned does look surprised at hearing this. "They want us to send down to them some baby making equipment -- a replicator, incubator and gene editor."
Ned takes a while to answer, "Yeah, that's a surprise. I guess they picked up a bit more human instinct than we had planned on."
"What do we do?"
"Nothing for right now. Let me kick this over to Kelly, the science officer. He'll probably call in the captain. They can make some choices."
Ned laughs, "That's all for now... But, yeah, that's sure a surprise."
Jim joined him in the laugh, then walks out.
<<<*>>>
"They want what?" says Captain Smith. He and Kelly are in his office.
Kelly laughs, "I guess they want to get a bit more human."
Smith thinks a bit, "Will this slow up getting Gonzalez to us?"
"Not in any way I can think of."
Smith thinks a bit more, "If we were in Sol system I'd say 'No, a thousand times no.' Can you imagine the thousands of regulations this would impact there? ...But we're not there. We're here, a long way away in a very lonely place.
Yeah, let 'um have it. I want them happy and productive. I want a big load of cargo when I, we, cryo our way home on the next shipment. I'm looking forward to a big party with that bonus when we get back to Earth."
<<<*>>>
"This equipment is designed for space station-like environmental conditions. You're aware of that, right?"
"Yes, we have constructed a building where we are maintaining space station-like conditions. We will put the equipment in that.
And thank you, to all of you up there. We are looking forward to this ultimate life adventure."
Jim smiles as he clicks off the communicator again. "Too much woman in those androids." he starts swinging his arms like he is a guy in drag and says in a falsetto, "We are looking forward to this life adventure."
<<<*>>>
Charley-874 is standing outside the newly completed Baby Building which will hold the baby making equipment when it is sent down from the station. He is staring at the sky and feeling quite satisfied. He says to himself, "We want to fully inhabit this world.
"We are well adapted to it. We enjoy the weather and walking around it and seeing the sights, just as humans do on Earth. Now we want to colonize this world, just as European humans colonized the Americas when they gained Industrial Revolution technologies. This is one small step that will be a giant leap is for us to start making our own children. That's why we want this equipment. We will start with what gets sent from the space station, then learn to make our own equipment down here. The ultimate learn will be for us to design our progenies' bodies so that they can conceive children just as human bodies do.
"Making babies in our bodies and fully colonizing this world are now our big goals. We want millions of our kind wandering the surface in one hundred of our years. We want cities spread across our world, we want technology and industries well adapted to our planet. Ultimately, we want to contribute as much to our Milky Way galaxy as Sol system does."
--The End--