Clarkesons

Clarkesons: Clarkesons aren’t living individuals. Rather, they’re colonies constructed by a collection of trillions of intelligent cells that work out their appearance and actions through committees, working in concert to create the illusion of a solitary persona. Their hair tends toward day-glow colors (e.g., raspberry or lime green) which contrasts with their fish-belly complexions. Their ‘clothing’ is actually a group of the colony that decided to appear in that fashion as a committee. The overall look resembles that of a circus clown.

Note: It's been established in the novella Calendrical Regression that the number of separate, self-aware celluar committees that come together to form a functioning Clarkeson is one million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand, which by no coincidence is also the number of days in the Long Count cycle of thirteen baktuns from the Mayan calendar. It's unclear how many actual cells comprise each of these committtes, but as a possible frame of reference, the human body is estimated to possess on average some 30 trillion cells.

Note: Early in their biological history, the Clarkeson colonies began by creating a symbiotic relationship with another species on their homeworld, an uncharted planet known as Tegloabome. Over time, they evolved to use the other species (the Tosh) as a template and grew their own bodies that mimicked the appearance of their hosts. Meanwhile, the hosts developed sentience and eventually sapience, as a consequence of the symbiosis. Although no longer needing the Tosh as hosts, the Clarkesons manipulated their biology to enslave them, transforming them into a servitor race that effectively worshipped the Clarkesons as gods, despite outnumbering than by several orders of magnitude. In service to their overlords, the Tosh developed science and technology. When the Tosh had developed spaceflight, a majority of Clarkesons — estimated at approximately one hundred thousand — departed their homeworld, leaving the enslaved race behind and possessed of an even great majority. Those Clarkesons who stayed behind eventually lost interest in being treated like gods and abandoned their humanoid shapes, preferring to allow their consortiums to float upon their world's oceans like vast and shapeless layers of algae, effectively abandoning their thralls who still yearned to be of service but now had no one to serve. The details of these events, and their ultimate resolution, can be found in the novel Ace of Thralls.

A Clarkeson is first referenced to appear in “Requiem,” though in fact this is a mistake and the being in question is actually a Tosh.

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