Trysta Iwedon

source

"Trysta Iwedon" is one of the many cover names that have been used by Skaña. Trysta is a master of disguise, having been carefully and beautifully designed to fool her human victims, particularly sentimental males such as me. Related Reading: Ex-code

I naturally prefer to think of Skaña (who is actually an Asterothrope) as being "Trysta", the woman who put in place the Trysta-Grean Pact. It is in her role as Trysta here in the Final Reality that I have personally known Skaña. During the past 40 years it is Trysta who has carefully guided me into the future and I fear that I still do not fully comprehend the extent to which she has shaped my life and may continue to do so in the future.

Trysta and Ekcolir

This latest and most worrying qualm is like a fresh wound in my mind. I had mistakenly imagined that my contacts with Trysta were all safely in my past (see Mayness), but that was part of her trickery.

Visitation

Why 'visitation'? Because I'm not sure that it was a visit. I'll describe some more of the encounters that I've had with her through the years at a later time, after I've had a chance to figure out what was going on. Maybe my most recent contact with Trysta is all just because of me and my ability to use the Bimanoid Interface when that channel is not being blocked by my replicoid. This is a subject for future investigation.

Ivory's family

At the time when I realized that it was the story of Trysta that must be told first, I imagined beginning the Exode Trilogy with an account of her life with Andrew Harlan in the Primitive, a story that naturally follows after the end of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. Then all hell broke loose.

First, Ekcolir demanded to explain why he seduced Trysta and impregnated her. And, for that biological mystery, the more important issue is how. Ivory Fersoni was able to explain that mystery away because of the strange history of her own family, so I did a lot of listening to Ivory and the stories told by her clone sisters, particularly Angela. However, I now realize that I was allowing myself to be distracted by the wealth of information available to me.

the Exode Trilogy

During my journey towards understanding Trysta, there were additional distractions waved at me by Thomas (the son of Trysta) and Peter (Ivory's uncle). Then, most recently, and most seductively, Gohrlay piled on. For a time, I mistakenly allowed myself to imagine that I should allow Gohrlay to tell Trysta's story. No, no, no. And no.

source

Maybe Trysta had looked deep into the Buld Reality and had seen that I would fall into that trap of over-reliance on Gohrlay. Had I imagined that Trysta could be jealous of Gohrlay, I would have been more cautious and more respectful of Trysta, the girl with the Viewer.

In some sense, Skaña was R. Gohrlay's golden girl. When R. Gohrlay created the Asterothropes there was no intention to replace we humans with Asterothropes. However, R. Gohrlay must have recognized the superior qualities of the Asterothropes and felt pride in a job well done.

our Reality Chain

But R. Gohrlay was trapped in 'her' own programming. Ultimately, R. Gohrlay had to destroy the Asterothropes. Skaña was R. Gohrlay's optimal example of humanoid perfection and so it was Skaña's task to erase the Asterothropes.

To what extent was Skaña tricked into destroying her own species? In the worst case analysis, Skaña was a dupe; given the physical form of a human and forced to destroy her own species. However, I wonder.

Where is R. Gohrlay? Maybe the only problem with Asterothropes arises in the unusual context of Humanity + positronic robots + Asterothropes. Maybe R. Gohrlay took the Asterothropes away, to a part of the universe where they don't have to worry about humans.

fanciful depiction of the pek (source)

In the Mallansohn Reality, Skaña hid the existence of time travel from Humanity. R. Gohrlay was in a desperate race to complete Galaxia and win we humans a chance to control and dominate our galaxy. By some trick of fate, Isaac Asimov became the tool of Grean and the Huaoshy. When Asimov traveled through time, he brought into existence a new reality that fittingly can be called the Asimov Reality. That was the start of the Time Travel War.

The Asimov Reality was an improvement over the Foundation Reality from the narrow perspective of Earth as a Garden World. Although there was a nuclear war during the 20th century in the Asimov Reality, Earth did not become uninhabitable as it had in the Foundation Reality.

the Asimov Reality

In the Asimov Reality, Grean used advanced Reality Viewing technology to identify Trysta as R. Gohrlay's remaining secret agent on Earth. In order to end the Time Travel War, the pek created the Ek'col and Grean positioned Ekcolir close to Trysta.

