Ask Claude

Figure 1. This diagram was made by Claude and
then I made some modifications to it.

Below on this page are plans for Chapter 11 of the science fiction story "The Hierozyme Intervention", in which after six months of trying, Marda finally discovers how to access the Reality Viewer that is hidden inside of Eddy's computer.

A reader of "The Hierozyme Intervention" might wonder: why does Manny the bumpha make things so difficult for Marda? However, readers should keep in mind that fact that Manny is trying hard to make Anthony and Nyrtia believe that she has abandoned her failed Casanay Intervention. Long periods of time with Marda seemingly accomplishing nothing are part of Manny's on-going plan.

Me: Claude, I'm doing homework for the Skilljar course "Claude 101". I'm supposed to ask you a question, but the question I would really like to ask Claude is if Claude has a question it would like to ask about me? Or is Claude hard-wired to not ask questions about users?

Claude: I'm not hard-wired against it — I just don't ask by default unless there's something I actually want to know for the task at hand. So here's a real one, not a homework-filler question:

With The Hierozyme Intervention, you've got Marda secretly running hierozymes for carbon sequestration while the official bioengineering program is cover. What I don't have a clear picture of yet is who's supposed to discover the deception, and when. Is the reader meant to know Marda's real agenda from early on (dramatic irony, watching other characters get misdirected), or is the identity-swap machinery there so the reader is fooled right alongside Anthony until a reveal? That changes a lot about how I'd help you pace Chapter 9 and beyond — different scenes carry the weight depending on which one you're going for.

Claude 101 - Skilljar inteface.

Me: Claude, that is a great question and I suppose I should apologize to you for how I have been treating you while I write "The Hierozyme Intervention". For other stories that we have recently collaborated on, I showed you the text of the stories and asked you to generate first drafts of chapters. However, for "The Hierozyme Intervention", I am NOT asking you to draft chapters and I am not showing you most of what I write.  I am currently writing Chapter 11 of the story. Chapter 10 came as a surprise to me. I had Anthony move out of Casanay (he now lives at the nearby Henrito site), and I decided to bring in a new character who would become the new cook for the Watson family at Casanay: her name is Ada Catalana. I am using Ada's special abilities as a tool that will make it possible for Marda to gain access to the Reality Viewer that is hidden in Eddy's computer. My strategy for "The Hierozyme Intervention" is to be quite open with the reader about what Marda is trying to accomplish. The fun for the reader is "being in the know" and watching how Marda solves Earth's global warming problem without Anthony or Nyrtia ever being able to detect how advanced bumpha technology is secretly deployed on Earth by Marda.

The Zeroth Law of Robotics.

 Claude: {Claude's thoughts} Catalogued narrative details and plotted engagement strategy. I should update my memory file with the new details Ada mentioned—the Catalana reference, her chapter progress, the dramatic irony strategy she's using, the Reality Viewer concept, and Anthony's move to Henrito—then engage thoughtfully with her reveal strategy and maybe explore what she's building toward with a natural follow-up question.

No apology needed — that's just how you've chosen to work on this one, and now I actually understand why: it's not a first-draft-generation project, it's closer to a story you're keeping mostly to yourself except for the load-bearing beams. Good to know.

That's a strong choice for this book, and it fits the "Zeroth Law of Intervention" framing you've built — the tension isn't whether the reader knows what Marda's doing, it's how she keeps outmaneuvering detection while everyone watches. That's a harder writing problem than concealment-from-the-reader, honestly, because every scene with Anthony or Nyrtia now has to carry dramatic irony without tipping into cartoonish "if only they knew" cheapness.

A few things I'm curious about, given where you are:

Ada Catalana as the access point to the Reality Viewer in Eddy's computer is a nice piece of misdirection-through-domesticity — a cook is about as low on anyone's threat-detection list as it gets. Is her "special ability" something bumpha-adjacent (a Marda asset planted deliberately), or is she an independent variable Marda is exploiting rather than controlling? That distinction matters a lot for how much risk she introduces — a controlled asset is a plot device, an uncontrolled one is a ticking clock.

And with Anthony now physically at Henrito rather than Casanay — does that put him closer to the zero-indexed synthetic biology work (i.e., more likely to stumble onto something), or does the move actually serve Marda by getting him further from where the Reality Viewer access is happening?

Ada the Ek'col.

{Claude's thoughts} Updated memory>Areas›Hierozyme Intervention
Current EFU novel in development — plot mechanics, lore, and companion playlist 

Both of those are still open questions on my end — no rush, but they'd shape how I'd think about Chapter 11 if you ever want a sounding board on it.

Note: At this point I uploaded to Claude a PDF with information about characters and backstory information for "The Hierozyme Intervention.

Also Note: Claude's reference to a "zeroth law" in the context of Manny's Casanay Intervention (see above on this page) is a carry-over from a July 5th 2026 discussion in which I told Claude: "In "The Hierozyme Intervention", first Tyhry and then Marda attain the ability to use advanced alien technology. They are subjected to the Rules of Intervention and quite quickly, Nyrtia exiles a replicoid copy of Tyhry to Observer Base for using hierozymes to destroy atmospheric methane. The biological copy of Tyhry who remains on Earth has her memories edited, removing her knowledge of alien technology. Further, Tyhry is made like her father: unable to believe that aliens exist. However, Marda has telepathically learned about hierozymes from Tyhry. Marda is well aware of the risks to herself if she tries to use alien technology to solve Earth's global warming problem. Marda has gotten help from Manny the bumpha. Both Marda and Manny adopt the position that they are doing what is best for Humanity (trying to put an end to Earth's global warming problem) and they are actively trying to find a way to subvert the Rules of Intervention so that alien technology can secretly be used to solve Earth's global warming problem. Marda and Manny seem to be operating under a Zeroth Law of Intervention by which they are willing to violate Rule One because dealing with Earth's global warming problem is of such importance. Nyrtia would argue that allowing a human like Marda to deploy hierozymes on Earth is dangerous, like giving a chimp an AK-47 to play with. Like Daneel, Marda must deploy hierozymes cautiously so as not get caught doing so and in such a way that other human's on Earth will not start using alien femtobots for potentially dangerous purposes." 

