COMPOSITE SYMBIOTIC ENTITIES
Jupiterians are not like us, mostly because they are "composite symbiotic entities", which is when a colony or cluster of different creatures join as a Common Being. Much like a city.
In fact, to find nominology for the different degrees of cluster-entities, the Jupiterians have described themselves as we do governmental units: smallest and least organized entities are a "Colony", moving up to a "Community", "Town", a "City", a "State" and the epitome of intelligent complexity and size, a
"Nation".
"Sender" is a Nation--what we would define as a Superpower
Nation, among perhaps 25 other scattereed around Jupiter. "He" is neither the largest or the most powerful of them, he tells us, but simply the one who
took it upon himself to contact us.
But what IS a composite symbiotic entity? How does it work?
Imagine if we humans were composed of loose parts and could
simply change arms and legs and heads as we wished. Imagine
further that those parts were in fact separately conscious beings
that could also jump ship if they so wished. Imagine that all
the cells in our bodies were interchangeable with other bodies,
just as we move to another city where there are better jobs.
Then imagine that even your brain cells were able to come and go-
-with your ability to think and your memories as baggage--or that
you could upgrade your brain by putting in more RAM and ROM from
the brain cells of someone else. Getting the picture?
Now imagine a creature so vast that it is like a planet, and
start plugging in billions and billions of tiny other creatures
with specialized functions, and wiring it all together with a
neural-plexus creature so that it functions as one intelligent
entity, with one Mind, mount it on a large skeletal framework--
and you have a Jupiterian.
They have no war, but with the kind of love they practice, who needs it?
Their matings can fulfill the same function: kill and destroy any superfluous breeding lines, absolutely conquering one another in the process of coming together.
The Nations do, however, have a common ENEMY: parasitic carnivores we
shall call Lokust--relatively tiny (about the size of one
of our larger Space Liners) which attack in swarms as
do Earth locusts, gluttonously consuming everything in their
path. They fly into the very innards of the victim Nation and
eat the symbiotes working there, which can be disasterous for the
Entity configuration. Nations have defense systems against
larger predators, but the Lokusts are too small too fast and too
many to be stopped.
Although the concept of apparently individual creatures being
composed of colonies seems quite alien, they do exist on Earth
as well: several forms of Jellyfish, specifically the Portuguese
Man-of-War, are exactly that. In fact, Jupiterian life forms
quite resemble the phylum Coelenterata: Jellyfish,
Corals and Anemones; many of which live in the deepest parts of
Earth's ocean where physical conditions resemble somewhat those
in Jupiter's AtmoSea.
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