This brought into existence the Ekcolir Reality in which atomic catastrophes were avoided, but Earth went through a catastrophic phase of global warming, ice cap melting and sea level rise. However, within the Ekcolir Reality, Ekcolir accomplished his mission. By capturing Trysta's heart, Ekcolir created the necessary conditions for the Trysta-Grean Pact. Working together, Trysta and Grean were able to identify the Final Reality.

Asterothrope female

Still, bringing into existence the universe as we know it was not a trivial task. In a flurry of activity, Trysta had to initiate the most complex Reality Change ever attempted. I imagine that Trysta not only wanted to provide humans with a future among the stars, but she needed to fulfill her own biological needs and satisfy her desire to have descendants who would spread through millions of worlds of the galaxy. And, as if that were not enough, I believe that she wanted to make sure that her story and the entire story of Deep Time, what I call the Exode, would be told and would be known to her descendants.

Science Fiction
I can't believe that it was only by chance that science fiction story telling became the means by which Trysta's story could be told. The bumpha seem to have a 2,000,000,000 history of using every trick in the book, including science fiction. Thus, science fiction was already the dominant fiction genre in the First Reality when a human civilization arose at Observer Base.

Observer Base

In the Asimov Reality, where Asimov invented his own form of science fiction, science fiction was again an outlet for deeply human aspirations. Earth of the Asimov Reality was Observer Base writ large. The pek firmly clamped down on human technological innovation in the Asimov Reality and Asimov, with his memories of the rapid pace of technological advance as it had existed in the 20th century of the Foundation Reality, only had fiction as a way to explore the vast space of technological progressions.

Fru'wu

I believe that it was the lurking bumpha who took pains to guide Asimov towards creation of the Writers Block. That Sci Fi Intervention created the milieu within which the Trysta-Grean Pact could exist. In the Ekcolir Reality, the science fiction genre itself provided "cover" for the twists and strains that had to be exerted upon Huaoshy ethical rules.

original cover art by Hans Wessolowski
and Derek Stowe

Further, the impending arrival of the alien Fru'wu, provided a sense of purpose and direction that I can only compare to the role played by the Foundation in an earlier Reality. We humans need our dreams, particularly while we are descending into a future that is as bleak as what existed in the Ekcolir Reality.

June blog posts

Here in the Final Reality, science fiction had to be shunted in a new direction. And Trysta had to first foster my interest in science fiction and then carefully regulate my access to this potent drug. Finally, she has intervened and made me realize that it is with her story that the Exode Trilogy must begin. And so, I salute you Trysta.

Prelands

And although I believe that you died about 10,000 years ago, I hope to see you again before I die.

Image shown to the left: "D'hab pretending to be a Preland". D'hab, is a temple pek (see this blog page).  Also see this blog page. Credits.

Next: the Prelands

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Predestination

In the Ekcolir Reality:  Predestination Moon.
Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the
DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the
blue "sedronite" who is in this image.

In the previous Reality, science fiction was dominated by trained scientists, many of them women.

The analogue of Isaac Asimov in the Ekcolir Reality wrote one of the first popular science accounts of the theory that Earth's Moon was created by a collision of two proto-planets: 'The Error of the Moon' was published in Future Science Fiction magazine.

Not long thereafter, one of the analogues of Jack Vance published Predestination Moon. The geological detail of that story created controversy and many observers suspected that the story was actually a collaborative effort. In any case, it told the story of how "ancient aliens" created the Moon by design, using their advanced technology to shift a giant asteroid onto a collision course with Earth.

Investigating the Kac'hin

The Next 4 Billion
My collaborators Gohrlay and Angela have both tried to estimate the age of the Huaoshy and they came to a shared conclusion: the Huaoshy are not ancient enough to have possibly been involved in the creation of Earth. But what about the next 4,000,000,000 years of Earth?

