The Mighty Mighty Machie'Na
Taken directly from the book "Your First Steps" by Athlon M. Topia II


     Heh, we're not exactly what you'd call "mighty" perse', but we are indeed popular. Not to toot my own horn, but the top 10 most brilliant people in the 'verse as rated by "J.P. Tower and Associates" are all Machie'Na. So that should tell you something.(and the #1 most wanted in the 'verse is a machie'na as well,,,, me!!)
     My people are the thinkers, the inventors, the explorers and the historians of the Patrolled Sectors. For all that we know about everyone and everything else, we actually know little of ourselves. The planet we were discovered on 300 years ago was/is not our home planet. It was a barren world with no ruins of any civilizations besides us. There was no way we evolved naturally and although I hate to admit it, someone made us, then dumped us on that planet. As some of my good friends like to say, " It don't matter where or how you came, as long as you're here now " .
     We are one of the stranger beings in the 'verse. We are made of a metal you could say. We have a solid skeleton that is nearly identical to a Human/Terran skeleton. We don't really have organs as we are pretty solid, but we do have what you might call wires and circuitry running from "nodes" positioned in different parts of our bodies. These nodes seem to develop in different places for different Machie'Na, and I guess you could call them a sort of central nervous system. A friend of mine was hit by a well placed ion pulse that hit a node in his stomach, and it paralyzed the right half of his body for 2 weeks till he could regenerate. Which brings me to my next topic, regeneration. We're almost unkillable, you have to basically blast us to peices to kill us. Sorta, see you have to do enough damage to totally incapacitate a Machie'Na, then hope nobody comes along and feeds one. If we can eat, we can regenerate any amount of damage. If we can't eat, we die.
     "What do we eat?" you ask? Easy, basically any kind of metal. I prefer aluminum myself, it's easy to aquire, it's lightweight which means I can carry more fuel or equipment instead of food, and well most people toss it out as space junk so I can follow a mining ship for a few days and pick up enough food to keep me going for weeks.
     Something else prety unique to us, we don't need external devices to connect to computers. Me myself, I can jab my finger into any common interface port and instantly access whatever computer is tied to that port. I can fly my ship 3ithout ever touching the controls. I can surf the GCN without the aid of an ID. Our only limits however is memory. I do have a pretty good memory, but we can't use our memory as storage for items like programs and such. We need external devices, so it gets a little tricky connecting to two things at once, like trying to run an attack program on the GCN, while trying to keep my persona active at the same time. It get's easier with skill, but that's with skill.
     300 years ago we didn't have male or female, we were an androgynous race. My "father" actually bore my two older brothers. Since we didn't have a culture of our own, no real history, nothing that made us, us. We adopted much from the other races we encountered. Since the primary race we were in contact with was Terran, we adopted much of the Terran form. My people are able to change their basic features enough to resemble males and females, also to have distinct facial features. Before that, any Machie'Na could bare a child, now only "females" can. No Machie'Na scientist can figure this out. It's something now engrained into our psyche which determines this. Also it's now passed along to children. Children born now are either male, or female. Not androgynous like before. We have very long but fragile lifespans. I mentioned we are pretty hard to kill and we are, we can also live to be several hundred years old, but we can also just die for no appearant reason. My father has lived 800 years, my Mother never woke up after 160. No reason, sometimes we just don't wake up. Yes we sleep, we do everything that any other race does except excrete waste. A good Human friend of mine doesn't like to visit because I dismantled the toilet on my ship.
     We look mammalian, and have all the mamallian parts now, and they're fully functional. Keep in mind, that it wasn't very long ago when we were androgynous. We looked humanoid, but didn't have all the details we have now. Our skin colors tend to be shades of reddish silver and bluish silver. Our skin is obviously metallic appearing and although we can alter our facial features somewhat it's quite obvious who/what we are. Speaking of the aforementioned ability, my research has shown that in another generation or two we'll lose that ability as well. We have no hair, males and females both are bald, and we're built as far as fingers and toes etc. just like a Terran or a Human.
Males:
6 ft/GS
350 lbs/GS
Females:
6 ft/GS
350 lbs/GS