Capertillers
Jan. 29th, 2012 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm designing an alien for my biotechnician's world.
Actually I started out designing one off monsters. I know there's the tall one that has arms like stilts and no legs. They're maybe like a pterodactyl without the membranes? They're tall and a very not human shape and kind of creepy.
There's also a caterpillar or centipede looking one. Which would make this the second 'verse where I cast about for something to look really creepy and unnatural and come up fuzzy caterpillar. I maybe have a thing there.
But this planet has possessing spirits, kind of like goa'uld but different. So then I was thinking, it's a perfectly good shape for a parasite. With the goa'uld they're snake shaped, and they only plug in at the front. But if you make something with lots and lots of legs and they all plug in... er, you have something off B5, iirc. Probably amongst other things. But that's fine, I'm not trying to be original. So, we have a long skinny thing with lots of legs that it uses to move but also uses to get between the vertebrae on chordate animals and just plug in. *quick wiki to see if I'm using the words right* Hmmm, near enough to be going on with. So! The legs are pointy and sharp so they can dig in, but also have all the nerves in the end so they can interface with a hosts nervous system. This gives them sensitivity to electrical impulses too. Since they're water creatures when they're not in a host then they would be like sharks, with electroreceptors telling them where to go to find the sparky electric powered life. Wiki says electroreceptors are most useful when sight isn't very useful, like caves and murky water, so we know where to find these things. But probably not caves because goa'uld had them and it's a bit not the vibe I'm going for. People go down to the water to take a spirit. The water is a bit murky then. Probably more swampy edges than pretty beaches? Fens maybe. I don't know, poke the UK coast for something with a big view and mucky water, should be simples. ;-)
Long thing with lots of sharp legs that can cut and wiggle and poke in to big nerves and then interface with electrically sensitive nerves. They could flick out the ends like little wispy feathery bits, licking at surfaces until they find one they like. They aren't tongues though, those would be where it takes in chemicals, nutrients. So the pointy legs would dig in to nerves, but there would be wiggly bits along its back that were for filtering food out of the water when they're at sea... or out of the host body when they're interfaced.
Then its whole back would be a tongue, with bazillions of little manipulators, of little strength individually but able to do things collectively. I'm thinking I've seen lots of sea creatures a bit like that but I don't know the words to find pictures now.
So I'm thinking it's sensitive to vibration, but doesn't have ears or listen to sounds exactly. It tastes the water all the time and is really good at tasting chemicals. And it has those electrical bits.
It's probably not much for cybernetic interfaces in its natural state, but if you have something that wants to interface with things electrically, it would be an interesting start on a way of bridging nervous systems and tech.
It tries not to do much damage on the way in. It's going to live in that system for a long time, it doesn't want to mess it up. It needs a healthy body as much as you do.
Like goa'uld, it has a tremendous memory, easily carrying around hundreds of years of experience.
I'm thinking of making them reproduce by growing extra long and then dropping a section off. Then if they're in a body and they get cut in half then the parts are used to it. It wouldn't be all localised systems like brain people, it would be all spread out. Also you could end up with the two parts fighting about who would keep the host, a very unpleasant experience for a host.
If they plug into the brain you need brain surgery to get them out.
But this plugs in to the spine. There would be someone who would think of keeping them out of their thoughts by cutting the spine. Even if this was done so high up it would usually kill you, the parasite would continue to regulate functions. It could also make you move around, but it would be deaf blind because those bits are higher up. Probably though it would just wiggle up until its own body formed a bridge and it was back in control. This gives an incentive for letting such a sharing happen in the first place, it can bridge damaged systems, so it can unparalyse people. For a price.
I like the idea that goa'uld are not in their natural state intelligent. If they have all the memory, but nothing to run it on, then that would explain why they have to take intelligent hosts. I like the idea that a symbiote would share the experience of being a cow or a bird or a human person, and remember it and bring it to a new host, but not actually be able to think like a human while it was a cow. All the hard drive, none of the processor. So we don't know if that's true of goa'uld, but I've decided it will be of these new caterpillar looking ones.
Actually, what I'm describing doesn't look much like a caterpillar. It's a centipede with a lot of anemone bits on its back, I think, which undulates through water. ... and the image in my head is totally giving me the creeps, so that works.
