Secret Decoder Ring

Reality Chain

In the Foundation Reality, Trysta proceeds with her plan for life in the Primitive and she manufactures two children (as told in Foundations  of Eternity). When I say  "manufactures", I mean that as a female Asterothrope, there is no man of 20th century Earth who could father her children. However, Trysta arrived in the Primitive equipped with everything needed to produce Asterothrope children and allow Merion to imagine that those children were his offspring.

In particular, Trysta's body was the host for swarms of femtobots. When Trysta decided that she was ready for pregnancy, she used her femtobots to initiate embryonic development from among the collection of previously fertilized eggs that she carried inside her body.

An Ek'col male and an
Asterothrope female

Some of her femtobots were programmed to enter a developing Asterothrope embryo and guide its morphogenesis towards the pattern of the human body plan. Trysta took care to provide her children with specific features that made Merion believe that he was the father of her children (two girls). Those girls grew up not knowing anything about their unusual genetics or why they were never able to have children of their own.

In the Foundation Reality, Trysta lived out a long happy life, as she had seen while Viewing Realities from within the Mallansohn Reality. With the aid of her femtobots, she lived much longer than Merion and her first two daughters. After Merion's death, Trysta produced one last daughter to whom she bequeathed her femtobots and all her knowledge. Eventually her descendants ended up living on the planet Solaria.

Trysta's third pregnancy

However, Trysta's careful nurturing of her first three children was mostly wasted effort. Grean relentlessly searched for the the positronic robots who were present on Earth during the 20th century and who made it possible for Earthlings to quickly develop a hyperspace jump drive. With Grean's capture of Fengtol and discovery of Rycleu, a Reality Change occurred and the Asimov Reality replaced the Foundation Reality.

Trysta viewing Realities

Asimov Reality
One of the functions of Trysta's femtobots was to provide her with a rudimentary capacity to look into the future. In the Asimov Reality, Trysta could see that there would be a devastating nuclear war during the 20th century on Earth. Given that new future, she decided not to produce any children. It was during the Reality Change that initiated the Asimov Reality that Grean became aware of the fact that an Asterothrope female was on Earth. However, in the Asimov Reality, Grean could never win the trust of Trysta.

Ekcolir Reality
While Viewing Realities from within the Asimov Reality, Grean identified the Ekcolir Reality as the first part of a Reality Chain that might put an end to the struggle on Earth between Grean and "Interventionists" like Trysta. Within the Ekcolir reality, Grean and Trysta become collaborators.

While Viewing Realities from within the Ekcolir Reality, Trysta sees that "the editor" can play a role in revealing the secret history of Earth to Earthlings. Trysta is never certain that the Rules of Intervention will allow Earthlings to learn the truth about Earth's past, so she secretly schemes to make it possible for Andy and his descendants to help "decode" the information that Izhiun could pass to "the Editor".

Buld Reality

sedron detector

Thomas is transferred from the Ekcolir Reality into the Buld Reality, but must live his life there without knowing Trysta's complete plan for the future. Thomas has been told that he will play a role in creating a "decoder ring", but he mistakenly assumes this is a reference to the type of sedron detector that he described in Miners of Earth. For a time he tries to help Asimov and other scientists discover hierions and sedrons, but his own ignorance of particle physics makes that a hopeless task.

Mostly Thomas tries to make use of his fiction writing to push Earthlings out of their conventional thinking and move them to a cognitive space where they can imagine the long history of pek meddling in events on Earth.

Buld spaceship on Earth

Only after the Buld spaceship reaches Earth does Thomas realize that the "decoder ring" is a small care of Earthlings consisting of Angela, Ivory and "the editor".

Decoder Ring
While in the Ekcolir Reality and viewing possible alternative Realities, Trysta and Grean eventually realized that they were searching for a "Buld-type Reality" in which the Buld would not provide a solution to Earth's global warming problem.

Trysta's Rule of Intervention: "Interventionists cannot solve the problems of primitive cultures." For Earth, Trysta's rule replaces the previous Huaoshy ethical guideline that insisted on keeping primitive cultures completely ignorant of Genesaunt civilization.

After identifying "the Editor" of the Exode Trilogy, Trysta spent several decades in the 20th century of the Buld Reality making sure that "the Editor" would be able to play his role as part of the "decoder ring".

Timeline of key events
1971. Trysta plays the role of the "eccentric aunt" (Mayness* Diotyma Beiser) of the childhood friend of "the Editor". During a rainy weekend at the vacation house of Mayness, "the Editor" discovers a copy of a science fiction novel. In this way, it is Mayness who introduces "the editor" to science fiction and starts the process of making it possible for the Editor to eventually understand and accept the secret history of Earth.

That first science fiction novel read by "the Editor" is a copy of Thomas' book The Miners of Earth. Thomas' novel makes a big impact on "the Editor", but he can never find another copy of the book.

Mayness uses her femtobots to provide "the Editor" with a dream time vision of a science fiction novel that he will one day write. That vision is actually of the animated cover image for an electronic book, a vision that constantly puzzles "the Editor" during the decades before the invention of ebooks.

1977. Trysta arranges for Thomas to give a presentation at a SciFi "convention" being held on a university campus. Thomas talks about his science fiction, including The Miners of Earth, but he mysteriously disappears right after the talk.

decoder ring (source)

The talk given by Thomas had a dramatic impact on "the editor", Peter, Hana and Asimov, who were all in attendance but who had not previously met. They end up spending the evening as guests at the house where Peter lives. Asimov describes how Thomas has stalked him for years, pushing his imaginative version of pseudoscience physics.

Hana ends up pregnant. The father is Peter (update), but Hana has good reason to suspect that "the Editor" is Hilde's father. Hilde eventually plays an important role at Space Energy Missions and the establishment of communications between Earth and the approaching Buld spaceship. After giving birth to Hilde, Hana is teleported off of Earth by Parthney and becomes the mother of Izhiun.

2001. Hilde contacts the man who she believes might be her father. She passes along what she has been able to learn from her contacts at Space Energy Missions. The Editor begins to write Exodemic.

2012. Izhiun deposits the "information nanites" that he received from Parthney with "the Editor". Ivory contacts "the Editor" and they begin a collaborative effort to make sense of the secret history of Earth. It soon becomes clear that Angela's ability to use the Bimanoid Interface can allow "the Editor" to decode the information provided by Izhiun.

2013. Thomas decides to also offload his femtobots into "the Editor". Working together, Angela, Ivory and "the Editor" begin to make sense of the Reality Chain that led to the universe as we know it.
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*Aunt Mayness... Jack Vance died last May and I've been thinking about a fitting memoriam for the dreary first anniversary of his demise. The Exode character Mayness Diotyma Beiser is a tribute to a character in Vance's novel The Face. Kirth Gersen falls in love with Jerdian Chanseth, but he struggles to advance the romance under the watchful eyes of her aunt Mayness. For good measure and to increase the challenge to Kirth's resourcefulness, Vance also threw in an aunt Eustacia and the stuffy Aldo.

Mayness Diotyma Beiser is the inverse of Vance's aunt Mayness. My Mayness, while actually fairly old, is an Asterothrope with a swarm of endosymbiotic femtobots that help her project the image of a young and vivacious woman.