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Fubas Clone Goo Event

Fubas clones
Image from Steve Bowers

In 8925 the Dominion system development vessel and linelayer Hoshanti reached the then unclaimed F-type star YTS 2145-098-3, which in the local arrangement popular under the sub-administration of Eir Excellency F1c2ab8 "The Bright" was named after popular sephirotic postbionts, in this case Jilunan.

Jilunan lay near the borders on Negentropist, STC, and local Panvirtualist space, and was part of the new Dominion initiative to claim a slice of the Sagittarius sector, thus opening up the rich worlds of the sol-ward Sagittarius arm to colonization and development. The haste with which the system was developed was an attempt to beat the rival superpowers.

After some 14 years the system was developed to the level that would be hospitable for biont life. Amat farms ringed Jilunan Prime, star lifting was extracting hydrogen and helium for conversion to exotic matter, a number of larger asteroids had been converted into Bishop Rings, several moons had been paraterraformed, the three small eujovian planets were being industrialised, and the third and fourth planets (Euvenusian and Xerovenusian, respectively) were being terraformed to Garden World standards. At this point, Hoshanti began bioengenerating the sophonts, all of them replicas of talented sapient citizens from throughout the Dominion, who would serve as colonists.

From surviving records it is not entirely clear what went wrong. An imperial investigation committee with the Seal of the God Emperor would later show that the result was a malfunction in the bioengenerating mechanism itself, but this same design — a Helios Clonemaster 21086 — had worked flawlessly thousands of times over the past twelve centuries. It is certainly true that the situation would never have gotten so out of hand were not the Hoshanti central node at the time exploring the systems Kuiper objects, but this alone is not enough to explain the event. Rumours and conspiracy scenarios persist to this day of deliberate Solarist clonelistism (though no such doctrine ever exists in the Dominion), of MPA pranksterism most usually attributed to the Googooboiz (although their technology could not possibly have interfered with a Dominion development vessel), of Panvirtualist memetic subversion (though no Panvirts were known within a radius of 50 LY), or even of attack by an unknown xenosophont ai or civilization (though no evidence of any have been found in the vicinity). Neither these more exciting hypotheses nor the even more numerous pedestrian explanations entirely explains the facts of the case.

In any case, instead of one copy of each of two thousand citizens, the Clonemaster created two thousand copies of the first clone, a replica of one Zar Arobyera Fubas, a hermaphrodite playwright, artist, thespian, sculptor, philosopher, fashion designer, madvert collector, hedonist, aesthete, vintier, virchdrama critic, soldier of fortune, hacker, fabulist, spy, template designer, transapientologist, alife breeder, architect, popstar, entrepreneur, and narcissist, of Turane-IVb, Nikkoshamas Prefecture. Both the Committee's findings, and independent cliological simulations, have shown that the first five Fubasii, realising that four of them might have to go (or at least be put in indefinite nanostasis) to keep the quota of colonists at the recommended level, first overrode the local surveillance subsystem so that the Hoshanti central node would receive a feed showing that everything was happening smoothly, then created a series of small but harmless diversions that would keep the mind distracted. After some 18 hours (all but 2 microseconds of which were due to transmission lags as e was currently exploring the outer system) the Hoshanti central node realised that something was amiss and commanded the local remotes to investigate. The remotes quickly discovered the (by now) 526 Fubaii, but were unable to do anything, as the clones, who each had full citizenship, commanded them not to interfere, and, using their own combined hacking and nanelectronic skills, along with a localnet technotelepathic linkup to create a temporary overmind, were able to take the nanoscale wormhole offline, simulating a maintenance shutdown for repairs signal.

By the time the Hoshanti reestablished wormhole connections and returned to the inner system, the Fubaii, fearing defeat and becoming almost foolishly reckless in the company of so many of themselves had created several dozen replicas of the Clonemaster unit and made even more copies. They had taken over the bishop rings and several bluesky habitats, occupied the wormhole superstructure, and were increasing their numbers exponentially. The situation was beyond the development vessel's control, and e asked for help from the Prefecture central government.

With the wormhole once again shut down by the occupying Fubaii, it took some 82 years for a relativist task force — the light cruiser Sulaminas along with associated corvettes, two tenders, a nanoborg landing craft carrier, the ISO Little Globe of Sunshine , and several seraiph — to arrive. They found a civilization of some two and a half trillion Arobyera Fubas, who had converted much of the system into habitats for themself. The Hoshanti, who had set up residence on the kuiper body 2314901, was as the only non Fubasan sophont in the entire system and as such was appointed a neutral go-between.

In the end the high toposophic minds in the task force managed to memetically subvert the Fubaii into renouncing their attempt at unilateral independence, joyfully rejoin the Dominion, and develop and maintain Jilunan as a strategic Dominion outpost, all without a drop of blood being spilled. The Hoshanti was sent on to develop another system, with eir cargo of clone templates (minus Fubas), and this time everything worked perfectly. Jilunan became a novelty world and mecca for Dominion narcissists, and has inspired several MPA imitators.

Following eir second (successful) mission, Hoshanti retired at the until then undeveloped Deeper outpost Gavit, a resource poor M6-type star YTS 2109 321 9 henceforth known (in the Dominion) as Hoshanti's Star, where e helped upgrade the local beamrider stations. E is happy to meet with outsystem visitors and has also made peace with the Fubasii, often putting them up when they come to stay, although e allows no more than one to visit at a time.

 
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Appears in Topics
7800 to 9999 AT: Age of Expansionist New EmpiresSignificant Historical EventsSolar Dominion
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 31 December 2000.

 
 
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