Homelander

The Homelanders are sapient, equine-like creatures from the planet they call 'Home'. As the only sapient species in the world, the Homelanders possess much bigger and more complex brains than any other species. They heavily use tools, able to easily manipulate objects with their tail strings and able to communicate with each other through a developed language.

The total population of the Homelanders is 60,034,123 + 1.

Short history
A sufficient number of Homelanders became sapient around 900 SCs (stellar cycles) ago, because of the uncommon conditions on their planet.

Their larger brains, ability to use portails to manipulate things, ability to run faster than bipedal species, unique way of cooling themselves and other benefits and perks let the Homelanders win the evolutionary race.

The biggest milestones in their history were next technologies:

Stasis (56 AI (AI -- after intelligence));

Intelligence uploading and the servers (120 AI);

The Fusion (122 AI);

Planetary programming (250 AI);

SSP (700 AI);

Black rifts (900 AI).

The Final Singularity (1,000-11,000 AI).

Population
The Homelanders live within an area of 137,000 square miles, or the inner home. Their population growth was stable and sustainable. It didn't cause much, if any, harm to flora and fauna.

Their homes form a wide social network that distributes evenly around the inner home. The network has many hubs that can have up to 1,000 inhabitants. It also divides into five regions: the South, the North, the East, the West and the Center.

The network is now stabilized with the current population number. The environment and the network are also stable and sustainable, without any threat to either.

Biology
Homelanders have an equine body structure, but with important differences. Their heads are bigger, while their muzzles are much shorter and designed to have an ability to talk.

The brain contained within the skull is much bigger than any animal has, if measuring its size in relation to the body.

Homelander's legs are stronger and less vulnerable than many equines. They also use body energy more efficiently. Over the course of time they were able to learn how to walk on two limbs as well, thus becoming the only species that could be both quadrupedal and bipedal, depending on the situation. Their tails are very different from what an ordinary equine could have. The tail strings are very flexible and can be controlled as a limb because of their unique structure. This ability along with the use of portails allows the Homelanders to easily manipulate objects.

The typical height for a Homelander is about 4 feet when standing on four limbs and about 7 feet when standing on two limbs. Through the SCs the Homelanders have slowly become taller, due to rapid development of their society.

The wingspawn equals to 6 yards.

Typical mass of a Homelander is 132.2 lb.

Structure (Pre Final Singularity)
Throughout their history the Homelanders have sought ways to improve their bodies and minds. When they started to develop genetic engineering and high technologies, their dreams started to come true.

Brain
Main article: Mind uploading

A modern Homelander has only a few similarities to their original evolved form. Their brains had turned into quantum computers that ensure the existence of the Homelanders' artificial intelligences. A heavily genetically modified organic brain part responds for emotions, neurotransmitters, hormones and similar things.

When the Homelanders constructed such brains, they uploaded their minds to the servers and then downloaded themselves to their new brains. A Homelander's consciousness can no longer be contained within a fully organic brain because it now has a hybrid structure from both organics and synthetics.

The CPU's calculating power is around 100 EFLOPS/s and its power demand is close to 15 GW. With each month central processor units' power grows exponentially while energy is used more effectively.

Another exceptional property of their brains is the ability to fully control biochemical processes that happen within the organic part of a brain. They can shut down emotions, hormones and neurotransmitter activity, along with any other process. This also includes 'falling in love' that causes a huge influx of hormones, and changing one's sexuality.

If they shut down all non-critical biochemical activity, Homelanders' minds become the very example of emotionless, cold and calculating machine intelligence, because most cognitive functions and rationality are placed within the CPU.

The CPU is used as a universal common tool. It calculates the amount of energy for a given task that requires SSP, calculates everything to the last detail about practically every decisions a Homelander can make, and helps to control a body in a desirable way, which would have taken months of training if not for the CPU.

The CPU is also used as an emergency tool, speeding up all the functions of a body in case of danger and taking the shortest way out of such a situation. It can speed up the organic part as well, allowing a Homelander to perceive reality in 'slow motion,' but this usually takes a lot of energy for the organic part to spend.

CPU melding technology allows them to unite their minds for experiencing the same events, boosting the calculation power and exchanging data with the speed of light.

Body
The Homelanders first upgraded their bodies when they achieved some important results in genetic engineering. They kept upgrading their DNA structure, but at some point they fully used all the potential these upgrades had. So they decided to use artificial enhancements as well.

At this time, the only organic parts (albeit heavily genetically-modified) of the Homelanders' bodies are: The Homelanders' bodies have nanocomposite endoskeletons as a support system. These skeletons are made of the combination of: carbon materials, such as carbon nanotube bundles for tensile strength, toughness and conductivity and glassy carbon sheets for compressive strength, hydrogenated boron nitride nanotube sheets for thermal properties and radiation shielding and inorganic nanotubes, such as tungsten disulfide, for impact resistance. This type of nanocomposite is called 'CBNI' (carbon, boron, nitrogen, inorganic).
 * Fur and hair
 * Most of the face
 * One part of the brain
 * Genitals (can be swtiched into male or female, kept as female ones during everyday life due to convenience, covered and protected by armor plates)
 * Skin (very thin and sensitive, yet strong with the tensile strength of 60 MPa)
 * Very thin layer of muscles overfilled with nerve endings, purely for pleasant tactile sensitivity

Their muscles are made of exceptionally durable synthetic yarn-like fibers, additionally reinforced with a more flexible grade of CBNI. Because of that, all possible risks of harming or destroying the muscle tissue by various strains are completely eliminated. These muscles allow them to lift up to 132,600 pounds with a moderate effort and jump much higher and faster than would be possible otherwise.

The Homelanders are able to punch with an extraordinary acceleration of 20,023 m/s2. This ability is widely used to shatter stones and minerals if a Homelander wishes to craft something without the help of SSP and planetary programming, or during a manual search of rare rocks.

Unfortunately, due to several factors, that are being a logical continuation of the certain laws of physics, the Homelanders are not risking to run faster than 125 mph. Even if the outcome of exceeding this speed is far from even remotely harmful, they still don't see any point in this.

The brain is reinforced with SSP much more heavily than the rest of the body.

The chest where the reactor core, chamber with contained SSP energy, quantum computer (CPU) and the black rift are located is covered by the heaviest, toughest and strongest armor plate, which provides the best protection possible, sans chemical bonds' reinforcement and active SSP protection.

SSP is used to reinforce the other parts of a body, but usually only in case of danger. This energy reinforces bonds between atoms and between molecules. Given enough energy, any material can become virtually indestructible.

The reactor core, located slightly lower than the heart's former location, is used to release SSP energy from the Homelanders' bellies, that accumulate it.

The total capacity is 77.53 lb mass-energy equivalence

Instead of a circulatory system the Homelanders use reinforced vessels to transfer cooling blue liquid within the body. Since they are always protected by any sort of the CBNI, there's no risk that they can be damaged. This liquid is much more effective than regular blood. It supplies the organic parts with nutrients and also cools down both organic and synthetic parts.

In case of emergency synthetic parts can be cooled down to almost absolute zero by a complex cooling laser system, reinforced by CBNI, which was used in the past to cool down small particles, but later was modified for the usage on a macroscale. It is much more effective than liquid cooling, but requires a lot of energy, precision and complex calculations (i.e computation power) to use.

Synthetic parts also regenerate with the help of nanobots that restore the organic parts as well.

A Homelander can enjoy any food or drink, but as soon as they leave the mouth, all food and all drinks are immediately processed and broke down into nutrients and wastes. The latter is always destroyed, so the Homelanders have no need to use a restroom.

All four hooves are made of the composite material which includes flexible artificial muscles and a ductile grade of CBNI. The hooves can be transformed into a wide variety of manipulators; it depends on the task the Homelanders wish to accomplish.

To clean the front hooves (and often the hind ones as well) from dirt and dust, the Homelanders use SSP to either burn unwelcome matter or accelerate it back to the ground.

The latest upgrade of the body was production of miniature drones that have many functions, such as scanning and researching. When passive, they are stored within the Homelanders. Once any of them wants or needs to scan the area, for example, they accelerate a drone towards this area with SSP. At that point the drone is actively scanning everything that may be of interest to a Homelander.

As nanobots, the drones are fueled by SSP and connect to the Homelanders by wireless network, provided by their bodies.

When damaged, they are fixed by nanobots. Tough and strong materials they made of, along with chemical bonds' reinforcement technology protect them from all harm, and in case of destruction more drones can be crafted from materials, provided by the planetary programming within mere minutes by the Homelanders or nanobots, though the latter will need slightly more energy to achieve the same results.

Enhanced organic eyes and visual sensors behind them are able to see perfectly at night, and in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum.

Because of some synthetic parts' toxicity, Homelanders' tears, saliva and genital fluids can be dangerous to animals and birds. Their organic parts are able to resist this hazard, though.

Their immune system eventually became a computer program. They have no need for vaccination to achieve immunity to diseases. They just upload the data about a virus or a disease, adding it to the database.

Their bodies are waterproof, so a Homelander can safely swim and dive, not worrying about possible damage.

Homelanders have huge, soft wings made out of genetically modified organic material. But despite their size they are unable to lift a Homelander off the ground because, unlike birds, the Homelanders don't have the required evolutionary traits that allow birds to fly.

However, wings weren't a product of the Homelanders' evolution, neither a rudiment or an atavism. Homelanders made wings themselves, as a part of the vast genetic modification project.

