Gohrlay and Ekcolir

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Foundation of Eternity is a science fiction novel that tells the strange story of how positronic robots came into existence and how the first positronic robot, R. Gohrlay, was able to make use of telepathy and time travel to liberate Humanity from the alien Huaoshy.

Of course, the Huaoshy and the pek did not sit idly by when R. Gohrlay liberated Earth. Eventually the Huaoshy realized that it was their own alteration of the dimensional structure of the universe that had made time travel possible.

Gohrlay was a Neanderthal who grew up on the Moon about  20,000 years ago. She was targeted by Orbho Anagro to be the human whose brain structure would be copied into positronic circuits. Anagro intended to make it appear to all the other humans on the Moon that Gohrlay had died, her brain having been destructively scanned and its neural network structure copied into functionally equivalent positronic circuitry.

Trysta and Ekcolir

However, Anagro did not anticipate that the resulting robot, R. Gohrlay, would have telepathic abilities and realize what Anagro had done, realize that Anagro was an alien and have the power to inactivate all the orbho at Observer Base.

Trysta and Ekcolir

With time, the Huaoshy developed their own technology for time travel and Reality Viewing. For a while, R. Gohrlay and her fellow positronic robots waged a time travel war with the Huaoshy, the pek and the Kac'hin. Grean, a hermaphroditic Kac'hin, became their tool for creating a new Reality in which the time travel war could end.

An opportunity for ending the war came about when R. Gohrlay sent Trysta, an Asterothrope female, to the 20th century. Grean was dispatched into the past and tasked with initiating the design and development of a new human variant, the Ek'col. Eventually, an Ek'col male using the name Ekcolir was sent to Earth during the 20th century, his mission: to win the trust of Trysta and convince her to collaborate with Grean. That plan worked, and ultimately Grean and Trysta identified the Buld Reality as a timeline that was acceptable to both the Huaoshy and R. Gohrlay.

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The End of Positronics
Within the timeline of the Buld Reality, positronic robots were never created. Ekcolir arrived from the future and lived for a time on Earth, 20,000 years in our past. Ekcolir was not interfertile with Earth women, but he had brought along a zeptite endosymbiont that could transfer some Preland gene combinations into humans. Rumor has it that it had been the intention of the pek to replace the humans of Earth with hermaphroditic Prelands, but within the Buld Reality the humans of Earth would remain in control of their home planet. After living on Earth for a few years, Ekcolir allowed himself to be captured by Overseers and taken to the Moon.

A gene database search quickly informed Orbho Anagro of the fact that Ekcolir was an Ek'col, a human variant that the pek had designed. Ekcolir was able to exercise his gallantry upon Gohrlay and alter the nature of her developing interest in the last few Neanderthals living on Earth. With help from Ekcolir, Gohrlay was able to expose Anagro's illegal plan to use advanced pek technology to copy the structure of Gohrlay's brain into positronic circuits. Anagro's command of Observer base was terminated. Ekcolir and Gohrlay were transported by Many Sails to the Koly star system where they worked to establish the Pla.

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When Ekcolir reached old age, he transferred his zeptite endosymbiont into a robot and began his "second life" as an artificial life form (using the name Rilocke). When the Buld sent a spaceship to earth 15,000 years ago, Rilocke was aboard.

The Fate of Gohrlay
I've begun to suspect that R. Gohrlay was able to negotiate a special accommodation with the Huaoshy. There seems to be no record of the fate of Gohrlay after she reached Taivasila. Within the Buld Reality, after Gohrlay worked for a time with Ekcolir in the Koly star system there is no further information about her activities. It seems possible that multiple copies of Gohrlay, both in her original biological form and as artificial life replicas may still exist within the Buld Reality along with R. Gohrlay. If so, is there any way to determine their location? Is there any chance for contact between we Earthlings and R. Gohrlay?

I've begun to apply to myself the methods of electromagnetic brain stimulation that were described by Ivory. I believe that she subjected herself to these techniques in an effort to attain contact with the Sedronic Domain. I don't know if she was successful and I have now lost contact with her.

As a test, I'm trying to access information about Gohrlay that I know must exist within the Sedronic Domain. Ivory's favorite hypothesis was that some humans on Earth carry Preland gene combinations that allow them to have contact with the Sedronic Domain. However, Earth has apparently been flooded with zeptites that scan all human brains for the special neural network structure required for reception of information flow from the Sedronic Domain. Those zeptites efficiently create a disruptor circuit in human brains to prevent conscious understanding of any information that is received from the Sedronic Domain.

Ivory suspected that during the past 20,000 years there have been a few Earthlings who were spontaneously able to escape from this "disruptor effect". The brain of Ivory's sister Angela was carefully monitored during development and her neural networks sculpted into a pattern that allowed her to efficiently obtain information from the Sedronic Domain. Ivory hoped that she could send electromagnetic signals into her brain that would inactivate her own "disruptor circuit" and allow her to receive data from the Sedronic Domain. For now this is also my hope, but I do not know which part of my brain might house the "disruptor circuit" and there is no way of knowing what types of electromagnetic signals might influence the activity of that circuit.

Positronic Memories

Reality Chain

As described above, in our timeline Ekcolir was able to prevent the development of positronics as a science. In the late 20th century the Huaoshy again changed the dimensional structure of the universe so as to make time travel impossible. That dimensional shift also eliminated the ability of positronic brains to amplify telepathic signals.

However, knowledge of positronic robots was able to survive into our Reality. In the Foundation Reality, Asimov had a "close encounter" with the "remains" of a damaged positronic robot. The robot sent its femtobot components into Asimov's brain. Asimov thus became aware of positronic robots and the role that they played in spreading humans through the galaxy, the rise of the Galactic Empire and the establishment of Galaxia.

Asimov participated in the creation of the next Reality (which I usually call the Asimov Reality) when he traveled through time and made use of femptobots to alter his appearance and take the place of pulp science fiction magazine editor John Campbell. In that Reality, Asimov/Campbell had a dramatic confrontation with an artificial life form from Observer Base. As an emergency measure, Trysta transferred memory nanites from both Asimov and the Observerbot into her son, Thomas.

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Thomas was later sent through time and helped bring into existence the Buld Reality, the world as we know it. In this Reality, Thomas put his memory nanites into the brain of Campbell. As Asimov's mentor, Campbell had repeated close contacts with Asimov and so it became possible for Asimov to write his famous fictional account of the Foundations and positronic robots like Daneel.

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2015 update: another source of influence on Asimov's writing career within the Buld Reality.

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