The Qua Replicoid

Storybook image by Gemini.

Below on this page is Chapter 3 of the science fiction story "The Trinity Intervention". Previously, in Chapter 1 of the story, Eddy Watson and 8ME were sent back to 1947 where they met Isaac Asimov. This allowed Eddy to complete a time travel loop by which he helped to bring into existence Asimov's time travel novel, "The End of Eternity", a story that had played an important role in Eddy's decision to become a writer of science fiction stories.

In Chapter 2 of "The Trinity Intervention", Eddy met Nyrtia, a zeptite robot who gave Eddy access to a Reality Simulation System.

Chapter 3 of "The Trinity Intervention" - The Search for Qua (Chapter 1)(Chapter 2)

The morning air was cool as Eddy drove toward Sky Harbor International Airport. He was think about his uncertainty: how would his reunion with Zeta go now that he knew she was the artificial life-form 8ME? His whole existence as a writer now made sense. His wife of forty-five years was a femtobot replicoid who was on a mission designed by Manny the bumpha. Eddy now felt certain that Manny had been guiding his life since even before he met Zeta.

He was so lost in thought that he didn't notice when Nyrtia popped in, arriving inside the car from the Hierion Domain. For a time, she sat quietly in the passenger seat marveling at Eddy's complete absorption with his own thoughts. Finally she spoke. "I don't have all day."

Now finally noticing Nyrtia, Eddy jerked the wheel, nearly sideswiping a pickup truck. He recovered and glared at Nyrtia where she sat in the passenger seat. Where there had been empty space now sat Nyrtia, looking perfectly relaxed with her seatbelt fastened.

"Nyrtia!" Eddy's heart hammered. "Don't do that!"

"Do you expect me to ring a notification chime before I arrive?" Nyrtia gestured vaguely at the speaker in dashboard. "A penny for your thoughts."

Eddy took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "I'm struggling to accommodate myself to the fact that my wife is a niaf."

"Tyhry unconsciously figured that out long ago, which is why she invented the term 'niaf'." Nyrtia adjusted her position and rearranged the nanite components of her body so as to allow her back to merged into the dashboard. Now her face was pointed directly at Eddy. "I need to discuss your plans for the Reality Simulation System with you before you pick up your family at the airport."

Eddy sighed. He'd been sacrificing sleep for the chance to explore the past using the Reality Simulation System. “The Reality Simulation System is a lot less useful than I had imagined. However, I've investigated Zeta's life right back to her embryogenesis, learning nothing new.”

Nyrtia giggled. “Don't try to fool me, Eddy. I've been monitoring you, so I know that you learned how Zeta lost her virginity. You watched that a dozen times.”

“I discovered that I enjoy watching Zeta enjoy herself.” Eddy grinned. “I'd always told myself that I did not want to know anything about Zeta's first lover, but I could not resist investigating.”

Nyrtia the niaf.

“Well, I hope you learned something useful. The Reality Simulation System gives you great power. You need to be responsible in how you use it.” Nyrtia let Eddy contemplate his now god-like ability to observe the entire history of Earth. “Lucky for you, 8ME is something of an exhibitionist and will not mind you ogling her past dalliances, but do you really want to see all that?”

Eddy shrugged. “Of course you are right. I don't.” Eddy checked the time and the status of the flight that was bringing Zeta back to him.

“Well, if you can stop thinking about Manny's time travel agent, I need you to help me find my time travel agent, Qua."

“Qua?” Eddy puzzled over the name. “That is a strange name.”

“She can explain the name to you when you find her, right now that is irrelevant. I sent Qua into the 20^th century so that she could accelerate research into fusion. That was my solution to global warming.”

"Your time travel agent was trying to accelerate fusion power development?"

"Yes. When the Huaoshy ended time travel, Qua was still on Earth. Without the Erno time machine, I have no way to contact Qua directly." Nyrtia's expression showed genuine concern for her agent. "I've been searching the past by using the Reality Simulation System, but there are gaps and discontinuous jumps in the data due to Reality Changes. The Reality Simulation System gives us access to the records made by Earth's femtozoans, but I can't figure out how to efficiently search through all the past Realities... there are thousands of them."

"So you need me to help you look for Qua?"

"Exactly. I can't find her in the Final Reality, but I know where she was in a past Reality, the Reality to which I originally sent her. We need to search through the data of the historical record and make some kind of catalog of the past Realities of Time.”

Eddy asked, “What's in it for me? Why should I care about Qua?”

“Do you care about global warming and rising levels of greenhouse gases?”

“Of course I do.”

