The Science Of Life Seed By Albert Nothlit

[albertnothlit]

*cracks knuckles*  I would like to begin my very first thread on the Promising Author Forum by talking about some of the sciency (and made-up) stuff behind the story Life Seed, which is my latest serial science fiction project here at GA. I will post some of the rambling thoughts which gave birth to the concept of the planet called New Skye,  explain some juicy tidbits which will not make it into the main story, and of course answer any questions you guys might have!

 

Part 1.  Concerning New Skye and its selection

 

      Life Seed takes place on an alien world, where life evolved very differently from how it did on Earth. The world of New Skye is nevertheless very similar to our own planet, with comparable gravity (1.05 g),  day/night cycle (23.8 hrs) and atmospheric composition (N₂ 76%, O₂ 23%,  within the remainder one percent being a mixture of CO_{2 ,} O₃ (in the upper atmosphere),  and other trace gases).  The length of each year is 492.75 days,  with the planet having a mildly elliptical orbit around its main sequence star, a sun similar to our own but about 1.35 times brighter, which compensates for the increased distance between itself and New Skye as compared to Earth, and results in a comparable temperature range.  The planet has a weaker magnetic field than Earth's,  but all lifeforms living on it have adapted to the increased radiation from the sun. Humans living on the surface need to have regular therapeutic treatments to prevent radiation sickness and other complications, but it is required only once every two New Skye years - or once every 2.7 Earth years. New Skye is the second planet in its solar system, with the first planet being a much smaller lifeless husk, entirely devoid of atmosphere. Two gas giants orbit at much greater distances, each of them surrounded by sizeable moons,  some of which have shown promising readings regarding the possibility of finding simple lifeforms in their oceans. New Skye has a single satellite to which it is tidally locked,  a large moon about 1.23x  the size of Earth's Moon. New Skye has no tectonic plate movement. Its planetary layout has remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years:  two large continents, isolated from one another by an enormous ocean.

       All of these characteristics made New Skye a prime candidate for the first colonization efforts of the coalition of worlds called the Core Systems. The generation ship Ionas, at the time the most advanced spacefaring vessel ever created, was sent on a course to the planet with the hope that humanity might find a new home there.  The original crew of Ionas consisted of people carefully selected through psychological screening and compatibility networking to provide the most stable multicultural environment for what would be a journey of more than a hundred years. The so-called First Generation on board was a model of cooperation and unity of purpose. As years went by, however, the second-generation crew members  found themselves facing a unique outlook in human history:  they would live out their entire lives on a ship, without ever knowing Earth firsthand,  and neither would they ever see New Skye.  The social, cultural, and political aftershocks of this realization affected the entire societal dynamics of the Second Generation, especially after all of their forebears had passed away,  when they found themselves in command of every aspect of life on board Ionas  except for its  unchangeable plotted course. Their children, the Third Generation, inherited some of these views, although for them it was the prospect of colonizing a new planet that was most important in their minds. The majority of the Third Generation would reach the new planet in their middle years, and many were excited to be pioneers, the first humans ever to set foot on the promising planet just a few decades' travel ahead.

       

 

Part 2.  Concerning alien morphology

 

 Bilateral symmetry is a very common characteristic of life on Earth,  with most organisms displaying an even number of appendages and sensory organs. On New Skye, however, evolution favored morphological characteristics in multiples of three. The clearest example of this kind of evolution, and the one which elicited the greatest surprise from the new colonists, were the flying creatures. All small bird analogues and arthropods exhibit radial symmetry, with their body plan distributed along a single central axis with appendages radiating out from it. Birds, in particular, have three muscular wings which attach to specialized rotatory muscle structures which enable flight through a carefully-synchronized corkscrew motion which necessitates that the animal spiral as it flies through the air. Birds usually have a single grasping foot at one end of their body, a very strong structure which provides adequate grip for resting, mating, and hunting. The tip of their body plan ends in a lightweight beak-like  organ of varying shape and size depending on the species of bird. It is divided into three sectors, all of which can open at once to allow the bird to ingest prey by trapping it within the inner mandibles and closing the beak afterwards. Some bird species have also developed highly precise funnel organs at the base of their necks  which are capable of  directing large quantities of air backwards in the moment before prey is caught, creating a very small but effective downdraft which slows down any flying prey so it cannot escape.