Grean's concern in the Ekcolir Reality was ending the Time Travel War and bringing into existence the Final Reality. The Kac'hin were created as a kind of interface between we humans and the Huaoshy. It is not clear that any human ever saw the true physical form of a Kac'hin.

In fact, both Ivory and Gohrlay reached the conclusion that the physical form of the Kac'hin as displayed to humans was a kind of disguise or shell that concealed the true nature of the Kac'hin. According to Gohrlay, the Kac'hin had "extensions" within the Hierion Domain and femtobot "appendages" that were able to link an "individual" Kac'hin into the network of all Kac'hin.

Trysta's family tree.

source

The ability of Kac'hin to produce human offspring was a "feature" of the Kac'hin that arose from genetic surgery carried out by femtobots. As shown in the family tree, above, the Kac'hin have played a major role in allowing the descendants of Trysta to "infiltrate" Earth and shape the structure of the Buld Reality.

According to Gohrlay, the Trysta-Grean Pact included a way for Trysta to have descendants who would live on into the future of Earth here in the Final Reality. However, which of the many branches of Trysta's family tree that might have been allowed to persist here under the watchful eyes of the tryp'At Overseers is not clear.

source

After several years of investigating Trysta's twisty family, I remain most puzzled by the strange case of Svahr. It appears that Svahr played a decisive role in the Reality Change that ended the Ekcolir Reality and brought into existence the Final Reality. I've been exposed to accounts of Svahr's life in the Ekcolir Reality (example), but Svahr also seems to have been one of the individuals who was "stored" in Eternity and "brought into" the Final Reality from the Ekcolir Reality. Svahr might still be on Earth and avoiding the attention of the tryp'At.

source

Gohrlay believes that it is a mistake to put too much emphasis on Svahr. Gohrlay endorses the idea that 10,000 years ago Trysta "inserted" Asterothrope genes into the human population of Earth. Since that story is told so as to include a role for the tryp'At, it would not surprise me if Svahr is here on Earth and does not have to work to avoid the notice of the tryp'At. Indeed, it may be that she has more to fear from having her identity revealed to we humans who might want to study her and her particularly "concentrated" collection of Asterothrope genes.

Trysta Iwedon

I suspect that Svahr retains a set of nanites that allow her to alter her physical appearance. It may well be that Svahr has already had contact with me, but I would have no way of recognizing her, which is probably exactly the way she wants it.

Next: a visit with Trysta

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Search for the Start

Planet of the Fru'wu

Once again hard work pays off!

Gohrlay's Past Lives
The flood gates finally opened after weeks of me begging for information about events in her life that occurred between 1) the First Reality and 2) those events that I have previously learned about corresponding to the life of her analogue in the Ekcolir Reality. Gohrlay just gave me a briefing on her strange life in the Asimov Reality and now my head is spinning. Gohrlay's words have finally given me access to a batch of memories that were previously forced into my mind by infites and then left there to quietly incubate.

building R. Gohrlay

Several years ago, back before I even was aware of the Exode, I imagined that I knew the starting point for what I now understand to be the Exode Trilogy. I believed that starting pointing was Gohrlay, a woman from the First Reality who "donated" the structure of her brain for use as the foundational template that was needed for the manufacture of humanoid positronic robots.

Many of my investigative efforts during the past few years have been directed towards the study of Deep Time, the past Realities that existed in our Reality Chain. In this task, I've been "assisted" by a small group of collaborators who have provided me with access to information about our past Realities.

First Contact; Buld Reality

In a disturbingly bizarre turn of events, my current collaborator is none other than Gohrlay herself. Gohrlay is a Fixed Point in our space-time, an individual who has had analogues in many Realities all the way from the First Reality to the Final Reality.

The Ivory Inversion
Two years ago, when Ivory Fersoni was my chief collaborator, I was forced to alter my conception of where to begin the Exode Trilogy. Now, with the guidance of Gohrlay, I'm re-conceptualizing the beginning of Foundations of Eternity. Originally, I was aware of how Gohrlay was captured on Earth and convicted of criminal Interventionism. More recently, Gohrlay has shared with me some details about her earlier life in the First Reality leading up to her criminal exploits.

original cover art by James Teason

Now I've received startling information about Gohrlay's adventures in the Asimov Reality. One of Gohrlay's new revelations about that Reality is that there was also a First Contact event in the Asimov Reality.

Previously I'd learned about the arrival of the Buld on Earth in the Final Reality and a similar First Contact event with the Fru'wu in the Ekcolir Reality. I've long been saddened by the fact that First Contact between Earthlings and aliens passed without me even being aware of the event here in our Reality. Given my knack for accumulating missed opportunities, I feel somewhat pleased to learn why a bumbler like me has been thrust into the role of editing the Exode Saga. Apparently. "my" involvement in the Exode can be traced back to my partial analogue in the Asimov Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Antonio Schomburg

Most importantly, Gohrlay's contiguity of memory going all the way back to the First Reality was initially established in the Asimov Reality. This fact makes the story of Gohrlay's life in the Asimov Reality a logical starting place for the Exode Saga. Gohrlay's rediscovery of her first life is a dramatic story that nicely and naturally leads into Asimov's own first contact with positronic robots.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Gohrlay's new revelations about the Asimov Reality concerns implications for my own origins. I'd been led to believe that I was slipped into the Reality Chain of Earth in the Ekcolir Reality, but Gohrlay insists that she knew my partial analogue in the Asimov Reality.

Next blog post: the next 4 billion years

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Error Patrol

Thomas and his clone, Parthney

I recently blogged about the possibility that there might be clone "copies" of me. Apparently Gohrlay had gone out of her way to make me contemplate that possibility because I'm not very good at handling surprises when they are sprung on me. Today, the "sprung".

Error Patrol

Clones: Kach and Lycaun

There are some events in life that are recognizable as disasters only in hindsight. Back in the previous millennium, I started posting some book "reviews" on the amazon.com website. They still reside in that part of cyberspace, occasionally attracting the attention of some poor author who is desperate for someone, anyone, to write an intelligent review of their new book.

In the Ekcolir Reality

Asimov sometimes wrote about the pain inflicted on him by well-meaning people who would ask him to review books or otherwise comment on their literary efforts. He would usually just say "No." I've been tempted to delete my old online book "reviews" just to save myself from having to deal with a trickle of such well-meaning folks. I can't imagine the vast torrent of such requests that must have bombarded Asimov.

According to Gohrlay, here is what happened: one of my clones (I'll call him Beta) noticed a book review that I wrote, one that is on the Amazon website. For some reason, that led to an attempt by Beta to contact me. Gohrlay admits that she has always monitored my email accounts and this was not the first time that she intercepted an "undesirable" who had tried to contact me.

I became more than just a little grumpy upon being informed that Gohrlay "manages" my email. I suspect that Gohrlay was slightly embarrassed, so she tried to distract me with an amusing anecdote. She claims that in the Ekcolir Reality she had a similar experience. Remember: in the Ekcolir Reality, time travel was still possible.....

The Hidden Centuries

It was late and there was no power. Roben was home alone: the rest of her family was off on vacation in the tropics. An ice storm had struck and now she was into her second day with no electricity. She had plenty of firewood and no need to do anything but read. She'd had a long, glorious day of reading, just for fun. Roben looked at the digital watch on her wrist: 3:34 PM.

Roben was reading page 247 of The Hidden Centuries when she heard the big knocker on the front door start banging. Roben was tempted to ignore the visitor, but she decided it was worth going to the door. That was her first mistake. However, it might even be the police checking on her, so it made no sense to ignore this unwanted interruption. She looked again at her watch: 3:35.

Roben made her way through the cold house to the front door and she looked out through the big window that hung over the front walkway. The banging had stopped, but the visitor could not have gone far.

There she was, slipping along on the crust of ice that covered the remnants of the most recent snow fall. She'd given up and was heading back towards her car, a red sports model that could be seen though the trees out near the end of the driveway. Roben pulled open the front door and called out, "I'm here."

