Teherrima
Notes on the Teherrima.
by Jim Comer on Friday, 4 May 2012 at 14:24 ·
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's
by Jim Comer on Friday, 4 May 2012 at 14:24 ·
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's