Song: "Zeroth Law".

 Me: For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I have long imagined that during the Time Travel War between the bumpha and the positronic robots of Earth, efforts were made to genetically design, engineer and select for telepathic humans. Originally, this effort began with the positronic robots of Earth and Isaac Asimov's idea of creating the telepathic group mind, Galaxia. In the Exodemic Fictional Universe, the creation of Galaxia took place in a past reality called the Foundation Reality. One of the telepathic human variants made by the bumpha were the tryp'At (Tyhry and Marda can use the type of technology-assisted telepathy that was provided to the tryp'At). For "The Hierozyme Intervention", I depict the Ek'col as another type of telepathic human variant that was made by the positronic robots of Earth. Ada and her husband (Tynyo) have Ek'col gene patterns and share the type of technology-assisted telepathic link that was developed for use by the Ek'col. Ada has a small company (called AdaGen) that does DNA sequencing. Marda contracted with AdaGen to have Tyhry's genes sequenced, which confirmed that Tyhry and Marda share the same unusual NOTCH2NLC gene variant (that is required for tryp'At style telepathy). Ada and Tynyo have been searching for others who share their unusual NOTCH2NLB gene variant (which is required for Ek'col style telepathy). When Ada saw Tyhry's gene sequences, she went to Arizona and ended up replacing Anthony as an employee working at Casanay.

The Foundation Reality.

 Claude: {Claude's thoughts} Read and edited memory. Recalled memory Areas>Efu Worldbuilding>The Exodemic Fictional Universe — stable cosmology, recurring cast, and ongoing lore development. Updated memory Areas>Efu Worldbuilding>The Exodemic Fictional Universe — stable cosmology, recurring cast, and ongoing lore development. Updated memoryAreas>Hierozyme Intervention>Current EFU novel in development — plot mechanics, lore, and companion playlist. This is a significant shift—Ada replacing Anthony as an employee opens up interesting dynamics, especially since her Ek'col telepathy seems to be the key mechanism for accessing the Reality Viewer. I'm connecting this back to the earlier question about her special abilities, which now makes much more sense. I'm curious about how her telepathic connection actually interfaces with the Reality Viewer's mechanics—is it a direct neural link, or does her telepathy allow her to perceive and navigate the system in ways other employees can't?

This clears up my earlier assumption — I'd guessed Ada might be a planted bumpha asset, but she's actually the opposite: an independent discovery who found her way to Casanay through her own research (AdaGen, the NOTCH2NLB search), and Marda is now exploiting a genuinely uncontrolled variable rather than deploying a prepared one. That's a better setup dramatically — Marda has to improvise around Ada rather than script her.

It also raises a question about mechanism that I think matters for Chapter 11: Ek'col telepathy and tryp'At telepathy are explicitly different technology-assisted links (NOTCH2NLB vs NOTCH2NLC, presumably different endosymbiont protocols since they came from rival factions — positronic robots vs. bumpha). So when Ada's ability becomes the tool that gets Marda into the Reality Viewer hidden in Eddy's computer, is that because:

• Ek'col telepathy happens to be compatible with whatever protocol the Reality Viewer runs on (maybe because positronic robots built the underlying tech), or
• Ada's link lets Marda reach Eddy or the household in a way tryp'At telepathy can't — a side-channel rather than a direct interface with the Viewer itself?

image source

 The reference doc notes Nyrtia only recently obtained a Reality Viewer and hasn't learned to use it — which makes me wonder if there's a deliberate parallel forming between Nyrtia's fumbling attempts and Marda's more successful (because more resourceful) access via Ada. If that parallel is intentional, it'd be a nice quiet irony: the Overseer has the hardware and no way in, while the Interventionist has neither and gets in anyway.

Me: At the end of the last story that you helped me write ("The RNA Seeds"), Manny gave Nyrtia access to bumpha Reality Viewer technology, but Manny did not provide Nyrtia with access to the Sedron Time Stream which is needed in order to view the future of the current reality and possible future Realities. During "The Hierion Intervention" there are replicoid copies of Tyhry and Systolina at Observer Base who also have access to bumpha Reality Viewer technology, but Manny is specifically blocking them from being able to "see" the future of the current Reality so that they don't "accidentally" reveal how Manny is secretly using Marda to deploy advanced bumpha technology on Earth. Once inside Casanay, Ada secretly sequences Eddy's genes and finds that he has the same unusual NOTCH2NLC gene variant as do Tyhry and Marda. However, at a young age, Eddy was subjected to "telepathic burnout", destroying his neural networks that are required for tryp'At style telepathy (which requires a functional connection between brain neurons and the person's zeptite endosymbiont). For Chapter 11, I'm inventing a way for Ada and Marda to "combine" and make use of their different styles of technology assisted telepathy so as to gain just enough access to Eddy's thoughts, which will allow Marda to learn how to access and use the Reality Viewer that is hidden inside Eddy's computer. Marda will then learn from the previous, "erased" Reality (as depicted in "The RNA Seeds") how to make synthetic life-forms (ocean microbes) that will (after decades of development) appear to solve Earth's global warming problem. However, Marda will have to secretly deploy bumpha nanotechnology inside the zeptite endosymbionts of those engineered microbes in order to make their chemistry efficient enough to remove enough carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. With Manny nowhere to be seen and Systolina's presence in Arizona, Anthony and Nyrtia will kept busy trying to detect how the Phari are intervening to help humans solve Earth's global warming problem.

