The Mind Clone Network

Creating the Mind Clone Network.

What follows is an account of how I first achieved telepathic contact with the mind clone network during a dream.

The Intruder
I've never been able to control my dreams; I simply drift through my dreams. If I become aware that I am dreaming then I wake up. The events that I experience during my dreams are generally familiar to me and relaxing, mostly jumbled up refractions of my waking experiences. That all changed when an Intruder began appearing in my dreams.

It was probably after the fourth or fifth nocturnal visit from the Intruder that I awoke and remembered having experienced something odd. I thought back to the unusual dream that I'd had when I was 12 years old: my dream of having met God. Actually, that had not been much of a meeting. It was more of a feeling that the energy of the universe had briefly run through me. There had been nothing as mundane as spoken words in that dream.

But now, the Intruder had told me: Listen to me.

The first light of morning was illuminating the swimming pool outside my window. I wondered if I had experienced an hallucination. Zeta was sleeping soundly. I went down the hall, fed the cats and started my exercise routine. Thinking back into my fragmented memories of the past few nights, I felt like I had on several occasions been contacted by the Intruder. The sensation was like déjà vu. I could almost remember thinking about the Intruder the previous morning while I exercised. However, soon my thoughts were back in the world of my daily concerns, particularly the ever-present, ever-growing fact that Zeta, Rylla and Nora were all pregnant.

That was a lot to think about and soon the Intruder slipped from my thoughts. Then as I completed my workout, the content of my dream returned to my conscious thoughts and I began thinking about Ivory Fersoni. I asked myself: Why Ivory?

source

Something about the Intruder reminded me of Ivory. But no, that was not correct. Ivory's infites had been particularly aggressive at making a place for themselves in my mind and all subsequent infites seemed to have had to compete with my memories of Ivory for space in my mind. No, I decided on second thought, this Intruder had the feel of Yōd. A very distant Yōd, signaling to me and trying to attract my attention.

Which was odd. Yōd had never had trouble getting my attention or holding my attention. And I even had dreams about Yōd. Then my phone rang and the day had begun. Again I forgot about the nocturnal Intruder who had been lurking in my dreams.

That night, I was drifting into sleep when Zeta said, "Well, it was nice while it lasted."

I mumbled, "What?"

There is one thing in this world that can perturb Zeta: me thinking about another woman like her sister Yōd when we are in bed. "Almost a month went by without you bringing Yōd into this bed."

I had almost been asleep and it took me a moment to recapture what I had been thinking about. The Intruder! I rolled over and put an arm around Zeta. "I've been having an odd dream. It is as if someone is trying to communicate with me."

I could feel Zeta using our telepathic connection, sifting through my mind, searching for my dream memory. She complained, "It's a jumble. I can't quite make it out..."

For a while I ran my hand over Zeta's abdomen, feeling the ever-expanding bulk of the baby she was gestating. An idea popped into my head and I blurted out, "Do you think-"

Zeta cut me off. "Just stop. I really don't want Yōd in this bed."

"But..." I said no more, but I could not stop myself from thinking. I started to get out of bed.

"Oh, come back here, silly." Zeta grabbed my hand and pulled me back beside her. "Tell me what is on your mind."

I said, "We can talk about it in the morning."

"Tell me."

I tried to frame what I had to say with some background context. "It is all rooted in this mind clone mumbo-jumbo. What exactly is a mind clone?"

"You tell me." Zeta turned and put her big belly between us. "What do the infites that you got from Nora tell you?"

source

"I'm not sure that Nora knows much more than we do. When she was at Observer Base, she heard the term 'mind clone' being used, but that is just a label. Maybe slang. It just seems to mean adapting a developing mind so that it can link telepathically to another mind, making use of the type of technology-assisted telepathy that was originally designed to link replicoids to humans."

Zeta asked, "What does this have to do with Yōd?"

"If Yōd is inside the AR simulator and if she was trying to communicate with us and if these mind clones are a way to use the Bimanoid Interface to link us to people at Observer Base then..."

the AR Simulator

Zeta completed my thought, "...could Yōd use a mind clone to communicate with us?"

I added the last step in the hypothetical chain, "Maybe Yōd is pregnant now, too."

Zeta laughed. "Yōd does not like being pregnant."

I had felt in Yōd's mind her aversion to having a living baby inside her, kicking and squirming. "But she did say that she would be happy to be the mother of Azynov's child."

Zeta raised her head off of her pillow and rested it in her hand. "You know, the AR simulator might be the perfect place for Yōd to have a baby. If she and Azynov are living in the far future of that Reality, they could gestate a baby in an artificial womb."