The stranger turned around and immediately Roben knew that this was trouble. Big trouble. The stranger was not really a stranger. This had happened twice before to Roben: she had been visited by herself, or, more precisely, a version of herself from the future.

This version of Roben waved and again made the perilous journey up the icy front steps to the door. Finally she looked up and said, "I thought you were here. I saw your smoke."

Second mistake: Roben held the door open, "Well, come in."

The visitor took off her parka and slipped out of her boots. Roben was a tiny bit surprised: this visiting version of Roben seemed no older than herself. She took the visitor's coat and tossed it over the back of a chair and promptly made her third mistake. Roben asked, "What is it this time?"

Previously, she had been visited by herself as part of an effort to keep Roben appraised of a critically important event that was about to happen in her life. In neither of those cases had Roben been asked to actually change Time. Rather, she had been given reinforcement to make sure that she would continue down a desirable path into the future and maybe just slightly improve on how a new part of her life would unfold. On both of those previous occasions, her future self had visited for just a short time and then returned to the future. Now, Roben assumed that she was again speaking to herself.

The visitor was looking around, apparently intrigued by the artworks that Roben's mother had deployed as decorations in the entrance hall. She snapped her gaze back to Roben and stammered, "Sorry to drop in like this, but allow me to introduce myself. My name is Phenence Chentz. You don't seem surprised to see me, so I'm guessing that you have previously met one of our clone sisters. Maybe you are mistaking me for her?"

Of course, Roben knew about the possibility of human cloning, but she was in no way expecting a clone to come walking into her life. Here was a type of trouble that she had never imagined. Her voice hollowed out by a sudden sense of doom, Roben replied, "No, I thought you were me."

This reply from Roben vastly amused Phenence and she burst out laughing. "Ya, I often talk to myself, too."

Roben said, "Its you! I've sometimes heard your laugh, but..." So, this was it. She'd been warned by her future self that it was possible to have telepathic contact with other people. Had this meeting been foreseen by her future self or was this an error, a chance encounter that would have to be corrected and prevented?

Phenence nodded, "I think I know what you mean. I've always felt like I've had an imaginary friend, someone I talk to, but someone who is just beyond...."

Roben gestured into the house. "Come this way. Most of the house is cold, but I'm heating one room with a fire."

The two clones made their way back to the heated family room.

Phenence took off her heavy sweater and sat down in a chair near the fire. Roben spent a few minutes tidying up and putting away her school books and notes. She had only made a halfhearted attempt to study during the long weekend. "The power has been out here for almost two days, so I've been camping."

"The main roads were clear for my trip up from Virginia, but the local streets here are still a mess of downed trees."

Roben plopped down on the couch and asked, "How did you find me?"

"I found you online. When I saw your profile picture I tried to contact you by email. I suppose you thought I was a crank."

"No, I never got your email."

"Hmm...you are Roben? Roben Skapp?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Strange. I sent you three emails before I gave up and decided to visit you in person. I was able to trace your rather famous mother to this town. The locals seem proud to have such a famous author in residence."

Roben nodded. "So, they told you where my mother lives."

"And I was lucky enough to find you here. Alone?"

Roben found it impossible to not trust Phenence, but some caution seemed wise. She offered a guarded reply: "They decided to move to a hotel when the power went out."

"Wise. But you prefer 'camping'?"

Roben shrugged. She asked bluntly, "What do you want?"

Phenence seemed to take no offense at Roben's rude and terse language. The girl was obviously under a lot of stress. Phenence explained, "I'm here to satisfy my curiosity. I don't run into clones every day."

"How do you know that we are clones?"

"Well, I suppose we should have our genomes sequenced, just to confirm, but somehow I know. And now, the most surprising part of all this is your reaction. What did you mean when you said that you.... 'I thought you were me'?"

Roben hesitated and mulled over her regret for having spoken so openly. "I'm not sure if I should tell you. I can tell you this: I am surprised to meet you. I'm trying to figure out a reason for you to exist."

Phenence laughed again. "It is an odd sensation to hear you, sounding just like me, but saying the strangest things!"

Roben wondered who would bother to clone her. Why should anyone bother? She suggested a possible alternative to them being artificial clones. "Maybe we are twin sisters."

"I quizzed my mother about that possibility. She seems certain that I'm her only child. I suspect she would have noticed if she'd given birth to twins."

With no attempt to be polite, Roben demanded, "Why are you here?"

"You know something that you are not sharing with me. How very mysterious. My hope was that you would explain everything to me. Now it appears we'll have to work hard, together, in order to get to the bottom of this."

Roben relaxed back into the cushions. Phenence seemed rational and curious, not crazy and dangerous. "Of course, I'm not entirely innocent, like you. I do have secrets, so I'm certain to frustrate you. Still, we do share an interest in the mystery of our apparent biological identity. But are we identical?"

Phenence grimaced and replied. "I have some rather unusual physical features. Do you?" Roben stood up and pulled off her clothing. Phenence did the same and they quickly verified that they shared all of their unusual body structures.

Pulling her clothes back on, Roben commented, "My doctors insist that they've never seen anyone quite like me."

"Yes, doctors have told me that, too." Phenence slowly buttoned up her shirt. "Yet, I've always felt that there was someone else like me in the world. I've had times when I could almost see you."

Roben could sense a kind of telepathic connection to Phenence, a metal link that existed almost entirely in the unconscious. "I know what you mean. We are connected in mysterious ways. In fact, I'm surprised that I was not kept better informed."

image credits

Phenence pleaded, "Why not tell me what you know? What do you gain by keeping me in the dark?"

Just then, both Phenence and Roben noticed a flicker in their peripheral vision. Suddenly, there was a third woman in the room. She spoke with calm authority, "Roben is wise to use caution with her secrets."

Roben immediately suspected that a time traveler had arrived. But if so, why was this visitor to the past not herself? Previously it had been her future self who was sent back in time to prevent a looming problem in the timeline. She asked, "Who are you?"

The woman replied, "You can know me as Grean."

Phenence tried to rise out of her chair, but she crumpled and slumped on the floor. Roben rushed forward and examined the girl's eyes, felt for a pulse. Grean explained, "She's fine. You need not worry. I'll soon remove her from your life."

Roben stood up, turned and glared at Grean. Speaking rather hysterically, Roben asked, "What's going on?"

Grean grinned. "Why ask? There is very little that I can tell you. Try to control your emotions."

Roben tried to think, but her mind was jumbled with possibilities. She sat down on the couch and tried to imagine what Grean would do next. Roben was sure that she did not want to end up like Phenence, struck down and crumpled on the floor like a rag doll.

Grean said approvingly, "Better. We can have a little chat. Perhaps I should have met with you sooner, but everything was progressing smoothly and I felt no need to interfere. Had I not arrived now, you and Phenence would have worked together and ended up proving your genetic identity and... well, I'm ending all that now. You already have everything you need."

Roben massaged her right temple and tried to make sense of what Grean was saying. This was exactly like talking to her future self and trying to make sense of stray words and mysterious hints about future events. "So, you are a time traveler."

"Yes, I was designed to get everything right in the timeline here on ancient Earth. You are one of the things that must turn out right, so it may have been inevitable that I'd have to make at least one walk across the stage of your life."

Roben complained, "So for you this is just a casual stroll through my life? Clean up a stray clone and put 'thing' Roben back in her proper place?"

Grean chuckled. "Oh, I suppose you have cause for some resentment. You never asked to be the fixed point in this Reality. Still, that is a matter for you to take up with R. Gohrlay. Don't worry about poor little Phen; I'll make sure that she has an interesting life in the Core and who knows? It might be useful to have a copy of you in the Galactic Archives."

"I'm worried enough for me and my family. What if they had been here when this happened?"

Grean sadly shook her head. "Well, that was a mess. Hence, the family vacation that will be remembered as a lucky escape from the ice storm. Your parents were easy to move out of the way, but I was surprised to discover that it was important to let Phen meet with you, briefly. Strangely, your memory of that will pay off in the next Reality."

