The research directions favored by the chers and the Terrans said much about their scope and ambitions.
The ch Trade Association favored huge layouts and grand ambitions. The chers were not content with developing incrental improvents. They sought to reinvent the market for biochs and fundantally change humanity's relationships with biotechnology. The ch Supremacists and Transhumanists did not hesitate to invest huge amounts of money and resources to realize their ambitious layouts.
The Terrans anwhile remained more grounded in their research and ambitions. They had big dreams as well, but they did not have as much room to squander so many resources on research and developnt. This was why they largely sought to develop biochs that possessed enough practical value to earn a profit within a decade.
Ves personally liked the approach adopted by the Terrans. Its biochs were at least a lot more practical and affordable than the crazy stuff developed by the chers. Even if Terran biochs were not affordable in an absolute sense, the cost-benefit ratio was at least within acceptable bounds.
The chers of the old galaxy clearly paid less attention to this parater. They had money and resources to spare. What they did not have was better chs, so they were willing to invest massive sums just to produce marginal improvents.
Although the MTA was probably one of the least efficient organizations in the Milky Way Galaxy, Ves and pretty much every other ch designer was still grateful that the chers invested so much manpower and resources into these wild ideas.
This was because the research and applications that erged out of all of these research projects usually managed to trickle down to the masses.
The chers clearly did not share all of their research results, and it could take one to four ch generations for them to generously pass on a fraction of their new
technological advances to the general audience.
Even so, the MTA still ensured that the ch industry beca more and more sophisticated with every passing year. The developnt of chs had never stalled or lost montum at any point during the entirety of the Age of chs.
One of the reasons why the chers were continually able to keep chs fresh and exciting was exactly because they conducted research that no one else dared. There were many innovations that could only be attained with imnse capital or plans that stretched for half a century.
No other institution was willing to entertain such research aside from the only superorganization that was completely dedicated towards ch.
"You may not be aware of this, but the Arboreal Project that you are developing in cooperation with our bioch designers and biotech research teams already incorporate minor design applications derived from our Rapid Adaptation Biotechnology." Master Laila Rebecca Devos inford Ves.
That took Ves by surprise. "Really?"
"Do not harbor any illusions about it. Our work cannot be considered a true implentation of Rapid Adaptation Biotechnology. We are only able to apply minor improvents on your TE Wood-based biochs whenever it is convenient. If you want to design a true rapidly adapting bioch, then you will need to start from the ground up and adopt a different approach towards bioch design. It is currently difficult to design such a product by using bioengineered wood as your primary material. Flesh is faster, more malleable and easier to program."
"I see. That makes sense."
Wood was more rigid and inflexible than flesh. This made the forr harder to change and less prone to adaptations.
While there were many ways to make wood more malleable, the costs outweighed the benefits.
"Do you Terrans have any bioch design applications that are actually useful to the Arboreal Project?" Ves asked with a touch of impatience.
"There is." Master Laila said in a asured tone. "It is one of the reasons why we support your initiative to develop a bioch based on wood. The tech is highly contentious and it is not one we wish to reveal to the public at this date. If you had not earned our trust, I would not ntion it to you at all, because it is not a capability that we are eager to share to the public."
Ves started to have ideas about what this secret tech may be. "Is it an innovation that violates a taboo?"
"Yes, and not in a small manner. It is classified tech that we have only ever thought about using it against the native aliens, and even then we are reluctant to permit it because it will harm us as well in the long term. The main reason why we have taken it out of our secret archives and updated it is because we may not have another choice."
Master Laila Devos decided to show Ves what she ant instead of describing the secret weapon with her own words.
The projection of a typical planet showed up. Ves did not recognize it, but he could see that it featured a mix of greenery and urban developnt. The foreign architecture clearly showed that the planet was occupied by an alien race. It was unlikely that the biosphere was compatible with the human race.
One day, a Terran fleet arrived in orbit.
Instead of engaging in orbital bombardnt or sending down chs to raid the alien cities, the fleet instead launched a fat torpedo that plunged into lake before drilling through the bottom.
Nothing seed to change at first. It was only after ti went by that earthquakes started occur. Their frequency rose quickly. Eventually, ent tectonic plates started to shift, causing apocalyptic damage to most urban settlents. Eventually, a massive tree burst out of the lake that used to absorb the fat torpedo! It turned out that it contained a massive bioengineered seed that had taken root inside the planet. Once the seed had sprouted, it had voraciously absorbed much of the surrounding nutrients to grow at a rapid speed.
The earthquakes that rippled across the planet were all caused by the rapid growth of all of its roots and the cavities that erged after so much underground water and minerals got sucked away.
This ultimately produced a gigantic tree that thrust up in the skies and almost seed
to breach the atmosphere!
The growth of this gigantic tree absolutely devastated all life on the planet. The
earthquakes, the depletion of minerals and the dramatic disruptions to the climate generated so many mass extinction events that the globe had practically been
cleansed of all life!
Almost nothing of value was left by the ti the tree had grown imnsely tall and
thick.
Its size and mass had already exceeded the scope of most moons and already
comprised a significant fraction of the planet.
Ves was both horrified and fascinated by this vision.
"Does this have anything to do with biochs at all? So far, all I have seen is a weapon
of mass destruction. The scale of devastation is only slightly less than what the
Destroyer of Worlds has wrought on alien planets."
"Wait for it, Ves. This display has not yet reached its end."
The enormous tree began to wilt. Enormous leaves the size of battleships ca loose and floated in the wind before they fell in many different locations, so even reaching the opposite side of the planet!
At the sa ti, the trunk visibly began to shrink as the tree gave back its resources
to the planet it spawned from. The globe was undergoing a profound transformation, Even its roots began to break down and return what it had plundered from the underground environnt.
Soon enough, a pristine planet erged at the end of this profound transformation. The massive tree had beco much diminished by the end of this impressive display, but was still large enough to tower over the surface.
Many of the ships of the Terran fleet descended on the surface. They released colonists that readily began to build settlents on the surface. The human colonists
did not bother to wear vacsuits or hazard suits because they could easily breathe the
local air.
"This tree... terraforms planets?"
"The World Tree embodies both destruction and renewal." Master Devos solemnly affird. "We can bioprogram it to perform many different assignnts."
This beca obvious when a part of the trunk opened up. An entire city made out of
wood erged!
Millions of Terran colonists readily moved into the city and could imdiately make use of the facilities without needing to install any additional hardware.
All the way up to a crowd, a lot of leaves and branches parted to the side in order to make space for a huge flat surface that was made out of dense mineral-heavy wood. Dozens of starships descended from orbit and landed on the flat crown.
Once they opened up their hatches, a surprising developnt took place. Wooden biochs erged from hidden cargo elevators!
The so-called World Tree appeared to have produced each of these bioconstructs.
They were all controlled by Als for now, but Ves could easily imagine human ch pilots taking them over.
This was not all. Existing biochs, both damaged and undamaged, exited the landed
carriers and entered the World Tree. They soon erged from the crown. Each of the bioconstructs had received comprehensive repairs and upgrades that made them as
good as new!
Due to the fact that the planet's resources were likely different from the ones used to build the original biochs, the material compositions had beco more difficult. Even so, the biotech mastered by the Terrans allowed them to integrate many different materials in the sa biochs while keeping their performance and structure surprisingly consistent.
When the carrier vessels were done with replenishing their biochs, they set, but
not before loading in another massive seed that was concentrated with critical minerals and other nutrients needed to grow a World Tree on another planet!
The World Tree finally shrunk even further. It had diverted a large amount of mass into large wooden growths that eventually morphed into wooden bioships. Through the vessels did not look as solid, reliable and well-built as proper warships, these grown biowarships still possessed most of the necessary parts needed to traverse the stars and assist with waging war.
Human crews arrived and installed all of the necessary hardware that couldn't be
produced by the World Tree. This included superdrives and other pieces of high technology that could only be produced through special ans.
The new bioships soon began to lift off the World Tree and joined the fleet waiting in orbit. The expanded armada subsequently moved out in order to conquer another
planet.
"Amazing, is it not? When I learned about it for the first ti, I beca fascinated with the possibility of using it to turn all alien planets into human ones."
"It is certainly a big invention." Ves said. "I wonder why you Terrans developed it in the
first place."
"It is not difficult to deduce that we developed the World Tree in preparation to make
use of it to conquer alien territories as quickly and effectively as possible. If we entered a second Age of Conquest, we thought about relying on the World Tree Project to rapidly accelerate our conquests. The World Tree allows us to conquer, destroy, terraform, extract resources and produce new chs and other war materiel much faster and more efficiently than any of the alternatives. It is a ans for us to conquer vast amounts of alien territories while keeping logistical disruptions at a minimum. One of its greatest advantages is that it can theoretically allow an invasion fleet to continually push into enemy territory without needing to return to friendly space in order to replenish lost chs, supplies and possibly even warships. Each World Tree planted on a resource-rich planet can solve many of its problems." What a horrible but ambitious invention. Even though it encompassed way more than biochs alone, it showed that the Terrans were not incapable of devising and realizing big big plans!
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