“Qua caused a Reality Change. In the new Reality that she created, fusion research advanced faster than it should have. With Qua's help, scientists had insights beyond what their education and resources should have permitted. Practical fusion energy power plants were developed in the 1990s. I was just starting to study that new Reality when Manny reverted the work of Qua. Now here in the Final Reality, fossil fuels continue to burn and carbon dioxide levels keep rising."

Eddy asked, “Why did Manny do that?”

“I suppose she wanted to prevent World War III.”

Eddy wondered if Nyrtia was joking. “World War III?” He changed lanes, heading for the airport exit.

“I think it was a fair exchange. World War III came in the 1950s when only about twenty fusion bombs were available. In exchange, there were fusion power plants and a limit to global warming. The Ice caps did not melt and Earth avoided catastrophic sea level rise.”

Eddy asked, "What's the connection between Qua and World War III?"

"In that past Reality, that no longer exists—it was erased by Manny's counter-Intervention—Qua helped the atomic spy, Fuchs, understand deuterium-tritium fusion well enough to give the Soviet thermonuclear program a crucial boost. The Soviets developed a hydrogen bomb at the same time as the Americans. That heated up the Cold War and eventually resulted in a brief thermonuclear war in the 1950s."

"A war that didn't happen in our timeline."

"No. Because Manny carried out her counter-Intervention. That's where your wife walks onto the stage of the 20^th century. She ensured that a physicist named Emil Konopinski would be in the right place at the right time to accelerate American H-bomb development. The United States got the hydrogen bomb first, years ahead of the Soviets. The resulting shift in the balance of power prevented war, but it also slowed the pace of development of fusion energy power plants." Nyrtia turned to look directly at Eddy. "Your wife—8ME—played a complex role in Manny's counter-Intervention. As Jean Tatlock, she had access to Oppenheimer. She influenced his decisions while he directed the Los Alamos lab."

Eddy felt a chill despite the warm Arizona morning. "So Zeta... 8ME... she's been involved in preventing nuclear war?"

"Among many other things. But here's what matters now: I want to recover Qua, or at least determine what happened to Qua. I want you to help me search the Reality Simulation System for traces of Qua's activities in past Realities. Can you do that?"

"Yes, but I have a question. Why can't you just search the past Realities of Earth's Reality Chain yourself? Why do you need me? It took me hours to find my wife."

"I can and I have been searching for Qua. You have not even tried to look at a past Reality.”

Tyhry and Marda

Eddy shrugged. “I only care about our timeline.”

“I can only do so much by myself. You know the limitations of the Reality Simulation System as well as I do. It takes time to find specific events in the past. With your help, with your family's help, we could double, triple, maybe quadruple the rate of finding and cataloging all the past Realities. Once we identify the index code for the Qua Reality, it should be possible for me to track her down."

Eddy had been wondering about how to demonstrate the Reality Simulation System to Zeta. "All right. I'll help you search for Qua. But remember, you already gave me an assignment: Manny. What if Manny steps in and prevents me from helping you?"

Nyrtia smiled slightly. "I suppose Manny won't like you having access to information that she can't control. It will be interesting to see how Manny responds to your use of the Reality Simulation System."

Before Eddy could respond, Nyrtia disappeared. There was a brief shimmer in the air and she was gone, returning herself to the Hierion Domain.

Eddy was amused by the idea that Nyrtia had to ask for help with the Reality Simulation System. He drove to the usual door for the arrival area at the airport and spotted Marda immediately: she had grown taller during the past year since she had last visited Arizona and her bright blond hair was like a beacon that attracted Eddy's attention. He wondered: what will Manny do when she realizes that I am helping Nyrtia recover one of her secret agents?

Zeta was quickly slinging the luggage from the curb into the back of the car, her dark curls catching the morning light. Eddy watched her with new appreciation for her graceful and effortless movements. Of course! As an artificial life-form from the far future, she could probably lift a tank. She wore a flowing dress that Eddy recognized as one of her favorites, bought on their last trip to San Francisco. Next to her, Tyhry was animated, talking rapidly to Marda and gesturing with her hands. There beside Tyhry stood Marda—taller than Tyhry and now looking right at Eddy.

When they were all in the car, Eddy pulled away from the curb and Tyhry was speaking to him from the back seat. "Dad! I still can't believe that your stories...” She fell silent and was looking at Marda.

Marda told Eddy, “Manny visited us in Australia and told us everything—well, not everything, but she explained about her being a bumpha and about the Huaoshy putting an end to time travel."

