Sapiens rusticus, Servile

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Leptocardii

Order: Amphioxiformes

Family: Tenaxis

Genus: Sapiens

Species: S. rusticus

Armwidth: 221.5 cm

Phenotype Mass: 41.7 kg

Resonance: Mute

Conservation status: Minor Concern.

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One of the numerous species colloquially known as Serviles or Fieldworkers they can be distinguished as being amongst the comparatively rare phylum Chordata. However it is easy to misidentify them due to their similarity with other unrelated species in their niche.

The bilateral budding split of the family Tenaxis is easily missed in Sapiens rusticus due to their parasitic feeding on a symbiote or artificial nutrient tap. However bereft of this feature it is possible to locate the budding marks where the fetal organism separated from its twin.

The notochord tissue indicative of Chordata is equally concealed in its adaptation as the primary (and only) rigid tissue within the Genus Sapiens to form the arm bow which can be a useful distinguishing trait of the species (although it is easily mistaken for similar morphologies in unrelated Animalia).

S. rusticus are prevalent in domesticated star envelopes along sunward reef walls, especially in such volumes within the territory of a small to medium scale polity center. They are extremely well suited to low cost maintenance tasks and many organizations across the reef provide prepackaged and preserved S. rusticus eggs with all necessary symbiotic, memetic, nutritional and technological materials needed to start a thriving Servile community.

Most of these packages are produced both by multi star system enterprises and small scale civil engineering communes. This is believed to be the only consistent source of reproductively viable populations of S. rusticus in the Reef.

S. rusticus reliably adopts cultural standards and will adhere to them given sufficient reinforcement and tradition prompts. It is recommended to inject fresh instances of cultural templates into a community periodically to avoid random drift into maladaptive patterns.Their motor, language and cultural skills are imprinted during maturation into adults and grown into rigid extracellular matrix. Their episodic and pattern memories beyond these skills are ephemeral and not sustained.

S. rusticus has an instinctive penchant for cultural mimicry that can border on obsessive or cargo-culting. Their personalities are often described as "earnest", “helpful”, "amiable" or "serene".

While having no cellular senescence to speak of S. rusticus has a fairly consistent mortality rate within a given environment or work load. This is predominantly based on the probability of irrecoverable maiming or accumulated injuries to the irreplaceable fibres of their arm bow.

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They can transition into early-urban ecosystem niches with extensive nutritional supplements and either fetal or post adult modification but most of the benefits of the species are lost in this process and are not recommended by reputable population-package providers.

Feral S. rusticus communities rarely survive without supervision or support by other species. While remarkably resourceful at times, they do not possess the abstract and symbolic capacities for novel engineering of either a social or technological kind. Likewise their neural tissues do not retain consistent associations or memories reliably without re-exposure to stimuli. Memory retention can be improved but at considerably increased calorie and oxygen intake.

While humble in appearance and means, S. rusticus like the few other competitive species in their niche is among the most fiercely optimized efficiency bionts in the reef. Individuals can near instantly and reliably go completely dormant with almost no overhead, suspending all metabolic activity. The capacity to do this so quickly and effectively and the precision of their genetic repair systems means that during their lives S. rusticus can spend the majority of their time completely inert, either in long term transits or in momentary blinks of inactivity to conserve resources.

Their cellular respiration has been honed to the utmost limits of what physics will allow, and it is an ongoing field of study how their neurons seem to implement reversible computing at far higher temperatures than would normally be possible. There is similarly an effortless grace to the movement of experienced individuals that should require orders of magnitude more motor computation resources to achieve then their bodies possess.

However all of these capacities are comparatively fragile, their arm bow tissue while incredibly strong and capable is also completely unable to recover from damage after adulthood. Even the smallest mutations frequently result in an order of magnitude increase in metabolism and subsequent starvation long before they even hatch. Their cognitive systems are almost completely open to numerous fault or seize states via memetic and sensory vectors Animalia are normally immune too. They generally cannot adopt new cultural standards or learn new languages beyond those they matured with.

There have been many extremist ethics programs enacted for merciful sterilization of the species, to date these have been unsuccessful. The relative ease with which new civil engineering facilities can be spun up with even a few individuals and the fact eggs can be stored for centuries by simply keeping them dark and dry means it is unlikely that any kind of extinction will claim S. rusticus as long as there is a market for them.