#protomolecule

[piandaoist]

Holden: The station at the center of the ring space will destroy our entire solar system if we piss it off.

Inaros: Cool story, bro. Imma strap some railguns to it. >:D

[d-muura-md]

Ganymede incident part 2

[eatorfuck]

The Protomolecule from The Expanse series

Eat or Fuck: The Protomolecule (The Expanse)

Eat

Fuck

Voting ended onJun 17, 2025

The protomolecule is an infectious agent of extra-terrestrial origin... It has the ability to radically alter infected life forms and utilize their biomass in various ways.

Not a life-form in itself, the protomolecule... "a set of free-floating instructions designed to adapt to and guide other replicating systems". It is able to maintain and adapt its primary structure in a wide variety of conditions, and it has an affinity for carbon and silicon structures, but is likely anaerobic and will not degrade upon exposure to oxygen. Naomi Nagata identified the substance aboard the Anubis as a "nano-fluid"... some form of nanotechnology, essentially functioning as a pseudo-biological "computers". As molecular nanomachines, the protomolecule uses ionizing radiation as an energy source. Its growth significantly accelerates if it is exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation, and it depends only on the abundance of such energy.

[dreadbirate]

It’s early on, I’m on the second book and might not have the third for a while, but I’m not buying that the Protomolecule was an intentional weapon. It’s certainly the assumption that Protogen made, but Protogen were idiots on top of being completely amoral. Seems to me that Phoebe was sent to what we would have considered to be an uninhabited planet, and it doesn’t seem like more “spores” have been sent since. I think it’s just a colony ship ngl.

[corruptedmuse]

I finished watching/reading the expanse last month and it's just one of those things that's kept living in my head since.

[ironvaliant547]

Viktor's still a robot-just one from a different genre

A neat detail about Viktor's post-Hexcore design is that, at sone points, you can see what resembles screws and/or bolts on parts of his body. (Note the connection point on the thumb.)

So he's still a robot/cyborg; just a different type of robot/cyborg than he's normally depicted as. Instead of being a more traditional Cyborg that slots perfectly into a Cyberpunk setting, Arcane Viktor is more of a "Spooky Living Metal Alien Hivemind" robot found in Space Sci-Fi.

(Imagine the Reaper Husks from Mass Effect-or, more accurately, the Protomolecule hybrids from The Expanse. Viktor's basically the latter, but still has his mind and a piece due to being the "Lord" of the Hive Mind.)

[thecoffeelorian]

this looks familiar...

Viktor's down in the Undercity turning blue and having visions and spreading what could be a body-destroying disease all over the place, but please pay no attention--

[wanderrealms]

Watching an analysis of Dead Space games. Somethings kind of remind me of The Expanse and the protomolecule (I'm half way into Abaddon's Gate the 3rd book in the series).