The Nightstar Zoo

***Is this assumption wrong? Could a beanstalk also work from say, one of the poles?****

I have a question. How did amorphs evolve from memory storage devices?

Evolution by natural selection requires that there be a replicator, which has a less than perfect copying fidelity. Errors in the copying process are mutations, these are random but the mutations are selected (naturally) depending on their utility for the survival and continued propagation of that particular replicator in that particular environment.

In all life on earth these replicators are the DNA (or RNA in viruses) that make up our genetic code. For about 3.5 billion years all life on earth consisted of single celled organisms, until the Cambrian explosion 500m years ago in which multicellular organisms appeared. Each cell in those organisms are all clones to serve the interests of the same replicator, though there would be symbiotes and parasites in there too, over time becoming seamlessly melded with the replicators of the original host. So a multicellular organism would be a kind of colony for replicators of many different origins, over time.

When it's time to reproduce a multicellular organism the germ cell is created with a random mixture of half of the genetic information from the previous cell through the process of meiosis, from which a new organism is constructed after fertilizing another such germ cell.

So what would serve the role of the replicator in a long term carbo-silicate storage device? And how would there be enough selection pressure to drive the process of blind selection to take it from a jar of goo to a sentient being like schlock which. Also once reaching that state apparantly stops evolving in a physical way altogether, according to schlock's talk about the birds and the bees, his species doesn't exchange codes for gross physical structure, only personality information.

Also I'm wondering, if life forms in the galaxy use the same kinds of replicators as us and the same amino acids as we do, how do different species stop their immune systems from being completely overwhelmed by trillions of previously unencountered species of bacteria upon setting foot on another world, ala War of the Worlds?

Actually, nanotech might be the easy answer to that last one...

One thing I was wondering about amorphs... if they were intended to function as highly redundant storage mediums, could they still contain the data they were originally storing before they came self aware? Could Shlock or another amorph hold millenia-old secrets in the form of "junk dna" or something?

Assuming that they're using some sort of diffuse redundant write error correction (equivalent to RAID 5 or 10) even minor skin injuries don't result in memory loss.

Apparently, in their early experiments with foil transplants, they had not yet perfected a method of inflating the recipient to accept the full foil memories of the donor, so Miamumla ended up with "fragments."

I think even minor skin injuries usually result in "losing sacred lift-breath" and "expiring".

Or they gave Miamumla memories from the very first skin they found, which they opened, exposed to the air, and severely damaged.