Dream of Trinity

Figure 1. Storybook cover by Gemini.
Tyhry imagines meeting Oppenheimer.

 Below on this page is Chapter 6 of the science fiction story titled "The Trinity Intervention". At the end of Chapter 5, 8ME (Zeta) was beginning to describe her experiences from 1936 to 1944 when she lived out the end of the life of Jean Tatlock. 

As can be seen in Claude's first draft of Chapter 6 (see the bottom part of my previous blog post), Claude wanted to explore why Jean Tatlock died in 1944. However, that was irrelevant to the story that I wanted to tell.

Also, when I edited and re-wrote Claude's draft of Chapter 6, I ended up with almost 10,000 words. I split that into four chapters (Chapters 6 - 9).

Chapter 6 of "The Trinity Intervention" (Chapter 1)(Chapter 2)(Chapter 3)(Chapter 4)(Chapter 5)

Zeta settled fully into the fluffy cushions of the sofa, her eyes distant with memory. "The Tatlock Intervention began in 1936, but it took me two years to understand that Oppenheimer's brain was gradually learning how to access my memories. I understood that by 1938." Zeta looked at Eddy and told him, "I want to take you to the year 1939. That's after everything crystallized and I finally understood what was happening between us. Robert never understood, but he accommodated himself to the fact of it."

Zeta and Tyhry by Gemini.

Eddy leaned forward in his chair. "When you say 'us' what you mean is Jean Tatlock and Robert Oppenheimer."

"Yes, in 1939 I was living as Jean Tatlock." Zeta's voice was firm. "Just as I had once been Philippa Chaucer, Eleanor de Welles, Damoiselle Marguerite and Amy Catherine Robbins. Each identity wasn't a disguise I wore—it was me, living that life, experiencing human relationships in a particular time and place that was defined by my time travel mission."

Tyhry asked softly, "Mom, can you show us? What Jean looked like?"

Zeta smiled. "Of course." She stood and closed her eyes. For a moment nothing happened. Then her body began to shimmer, the femtobot components rearranging themselves at the molecular level. Her height decreased slightly. Her dark curls lightened to brown, reshaping into the softer waves of 1930s styling. Her features shifted—the same essential beauty but with different proportions, a different presence.

Zeta and the RSS interface.

When she opened her eyes, they were a deeper brown. The woman standing before them wore Zeta's modern clothes, but the face was Jean Tatlock's. Zeta carefully watched her daughter's reaction to the transformation she had witnessed.

Tyhry muttered, "Mom... it is all true... you can just... change yourself..."

"It's one of the features of being an Eloy, composed of programmable femtobots rather than biological cells." Jean—or Zeta wearing Jean's form—gestured at her transformed body. "The spatial organization of my femtobots is under my control. I can reconfigure my appearance, my height, even my internal organ arrangements if necessary."

Eddy asked, "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"Maybe Sedruth knows." Zeta suspected that the replicoids generated by the Reality Simulation System were a type that lacked the ability to alter the behavior of their constituent femtobots. "The earliest types of replicoids in the future began as mere femtobot copies of particular human beings, but over thousands of years, the discipline of femtobot programming developed to the point where more sophisticated artificial life-forms of the far future such as we Eloy and the Grendels had complete control over our physical form."

8ME living as Zeta Watson.

Eddy carefully examined his wife's altered form. He wondered: is she still my wife? "For the past forty-five years, I never saw you change your physical form, but then the day came when you arrived in the company of Manny and you were in your role as 8ME, my time travel companion. 8ME... the way you moved -as 8ME- reminded me of you... Zeta. But my poor imagination, although lubricated by decades of science fictional fantasizing... I could not make the conceptual leap. I suppose I did not want to believe the truth that was in front of me."

Zeta laughed, "How could you have guessed. Give me some credit for my acting skills!" 

Eddy mused. "I give you all credit due to you, Zeta... 8ME... but I also suspect that Manny was playing with my mind. Manny had sent me on a mission and she did not want me distracted by irrelevant details. You told me the truth at the time. We were in a big hurry! We were almost out of time. Asimov's life had been perturbed. We had to repair the timeline and it had to be done before the Final Reality arrived. The Huaoshy had set a deadline for the Dimensional Shift and I could not be given the luxury of knowing the truth about my wife. Not until later." Eddy told Tyhry, "I was not allowed to actually see the truth until now, along with you."

"Can you become anyone?"