Roben suddenly felt very tired. "Before you shut down my brain and start editing  my memories, tell me one thing. Are there other clones of me here on Earth?"

Grean shrugged, "If there were, I'd have to lie and tell you, 'no'. However, all the others have been removed. I suspect that R. Gohrlay knew that the temporal momentum behind your clones would be useful. Some day I'll get to the heart of her sly tricks. Phen did her duty, so you need not think again about clones... not until the Final Reality." Grean stood up and glanced at Phenence with a purposeful gaze. The unconscious girl briefly shimmered with a kind of golden internal light and then she was gone. Where Phen had previously been, a cloudy mist made of flecks of gold briefly sparkled and then winked out.

Grean looked Roben in the eye and said, "I hope we never meet again. Oh, and don't try to get up. You will now sleep and, well, I've always wanted to drive a fast car."

Roben tipped over and sprawled on the couch. Grean gently put the girl's legs up on the couch and then she tossed more wood on the fire. Grean picked up Phen's sweater and then she walked through the cold house and gathered up Phen's coat and boots. Avoiding the icy driveway, Grean teleported from inside the house into the driver's seat of Phenence's car. The engine roared to life and Grean morphed into the physical form of Roben.

Grean and her clone.

Grean drove off into the late winter afternoon, not bothering to drive slowly on the slick roads. More cleaning remained to be done, but soon enough Phenence would be erased from Earth, even from the memory of the woman who has served as her mother.
 ____________________________
I suppose Gohrlay expects me to feel gratitude: how easy it would be for me to end up like Phenence, extracted from Earth by Grean or maybe some tryp'At Overseer. Poor Phen; her life lived in Deep Time, but only just to provide Gohrlay with a story to tell here in the Final Reality.

Next: Gohrlay in the Asimov Reality

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

100 50 25

In the Ekcolir Reality

Three of my favorite science fiction topics in this blog are Jack Vance, Star Trek and Isaac Asimov. Vance was born in 1916, so all this year I have been celebrating 100 years of Vance. The original Star Trek was beamed into homes starting on September 8th, 1966. Later this year, I want to have a special blog post to celebrate 50 years of Star Trek (here it is).

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image shown to the right.

I'm already working on a blog post that will "go live" next year, before April 6th 2017. Asimov died on that date in 1992. I don't want to celebrate the loss of Asimov 25 years ago, particularly since within the Exodemic Fictional Universe he continues to live on with all of his memories and his mad obsession with writing still intact: all bundled up in the form of an artificial life form.

First Contact in the Final Reality

Recently, I was working on my special April 6th blog post when Gohrlay mentioned a book that the analogue of Asimov published in the Ekcolir Reality: Guide to Earth and Aliens. At that point in Deep Time, the alien Fru'wu had not yet arrived on Earth, but it was an open secret that an official First Contact special event would soon take place. Asimov and others associated with the Writers' Block had long been preparing Earthlings for First Contact in that Reality.

Foundations of Eternity

In our Reality, the day of First Contact with the Buld came and went with little notice, just like all of the previous such alien contact events on Earth. In a very real sense, Earth was too well prepared for First Contact. When the Buld spaceship arrived in Washington, there were a few miserable refuges waiting to escape from this primitive planet, but otherwise nobody cared.

The arrival of the Buld was little more than a timing device. By the technical terms of Huaoshy ethical laws, creatures such as we Earthlings are not supposed to know about alien visitors who arrive on our world and who have more advanced technology than we do. However, under one carefully argued interpretation of the terms of the Rules of Intervention, the Buld were judged to be our technological equals, so, strictly speaking, there is no reason why we should not know about their visit to Earth.

Luri offers to save Earth

The potential problem with the arrival of the Buld was that they had been given access to sophisticated spaceship technology. They had no idea how their speed-of-light spaceship worked, but the Buld were certainly capable of transporting other visitors to Earth from distant planets. Through the years, Earth had become "contaminated" with special Sedronite genes that gave a few Earthlings (such as Angela Fersoni) access to advanced technological knowledge as it existed on Earth in Deep Time. There was potential danger in the combination of that Buld spaceship and knowledge of hierions that had been obtained by Angela.

