The Supernaturalist
The Parasites are a race of blue amoeboid blobs which absord the pain of humans on a place called Satellite City.
The Setting
The story happens in satellite city so called because of the giant satellite controlling everything in the city. Recently, at the time of the story, the link between the two has been deteriorating to a sorry level and has been causing havoc. It is in this instance that the Parasites are made obvious to the young boy called Cosmo Hill.
Biology
Anatomy/Form
The Parasites are described by Cosmo Hill as strange inhuman creatures that crawls at amazing speeds like gravity meant nothing to them. "The creature was the size of an infant, with smooth, blue translucent skin, four slender limbs and an oval head. Its features were delicate and impassive. hairless and smooth. Sparks rolled in its veins instead of blood."(Colfer, 2004). The Parasite also has only four fingers. They also contain high levels of energy as seen in the last parts of the book where they were caged by a prominent figure in Satellite City and used as a power source for the city. The Parasites are invisible to the human eye unless those that have had a near death experience.
Info About The Book
It was first thought that the Parasites absorbed the life energies of humans. In many instances, they cluster around high-risk areas where men are likely to die, like drag races and gun fights. They used their four fingers to reach out to an injured man and suck the life out of them just. As Cosmo saw it "The hand settled on his heart and sucked. Somehow the hand was pulling the pain from his body. The agony dipped, faded and was gone. The more the creature sucked, the brighter its light became until its blue glow morphed to sunset gold... Something was flowing from him, in a starry stream. He knew what it was. Life."(Colfer, 2004). Eventually, the Supernaturalists learned that the main purpose of these Parasites were to be natural anesthetics. They are able to draw away pain and were actually feasting on it.
Reproduction
The Supernaturalists use lightning rods and guns to blast the Parasites away. They usually leave after they see the blob burst into tiny little bits. One time, while they were doing their rounds fighting off the blobs, they were able to observe what happened right after the initial explosion and realized that the Parasites actually benefited from the sudden burst of energy. To their horror, the new tiny little blobs formed new Parasites. They realized they were actually helping the creature reproduce by shocking it with high bolts of energy and allowing it to reproduce asexually.
Sapience
The Parasites can be considered sapient beings thanks to their ability to detect areas of high risk as well as communicate with chosen people like Ditto (a member of the Supernaturalists) who was modified genetically to be superhuman but turned out to be a failure.
Trivia and Speculations
The following information is speculative and not based on the book:
- A possible reason why no one can see a Parasite without a near death experience could be that they are able to use and directly trigger certain parts of the brain that may only be activated by a traumatic experience. This ability could be due to the fact that they are made almost purely of energy and thrive on it, therefore the different levels of energy wouldn't be so complex for them.
- The reason why they glow when absorbing pain could be associated to the way nerve receptors transmit messages. There are two ways a nerve cell can send information through the body: chemically and electrically. Usually, without the latter, the chemical activators do not respond. The Parasites might be able to suck up the energy from specific areas of the body. This can also explain how Cosmo's muscles turned to jelly after his first encounter with the floating blue organism.
References
- Colfer, Eoin. The Supernaturalist. New York: Scholastic, 2004. Print