BY LETTER
HIE-236-PPE (Khitai)
Extremely ancient un-named xenosophont species | |
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Khitai VI, the first world discovered to have been re-engineered by the un-named species HIE236PPE | |
This species is known only from evidence of planetary type modification ("Terraforming" is the Human equivalent) and transplanted Evoltypes. There are no known spaceship or building ruins and no record from other alien civilizations on the appearance or behavior of this species.
The HIE-funded expedition to Khitai VI in 5617 AT found that the Titanian-type planet (9,460 km. diameter) had a minimal ecosystem with non-intelligent life, of Evoltype PSP-Beta8/Drift-Orthogenesis. The genetic material of this life was based on a layered folding protein-like molecule of a type also found on Vijayanta III. The fact that the genetic code and the mechanism for reading the code is shared by life on these planets suggested that a transplant of life forms had taken place in the distant past. Since then 12 more worlds have been found with life of the same Evoltype (Bolinger et al., 7948).
The probability of such a genetic system originating so many times is nil, indicating that a large interstellar civilization had visited all of these worlds (presumably for colonization, although it can't be proven without a doubt that the hypothesized sapient alien species designated HIE-236-PPE lived on all these worlds or even had that particular Evoltype itself). None of these worlds has intelligent life, the most advanced being multicellular amphibious flatworm-like creatures from the northern ethane ocean of Felis Minoris II.
The current location of their homeworld is not yet known. There is a clear Hamilton True Polytomy for common "genes" found in sample life forms from the 14 planets with this Evoltype. Estimates of the divergence of the life from the different planets based on molecular data is 2 to 3 billion years ago (presumably when the planets were abandoned by the starfaring species HIE-236-PPE). This is consistent with the estimated movement of these star systems around the galactic core; 2 billion years ago these stars would all have been in a relatively small volume of the galaxy less than 20,000 light-years in diameter, and presumably their homeworld was also in this region (but has not yet been found, since it is likely outside the Terragen sphere.).
It is probable that many more similar worlds have since been rendered lifeless by star death or ecosystem degeneration. It has been hypothesized that most of these Titanian worlds were temporarily modified for colonization, but that the abandonment of the "Titaniforming" resulted in poor environments for the transplanted life, limiting biodiversity and evolutionary development. It is also possible that the life on each planet has evolved from unicellular equivalents of bacteria left behind by the unknown starfaring species, and is not the result of intentional "seeding" of these worlds.
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Development Notes
Text by Aaron Hamilton
Initially published on 02 July 2000.
Initially published on 02 July 2000.
