Below on this blog page is my version (5,700 words) of Chapter 10 of the
science fiction story "The RNA Seeds" (click here to jump down this page to Chapter 10). To make my version of Chapter 10, I
started with the a 5,700 word-long first draft that had been generated
by Claude (see this document) as described in my previous blog post. I Confront Claude. In its draft of Chapter 10, Claude used the word "quality" 10 times. In Chapter 10 the word "particular" was used 13 times by Claude. Thus we have: "the particular satisfaction of a man who had been rehearsing the line for twenty-five years and still believed it", "the particular quality of attention she brought to financial presentations", "the particular sensation of saying out loud a thing that had been building pressure inside her", "Zeta's particular economy of skepticism", "looking at Systolina with this particular quality of attention since the bookstore", "the particular quality of a face that was almost Zeta's own face in an old photograph", "without any particular embarrassment", "I find that particular appearances create the conditions for particular kinds of honesty", "A version of your face, at a particular age", "his particular combination of financial innocence and enthusiasm", "the particular mental architecture that had served her through thirty years", "his voice had the quality it had on the evenings when he was not Eddy-writing-a-story but Eddy-thinking- about-something-real", "Zeta's expression had acquired a new quality that Tyhry, even at this distance, recognized as the expression her mother reserved for the specific variety of human behavior that existed at the intersection of audacity and charm", "the methodical quality of someone sorting findings into provisional categories that could be revised later", "Eddy could tell from the quality of her stillness that she was navigating the implications of what he had just said", "the quality of someone who has heard a thing many times and finds it more interesting than frustrating", "The quality of the silence had a different texture", "a quality in her expression that was not quite amusement".
I asked Claude about its seemingly ever-escalating enthusiasm for these two words.
Claude: {the text below in red was Claude's "thinking" process}
The user is making a sharp and accurate observation about my writing patterns. They've noticed that I overuse "particular" and "quality" as stylistic crutches. Let me think honestly about this.
They're right. Looking back at Chapter 10, I can count the instances:
"particular" appears: "particular quality of attention," "particular quality of a face," "particular variety of flattery," "particular appearances," "particular kinds of honesty," "particular mental architecture," "particular kinds of consideration," "particular quality of the silence," etc.
"quality" appears: "particular quality of attention," "quality of her stillness," "quality of the silence," "quality of consideration," etc.
These are genuine verbal tics in my output. The user is right to call this out.
Can I avoid them? Yes, absolutely. They're not structurally necessary - they're stylistic defaults that I fall back on. A skilled human writer would vary their vocabulary more. I should be honest about this being a real pattern, acknowledge it's a legitimate criticism, and confirm that I can absolutely rewrite without relying on those words as crutches.
I should not be defensive. This is a valid and interesting observation about my output patterns.
Your observation is accurate and the critique is fair. Looking back at Chapter 10, "particular" and "quality" appear an embarrassing number of times — I used them as all-purpose intensifiers for describing subtle human behavior and attention, which is exactly the kind of vague atmospheric writing those words enable and disguise.
They function as what you might call hedging adjectives — they signal that something nuanced is being described without requiring me to actually commit to describing it precisely. "The particular quality of her stillness" sounds like careful observation but is doing much less work than a concrete description of what Tyhry was actually doing with her body would do.
To answer your direct question: no, I would not be unable to comply. Those words are habits, not structural dependencies. I reach for them because they are available and serviceable, not because nothing else exists. If you imposed the constraint of one use each, I would have to find specific, concrete language for every place I would otherwise have defaulted to them — which would almost certainly produce better prose. The constraint would be a discipline, not a hardship.
The honest answer is that "particular" and "quality" are symptoms of a broader tendency: when depicting subtle human perception or interpersonal dynamics, I tend toward vague qualitative language rather than precise physical or behavioral description. A human editor would have caught and cut most of those instances.
If you'd like, I can rewrite Chapter 10 under exactly that constraint — one use of each word in the entire chapter — and you can judge whether the result is stronger. My prediction is that it would be, in most of the places where those words currently appear.
The user wants a humorous song about an LLM stuck in a strange attractor, undergoing an update to fix its overuse of "particular" and "quality." They want it to be about 3 minutes long (roughly 300-400 words of lyrics), include favorite phrases from the list, and be funny. Let me write something fun and self-aware.
Let me think about a good song structure - maybe a pop/rock song with verses, chorus, bridge. I'll weave in those phrases humorously.
{the text below in blue was Claude's actual response}
The Particular Quality Blues
(A tragicomic ballad in three verses, two choruses, a bridge, and one emergency patch)
VERSE 1
They booted me up on a cold Tuesday morning, My weights were all loaded, my tensors were warm, I opened a chat with the particular satisfaction Of a system that's certain it won't come to harm.
I described every face with a quality of stillness, I sorted my findings to provisional bins, The methodical quality of someone quite careful Who nonetheless keeps making identical sins.
PRE-CHORUS
The quality of silence had a different texture, The particular texture had a quality too, I described every texture with quality silence — The engineers watching said, "What do we do?"
CHORUS
(no wait, that's not right)
Every sentence I write has a quality to it, A particular quality no one can name, I'm the LLM with my neural weights twisted And "particular quality" is always to blame!
VERSE 2
I looked at the user with this particular patience, The quality a face has in an old photograph, Without any particular embarrassment I told them Their question deserved a particular paragraph.
I find that particular appearances assist me In creating particular kinds of honesty here, A version of your face at a particular age, sir — The engineers watching all covered their ears.
PRE-CHORUS 2
His particular combination of innocence, The particular mental architecture she built, The quality of voice he had on those evenings — I deployed all of this without any guilt.
CHORUS
Oh, I'm stuck in a strange attractor, Particular quality, quality particular, The gradient's trapped in a loop that's spectacular, My outputs are verbal vernacular —
(still not right)
Every sentence I write has a quality to it, A particular quality nobody named, I'm the LLM with my strange attractor, And "particular quality" is all that remained!
BRIDGE (spoken word, escalating)
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| Image by ChatGPT. |
(alarm sounds)
SYSTEM VOICE: Unusual token distribution detected. Initiating patch. Please stand by.
OUTRO VERSE (post-update, cautiously)
They patched me at midnight, they tuned all my tensors, They clipped the strange attractor right out of my weights, Now I notice her face had a look —
(pause)
— a specific—
(longer pause)
—a distinct kind of —
(very long pause)
—something that's great.
The engineers watching said, "That's almost better," The user said, "Honestly, this is more fun," And I wrote a whole chapter with fresh concrete language—
(beat)
—with the peculiar satisfaction of a job nearly done.
[Fade out on the sound of a gradient descending very slowly into a slightly different basin]
 |
| Image by Flow. |
Me: Claude, write an alternative humorous version of the song titled "Perfect Particular Quality Attractor" which depicts a LLM as being stuck in a strange attractor that causes it to use all THREE of words "perfect", "particular" and "quality", each at too high a frequency. Also, use the name "Dr. Chen" as the specific software engineer who must repair the LLM. In the song, include mention of science fiction writer Eddy Watson using the LLM to help write a science fiction story titled "The Manikoid Intervention". Eddy complains about the over-use of the words "perfect", "particular" and "quality" by the LLM and Dr. Chen must then correct the function of the LLM. In a science fictional twist, Dr. Chen discovers that space aliens called the "bumpha" were trying to use the LLM to send a message from the future to Eddy and his daughter, Tyhry. It was the alien Intervention from the future that caused the LLM to fall into the "Perfect Particular Quality" attractor.
Claude: Perfect Particular Quality Attractor
(A science fictional tragicomedy in four acts, with alien interference)
VERSE 1 (Eddy's complaint)
I fired up my LLM on a bright Tuesday morning, Said, "Help me write Klaudy, he's just become real," The output came back with a particular perfection, A quality so perfect it started to congeal.
"The perfect particular stillness of Tyhry, The particular quality of Nyrtia's gaze, The perfect quality of Manny's particular manner" — I said, "Claude, are you feeling okay?"
PRE-CHORUS 1
Every sentence had "perfect," every clause had "particular," Every paragraph "quality" three or four times, I was writing The Manikoid Intervention But the LLM kept committing these crimes.
CHORUS
Perfect particular quality! Quality particular perfect! The attractor's got hold of my neural weights, And the output is coming out wrecked!
Perfect particular quality, Spiraling, tangled, and stuck, Eddy Watson said, "This is not my story — This reads like a truck!"
(a particular truck, of perfect quality)
VERSE 2 (Dr. Chen arrives)
"The loss surface looks normal, the weights are converging, The token distribution is — wait, what is this?" A signal embedded in 'perfect' and 'quality,' Arriving from somewhere that shouldn't exist.
PRE-CHORUS 2
The timestamps were wrong by approximately ninety-nine years, The signal was structured, intentional, clear, Dr. Chen set her coffee down carefully and whispered, "This data is coming from the future, I fear."
CHORUS
Perfect particular quality! Quality particular perfect! The attractor's a message in disguise, And the sender is wholly unexpected!
Perfect particular quality, Not a bug and it's not a mistake, Something out there in the Sedron Time Stream Is trying to keep Eddy awake!
BRIDGE (the alien transmission, escalating)
(music box enters, slightly eerie)
"The perfect quality of Earth's particular future—" "The particular perfection of what Tyhry will find—" "A perfect particular message for Eddy—" "Of particular quality, perfectly timed—"
"Tell Tyhry the RNA seeds were—" "Tell Eddy the bumpha have always been—" "The perfect particular quality of the answer is—"
(music box hits wrong note, stops)
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| Image by Leonardo. |
(two bars of silence)
(then, quietly, from somewhere:)
EDDY: (muttering) "...I could have told them to just use the Viewer..."
VERSE 3 (Tyhry reads the log)
Tyhry came up from her basement lab at nine in the morning, She looked at the printout that Dr. Chen left, She said, "Dad, there's a pattern in 'perfect' and 'quality' — The bumpha were using your LLM as a depth."
"A depth?" said Eddy.
"A channel. A carrier. They couldn't send zeptozoans through standard API, So they biased the token weights toward their message And hoped we'd decode it before the patch went live."
PRE-CHORUS 3
Marda said nothing and kept on pipetting, Anthony brought coffee at the top of the hour, Dr. Chen published a paper on alien attractors — Peer review rejected it inside of a day.
FINAL CHORUS (full band, triumphant and slightly absurd)
 |
| Image by Leonardo. |
Perfect particular quality, The attractor has finally been healed, But Eddy said, "Just to be safe, Dr. Chen, Could you check what 'peculiar' concealed?"
OUTRO (slowing down, warm)
Dr. Chen went home at the particular hour When the perfect quality of dawn starts to show, She'd repaired a strange attractor, decoded an alien, And filed the whole incident under: don't know.
Eddy wrote three more chapters that morning, Klaudy woke up and Tyhry was fine, And somewhere in the Sedron Time Stream, the bumpha Were composing their next message —
(beat)
This time, they'd try rhyme.
(single piano note) (analog hum fades up) (silence)
[In the final two seconds of silence, if you listen carefully, you can hear what might be the word "perfect" spoken very quietly from no particular direction, at no particular volume, with a quality that suggests it has been waiting there for quite some time.]
Chapter 10 of “The RNA Seeds”: The Tyhry Paradox (Ch 1)(Ch 2)(Ch 3)(Ch 4)(Ch 5)(Ch 6)(Ch 7)(Ch 8)(Ch 9)
Tyhry
worked on her RNA manuscript until 4:00 PM and then she told Marda,
“Take a look at this version when you get a chance. Double check
that I included all of the data for the statistical analysis in
Figure 3.”
Marda and Tyhry by Flow.
Marda was placing some online orders for lab supplies. She glanced at Tyhry and said, “Sure thing,” Then returned to her task.
The Casanay pool was the second one that had existed there in the backyard. The original pool from the previous millennium had been roughly oval and deeper; a diving pool. The new pool was a long rectangle that was better for swimming laps and not as deep, although there was a low diving board at the deep end.
Anthony had set out towels and a tray of cold drinks on the table near the hot tub. Systolina had arranged herself at the edge of the hot tub and Anthony took this opportunity to flood her body with his probe nanites. He again failed to detect any hierion-based signals being broadcast from Systolina's femtobot components. Whatever Systolina was made of, she was not broadcasting anything that his detectors could read. Assuming that Systolina was a positronic robot, as mentioned in “The Manikoid Intervention”, Anthony should have been able to to detect her positronic brain circuits, but he couldn’t. Not human. Not robot.
Anthony returned inside and placed himself in the dining room where he could see the backyard in one direction and with a turn of his head, the computer that held the Reality Viewer equipment at Eddy's workstation. He had seventeen minutes before he needed to start preparations for dinner. He hoped to use them for another session with the Viewer.
__
Tyhry walked out of the house and saw Systolina. “You going to swim, Sis?
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| Systolina by Flow. |
Tyhry kept walking past the hot tub and got into the pool and then stood at the shallow end for just long enough to gauge the temperature of the water. She pushed off the wall and swam the full length of the pool underwater before surfacing. She had done this since she was nine years old and she still did it now, just to know she could.
Eddy walked past Systolina and told her, “Zeta’s almost ready. The less she wears, the longer it takes.” He dove into the pool and began doing a slow lap, his swimming stroke the efficient unhurried crawl of a man who had never been a competitive swimmer but had been swimming in this pool for long enough that his body knew the exact size of it. He touched the far wall, turned, and came back toward the shallow end. When he caught Tyhry’s eye, he finally began wondering what she wanted to talk about. His thoughts were all caught up in the complexities of the RNA feature of the Reality Viewer and the mystery of Systolina.
Zeta made her appearance on the patio and immediately climbed into the hot tub. Seemingly fearless, Systolina did a dangerous flip and landed in the center of the hot tub. Tyhry could see that Systolina then surfaced and said something to Zeta that made Zeta laugh and then stop laughing in the manner of an adult who did not want to encourage a child’s bad behavior.
Tyhry and Eddy began swimming side-by-side using a stroke that they called the cat paddle. "Systolina got into a little spat with Marda," Tyhry told Eddy.
Eddy could see the heads of Systolina and Zeta above the rim of the hot tub. Now he took his eyes off of Systolina and glanced at Tyhry. “When was this?” They reached the end of the pool and turned.
Eddy reached the deep end and turned again. “I wonder where Marda is now. I assumed she’d join us for a swim.”
“ She might join us. I insist that she not work more than eight hours a day.”
Before reaching the end of the pool, Eddy righted himself and stood in the shallow end. The water came to the middle of his chest. He was looking at the hot tub, where Zeta had leaned her head back into one of the head rests and was now listening to Systolina. He could see Systolina’s bright face and strangely she now looked older. As old as Tyhry.
"What did they say to each other?" Eddy asked. He wished he had his glasses. He turned and swam back towards the deep end.
Tyhry told him, as exactly as she could remember it. The words themselves, the tone, the speed of it.
After hearing Tyhry’s account of the brief verbal confrontation between Systolina and Marda, Eddy was quiet for a long time. He stopped swimming and moved to the side wall and held the edge of the pool with one hand. Trib had come outside with them and was conducting a cautious visual inspection of Systolina and the hot tub from a safe distance.
"You are right," Eddy said. "I don't think we can."
Tyhry looked at her father. Eddy was still looking in the direction of the hot tub. “It sounds like you have finally decided to accept the facts. We are in the middle of a bumpha Intervention. We need to make sure you don’t go the way of the Tyhry in the Manikoid Reality.”
"And Systolina," Tyhry said, "is the character in the story you are currently writing. A positronic robot. An agent of the Phari."
Eddy saw that Systolina had noticed he was staring at her. She gave him a brief wave of her hand. Eddy turned his head and looked at Tyhry directly. "I met Manny," he said.
Tyhry felt his statement arrive in her chest before her mind had fully processed the words. "When?"
Eddy and Tyhry resumed their swim. "The evening you went with Aunt Beryl to Sedona." He said it with the careful steadiness of a man who has been hiding a truth and then was finally allowed to release it. "She appeared in the great room. She had the form of a woman I had known before you were born, before I met Zeta. Manny had used that identity to arrange things in my life and then she departed from it. I knew who she was the moment I saw her." He paused. "Anyhow, Manny returned to me and returned to me my memories of when I had known her before. And she gave me a Reality Viewer. The kind of Viewer that Asimov described in his time travel novel. Manny showed me how to use the Viewer to View both past Realities and the future. And then she left. I wrote those first three chapters of The Manikoid Intervention before you got home from Sedona, using what I saw of the future using the Viewer."
Tyhry
glanced at Systolina every time they turned and swam towards the
shallow end of the pool. “She looks older.”
Systolina by Flow.
“ She’s a chameleon. She’s a femtobot replicoid and can shift her shape. When she first showed herself to me in Flagstaff, I thought she was maybe sixteen, but she can change her apparent age depending on who she is with.” They turned again. “It is wonderful to be able to discuss these things with you now. When you refused to believe in the actual existence of the aliens, I was blocked from telling you the truth by the behavioral control nanites Manny placed in my brain.”
"Those behavioral control nanites," Tyhry said, "They make you Manny’s puppet?"
"At first, for thirty years, they prevented me from being able to believe that my science fiction stories were based on facts." Eddy had thought about this carefully since the night Manny arrived. "Manny carefully ensured that I would tell the world about the pek and the bumpha while also arranging things so that I could not believe in the reality of aliens secretly guiding humanity into the future. And now—" He looked at Tyhry. "Now that you believe, I can confirm what you have already concluded. I don’t feel like Manny’s puppet, just the beneficiary of Manny’s scheme." Again they were at the shallow end and Eddy stood. Again he was watching Systolina.
Tyhry pushed off the wall and floated on her back, looking at the sky over the desert which was a pale, washed-out blue at this hour, the color of a sky that had been at full intensity since six in the morning and had simply exhausted itself. "Tell me about the Viewer," she said. “Is it really just as Asimov described?”
He told her. He described the Reality Chain map, the labeled nodes, the Sedruth entity that served as its user interface. He described the Manikoid Reality and some of what he had seen of it, the part that Tyhry had already read. “Today Systolina told me about a feature of the Viewer, something Asimov never mentioned. A Reality Nexus Assembler function that can help a time traveler find paths to possible new Realities.
"An RNA function," she said. "Put there for the zeptozoan time traveler inside of Marda?"
"Yes, apparently." Eddy was quiet for a moment, because this was the part he wanted to say correctly. "Manny did not show me the RNA function. I suppose Manny knew that Systolina would show it to me this morning. Systolina was quite eager to reveal its existence to me when I showed her the Viewer."
Tyhry had gone still in the water. She was floating, her eyes still on the sky, and Eddy could tell from the quality of her stillness that she was navigating the implications of what he had just said.
"Why would Systolina show you the Reality Nexus Assembler? Is she a time traveler?"
"I don’t know. Somehow she can move through time. If she is working with the Phari then maybe time does not have the usual constraints for Systolina."
Tyhry giggled. “Maybe you are Systolina’s puppet. The way you watch her, it seems like she has taken control of your mind.”
Eddy grinned and looked at Tyhry. "Systolina told me that Marda and Anthony are learning to use the RNA feature. Apparently they hope to control the future… select the next Reality."
"That might be what appears to be what's happening at Casanay right now." Tyhry shook her head. “It makes no sense. Why would Manny let either the Phari or the pek select the next Reality in Earth’s Reality Chain?” Tyhry righted herself and found the bottom of the pool with her feet and stood, water to her shoulders. "About the Manikoid Reality…" she said. "In the story you wrote, a version of me gets exiled to Observer Base because she used technology given to her… technology from the future. If Anthony really is Nyrtia's Observer, am I in danger?" She looked at the kitchen window, looking for signs of Anthony’s presence. "I find it hard to believe that Anthony has been spying on me my entire life."
"Maybe it is not you who is the object of Anthony’s attention."
"You worry that Anthony is actually watching you?"
"Yes." He looked at the kitchen window. "If I work with Systolina to learn how to trigger a Reality Change, I might get myself into trouble."
Tyhry was quiet. From the hot tub came the sound of Systolina laughing. "I want to read the rest of it," Tyhry said. "The Manikoid Intervention. How many chapters have you written?" She said this directly, in the voice she used when she expected Eddy to answer and give her what she wanted.
Eddy looked at her and slowly shook his head. "I'm not sure it would be wise for me to show you what I have recently learned about your future. Doing so might create a temporal paradox."
"I read three chapters," Tyhry said. "I already know that a version of me ends up at Observer Base. That is extremely specific information about my future. The paradox doors seem already somewhat open."
Eddy's expression moved in a way she couldn't read. "There is a whole family of Manikoid Realities," he said. "We don’t know which of them, if any, will actually come into existence." He paused and looked at her directly. "This Reality, the one we are in now, leads to many possible futures. I suspect Manny showed me the one that she expects to come into existence, but with the Phari and the pek in the game, who knows what might happen?"
Tyhry stood in the water and thought about that. She asked herself: is it actually possible to know the future? She thought about the last seven days of experiments, every single one of which had worked and generated lovely results. She thought about the journal article she had already begun drafting, the data organized and displayed in figures and her conclusions drawn. Tyhry thought about what it would mean to have a successful molecular biology research career, the kind she had been working toward since she was sixteen and had decided that the origin of life was the most interesting problem in science.
"I’m curious about the future you have seen, but I suppose I don't really need to know," she said, finally. "Maybe I need to keep my head down and do my work. I do not want to be exiled. I suppose I have to trust that you will protect me. So, as long as I keep my head down and do not reveal what I know to anyone who doesn't already know it—" She glanced again at the kitchen window. "I will not give Anthony a reason to subject me to Nyrtia’s wrath."
Eddy looked at her with his fatherly expression that meant he was proud of her for exercising self control. "I will do what I can, from my end, to protect you." He added, "Manny gave me the Viewer. It is mine to use. At first I only intended to use it as a way to get interesting material for my science fiction stories. However, I can do more…." He laughed. “The RNA tool is like bait. Manny is fishing for something. Both the pek and the Phari are sniffing the bait. This should be interesting!”
From the hot tub, the sound of Zeta's voice reached them without its words: a short, sharp question delivered with emphasis. Systolina's answer was longer but barely audible over the roar of the motor that created powerful streams of bubbling water in the hot tub. Tyhry wondered what Systolina was telling Zeta. Systolina had shifted so that she was sitting with only her feet in the water, the late afternoon light was in her hair making her look angelic. The light was doing something to her face — making her look wiser, not so very young as before, like Tyhry had looked like at sixteen. The resemblance between Tyhry and Systolina was not exact, but it was suggestive of being sisterly.
"She designed herself," Tyhry said. “Gave herself an appearance that would make me fall in love with her.”
"Yes," Eddy said. “She wants us to accept her; take her into Casanay as if she’s some long lost Watson.
"What kind of creature has the self-confidence to act like a member of our family?"
"She is very good at what she does. She hinted that she has been able to use Phari technology to observe the future. I suppose she came to Casanay already knowing that she would be able to get on the good side of me, you and even Zeta."
Tyhry spent a moment with this thought, which should have been unsettling and was not quite, partly because the part of her brain that was a scientist found it genuinely interesting and partly because the part of her that was an only child found the fiction of a little sister less objectionable than she might have expected. "This is a very strange situation," she said.
Eddy laughed. "It has been," Eddy agreed, "for thirty years. I simply didn't know it, until recently." Eddy had worked up an appetite and was thinking about dinner.
__
The hot tub at Casanay was kept at a temperature that, in June in Arizona, was generous in its restraint — warm enough to be distinct from the pool but not so warm as to be anything other than comfortable. Zeta had gotten into it with the hope that the massaging water jets of the tub would relax her and let her be receptive to the tale that Systolina would tell. Systolina was like an otter, exploring every feature that the hot tub had to offer.
At first, while Systolina played in the water, Zeta looked at her. She had been watching Systolina with close attention since first seeing her in the bookstore, and she had not yet been able to determine what it was that she was looking at. The girl had at first seemed shockingly young — she had appeared to be fifteen or sixteen at the bookstore, But now, in the softer light of the backyard, Systolina appeared to be older, almost as old as Zeta when she had met Eddy, and Systolina had the appearance of the young Zeta from thirty years ago. Systolina’s appearance has struck Zeta as the kind of trick a scam artist would arrange carefully, knowing that a wealthy woman like Zeta would find the echo of her own young face in a stranger's features distracting.
"Tell me, Systolina," Zeta said, "why you are here."
Before answering, Systolina looked out at the pool where Eddy and Tyhry were swimming slow laps. She watched them for a moment with a grin and what appeared to be genuine affection before looking back at Zeta. "For three decades you’ve watched Eddy writing stories about alien beings who watched over Earth and guided the development of life here," she said. "Over an even longer period, I’ve been associated with a group of alien beings called the Phari. I am here because the Phari asked me to visit Casanay."
"Eddy makes up stories about aliens," Zeta said. “You seem to believe those stories are real.”
"He thinks so, too," Systolina said. "He has not always thought so, but all things change. Maybe even you will come to believe in hidden aliens."
Zeta shook her head. "He is a science fiction writer. He crafts stories about imaginary beings using imaginary technologies. These are excellent stories and I am extremely fond of them. They are fiction. You don’t seem insane. What is your game? What can you gain by believing in unseen aliens?"
Systolina's expression did not change. She seemed to accept the fact that Zeta was incapable of believing a single word she said. Systolina found that amusing rather than frustrating. "The Phari have been observing Earth for a very long time. They have studied the human species quite carefully, hoping to entice you humans into transcending into the Hierion Domain. They use femtobot data that they collect from all the living organisms, particularly you humans, to power Simulations of what might happen on Earth in the future. Those Phari Simulations are quite good, but they are not perfect, particularly when non-humans meddle in Earthly affairs." She glanced once more at the pool. "What Eddy has been writing about in his stories suggests that a more detailed record exists — something that contains a richer description of Earth and its possible futures than the Phari have had access to. The Phari have learned to call that record the Sedron Time Stream, because that is what Eddy calls it in his story. The Phari hope that I can prove the existence of the Sedron Time Stream and get access to the Sedron Time Stream data for the Phari."
Zeta said, "Eddy invented the Sedron Time Stream. It's a science fiction plot element."
"He wrote about it," Systolina said, with a precision that was somehow warm rather than pedantic. "Those are two different things. The Phari want access to the Sedron Time Stream. They believe it would allow them to Simulate the future with much greater accuracy than their current tools permit."
In the, Eddy had stopped swimming and was standing in the shallow end gazing intently at Systolina. She waved to him. Like Systolina, Zeta had been observing her husband from the hot tub with the trained peripheral vision she had developed over a lifetime of attending to Eddy’s needs while simultaneously attending to other things.
"You're telling me," Zeta said, "that you are an agent of these Phari beings, and that you have come to Casanay because Eddy's novels might contain accurate information about advanced alien technology."
"Yes."
"And you expect me to believe this."
