The Journal
I don’t have to tell you what will happen if anyone finds this journal.
Have I made myself clear?
Good, let’s begin.
Preface
Forget everything you think you know about this life form.
They’re nothing like we thought.
There’s nothing you can do to stop what’s about to happen.
Save yourself.
Abilities of the Sentient – Part One
(The journal of Dr. Amon Teicher)
The storm delivered an organic matter that behaves like a spore.
The spores paralyse their target.
Note; they targeted just the one species.
Curious yes? They knew to target the dominant species on the planet.
What does that tell you?
It speaks of intelligence yes but there’s more.
If this species has been travelling dormant throughout the universe, only to spore upon entry into the planet’s atmosphere then logically, its first action to spore must be instinctual.
Instinct is accrued intellect over generations.
Consider this, if they have been doing this since the dawn of life in the universe, how many life forms have they targeted and evolved through?
The bank of accrued knowledge stored in their DNA and demonstrated as instinct makes their ability to adapt a significant threat to the survivors.
Unless they are targeted with one, decisive genocide they will adapt countermeasures until they become unassailable.
Even more disturbing, I believe we are dealing with not one life form but two.
The spores are their own life form. They are not the Sentient. The Sentient are something else. What are they? Yes, what are they?
Assimilation and resonance
Once its target host is paralysed, the spores form complex networks throughout the body.
They resonate, uniting human cells and providing the body with an advanced operating system.
The spores prepare the body for the Sentient to enter and take control.
Running such an enhanced system vastly enhances their mental and physical abilities enabling rapid evolution.
Observations whilst in captivity
Senninger’s lab experiment with the captive should serve as a cautionary tale for all.
His actions were reckless and no doubt led to the death of Seaman Brent.
I write death because Brent is not coming back. The newly adopted zeal for viewing this as a demon possession is as ludicrous as the claims that exorcisms will return the lost souls. Brent is dead. They are all dead and became so the moment this life form erased their minds like a hard drive. Furthermore, a dead body does not mean the life form inside is dead or that the spores are not still present.
They can still paralyse and enable the Sentient to transfer from one human to another.
The most telling observation made during captivity of the life form was who was observing who. They observe us. They mimic. They learn then adapt and they do so rapidly.
As previously stated, there are no half measures available to us. Everything we do, they observe and learn from. They are the ultimate predator and they predate on us.
Transcription by lab tech, Alex Soliven
Dramatisation by lab rat, David Steinhoff
This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2015 at 3:18 pm
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Tags: Alex Soliven, David Steinhoff, Dr. Nicholas Hope, Dr.Amon Teicher, sci-fi, sci-fi TV series, Sentient
Posted in: Pilot, Sentient, Series Bible, Uncategorized, Writing
Like it! 🙂
Re mystery
Oh yes!
Oh – and another thing. You say they “predate on us” but you have also said they convert food into energy so efficiently they do not need to eat us – they simply need to make sure we cannot kill or contain them. Perhaps their “interstellar sporing mechanism” resulted from major species life threats on a planetary scale ( a lot of plants flower and seed or spore, in the face of a specific threat whether regular or irregular in nature),
so if we humans are successful in curbing or destroying the sentient that would probably trigger a new sporing survival event FROM earth outwards.
When they arrive, 99.999% of humanity are atomised and taken in as energy.
That would be the end of it BUT when we start to come after them they learn and turn the tables.
This is a journal extract taken from some time into the story to demonstrate what the good doctor has learned about them.
All other reference content to date is contained in our notes in the Series bible
https://www.sentient.tv/series-bible/
A brief position statement so you know where my comments are coming from. As a consumer of TV I will watch and enjoy Sci Fi where the ideas are at least plausible (they can be stretched a good way but they have to be plausible. But I do not enjoy zombie stories or unbelievble sci-fi. So…
If the spore life form lands on any planet and takes over the predator there, they will only survive if they acquire a good part of that predator`s skill set, which requires they take over practical memories of where to find prey, how each prey species reacts – I know you will say this is instinct of the predator too but the lion has to remember where the watering hole is and that a arge elephant poses a threat, so instinct cannot work without memory. In the case of humans, we may be a predator species but our success has been as a result of evolving beyond simple predation and the memories in our instinctive behaviour of success involve use f our intelligence and ability to manipulate others – so I have a slight problem with the “wiping a hard drive” model of takeover. Manipulative skills rely heavily on personality, which is at least partly learnt (and therefore relies on early life memories of parents and family as well as basic instinct) So the more the spores “erase”, the more likely they are also to erase at least some of our higher level skillset.
Two possibilities at least emerge from this – one is that they lose some of the higher COLLECTIVE skills of humanity which may give us a way to defeat them (the classical human illogical approach to problem solving of Captain Kirk springs to mind) OR in having to try NOT to lose the higher skills the spores may leave open the possibility that the original human person who owned the body may be able to re-emerge and claim their bodies back?
I understand if you do not want to do that and seaman Brent really IS dead and not coming back – but the more the spores have to eliminate of their hosts personality (or “soul”?) the greater the potential for us humans to outwit them – if not they will just be clever zombies?!
Replace the word, erase with rewrite.
Same operating system. New owner of the drive.
Problem solved.
Sounds great! Looking forward to shooting it! :}
Super! Guess there will be a part two.
2, 3 and 4 but first we have the international teams work to publish starting with Africa
Before the month runs out. I will make submission.
Excellent.
Nice. But actually you do have to tell me what would happen and haven’t made yourself clear, Amon.
Perhaps Amon didn’t have that conversation with you. Perhaps your one of the people he is afraid will find his journal.
Hmph!
The work is an except from the future of this story.
We’ve specifically left gap and mystery to create conjecture.
It’s like romance. Your date isn’t looking for a contract outlines all T and C before the date. She goes in with a little mystery and filling the gap with her own expectations.
To that end, we have not explained everything.
Actually, with all respect to Alex, I was thinking in the interests of mystery this shouldn’t be more than backstory and we should remain in the dark about the sentients and be left to wonder and marvel at all the strange goings on until well into the series. Ie see all this stuff happen but even avoid exposition altogether if possible. Yay mystery!
Rats of a feather
Lab Tech and Lab Rat lol.