The Last Infites

1973

In another blog post, I previously explained how I came to be aware of the most recent swarm of infites that were provided to me. Below is the rest of that story....

Teleportation

Star King (1978)
cover art by Gino D'Achille

Also, I'm still caught up in my 2018 celebration of the life of Jack Vance. Back at the end of the 1970s I discovered the stories of Jack Vance. When I read Vance's novel Trullion, I was hooked on his stories that are set in a future time when humans have spread out from Earth to thousands of distant exoplanets.

Lucky for me, by the time I began reading Vance's novels, the DAW editions of Star King and The Killing Machine were already in book stores.

1973

Trullion was first published in the March and June 1973 issues of Amazing Science Fiction. but I never saw those magazines. Later, I bought a copy of the 1973 Balantine Books edition of Trullion with cover art by Gene Szafran.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Also published by Vance in 1973 was his story "Rumfuddle". For that story about teleportation, Vance adopted an approach to science fiction story telling that I generally despise. One dude, working in his lab, invents teleportation technology. Not only can this teleporter send people to distant locations, it can also send you into the past.

The power of this super-duper teleporter to send Earthlings through space and time is complicated by the fact that Vance's imagined universe is a multiverse in which it is possible to select a precise place and time as your destination, but you always end up in an alternate universe. Your only hope of reaching the same universe twice was to constantly keep open a teleportation gate connecting your home universe to each newly visited universe.

Ernest Rumduddle Award

According to Yōd, in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jaqy wrote a novel called Rumduddle, that was a parody of science fiction stories that made use of teleporter technology. Rumduddle was self-referential and featured Sam and his friends who were also writers. The story chronicled their adventures after teleportation technology was invented. Sam and his writer friends took their families to live on a parallel Earth, but they frequently traveled back in time, inserting new stories they had written into the timeline of Earth, all as part of a contest to win the Ernest Rumduddle Award, an annual award that was the most prestigious prize for story writers.

In Rumduddle, time travel was only possible into the past, and it involved creating a "duplicate copy" of the time traveler. Yōd's replicoid read a copy of Rumduddle in the library of the Writers Block. According to Yōd, another feature of Rumduddle that was not in Jack Vance's "Rumfuddle" was a new strategy for  interplanetary teleportation that solved the problem of teleported people ending up materialized inside distant stars. The effect of gravitational distortion on the accuracy of long-range teleportation could be overcome by "phase shifting" the atoms of a teleported person. Yōd claims that in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jaqy was aware of the existence of sedrons and the "phase shifting" described in Rumduddle was actually inspired by Sam's knowledge of the the existence of "copies" of people that were composed of sedronic matter (zeptites). While there was no practical way to achieve long-distance teleportation of people, artificial lifeforms composed of sedrons could be teleported even through the high gravity fields at the center of the galaxy.

_____________ previously ________________

From the Archives of the
Writers Block by Lydya Olivano
Original cover art by
David Hardy.

Zeta and I were driving home together. I was impatiently watching each mile of the highway glide under our wheels. Zeta reached over and took hold of my right hand, prying it off of the steering wheel. I sensed that she was trying hard to look into my memories, but we only had a weak telepathic link that allowed us to share our completely formed verbal thoughts. There is something more.... She asked, "What did Yōd tell you while I was asleep?"

I squeezed Zeta's hand reassuringly. "The main thing she wanted to tell me was that there are some information nanites waiting for me back home... what she called a gift from R. Gohrlay." I continued via our telepathic connection: Somehow a second copy of Yōd was involved.

Zeta asked, "You mean Yōd's replicoid?"

"No. An actual copy of Yōd."

Zeta nodded. "Then it is true." She stated with full conviction: "There is a teleportation-created copy of Yōd."

I was certain that a correction was needed. "Well, there was." During my final brief telepathic contact with Yōd, I had been able to look deeply into her mind and see that there were two overlapping versions of Yōd's mind there, sharing the same physical substrate. I asked Zeta, "How is it possible for two copies of a person to be merged together?"

For a minute Zeta thought about that problem. Another mile of highway went by. Finally she said, "For we Gohrlay clones, the easiest way would be if the memory pattern of one copy was reduced to infites. We were designed to smoothly take up infites into our Phari endosymbionts. That trick provided us with a major part of our education and training."

"You are lucky." I complained, "My zeptite endosymbiont allows me to access infites, but it is not a simple process for me to process and absorb information from infites. For me it is not a natural process... it is hard work."

"Yes, I was remotely monitoring you back when you absorbed the Thomas and Izhiun infites. I know that almost broke your mind." Zeta suggested, "Maybe it would be safer if I took these new infites on-board." I could sense an unspoken comment in her mind: You are not getting any younger.

I muttered, "Ya, I'm an old man."

Zeta laughed at me. "You are a dirty old man. I can sense that your biggest regret over Yōd's departure from Earth is that you never got to spend a night alone with her."

I laughed. There was no question that Yōd had tantalized me with her beauty for many years, but there had never been a time when we were anything other than collaborators in our shared search for knowledge and a better understanding of human history. I corrected Zeta, "No, we had many nights together, doing what we did best... piecing together the mysteries of the past."

Zeta pressed her point, "Well, for the first few years with her in our house I feared that you liked her more than me."

"And I've apologized repeatedly for that. You know that I could not trust you when you tried to impersonate my wife... my first wife. There was a long, painful period of time when I thought that your sister Alpha might return to Earth. Eventually I realized that was not going to happen and by then I had fallen in love with you."

"Still, every day I could see your eyes and how you looked at Yōd and I was also inside your mind. I know what you were thinking every time you saw her."

I shook my head in wonder. "I still don't understand why she worked so hard to... oh, well... I don't know what she was trying to accomplish. She seemed to enjoy showing off her body. And I did not understand why you put up with it."

Zeta sighed. "It is probably best if you don't know."

I tugged on her hand. "Tell me. I know that she was trying to monitor my mind and determine if I could get around Irhit's block and regain my access the Interface, but that doesn't explain..."

Zeta finally explained part of the mystery that had been her sister Yōd. "When she arrived on Earth, she saw how you barely tolerated my presence in your house. She quickly resolved to make you like her."

I was still puzzled. "But after I accepted you as my new wife, Yōd continued trying to... no... I still don't get it."

We fell silent for a few minutes. Zeta said, "Really, it began long ago with R. Gohrlay's obsession..."

For a good ten minutes we continued along the highway, both of us thinking about the ancient robot, R. Gohrlay. I've never been able to comprehend how even a robotic mind could last through the millions of years of time that R. Gohrlay traversed. What was important was the end point: R. Gohrlay had won for we humans a chance to reach the stars.

Finally Zeta again spoke, "When she learned that the biological Gohrlay still existed, R. Gohrlay decided that Gohrlay would have descendants who would live on Earth... descendants who would see a future of human exploration of the galaxy. Later, she changed... after the Huaoshy put an end to time travel and R. Gohrlay lost her telepathic powers. By then it was too late. My sister and you had produced three wonderful children, but that was no longer of importance to R. Gohrlay."

It was mind-boggling that R. Gohrlay's million year struggle had come down to the biological Gohrlay and I having children. It seemed crazy that R. Gohrlay had worked so long and hard to make that happen and then... What? Just lose interest? I asked Zeta, "Why not? What had changed?"

Zeta shrugged. "I'm not sure. I can only speculate."

"Maybe the new infites will provide an explanation."

Zeta suggested, "Well, it is certain that R. Gohrlay had seen the future and that must have influenced her plans. Then when the tryp'At took control of Observer Base, R. Gohrlay must have realized that she had seen a different Reality, and alternative future that did not match the Reality that was actually unfolding. All bets were off."

"I suppose she had become lazy and spoiled. After millions of years of controlling the future, suddenly everything was out of her control."

"Yes. She could only control her own actions and there was no more advantage for R. Gohrlay in having a positronic brain."

I thought of Isaac Asimov's stories about robots who wanted to abandon their positronic brains and become human. "Not even immortality?"

"Immortality in a future that she could not control? That was probably the worst existence that she could imagine." Zeta was looking off towards the far horizon. She said quietly, "so,  R. Gohrlay totally changed her goals."

I asked, "To what?"

"Again, I can only guess."

Several more miles flew by. Finally I asked, "What is your guess?"

Zeta shrugged. "I really don't know."

"You mist know more than I do."

"I never studied R. Gohrlay and after I came to Earth, I was cut off from all sources of information... except for Yōd."

I thought that might be all I would get from Zeta about R. Gohrlay, but then after a long pause she said, "R. Gohrlay seemed to give up on Earth and her attention went elsewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

I had an image of another world that I had snatched from Yōd's mind. "Yōd mentioned another planet, a world called Cynk."

Zeta asked, "Sink? Like a kitchen sink?"

"I saw the name in Yōd's mind. It is c-y-n-k."

Zeta shook her head. "I've never heard that name." After a moment she added, "I can tell that you are thinking about Ivory."

"Yōd said that Ivory is on Cynk and that she will never return to Earth."

 Zeta now squeezed my hand and smiled. "That's a relief. I've never been able to compete with your memories of Ivory."

"Well, she was the third source of the infites that are inside my head. In a very real sense, I can't get Ivory out of my thoughts."

"And now you are eager to take up infites from Yōd."

I chuckled uneasily. "I have no choice. I must know what are in these new infites."

"Even if it damages your brain?"

"Why should there be a problem now? This will be the 4th set of infites that I process. I'm used to the deleterious effects; I know what to expect from absorbing infites."

"But Yōd had memories that her brain was programmed to not share with you. If that conflicting data structure gets dumped into your mind... who knows what could happen."

"I must know what is in those infites. Your worries don't scare me."

"What if you take into your brain an information editing virus? It might erase memories that you now have. Truths about the history of Humanity that you have struggled to learn might be edited out of your mind."

"That's a risk I have always faced. I can't live my life avoiding sources of new information because of fears that I might learn too much. No, as soon as we get home, I'm going to access those infites. The thought fragments I saw in Yōd's mind tell me that Cynk was an important Phari world. I've imagined that our only chance to learn about the Phari is through the information content of the AR Simulator, but that path towards the truth may be a dead end. I need to know what Yōd learned about the Phari while she was on Cynk."

The rest of our trip home was dominated by speculation about what was happening at Observer Base. I was hoping that the Yōd infites might provide me with Mahasvin's mind pattern and allow me to establish a link to Observer Base.

After the long drive we finally arrived home. I went to Yōd's bedroom and immediately I felt dizzy. I sat on the floor and tried to pick up a single thread in the new information avalanche that was now in my mind. The Yōd infites "unlocked" some of my early memories. I became aware of my mother teaching me to communicate with Irhit via the Bimanoid Interface. In those old memories I was very young, maybe four years old.

It had been important that my young brain be shown how to use the Interface. Once that had been accomplished, a set of false memories had been inserted into my brain by infites. Those were memories of me with my mother, saying prayers. I had always resented the fact that I had been indoctrinated into saying prayers to an imaginary god. As I grew up, only the resentment remained and now, with the help of Yōd's infites, I realized that I had never actually been forced to pray. I mumbled, "How much of the memories of my life is false and never happened?"

Zeta was holding on to my arms. She could sense the turmoil in my thoughts. She asked, "What is happening in your mind?"

Too much was happening for me to explain. The fact that I had been trained to use the Interface by my mother gave me a confidence boost, but I could sense that it would take me years to sort through all of the information I had just received from Yōd. Sadly, there was no obvious solution to the problem of how I might telepathically connect to people such as Mahasvin at Observer Base. I muttered to Zeta, "This is not fun." I was very dizzy and I tried to vomit, but thankfully there was nothing in my stomach.

I stretched out on the floor and closed my eyes. I quickly reviewed the memories of the Yōd copy that had been teleported to Cynk. At the end of that memory chain, Yōd was teleported inside Many Sails. I said, "Not just one copy."

Zeta was holding a cold cloth to my forehead. She asked, "Another Yōd?"

The copy of Yōd who has spent time on Cynk was duplicated again. One of these copies was put into stasis for the trip to Tar'tron. The other entered into a kind of virtual reality existence within the Sedronic Domain. She had been "phase shifted" into sedronic matter. From her place in the Sedronic Domain, she could listen to the discussion that Many Sails had with R. Gohrlay as they departed from Cynk. Then that sedronic copy of Yōd was teleported to Observer Base and merged into the zeptite endosymbiont inside of the copy of Yōd who had lived on Earth for several years.

source
(Sedronite, image credits)

I opened my eyes and managed to sit up with Zeta's help. I said, "Now I understand. R. Gohrlay is on her way to visit the home galaxy of the Huaoshy. Many Sails is taking her...."

Zeta asked, "What happened to Yōd?"

"Our copy of Yōd took up a set of infites that contained all the memories of the Yōd copy that went to Cynk. Included in those infites was the code signal that allow people to enter into the AR Simulator. Yōd is gone. She's with Azynov inside the Simulator. They won't be coming back."

Related Reading: 1) Yōd's first visit to Earth: My Yōd
2) This time for sure: Nora's infites
Next: a SIHA nomination before we vanish

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