Observer Base

investigating the past Realities of Deep Time

One of the greatest challenges during my study of Deep Time has been tracing the origins and transformations of Observer Base. The term "observer base" is an exonym and I risk confusion by even using that name.

According to Gohrlay, Observer Base began as a way for Interventionists to secretly interact with Earth. For billions of years, Earth was "guarded" by the pek. Long ago the pek "seeded" Earth with zeptites and one of the functions of those zeptites was to constantly monitor Earth for Interventionist activity.

The Long Island Trail

Here is an analogy that Gohrlay uses. Imagine that in 1900 you are a Railroad Tycoon based out of New York City. For your own personal convenience, you built a railroad connecting your office in New York City to your beach house in Belle Terre.

Later, say in 2000, someone made a biking trail (the Long Island Trail, see the map, below) that ran from New York City to Greenport (running through Port Jefferson).

Imagine further that one Friday evening, some pesky bikers managed to block your rail line and prevented you from reaching your beach house for the weekend. How annoying would that be? According to Gohrlay, that's essentially what happened to the pek when positronic robots took control of Observer Base.

In the Ekcolir Reality: the Long Island Trail (blue line)

The First Life of Gohrlay

Human origins: the key role of the bumpha

I've been working hard to learn from Gohrlay the story of her first life. Each little fact that I obtain directly from Gohrlay triggers a cascade of access to additional information that is somehow available to me, either through my on-board infite-enabled stores or possibly via access to the Hierion Domain. Here is what I know so far....

Gohrlay was "seeded" into Observer society in order to provide a neural template for the brains of positronic robots. That sly scheme was conceived by the Interventionists who were "in control" of Observer Base. I must put "in control" inside quotation marks because it is clear that the activities of the Inteventionists were severely constrained by the pek.

Gohrlay at Observer Base

Here are some examples of those constraints. The humans at Observer Base had been allowed to develop science and they had discovered computers and hierion physics. However, the residents of Obsever Base were not allowed to create electronic computing devices and although the scientists had a theoretical understanding of hierions, they lacked any capacity for hierion engineering.

Reality Chain

Gohrlay believes that the human scientists at Observer Base were being guided towards the development of positronic computer science. Guided by who? According to Gohrlay, the bumpha.

The bumpha and the pek are two ancient factions that have competed to guide the evolution of hadronic life in the universe for over a billion years. Gohrlay believes that it was direct intervention by the bumpha that made her into a freak, the one special human who would be sacrificed for the purpose of creating positronic robots at Observer Base.

Preland

The zeptite endosymbionts inside the humans of Observer Base normally functioned as developmental control nanites to shape the bodies of Observer Base residents into the body form of Prelands. However, Gohrlay's body was allowed to develop to a large extent in its natural form: that of a human female.

The Preland thoracic pouch (source).

Gohrlay's freakish body caused her to avoid joining a Clan. Avoidance of Clan life, in itself, was not unheard of. Some residents of Observer Base refused to join a Clan for personal reasons, usually because they wanted to lead unique lives that were not restricted to the structure imposed on society by Clan dynamics and Clan hierarchies. Those who never joined a Clan were viewed as outcasts from Clan society and generally referred to as Isolates. Many of these Isolates were Escapists who wrote fictional accounts of life beyond Observer Base.

source

Rol, Jaqy and Meppen
When Gohrlay had completed her rookie year as a member of the Earth Observer Corps, she met three Escapist writers, Rol, Jaqy and Meppen. Apparently Gohrlay, Rol, Jaqy and Meppen became close friends and they experimented with forming their own Clan. That experimentation was mostly driven by Gohrlay's secretion of a potent female pheromone, so when Gohrlay was taken away from Observer Base and sent to the Galactic Core, their experimental Clan disintegrated. However, Rol, Jaqy and Meppen wrote extensively about Gohrlay and thus created the source material that became a kind a sacred literature for the Cult of Gohrlay that grew to dominate Observer Base in the era of the positronic robots.

Related Reading: Martian Observers

Next: the Escapist Clan

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