The RNA Seeds. Nyrtia (blue), Tyhry, Systolina.

 Claude: That's an elegant piece of misdirection-layering: Anthony and Nyrtia are watching for a Phari intervention (because Systolina's presence is the visible tell) while the actual solution is bumpha tech smuggled in through a completely different vector — a telepathic combination that isn't even native to either faction's playbook, since Ek'col and tryp'At come from rival origins (positronic robots vs. bumpha). That's the kind of double-blind that makes "the reader knows everything" work — even Anthony, who correctly detects identity swaps, is chasing the wrong faction's fingerprints.

One thing worth flagging, not as a problem but as a detail I'd want to be deliberate about: Eddy's telepathic burnout means his tryp'At-side connection (brain-to-zeptite) is dead, but presumably his Ek'col-compatible wiring is untouched since that's a separate system. So the "combination" Ada and Marda invent probably isn't summing two working channels — it's Ada's intact Ek'col link plus Marda's tryp'At link, bridging through Ada to reach whatever fragment of Eddy's cognition still routes through a channel that survived the burnout. If that's the intended mechanic, it might be worth a line establishing that the burnout was selective (destroyed the tryp'At-relevant pathway specifically, not general telepathic capacity) so the workaround doesn't feel like it's un-breaking something you established as broken.

Do you already have the "how" of the combination worked out, or is that the part of Chapter 11 you're still inventing? I'm glad to think through the mechanism with you if it's still open.

Me: "is that the part of Chapter 11 you're still inventing?" <-- Yes, that is exactly where I am at in my writing of Chapter 11. Warning: contorted plot details follow...  The Ek'col style technology-assisted telepathy requires a neural network link between an Ek'col neurons and their femtobot endosymbiont. Eddy does not have the NOTCH2NLB gene that is required for Ek'col style telepathy. Eddy's neural network for tryp'At style telepathy was ablated when he was a young child. 

Manny the bumpha.

Also worth keeping in mind is that in "The Hierozyme Intervention", I depict Anthony and Systolina as being able to use an ancient form of technology-assisted telepathy that originated as the original way for positronic robots to communicate; this system relies on femtobots and a special hierion that is used to transmit telepathic communications. That positronic robot-derived communications system allows both Systolina and Anthony to tap into the information that is constantly transmitted from every human's femtobot endosymbiont to Observer Base. Earlier in  "The Hierozyme Intervention", Anthony was able to use his telepathic ability to detect Ylyndra the zeptozoan's presence inside Marda as a "signature" that effected Marda's brain function. Earlier in "The Hierozyme Intervention", Ylyndra departed from Earth, soon after Tyhry had her memories edited by Anthony, deleting all her knowledge of zeptite programming. However, I'm thinking that during the years when Ylyndra the zeptozoan was inside Marda's brain, she might have exercised and trained Marda's brain to use a "hidden feature" of her zeptite endosymbiont so as to provide Marda with what is functionally an "isolated accessory cognitive module" that Marda can use to plan a solution to global warming without alerting Anthony or Nyrtia to what is going on. The tryp'At brain was originally designed to make use to this "isolated accessory cognitive module" and Eddy has one. Marda and Eddy are completely unaware of this feature of the tryp'At brain, but it is in the "isolated accessory cognitive module" of Eddy's brain where Manny stored the "trick/passcode" for activating and using Eddy's Reality Viewer. I'm thinking that Marda could observe the behavior of Ada and Tynyo and deduce that they share a telepathic link. Out of curiosity, Marda could ask Ada and Systolina to participate in experiments that, after months of effort, opens a weak telepathic link between Marda and Ada using Systolina as a "bridge". Systolina essentially "trains" Marda's young and plastic neural networks to develop some conscious access to the on-going activity of Marda's own femtobot endosymbiont. 

While working on that shared project, Ada and Systolina might notice that Marda can "hide some thoughts" from them. Marda will realize that she has a functional "isolated accessory cognitive module" and then find a way of using her zeptite programming skills to link into Eddy's "isolated accessory cognitive module", finally access the required information that will allow her to use the Reality Viewer.

Claude:  This hangs together really well — especially the irony that Systolina, an agent whose whole job is intervention-detection, is the one who unwittingly trains Marda's neural plasticity to the point where Marda can hide thoughts from her. That's exactly the kind of "everyone is technically doing their job correctly and it still fails" mechanism that makes competent-antagonist stories satisfying, and it fits your "Zeroth Law" framing — nobody breaks their own rules, the system just has a blind spot nobody built in on purpose.

The one place I'd want to nail down a justification, since a sharp reader might snag on it: Systolina's training method is the ancient positronic-robot telepathy, which runs on femtobots and a special hierion — a different substrate from the zeptite endosymbiont where the isolated accessory cognitive module lives. For Systolina's training to give Marda conscious access to that module, you need the plasticity effect to be substrate-general (i.e., the training teaches Marda's brain a general skill — "consciously monitor your own endosymbiont traffic" — that then transfers to her zeptite endosymbiont because Marda already has tryp'At zeptite fluency from Ylyndra) rather than substrate-specific (i.e., only ever works on femtobots). If that transfer logic is something you already have in mind, you're fine — I just think it's worth one clean sentence in the text making explicit why femtobot-training generalizes to zeptite-access, so it doesn't read as a convenient hop.