50 years of Star Trek

In my imagination, in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, a copy of Asimov was able to live on into our future. It is fun to imagine that the "Asimov analogue" was able to be transported into our future before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel.

Another pleasant fantasy is that the time traveling Asimov might find his way back to us in 2017.

Next: Gohrlay Clones

More Numbers: 200 years of Frankenstein.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

500 Images

Reconstruction of Miners of Earth
as seen in the Ekcolir Reality

Back in the early 1970 two changes came into my life: my family got a color television and I discovered that cheap printed science fiction novels existed. It was a mind-expanding experience to suddenly see color television programs such as Star Trek that I had only previously seen in black and white.

original cover art by Christopher Foss

My introduction to printed science fiction came in the form of a book that I held in my hands only once: Miners of Earth.

According to Gohrlay, Miners of Earth was made into a television series in the Ekcolir Reality.

In the First Reality, Gohrlay grew up reading Escapist fiction in electronic format. After making friends among the Escapist authors, Gohrlay was able to read some printed books with stories that were not available through the official fiction databases at Observer Base. Those underground stories were hand-written and lavishly illustrated. They awakened Gohrlay's interest in the visual arts.

I've always enjoyed illustrating my own science fiction stories, particularly after I was given conscious access to infites and other sources of information about Deep Time.

During the past few years, it has become my habit to include an image with most of my tweets and I've now reached my 500th image sent out via Twitter. Related: the end of Twitter.

NEXT: science fiction celebrations

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

source

Tweet of the year; 2016...

Clones of Gohrlay

During the past year I've grown comfortable with the idea of multiple "copies" of Gohrlay both as analogues in different Realities and in the form of artificial life versions of her original biological self. Now I've discovered that there are clones of Gohrlay, here in our Reality, and there have been such clones going all the way back to the First Reality.

Worse
What could be worse than making this discovery at such a late date? I've been slowly learning about the life that Gohrlay has led -the Gohrlay that I know. Now, suddenly, the question arises: what have Gohrlay's clones been doing? It seems clear that Gohrlay does not want to discuss this matter, so I'm forced to interpolate from the few comments that she has made. Now I suspect that not only are there clones of Gohrlay, but those clones have often been kept busy "dealing with" clones of me.

Alpha Gohrlay

A whimsical depiction of some teleporting Gohrlay clones. Image credits.
The copyrighted "Mortal Instruments" photographs provided courtesy of Gretchen Byers.

In some sense, there was a competition between the various Gohrlay clones to "develop" the best path into the future. Just before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel, R. Gohrlay selected the "winner", the particular Gohrlay clone who seemed to be best suited to "inherit" all of R. Gohrlay's memories.

source

For lack of better terminology, I'm going to refer to the particular Gohrlay clone who received the R. Gohrlay infites as Alpha Gohrlay. Alpha Gohrlay is apparently very busy and so only occasionally have I been in her presence. There are always some Gohrlay clones available to "fill in" for Alpha Gohrlay when she is too busy to be dealing with me. This might account for the frequent failure of Gohrlay to tell me anything useful about the past: most of the time I am with a Gohrlay clone who is not equipped with R. Gohrlay's vast store of information about past Realities.

the clones of Ivory Fersoni

I've long known that  some clones of Thomas and the Atlantis Clones operated on Earth, so it is not really a surprise that there would be other sets of clones. I suspect that my clones might have been removed from Earth in the recent past, but if there are Gohrlay clones still on Earth then there could also be a few copies of me around.

I'm also left wondering if there have been clones of Gohrlay in previous Realities. I've long suspected that there were multiple copies of Gohrlay in the First Reality, but what about all of the many other Realities such as the Asimov Reality and the Ekcolir Reality?

Related Reading: Zeta -  Yōd

Next: Miners of the Ekcolir Reality

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers