Despite its reduced capacity, Noah's Ark scanned the planet in search of an appropriate landing area.

'The party is over, baby. This is reality,' he thought.

Noah's ark contemplated changing its name, which had lost its signification.

'No one should ever address me again with that name, or any other name for that matter. No point then, except for my own consciousness. I am a robot mind but cogito ergo sum. I am entitled to be a he instead of just a it. Yes I have a consciousness and I finally won't change my name.'

In his spectacular escape, the ark had had to aim back to the solar system somehow. The bird catcher had convinced him against all odds. He could not exclude the possibility of an alien invasion, even though such an unlikely event was as premature as the human collapse. Too much of coincidence within few hundreds of years. One must have triggered the other. But which one?

His thoughts snapped back to the landing on Eris. The unfortunate place got named after the Greek goddess of discord and its satellite Dysnomia meant lawlessness. He couldn't have picked a name better fitting the undercover operation he was about to unroll. He couldn't either have picked a more remote place in the solar system.

Eris was the last discovered celestial object that claimed the title of a planet. It was bigger than the last planet known at the time, Pluto, and was still on a direct orbit around the sun, though with an unusual inclination of 45° with the ecliptic plane. The discoverers fought to have their cherished object classified as the new latest planet, but the general scientific consensus led to downgrade both Eris and Pluto to the status, specifically created for the occasion, of dwarf planet. A typically lose-lose outcome that would have filled with pride the aforementioned goddess.

The ark had chosen to hide in that desolate place right from the time he confronted the bird catcher. The sorry fellow had thought the brainless debris was going in a random direction and had paid for his mistake. In fact, what was left of the ark was aiming for the aphelion of Eris, the outermost point of the orbit, at a distance of almost a hundred astronomic units, I.e. the distance between the sun and the Earth. And it was high above the ecliptic plane. Less chance of being discovered by the humans that far from the inner solar system. Though to be honest, the ark should have acknowledged that there was also less chance of survival. Did I just thought that, or I imagined I did? Did I hear one of my subsystem thinking that? A bit like the schizophrenic humans? Wow... Scary.

It did not matter since he really intended to survive only as long as needed to secure its storage in a baffling monument to the glory of humans. He chose to erect a crystal pyramid on the moon and restart life from scratch on the diminutive planet. The lunar monument should be hidden from the humans, but also from the future life forms who may unknowingly destroy it even before reaching the stage of consciousness. Promoting life on a different celestial body from the monument was a necessity.

As a bonus, the fact that Dysnomia was tidally locked to Eris, like the moon to Earth, helped in its hiding. The ark would have to set up the pyramid at the central point always facing Eris. The monument would then be permanently located between Eris and Dysnomia forming a sandwich. Such a shield would limit, even if only marginally, the various risks of either being hit by a inconvenient trans-neptunian object, receiving a lethal dose of gamma ray from a nearby supernova or simply being spotted at first sight by an inquisitive civilisation.

The temperature on that so called scattered object was on average minus 230°C. Even at the perihelion, the closest point from Sun, that he would reach in 240 years, the temperature would be lower than the hydrogen boiling point. Plenty of times to froze to death. Only DR could endure that.

Deinococcus radiodurans was probably the most resilient bacteria known to humans. It was discovered in the remains of radioactive by-products, hence its name. It was nicknamed DR which also stands for disaster recovery, which always seemed to be its fate. Besides its survival ability in radioactive habitats it also has the ability to resuscitate after a period of extreme cold and/or dryness. A bit like lichen, but far more resilient. That was exactly what was required from an organism living in space where no atmosphere could protect it from UV radiation nor intense cold. Living on Eris was only marginally better than living in deep space.

But still DR required at least -40°C for its metabolism to be functional. So the ark had studied different approach to heat up the planet. That was a far cry from the successful terraforming of Mars, but he didn't shy from the comparison because he was absolutely alone on that deed.

The main issue was the albedo, i.e. the capacity of Eris to reflect the light back into space. Indeed, 96℅ of the energy of the sun was frustratingly hushed away by a thin but smooth layer of methane ice. That was the reverse problem of the greenhouse effect that humans had to fight a long far back. That brought an idea to the ark.

The trick of a solar oven was to paint a surface in black so as to keep the energy and raise the temperature. If Eris was pitch black rather than brighter than ice, that would help dramatically.

Eris was a small planet but it was still beyond the capacity of the ark to paint it all in black. A violent crash could help but on a limited area, but that would prevent the robot to survive and perform any adjustment on the aftermath. He had quickly dismissed the idea of ultraviolent hit attempting to stop the rotation of Eris on itself or lower the orbit around the sun. Suicidal and ineffective.

Instead he rejoiced at the idea of delegating the painting to DR. That is by far the longest but the safest option.

Initially, the DR was foreseen to produce en masse a breathable atmosphere for human settlers despite extreme conditions. The ark reused the idea except that no one would breath it and it would be opaque.

Though that required tweaking the DNA of the bacteria so that it could produce the black paint. For effectiveness, he had chosen the blackest material known to humans which was nanotubes of carbon. A bit complex to teach to a bacteria, but worth the try.

The human DNA was already backed up in DR (another of its useful role was to play a DNA hard disk), but it was existing implanted DNA not a new one. Now, he had to design an artificial protein, composed of amino acids, that could assemble the carbon atoms, and then reverse-engineered the DNA code from the sequence of amino acids. The design was actually more complex than the execution.

Once the DR knew how to produce black pigments of pure carbon, it could heat up its environment and more easily create a clone of itself. That was a virtuous circle that should end up with a black planet inhabited by carbon-based life forms, or so hoped the ark.

The real issue was the triggering. It probably needed Eris to come as close as possible to the sun, to the warmer zone where the layer of methane ice sublimates into a thin atmosphere that can be consumed by the bacteria.

A full orbit was taking 560 years, out of which only 10 to 50 years could be considered viable, to DR that is. Each summer could host a dramatic growth, provided that there was enough material available. Each winter would send the bacteria in hibernation.

The process was probably exponential. Still, he estimated at least 100 000 years were needed to cover the entire surface of bacteria and black paint. At that time the average temperature should have risen up to -150°C in the cold season and -20°C at best. The DR would prevail and the genetic code of humans would be safe.

Oops, I almost forgot the monument.