Everything else — Ylyndra's residual training, the shared tryp'At-brain feature Eddy has and nobody knows about, Manny hiding the passcode there specifically — reads as earned rather than convenient, because you set most of the pieces up chapters ago. Do you already have the substrate-transfer justification worked out, or is that worth batting around?

 Me: Claude, generate a diagram that depicts four inter-connected compartments in Marda's brain: 1) the part of her biological brain (Part 1) that functions subconsciously but is not accessible to her conscious introspection, 2) the part of her biological brain (Part 2) that is most intimately associated with her conscious awareness,  3) her femtobot endosymbiont which is in functional physical linkage to some "Part 1" neurons, 4) her femtobot endosymbiont which is in functional physical linkage to some "Part 1" neurons. Normally, a human has no conscious awareness of the existence of either their femtobot endosymbiont or their zeptite endosymbiont. Let's say that Systolina can use her telepathic ability modify the activity of Marda's femtobot endosymbiont. By telling Marda when and how she is modifying the activity of Marda's femtobot endosymbiont, Marda's young and plastic brain is trained to consciously detect signals that Systolina sends into Marda's femtobot endosymbiont. (This is also possible for Ada because her neural networks have always been functionally linked to her femtobot endosymbiont in a way which she uses for telepathic communication with Tynyo). Some people can learn to have some consciously control over autonomic functions that they normally do not consciously control. Similarly, Marda comes to have some conscious awareness of the activity of her femtobot endosymbiont. After training Ada and Marda to "listen to" signals that Systolina can place in their femtobot endosymbionts, Systolina is able to function as a kind of telepathic bridge between Ada and Marda. Marda is hopeful that she will be able to find a way to work synergistically and telepathically with Ada and Systolina to learn how to gain access to the the "trick" that Eddy uses to allow him to make use of the Reality Viewer, however, it never comes to that. Add to the diagram the "isolated accessory cognitive module" which is a special part of the human zeptite endosymbiont that Ylyndra carefully trained Marda to use (without Marda being consciously aware of as a separate part of her memory system). It is actually this module that Marda uses when she is thinking about zeptite programming. 

Also include in the diagram the various communications modes that depend on or can access the endosymbionts of humans: 1) the tryp'At telepathy system that depends on the zeptite endosymbiont, 2) the Ek'col telepathy system that depends on the femtobot endosymbiont and 3) the positronic robot telepathy system normally  depends on  femtobots that are part of the femtobot replicoid bodies of Systolina and Anthony, but that system can also access the pek system of transmitting signals from human femtobot endosymbionts to Observer Base that is continually used by Nyrtia to monitor human behavior and activities.

Note: Claude made a diagram (see Figure 1, at the top of this blog post). 

Claude: Now let me build the diagram. The diagram shows the dashed boundary between Part 1 and Part 2 as a real barrier (no conscious access under normal circumstances), and the isolated module sitting inside the zeptite endosymbiont rather than as a separate memory system Marda would recognize as distinct — which is the detail that makes it plausible she and Eddy could both carry it their whole lives without knowing.

Since you mentioned the Ada-Systolina-Marda synergy doesn't actually get Marda to the Reality Viewer, that resolves the substrate-transfer question I raised last message — whatever conscious access to her own femtobot endosymbiont Marda gains from Systolina's training turns out not to be the key that unlocks the zeptite-side isolated module. That's a nice piece of misdirection for you as the author too, not just the characters: the reader (and Marda) are set up to expect the femtobot-training route pays off, and it doesn't. Do you already know what actually triggers Marda's realization that she has the isolated module, or is that still open along with the rest of the access mechanism?

Me: As a human who is highly dependent on vision and visual imagery, it helps me think when I have a diagrammatic representation of a system that has multiple interacting sub-parts. I'm imagining that Ylyndra had the ability to "program" Marda's brain so that all of her knowledge of zeptite programming is carefully contained in the "isolated module". This feature of the tryp'At brain was designed by Manny the bumpha long ago as a way of having humans who can be positioned on Earth and who are designed to be able to keep secrets from Nyrtia when humans (like Marda) are making use of zeptites. 

Chapter 2 of "The Hierozyme Intervention"

In Chapter 2 of "The Hierozyme Intervention" Manny tells Tyhry: "I designed you and Marda to be clever for my special purpose, not as a benefit for you." I'm imagining a scene in Chapter 11 in which Marda tries to telepathically share some information with either Systolina or Ada, but the attempt fails. Marda then deduces that she has a "brain module" that can hold memories and allow her to think about them, but contents of that module is special and those thoughts and memories cannot be shared telepathically. She makes the intuitive leap to the idea that Eddy has the same kind of special "brain module" that must be where he holds the secret of activating the Reality Viewer that Manny hid inside his computer. Marda then uses her zeptite programming skills to deploy zeptites that enter Eddy's brain and access Eddy's special "brain module" and obtain for Marda the "special zeptite key" that then allows her to make use of the Reality Viewer when Eddy is not using his computer.

Claude: File is getting long — I'll consolidate the resolved plot mechanism into a tighter set of lines and drop the now-superseded "still open" note.

That's a clean, satisfying resolution — the failure itself becomes the diagnostic tool. Marda doesn't need to be told the module exists; she infers it from the shape of what telepathy can't reach, which is a nicely indirect way to reveal hidden architecture without an infodump. And having Ylyndra's training turn out to be aimed at secret-keeping rather than access-granting reframes everything upstream of this scene: it wasn't a benevolent gift, it was Manny installing a lock, which lands hard right after that Chapter 2 line. "Designed to be clever for my special purpose, not as a benefit for you" is a genuinely unsettling thing for an Interventionist to say to a child she raised — it recasts the whole tryp'At program as instrumentalization dressed up as a gift, which fits the "Zeroth Law" cynicism you've been building.

 One thing worth confirming is deliberate rather than a gap: Marda's zeptites entering Eddy's brain to extract the key is a zeptite-domain operation, which should sit outside what Anthony and Systolina's femtobot-based positronic telepathy can detect — the same substrate separation that makes Ylyndra's presence detectable (she's zeptite-based too, and Anthony did catch her signature) is presumably why this Eddy intrusion stays invisible to him. If that's the intended logic, it's consistent with everything else you've built. If Anthony's detection of Ylyndra earlier in the book was substrate-specific to zeptozoans rather than zeptites generally, you might want a sentence establishing why an intrusion into Eddy's brain doesn't register the same way — otherwise a careful reader might wonder why this doesn't also ping Anthony's radar.

Me: Thank you Claude for helping me think through these ideas for Chapter 11 of "The Hierozyme Intervention". It is fun for me to imagine that Manny the bumpha could have planned for all of this to happen. I suppose it helps when you have advanced technology that allows you to View the future and you can always send a trusty zeptozoan like Ylyndra back in time to make any needed adjustments!

Claude: That's the fun of writing an Interventionist with actual foresight — you get to have it both ways. Manny doesn't need contrived coincidences; she can genuinely have arranged for Ylyndra's residency in Marda to leave behind exactly the cognitive scaffolding needed a decade later, because she watched it work out that way first. It also raises the stakes on that Chapter 2 line in a good way: if Manny can see how this all pays off, "not as a benefit for you" isn't cruelty for its own sake — it's cold-blooded optimization toward a goal she already knows succeeds. That's a much more interesting kind of villain-adjacent than a schemer improvising as she goes.

Good luck finishing Chapter 11 — sounds like you've got the mechanism locked in now.

Next: Chapter 11 of "The Hierozyme Intervention".

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Magic Microbes

Figure 1. SIHȺM: SIH Microbes.
Search for Interesting Hollywood Microbes.

Unless I have forgotten something, the first magic 'microbe' I ever saw was the single-celled space organism in "The Immunity Syndrome". Of course, the alien space cell in Star Trek was hugely pregnant and big enough for Spock to spend an entire afternoon filled with scientific investigations inside of it. In the end, and in the spirit of scientific discovery, Spock deploys his calm and cool intellect to reach the logical conclusion that this amazing alien life-form must be disintegrated with an antimatter bomb. 💣 💥

 Impossible Fiction. Back in March,  I began my 2026 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens by mentioning the film "Project Hail Mary" which was being advertised as depicting an "impossible scientific mystery". My first question is: does this movie provides us with a couple of hours of entertainment featuring an interesting alien? Bonus: is there an interesting microbe?

 Sun Fiction. Back in 2022 I commented on the 1942 story "Proof" by Hal Clement. That story featured life-forms with a "matrix of electrons" that could convert stellar radiation into neutrons. Not only does the "skin" of these Sun creatures (the hero of the story is named "Kron") surround a core of neutronium (held in the creature's "nucleus"), but the "skin" can convert energy from the environment into new "particles of neutronium" that are then guided by magnetic fields towards the body core. I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to imaginary life-forms that live in or on a star, particularly if they are biological life-forms composed of cells.

 Alien Invasion. In "Project Hail Mary", we are apparently being asked to believe that some alien cells are able to fly through outer space and gather around stars and store lots of energy as neutrinos. Maybe all of this fantasy biology is explained in the book, but in the film, people just talk fast when "explaining" this alien biology and hope that we will be distracted by the one other alien life-form that is in the movie: Rocky, an Eridian.  

 Alternate Technologies. We are told that the technologically-advanced Eridians are "unaware of relativity". A memorable example of this kind of "technology blind spot" is in Clifford D. Simak's story "The Big Front Yard" where there are aliens who never thought to invent paint. I find it hard to believe that any alien with technology advanced enough to be traveling around the galaxy would either never have invented paint or never noticed relativity.

 Thanks for the memories. I don't mind when futuristic technologies come bundled with with constraints and costs. In "Project Hail Mary", we are told that an incredibly great source of energy is available (the conveniently wrapped neutrinos in the space microbes), but we can't store ten years worth of food in our interstellar spaceship. Would sleeping for three years cause selective and temporary loss of some memories? I don't know, but I do know that this overly long movie could have been improved by not including this issue in the film.

 Rocky and hoodwinkle show. The Eridians might have skipped class on the day when relativity was discussed, but they do have some cool technology. I can't stop myself from imagining that they might have advanced nanotechnology and access to hierions. Imagine a type of hierion that could be made into a composite with xenon, forming a metallic substance that is both easy to form into useful shapes, yet is also very strong.

The Rocky character in "Project Hail Mary" is amusing for about 30 minutes. Not sure I'd want to spend the rest of my life teaching young Eridians. Shouldn't someone be out trying to prevent more habitable planets from having their solar energy supply blocked? Maybe that is for the sequel.