But sometimes trying to say caterpillar comes out capertiller, and I like that for a symbiote name. Caper is like a happy dancing or a complex crime, and tiller is a thing for steering. It's a thing that jumps on, steers and steals you. Capertillers in the water. Sounds so silly, make it scary later.
So the little versions climb in to people and go inside their rib cage and plug in to the spine, so they're not making it bumpy from the outside. They're very bendy. Some of them take over and some of them are just along for the ride and some of them are friends who can use your hands, and some have been human many times and some only just started. Most cultures stay away from the places they live, but the ones who live with them have a place for the people that go down to the water. There's all sorts of reasons, if you need them enough.
But there's not just the little versions. There's the monster version. And it is huuuuuuuuge. It was one of the things I thought of first, the expedition go down into the scary Keep Out places and find crystal coffins, surrounded by mist, patrolled by this huge great capertiller. And if it is a giant version of a water creature you have an excuse for the mist, it needs the humidity to stay healthy walking around outside of the water. But then you wonder, why build a huuuuuuuuge version of a symbiote anyway? Answer: Memory. It has a spectacular capacious memory even as a tiny thing. It interfaces with a person and then from a certain point of view that person never dies. They'll always be remembered, all the way down the line. But the trade off with the tiny ones is giving up control of your body. The huge one can't exactly climb in and make itself comfy. But it can remember much, much more.
So I knew the boxes were full of people plugged in to VR. They're in simulated worlds having a matrix life. But where is the matrix? Millions of individual brains, or one, huge, gigantic, hard drive, with perhaps millions of minds, fully remembered...
At what point does one start or stop being human?
Is a human with a capertiller riding still a human?
What about the capertiller alone, after?
It always has a personality, like a Tok'ra or Goa'uld, not simply like a Trill symbiote. It never completely blends. But everyone it wears would be remembered, and to greater or lesser extent influence it. It carries around a full memory of everything its host was, but it is a personality separate to and on top of any of those memories. That's how it can take charge.
Does the VR interface make an important difference? If it can look human without being humanoid, does that make it more human?
When you make a computer bigger and smarter, eventually you get Turing capable AI. (So SF tells us.)
So what happens when you keep upgrading this being, who once upon a time rode humans, and remembers?
There's a person in there... but what kind of person do you get, when they know all, see all, see into your mind, and remember everything?
I'm wondering now if the VR boxes should be clean looking tech, or should lick out strands of wet silver from under a pillow, strands that look quite familiar when the monster capertiller uses one leg to stop another monster in its tracks. And when they tear apart the machine, they find it's just a cosy life support for another chunk of capertiller. After all, it already knows how to plug in to humans without hurting them. And even if it's all wires and chips, I have to figure out how it all connects up.
Probably the monster is wireless. But the bandwidth is limited that way, so after patrols it curls up and plugs itself in properly.
I wanted to have one time though that someone plugged into the box but not the communal VR, so they're isolated, just their own mind running on that system.
Could still do it though, if like the goa'uld the capertiller could spawn parts that were mindless. Clean sheets to accumulate a new set of experiences. They'd have to be able to, or everyone would be the same person branching a lot. I want different people so I'll make it so they can make entirely new parts.
I was thinking that the budding thing doesn't go great with evolution, but if what they're swapping and rearranging is other beings memories, to best survival effect... I don't know, I reckon they'd also need to do gene swapping and slightly new versions.
Of course there's nothing to say they ever evolved naturally. If they were originally intended as cybernetic interfaces that could be fun too. The big one is the main memory, the central core everything is meant to be backed up to, and the little ones were meant to be netbooks, but after a while something broke and they stopped coming home. There's two cities and the City in the Ice is emptied out and isolated, quarantined. The City in the Waves is inhabited still, but breaking down, because nobody much understands the tech any more. Except the ones who have been there since the beginning, the spirits of the waters, the capertillers.
... hmm, the name maybe doesn't work so well. That would be sad.
But, my lost city has a giant squirmy mind controlling bug in the cellar, running the Matrix.
That's a story.
