Scientia Weaponizes The Future

Congratulations!

Anyway just love the update, Amy making this kind of massive changes to the world's environment is quite rare!
Same the idea of Capes she saved in Endbringer attacks own her favours and willing to help her with no questions asked, something that should have happen considering the higher potential of death in their profession.

Honestly i find it quite sad Amy in canon is so trapped in her mind and socially isolated from everyone except for Vicky and Carol as the dangerous influence on her.
She got huge potential more than just local scale civilian and cape healing same with power manipulation sigh.
 
Welcome back, Taliesin! Welcome back! Time to relax and click my reader and enjoy the new chapter!

Congratulations on the successful passing of the exam! I hope your future career is bright and awesome!

Take all the time you need. Its wonderful to see you writing again!
 
Holy shit. This is why Amy should literally be the most feared being in Worm. If she wanted, she could have wiped out life on Earth a dozen times over.

Hopefully Scion is too deep in depression to notice and hammer down the nail thats sticking out.
 
Mosquito change? Good.
Cholera change? Also good.
The completely new algae blooms that are going to form?
That. . . might not be great.
 
Yeah, this looks like a mass extinction event. The algae will outcompete other marine organisms for carbon dioxide that would have been taken anyway, to a much greater degree than they add to the total carbon-removal.
How could they possibly outcompete other marine organisms to a greater extent than they add to carbon removal? A photon captured by Panacea Algae is at least as effective as one captured by anything else. They could certainly do ecological damage by being over-competitive, but they could wipe out the natural photosynthetic ocean biome and still be ahead on decarbonization. (That'd be bad, though.)

If anything I'd worry that the algae will self-destruct by activating Crash Decarbonization mode everywhere they are, dropping local concentrations sharply and being poorly positioned when it switches off.

They also obviously won't be secreting toxins like some of the more problematic algal blooms, and if they're locking some of the carbon into mineral forms that reduces the degree to which they generate post-bloom decay products.

Might want to have tweaks to reduce nocturnal de-oxygenation though. I don't remember that being addressed.


EDIT: OTOH I somewhat doubt that the mosquito and cholera fixes will be fully effective. To eradicate V. cholorae worldwide would require aggressive worldwide deployment of the competitor at a minimum. And I'm not sure that would work. Or that it wouldn't break some piece of marine ecology if it did work. It'd actually have been a better idea without the timer.

For the mosquitoes, well, the question is whether any Mosquito Classic populations manage to evolve reproductive isolation from the neo-mosquito before they get genetically contaminated. Of course, Panacea could just hunt those down later if they develop.

Still good things, though.
 
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How could they possibly outcompete other marine organisms to a greater extent than they add to carbon removal?
In a situation where for every (say) five carbon atom they fix from CO2, four of them would have been fixed by non-biotinkered organisms anyway. They're increasing total carbon fixing, but outcompeting to a five times greater extent.
 
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Thank you all so much for the kind words. I'm glad people enjoyed this one more than I expected. And I'm very, very glad the test is over and done with. I'll hopefully never have to do anything that hard ever again.

I've often wanted to see Amy explore her full potential too. It doesn't come up often in fics, and when it does the results tend to be on the more fantastical side rather than thinking about the true power of real biology with all the keys in human hands.

Holy shit. This is why Amy should literally be the most feared being in Worm. If she wanted, she could have wiped out life on Earth a dozen times over.

A queen who can choose to wear red, or white.

Yeah, this looks like a mass extinction event. The algae will outcompete other marine organisms for carbon dioxide that would have been taken anyway, to a much greater degree than they add to the total carbon-removal.

Shaper/Amy thought about that:

A metabolic switch like a high and low gear, that would send the affected species into frantic metabolic and reproductive overdrive to reduce carbon levels whenever they were too high, but only maintain a modest population when it was reduced back to normal, waiting until they were needed again.

