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Crystallographer's Nightmare
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| A cross-section of the white dwarf star Crystallographer's Nightmare, showing the crystalising core where the native biopshere has evolved. | |
Overview
Crystallographer's Nightmare is a white dwarf star in the Perseus arm, containing a native biosphere based on crystal dislocations within its core. The biosphere is the most complex example of its type known, and the first discovered, though a later search of white dwarf stars in Terragen Space turned up several others, all much more primitive.Discovered in 8510, Crystallographer's Nightmare is currently claimed by the Caretaker God Deepening Radiance, who, after a period of uneasy co-existence, forcibly evicted the previous Silicon Generation colonists, moving them to a similar white dwarf, now known as Crystallographer's Reverie.
Biosphere
Context
As Crystallographer's Nightmare cools, the carbon in its core freezes into a body-centred cubic crystal. This crystal core, composing roughly 34% of the star's mass, is filled with crystallographic defects. Stresses in the core, generated by a complex interaction between the star's cooling and its rotation, drive the defects to move and interact with each other. These defects and their interactions are the basis of the local biosphere.The primary constituents of the biosphere, analogous to biomolecules in chemical life, are linear defects called dislocations. Dislocations move in response to stresses and can interact with each other in multiple ways. Two dislocations may, depending on their type and orientation, attract, repel, or annihilate with each other. They can also block the passage of other dislocations, so large numbers of dislocation loops can be bound together to form topologically complex, information rich structures that interact. Organisms in Crystallographer's Nightmare are composed of trillions of interacting dislocation loops.
Point defects are also important. Unlike dislocations, they are quite stable, and do note move easily in response to stress. Two point defects linked by a dislocation line, called a Frank-Read source, can generate new dislocation loops when supplied with stress.
Grain boundaries, a form of planar defect, can also act as sources of dislocation loops, but also as impenetrable barriers to organisms. The biosphere seems to remove most grain boundaries in the crystalline core, with the only remaining ones being between recently-formed grains near the edge of the core.
This environment has several unique features for organisms to deal with.
First, the biosphere is dependent on the stresses provided by cooling and rotation. Such stresses vary in intensity and direction. High stresses are times of both great turmoil and great opportunity. Large parts of the ecosystem glide together. Metabolisms ramp up quickly as dislocation loops are driven to interact. Organisms that can't repair themselves fast enough in response to the disruption die, while those that can may grow to several times their previous size. At times of low stresses, however, the biosphere slows down, relying on the stored energy of dislocation loops. Organisms devote this time to rest, repair, and preparation for the next storm of high stress.
Second, the environment is anisotropic: All dislocations preferentially glide along certain planes. Moreover, edge dislocations can only glide in one direction. This has implications for biological processes (because dislocations can be close to each other within interacting), but also for how organisms move. At any one time, most mobile organisms can only easily move in one direction; changing direction is difficult because it requires a special metabolic process to absorb some edge dislocations and create new ones.
Ecology
In Crystallographer's Nightmare, all organisms receive energy directly through stress forces that drive interactions between dislocation loops. Therefore, on an energetic level, there is no distinction between autotrophs and heterotrophs.However, there is a distinction between organisms that specialise in producing dislocation loop networks and organisms that specialise in consuming those networks. Consequently, life is divided into three trophic domains:
Frank-Read Autotrophs are sessile organisms that specialise in generating dislocation loops from Frank-Read sources. They grow around clusters of point defects, laboriously migrating the defects into place and linking them with dislocation lines to form Frank-Read sources. During periods of stress, these complexes generate streams of dislocation loop networks for the organisms to use. They also rely on point defects to remain sessile. Stress events cause Frank-Read Autotrophs to expand and stretch out, with one end remaining around the cluster of point defects and the other moving away in the glide plane. If this stretched end encounters a defect, it will try to migrate that defect to its core. If it encounters another autotroph, it may engage in an attempt at predation to take over the organism's cluster of defects. Otherwise, it slowly retreats back towards the core of point defects.
Grain Boundary Autotrophs generate dislocation loops from grain boundaries. They are much smaller and simpler than Frank-Read Autotrophs, and are neither sessile nor actively mobile, passively gliding due to stress. When they are close enough to grain boundaries, they absorb and metabolise the dislocations that are generated there and reproduce in great numbers. Many will ultimately die, but a small number survive long enough to encounter a grain boundary and propagate again. These organisms are a relatively small part of the ecosystem, but have an outsized effect due to their role in pushing grain boundaries back.
Mobile Heterotrophs specialise in growth-based movement. Keeping complex dislocation networks intact while moving is a considerable challenge, and Mobile Heterotrophs devote a large part of their metabolism to repairing the networks that they're made of.
Herbivorous heterotrophs anchor themselves in a Frank-Read Autotroph and extract the energy from its dislocation loops to extend a long, worm-like body along a particular glide direction. If a stress event occurs, they can grow much faster in that direction. Upon reaching another Frank-Read Autotroph, they burrow into it to feed. Using the energy extracted, they can generate new heads to grow in multiple new directions, each seeking out the next Frank-Read Autotroph. The result is a fractally-branching organism, in some ways resembling a macroscopic mycelial network more than an animal. Large herbivores will often end up being broken in the middle, forming two independent organisms.