"You had known me for 45 years," Zeta said gently. "During which I was maintaining the fiction that I was purely biological. However, you subconsciously learned to recognize my habits and patterns of moving."

"What are the limits? What are the constraints on femtobot re-programming?" Eddy watched the motion of Marda's long legs as she seemed to dance and almost float in the space around Zeta. Watching the sway and tumble of Marda's beautiful hair, Eddy thought of Manny and the great powers that the bumpha had. Marda circled around Zeta, examining the intriguing truth of her physical transformation with fascination. "Can you become anyone? Could you turn yourself into a copy of me right now?"

"If I took the time to fully deploy my probe femtobots inside you and collect what are essentially detailed scans of your body structure, yes."

Marda and Qua by Mr. Wombo.

Marda seemed surprised. She asked ingeniously, "Are you telling us that you could scan me but you never have?"

"Humans can't imagine what it is like to be Eloy." Zeta shrugged. "I'll try to explain the truth of it in simple terms. In your case, Marda, you grew dramatically during this past year so that you are now even taller than Eddy, but year by year during your childhood growth, I've only ever had reason to perform what I'll describe as casual scans of your body, with just enough detail for easy recognition of you."

"What?" Marda laughed. "I was not important? Not worthy of your complete attention?"

Zeta imagined that Marda was mocking her. "Sure I could have lavished more attention on you, but you were little more than a play-mate for Tyhry." Zeta looked at Tyhry, as if making sure that her daughter knew how much more she meant to Zeta than her cousin ever had. "When dealing with those human individuals who were to become hosts for my femtozoan, the human bodies that I've actually inhabited, I had to obtain complete scans of their physical structure and then I could efficiently replace the biological body with femtobot components, achieving a kind of immortality. Think about it. While using the body of a human being, I could not risk a sudden illness or accidental death, not while I was in the middle of my mission.”

Figure 2. Marda.

Eddy mused, “And Zeta began as a biological embryo, but then...”

“Eddy, by the time you met me, Zeta was completely composed of femtobots; all of the biological components had long since been lost and replaced by femtobots. Of course, with your limited human senses, you believed me to be biological.”

Eddy thought about the golden hair of his time travel companion, 'Leah Cole' of the Daily Review-Star. Eddy looked at the bright blond hair of Marda. Eddy laughed nervously. “What about Marda? Do a detailed scan now. Is she human or is she... was she... what about when I say her last, what about last year... was she human then?”

Zeta looked and Marda. Zeta felt certain she knew what a scan would reveal. But now activated the deep scan process and her scanner femtobots reflexively deep scanned Marda. “What are you suggesting, Eddy? Of course she is composed of femtobots, after having using the Reality Simulation System. But before that, of course she was biological... until this week, I'd only ever detected the femtobots of her femtozoan inside her body, just as for all other humans on Earth.”

Tyhry

Eddy laughed in relief. “I did not want to be fooled twice. I had begun to suspect that Marda might be one of Manny's agents, pretending to be human and positioned close to me, so as to infiltrate our family and spy on us.”

Marda laughed and told Eddy, “I've noticed the way you have been looking at me. I felt flattered, excited by your obvious interest in me. I like the way you stare at me! But you gaze upon me with suspicion in your eyes.” Marda turned to Zeta and asked, “Back in the 1930s, when you were existing as Jean Tatlock, did you ever worry that you might encounter one of Nyrtia's time travel agents?”

"Yes, of course I did." Zeta nodded. “When I realized that Oppenheimer had gained access to my memories, my first guess was that he was one of Nyrtia's time travel agents, a Grendel, like Qua.”

Marda pressed Zeta further on that point, “But you scanned Oppenheimer's body.”

Zeta explained, “I came to know Robert quite intimately. Based on what I knew at that time, including a deep scan of his body, I assumed that he was human. I imagined that I knew him well enough to make a definitive assessment.” Zeta looked at Eddy and added, "I suppose I might have lacked sufficient imagination. It is possible that I was tricked. Eddy, I want you to make your own evaluation of Robert."

Listening and Learning.

Qua had been sitting in a corner of the room, listening and learning. She had her own past experience of being deployed in the field and suddenly confronting one Manny's time travel agents during the Time Travel War. Now she asked Zeta, “And what about me? What do your scans of my body tell you? Would you like to get intimate with me?”

Zeta laughed. "You are a real cutie. I would not mend getting to know you, as intimately as you are willing to let me." Zeta stopped teasing Qua and replied more to the point. “I've scanned you. You consist of femtobot components, through and through, artfully arrange into the form of a beautiful woman.”

"As I have scanned you, Zeta." Qua laughed and then pressed Zeta on that point. “But as an Eloy, you have always known that Nyrtia has long been the leader of the zeptite robots.”

The Qua Intervention.

"I apologize for not having paid close enough attention. I could not read all of your silly science fiction stories." Tyhry gazed apologetically at her father and continued, “Forgive me, but I don't get this. Daddy, in your science fiction stories, you have always described the bumpha as being composed of zeptites and you always depicted Nyrtia as being a probot, an artificial life-form that was composed of femtobot components.” Now Tyhry placed her hands on Qua's shoulders. “Qua, you appear to be a beautiful woman, but what are you, really?”

Qua explained, “I'm an artificial life-form from the far future, what is called a Grendel. We Grendels served as Nyrtia's time travel agents through all the long centuries of the Time Travel War.”

Tyhry asked Qua, “Can you telepathically read my mind?”

"I'm sorry to say this, Tyhry, but your telepathic powers are pathetic." Qua grinned and put her arms around Tyhry. “Right now I am forming a synapex link to your brain. Thank you for allowing me this intimacy of contact. I've been studying you and trying to imagine what Manny has planned for your future.”

Synapex linkage: Qua and Tyhry.

Eddy blurted out, “Synapex!” He looked at Zeta. “When we went to the year 1947, you were repeatedly using a synapex link between our bodies so that you could provide me with information. That's how I received a copy of your amazing report to Manny on your Intervention that started in 1340, in England. It was through our shared synapex link that you allowed be to understand your mission to bring into existence a literature of science fiction, in English.”

Qua explained, “Synapex technology can provide artificial life forms like an Eloy or a Grendel with a direct physical connection into the nervous system of a human being.” Qua gazed intently into Tyhry's eyes and told her, “For example, I can now see in you thoughts that you are quite eager to have your own adventure inside the Reality Simulation System. You hunger for what you imagine will be immortality as a femtobot replicoid.”

Pepper the cat was not happy to see Qua holding onto Tyhry. Pepper began emitting his piercing meows of complaint.

Qua and Tyhry by Mr. Wombo.

Tyhry snuggled against Qua's soft and sexy body. She admitted, “After seeing that silly movie about Oppenheimer, I'd like to know the truth. What really happened during the Manhattan Project? How did a weirdo like Oppenheimer become the director of Los Alamos labs? Is that actual history? It seems crazy, like one of daddy's goofy science fiction stories.”

Edy was somewhat uncomfortable as he watched his daughter seemingly enjoy being held by the mysterious secret agent, Qua. "I agree, my dear." Eddy had long regretted the fact that his daughter had no respect for his abilities as a science fiction story teller. Putting his resentments to the side, Eddy had to admit that Tyhry's crtical observation was valid. “It is interesting that in my Exodemic Fictional Universe, Manny always comes out on top and defeats Nyrtia, precisely because Manny is composed of zeptites, a more sophisticated form of artificial life than femtobots. But Qua is telling us that it is really the other way around.”

Qua told Eddy, “Based on what I see in Tyhry's mind, I now realize that I should examine your blog.” Every time that Qua spoke, Pepper emitted loud meows. Qua scowled at Pepper and then glanced at Zeta and asked, “It must have been you who supplied Eddy with his knowledge of femtobots and Zeptites. Manny had carefully positioned you to remain close to Eddy for decades. What exactly was your mission? Did you intentionally mislead him about the nature of bumpha nanites?”

"No." Zeta shook her head. “I functioned as a conduit, passing along to Eddy whatever infites Manny wanted him to receive. Most of my work then came when I tried to help Eddy make sense of the artificial memories that had been created in his brain by Manny's infites. I certainly did worry that Manny was over-loading Eddy's limited cognitive capacity."

Eddy protested, "If my cognition is so limited, then why did Manny select me?"

"Sorry if I bruise you ego with my bluntness, my love. Don't take what I say personally. No human could have done it better... piece together a coherent and self-consistent universe from the disjointed clues that Manny gave you within the constraints of all the temporal paradoxes that swirled around you." Zeta told Qua, "I suppose Eddy made mistakes, but he wrote his stories as best he could, even if he had things backwards, like saying Manny used zeptites, when in fact it was Nyrtia who was the master of zeptite technology.”

"Tell me." Qua asked Tyhry, “What do you know about zeptites?”

"Very little." Tyhry admitted, “Not much. I never took daddy's stories seriously. I did not study and analyze them, not like Marda.”

Qua pulled herself away from Tyhry, breaking her synapex linkage to Tyhry's mind. Now free of Qua, Tyhry picked up Pepper and tried to comfort him and show him that she had not been harmed by Qua.

Eddy admitted, "I can't really remember details why I decided to depict Manny and the bumpha as being more technologically advanced than Nyrtia's probots. That story-writing choice was made long ago. It had to do with the way that the Huaoshy altered the Dimensional Structure of the universe and put an end to time travel. I needed a way to continue to depict Many Sails as being able to travel between the stars, even between galaxies! So I depicted Manny as using the most sophisticated type of nanotechnolgy, zeptites."

Now Qua approached Marda. "I've probed Tyhry's mind." Now Qua told Marda, “Marda, I suspect you know that Tyhry has long been simultaneously amused and jealous of the fact that you are Eddy's most ardent fan. Tell me, Marda, what do you know about zeptites?”

Marda and Eddy by Gemini.

Marda threw her hands out from her sides. “There is so much to say! Zeptites really are the most sophisticated form of nanotechnology. Zeptites are composed of sedrons, so an artificial intelligence composed of zeptites might be a trillion times smaller than a femtozoan.” Marda told Eddy, “I was so very impressed when you started including femtozoans in you science fiction stories about a year ago.”

Eddy laughed, “I like to think that femtozoans are one of my best literary inventions! It almost hurts to now realize that I did not invent them in my imagination. My body is now composed of femtobots. I'm almost willing to believe that I have always an invisibly small femtozoan inside my body.”

Marda giggled. “Femtozoans were great fun and you included them in several stories. But first there were zeptozoans.”

Eddy moaned, “That was unfortunate name. Too many Zs... 'zeptozoan'... it never rolled off my tongue easily.”

Marda reminded Eddy, “About a year ago, you wrote in your blog, and I'll quote: 'what if femtobot and zeptite endosymbionts can also have their own artificial lives as femtozoans and zeptozoans?' However, you never wrote a single story that included zeptozans.”

Eddy laughed and tried to remember all the stories he had written about artificial life. "Marda, you have a remarkable memory."

"So I've been told."

Eddy nodded. “It is true..." He could not remember by he had deliberately written about femtozoans and not zeptozoans. "It is almost as if I had a mental block... as if something prevented me from writing about zeptozoans, even while I was completely free to tell stories about femtozoans. In retrospect, zeptozoans would have been much cooler.”

Qua pressed that point. Thinking out-loud, she said, “If you were blocked from writing such stories then who could have done that? Zeta claims not to have treated you like a puppet.”

Eddy replied, “I suppose it had to be either Manny or Nyrtia.” Eddy turned to his computer and activated the interface for the Reality Simulation System. “Sedruth, was Oppenheimer one of Nyrtia's time travel agents, equipped with a zeptozoan?”

"Is Nyrtia available?"

The Sedruth entity replied, “I'm the only form of life that could reasonably wear the label 'zeptozoan', but I prefer another term that you coined: sedronite."

Eddy smiled. "Yes, of course. As ugly as 'zeptozoan' is, 'sedronite' is just the opposite, it is beautiful terminology. But don't mess with me, Sedruth. You never answered my question about Oppenheimer.

 Sedruth told Eddy, "Don't treat me like an oracle, like some chatbot. Don't be lazy. You humans need to think and figure things out for yourselves."

Eddy complained to the Sedruth entity, "It seemed like a simple enough question. Imagine if Oppenheimer really was one of Nyrtia's time travel agents, and equipped with a zeptozoan. If so, maybe 8ME would have been fooled and would have failed to recognize Oppenheimer as a secret time travel agent, deployed by Nyrtia in the 20th century."

Sedruth enthusiastically said, "Let me be your guide to past Realities! Eddy, are you now ready to visit Oppenheimer? You can ask him about zeptozoans... go right to the horse's mouth, so to speak. I sense that Zeta wants to give you the opportunity to speak to Robert. And you should. In fact-”

Qua interrupted the loquacious Sedruth. “Is Nyrtia available?”

