Clarkesons

Clarkesons: Clarkesons aren’t living individuals. Rather, they’re colonies constructed by a collection of millions and millions 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-glo 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. First appearance: “Requiem.”

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 37.2 trillion cells.

Note: Early in their biological history, the Clarkeson colonies began by creating a symbiotic relationship with another species on their homeworld. Over time, they evolved to use the other species (the Tosh) as a template and grew their own bodies that mimic the appearance of their hosts. Meanwhile, the hosts developed sentience and eventually sapience, as a consequence of the symbiosis. The two species ended their relationship but continued to develop a shared society with the host race being second-class citizens and providing the labor force, despite being better than 90% of the population. When they achieved spaceflight, most the Clarkesons left their homeworld, leaving the host race behind. Those who stayed, feared for their own safety as they were now outnumbered more than 1000 to 1 by the Tosh. Their solution was to completely enslave them.

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