Ronald Sandoval
- Sandoval is concerned about Boone, saying that they haven’t really talked ina long time and asking how Boone is adjusting to living alone (i.e. without his wife Kate).
The Taelons
- Technology
- Skrill: Skrills were sentient beings with whom the Taelons made contact. The Taelons considered them primitive; Da’an says that “as with every texture, there are degrees of contact as well as degrees of sentience.” Quo’on describes their first contact as “carnage without ceasing,” and Da’an remarks on the skrills’ having proved of “particular potency in time passing.” Reluctantly Da’an admits that a skrill is capable of killing a Taelon, reminding the Implants that a skrill “harbors an almost apocalyptic power.” The skrills used by Boone and Sandoval, which Da’an calls “peace-keeper[s]…a tool to quell a storm,” are a product of human bioengineers at Comtech working from a template provided by the Taelons. Two series were developed; the Alpha series, which retained greater self-awareness and, descended from the Alphas, the Gamma series, which are more docile. Dr. Clarke nicknamed Boone’s skrill Condor and Sandoval’s Raven. Sandoval describes Implants as “true symbiots. [The skrills] feed off our food intake, draw on our energy to generate their fields.” Both Sandoval and Boone have experienced communication with their skrills, particularly in “primitive and irrational” dream imagery. Boone tells Lili that his skrill definitely “has an intelligence, a presence.” Sandoval councils Boone that “a skrill isn’t a device to be mastered…form a relationship.” Skrills make a hissing noise and exhibit bioluminescence, which they also use to communicate with their hosts.