Sedruth replied, “Nyrtia is still inside the Reality Simulation System. Do you think she'll be startled when she realizes that you have been here, waiting for her? This situation reminds me of an ancient Hua legend, what we can call the Legend of Quyn. Quyn was an important early developer of nanotechnology in the First Reality and legend says that-”

“Shut up, Sedruth. Let's stay focused!" Zeta paused, as if waiting to see if Sedruth would say anything else, but the room remained quiet. "Here's what I propose. We enter the Reality Simulation System and go to a specific moment in July 1939. My father—Jean's father, John Tatlock—had remarried in that year, to Elizabeth Goodrich. The Tatlocks had a beach house on the coast. That summer, my father invited Oppenheimer to spend a weekend there. John wanted to meet the man his daughter had been seeing."

"Here is what I propose..."

"You want us to crash a family gathering?" Eddy asked.

"Not crash, just arrive early. I was delayed in getting out of town until that afternoon, having gotten stuck at the hospital with a difficult psychiatric patient. I didn't arrive at the beach house until late, after six o'clock. If we enter the Simulation and arrive around four, as I had originally planned, then we'll have two hours before the 1939 version of me shows up. Eddy, that will give you time to talk with Oppenheimer, to understand his state of mind during the period when he was struggling to make sense of the telepathic information he was receiving from me. You can explore your idea that he was a Grendel. I understand why you might imagine that Robert used a zeptozoan to access my memories, but in this case I believe your science fiction imagination is going too far."

"What is all this blather?" Qua laughed. “What is a zeptozoan?”

Eddy admitted, “I invented the idea of a zeptozoan. It is an imaginary form of artificial life.”

"Whatever." Qua giggled. "This is the first I've ever heard of such a thing. I assure you, Eddy, I have a femtozoan, just like any other advanced artificial life-form of the future. Yes, my body uses zeptites for a few special tasks, like linking into the time machine on Erno. The fact that I have some powerful zeptite tools is why I'm called a zeptite robot.”

Tyhry put a hand on Eddy's shoulder, excited by the prospect of becoming an immortal femtobot replicoid. "I'll get to meet J. Robert Oppenheimer? The actual Oppenheimer?"

"A simulation of him, based on complete femtozoan recordings of his experiences that are available to the Reality Simulation System," Zeta corrected. "But yes, effectively the real Oppenheimer. Every memory, every thought pattern, every personality quirk—it's all there in the data, waiting to be instantiated as a simulation of Robert Oppenheimer, the famous physicist." Zeta giggled. "An Oppenheimer with a zeptozoan, if Eddy's imagination is to be trusted."

"You can all go into the Simulation." Qua stated her preference. "I should stay here. My presence would be difficult to explain."

Sedruth's thoughts telepathically entered all of their minds: Qua could go along, using the form of a microscopic artificial life form. The simulated humans of 1939 would never even notice her presence.

Qua declined. “My duty is to report to Nyrtia. I'll remain here and Sedruth can let me know as soon as Nyrtia exits from the Reality Simulation System.”

END OF CHAPTER 6

I provided Gemini with backstory information for “The Trinity Intervention”, summaries of the 5 chapters of "English Time" and the full text (Chapter 1 - 9 of “The Trinity Intervention”.

Me: Process the file that I just uploaded. Create a science fiction storybook for adults with illustrations of events from Chapter 6 of the science fiction story “The Trinity Intervention”. Make the illustrations in the storybook photo-realistic and they should resemble full color high resolution movie stills.

 Gemini: I've created a science fiction storybook for adults that covers events from Chapter 6 of "The Trinity Intervention," featuring photo-realistic illustrations resembling high-resolution movie stills.

Sadly, Gemini got confused and created a rather telegraphic "storybook" with scenes taken from Chapter 5 to Chapter 9. I used some of those Gemini-generated storybook images to illustrate parts of Chapter 6, 7, 8 and 9 of "The Trinity Intervention". I also used WOMBO Dream to make some of the images on this page, including the one that is shown to the right and Figure 2, above on this page.

I also tried having Gemini create another illustrated storybook with only the text of Chapter 6 (calling that story fragment "The Trinity Dream". Gemini generated images such as the one shown above at the top of this blog page in Figure 1. Gemini also managed to generate three images depicting beach house that seemed better suited for the NEXT chapter of the story (Chapter 7), in which the investigative "team" of Eddy, Zeta, Tyhry and Marda has actually entered into the Simulation of 1939.

Next: Chapter 7 of 'The Trinity Intervention".

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