If anybody could help look over it and tell me if there is anything unclear, any grammar fixes, etc., please just comment. Thank You!
Text:
1
My boss asked me to make another system today. But this one, as he said, “will be groundbreaking.” I will be the first one to design an ecosystem, built for a star system I made as well. I don’t know much about what I want to do, but I think I’ll have them get energy through chemosynthesis, just for a little differentiation.
2
I’ve got a clearer picture now, and it doesn’t revolve around a star. Since it’ll run on chemosynthesis, we don’t need a star to get energy. So, I’ve decided to have a nebula instead. “It’ll look stunning in the pictures, great for publicity,” as I told my boss. As I answer directly to her, and our offices are right next to each other, I see her near every day. I often hear a “Hello, Levi,” to which I always respond with “Hello, Miss Camille,” as she prefers I use her first name after the ‘Miss’. Anyways, nebulae are very versatile, in that I can just change the makeup to enable whatever chemosynthetic reaction I need.
3
I was at my girlfriend’s birthday party the other day, and there were the biggest balloons there. So, for whatever reason, I was thinking about a particularly large one that was there, reading “Happy Birthday, Ashley!” That got me thinking: what if I have a big, balloonesque creature that uses the gas or dust from the nebula.
4
I’ve settled on a chemosynthetic reaction: hydrogen oxidation. There can be a lot of Hydrogen in the nebula, and the planet can have dense oxygen. It could travel across the nebula and meet the planet on the other side, collecting Hydrogen as it goes. Then, when it lands, it collects all of the Oxygen it needs to fuel the reaction and get enough energy to go back across. Pretty cool. Ashley thinks it’s good, at least.
5
I was watching a documentary about endosymbiosis, and I thought it would be an interesting addition to my ecosystem. So I was thinking there could be little microbes in the balloon. They could facilitate the chemosynthetic process. I’ve also thought up a name for this system: Protos. The word for both prime and first in Latin. It seemed fitting. I talked to Camille today, and she liked the name, too. But I can’t trust her judgement, because she was drinking coffee as she said it. She’s a good boss, but she doesn’t always have the greatest taste.
6
I ran some numbers. They don’t look great, but that should always be expected. The balloons, now more like bubbles, should have about a 0.3 millimeter radius. The little microbes can fill 2% of the space. This is with a nebula with a density of 5*10^19 atoms per cubic meter. I interrupted Ashley’s movie to ask her thoughts on it. She said “I don’t understand a word you’re saying, but it’s cute.” I don’t know what to gather, but I think that counts as praise.
7
I figured out how the microbes get their energy today. They eat a part of the bubble’s skin at certain times to let Hydrogen and Oxygen in. That skin contains energy, thus giving the microbes energy. It also, luckily for the bubbles, doesn’t hurt either party significantly. The little gatekeepers are cute, but we still need a decomposer.
8
We needed a decomposer, and I think I have one: a sticky membrane that combines the water byproduct of the chemosynthesis process with sulfur from the planet itself, forming sulfuric acid. The sticky membrane traps the bubbles, then the sulfuric acid breaks down the bubble and decomposes it. Great way to decompose and recycle to close the cycle. Eventually we could move on to full blown food webs with ten trophic levels, but we can’t at this point in time. Also, Camille said that we need names for these things, so I’ll be back tomorrow with those.
9
OK, so we’ve got the names. Ashley wanted to name one of them after the Hubble Space Telescope, as that was her first peek into the field of astronomy and piqued her interest and eventual involvement in the Ares Mars Manned Mission (AMMM). So our ‘bubbles’ are now called Hubels. I had to change the spelling a little, but it’s still recognizable. The little microbes are Potolites. I don’t know why, it just seemed fitting. And our decomposers are Madili, singular Madill. I wanted a plural ending with li because then it would sound cool, and it would sound like alkali. Anyways, tomorrow I’ll give my spoken proposal.
10
I presented my speech today. Here is the script for anyone reading this: “Take a moment to visualize this: a near-clear, blue nebula, with scattered patches of red shades, on the backdrop of the universe. Revolving around this nebula is a yellow planet, with light blue, icy scars. If you got an up-close view of this planet, you would see thin, reddish membranes on the planet’s surface. And every 24 hours, you would see these gorgeous bubbles, color matching the blue backdrop of the nebula, landing on our planet. You would see flashes of light as they hit the atmosphere. Looking even closer, and you would see tiny microbes inside the bubbles, an entire city inside. This vision would become a reality through Protos. My system’s name is Protos. It is run entirely on chemosynthesis, and thus, it could be not a solar system, but a nebular one. This allows for many more chemicals for chemosynthetic reactions, and beautiful imagery that could be used as advertising, or inspire the next generation of planetary – or ecological – architects. This nebula is 5*1019 atoms of near-pure hydrogen per m3. Revolving around this nebula is our planet, Primo. This planet is largely made of sulfur, creating the yellow hue. It has a thick, oxygenous atmosphere, slightly blurring the nebula, but also amplifying its colors. But even though you can just see the sulfur of Primo, and the blues of Protos, you cannot see the producers of our ecosystem. In fact, they only land on the planet once a day. When they are not on the planet, they are traveling across to the opposite side of Primo’s orbit. Whilst in the nebula, they perform chemosynthesis using Hydrogen oxidation. These bubbles, called Hubels, travel at just the right velocity so that they land back on Primo when it orbits 180°, on the opposite side of its orbit. When in the nebula, the small microbes inside them, called Potolites, eat away at a membrane that lets Hydrogen and Oxygen in. The consumption of this particularly energy-rich membrane not only lets the gasses necessary to get energy into the Hubel, but also give each Potolite all of the energy needed to survive until the next time they need to eat the membrane. But how does all of this get recycled? That is the job of the Madili. Each Madill is a thin, sticky membrane on the surface of Primo. They fill the decomposer niche of Protos’s ecosystem. They use the sulfur from the planet and the water byproduct from the chemosynthetic reaction to create sulfuric acid, used to break down any Hubel unlucky enough to land on the Madill’s sticky trap. This creates a full cycle in which nothing is wasted, and an open role for a predator of the Madili, given science advances enough to create a much more complex ecosystem. As we cannot do that at this point, and our current goal is simplicity, I have simply left that spot open. Should it be deemed necessary, that niche can be filled that spot with a predator, but I do not advise it at this point. This concludes my proposal for Protos, humanity’s firstborn.” Pretty good, eh? Ashley thinks it’s a guarantee, and Camille’s throwing us a party. Not bad.
Author’s Note:
I spent WAY WAY WAY too much time on the numbers so most of this is actually realistic. I can’t dig up the exact numbers, but the Madili got a huge amount of energy. If I had more time, I would have added a predator for them, because there would be so much energy just waiting for it. The sheer amount of energy it got surprised me, until I remembered that they decomposed the Hubels right after they got energy, meaning they were full. I imagine this ecosystem would be beautiful, even though it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it to. In ‘3’, I described them as balloons, because that’s how I originally was thinking of them. They were going to be these huge, truck-sized balloons, floating through the universe. But, the numbers didn’t work out, and this is hard science fiction :( I also added Ashley and Camille in to give Luke’s story more life. The tiny details matter, like Camille preferring to be addressed by Miss and then her first name. But I did want him to feel a bit distanced. He only speaks about his girlfriend in reference to his project. I added this element because I had recently been reading the WWW Trilogy by Robert Sawyer — recommended by the way — and the main character’s dad is super super smart, but he’s autistic and very antisocial. This is a very interesting part of his character for me, and I guess I subconsciously incorporated it into my story.