Eddy was holding Zeta's hand and driving with one hand. Of course, Zeta's hand felt exactly as it always had—warm and familiar and right. But now he knew that the body he had so often held in his arms was composed of femtobots, not biological cells. That the woman he loved was an artificial intelligence that had existed for thousands of years.

Zeta looked into his eyes. "We have a lot to talk about."

"Yes. We do." Eddy managed a smile. "Hello, Marda. Good to see you again." Marda had long been Eddy's biggest fan, frequently commenting on his blog posts and even inventing some of her own science fiction stories.

Everyone fell silent, sorting their own thoughts as Eddy navigated through traffic. When they were on I-17 and headed out of the city, Marda broke the silence. "Uncle Eddy, this is the stranger than any story you ever wrote."

"It will get stranger." Eddy had decided to tell Tyhry, Zeta and Marda everything he knew.

As Eddy activated the self-driving features of the car, Tyhry resumed the discussion that Marda had tried to start. "What Manny told us does not exactly match the tales you tell in your blog. She told us that there is a trinity, three distinct types of artificial life and—"

"Tyhry." Zeta's voice was gentle but firm. "Let your father tell us about the Simulator. We'll have time to discuss everything."

"But Mom—"

"Eddy first.” She asked her husband, “What have you learned from the Reality Simulation System?"

Eddy glanced in the rear-view mirror and met Tyhry's eyes. She gave him a small, knowing smile. In that moment, despite everything, she was still in tune with Zeta— the woman who had guided Tyhry to adulthood. Eddy had never once seen Zeta and Tyhry argue about anything.

During the drive into the high desert, Eddy described how he had used the Reality Simulation System in its Viewer mode. He spoke about the thrill of watching history unfold on the display screen of his computer. He told Zeta, “It took me six hours of bumbling to find you in the System, but then I had your code signature and could track you back through time.”

Zeta said, “Six hours... just to find your own wife? That's absurd.”

“Well, Nyrtia did not provide me with a users manual for the Reality Simulation System. It is funny, but I don't think she is any better than I am at using the System. Just today she asked me for help in finding one of her time travel agents.”

“Time travel agent?” Zeta giggled. “Its too late for that. Manny assures me that time travel is no longer possible.”

“I get the feeling that Nyrtia lost most of her agents when Manny sent you back in time and you triggered a Reality Change.”

“That in itself is strange. I suspect Manny had a plan for how to destroy Nyrtia's time machine on Erno, but I can't imagine how Manny managed to do that.”

Marda said, “In Eddy's stories, Manny always comes out on top.”

Unable to restrain her curiosity any longer, Tyhry launch a set of questions at her father. "Dad, have you seen Manny since she sent you to meet Asimov? Has she explained what happens next? Are we going to reveal the Secret History of Humanity to the world?"

"I haven't seen Manny since that first day when she revealed to me the fact that she is a bumpha." Eddy navigated off of the main highway and they were now heading east on a side-road. "But I have seen Nyrtia. She claims that she needs our help."

"Nyrtia!" Zeta's voice was sharp. "She and Manny have been bitter rivals for thousands of years, going back even before the Time Travel War. I've never met her."

Eddy told Zeta, "When I was driving to the airport, she appeared in the passenger seat while I was driving. She sat right where you are now."

"It seems strange that she would ask us for help. What exactly did she want?"

Eddy glanced at Marda in the rear-view mirror and was distracted by her beautiful golden hair. Suddenly, he had doubts in his mind about Marda. Zeta caught his look and said, "It's all right. Marda knows everything we know. Manny explained the situation to both girls."

"Everything?"

Tyhry drives.

"Everything about the bumpha, the Huaoshy, the the Secret History of Humanity; Manny said it was time for the whole world to know the truth."

Eddy turned his attention back to the road. They were now on an unpaved road where it was not wise to use the self-drive feature. "Nyrtia wants me to use the Reality Simulation System to search for one of her time travel agents. Someone named Qua, who got trapped in the twentieth century when time travel ended."

Tyhry asked, "Have you used the Reality Simulation System to View past realities?"

"Not yet. So far, all of my attention has been on this Reality... the Final Reality. But Nyrtia gave me an interface device... it's installed in my computer and I'm sure it gives us access to everything, all of Deep Time." Eddy hesitated, then decided to just say it. "So far, I've just been trying to understand Zeta's history. Trying to understand 8ME."

There was a long silence. Finally, Zeta said quietly, "Tell the girls what have you found."

"Nothing. At first I thought that was so strange." He told Zeta, "I can't find any evidence that you're anything other than a normal human being. I've watched you grow up, watched us meet, watched our courtship and marriage. Everything seems completely normal."