 

        Flying arthropods are somewhat different, chiefly in the fact that they are bodies are heavily segmented,  tending to be much longer than the animal is wide, and exhibiting  several triads of  gossamer wings which beat in unison.  The most remarkable of these species is the one early colonists called the hawk dragonfly, a 30 cm-long  creature with twelve wings altogether,  arranged in four stages radially along its body length, with each triad rotated exactly 22.5º  with respect to the previous one. This arrangement allows the creature extraordinary freedom of movement, hunting capabilities, and such high speeds that their upper limit remains unknown.  Their eye structure  is also unique:  a single compound eye, torus-shaped,  rings the mandibles at the tip of their bodies. The mandibles are extendable, and it is chiefly through their use that prey is caught in midair.  Although there were fears at first among the early colonists regarding whether hawk dragonflies were venomous, careful experimentation was conclusive in the negative.  Before the Long Winter began, the animals were seen as helpers and pest controllers in the summer months, despite their fearsome appearance and unnerving screeching and buzzing at dusk and dawn.

 

     The spined variety of wurl which inhabit the smaller of the two continents are remarkable exceptions to the radial symmetry pattern which can be seen in nearly all other species. In fact, early genetic mapping done  some time after the discovery of the Life Seed,  when dazed or helpless wurl individuals were a common sight in the wilderness  surrounding the colony,  revealed that the genome of juvenile wurl was strikingly different from everything else which had been mapped up to that point. Aside from hypothetical, extremely primitive single-celled organisms, there was no clear common ancestor between wurl  and the rest of the life on New Skye. The reason for this fact remains unknown.

 

Read Life Seed here!  If you'd like to know when I add more sciency facts, just follow this topic.  Any questions you may have are also quite welcome. See you soon!

 

-Albert

[Drew Espinosa]

Hey Albert, I just began reading Life Seed yesterday, and I love it!

 

And OMG! All this information you provided is so interesting. Now, you mentioned the second continent, will Elias be making a visit there?

[impunity]

Too tipsy to read all this information right now, but I've been regretting the lack of a forum for Life Seed, so thanks for starting one.

 

Btw, I LOVE this story.

Edited May 28, 2016 by impunity

[Graeme]

Very interesting Coming up with a solid background for an alien world is a big challenge, but I like how even in that world you've got exceptions (the Wurls not fitting into the radial symmetry scenario).

[albertnothlit]

Thank you all for the comments! I have SO much more to add to the world's background. I'm not an expert on exoplanets by any means, but I like to flesh out the worlds I create as much as possible, even if many of these details will never make it into the main storyline, or be mentioned only in passing.

[ghanbrews]

Wow, really cool all this this background info. It gives a new and clearer view on new skye. It looks loke you've had some fun creating it.

[Stephen]

There is so much new about Elias and his mountain sanctuary (prison? ordeal?) experience that it's hard to say what makes

the most impact on me. This chapter is full of new information. Elias is making friends with the two wurls and discovers

how adept they are at survival. They're seeming to be more clever all the time, they don't have the same manner of thinking

as humans, but neither do dogs, and certainly not cats! But we love them anyway. Elias is getting attached to his wurls and

they seem to feel the same thing happening themselves in their own way. New Sky's birds sound totally bizarre, -one leg

and all...I worry about what's going on back at the settlement as well as with Sizzra and her boyfriend in their love nest.

No doubt wurl sex is odd.

[albertnothlit]

Thanks, ghanbrews and Stephen! I'm glad you're finding the story engaging and the extra information interesting. Wurl sex is indeed somewhat odd – which brings me to my next entry!

 

 

Part 3.  Concerning wurl reproduction.

 

 As has been seen in the story, the mating rituals of wurl are a somewhat violent affair.  This is a necessity, since Spine wurl are a species with unique advantages and limitations, perfectly adapted to the continent they live in, psionically interconnected through their Flower, apex predators of all they survey. 

 

Spine wurl, like Flyer wurl and Singer wurl, exhibit sexual dimorphism to a rather extreme degree. Each generation of wurl consists of several hundred males born from eggs with obsidian-like casing, and a single female born from a much larger,  and in the case of Spine wurl, iridescent-shelled egg. The female is always the first to hatch -  it is she who triggers the hatching of the males with a mental command. Although wurl are fully developed within their eggs from the moment they are laid,  the trigger for the hatching of the female in the new generation is invariably the death of her mother. At that moment, generational memories are transferred into the new queen via the biological network connecting all living things on New Skye's  continents through the nexus of the three Flowers.  The new queen will hatch as soon as conditions are appropriate,  though – If  her mother has been killed violently by one of the other two queens, as has happened often throughout the history of the world, the new generation's eggs will not hatch until the threat is gone. This can take anywhere from several hours  to several centuries.

