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(This is my first time responding to a writing prompt but I'm excited to do more, I've always wanted to but never, until recently, got a Tumblr. Can you tell I like naming things and world building?)

Excerpt from the Earth Modern History Museum exhibit on the Hercules Initiative 2563:

To say it started with innocent intentions would be incorrect. It was more like someone blowing up a gopher hole that they didn't know was next to a gas line.

The first Von Neumann probe was released 2145 AD with a simple mission: increase in number until critical mass, then deploy weapons against the aliens deemed hostile. Once the Mark 1 reached the asteroid belt 2 years later, anomalies soon followed.

There's a saying we have on earth, "Life finds a way." In our hubris, we missed the obvious. Life finds a way to exist where there is none.

The first abiogenesis even occured in Hyrda 31ADF12. It was designated alias "Adam". It's progeny quickly began to be hostile to other Hydra. The original Mark 3 were not designed to defend themselves initially, in order to not provoke hostility among the stars. Their numbers soon plummeted in favor of Adam's, but maintained a small population.

Luckily Adam was not hostile to non-Hydra vessels, and was considered a minor glitch in the program. Scientists began to worry once the second event happened. An original Hydra Mark 3, serial 31FF1AQ, alias Eve, mutated to be hostile to other probes when competing for resources only. It also developed a much more effective method for gathering resources.

At this point the governments on Earth began to become concerned. A project was started called the Hercules Initiative, as a think tank for ways to retract or destroy the Hydra Von Neumann project. Unfortunately the worst was yet to come.

An Eve probe serial 32004FW mutated to become extremely hostile to surrounding probes and other vessels. This probe and it's progeny were given alias Cain. Using the strategy developed by Eve, Cain quick dominated the space previously occupied by Eve due being able to act first against it's less hostile mother. Even was quickly wiped from space.

The first recorded alien casualty was 2214 AD. We only know that in hindsight. As Cain replicated it would hunt down alien vessels indiscriminately, with no regard for the laws of war it's forebearers were programmed with. A barracks ship and a vessel full of war refugees were the same to it: a metal exterior with a gooey organic center to feed on.

The Hydra project was designed to seek out any electromagnetic radiation thought to be radio chatter or communication. Soon the aliens stopped interplanetary communication all together, and their space was empty, as if no intelligent life remained.

The governments of the world assumed they had been iradicated, and the Hercules Initiative changed goals towards assessing and repelling the threat of Cain targeting humanity. So far, it was unknown whether Cain had retained it's protocols against harming humans.

The answer came in 2374. A strange ship jumped into Earth's sector, spewing uninterpretable communication signals that were 100 years out of date. Right after it jumped in two copies of Cain, who are now known as the Gemini probes. The planetary government of earth quickly deployed it's defense systems against the aliens vessel. It was hoped that displaying hostility towards the same enemy may quell Cain's destructive tendencies if it could harm humans. A few aliens lives, a small price to pay for the hope of humanity. The alien vessel was struck in its right engine. It's shield had been focused to the rear for protection. They realized their mistake instantly, but instantly was not soon enough. Powering shields to the front, the Gemini probes struck quickly and ruthlessly with weapons unknown to Earth. There was no hope for them, and it only took a few minutes for the probes to destroy the escape pods. This moment is known to humans as The First Contact. The aliens call if the Gemini Massacre. There are 2 memorials on Earth today. One from long ago, and one made recently, twenty years ago, which was requested by the alien refugees that now live on Earth. If you saw them both, it would be hard to tell they were referring to the same event, without reading the dates.

Cain proved to not pose a threat to Earth that day, but unfortunately that was only in the very literal sense. The Gemini probes immediately identified our moon as unharvested material, while the planet itself was deemed sacred. As Earth realized what was happening, they made peace with the new war that was only beginning. As the moon is essential for the life on our planet to thrive, we were fighting for our planet.

The Hercules Initiative responded with Earth's greatest weapon, what was called a jumper nuke. Short ranged teleportation of a nuclear apparatus, specifically a hydrogen bomb, set to detonate instantly on arrival. Luckily the Gemini were vaporized with one blast, leaving the famous Gemini Crater on the surface of the moon.

