Edenic Garden Society

An offshoot of the Glassenheim Foundation, the Utopia Initiative, and the Anunnaki, the Edenic Garden Society is a self contained faction that has as it's driving purpose the creation of 'Seeds of Humanity'.

The Logistics of Extrasolar Colonization

Groups like the Explorer Corps and missions like the Oumuamua have proven than extending the dominion of humanity beyond the edge of the Solar System is a daunting task. There were previously just two lines of thought on how to accomplish this, unlocking the secrets of faster than life travel, and generational ships. The Oumuamua was technically a success but ran into the basic problem of topicality. When it was being built it was considered of vital importance, but some sixty years after its launch, most of the people involved with the exploration program at that time were dead or retired, and the megascale ship scooting towards the heliopause stopped being exciting and cutting edge, and fell into the same category as cleaning out the garage and closets of a deceased grandfather. Generational ships were massive, expensive, and quite simply lost the public interest quickly. The revelation of Project Infinity also soured relationships with long term projects.

The progress on FTL travel was even more dismal. The less promising designs simply didn't work. The more promising designs and theoretical models simply ceased to exist, imploded into dimensional fatigue events, or went *somewhere* and no one has any idea when, where, or even how they went, and that even assuming that the test bed vehicles weren't translated (exploded) into hyperdimensional energy, debris, or just cosmic noise.

The Seed of Humanity

The concept behind a Seed of Humanity is a generational ship on the cheap, minus the generational part. Without a crew, the 'Seed' can be dramatically smaller than a generational ship, and conceptually will plant itself in the surface of another planet or moon. The Seed will germinate, and somewhere between unpack/grow out from it's transit form into a base colony. Eventually, the base colony will grow into an arcology, and gestate a human population which will become the first generation of extrasolar humans. Eventually, the seed will 'flower' and establish contact with Earth and report it's progress.

An ambitious plan to say the least.

Progress on the project was set back decades after a particularly violent schism within the organization, splitting it into the original Garden of Eden Initiative and the Edenic Garden Society. The GEI initially had the upper hand in terms of financing and senior personnel, while the EDS was left on the defensive, but held the more ambitious and anti-orthodox engineers and designers. The GEI soon started to suffer from its own hubris and internal politicking, with various departments working to undermine the others to cover their own failures. Tenured appointees lorded of their domains like feudal dukes and barons, while finances became the field of battle. Eventually the Garden of Eden Initiative was cannibalized by the Pauper faction of the Anunnaki, and was dismantled like an animal in the slaughterhouse. A handful of GEI members were elevated to the ranks of the Anunnaki, but the majority were liquidated or simply terminated.

The Seed Of Humanity Prototype

The Seed of Humanity has long since passed the concept phase, and is well into testing phase. Dozens of tests have been run in long term simulation, as well as run piecemeal through outside computer modelling firms, proving out the various sections and pieces of the project.

Prometheus V.3

The current model of the 'seed' is the Prometheus version three. The Prometheus V.3 resembles an egg attached to a heavy drive section, based off of the Shenandoah Pioneer ship. This makes the assembly of the central components relatively easy, and inexpensive. This is a massive offset compared to the enormous cost of generational ships. The second cost saving measure is the 'seed' or 'egg' component of the Prometheus. It is based off of the Seyetik class pre-con tactical base, which was designed to support the Utopia Initiative as a mobile environmental observation post.

The Seyetik Pre-Con used in the Prometheus has 6 bays, and a central core. The Central core houses a self contained Dimensional Reactor and a small back up fusion reactor. There is a L/AISC core and CogNet node stacked above the reactor, and it is topped by a communications array and ansible for faster than light communication. This is a power hungry system, so it is used sparingly.

Bay 1 - Human BioCreche

Bay one houses a human reproduction and cloning center, where a small number of relatively simple autons can oversee the long term care and storage of fertilized human embryos, as well as the equipment required to gestate and birth the initial human settlers. The BioCreche can produce several thousand human children before exhausting its supplies.

Bay 2 - Animal BioCreche

Bay two is similar to Bay one, but it houses embryos and supplies to birth several generations of livestock as well as a host of genimals to begin populating a new biosphere.

Bay 3 - Plant Biosciences

Plants are transported as seeds, large amounts of seeds. These seeds are held in readiness to be used for both kickstarting biome modification and planting crops. An ideal 'Seed Mission' will deliver not just humans to another world, but will turn those worlds into images of earth, complete with forests and steppe terrain.

Bay 4 - Robotics

Bay Four is a storage and maintenance facility for hosts of auxons and autons. The auxons serve as scouts, seed dispersal units, and start the basic steps of terraforming. The autons tend to the function of the Prometheus as it deploys through it's mission. After being deployed, the robotics bay is reconfigured into a machine shop and garage for the construction and maintenance of vehicles.

