Capeworld Comics

Crysaloids

 

Crysaloids are naturally occurring fauna in the local multiverse’s worldtunnels. Their nests form when worldtunnels turn in on themselves to create cavernous spaces of creative potential called worldeggs. 

 

When conditions are right in worldeggs, a new universe forms. When they aren’t, a worldegg becomes a region of intense pressure and heat beyond that which the stars of our own universe can reach. This energy rich zone swells with negentropic, creative forces. Worldtunnel fauna such as crysaloids form when these creative forces, unable to organize their energies into a universe, instead organize them into cosmically vast creatures. 

 

A crysaloid mother converts energy into her own massive, glass-like body. The worldegg becomes her hive, and as she grows she stretches the bounds of her worldegg. The Warp Authority advises that persistent abnormalities in local worldtunnel traffic should be investigated as it may indicate the growth of a nearby crysaloid hive.

 

When a crysaloid mother breaks into another universe through her growth, the inhabitants of that universe face the surreal sight of an enormous mirror reflecting their own universe back at them, But it’s not the mother that universes have to be wary of. The mothers are only a danger to those that travel the worldtunnels. Crysaloid mothers reflect the information of adjacent universes off their mirror-like skin. Multiverse travelers that fall for the illusion run right into their own reflection–and an expanse of energy absorbing matter that steals the very motion from their atoms. But when a mother breaches into another universe, it only absorbs the energy it comes into contact with. If it materializes on top a galaxy, the galaxy is going to be snuffed out like a tiny candle flame dipped in the ocean. But universes are typically like our own in that there’s vastly more cold, empty space than warm substance. The mother consumes a supercluster, grows a little, but then goes no further. The mother becomes nothing more than an amusing mystery for astronomers to mull over. “Why am I seeing the same galaxies twice?” Unless a breaching mother comes into contact with heat through a breach in another universe or someone does something really foolish like feed it stars just to see what would happen (as the Cult of the Laughing Mirror did to the breaching mother that created the sculptor void before the Chromian Empire annihilated them) a breaching mother is generally an inert, harmless curiosity.

 

But then there are the drones. And though the drones are microscopic compared to the size of the mothers, they are what makes crysaloids a potential danger throughout the multiverse.

 

Drones are roughly the size of a basketball. Their hollow-centered, snowflake-like bodies are supported on crab-like legs. Blind and deaf, they move by sensing vibrations and temperature. Their bodies drain heat, and in our atmosphere leave trails of snow and ice behind whenever they move. 

 

Drones are born in crysaloid hives out of the bodies of mothers. For beings that live only to consume, there’s something poetic about crysaloid mothers sacrificing parts of themselves to create young. Crysaloid hives are cold environments with most of the heat concentrated within the mother. Crysaloids aren’t very intelligent creatures, but they innately associate cold with home and their mother’s presence. But an instinctive hunger for heat causes them to journey away from their hive and out into the worldtunnel system. Due to the Thomas effect, worldtunnels are hotter at their entrances than in the tunnels themselves. This creates currents of energy that stream throughout the worltunnels. It also draws crysaloids to gather at the thresholds of worldtunnels and, if anything warm is beyond the thresholds, inside other universes.

 

If there is, for instance, a star at the end of a worldtunnel, then the crysaloids will land on it (crysaloids are extremely durable), absorb a negligible amount of its energy, and return to the hive. The mother then drains the drones of their excess energy storing some of it within herself for her own expansion and using the rest to create more drones.

 

This process repeats again. And again. And again. 

 

It repeats until the entire star is extinguished beneath a sphere of countless crysaloids. Then the crysaloids drift through space until they come into contact with another star and use some stolen heat to chew through reality and establish a new connection to the infested worldtunnel system.

It only takes one to lead the way for all of them.

 

In this way, creatures smaller than a beach ball can wreck more havoc than the gargantuan mothers that spawn them. They can chew through a galactic filament like termites through wood.

 

Fortunately,  most naturally occurring worldtunnels lead to cold space as most of an average universe is void. In fact, an early cosmological theory suggested that the reason so many universes, including our own, contain far less substance than void was because it was an adaptation to prevent crysaloid infestations from growing severe. But given the success energy rich universes like Universe Chi-Delta have had in dealing with infestations, the theory is currently in doubt.

 

Unfortunately, artificial worldtunnels that link inhabited worlds throughout the multiverse are far warmer than natural worldtunnels due to their traffic and attract crysaloids. The Warp Authority has a theory that the reason multiverse exploration took so long to pick back up after the Form Masters retired to explore the inner worlds of the soul is that crysaloids destroyed civilizations that reach into the multiverse without being prepared.