"That's because it was normal," Zeta said. "I was born as a biological human. I lived as a biological human who just happened to be the host for a complex collection of programmable femtobots. Even when I built Tyhry, that process was hidden from view; it took place inside my body. It is not as if you could find me one day at work inside a laboratory, literally assembling our daughter's genes in a test tube."

Eddy turned off the road and started up the long winding driveway to their house. Zeta added, "From my earliest days as baby Zeta, the biological part of me was under the control and guidance of 8ME's femtozoan."

Tyhry said, "Mom explained all this to me in Australia. I still have trouble believing it, but maybe it explains why I've always felt so close to mom." She asked Zeta, “Are you going to do the same to me? Do you plan to use my body next? Transfer your femtozoan into my body?”

Zeta replied, “No, I don't think that is part of Manny's plan and I really can't see that happening. I plan to spend eternity with your father.”

“But you don't know the future?”

Zeta shook her head. “Manny tells me very little. Her excuse always used to be that I could not know my own future, because that could cause a temporal paradox.”

Eddy said, “If there is no more time travel, then there can be no more paradoxes. And without time travel, Manny can't know the future any better than we can.”

Zeta giggled. "That's wishful thinking. She could have Viewed our future before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel. And maybe Manny's sophisticated Reality Viewing technology still allows her to see the future, even if she can no longer physically move up and down the timeline."

Eddy emitted a soft groan. "We know so little."

Zeta told Tyhry, “I did carefully construct your genome, Tyhry. That has allowed you and I to share a form of technology-assisted telepathy.”

Tyhry laughed. “Mom, is that why you never let me get away with anything when I was growing up? You can read my mind?”

Zeta thought about how she had formed her daughter's genome by combining one of her stored oocytes with a male pronucleus from Eddy. The pregnancy appeared normal, but 8ME had deployed her femtobots continually, trying to make Tyhry perfect. When born, Tyhry appeared normal, but she was already exchanging hierion-based signals that passed between Tyhry's femtozoan and 8ME's more advanced femtozoan. Zeta told Tyhry, “You are a normal woman, just with some carefully designed genetic advantages: enhanced memory, increased intelligence, a predisposition toward creative thinking and perfect health. Nothing that would be obviously unusual to casual observers. However, when I first noticed your femtozoan I was surprised. I checked and discovered that all humans now have a femtobot endosymbiont. In past Realities, that was not the case. In the First Reality, femtozoans were an advanced form of artificial life that was designed and crafted in the far future. An Eloy like me was designed to use a femtozoan as a tool for technology-assisted telepathy with my co-workers."

Eddy was having trouble accepting Zeta's casual description of manipulating Tyhry. "So you've been shaping Tyhry's life since before she was born... using telepathic signals sent from your femtozoan endosymbiont into her brain?"

"Yes. Like you, Eddy, Tyhry has an unusual NOTCH gene variant that, with a little help from my femtobots, allowed her brain to develop in a way that makes it possible for her biological neural networks to communicate with her own femtozoan. I first observed that sort of thing in the Myrloks, a human variant of the far future."

Eddy mused, "And during our entire marriage you've been using your infites to give me ideas for my science fiction stories." They were now inside the garage. "Tyhry and I have been your puppets this whole time."

They all got out of the car and went into the house. After quick visits to bedrooms and bathrooms, they all assembled in the great-room near Eddy's computer.

"No, I never treated either of you like a puppet." Zeta's voice was firm. "You've been yourselves, living your own lives.” Zeta sat in a big recliner and told Eddy, “Yes, it was me that guided you toward science fiction writing; that was the mission that Manny gave me. Yes, I encouraged certain story ideas. It was exciting to know that Manny was working towards a future in which the people of Earth would be told the truth... The Secret History of Humanity. But your creativity, Eddy, your insights, your personality—those are all genuinely yours. I never used memory-editing infites on you unless the parameters of Manny's mission required it. I've always believed in letting you maintain free will." She looked at Tyhry. “I would have warned you that your friend Manny was an artificial life-form, but I could not. Manny kept control of my brain and blocked me from telling you that truth. To this day, I don't really know what Manny's plan is for you, my dear.”

Now Marda spoke rather heatedly. "This is insane. We can't let Manny and Nyrtia continue to manipulate us."

"Our situation is not ideal," Zeta agreed. "But what can we do about it? I've long felt that the solution is to share The Secret History of Humanity with the world. The Huaoshy spent millions of years crafting the human species. The bumpha and Nyrtia's zeptite robots have spent years guiding the course of human civilization. They have been trying to prevent catastrophes and help humanity survive. If the world knew about this secret history, then Manny would have less power over me, over all of Humanity."