Actually I started out designing one off monsters. I know there's the tall one that has arms like stilts and no legs. They're maybe like a pterodactyl without the membranes? They're tall and a very not human shape and kind of creepy.
There's also a caterpillar or centipede looking one. Which would make this the second 'verse where I cast about for something to look really creepy and unnatural and come up fuzzy caterpillar. I maybe have a thing there.
But this planet has possessing spirits, kind of like goa'uld but different. So then I was thinking, it's a perfectly good shape for a parasite. With the goa'uld they're snake shaped, and they only plug in at the front. But if you make something with lots and lots of legs and they all plug in... er, you have something off B5, iirc. Probably amongst other things. But that's fine, I'm not trying to be original. So, we have a long skinny thing with lots of legs that it uses to move but also uses to get between the vertebrae on chordate animals and just plug in. *quick wiki to see if I'm using the words right* Hmmm, near enough to be going on with. So! The legs are pointy and sharp so they can dig in, but also have all the nerves in the end so they can interface with a hosts nervous system. This gives them sensitivity to electrical impulses too. Since they're water creatures when they're not in a host then they would be like sharks, with electroreceptors telling them where to go to find the sparky electric powered life. Wiki says electroreceptors are most useful when sight isn't very useful, like caves and murky water, so we know where to find these things. But probably not caves because goa'uld had them and it's a bit not the vibe I'm going for. People go down to the water to take a spirit. The water is a bit murky then. Probably more swampy edges than pretty beaches? Fens maybe. I don't know, poke the UK coast for something with a big view and mucky water, should be simples. ;-)
Long thing with lots of sharp legs that can cut and wiggle and poke in to big nerves and then interface with electrically sensitive nerves. They could flick out the ends like little wispy feathery bits, licking at surfaces until they find one they like. They aren't tongues though, those would be where it takes in chemicals, nutrients. So the pointy legs would dig in to nerves, but there would be wiggly bits along its back that were for filtering food out of the water when they're at sea... or out of the host body when they're interfaced.
Then its whole back would be a tongue, with bazillions of little manipulators, of little strength individually but able to do things collectively. I'm thinking I've seen lots of sea creatures a bit like that but I don't know the words to find pictures now.
So I'm thinking it's sensitive to vibration, but doesn't have ears or listen to sounds exactly. It tastes the water all the time and is really good at tasting chemicals. And it has those electrical bits.
It's probably not much for cybernetic interfaces in its natural state, but if you have something that wants to interface with things electrically, it would be an interesting start on a way of bridging nervous systems and tech.
It tries not to do much damage on the way in. It's going to live in that system for a long time, it doesn't want to mess it up. It needs a healthy body as much as you do.
Like goa'uld, it has a tremendous memory, easily carrying around hundreds of years of experience.
I'm thinking of making them reproduce by growing extra long and then dropping a section off. Then if they're in a body and they get cut in half then the parts are used to it. It wouldn't be all localised systems like brain people, it would be all spread out. Also you could end up with the two parts fighting about who would keep the host, a very unpleasant experience for a host.
If they plug into the brain you need brain surgery to get them out.
But this plugs in to the spine. There would be someone who would think of keeping them out of their thoughts by cutting the spine. Even if this was done so high up it would usually kill you, the parasite would continue to regulate functions. It could also make you move around, but it would be deaf blind because those bits are higher up. Probably though it would just wiggle up until its own body formed a bridge and it was back in control. This gives an incentive for letting such a sharing happen in the first place, it can bridge damaged systems, so it can unparalyse people. For a price.
I like the idea that goa'uld are not in their natural state intelligent. If they have all the memory, but nothing to run it on, then that would explain why they have to take intelligent hosts. I like the idea that a symbiote would share the experience of being a cow or a bird or a human person, and remember it and bring it to a new host, but not actually be able to think like a human while it was a cow. All the hard drive, none of the processor. So we don't know if that's true of goa'uld, but I've decided it will be of these new caterpillar looking ones.
Actually, what I'm describing doesn't look much like a caterpillar. It's a centipede with a lot of anemone bits on its back, I think, which undulates through water. ... and the image in my head is totally giving me the creeps, so that works.