For a while we were quiet. I was wondering about how the Asimov Reality Simulator worked. Finally I asked Zeta, "It is a virtual reality simulation, right? Could Yōd actually have a baby while she's in there?"

Zeta explained, "It is just like Nora. She's an artificial life-form. If you can't detect any difference between Nora and a human, do you ask how it is possible for her to have a baby?"

Nobody had ever explained to me how it was possible to simulate an entire past Reality of Earth's Reality Chain. "Do you mean that Yōd is no longer human? She was converted into an artificial life-form when she went into the AR Simulator?"

Zeta asked me, "What about me? I was not born on Earth. When I was teleported to this world, a copy of me was made. Does that make me an artificial life-form?"

As usual, I found myself in a trap: meandering through my ocean of ignorance. "I suppose I can't even prove that we are not living inside a simulation."

"So don't worry about Yōd. Now, let's get some sleep. I'm tired."

Zeta was soon asleep, but I was thinking about the possibility that Yōd was trying to contact me. Maybe there was something that I could do to help. Finally, I fell asleep.

Two Intruders
Then there were two women there, invading my dream.

Woman 1: He's going into REM.

Woman 2: He noticed us.

Woman 1: Don't get excited, now... you'll wake yourself. I've been trying to link to Earth. You and Rylla finally noticed.

I was in a dream state. My thoughts were sluggish and my senses were not functioning. The active part of my brain was providing me with a dream experience. I was in a low-fidelity dream world, dominated by the pressure of Yōd's thoughts, and the thoughts of others, all mingling with mine. I asked: It is you, Yōd?

Yōd: You know my mind pattern.

Yōd's mind pattern

I could certainly sense Yōd's mind, the pattern of which I knew from back before she had departed from Earth. But there was more in my mind than just Yōd's thoughts. I felt like I was being watched. Simultaneously, I had a wavering image of Yōd in my thoughts.

Yōd told me: I finally realized that I'd have to suppress Zeta's thoughts in order to connect to you. I had to recruit Rylla to do the work of pushing Zeta out of the way.

I wondered: Out of the way?

Zeta must be out of her body... she is off visiting with Georgy, now. This mind clone network is fluid... push on it here and it bulges out there.

In my dream, I seemed to be able to feel Yōd. I could feel her bulging abdomen. I imagined that I could feel her arms around me. I had to ask: Speaking of bulges... are you pregnant, too?

How else could I join the network?

source

And you are still in the AR Simulator?

Yes, this is now my home. I'm quite happy here with Azynov. And besides, there does not seem to be any way to get out. We are both trapped here.

I was just about to ask Yōd if she had made any progress towards learning about the origins of the Ek'col or the tryp'At when I awoke. Zeta was there beside me. We kissed and as I came up from my dream state, I sensed that there was something odd about Zeta. I felt my heart go cold as she seemed to slip into unconsciousness. "Zeta? Zeta!" I grabbed her arm and shook her. I checked her breathing and her pulse. I was starting to panic and then she woke up again.

Zeta Returns
Zeta asked, "What is it?"

I held her in my arms and tried to think logically. "Were you with Georgy?"

Zeta replied, "I was... inside Georgy. I was sharing the consciousness of her baby..."

"You what?"

"And I could communicate with Georgy. It was like a dream, but she was telling me about how she met Rylla and.... I saw it in her mind. How she died."

I was still on edge and upset. "Rylla is dead?"

"No, silly, Rylla was here." Zeta explained, "Her consciousness was inside of my body. I had to kick her out of my body to get back here to you."

I was too surprised to keep talking. This is too weird. I realized that as I awoke from my dream of Yōd, I had been kissing Rylla.

Zeta could follow my thoughts. She was more interested in what I had learned from Yōd than what Rylla had been doing while her roving mind had been inside Zeta's body. You were right... Yōd is part of the mind clone network, too.

source

I wondered: Why didn't Yōd just contact you?

Zeta replied, "We have to face the possibility that this whole mind clone network has been assembled just to link you to Yōd. Your tryp'At brain may be the only remaining data channel by which Earthlings can retrieve information from the past Realities of Deep Time."

I asked, "Does Georgy know what is going on?"

Zeta shrugged. "I don't know. Her baby is learning Georgy's mind pattern, but the thoughts of a fetus are rather like a dream. Maybe the link to Georgy's baby will get stronger as the mind clones grow and develop." After a minute of silence Zeta added, "Don't worry about Rylla. She was mostly inside our baby and her memories of being here in this bed will only be dream memories."

Next: dead aliens

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers