Bynar
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The Bynar are a race of humanoids native to the planet Bynaus in the Beta Magellan system. The planet was devastated when Beta Magellan went nova in 2364, destroying most of its atmosphere and rendering its surface barren and irradiated. Since then, the Bynars have lived both underground and in domed structures on the surface, in both cases relying on their planetary computer network to operate life support systems.
Personality
Most foreigners find Bynars utterly inscrutable. Their flat facial expression gives them less emotional effect than even the ascetic Vulcans. The concept of individuality is entirely alien to them, and they do not vary in terms of personality, interests, or likes and dislikes. Their odd binary language makes them even mre incomprehensible to those who do not know them intimately.
Furthermore, their language reflects their thought processes for the Bynar mind does, to a certain extent, work like a computer. Bynars understand any given situation as a series of either/or propositions, just like a computer using Boolean logic (statements of true or false). They cannot cope with possible outcomes that non-Bynars would dismiss as unimportant, which in turn can cause them to take courses of action that seem desperate, even illogical to others.
Physiology
The Bynars are shorter in height than most humanoids and have lilac skin and enlarged skulls. They average about 1.4 meters in height. Their brains are larger in proportion to the rest of their body than is the case with most humanoid races. Their most unique characteristic is that they are interconnected with a master computer on Bynaus. When a Bynar is born, a surgeon removes the child's parietal lobe and replaces it with a synaptic processor which facilitates high-speed connections with their planetary computer network. Doctor Phlox saw the procedure performed when he encountered the Bynars.
Bynars have evolved away from sexual reproduction and are now entirely asexual. They reproduce by laboratory processes. The Bynar planetary computer uses an algorithm to compute who reproduces and when.
Society
Bynars always work and live in pairs. Because they are so interconnected with the master computer, the Bynars' language and thought patterns have become as close to binary code as is possible. They can speak English, usually finishing each other's sentences (ex. One Zero: It is a great pleasure...; Zero One:...to work on such a large mobile computer.). When they speak to each other, they use a high-frequency sound that is unintelligble to humans. Every Bynar is equipped with a buffer to manage this rate of information transfer.
History
Always a small and frail race, Bynars came very early in their evolution to rely on technology for their very survival. Whether it was shelter, defense against predators, or food, they learned to invent for themselves what they could not gain through physical strength. When they reached the point in their technological evolution where they had mastered digital information technology, they seized upon it as the key to their continued survival. They constructed a planet-wide computer system to communicate with each other, educate and entertain themselves, but also to monitor the myriad devices and mechanical structures that they relied upon to maintain their environment and provide them with food.
By the time the Federation made first contact with them in 2358, the Bynars had come to rely upon their computer network so completely that the first UFP representatives to visit Bynaus openly wondered whether the system served them or they served it. Nonetheless, the Bynars' value as computer technicians was obvious, and almost immediately Starfleet began hiring skilled Bynars to work off-planet. Bynaus did not apply right away for Federation membership, but maintained cordial relations with the UFP.
A team of Bynars were assigned to Starbase 74, under the supervision of Commander Orfil Quinteros. In 2364, those Bynars commandeered the U.S.S. Enterprise-D during a refit, so that its computer could be used to re-start their planetary computer, which had been damaged by the supernova of Beta Magellan.
The Bynars live and work in inseparable pairs, and each Bynar exchanges information with its counterpart by means of a cybernetic device, known as a buffer, strapped to its belt. Bynar pairs typically come from a paired reproductive tank, created simultaneously by the computer algorithm that oversees their society. From that point on, they function as closely as the left and right hands of the same body. They will live together with no sense of an individual identity separate from the other, and, barring unnatural occurrences, they will die together at the same genetically determined moment.
Reference(s)
- Bridges, Bill, et al. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 5: Aliens, Decipher, 2003. ISBN: 1582369070.
- Also see Bynar at Memory Alpha