 

The Warp Authority uses heat sinks to mask artificial worldtunnels. While they possess enough power to destroy crysaloids, it is far better to let them go back empty to the hive. When the mother senses that drones aren’t returning, it starts producing evolving crysaloids.

 

Evolving crysaloids are produced with random features. They shoot energy beams, or have force fields, or emit waves of telepathic force. If they don’t come back with heat, the crysaloid mother discards their design and makes another. If they do, the model is remembered and duplicated. As with genetic evolution, there is no overarching design to crysaloid evolution. If a new feature allows the crysaloid to survive and return to the hive with heat, it is kept. But this simple process of random variation restrained by non-random environmental factors can lead to incredibly powerful varieties of crysaloid. It’s the same process, after all, that created man who now travels through the worldtunnels saving worlds and righting wrongs–and crysaloids are vastly older than man. Universes that wage long wars against crysaloid hives can see some frightening varieties that possess enough powers to make even the mightiest of Earth’s heroes nervous.

 

This all might make crysaloids sound like fearsome menaces to the multiverse, but it is important to note that infestations are only deadly if they get out of hand. The inhabitants of the astral universe known as the “Blueprint” consider crysaloids as nothing more than mild pests the equivalent of rabbits on Earth. Martin’s School in Joyous Harbor, Rhode Island, has had their omnimover system which connects to the Blueprint infested twice since it started operating in the late 1940’s.

 

When one knows how to handle crysaloids, one doesn’t have to be afraid of them.

 

The standard solution to a crysaloid infestation in the early stages is to freeze them. Low-energy environments remind them of their home and mother and make them docile. Once docile, crysaloids can be placed back into the local worldtunnel systems. Without excess energy, it will travel back to its mother and “report” that there was nothing in the dimensional direction that it traveled. This makes another crysaloid infestation very unlikely. 

 

If a crysaloid infestation has progressed to the point where freezing them doesn’t work, the solution is to attack the crysaloids through their rapid evolution. Their evolution is their greatest strength, but also their greatest weakness. Universe Chi-Delta, also known as the snowglobe universe, has become the multiverse expert in handling crysaloid infestations in this manner. 

 

Universe Chi-Delta is incredibly energy rich. Commonly in the known multiverse, a universe consists mostly of space with comparatively few stars. Our own universe is 99.9 percent empty space. But this is reversed for Chi-Delta. It contains 99.9 percent matter and energy and 0.1 percent space. Just as stars and planets in our universe drift through an empty expanse so do bubbles of space drift through an ocean of plasma. Life in our universe can be thought of as occurring around rare bits of matter and energy called stars. Life in Universe Chi-Delta can be thought of as occurring within rare bits of void called space.

 

Universe Chi-Delta was naturally as attractive to crysaloids as a mound of sugar is to ants. Most universes don’t see a crysaloid infestation. Those that do typically encounter one or two hives.

 

Universe Chi-Delta had to contend with countless.

 

The universe survived by learning to live with crysaloids. It’s inhabitants learned how to breed crysaloids. Typically, one breeds species they intend to prey upon. But Chi-Delta proved that breeding can also work for one’s predators.

 

Crysaloid hives duplicate the varieties of drones that return to the hive with captured heat and forget the varieties that don’t. The more successful a drone variety is, the more it is duplicated. The inhabitants of Universe Chi-Delta captured and duplicated a variety of drone called a flake. Flakes hinder other crysaloids, are easy to overcome with several kinds of weapons, absorb only a little amount of heat, reveal themselves and their incursion points with an energy pulse, and are in short terrible crysaloids. 

 

But because the inhabitants of universe Chi-Delta duplicated them and sent them back in clusters, the mother crysaloids laying siege to their universe thought flakes were incredibly successful and kept duplicating them. The sheer number of flakes vs non-flakes returning to the hive caused the mother crysaloids to produce almost nothing but flakes. Coupled with a thorough policy of extermination for non-flake crysaloids and Universe Chi-Delta had and continues to have incredibly few problems with crysaloids even though their universe has the largest infestation on record. They even offer flakes to other universes infested with crysaloids.

 

Though crysaloids have a reputation that ranges from being the embodiment of entropy (which is only accurate from the perspective of their prey as they are formed by cosmic negentropic forces) to being the multiverse equivalent of locusts or rats, they do have their practical uses. The Warp Authority keeps a crysaloid hive not only to study crysaloids so as to develop better countermeasures against them but to use crysaloid drones to heal dying stars. Crysaloids eat stars, but by applying drones in a controlled manner they can cool down a star while adding to its mass. This can halt and reverse the growth of a star into a red giant or even prevent a star from going supernova.

 

Yes, crysaloids are dangerous when there’s enough of them–but so is anything when you think about it.