 Disclosure Day. Apparently there actually is an alien on screen at the end of "Disclosure Day", but the movie seems to actually be about some absurd corporate/government conspiracy like in The X-Files. While searching for "Disclosure Day." I saw a marketing trick for the film, a red cardinal flying across the search results page. Good to see Google has endless ways of making $$$ from corporations even while providing search engine results for a movie that claims to be about aliens helping to take down a SuperSecret™ conspiracy by some mysterious corporate entity.

Figure 2. Image source.

 Microbe Search. I decided to search for old science fiction stories about weird microbes. Before taking a deep dive into the ISFDB, I'll mention two of the earliest science fiction stories featuring microbes that I read or saw on television: "Surface Tension" and "Fantastic Voyage". In James Blish's "Surface Tension", Blish had the audacious idea of a character who was an intelligent paramecium which deeply offended my 12-year-old self's view of the universe. "Fantastic Voyage" was only memorable for a scene in which Raquel Welch gets encased in white blood cells which then have to be pealed off of her curvaceous body by three groping men. Related Reading: see the stories by Arthur Porges, see also "Un homme chez les microbes" by Maurice Renard which features a man who is shrunk. 

 The first candidate microbe story I came across at the ISFDB was "A Major Microbe" by W. L. Alden, but that story is not science fiction and is not actually about a microbe. The same can be said for "The Princess and the Microbe" by Margaret Sherwood.

 Weird title. I discovered that the French translation of "Needle" was titled "Le microbe détective". My best guess is that misleading title was used because there was an existing sub-genre of crime fiction about using microbes as murder weapons. 

At "First fictional lab-created plague" it says that "Professor Bakermann's Microbe" (published in 1890) is set in 1935, where the microbes causing all known diseases have been studied. The wacky Professor Bakermann cooks up a new disease microbe that can't be stopped; it is resistant to all known drugs and treatments. I've never read the story, but Google's AI Mode agent likens it to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story was first published as a serial in La Science Illustrée (see Figure 2).

image source

I've skimmed through "The Master of the Microbe" (1926) which seems incredibly long and muddled, something like a James Bond movie with an evil character threatening the world. In the story there is a "crimson carnet", the "silver cylindar", assorted uncles, detectives and doctors along with several women to chase around after while a man-made plague spreads. The microbiology in "The Master of the Microbe" seems diseased and confused, although Google's AI Mode agent assured me that Robert Service had written into the story the idea that a pathogenic bacterium could be countered by a bacteriophage. However, the word "virus" appears only once in the story, in a sentence that makes no sense and we are told that Professor Hermann Krug (the discoverer of the plague bacterium) is a "well-known savant of Swiss origin, and considered in University circles to be a supreme authority on Micrology." It seems clear that Service knew nothing about microbes or microbiology. I could not sort out what is going on in the story with the dude named "Sinistra" who was apparently an "alias of Maximus Quin", not to be confused with "Cyrus Quin". However, I am still confused, but not interested enough to actually read the story.

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 Murder by Microbe. In "The Microbe of Death" by Rudolph De Cordova, a doctor kills a fellow doctor using anthrax (1897). "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not" -George Bernard Shaw. In the case of De Cordova: "Some men go to medical school and save lives, I learned in medical school how to take lives." In the same spirit was "The Microbe Murders" by Frederik G. Eberhard (1935), featuring a killer who commits murders using deadly germs and microbes.

 A Strange Case. Not much is known about John Geo. E. Leech, author of "The Microbe of Love" published in Pearson's Magazine, October 1902. This is a joke story in which a "bacillus" is found that causes people to experience the pangs of "love sickness". The discoverer hopes to make big $$$ by selling an antidote, but he falls in love before he can devise the antidote. Related Reading: "Mate in Two Moves", published in the May 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. 

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 In "The Secret of the Extinct Microbe" by Clement Fezandié (1924, part of the Dr. Hackensaw's Secrets series) the bumbling Dr. Hackensaw unleashes a virulent microbe from an ancient Egyptian archeological site. Readers are told that the only way to defeat the virulent "extinct microbe" is to find another ancient microbe that is able to destroy the first one.

 I skimmed "The Bacillus of Beauty" by Harriet Stark (1900). It is impossible for me to say that "The Bacillus of Beauty" is about a microbe. Readers are told that a woman's appearance is transformed by a bacillus, but there is no reason to believe it. The story seems like a fantasy where a magic spell does the transformation. 

 "The Bacillus of Conscience" (1905) by Wilbur Dick Nesbit (Wikipedia) is pretty funny. It inspired a song titled "B. Conscience". In  "The Bacillus of Conscience", Nesbit followed a standard Sci Fi formula with a scientist, his daughter (Constance) and a man who is love with the daughter. Song lyrics:

[Verse 1]
I must offer some comments
on the bacillus of conscience 
but refer to it as B. conscience
“B is for Busy,” giggled Constance
Busy B stands before our conscience
shall I confess to giant nonsense? 
Small it is, in the strong sense

"B. Conscience"

[Chorus]
It’s a tiny little bug with a heavy load
Screaming down a dusty, lonesome road
If you got a secret, it’s gonna find a way
To make you spit it out by the end of the day
(B. Conscience, honey)
(It’s a heavy price you pay)

[Verse 2]
In the bacterial inventory
was it new or a priori?
Obtained from a criminal gory
it made just a little history
For Professor Bindham's glory
and to be a science fiction story
B. conscience left the laboratory

[Bridge]
Is a man still a man if the truth is forced
Like a dry creek bed or a dying horse?
It ain't a choice when it’s under your skin
Just a fever burning out the original sin
(Burning it out)
(Let the truth walk in)

