Jan 28, 2019

As it turns out I wrote part 2 first. This goes before it and there is a little of part 3 done.:

"Why are you so close to that comet?" BY asked.

"Curiosity. It has an unusually high concentration of iridium. If we weren't so far from home it would be worth salvaging." AX said.

BY studied the readouts. "If we laser it a bit we can knock off some chunks and get some to take home. Enough maybe to finance an expedition to get the rest. No one would come to this system otherwise."

AX powered up the laser. "I'll see if I can cut off that lump at the side."

"Wait," BY called. "Check for -"

The laser hit a pocket of nitrogen ice. It blew up scattering chunks of the comet in their direction. They watched as a large piece tore into their ship. Alarms fired and systems started shutting down.

"You idiot. It's a comet. It has pockets of frozen gases all over the place." BY checked the ships status. "The FTL systems are gone and so are FTL communications. Power cells have drained. We've got no way to get home and no way to call for help."

"Can we fix them?"

By gone I mean gone. The FTL pod was torn away by a piece of that comet."

"No one knows we're here. It'll be millennia before someone else checks this system. Do you think we can survive in space that long?"

BY checked the navigation system. "No. We're going to intercept that planet in a few days. If we avoid it we'll be floating in this system. The radar systems were destroyed too. Without radar we'll eventually get hit by something. I think we're dead."

"It's that bad?"

BY pulled up one of the last scans before the radar had been destroyed. "This isn't a civilized system. We've cleared out most of the junk in ours but this one is primordial." BY focused the optical scanner on the planets moon. "Look at that. It's full of craters."

AX checked the image of the moon. "Let's land."

"On the moon. How will that help."

"No on the planet. It has an atmosphere. That will shield us from most debris in the system. The temperature is near our normal. We won't need temperature control so we can drop power usage way down. That way we can survive indefinitely," AX said.

BY studied the plan. "It's better than dying but not by much." BY shifted the sensors to the planet. "Lots of water. The planet is probably crawling with biologicals. I'll set us down on some land not too close to the water. We'll leave a few probes in orbit. They can monitor to see if one of our ships stops by."

#

BY came awake and checked in with AX. "You've been awake for a while. Have the probes heard anything?"

"No. I've been studying the bios. I think they can help us."

Insert the original story here. It's not a clean fit but you'll get the idea.

A few generations passed and the AIs powered up from their slumber. Their sensors flew into the air and they scanned for the descendants of the beings they had modified. Finally hundreds of miles away they found them. "What the hell are they doing over there?" BY asked.

AX studied the sensor data. "I think the climate changed and some large herbivores moved in. Then some predators followed and our bios moved away. Not a big problem more of an inconvenience."

"Inconvenience. Any more of that and we might as well stay on this rock."

AX whooped. "They got fire. Told you this would work. We'll set ourselves up as gods and they'll be smelting metal and soon we'll have all the power and materials to get ourselves off this rock."