Call it luck or planning, but due to the nature of jumper nukes, probes were unable to send signals of distress fast enough to sense valuable information about how the technology worked out to other probes.

The government of Earth set a goal to launch the Mark 1 of the Hercules Initiative by 2400. The launch date came 4 decades later, 2409.

Hercules Mark 1 was yet another Von Neumann probe, equipped with cloaking, short ranged teleportation, jumper nukes, and most importantly, the Medusa Contingency. If the design deviated from the Mark 1, it was fed a sequence of commands to weld it from the inside out. Members of Hercules would attack non-conforming members instantly.

The true Achilles heel that Cain displayed was it's tendency to rapidly seek out communication signals. Hercules was equipped with a radio spoofing device, that would broadcast randomly generated radio chatter to lure in Cain. Hercules's first battle with Cain came 2434. The mission showed great promise, and the battle was over before it even started. But Cain had something that Hercules lacked by design: evolution. Cain destroyed it's first Hercules probe 2435. By 2500 most Cain units were able to detect short range teleportation from long ranges and the cloaking device could be noticed from beyond Hercules's effective range. Cain developed their own weapons. We still don't fully understand how to replicate them, but we call them Quiet Room Missiles. Upon detonation they create a sphere of millions of micro black holes that section off any space inside of the sphere from the outside world, causing it to collapse in on itself and annihilate.

Hercules Mark 2 is currently in development, we hope to deploy them in the coming 20 years. Details of the systems onboard are of course, classified. As we look into the future, we hope to mend humanities past mistakes. God help us.

In the future Mankind sends automated starships to fight an alien enemy for them. The robotic ships never returned, but the aliens eventually stopped attacking. Then one day a badly damaged alien ship was found entering human space, transmitting over and over again, "HELP".

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Feathered raptors are 100% cooler than the shrink-wrapped abominations we used to view them as. Not only does it display the awesome history of biology, but, like, they have feathers for the fashion, and then don't have them on the bits where the blood is gonna get when they fuck something up. That's cool as hell.

Some people find feathered raptors a bit disappointing because they're just like big birds. I don't see that at all, I think they're awesome, like some kind of weird heraldic beast.

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The Shadow of Colossus impulse of seeing a giant creature and thinking "Yeah, I'm gonna climb that thing" is the same genre of impulse as men digging a hole at a beach

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Hey! Something I'm passionate about is the use of TALEN for gene editing in treatment applications.

TALEN is flexible in specificity and when compared to CRISPR, more accurate.

TALEN can target multiple alleles with its RVDs that select multiple nucleotides.

If you are interested, check out this study on assessing synthesized RVDs (You can pop it open with sci-hub)

https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.3330

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whenever I look an animal in the eye or face, I'm always wondering, "What do you have going on behind those?"

I think the most beautiful thing about the privilege of interacting with them is to get just a glimpse of what it's like to be them.

When I pick up a snake at work, and they posture at me, so I stay still, until they flick out their tongue once, then twice, before chilling out and starting to move on my hands. It's adorable.

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Bell Rock with hikers.

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I guess for my first post I'll share something pretty cool about Jainism.

Jainism recognizes all living things as having a jiva (most closely translated as soul). This includes plants, although their jiva is thought to be less sacred than animals. Root vegetables, because of their ability to propagate asexually, are viewed to have the potential for infinite generations in one plant.

In a traditional Jain diet, you never eat root vegetables because infinite quantities of a lower jiva is considered, well, infinite in value.

Except ginger.

In the texts, an exception is made for ginger, presumably because of its medicinal and essential properties needed in daily life. But jains weren't allowed to harvest the ginger themselves, and had to buy it already harvested.

What's fascinating about this is that it starkly clashes with other Jain thought. The degree from which you are removed from the action does not normally affect karma, because you are still consuming and therefore responsible.

But it's a beautiful example of the humanity of religion. That no religion develops in a vacuum. Because religion will bend to accommodate the needs of the people who hold it.

It shows why interpreting religion in context of the society it developed is so essential and the beauty that comes from doing so.