         

 The lifespan of a wurl queen has no limit, or at least none have ever died of age-related causes. They and their brood can live for centuries on end. The males of a generation will develop at different speeds to ensure that there will always be fit males in their prime at the moment that the queen is ready to mate. This means that, although all males are born at the same time, there can still be juvenile specimens after centuries have passed, along with adult wurl.  After the complex set of chemical reactions that triggers maturity in males starts,  their aging process resumes and they will die of old age eventually,  unlike the queen,  who can outlive her entire brood in theory – although that almost never happens. The reason for this is the constant and deadly rivalry between the three wurl breeds' queens.  They will fight often, trying to eliminate the other two, although this instinctive behavior is expressed differently in each of the breeds. Of particular note is the constant fighting between Spine and Flyer wurl.  Just as it happened with Sizzra's forebears, the two queens have killed each other many times in their seemingly eternal pursuit to destroy the other queen and her precious queen egg to exterminate her breed from existence.  The fact that none of them have ever succeeded in doing so is a testament to the exquisitely balanced  ecosystem of New Skye. Throughout a history that spans hundreds of thousands of years, the eternal conflict continues without a victor.  There are three Queens, three Flowers;  always three. It is a number which represents the foundation of life on that world.  The balance is so perfect that the slightest outside disturbance could very well have  catastrophic consequences for one or more of the wurl breeds.

 

A female wurl  will mate only once in her lifetime.  Three candidates approach her when the time is right, the three strongest specimens of her brood. Before coming to her, they have fought fiercely with every other adult wurl on the continent. The battles between them are violent, merciless, and sometimes deadly. The three candidates represent the very best of their species:  strength,  adaptability, cunning, and determination. There is no weakness among them, no hesitation. It needs to be that way for them to challenge the much-larger female and earn the right to mate with her.  If they are not strong enough, or fast enough, she will kill them during the mating dance. The males  know this instinctively, but it doesn't deter them from attempting to achieve the one purpose which matters most than any other:  to ensure that their genes will pass on into the future of their species.

[Lux Apollo]

Ah, I didn't see this linked in one of the previous chapters but I'm glad I saw it this time. Good stuff! This is a wonderful concise explanation of some of the basic geological and biological phenomena of New Skye, and also a bit about the colonists. If you are going to write more of this stuff, I look forward to it - especially if we learn more about the other breeds of wurl.   

[ghanbrews]

Ok, this ever living quality of the queens left me a little bit confusing. They basically only die if another queen kills them, is that right? I can't see any other thing killing those creatures... 

And I'm so curious about the singer queen

[Drew Espinosa]

OMG! That was an awesome chapter!

 

 

I hope Elias, the Spine Wurl, and Portree are ready for the Flyer Queen and her minions.

 

[impunity]

I'm still a tad confused about wurl age cohorts. If the queen only lays one batch of eggs sometime near her death, where do the juveniles come from? 

 

Also, why hasn't the colony figured out yet that they can use wurl spines as weapons or tools? They've certainly had enough of them on hand with all the previous attacks. Or are only Sizzra's strong enough? Hopefully they'll think to collect them. 

Edited August 5, 2016 by impunity

[Drew Espinosa]

I'm still a tad confused about wurl age cohorts. If the queen only lays one batch of eggs sometime near her death, where do the juveniles come from? 

 

Also, why hasn't the colony figured out yet that they can use wurl spines as weapons or tools? They've certainly had enough of them on hand with all the previous attacks. Or are only Sizzra's strong enough? Hopefully they'll think to collect them. 

It was explained in one of the chapters (I can't recall which), the male wurl mature at different rates relative to each other. Some become adults within years, while others remain juveniles for decades. And it's all based on a hierarchy; with the alphas being the most mature, and the weaker ones being less so.

 

But I'm sure Albert can explain that in a lot more detail.

 

Edit: I really should learn that It pays to look at previous posts Albert already explained it in this thread. Oh, and to clarify, I was was confusing his explanation in a post for a chapter.

 

 

As for the spines, I think the colony thought they were 'above' using the spines since they already had their shock spears. Maybe they felt that their own weapons were advanced enough without having to resort to 'primitive' weapons such as the spines as spears.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Drew Espinosa

[Drew Espinosa]

Nvm, Albert already explained it here:

 

 The lifespan of a wurl queen has no limit, or at least none have ever died of age-related causes. They and their brood can live for centuries on end. The males of a generation will develop at different speeds to ensure that there will always be fit males in their prime at the moment that the queen is ready to mate. This means that, although all males are born at the same time, there can still be juvenile specimens after centuries have passed, along with adult wurl. 

[albertnothlit]

Also, why hasn't the colony figured out yet that they can use wurl spines as weapons or tools? They've certainly had enough of them on hand with all the previous attacks. Or are only Sizzra's strong enough? Hopefully they'll think to collect them. 

 

Hi! To answer this bit: Male wurl spines aren't as durable, sharp, or as big as Sizzra's. People in Portree hadn't had the chance to consider using one of Sizzra's spines as a tool or weapon since none but Elias and Tristan had ever seen her before, let alone taking a spine home without dying a painful death in the process. Now that her body lies near the colony after the battle, though, Portree scientists may indeed discover uses for materials derived from her unique scales and/or spines.

 

Thanks for asking! 

-Albert