The modified organisms won't reduce the carbon levels below reasonable levels, they're aimed at buffering the level instead of simply reducing it as much as possible. Certainly not to a degree that would cause mass extinctions of stuff that's currently around. It's not an introducing rabbits to Australia situation.

One of the major hazards with introducing new species is definitely what happens after they accomplish what you wanted, but it might be possible for a sufficient sophisticated actor to manage the hazards with good planning and good biological tools.

One of the inspirations for this chapter was a conversation I had with a friend 15ish years ago who was studying graduate biology. She pointed out that many biospheres on Earth are already likely too far gone to save, which means whether we like the risks or not, we need to start figuring out how to engineer their replacements. Because eventually we're not going to have a lot of choice in the matter.

Might want to have tweaks to reduce nocturnal de-oxygenation though. I don't remember that being addressed.
Author knowledge limitation, I'm not a proper biologist and didn't know about the issue. The modified algae do still rely on photosynthesis as a power source to do their work, so that might not be an issue.
 
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Author knowledge limitation, I'm not a proper biologist and didn't know about the issue. The modified algae do still rely on photosynthesis as a power source to do their work, so that might not be an issue.
I'm a semi-proper biologist by training, but I didn't either. I went looking on wikipedia for the mechanisms of algal blooms causing harm. Apparently one is that during the night, the algae don't stop all metabolic activity - and naturally they're aerobic. Combine that with being extremely numerous and they can produce low nighttime oxygen levels. (And when the bloom collapses they die off and induce a follow-on bloom of aerobic scavenger/decay organisms that continues to de-oxygenate the area, but Panacea Algae might exit a bloom state more gracefully.)
In a situation where for every (say) five carbon atom they fix from CO2, four of them would have been fixed by non-biotinkered organisms anyway. They're increasing total carbon fixing, but outcompeting to a five times greater extent.
Okay, but that's very much a comparison of apples and orange-headed Tanagers.
 
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Author knowledge limitation, I'm not a proper biologist and didn't know about the issue. The modified algae do still rely on photosynthesis as a power source to do their work, so that might not be an issue.
All photosynthetic organisms use sunlight to generate sugar during the day, and then burn it with oxygen to generate ATP. During the nighttime, that happens without also generating oxygen—so if you're adding a ton of algae, that can deoxygenate the region. It's one of the big problems with even natural algae blooms, as it can asphyxiate sealife.
 
All photosynthetic organisms use sunlight to generate sugar during the day, and then burn it with oxygen to generate ATP. During the nighttime, that happens without also generating oxygen—so if you're adding a ton of algae, that can deoxygenate the region. It's one of the big problems with even natural algae blooms, as it can asphyxiate sealife.
Ah, I see. Thank you for the detail.

We can safely assume that Shaper knows what it's doing at least, and probably has stuff lower its aerobic metabolic activity at night.
 
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Ah, I see. Thank you for the detail.

We can safely assume that Shaper knows what its doing at least, and probably has stuff lower its aerobic metabolic activity at night.
Normally, Shaper might or might not have bothered, but now that Panacea is FINALLY going out and doing stuff on a global scale that has nothing to do with healing? Honestly, I expect Shaper to currently be as helpful as it's possible for Shaper to be.

Shaper absolutely wants Panacea to keep doing stuff like this. That list? That unfinished list? You can bet Shaper has already read it, and is playing with possibilities.
 
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Normally, Shaper might or might not have bothered, but now that Panacea is FINALLY going out and doing stuff on a global scale that has nothing to do with healing? Honestly, I expect Shaper to currently be as helpful as it's possible for Shaper to be.

Shaper absolutely wants Panacea to keep doing stuff like this. That list? That unfinished list? You can bet Shaper has already read it, and is playing with possibilities.

♫ She's making a list ♫
♫ She's checking it twice ♫
♫ She's gonna find out which genes to splice ♫
♫ Shaper's host ♫
♫ Is coming to town ♫​
 
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