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Spoil Sport: Grey Goo

Spoil Sport: Grey Goo

Somewhere, someone right now is saying, “Hey! Why don’t we make a huge mass of nanobots that can replicate themselves without our input! That’s a great idea!” Oh, science. What will you dream up next? Welcome to Grey Goo , another wonderful sci-fi story about how humanity just f@*ks everything up.

A long time from now after we make awesome space ships and futuristic buildings that kind of look like glowing space penises, humanity sets out to find life on other planets, as well as otherwise habitable planets that we can escape to when we inevitably blow up Earth. But since we have absolutely no idea what lies on alien planets, we develop the perfect exploration tool, the goo. I wonder if anyone in the Grey Goo universe ever read stories about science fiction grey goo that ends us eating us all? Nah.

The goo is a mass of nanites that can change shape to take the form of whatever tool we need. From drills, to cameras, to lasers, the goo puts the Curiosity rover to shame.  The goo finds a planet that could support life! So we check the planet out and find that there’s basically no life to speak of… and then we get bored. So we return to Earth and just sort of leave the goo on this new planet, figuring, “Hey, it’s just a self-evolving mass of nanites that can fuel itself by consuming any matter around it. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?”

Fast forward to the future future where an alien race of nomads called the Beta are running from some horrible enemy that is kept off camera for a possible sequel. They find our paradise planet and figure “This place is kind of nice, why not settle here and take a breather from running from our lives?”

And then the goo attacks.

Spoil Sport: Grey Goo

You see, after being left alone for hundreds of years, the goo became more and more intelligent, and eventually became a near-unstoppable killing machine. It figured out how to morph itself into battle machines that can easily swarm over the Beta’s primitive settlements. How it figured this out when it was stuck in isolation is anyone’s guess, but the point is the goo is evil now.

So how do the Beta plan to fend off the goo? By attacking the nearby humans and… wait, what?

Yeah, the game has you randomly attacking the wrong race for the first half of it, just so that it gives you a chance to try out every race. So you basically devastate all intelligent life on this planet before finally coming together and deciding to take out the goo… and that’s basically it. It’s just one big intergalactic misunderstanding. Everyone can be friends in the end, at least until Blizzard sues them for ripping off Starcraft something fierce.

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