"Belgians in the Congo"

Back in the present year of 2999, Billy Sodenholzer - yes, that Billy, a deck officer for the space-sloop Abrams A. Asskicker, lover of robots, smuggler of hot sauce and rayguns - stood on the bridge of the flotilla flagship. The Asskicker, along with the rest of the task force, floated above a planet with a long-winded scientific name. To the harvester force, it was simply known as the target.

They were out in the Gliese 570 system, previously connected to the Solar System via Warp Gates. As a quaternary star system with two uninhabitable terrestrial planets, Pioneer Defense Contractors slated it for resource consumption. The smaller, brown planet had previously been converted as a base of operations for the Dyson-ing of the stars. Two were already completed covered, with a third on the way, labor-bots scurrying like ants across the A-Polymer scaffolding spreading across the solar surface.

The larger, reddish planet would be harvested. Preparations were already underway as the flotilla got into position overhead. Captain Nixon, commanding the Asskicker, barked out orders to who else but the bridge bunnies - those various officers, analysts, technicians, and interns staffing the bridge who tended to be young women in pencil skirts. They called out readings like “Blood Type Blue!” and got coffee. Billy himself had just returned from the espresso machine and handed over a cup to none other than Amadeus Lawrence. In the decades since that incident at Arabia Terra, Lawrence had risen through the corporate ladder of Pioneer to a senior position as Earth Planetary Manager. He led this flotilla ever since it left the spaceport at Big Dig, with the Asskicker as his flagship. The extended human lifespan of 2999 meant that he was old, sure, but still as spry as a spring chicken.

Billy was tall and lanky. Lawrence was stocky, seemingly no neck, just a big round face covered with a big gray beard and even bigger gray eyebrows. He drank his coffee quickly. His eyes always seemed to be strained by paranoia.

Through the tall windows of the bridge, the nameless planet stretched before them.

“What do you think of this?” Lawrence asked Billy. “Of our expansion across the stars.”

Billy, to be honest, didn’t think of anything beyond his various robo-lovers across Earth. His thoughts were dominated by the recurring dream of the mysterious robo-girl he briefly met on the train tracks down in Australia.

“I, uh, don’t know. It’s good, I ‘spose. The harvested resources keep the lights on at home.”

Lawrence rubbed his beard. “Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask. I wonder about this younger generation sometimes. I think, therefore I am. But if the kids today don’t think, then what are they?”

Billy had already spaced out, dreaming of Sydney…

Lawrence didn’t notice, for he thought of the dunes back on old Mars. “Do robots think? No, no, their thoughts are mere calculations, as are their actions. Mathematical formulas fixed with kinetic energy. But are humans not programmed as well? Are we not the sum of chemical components? Our thoughts, are they nothing more than subatomic reactions, unseen formulas, processes that merely exist?”

Billy, on shore leave for a week, roamed around, walking parallel to the train tracks…

“There must be more to humans. Nothing else in this universe has the ability to name, to believe in morality. Believe. Only humans can believe. Only humans can Understand. Robots, animals, planets, stars - no sentience. A universe of sleepwalkers. Only humans are awake. We ate from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, yes. And yet, and yet, in this harmonic, glorious future of ours, where every need and whim is catered to, we find ourselves no longer needing of knowledge, of Understanding. We’re devolving back toward Eden, a land of no thought, of no advancement, of no meaning.”

Standing on the rails, mysterious robo-girl X hawked a loogie on her finger and stuck it in his mouth instead of kissing Billy, and it tasted sweet…

“Human nature. It’s one of curiosity, ambition, expansion, conquest. We must know. We must Understand. But if we to lose that need, return to Eden, then we’ll lose our human nature, yes, and therefore will no longer be human. We’ll be folded back into the fabric of the sleeping universe, lose our ability to understand it, lose our ability to name and master it. We shall return to Nothing, of just mere existence, of just Is. That is why I’ve pushed for this War on Nothing, for we currently face an existential crisis of the highest order.”

Woah, robo-girl X, careful with those scissors of yers!

“I won’t stop until we vanquish Nothing, and ensure that humanity doesn’t collapse back into the universe. Rather, Man Himself will become the universe, a fundamental law without which reality couldn’t exist, akin to gravity, time…”

“Orbital bombardment ready!” called out a bridge bunny.

“Swarm ready!” reported another bunny.

“Harvest preparations complete!” concluded the first mate.

The siren noises stirred Billy from his Australian daydream. Lawrence was already conversing with Captain Nixon, giving his approval.

Nixon’s jowls bounced as a grin appeared across his wolfish face. “Commence harvest!”

The reddish planet, amid the field of stars, came under the fire of a hundred thousand cannons. The orbital bombardment - sharp laser beams, colored like overripe plums - smacked into the planet’s surface. Canyons formed, craters emerged, huge gashes opened up, dust and smoke rose. When the lasers finally ended, millions of drones buzzed to life and crawled out from space-sloops such as the Asskicker, swarming towards the planet’s wounds, ready to suck out the raw materials. These locusts covered the unnamed planet, which soon disappeared from vision beneath the smoke and writhing drones.

“Switch to gamma vision,” ordered Nixon. Orange spread across the ship’s windows as gamma vision activated, enabling them to see through the chaos on the planet’s surface. Already, quicker drones were already making their return trips with helium-3, manganese, bauxite. Resources like these were the easiest to retrieve, available directly beneath the surface, now broken up by the bombardment. Heavier drones, resembling oxen, carted A-Polymer self-replicators down to the planet. A-Polymer drills would soon emerge, plunging deep into the planet, draining it for everything it was worth.

The A-Polymerization would then continue, with a plastic cocoon growing to eventually cover the entire surface of the planet. The wonder material of A-Polymer would then serve as a substitute for the magnetic field, the planetary core now drained of its iron and nickel, the various geodynamics that made a planet a planet. The harvested resources would be transported home by convoys of flotillas, where they would be transformed into A-Polymer and its off-shoots, funneled into the expansion of Eden, the orbital rings, Solar System terra-forming, the quadrillions of robots, even your toaster.

Orange light shaded Lawrence’s faint smile. While Nixon and the bunnies called out readings and orders, Lawrence and Billy stood quietly, watching the expansion of civilization in real time.

"This is just the start," Lawrence said to everyone, or maybe just himself. "Humanity is still very young. Our efforts to make ourselves the fundamental law of the universe will continue to snowball. Nixon, how long until the entire Milky Way is A-Polymerized?"

Nixon already knew the answer. "Three hundred years."

Lawrence gazed at the locust swarm. "Then we'll need to cut down that number down, or expand our lifespans, so that we may witness such an accomplishment..."