Aroidia at sunrise.

You have arrived on Aroidia, an intensely tropical planet orbiting a binary star system. Here can be found not one but two intelligent races, one indigenous and one "alien". No animal life as we know it can be found on Aroidia; however, to the untrained observer, the place is teeming with moving entities. All life here is symbiotic and some life has as many as five sexes. The planet is one huge ocean, with very little land as we on earth understand the term.

So what you see in the picture is not a geologic land mass, but is one of the oldest and largest of the biological archipelagos, one of many...

Mapping Aroidia is nearly impossible, as each archipelago is moved around daily by winds and ocean currents. And, if that is not bad enough, there is the season of the twin hurricanes...

Extensive studies of life on Aroidia have revealed that the collective of all life on the planet is not merely symbiotic, but functions as one organism in spite of the apparent existence of many life forms. This knowledge was gained by a research team staying on the planet through the annual "twin hurricane" season. At that time, due to Aroidia's eccentric orbit and peculiar atmospheric dynamics, two gigantic storms form, one with an "eye" at the north pole and the other with an "eye" at the south pole. The region of greatest wind force are the subpolar areas, near the eye rim, much as in a terrestrial hurricane. However, intense shear forces are experienced in the equatorial regions, as tremendous turbulence is generated by the conflicting wind zones of the two storms.

In preparation for the storm season, all life forms on the planet undergo a fascinating "disintegration" in which the cell plasma emerges from every cell and moves, amoeba-like, to the protection of the depths of the ocean. Each of these cells "de-differentiates" so that, genetically, all of them are identical. This means that what appear to be different species and genera of organisms are actually the differentiated components of the planetary organism. In this context, then, the genera can be thought of as analogous to organs, and the species analogous to organ functions.

The alien race existing on Aroidia has cells of a genetic constitution that is almost indistinguishable from the rest of the Aroidian life forms. This apparent anomaly is explained by another characteristic of the Aroidian organism, and that is genetic assimilation. At some point in Aroidian history, an alien bipedal humanoid visited Aroidia and left some genetic material behind, either intentionally or unintentionally. This material was absorbed, analyzed, and replicated by the Aroidian organism, forming the alien body form.

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