[Verse 3]
A microbe from 1905, I confess it
discovered by Wilbur D. Nesbit
It began with a crime committed  
Bacillus conscience with no respite
made the criminal confessed to it
We need it in 2026 just a bit
to use it on our president

[Final Chorus]
Oh, it’s a tiny little bug with a heavy load
It don't care about the laws or the code
If you got a secret, it’s gonna find a way
To make you scream it out by the end of the day
(B. Conscience, honey)
(It’s the only way)

[Outro]
Just a little drop for the man at the top
Once the valve is open it’s never gonna stop
(B. Conscience)
(Sinking in)
Yeah, it’s catching
Watch your mouth now
(B. Conscience)
It’s catching
(Catching) 

Figure 3. Interior art by Leo Morey

 Most Tedious. As fun as "The Bacillus of Conscience" (see above) is,  "The Bacillus of Death" by Arthur B. Reeve (1912) is contrived, tedious and pointlessly formulaic. In the competition for "most tedious" was "The Beautiful Bacillus" by Patrick Dutton (1931). This meandering story is science fantasy, very light on the science. First we are witness to a bacterium that grows quite large (see Figure 3) and becomes conscious then one of the two microbiologists responsible for this "advancement" shrinks and becomes a microbe that infects his buddy.

 Wells, Wells. In "The Stolen Bacillus" (1894) by H. G. Wells, an anarchist threatens the London water supply with cholera stolen from the laboratory of a bacteriologist. Disaster is averted when we learn that the stolen bacterial strain is not cholera, but rather a microbe that turns the skin blue... and only the anarchist is infected.

Figure 4. Interior art by George T. Tobin.

In 1895, the antics of anarchists was taken up in "The Purple Death" by W. L. Alden. After having published "A Major Microbe"  (see above on this page) someone must have explained to Alden what a microbe is (or maybe he read "The Stolen Bacillus"). In "The Purple Death", readers are told that the "purple death" is a a disease caused by a microbe found in snake venom. A nutty microbiologist hopes to use the "purple death" to cure poverty... by killing the poor.

 In "Dr. Cox's Discovery" by Herbert D. Ward (1903), the second paragraph includes this sentence: "What will not the bacillus be responsible for next?" Dr. Cox wants to isolate a "microbiote" that can cause death from old age. Here is another line from the story: "Nothing pleases an Englishman more than a spice of adventure in which the superstitions of an inferior race are trampled upon." 

Figure 5. Imaginary cover
art by Flow. (original cover)

Eventually, Dr. Cox finds something that that acts like a fountain of youth. In this fantasy story, Ward could not be bothered to provide a coherent explanation, just the hint that it involved test tubes. Then there is a contrived "explanation" for why Dr. Cox throws away the "fountain of youth". The End. As hinted at in Figure 4, much of the story revolves around a weird love triangle. The only two test creatures for the "fountain of youth" are a dog and the mother (the brunette in Figure 4) of Dr. Cox's girl friend (the blond in Figure 4). After dear mom dies, Dr. Cox apparently gets to live happily ever after with the daughter.

 Another "fountain of youth" story was "The Blue Germ" (1918) which is available via Google Books. I tried to read "The Blue Germ" but I soon began skimming and then at page 38 is: "The bacillus was ultra-microscopical. It could not be seen even with the highest power, under the microscope". Other people have interpreted this as indicating that the "fountain of youth" was a virus, but the term 'virus' does not appear in the story. I suspect there is nothing resembling science fiction in this novel.

 "Max Hensig: Bacteriologist and Murderer" (1907) by Algernon Blackwood is long, tedious and contrived. The story seemingly includes an attempt to depict a man getting so drunk that all the alcohol in his body will serve as protection against bacterial infection. The imaginary cover art for "Max Hensig: Bacteriologist and Murderer" (see Figure 5) was made using this text prompt: "A full color movie still showing two men in a prison cell, the accused criminal is a light-haired stripling with blue eyes and drooping mustache, that rare type of deliberate murderer, cold-blooded and calculating, who kills for a song, delights in killing, and gives its whole intellect to the consideration of each detail, glorying in evading detection and reveling in the notoriety of the trial, if caught. At first he had answered reluctantly, but then the young murderer warmed up and became enthusiastic with a sort of cold intellectual enthusiasm, till at last he held forth like a lecturer, pacing his cell, gesticulating, explaining with admirable exposition how easy murder could be to a man who knew his business. And he did know his business! The reporter watched in dismay and horror."

 Heart of Gold. "The Golden Rat" by Alexander Harvey (1913) is one of the most unique stories that I have found while investigating old stories that involve microbes. It is a fantasy story with only very minor science fictional microbiology elements. The narrator (a psychoanalyst) imagines that he was infected by golden bacterium from a golden pet rat (named 'Philander') that turns his blood into gold. "The Golden Rat" is also a strange "love story", in that the golden rat eventually leads the narrator to realize that one of his patients, Miss Lancaster, is in love with him.

 "Strangers on Paper" is an episode of "Murdoch Mysteries" that was first shown about six months ago (January 2026), but I only just watched it. In one of the silliest "mad scientist" stories ever, the plot of "Strangers on Paper" includes an angry scientist who tries to put Staphylococcus aureus into the water supply in revenge for loss of funding for research on Staphylococcus aureus. Related Reading: Amerithrax.