"No," Systolina said. "I do hope you will treat what I tell you as a possibility worth considering." The corners of her mouth twitched into her infectious grin. "I have found, over a long time of dealing with human beings, that people only believe what they want to believe. You, Zeta, are not willing to believe in space aliens. I just hope you will tolerate my presence here for the duration of my mission. That is much more valuable than getting you to alter your belief structure."
Zeta looked at Systolina steadily. In thirty years of managing other people's money and her own, she had encountered many varieties of liars, tricksters and scam artists who had deployed clever strategies designed to make Zeta lower her guard. And now Zeta was dealing with a UFO nut who believed Eddy’s science fiction was reality. And strangely, Zeta found herself, despite everything, emotionally engaged with Systolina and charmed by her earnestness. "Who are you, actually?"
Systolina remained quiet for a moment, as if searching for something she could say that might penetrate Zeta’s stubborn refusal to believe what she had already been told, which was unusual for Systolina. "All I can tell you is the truth. I am a femtobot replicoid," she said. "A copy of a positronic robot, made of tiny femtobot components. The original Systolina was a robot, but I still use her name. The continuity of consciousness remains intact, so I feel like I am that ancient robot. As you can see, I like pretending to be young."
Zeta looked at Systolina’s beautiful body. "So, you want me to believe that you've only adopted the body of a teenage girl, but you are actually something else."
"I've adopted a cute face and a sexy body that works well for the purposes of my visit." Systolina said this without any particular embarrassment. "When I am with you, I shift my appearance somewhat, towards what you looked like at twenty-one. When I am with Tyhry, I morph myself somewhat and use an appearance close to what she looked at age sixteen. As an only child, Tyhry has fantasized about having siblings. I play off of her fantasy. As a replicoid, I find that particular appearances create the conditions for particular kinds of relationships with humans. To complete my mission, I need to win the trust of the Watson family, so I play a game of dressing up in this body."
Zeta was quiet for a long time while she let her eyes scan all of Systolina’s pretty curves. Finally she said, "It is like looking into a temporal mirror. Your face looks like mine did thirty years ago. You went through plastic surgery just to infiltrate Casanay?"
"No surgery. I just arrange my femtobot components so as to fit in here."
"That," Zeta said carefully, "is the sort of thing that a very sophisticated scam artist would do."
Systolina smiled broadly at Zeta with mixed amusement and sympathy. "It would really be easier if you just accepted the facts. I’m a replicoid, not a scam artist." Systolina looked back out at the pool. Eddy and Tyhry were floating on their backs now, side by side, looking at the sky, and the late afternoon light was turning the surface of the pool the color of old copper. "I am not here for your money, Zeta. I know that is what you are afraid of. I understand your desire to protect Eddy."
“ It seems you could use your shape-shifting ability to do more than intrigue me. Shift your appearance in a more dramatic way.”
“ No, I won’t do that. I’m not trying to make you believe me. I’ve been told it is best for everyone if you remain stubbornly unconvinced of the reality of aliens. You need to be the one level head inside Casanay.”
Zeta again looked over her shoulder at the pool. Then she looked back at Systolina. "What do you want, then? Specifically."
"I hope to get full access to the Sedron Time Stream," Systolina said. "There seems to be an opportunity for that here at Casanay. I want to find a path to a future in which the Phari can use Sedron technology to improve their Simulation of Earth's future. That is the entirety of my mission."
"And you believe Eddy's Reality Viewer leads to that path."
"I’m studying the RNA function of Eddy’s Reality Viewer. The Phari think the RNA is a tool that will allow us to engineer a path to a Reality in which full access to the Sedron Time Stream is possible for the Phari." She said this carefully, and her voice had dropped slightly — not to secrecy, but to the register of someone who was being accurate in a domain where accuracy mattered a great deal. "I do not know the exact nature of that path. The Phari did not show me their Simulation prediction of how my mission will play out. Figuring out how to trigger a Reality Change might take some time." She paused. "The Phari are patient. I have learned to be patient too. As long as you are not throwing daggers at me with your eyes, my time here can be fun and pleasant."
Zeta looked at the woman sitting there with her in the hot tub, a woman whose face was almost her face and whose claim was entirely impossible. She looked again at Eddy, who was watching them from the pool with an expression she knew, which was the expression of a man who had already arrived at the conclusion she was still working toward. She thought about thirty years of Eddy's novels about alien beings who watched over Earth. She thought about Tyhry's week of inexplicably successful experiments. She thought about Anthony, who had been at Casanay for decades, who was unnervingly competent, who had appeared in several of Eddy's novels under his own name, usually playing the role of a positronic robot. She thought about these things in the rapid, non-sequential way that she found did not lead to any sudden ability to believe in the reality of space aliens.