Bay 5 - Polyforging

Bay five houses a complex of polyforges along with a deep inventory of Standard Template Construction patterns, mostly for vehicles, mining equipment, more machines and droids, and anything else the fledgling colony would need. The bay also includes a smelter to render the ore that the first gen mining and resource gathering autons bring back.

Bay 6 - Raw Materials

Bay six is packed completely with the initial stage of supplies. With some gear, space is more of a commodity than mass, so many things like vehicles and heavy gear are either shipped in pieces to be assembled, or as simply large barrels and gaylords (pallet sized boxes, like what watermelons are shipped in). Autons will assemble the equipment, or feed the raw materials into the polyforges to make what is needed. There are also stores of food, and food grade materials.

The Seyetik has a large cargo capacity outside of the bays. Most Seyetiks use this space for the things held in bay 6, the Prometheus uses this storage space to hold liquid cargo in massive bladders. The most common supply carried is synthetic fuel, followed by potable water.

Standard Mission

The standard mission involves the Prometheus class ship being stocked and having it's destination programmed. Likewise, a plan of colonization, based off of preliminary recon data, is loaded into the computer system. The ship is linked to a secondary 'booster' ship. The booster ship, ideally something with a lot of power, will accelerate the Prometheus to it's own maximum speed, likely using a gravity slingshot maneuver for more speed, and will kick the 'seed' off to continue the voyage alone. It is worth noting that at that point there is nothing alive on the ship other than ovum and seeds. Everything is in the hands of computers and autons.

Secret Tests

The Edenic Garden Society hasn't been all computer models and dream tank testing. It has done live tests of the plan, with the Prometheus 1 and 2 series.

Neo-Uruk was launched and landed on Antarctica to explore a hostile environment operation. The seed unpacked, and within a year had a neo-human population of twenty children, who were being raised in accelerated growth pods, their minds linked into the mutual dream of the L/AISC core's cognet node. By the end of the fourth year, Neo-Uruk had a population of 80, with the first generation having been decanted and living on the frozen continent. By the end of the second decade of Neo-Uruk, there were almost a hundren 'Urukians' and they had established a protoculture largely based around the writings of Jack London, and used a constructed language that was a mixture of phonetic Russian but used Arabic letters and Romantic language structure. They were xenophobic, insular, and had demi-incestuous familial relationships. Neo-Uruk was shut down after 23 years, and the colony 'terminated' within six months. Terminated is a sanitary word for the violence and cannibalism that broke out after the L/AISC shut down all of the systems, and all of the computer controlled systems powered down.

Exo-Cambria was settled on Mars, and lasted close to fifteen years before it was discovered by the ACPS in their surveys of the Red Planet. This was a cause of great concern because Exo-Cambria was represented by close to three dozen individuals who spoke a fragmentary con-lang, had no knowledge of Earth, and were exceedingly well armed and paranoid. After being discovered, the base computer made the decision to self destruct, and burned itself out in a semi-controlled DFE.

Exceptional Failures

Site B was a spectacular failure. The human host failed, and Site B continued to expand and grow without any humans. The base L/AISC countered this loss be bolstering the number of autons it constructed, and used them to emulate humans, and to take up human roles. These autons were more humanlike, as the L/AISC was designing them on the fly as they were being made by the forges. The Edenic Gardeners stepped in and shut down Site B, but not before harvesting all of the new droid design data the colony created.

Mission 19 was an exercise in horror. The first generation of colonists started using the biocreches as a food source. They started worshiping nature and animals, and refused to hunt, or kill, so instead reverted to eating the nascent colonists as they were gestating in the accelerated growth pods. The Gardeners took copious notes and officially 'terminated' all of the colonists. It is suspected that several of them were promoted into the Garden Society itself.

Phase Four

Many of the problems discovered in the early tests have been addressed in Phase Four. Plans for the Prometheus V.4 is being designed, as a 12 bay monster, and plans involve mating the new larger seed section to the larger and more robust drive section of a Eurasian Alliance sourced Kirov VI cruiser. This would keep the cost of the program largely the same, but greatly increase the thrust potential of the ship. The Kirov VI also has the advantage of already having the potential to mount outboard thrust modules that can be jettisoned once they are spent. This would let the P4 achieve a higher launch velocity, and have a larger drive section for retro-braking as it reaches its destination. The more simple and robust Neo-soviet drive section requires less maintenance and is more reliable than it's Federation counterparts.

The unsaid step in Phase Four is that there will be no Homo Sapiens involved in the project. Only the test missions have used Homo Sapiens stock. Phase Four plans to use Homo Sapiens Xenus to stock the mission, along with the Anunnaki plan to instill a new 'Terran free' protoculture to the missions, one that venerates the Anunnaki, and the idea of the reunification with Earth. Not as a colonial force, but as liberators or conquerors. The seeds aren't intended to extend the dominion of man, they are to grow as nascent states to support the Anunnaki and their vision of the future of humanity.