based on the novel The Dreaming Jewels (1965), by Theodore
Sturgeon
Part One: Introduction
If a species had no goals in common with mankind, no need to compete for
resources, no need to communicate, and no desire to command or control anything,
would we recognize it as sentient? As alive? If there were a species on Earth
right now that was far more intelligent than us, but looked exactly like common
quartz, would we ever figure it out? Probably not. But what if that species'
dreams, their very mating processes, caused deformities and death in beings
nearby? Would we notice them then, or lay the blame at the doorstep of another
cause, like pollution or radiation? Again, it is unlikely that they would ever
be noticed, even accidentally.
This is the paradox of the Dreaming Jewels.
The Dreaming Jewels are not indigenous to Earth, although it is unknown
where they originally come from. They do not communicate, even with each other
unless some major cataclysm occurs or they decide to reproduce as a pair, but it
is known that they are intelligent and self-aware (though probably not in any
way that human beings could ever comprehend). They do not have any desires or
needs, gathering all of their energy needs from ambient electromagnetism and
light. The only things they seem to do are dream and mate--indeed, they mate by
dreaming and dream by mating.
The dreams of the Jewels are flesh; that is to say, by dreaming, they alter
the world around them through some form of telekinesis. While they dream, they
replicate and alter life forms as practice for mating, but life-forms replicated
by a single Jewel are always deformed in some manner: midgets, giants,
beast-men, and other, worse, deformities are caused by the practices of the
Jewels. And that's just on the visible level: on the microscopic level, they
have been known to genetically mutate bacteria, amoebae, and paramecia. These
beings, whether large or small, are referred to as crystal-kin.
Then, there are the extremely rare instances in which two Dreaming Jewels
cooperate to produce "offspring." This is believed to be both an aberration and
the only way in which the Jewels can create non-deformed beings. In this case,
the Jewels do not create a life-form from scratch, or from a mere model, but by
replacing the cells in a young being one at a time with their own substance.
When they finish, the creature is no longer of its parent species, but a being
which has the outer shape of that species and whose interior is a colloidal
gel/superconductive fluid which has metamorphic capabilities. The most common
models for this sort of alteration are human beings, trees, and large mammals
and reptiles. All such beings are called twinned crystal-kin, and they are
indistinguishable from their parent species except in their unique abilities and
a strange chemical deficiency that requires them to ingest large amounts of
formic acid (which is present in ants).
The Dreaming Jewels themselves are rather innocuous in appearance, looking
exactly like common quartz, save that they have their own inner light. The
larger the crystal, the brighter the light, but this light at its brightest is
barely above the range of a firefly and varies in color from dazzling white to
sizzling blue. Jewels range in size from no bigger than a human's pinkie nail to
the size of a basketball. It is not known if size is indicative of age, but
Jewels that mate in pairs are known to lose much of their mass in replacing
their model's tissues. While they may look like quartz, inside they are actually
made of some sort of superconductive fluid that makes their mental processes
faster than the Pentium II. Their exterior covering is a fairly fragile type of
clear silicate that does bear some relation to quartz.
And while they do not communicate, they may be commanded. Despite their
alien nature, they do have at least one thing in common with humanity: pain. The
Jewels are incapable of physical pain, of course, because they have no nerves to
conduct sensation, but they are quite sensitive to psychic transmissions, so
much so that they experience extreme pain when contacted by an evil mind; this
pain becomes unbearable agony if the telepath focuses his will or can transmit
his emotions. At least one unscrupulous latent telepath has used his minor
psionic powers to force the Jewels to create freaks for him. It was his desire
to discover the truth about the Jewels, his overriding obsession actually, that
made it possible for the first twinned crystal-kin human of the modern time to
be "born." After this evil individual's death, the Jewels, no longer afraid,
began to pair up more often, creating a fair number of twinned crystal-kin.
The most advanced of the twinned crystal-kin, Horty, and his wife (a regular
crystal-kin), Zena (I kid you not!), are currently running a "freak show" and
carnival as a front while they search the United States for as many Jewels as
they can find. When they have found all of the Jewels, what then? Not even they
really know, but for now they're just glad to be getting such dangerous
creatures out of the reach of any who would use them for evil. Monetre's
Carnival and Sideshow (Horty and Zena's establishment) is described in Part
Five.