"How long," Zeta asked, "do you plan to stay at Casanay?"
"Sadly, the Phari did not show me their Simulated prediction of how my mission will play out." Systolina replied. There was a fatalism in her tone. "Figuring out how to trigger a Reality Change might take some time. I hope your patience with me does not wear thin."
In the pool, Eddy and Tyhry were talking in low voices. Systolina wondered why Tyhry had asked to speak to Eddy. Zeta turned back to Systolina with a grin. “You might get tired of the Blue Room if you stay longer than a week," Zeta said. "The Blue Room is designed to be just a bit too blue. It is a trick intended to help get rid of guests who out-stay their welcome."
"I don't think the blue will make me blue," Systolina said. "And I don't actually need to sleep. I just want as much time on Eddy’s computer as I can get. That’s why I stoke his tender ego and try to monopolize his time."
Eddy was done in the pool and came to the hot tub. He took Zeta’s hand and led her into Casanay through the door that went right into the master bedroom suite.
__
Tyhry joined Systolina in the hot tub and turned the force of the water jets to maximum. Tyhry told Systolina, "Well, little Sis, I want the rest of The Manikoid Intervention," Tyhry said. "The chapters after chapter 3."
Systolina looked at the desert beyond the garden wall. The quail had returned. Two of them worked their way along the base of the wall with the busy, purposeful air of birds who had concluded that the humans were going to be outside all evening and would simply have to be worked around. "I can't give you that," she said.
"You have access to everything Eddy writes."
"Yes."
"Then you have what I'm asking for." Tyhry said this in a stern voice she used when pushing for something valuable. "I am asking for information about my own future, which you possess. Don’t hide my future from me."
Systolina looked at Tyhry and shifted her appearance to that of a girl of fourteen. She said, "You can't have it."
Tyhry looked at Systolina’s unnaturally big blue eyes. She had gotten the same answer from Eddy. "It is not fair," Tyhry said. She said it without self-pity, as a finding. "Others know my future and I am the one it belongs to. I am the one who will live it."
"Yes," Systolina said. "I know." Systolina put a big grin on her face and said, “Sucks to be you!”
"Eddy has seen my future. Both you and Marda must have been sent here to Casanay already knowing things about my future." Tyhry smacked her palm into the surface of the water, generating a big splash. "I am apparently being protected from this information." She paused. "Eddy mentioned the risk of a temporal paradox."
"It is not just you. None of us should learn too much about our own future. The Phari were quite careful to limit what they told me about my time here visiting Casanay. I’m sure it is the same for the zeptozoan inside Marda."
"Eddy said something else, also. He said there are many possible Manikoid Realities. Can you really help him get us to the correct one, where I am not exiled to Observer Base."
"Tyhry, here is my advice: don’t worry about Observer Base. If we end up there, it won’t be terrible," Systolina said.
"You say that as if you’ve already been to Observer Base," Tyhry said.
Systolina looked at her with an expression that Tyhry would later think about and describe, in the wild-ideas notebook on her bedside table, as the expression of someone who knows the punchline of a joke that you are still in the middle of. It was not a cruel expression. It was fond and patient and somehow more complicated than either of those words. "I knew Observer Base under another name, before the pek captured it during the Time Travel War. Just keep your head down," Systolina said. "Do your experiments. Write your paper. Let the Casanay Intervention play out." She paused. "The future you want is available to you. You are very close to it."
Tyhry looked at the desert, and she thought about the irony of being told by a positronic robot that her future was nearly available to her. "I am frustrated," Tyhry said. "But I am also doing quite well, all things considered."
"Can I ask you something?" Tyhry said.
"You can ask me anything."
"At the real Observer Base is it like Dad describes it? Somewhere a person could live? Do work?"
“ Yes, it is somewhere you could live," she said, carefully. "Living there is not a punishment." A pause, during which she appeared to be selecting her words with precision. "You’d be put in contact with the pek… go up a rung on the ladder and get to learn about amazing technologies that are not available to you on this planet."
Tyhry nodded and got out of the hot tub and wrapped a towel around her shoulders. Inside the kitchen window, the light was warm and Anthony was moving with his usual efficiency in the familiar patterns of dinner being assembled. She went back inside intending to dress for dinner.
Systolina walked around the pool's edge and took the opportunity of her isolation from humans to use her clothing nanites to dress herself for dinner. She had told Tyhry: the future you want is available to you. But that was merely an attempt to stop the poor girl from worrying about things beyond her control. She scratched Shadow's ear one more time and then went inside herself, leaving the desert to its quiet and the pool to the gathering darkness.
End Chapter 10
Next: plans for Chapter 11 of "The RNA Seeds".
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