The extract from several editions of Encyclopedia Galactica:
Currently, we have no evidence about the early history of the Aua people. Their race was long established on several planets of similar climate and were sending multitude of scientific expeditions throughout the surrounding space at the moment of the first contact with other sentient races. The Academy first encountered this race about 27,554 BA* (see an appendix in the Classificado folder). Many Aua people are staff members or freelance researchers of OAH** now.
Endonym: Aua or Auacha. The latter, as more formal, is used nowadays only to refer to the language, but the previous meaning is not forgotten. The word INO have been used in the Academia languages until quite recently, but one of the Aua terms of the agreement about trainees was the ban of the word, which they consider pejorative and don't won't to be applied to their youth.
The Aua people are amphibians, they reproduce parthenogenetically, with frequent case of mutual fertilization, and throughout the recorded history have been correcting the genetics of the foetus to meet both practical and aesthetical criteria, e.g. they choose a colour of their future child. This mechanism should be means of instinctive species improvement as an individual experiences no parental feelings to her own child. Two pairs of eyes must have been developed due to semi-submerged life in coastal waters. Lower eyes are bigger as adaptation to low light conditions underwater. Both pairs of eyes are covered with thin protective corneas resemling natural contact lenses. An upper small mouth is in the middle part of the face (humans often mistake it for a nose). Round-shaped gills are on both sides of the head. A corneous crest, covered with a thin layer of skin, protects the top and the back of the head. An Aua individual that spends most time on land, begins to mold, shedding her crest and growing human-like hair instead, her skin becomes drier and denser. They have four webbed digits on each hand: two thumbs and two fingers in between. There are three digits on each foot, one rudimentary on the heel, and the bone frame that allows to unfold the webbed toes to get an “umbrella” or a “flipper”, needed for swimming. What humans consider mammary glands are, in fact, multi-purpose glands secreting different kinds of substances, depending on the situation; it can be used not only to provide infants food, the secretion can be aimed at the partner, if one exists. Aua individuals are able to consciously control many processes, such as conception and such secretion.
There is no trustworthy information about the history of development for the female only sex of the Aua race. There are rumours that after several centuries of successful genetic engineering application, all the males were destroyed, but we won't cite them here, especially taking into consideration that there are many scientific observations of reptilian populations producing only female progeny in a favourable environment. This case should be described as hermaphroditism with female external reproductive organs.
The aua life cycle begins with laying of an egg (if there is a need to quickly increase the population, the cycle changes to archaic one, when one parent produces a spawn of hundreds or even thousands eggs, but it should be induced before conception and pregnancy). It takes several hours (exactly one day and night cycle of the Aua home planet) for a developed tadpole in this only one egg to hatch. Then, it evolves for a long time in strictly aquatic environment. The upper part of the torso (a head, a neck and fully-developed arms and hands) is formed in the course of five standart years. During the next five or six years the tail is reabsorbed and adult lower appendages are formed. The resulting phisique of an individual depends greatly on a chosen lifestyle and the environment: the adolescents that begin to acquire space trades, spend more time in lower gravity than their planetary peers, and grow up to 150–160 cm, while the rest of the youth gain more subcutaneous fat and are rarely taller than 130–135 cm. The average lifespan of the Aua species is about 120 standard years (the statistic including only natural deaths); taking into account their advanced biotechnology and medicine, the individuals' ages of natural deaths vary only slightly.
A child, born on board a ship, is kept in a special compartment until delivered to the nearest Aua-colonised planet where it is bound to be accepted. The poplulation of planets is increasing to a large extent by the children born during space travel. And it decreases likewise, as, upon growing up, many Aua individuals leave their home world. And when they pay off their upbringing debt—which is not very large, some manage to pay it off in advance, before losing their tail—they may completely break all the ties with the home colony. Parents never visit their child, they don't develop a parental instinct, the same as a child wouldn't understand a strong bond with its parents or caregivers. But the Aua people do have other instincts such as species interests devotion and caring about its prosperity, curiosity and love for rational life comprehension which indicates itself in fostering quality interlocutors.
Therefore the Aua colonies are inhabited by mostly children and adolescents and fewer quantity of adults. When a child is born in the space she is sent to one of the planets as soon as possible. On the contrary, many adults are scouts, researchers or diplomats, who then trade the obtained valuables for household goods and other stuff being produced in their worlds.
Material culture produced by the Aua race is divided into “objects” and “mechanisms”, the nearest human synonyms to their terms.
“Mechanism” is always a genetically modified symbiont organism used as a house, a furniture item, as a piece of clothing or even as a spaceship. The Aua people usually don't consume “murdered” food, be it a plant, an animal, a fungus or any other form of life, they feed on secretion of “familiar” animals that also are a part of the Aua habitat ecosystem. But, when other sources of nourishment are unavailable, they can eat purées, pâtés and various liquids, that can be absorbed by their mouths and can be assimilated by their digestive system.
Very few “objects” exitst, only where, when and while it is impossible to utilise a symbiont “mechanism” for the purpose.
The main occupation of the Aua race is working with living organisms: genetical researches, search for new lifeforms, creating of closed ecological systems of every scale. They prefer to keep their distance from other sentient races, but they do exchange their scientific results, and can be employed as researchers, scouts and ecology specialists.
There are closed ecosystems functioning aboard each of Aua “living spaceships”. Every ship regardless of its size has a genetic laboratory inside and bank of cells of symbiont “mecanisms” to reproduce them as required.
The Aua race tends to colonise planets with oxygen-rich Earth-like atmosphere and with relatively small amount of land. They consider planets that are covered with shallow oceans and a multitude of islands, sandbanks and shelves to be the most suitable and comfortable of all. They prefer planets with the rotational axis that is perpendecular to its orbital plane, and without satellites, which provides the equable climate and high improbability of large-scale hydrological disasters.
The social system of the Aua race is very hard to describe. Each planet and each separate spaceship, even if its crew consists only of a single individual, is an autonomy and governs itself on its own, but there is a code, that regulates trade and mutual aid. The media of exchange are energy and information whose equivalent value can be calculated. There are also an information gifts exchange tradition and a practice of commercially valuable information trading. Planetary colonies get much information in exchange for their products.
The society on the Aua planets bears a distant resemblence to an ant or a bee colony with the sole difference that Aua individuals are self-reliant and higly intellectual sentient beings and are able to make decisions and take responsibility for themselves, should they be separated from their kind. Some features of economy organisation of the Aua worlds resemble classical communism, some are similar to teoretically possible sort of anarchy, and some of them contradict both of this human models.
The Aua people cherish life as a whole, but are absolutely irreligious and rational, recognise no authorities except for logical arguments, their emotional level is low, they don't become deeply attached to any individuals of their own or of any other species. Humans consider them selfish and unsentimental.
*BA = before foundation of the Academia**, Sp.: a.f.A. antes de fundación de Academia
**Open Academy of Hope, Sp. Academia Abriga de la Esperanza (AAE)
It is scientifically proven that it was the Aua race that settled ancient Humans taken from Earth on several known and several unknown nowadays planets as ecological experiment, until the control of this experiment was taken by the Academy, consisting mostly of Humans themselves. Before the established time of contact with Aua, all potentially registered alternatives are on supplementary temporal threads and already don't require correction. The main thread is established and is in the ACCD (area of constantly confirmable data).