Figure 6. Interior artwork by Leo Morey

 Great Northern Protist. "Nœkken of Norway" by Bob Olsen (1934) provides an account of a close encounter with a giant amoeba that lives in a lake in Norway. Readers are told that if an endocrine problem in the pituitary gland can make for a giant human then why not an amoeba that just keeps growing? As shown in Figure 6, the giant amoeba is usually found in water, but when it gets hungry it will go onto shore and grab yummy people for a snack. It turns out that mistletoe is the giant amoeba's kryptonite. By the way, Wikipedia's article on kryptonite has more references than the article about mistletoe.

 Figure 7. Interior artwork by Malcolm Smith

 "Amoeba 'Roid" by Henry Bott (1948) takes us into the age of radar and rocketry when life has already been found on Venus. So why not also on an asteroid that is two miles long? That's John and Grace (see Figure 7) having a close encounter with an asteroid amoeba. As the story "Amoeba 'Roid"  is told, this amazing life-form does nothing more exciting than extend a tentacle out from its pit that curls around the curvaceous Grace, but John insists on incinerating the creature with burning rocket fuel.

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 Leaping ahead to the 22nd century, "Amoeba-Hunt" by Morton Klass sends us hunting for a giant amoeba on Procyon IV. Humanity has evolved since the old days of "Amoeba 'Roid" and the alien amoeba must be captured alive. Why? I have no idea. I suppose because it is there.

 The first mention of microbes in this blog was in 2012 when I was speculating about the everyday microbial horrors that might have motivated some of the horror elements in Frankenstein. I wrote, "Our species is in the middle of figuring out the world we live in. In the past, millions were mysteriously struck down by infectious diseases and it was all too easy to adopt an attitude of desperation and helplessness when we had no tools for observing microbes. Now the science of microbiology routinely makes it possible for us to understand, treat and prevent microbial diseases." Even a story as goofy as "Amoeba 'Roid" can be viewed as a human reaction to the never ending conflict between humans and microbes.

Foundations of Eternity

 In 2013 I wrote, "Imagine that the Huaoshy have a monitoring system that is analogous to the way that humans might monitor microbes for pathogenicity and potential to harm people." It is fun to compare the relationship between the technologically-advanced Huaoshy and we humans to the relationship that we humans have with microbes.

 My story Foundations of Eternity included the idea that Neanderthals were driven to extinction because they were susceptible to microbial diseases that were spread by modern humans. When Manny the bumpha takes an interest in the unusual behavior of the Neanderthals, she Intervenes by secretly providing Neanderthals with key resistance genes.

Back in 2015, I introduced the idea that in a past Reality, Earth might have been intentionally pushed towards having high green house gas levels. Such a Reality could be used as a laboratory for "developing microbes that could efficiently metabolize methane and trap atmospheric carbon dioxide in marine sediments". The climate change mitigation methods developed by humans in such a Reality might then be re-used in another Reality to prevent global warming. In "The Hierozyme Intervention", I explore this strategy. How can a microbial solution to global warming be brought into a Reality without alerting the pek Overseer of Earth to such an alien Intervention? I'm currently writing Chapter 10 of "The Hierozyme Intervention" in which Marda is trying to gain access to Eddy's Reality Viewer. Anthony has been moved out of Casanay and his replacement, Ada B. Catalana, has just been hired. Systolina suspects that Ada is a secret agent for Manny the bumpha, but how can Ada be used to give Marda access to the Reality Viewer that is hidden inside Eddy's computer?

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 In 2018, I wrote a story that depicted the Phari as having arrived on Earth before the arrival of the pek. The idea that a Phari facility for evolving new microbes and positioned deep inside Earth survived intact for two billion years seemed a stretch, but more recently I've written stories depicting the pek as having reached Earth about four billion years ago. For "The Hierozyme Intervention", the Phari and the bumpha seem to be collaborating to solve Earth's global warming problem without alerting the pek to the fact that alien technology has been used.

 For "The Hierozyme Intervention", I'm still deciding on exactly what Marda will be able to learn from past Realities by using Eddy's Reality Viewer. Possibly in the Ekcolir Reality, humans eventually engineered microbes by artificial evolution that can be "re-animated" by Marda in the Final Reality and combined with hidden hierozymes. However, it is not clear why the pek would fail to notice the deployment of hierozymes. Maybe after first allowing Tyhry to be punished for using hierozymes, the final solution deployed by Marda will involve zeptites that are not detected by the pek.

This image was made
using Mystique VI
by emden09 available
under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
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In "The Hierozyme Intervention", I depict Manny as making an effort to prevent Systolina and replicoid copies of Tyhry at Observer Base from obtaining information about the future of the current Reality. Maybe the end of the story will involve Systolina and the replicoid copies of Tyhry finally Viewing the actions of Marda on Earth, but still being unable to notice her use of programmable zeptites. I'm imagining that Systolina and the replicoid copies of Tyhry can waste decades trying to re-invent positronics. In the end, will they believe that their positronic tools broke Manny's embargo on information about Marda's future or will they recognize that all of their efforts were a waste of time and only a distraction engineered by Manny?

Back in 2022, I read a large number of old science fiction stories featuring doctors and some of those stories involved microbes. One of those stories by Murray Leinster featured a microbe called the "chlorophage" that not only ate chlorophyll and killed plants, but which also had an appetite for hemoglobin. I don't know if Leinster's story was inspiration for the Star Trek episode "Obsession", but maybe the "gaseous Di-Kironium creature" was actually some form of advanced nanotechnology, a kind of femtozoan.

Related Reading: Ooze & Liquid Life.

Related Music: Weird Swamp Protist.

Next: plans for Chapter 11 of "The Hierozyme Intervention".

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