The Jeepers of Mik's Planet
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The Jeepers of Mik's Planet |
Mik's Planet, located 6010 light years from Sol in the Vela Puppis
region, is in many ways a typical Eugaian world: 6115 km in
radius, with oceans, a typical oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, and a
diverse set of biota. However its life forms, known collectively as the cybyota, do not seem to have evolved here, and there are no fossils
more than thirteen million years old. It appears that a single
long-range seedship arrived some time before thirteen million years
ago, and proceeded to terraform this world. It is not known where the
original seedship came from, or how far it came, or from which
direction. Some resemblance has been noted to the botworld silicon-only
aiota of Stanislaw,
and some similar theories have been formed
concerning the real origin of these cybyotan worlds, but so far there
have been no satisfactory conclusions regarding the problem of their
origin. After a time the planet's biota collectively achieved the goal
of building and launching the seedships to four other relatively nearby
terraformable worlds, without any of the species involved in these
launches ever attaining self-awareness, but in the post-launch era of
the planet's paleohistory a sapient species evolved.
The animal-like and plant-like members of the cybyotan biosphere both
have silicon processing organs or shells. Those in the plant-like
organisms act as memory storage units, and the add strength to their
support structure. Animal-like organisms generally have a silicon-rich
processing mantle on the top part of the body, generally covering a
third to a half of the top surface of the organism. The cybershell
holds pre-programmed behaviours, and deals with communications of a
basic kind. Bioelectric organs in the mantle of the cybyotan life forms
are easily capable of dealing with the energy requirements, and the
shell produces just a small amount of waste heat. This mantle or shell
can be brightly coloured, and often is studded
with ellipsoidal infrared ports. After the seedships were launched,
many parts of the pre-programmed memory became redundant. The silicon
shells have atrophied on some species; others simply use the
cybershell's infrared signals for complex mating displays that are
invisible to unaugmented eyes.
The species known as Jeepers arose seven million years ago, from a
widespread genus of GP (general purpose) maintenance morphs that
were equipped with large biological brains in the anterior part of
their body. The Jeepers evolved self awareness and sentience
spontaneously as the genetic and stored-data they inherited from their
precursors mutated and changed due to information drift. The ancestral
species was pre-programmed to oversee the construction and testing of
the seedships, and individuals were dextrous and equipped with acute
senses. The ancestral Jeeper species was not inherently sapient, was
but imbued with a broad range of skills and instinctive behaviours
which must have been part of the original cybyotan blueprint. Similar
general-purpose morphs are found on all the seeded worlds, although
they are strangely changed and diverge markedly, especially in the
third and fourth generation systems (such as the dead end worlds, which
were discovered first).
The ancestral Jeeper species was used to maintain the seedship
launchcraft, which were powered by fusion pulse into orbit. They
were also programmed via the data-transfer channel to oversee the
construction in orbit of the giant seedship vessels. Jeepers are
therefore adapted to operate in microgravity, and are very unusual
among intelligent species in that they evolved into self-awareness
after attaining space flight capability. The seedship program halted
when vessels had been launched toward each of four nearby target stars,
and no other target stars had been identified, but the newly self aware
Jeepers used their pre-programmed astronautical skills to launch more
spacecraft into orbit for their own purposes. They eventually
established space colonies on their moon and several other terrestrial
bodies.
The Jeepers are six-legged animal-like organisms, with two
complementary pairs of manipulative arms (one large, one smaller)
associated with each pair of legs. The limbs all meet at a complicated
girdle, and the three girdles are arranged in line and surmounted by
the protective cybershell. As the girdles are freely articulated, the
cybershell is also divided into three segments, with large stereoscopic
frontal eyes and smaller rear dorsal eye pairs; the rear eye pair has
an independent optic processing centre linked to the anterior brain
complex by a notochord. The middle segment has no dorsal eyes but has
six infrared ports instead. Each girdle also has a smaller ventral pair
of eyes, which co-ordinate the movement of the limbs, and the
complicated mouthparts, which are located on the front segment. The
smaller limbs are also responsible for passing captured food to the
mouth, and for grasping the mate during genetic transfer (mating).
