Biology, Part II: Evolution of Intelligence
Evolution, part I
The Chara'ai originate on the planet Chara Alpha XII, or Chara'ai, a watery, porous world rich in minerals, a perfect environment for breeding crystals. The consciousness of the crystalline entities is a collective one, containing over 11,000,000,000 individual crystals. The crystalline entities first experienced consciousness in a very small colony in a remote underwater vent. The vast amounts of mineral material contained a large amount of acidic matter, which built up in the crystals. This acid mixed with small amounts of metals being ejected from the vents, created a conduction currents which flowed around the crystal colony. While this first little bit of intelligence was about the equivalent of a few cells, it was something. And that something fed back into itself. The more intelligence the crystals gained, the more electricity flowed around, and the larger the crystals became. Eventually, after some billion or two years of this, several colonies had been created, but they were very primitive and not self-aware. The original colony, however, was. It became aware of its own existence, and became aware of its ability to think. It became able, after a few years of training itself, able to influence connections between crystals, grow new cultures willingly, and, perhaps most important of all, it became aware of a wonderful communication ability—radio. Since the crystals were... well... crystals, they were able to function almost as a primitive crystals radio set, capable of talking to other crystals without a connection between them.
They were on their way to becoming a sentient species, and weren't going to stop soon.
