Kac'hin

In my previous blog post I explored the implications of the artificial lifeform Reginal, a pek, being the birth mother of Parthney, the main character of Exode. When Parthney was born on Hemmal there was no woman on the entire planet, so it was necessary that a pek be the vessel that served to gestate Parthney. Here, I need to make a similar investigation into the origins of Kach, a human woman who grows up on Hemmal at the same time as Parthney.

Just before Parthney departs from the planet Hemmal he meets Kach. Kach is under considerable strain because she has been working diligently for years to wheedle her way into Preland society. She hopes that direct study of the Prelands might provide her with insights into the nature of the Creators, the mysterious beings who, according to Preland tradition, created the Prelands.

by Jon Lomberg

At the same time, Kach has decided that Parthney, as the only male on Hemmal, represents her only opportunity to have children. Kach orders her pek assistant Muchlo to collect some of Parthney's germ cells. One of Muchlo's secrets is that the pek have no need for anything as messy as a sample of Parthney's germ cells. The pek have long had Parthney's genome on file and they could effortlessly provide Kach with a child that combines Kach's DNA with that of Parthney or any of billions of other people with their genomes on tap in the pek data banks. However, Muchlo has other reasons for accosting Parthney, so everything proceeds as Kach expects during the last night that Parthney is on Hemmal.

Several years later, after she has become frustrated by her inability to learn anything useful about the Creators from the Prelands, Kach gives birth to Boswei, who is Parthney's son. By this time, Parthney is far away, living on Earth.

When Boswei is grown, Parthney manages to return to Hemmal and collect his "family". Kach, Parthney and Boswei go off to the Andromeda galaxy. Parthney has been recruited by the Fru'wu to go in search of the mysterious Nereids. Kach hopes that the Nereids might be the Creators.

Related reading: The Religion of Exode

The Journey Within

Kach is fundamentally wrong in her belief that the Creators are somewhere "out there" and waiting for Kach to arrive and have a nice chat with them. Long ago the Huaoshy originated as biological organisms, not too different from we humans, but they developed the technological means to transform themselves in a form of artificial life based on sedronic matter. Thus, the Huaoshy no longer exist as beings of conventional matter constrained to the three extended dimensions of our human experience. Kach has no way of knowing how different the Huaoshy are from us, so is her life-long quest to make contact with the Creators doomed to failure?

For billions of years prokaryotic cells have produce nothing more complex than stromatolites. Eukaryotic cells make possible complex multicellular organisms such as we humans. The gulf between a bacterium and a human is similar in magnitude to that which exists between a human and the Huaoshy.

What Kach only slowly comes to realize is that she holds within herself the means to achieve contact with the Huaoshy. Kach, like Parthney, has an unusual biological origin.

When the Huaoshy finally understood that positronic robots, an invention of humans, had developed the technological means to travel through time, they also realized that it was their own dabbling in dimensional engineering that had made time travel possible. The Huaoshy began the difficult task putting an end to time travel and correcting the damage that had been done to Genesaunt civilization by the positronic robots. In order to make these "corrections to Reality", the Huaoshy had to deal with another fundamental and serious problem.

source: Ron Blakey, Department of Geology, Northern Arizona University

During the hundreds of millions of years during which the Huaoshy had existed as sedronic lifeforms, they had lost interest in the dingy three dimensional universe of their origin, the universe of conventional matter that is inhabited by primitive biological creatures like we humans. The Huaoshy long ago designed the pek, an artificial lifeform that exists within three dimensional space, and for hundreds of millions of years the pek have followed an automated program of spreading Huaoshy influence from galaxy to galaxy. When the pek encounter a world like Earth, they set about "domesticating" any organisms that have the capacity to develop a technological civilization. Working slowly, the pek provide a means of systematically altering such biological lifeforms into a form of life that can make the transition from conventional matter into the domain of artificial life known as "Huaoshy".

Four phases of life.

The Huaoshy long ago lost interest in the work of the pek. More importantly, from the human perspective, the Huaoshy lost interest in the existence of individual species like we humans and they lost the ability to understand the concerns of lifeforms as limited and restricted as individual humans. Thus, while it is easy for Kach to imagine that the Creators might be similar to humans (to the extent that they could explain themselves to we humans), in fact, such communication between humans and the Huaoshy had slowly and gradually become impossible during the time period when land animals evolved on Earth.

