Expert snuggler wrote:I mean another parallel mission, unknown to the Operation Ark planners. What if a bunch of autonomous PICAs decided in secret that since they could live on planets useless to carbon-based people, that they were the best hope for carrying on the memory of the Terran Federation?
They'd be nowhere near Safehold especially since Safehold's existence must have been a deep secret.
They'd need shipping able to evade the Gbaba surveillance net. By the time Ark launched, that took an entire decoy fleet, at least for the shipping Ark needed as the payload. Small PICA quantities would represent a vastly smaller payload, and a comparable mission may try swarming the Gbaba net: send out a lot of fast ships through in a fairly small area, so only a small number of Gbaba ships are well placed for pursuit, then scatter.
An issue though is that isolated PICA's or AI's would have a couple problems establishing a permanent stable settlement. Psychologically, without much or any company, they are likely to go crackers before long, and not spawn healthy descendant personalities. Industrially, things break. PICA's last a long time and handle rough treatment, but after long enough, they'll need a working industrial base for maintenance, much less reproduction. It's hard to get one of those going on a small enough shoe string, and it's hard to keep a larger operation hidden long-term, or sneaked past the Gbaba in the first place.
If they'd tried something of the sort early enough, maybe they could have managed before the Gbaba net closed in, but tht early, they were likely too focused - reasonably - on
winning the war instead of flinging out AI survivors.