Avrana Kern
Avrana Kern is the chief scientist and administrator of the Second Brin Exaltation Project. She oversees a plan to uplift primates on a terraformed planet that she calls Kern’s World. She sees the project as her own achievement and wants to learn what the primates will become without human supervision. She believes humanity should create new intelligent life and spread it beyond Earth.
Background
Kern leads the Brin 2 facility. Its Barrel carries ten thousand primates, and its Flask carries the uplift nanovirus. The virus is designed to increase brain size and complexity, body size, flexibility of behaviour and speed of learning over generations. Kern expects the primates to develop until they can make contact with the Sentry Habitat. She presents the project to its backers as a way to prepare the planet for future colonists, but that is not her personal aim. She wants to see what the primates become.
The project faces opposition from the Non Ultra Natura movement, which rejects genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and the creation of new species. Sering, a crew member and NUN agent, sabotages Brin 2 by disabling the reactor safeties. Kern escapes into the Sentry Pod. Sering and the rest of the facility’s crew die when Brin 2 is destroyed. The Barrel burns in the atmosphere, while the Flask releases the virus on the planet.
Story
Kern orders the Sentry Pod to launch and then uploads a copy of her personality into its systems. She expects a rescue from Earth. Fourteen years later, the pod wakes her. No rescue ship has arrived, and the radio signals from Earth have stopped. The last transmissions suggest that a war and an electronic virus destroyed human civilization and its colonies. Kern returns to cold sleep while the uploaded personality remains active in the Habitat.
Many generations later, the ark ship Gilgamesh reaches the planet. Kern calls its crew unauthorized biological hazards and refuses to let them settle there. She regards them as neither her people nor the primates in her experiment. She gives them information about other terraforming projects, and the Gilgamesh leaves Kern’s World. Its crew later establishes a colony on a moon in the same system.
When the Gilgamesh returns, the spiders have built a web that traps the Sentry Habitat. The humans debate whether the spiders are intelligent and decide to attack the station. Their drones destroy it, and it falls toward the planet. Kern’s surviving presence is dispersed. The spiders use her remaining knowledge while preparing to meet the humans, though she distrusts the plan to welcome them. The spiders choose to seek cooperation rather than destroy or drive the humans away. Their modified nanovirus lets the humans recognize the spiders as kin.
Later role
Kern remains present in the society that grows from the meeting between humans and spiders. By the time they build the Voyager, its intelligence is based on what Kern once was. The story describes it as a child of Kern, made with her blessing. Her expertise also contributes to the joint development of technology for the new ship.
Unanswered questions
The text does not explain how much of Kern’s original personality remains in the uploaded copy or how she experiences her dispersed form.