However, when the positronic robots invented time travel, the Huaoshy noticed that for the first time in their long existence they suddenly faced a serious threat from the domain of conventional matter. The Huaoshy had long worried about -and prepared for- the possibility that somewhere else in the universe there might be another lifeform that had mastered the science of sedronics and begun to engage in dimensional engineering. The Huaoshy contingency plan for that possibility was triggered by the positronic robots of Earth and their development of time travel technology.

When the Huaoshy became aware of Earth they faced a serious problem. They had no way of understanding humans and investigating the mystery of how humans had liberated themselves from pek control and creating an unprecedented hole within the vast fabric of Genesaunt civilization.

In order to deal with this crisis, the Huaoshy started working through their proxies in the domain of conventional matter, the pek. The pek managed to infiltrate the budding Interstellar Empire of Humanity and obtain a damaged positronic brain. Careful study of that brain allowed the Huaoshy to realize the importance of positronics. Still ignorant of the existence of time travel, the Huaoshy made several attempts to defeat the positronic robots who were beginning to spread Humanity from Earth to other planets of the galaxy. Only after several failures did the Huaoshy realize that they were dealing with positronic robots who could travel through time. Finally, the Huaoshy mastered time travel themselves.

The Huaoshy realized that the positronic robots of Earth were actually still at a primitive stage in their understanding of sedronic matter. Further, the positronic robots had so far only achieved a strangely limited form of dimensional engineering that allowed for their ability to travel through time and exist within temporal bubbles where the links of causality to the rest of Reality had been broken.

The first of these "Temporal Bubbles" that was discovered by the Huaoshy was Eternity, the time travel device being used on Earth.

The Huaoshy went into the past and tried to prevent positronics from being discovered by humans. Only after several failed attempts did the Huaoshy realize that they were fighting against positronic robots who were using several "Temporal Bubbles". If all the Huaoshy did was pop one such bubble then their adversaries would emerge from another hidden bubble, travel back in time, and prevent the Huaoshy from regaining control over Earth. In order to put an end to this futile time war, the Huaoshy traveled back in time and brought into being a new population of humans.

The Kac'hin
This newly designed variety of humans, the Kac'hin, became the tool that the Huaoshy could use to regain control of Earth (as told in The Start of Eternity). Working through the medium of several Kac'hin individuals, the Huaoshy were able to reach a deal with Noÿs that ended the struggle over the fate of Earth.

As part of their negotiations with Noÿs, the Huaoshy agreed to allow humans to retain possession of Earth rather than stick to their long-standing plan to replace humans with Prelands. Noÿs insisted that humans on Earth be allowed to establish a technological civilization and achieve first contact with the Buld in approximately the year 2000.

Exode is the story of the events leading up to that "first contact". During the 20,000 years before Earthlings first have knowledge of Genesaunt civilization, the Huaoshy arranged for the pek to produce several types of human "agents" who were routinely sent from worlds like Hemmal to Earth. Some of these secret agents were Kac'hin.

As a Kac'hin, Kach has a brain structure that has been selected to make possible a form of communication with the Huaoshy. As an analogy for how difficult such communication is, imagine establishing a data channel for information exchange between a bacterium and a person. From the perspective of a human communicating with a bacterium, the information received might seem quite limited and boring. However, the Huaoshy have made an effort to establish the means to monitor the communications channel that they created by designing the Kac'hin.

source: Dan Durda, Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO.

In order to communicate with the Huaoshy, Kach must learn to use the "bimanoid interface", which is a specialized collection of devices composed of sedronic matter that can interface with the pek nanites that have resided in her brain during her whole life. When Kach arrives in the Andromeda galaxy and has a chance to question the Nereids, she learns about the planet Luk'ru where the Kac'hin were originally created.

Arriving at Luk'ru, Kach quickly decides that there are no surviving Kac'hin on the planet. She and Parthney depart Luk'ru and go off in search of some living Kac'hin who Kach hopes will be able to teach her how to use the "bimanoid interface" and allow her to communicate with the Huaoshy. By this time Hana is about to give birth to Izhiun, so she and Boswei decide to settle on Luk'ru and establish a human settlement in the Andromeda galaxy.

Source: Matthew Trickel

Kach eventually realizes that her use of the "bimanoid interface" as a communications channel to the Huaoshy depends on her doing something that is of interest to the Huaoshy. 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. When Kach finally makes her way to Earth and starts interfering with the Overseers who are stationed at Observer Base on the Moon then she finally attracts the attention of the Huaoshy.

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Note. For more about the Bimanoid Interface see my blog post "Let there be light".

2014. Update on the origins of Kach.