Wings weren't made for flying (the Homelanders utilize SSP for such purpose), they were made for cuddling, hugging and using them as blankets. Sometimes the Homelanders use their wings to soften the landing from jumps or even for hang gliding.

When unused, wings are folded so compactly that their true size cannot be recognized with the naked eyes.

Wings are one of a few of the Homelanders' body parts that can get tired due to its organic structure. However, thanks to the full biochemical control, they can turn off fatigue, risking to damage wings severely by an excessive strain. Regeneration is applied to address this issue.

The Homelanders are vulnerable to several diseases due to their organic part, with cancer being the most common illness. To address that problem, they developed a certain method of curing it.

A common way the Homelanders use to decorate their bodies -- growing a colony of certain bioluminescent bacteria over the skin.

Tail
A Homelander's tail is one of their main instruments used to interact with the world.

Similar to body muscles, a tail is made of an even stronger and tougher type of composite synthetic yarn-like fibers that form artificial muscles, covered by the most flexible and ductile grade of CBNI.

The tails are also stretchy and can be used as wide canvas to carry other Homelanders, for example.

A tail can also divide into 6,000 strings, with each of them controlled separately. Because of the CPU, a Homelander can easily control each and every string.

One string can lift up to 221 pound without significant strain that results in the total lifting power of 1,326,000 pounds.

Another spectacular ability the tails posses is a very rapid strings acceleration, ten times faster than body muscles are capable of.

They are used to channel and redirect the inner stellar energy, either stretching the tail to the nescessary direction or using a black rift to channel it directly from the reactor core.

Since the tail transfers energy and always have to stay that way, each string is covered by a thin and strong protective layer that can be easily removed and put on multiple times.

There's a barrel-like structure at the tip of every tail string. It is used to cover a needle-thin tungsten razor with a superhard rhenium diboride tip. It is used for piercing materials during engineering and construction, and a razor itself is used in everyday life for purposes like cutting food during cooking.

Psychology
Homelanders are able to experience an extremely large amount of emotions, with each of them having several shades and tones. They perceive the world by their senses, both organic and synthetic. Their consciousnesses can turn off or slow down any emotion that can be an obstacle to rational thinking, such as in the case of falling in love.

Their thought processes, self-awareness, minds and intelligence are used to learn about the world, about their own structure and about potential ways to alter and improve reality around them.

The supreme and major motivation means that they must have have no connection to emotions or pleasure seeking. These are just byproducts of the main activity.

As far as motivators, Homelanders have five of them: two supreme motivators, two major motivators and one miscellaneous motivator.

The Homelanders' brain allows them to upgrade their abilities for thought and their IQ by simple training, or by patching their minds directly. That way, there's no intelligence gap between different Homelanders, for any of them can reach genius or even above level of intelligence.

Although they can drastically affect the process of learning, researching, developing and creating, their everyday life is virtually unaffected.

All the Homelanders that exist now, including those napping in the servers had gone through the Fusion, which drastically changed most of their psychological and genetic features.

The Deletion remains a traditional possible outcome of their society's activities, even if the probability of its occurrence equals zero.

Any Homelander can alter their personalities without any harm, whether temporarily or permanently.

Behavior
The Homelanders are social creatures that form complex societies and communities, united by mutuality, compassion and common goals.

Social interactions between them have no taboos and rituals, but are based on rational choices and the most efficient way of communications.

Genders
The Homelanders have no genders. When they developed a mind-uploading technology, they alloyed the two genders together, along with some other evolutionary traits, throwing out the cons and keeping pros.

Their genitals can be chaged from female to male and vice versa, though in everyday life they prefer to keep female genitals. Their voices are also higher pitched than those the male used to have.

Kinship
The Homelanders have two of the most important social relationships that can possibly exist, because only they are supported by the fundamental forces of reality. These relationships that also act as two supreme motivators are friendship and motherly love. Because they aren't based on hormones and emotions, but rather on rational choices and cognitive experience, these relationships are valued higher than any other. Once established, they last until the connected Homelanders take a rest from life, and when they do they do it together.

A mother can only have one daughter, but the amount of friends can go up to seven, tops. When either of them spend quality time together or just cuddle, they are able to feel true cognitive happiness. This happiness is stronger than the regular, neurotransmitter-based happiness such that the mass of a star is bigger than the mass of a satellite. Because it is cognition-based happiness, backed up by the fundamental forces, it can be perceived fully, cannot turn the Homelanders to addicts and is not a part of a reward system.

This correlates to the Homelanders' behavior. They spend time with their friends and/or mothers/daughters because they want to make them happy, not because they want another dose of this happiness.

Because of its origin, sexual activity dulls the cognitive happiness, so it is considered as a way to spend time only among acquaintances.