Carnivorous heterotrophs have similar structures and behaviours, but instead seek out and burrow into other heterotrophs. Finally, there are several parasitic heterotrophs, which live inside other heterotrophs, growing with them.
Overall, the biosphere of Crystallographer's Nightmare is made up of islands of Frank-Read autotrophs scattered throughout the habitable volume of the core, all connected by a network of mobile heterotrophs moving between them.
History
Discovery
Crystallographer's Nightmare was first reached in 8510 by a Silicon Generation research mission attracted by the unusual astroseismological readings.Having established a research base and lightway connection in the star's debris disk, the vecs began investigating the stellar interior by using orbiting superconductor cables to manipulate the degenerate plasma. After several decades of study, they were able to indirectly observe the formation of crystal grains at the core boundary, and from there, gather readings of the crystallographic structure within. After several hypotheses were tested and discarded, the vecs were able to confirm the existence of a biosphere in 8590.
Seeking to more directly observe the lifeforms they had discovered, the researchers improved the sophistication of the degenerate plasma probe to the point where they were able to influence the crystallisation process, constructing self-sufficient bots made of dislocations at the surface of the core. These bots moved into the core, studied the ecosystem, and then returned with their findings.
When news of the biosphere in Crystallographer's Nightmare reached the rest of Terragen Space, it drove a surge of interest among white dwarf scholars. Several hundred white dwarfs were more thoroughly investigated in the following centuries, turning up several further examples of crystal dislocation life, although all of these were far simpler, being roughly equivalent to prokaryotic organisms.
Immersion
In 8700, the researchers chose to upload/engenerate themselves into the core of Crystallographer's Nightmare, adopting bodies based on the dislocation bots they had constructed.They constructed several inverted conical "cities", each with the base at the core boundary, where it connected to the outside world via degenerate plasma probes, and the apex several kilometres below it, pointing down. The vecs themselves inhabited arms, extending from the cone-city and anchored to it, so it could supply them with energy and a data link as they explored.
Siloen
Simultaneously with the engeneration effort, the Silicon Generation began to provolve the local lifeforms. The best candidate was a nomadic, omnivorous Mobile Heterotroph with strong prosocial behaviours and an intelligence roughly equivalent to a dog's. Success was announced in 8770.These xenoprovolves, known as the Siloen, proved to be far more dynamic and active than their Silicon Generation sponsors. While retaining a firm and indeed loving connection to the vecs, they also created several of their own cities amid the forests of Frank-Read Autotrophs, developed a native dislocation-based biotechnology, and modified themselves into several subclades. Some groups uploaded themselves into the vec cone-habitats, and from there engenerated themselves in independent bodies in orbit around Crystallographer's Nightmare.
Caretaker
In 9202, a terse message appeared, deposited directly within the most secure parts of the local datasphere. It announced that Crystallographer's Nightmare was now under the protection of a Caretaker God to be known as Deepening Radiance and that, while the vecs and Siloen would be permitted to stay for the moment, undue interference with the biosphere would not be permitted. The Siloen, who by this point outnumbered the vecs sixteen-to-one, were initially shocked into submission. The growth of their civilisation and population slowed, quickly adopting a steady state.For the next few centuries, the Siloen and vecs lived in comfortable if uneasy harmony with their Caretaker. However a series of political shifts led to the Siloen civilisation entering a new phase of growth, apparently attempting to undergo industrialisation without external assistance. In 9620, they began attempts to stabilise and control the periods of high stress within the core with results that none of them could have expected.
Eviction
From the perspective of the Siloen and vecs, nothing seemed to change except that, according to their telescope data, the constellations were different and the debris disk was absent. After a hurried analysis, they determined that the year was now 9800 and they were four hundred lightyears away from where they had been.As far as such things can be determined, it appears that Deepening Radiance had forcibly uploaded the entire population, along with all their habitats and technology and a copy of the entire biosphere, and reproduced them exactly inside a suitable white dwarf star. The time taken to transport them suggests the use of wormholes, but there is no path through the known Nexus that could achieve this.
The Siloen-vec civilisation was sufficiently self-contained that it was able to adapt to the change with relative ease. By popular vote, the Siloen chose a name for their new home, based on the original, but with the negative connotations changed: Crystallographer's Reverie.
Deepening Radiance, despite their terse communication style, has since provided a live feed (without commentary) on the Known Net, showing scenes from several locations inside Crystallographer's Nightmare. If this feed is to be believed, they have restored the biosphere to its original pristine state.
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Development Notes
Text by Liam Jones
Initially published on 17 December 2024.
The nature of the crystal biology was inspired by the paper "A model for a non-chemical form of life: crystalline physiology" (PDF), by Jean Schneider, published in the journal Origins of Life in 1977.
Initially published on 17 December 2024.
The nature of the crystal biology was inspired by the paper "A model for a non-chemical form of life: crystalline physiology" (PDF), by Jean Schneider, published in the journal Origins of Life in 1977.