Eddy chuckled and threw Zeta's own words back at her. "That's wishful thinking."

"Reveal Manny's secrets, even at the cost of revealing that Tyhry is the product of genetic engineering?" Marda's voice had an edge. "Can we let her be studied like a lab rat? And you know she would be studied if the truth about her unique and carefully crafted genome became known."

Tyhry shook her head and told Eddy. “All these years I thought your stories about aliens and how they made the human species were just amusing fantasies. Now I believe everyone in the world should know the truth, but I certainly don't want to be treated like some genetic freak.”

"Of course we'll do what is necessary to protect your privacy." Zeta's tone was patient but unyielding. "And Eddy and I... we're not robots. We're artificial life-forms, yes, but we're going to have to deal with the fact of our long life spans. We would not be able to hide that truth forever if we became famous."

Eddy asked Zeta, “So it is true? I'm now a replicoid?”

Zeta nodded. “Of course you are. How else could you have been inside the Hierion Domain? Only hierions and sedrons can exist in that space of compactified dimensions. Your biological body was destructively scanned and you were instantiated as a femtobot replicoid.”

“I suppose I did not want to believe it.”

“You are sure?” Tyhry asked Zeta, "Dad is not biological anymore?"

"He's composed entirely of femtobots now. They're perfectly simulating his original biological structure at the molecular level. Every cell, every protein, every strand of DNA—it's all there, just built from hierion-matter instead of hadrons.” Zeta paused and for a moment thought about putting on a show for Tyhry that would demonstrate her ability to re-arrange her femtobot components and morph her own body structure. However, she suspected that Eddy had no such capacity to control his artificial body, so she simple said, “Anyone with conventional senses and current technology can't tell the difference, but with my femtobot tools it is easy for me to tell the difference between a replicoid and a biological organism."

Marda by Mr. Wombo.

Eddy looked down at his hands. They looked normal. He flexed his fingers, felt the slight ache in his right thumb where he'd jammed it last week working on the fence. "This ache in my thumb... is that simulated too?"

"Apparently the answer is 'yes'. My guess is that your femtobots will maintain perfect continuity with your biological state at the moment when you were scanned. If you had an ache, the ache continues. If you had a memory, the memory persists. You're still you, Eddy. Just running on different hardware."

Tyhry pointed to Eddy's computer and said, "Now you have access to Nyrtia's equipment in the Hierion Domain. If I passed into the Hierion Domain then I'd also be converted to a femtobot replicoid?"

"And me, too?" Marda asked.

Eddy replied, “Yes, I can give you the same kind of immortality that I now have.”

Pepper the cat finally emerged from under a bed, having remembered who Marda was. He approached Tyhry and flipped onto his side. Tyhry began scratching his ears.

Marda and Tyhry.

Gray did not care about strangers and was sleeping beside Eddy's computer, on the side where the optical drive slot was.

"Gray, I need to move you." Eddy gently lifted the cat out of the way. He gave the command sequence to his computer that would normally have ejected an optical disc, but inside the drive, where there might have been a DVD, there was now a device of alien design. It popped out of the slot, revealing a strange semi-crystalline structure that reflected light in unusual ways.

Marda was there at Eddy's side, leaning close. Eddy noticed that Marda was now well over six feet tall, even taller than he was. She asked, "That's the interface for the Reality Simulation System?"

"That is what Nyrtia told me." Eddy pushed the glittering alien device back into the slot and his desktop monitor flickered. The normal operating system interface was replaced by something entirely different—a three-dimensional visualization space that seemed to extend beyond the physical boundaries of the screen.

Marda stepped back. "What is that?"

End of Chapter 3

---

Gemini does not understand mirrors.

I provided Gemini with backstory information for “The Trinity Intervention”, summaries of the 5 chapters of "English Time" and the full text of Chapters 1 - 3 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 3 of the science fiction story “The Trinity Intervention”. Give the illustrations in the storybook a photo-realistic style. Make the images generated for the storybook resemble full color high resolution movie stills.

Gemini: I've created a science fiction storybook for adults that captures the events of Chapter 3 of "The Trinity Intervention." Please note that the story and its illustrations, while based on the content of your uploaded file, may not be 100% faithful to the original text or any embedded images.

I used the Gemini-generated storybook images to illustrate Chapter 3 of "The Trinity Intervention", above on this page. I also used WOMBO Dream to make some of the images on this page.

Next: Chapter 4 of "The Trinity Intervention".

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