Epilogue

Time: Tuesday April 22, 2014 3:42 AM

"Ten minutes to go for the moon, T minus five minutes for Mars," Melanie said with a smile. "You really sure you want to go through with all this?"

I grinned back. "All systems go!"

I looked at the last-quarter moon outside my condo's window. It was ten minutes before the moon-Earth axis was exactly perpendicular to the Earth-sun axis. Unknown to the rest of the world, the moon had another ten minutes to exist. I checked my latest creation, a close replica of Earth's solar system in deep intergalactic space. It was at the current limit of my influence sphere, 610 million light-years away. It had taken me three minutes to create, almost all the time being spent on the 2e30 kg of the duplicate star. The duplicate Earth was a gem, wild and free.

I had spent much of the last year perfecting my techniques for biological replication. I'm at the point now where I can replicate the hardwired instincts and even the learned behaviors of animals, though true memory and personality duplication will be forever beyond my reach. I'm glad. Experiences and perspectives should be unique. I've never duplicated a person, and I never intend to.

I looked at my wife smiling at me in our condo in the dead of night. She's finishing up her senior resident year in another month and has offers from a number of oncology departments from across the nation. She's a world class doctor in her own right, and with a little help from me, her diagnostic skills in the Boston area are legendary.

"What will you miss the most?" I asked.

"Oh, the fairways under Daedalus! Playing golf is so much fun in lunar gravity!"

I grinned back. "I know. I'll definitely have to replicate some of the courses on Tierra."

Melanie laughed. "Think how hilarious it would be if you put them on the surface! Mankind's first mission to its sister planet, and they land on a golf course!"

"There is precedent, you know. The astronauts tried to play golf on the moon."

Melanie nodded and sighed. "The moon, so much poetry... It's a shame to lose it."

"Oh, yeah. But the three-body orbits would be a nightmare. It's got to go."

Melanie nodded and glanced at her watch. "Less than a minute until Mars substitution. Do you want a count?"

"Just the time for go." I closed my eyes and prepared myself, locking the lifeless planet and its two small lifeless moons.

Mars' closest approach to Earth had occurred the previous week, on April 14'th. It wasn't a particularly close encounter, over five light-minutes away, almost a hundred million kilometers. At exactly light-speed time until the last quarter moon, I cancelled Martian reality, and one millisecond later created two Earth sized planets in its place.

I have no idea what Earth's population will call the distant twins, but my pet names for them are the names from Mars' old moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both planets have exactly Earth's mass and 24-hour rotation, the same atmospheric composition and pressure (except for elevated CO2 levels, 500 ppm), and similar land to ocean ratios. Their biospheres are quite different though.

Phobos has a 25-degree axial tilt (compared to Earth's 23.5 degree tilt), and Earth's sub- polar and temperate ecosystem. Deimos has a 29-degree axial tilt, and is modeled on a fascinating planet I found in a galaxy about 200 million light-years from here. There are cephalopod-like creatures in its shallow equatorial oceans that have none of mankind's technology but many of our social norms. They have a complex, color-oriented language, and have even begun to express themselves in artwork. It will probably take decades, maybe even centuries, but on a cosmic scale, humanity was about to find someone to chat with.

"Eric, I've just thought of something."

"Yeah?"

The slot for the Martian orbit now has a lot more mass in it."

"Oh yeah. The two planets combined, about a factor of eighteen."