Jeepers are mostly carnivorous, as hunter/scavengers, but
sometimes adopt an omnivorous diet. Small animal species are carried by
Jeeper spacecraft as food stocks, but on the home world the Jeepers
enjoy the pursuit of prey whenever possible. In hunting the twelve
manipulative arms fold neatly into the sides of the body, and the
running legs are capable of short bursts of speed until the Jeeper is
within grasping range of its prey. Jeepers hunt many of the nonsentient
species of the cybyota. All their hunting and survival behaviour is the
domain of the instinctive and learned behavioural complexes, and the
data-transfer mode of behaviour is always overridden. Many of the other
cybyotan planets have unusual commensal ecologies where the prey are
partly or wholly controlled by the hunters via the data- linkage route,
and Mik's world. It is thought that this arrangement is likely to
explain the emergence of self-awareness among the Jeepers, and the
absence of intelligence from the other seeded worlds: a system where
the hunted leaps into the jaws of the hunter is unlikely to lead to
individualistic sentience.
The psychology of the Jeepers is profoundly influenced by data-linkage
with other members of the species, and to a lesser extent linkage with
all the various cybyotan species via the cybershell; apart from hunting
and instinctive survival behaviour, there is some connectivity
available between the Jeepers and all silicon-bearing life forms on
this planet. The datasphere has become a medium for transfer of
thoughts and dreams from the simplest of the biota to the most complex,
and these abstract and naturalistic thoughts form a constant
undercurrent in the psyche of all data-linked creatures on this world.
However because of the hunting strategy adopted by the Jeepers and
other carnivorous morphs, the surviving biota of this world have learnt
to limit their data-transfer to information that cannot be used during
hunting.
The cybyota on Mik's Planet seem to have undergone a period of rapid
evolution after the last seedships were launched; some species used the
datasphere to detect their prey, while others sent confusing messages
to spoof predators or conceal themselves. The datasphere became a
rapidly changing environment, and only those creatures able to
discriminate between useful and spoofed information could thrive.
Several types of naturally evolved data viruses are also present on
this world, together with evolved countermeasures.
Jeepers have a strong community spirit because of their data linkage,
which can send long distant messages from individual to individual via
the plant-like ecology. However in the wild these long distance
messages are prone to data loss and interference from the minds of
lesser creatures, so the Jeeper civilization maintains cultivated
telecommunication forests that are free of mind pests. Because of the
unreliability of natural long distance telecommunications several
differing data protocols, or languages have developed, and it is
necessary to translate between these, often with some difficulty. For
this reason different regions of Mik's planet have developed separate
cultures, similar to nation-states.
In the larger desert regions of the planet, under the sea, or in space,
individual Jeepers can become cut off from the Datasphere; they
experience loss of memory and become psychologically disturbed. Without
access to the store of culture and information the civilized Jeeper
datasphere contains an Individual Jeeper becomes inefficient and
despondent, but sometimes isolated from er fellows e can become an
individualistic genius; Jeepers have highly developed mental faculties
in themselves. Jeeper cybercraft spaceships, metal-framed fusion pulse
craft partly constructed from organic components, have small
dataspheres containing pre-programmed skills and orbital calculators,
some of which are directly derived from the original programs that
arrived with the first seedship millions of years ago.
When the Vela-Pup Borderer mission (commanded by Mik Junior Junior, who
named this world after himself) arrived in 10297, the three inner
planets of the system had been colonized by Jeeper cybercraft. The
Jeepers had developed a number of belief systems based around the
mysterious race that sent the first seedship to Mik's Planet, which
race they called the Originators or Original Makers. The Jeepers have
long been searching for details about these Makers who sent the first
seedship; this quest is a major driving force behind the Jeeper
exploration of space. Some versions of the belief system held that the
Originators would one day come to Mik's Planet (which the Jeepers
called the Seed, or Seedworld); when the Borderers arrived the
followers of this creed believed that the Originators had at last
arrived. Some small sections of the Jeeper population still believe
this.
The Jeeper Datasphere has become a fascinating subject for study,
especially by self-contained virtual entities who are able to travel
through the cybyotan ecosphere and contact the greater and lesser minds
of this world. Many Jeepers meanwhile have been allowed to enter the
Known Net as
virtual entities and are gaining access to the greater
Orion's Arm civilization in carefully controlled stages.
There is no way of telling if the Jeeper body plan resembles that of
the species which originally sent out the seedships, wherever that
species might have been found; it is possible that the original long
range seedship came from very far away, even from a different galaxy,
so this may never be known for certain.
Related Pages:
Cybyota - mechanical/biological world-seeding and terraforming agents of non-Terragen origin that have apparently evolved into independent life forms since their origin