But sometimes trying to say caterpillar comes out capertiller, and I like that for a symbiote name. Caper is like a happy dancing or a complex crime, and tiller is a thing for steering. It's a thing that jumps on, steers and steals you. Capertillers in the water. Sounds so silly, make it scary later.
So the little versions climb in to people and go inside their rib cage and plug in to the spine, so they're not making it bumpy from the outside. They're very bendy. Some of them take over and some of them are just along for the ride and some of them are friends who can use your hands, and some have been human many times and some only just started. Most cultures stay away from the places they live, but the ones who live with them have a place for the people that go down to the water. There's all sorts of reasons, if you need them enough.
But there's not just the little versions. There's the monster version. And it is huuuuuuuuge. It was one of the things I thought of first, the expedition go down into the scary Keep Out places and find crystal coffins, surrounded by mist, patrolled by this huge great capertiller. And if it is a giant version of a water creature you have an excuse for the mist, it needs the humidity to stay healthy walking around outside of the water. But then you wonder, why build a huuuuuuuuge version of a symbiote anyway? Answer: Memory. It has a spectacular capacious memory even as a tiny thing. It interfaces with a person and then from a certain point of view that person never dies. They'll always be remembered, all the way down the line. But the trade off with the tiny ones is giving up control of your body. The huge one can't exactly climb in and make itself comfy. But it can remember much, much more.
So I knew the boxes were full of people plugged in to VR. They're in simulated worlds having a matrix life. But where is the matrix? Millions of individual brains, or one, huge, gigantic, hard drive, with perhaps millions of minds, fully remembered...
At what point does one start or stop being human?
Is a human with a capertiller riding still a human?
What about the capertiller alone, after?
It always has a personality, like a Tok'ra or Goa'uld, not simply like a Trill symbiote. It never completely blends. But everyone it wears would be remembered, and to greater or lesser extent influence it. It carries around a full memory of everything its host was, but it is a personality separate to and on top of any of those memories. That's how it can take charge.
Does the VR interface make an important difference? If it can look human without being humanoid, does that make it more human?
When you make a computer bigger and smarter, eventually you get Turing capable AI. (So SF tells us.)
So what happens when you keep upgrading this being, who once upon a time rode humans, and remembers?
There's a person in there... but what kind of person do you get, when they know all, see all, see into your mind, and remember everything?
I'm wondering now if the VR boxes should be clean looking tech, or should lick out strands of wet silver from under a pillow, strands that look quite familiar when the monster capertiller uses one leg to stop another monster in its tracks. And when they tear apart the machine, they find it's just a cosy life support for another chunk of capertiller. After all, it already knows how to plug in to humans without hurting them. And even if it's all wires and chips, I have to figure out how it all connects up.
Probably the monster is wireless. But the bandwidth is limited that way, so after patrols it curls up and plugs itself in properly.
I wanted to have one time though that someone plugged into the box but not the communal VR, so they're isolated, just their own mind running on that system.
Could still do it though, if like the goa'uld the capertiller could spawn parts that were mindless. Clean sheets to accumulate a new set of experiences. They'd have to be able to, or everyone would be the same person branching a lot. I want different people so I'll make it so they can make entirely new parts.
I was thinking that the budding thing doesn't go great with evolution, but if what they're swapping and rearranging is other beings memories, to best survival effect... I don't know, I reckon they'd also need to do gene swapping and slightly new versions.
Of course there's nothing to say they ever evolved naturally. If they were originally intended as cybernetic interfaces that could be fun too. The big one is the main memory, the central core everything is meant to be backed up to, and the little ones were meant to be netbooks, but after a while something broke and they stopped coming home. There's two cities and the City in the Ice is emptied out and isolated, quarantined. The City in the Waves is inhabited still, but breaking down, because nobody much understands the tech any more. Except the ones who have been there since the beginning, the spirits of the waters, the capertillers.
... hmm, the name maybe doesn't work so well. That would be sad.
But, my lost city has a giant squirmy mind controlling bug in the cellar, running the Matrix.
That's a story.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 01:50 am (UTC)~
no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 11:00 pm (UTC)Well, it's an interesting bag of ideas. I may steal the name for the fic I've not been writing for trope_bingo.