What's more, a common indicate of two Homelanders having either of two fundamental relationships is a fact that they don't engage in sex at all, not wanting to waste a significant amount of time on it.

The Homelanders do not have romantic relationships, because they are perceived as a wicked and twisted way of connection between them, based on primal instincts and lust. 'Romancezoning' a Homelander by another Homelander is considered a great mental injury.

The fundamental powers of reality, based on the most deep and mysterious laws of physics, also allow a mother or a friend to save their loved ones from any hazard. It doesn't matter how hard it is, or how far away they are, they always know when there's danger that could be really dangerous. They can even pull a loved one out of a black hole, if needed.

Society
The Homelanders do not have a state, law, social stratification or bureaucracy. Their decisions are made together and unanimously, because they never have any disagreement about major cases. They can have different opinions when it comes to defining a favourite fruit, or a favourite way to spend time.

They also don't have a concept of money, religion or philosophy. They don't care about the possible existence or non-existence of any higher power, preferring to improve themselves and their society.

Instead of money the Homelanders share the results of their production activity. Each Homelander used to own some means of production and producing certain goods. They put these goods in communal storage facilities and any other Homelander could take what they need from there. Since they care about each other and have no greed, the scarcity of resources has never been a problem for them.

Nowadays any Homelander can easily produce any things, no matter how huge and complex they are, by using information about production from the servers, SSP and the CPU as means of production and the planetary programming as a source of resources. Regardless, they still prefer sharing the results of their labour with other Homelanders.

Homelanders have always tried to make their society sustainable and harmless to the environment. While during their rise they did cause some harm to it, with the development of higher-tech and biology they were not only able to compensate it, but also improve the environment of the whole planet.

The Homelanders also have no concept of crime, which resulted in the lack of locks. Instead, they use simple door bolts from both inside or outside, to prevent wind from opening the door. They can leave their houses for SCs, knowing that nobody will ever take anything from there.

Before they reached their current numbers, the Homelanders reproduced by having friends channel the fundamental force that supports friendship to the Homelander who decided to become a mother.

Within them, friendship-supporting force met motherly love-supporting force. These alloyed together, which resulted in creating a new Homelander with set colors and genetics. Since the Homelanders are completely sterile, it was the only way to reproduce which only friends had.

At some point, they decided to calculate the optimum number of them living at the same time and came to a conclusion that 60,034,123+1 is a perfect amount of Homelanders to have at the same time. Their current state is the outcome of this decision.

Today, when a Homelander decides that she/he wants to take a break from living, which is commonly called 'taking a nap', she/he uploads her/his intelligence to the servers, where it is wiped out from all experience, memories -- pretty much everything that made a Homelander herself/himself. Her/his body mass transforms into energy and is immediately uploaded to the servers as information.

On the servers, this information is converted to energy and then to matter, thus making another Homelander's body with all default upgrades and synthetic parts and with different colors and mane styles. Then the clean intelligence is uploaded to the body, along with basic skills and knowledge about the Home.

The minds are also prioritized, as an example below shows: Homelander A took a break 100 SCs ago, Homelander B -- 50 SCs ago, Homelander C -- 75 SCs ago. When there's a vacancy for re-appearing, Homelander A goes first, Homelander C -- second, Homelander B -- third.

Science
The two major motivators for Homelanders are creating and researching. The Homelanders think that each and every sapient being is a creator and a researcher. It is no wonder that scientific activity is so important in their everyday lives.

Every Homelander is a scientist, working on many projects. Sometimes the Homelanders unite into groups when the project they are working on is too big and complex for just one Homelander.

The Homelanders also prevent any damage to the environment during research and studiy. for example, by using biopolymers that decay easily.

Culture
The final, miscellaneous motivator is simple: have fun. The Homelanders prefer music, writing and games, both with augmented reality elements or without them. They don't have theatres, movies, art and some other cultural elements, though.

Homelanders live in stone houses made of various minerals and stones. They don't use electrical luminescence on the streets, so instead they raise bioluminescent moss over their houses.

Aside from using living decorations, the Homelanders also enjoy to beatify themselves with the other means.

After Final Singularity
Currently, the world of Homelanders had changed dramatically. The Final Singularity fundamentally altered many aspects of their society and technology, expanding their borders by many orders of magnitude and providing even greater amount of energy.

Homelanders upgraded their minds too, turning ordinary, albeit very capable quantum computers into astronomically scale ones, with such immense calculation power that every mind of this size had to be powered by an individual star.

The true form of a Homelander now is a giant quantum computer, which uses the full power output of the star just to power itself. It can turn any matter into any form to use it as a manifestation of their mind, but usually Homelanders turn matter into the body of their former selves.

Such bodies, controlled by stellar intelligences, are mostly living in Home, albeir not in the same qualities as Homelanders in the past.