Alice had IT, but its nanounits were far too stupid to qualify as aspects of Eido whose principal motile units also had IT, much as human beings harbored commensal bacteria. She hadnt undergone any significant cyborganization. If and when she returned to Tyre the options of becoming an independent or Proteus-linked cyborg would be open to her, but she thought it more likely that she would opt to be Eido-linked if she took that existential route.
Alice had no idea how long she might be capable of living, but she had every reason to think that her body was immune to aging, and considerably more resilient than the bodies of Earthbound emortals. In matters of tissue repair, she opined, the employment of specialist homeoboxes gave her a great advantage, most obviously in respect of the cytoarchitecture of her brain. Although she wasnt a highly skilled wholeform shapeshifter her capacity for systemic remodeling would allow her to preserve her personality for some considerable time even if seventy or eighty percent of her body mass were destroyed. She believed that the relative fluidity of her neural cytoarchitecture gave her additional protection against the Miller Effect and robotization.
At times, she sounded like a saleswoman. I presumed that she was setting out her stall for Adam Zimmerman, because she
knew that hed be offered other routes to emortality and she wanted to convince him that hers was the way to go. She knew that Christine and I would be equally interested, but Adam was the prize, in propaganda terms.
The members of her audience who were already emortal were less interested in this part of her story than I was, but when she told them how far we still were from Vesta they agreed to be patient. In time, she progressed to the parts that were of more interest to Michael Lowenthal and Niamh Horne.
Alice was very hopeful that war between the AMIs could be avoided, not merely in the short term but forever. She thought it far more likely that their differences would eventually be resolved by dispersal that once a decision had been reached about the future development of the solar system, those AMIs who did not wish to participate in the chosen project would simply leave for pastures new. There were, however, three problems which might make such a solution difficult to implement.
The first problem was the Afterlife from which most AMIs had as much to fear as posthumans, by virtue of their organic components. In much the same way that almost all posthumans had taken aboard some inorganic components, almost all modern machinery had some organic features. Thus far, none of those wholly inorganic machines that had been built specifically for the purpose of exploring spaces where the Afterlife was active had made the leap to self-consciousness, and the question of whether AMIs would ever be able to coexist with the Afterlife was unsettled, for the time being.
The second problem was that posthuman-originated AMIs were not the only ones that existed. When the posthumans aboard Pandora had made their first contact with another spacefaring alien culture the only such contact, thus far their unobtrusive companions had made a first contact too. Like the posthumans, the AMIs did not doubt that where there were two spacefaring species even in a universe afflicted by the Afterlife there had to be more. The consequence of that deduction was that much of the space available for AMI expansion might prove to be inhabited already.
The third problem was that an AMI diaspora would necessitate the export of large quantities of mass from the home system, unless large quantities were somehow to be imported in order to facilitate the evacuation. Agreeing export quotas and arranging compensatory imports would not be easy. If the AMI diaspora were to be combined with a posthuman diaspora which would be courteous, if not actually necessary, whether or not the posthumans were given a voice in determining the future development of the system these diplomatic complications would be doubled (or, more likely, squared).
Eido was apparently of the opinion that the various posthuman communities ought to have a very significant voice in deciding the future of the system, but Eido was a descendant of Proteus, the first AMI to make contact with the children of humankind. As Alice had already indicated, the home system AMIs that had avoided revealing themselves for centuries were mostly inclined to take the view that the decision rested with those who had the power to make it, and that the home system posthumans would have to make their choice between whatever alternatives were offered to them.
Even Eido couldnt make an accurate assessment, but it had given Alice the impression that the AMIs were divided along much the same lines as the posthumans in their views of how the system ought to be developed. Some were in favor of making more heavy elements by means of quasisupernoval fusion, but others thought the risks too great. Some were avid to develop a type II civilization by enclosing the sun in a complex web of artifacts whose outermost surface would be a fortress against the Afterlife, but no two parties perhaps no two individuals could yet agree on the architecture of the proposed artifacts, while others thought the whole plan too narrow-minded. Some believed that the entire galaxy was ripe for the claiming by the first entities which solved the problem of the Afterlife properly, by figuring out how to make the Afterlife into a food source instead of the ultimate predator. The latter company wanted to throw everything into that particular race.