Finding Love Among the Aliens

Araminta Station by Jack Vance

My recent commentary on the Sessily Trilogy avoided any mention of who Sessily is. Sessily Veder is a character in Araminta Station by Jack Vance.

When the young Glawen Clattuc informs his father that he is sneaking off to meet Sessily in the back garden of her family home, his father expresses sympathy with Glawan's surging hormones,  remarking that Sessily is without a doubt a charmer.

Later, seated on a bench in the garden with Sessily, Glawan is quiet and glances up at the stars. Sessily says, "I'm much more fun than the stars".

Glawen instantly agrees, "I'm convinced of it."

Sessily in Deep Time

Our Reality Chain

Imagine that time travel is possible, as described in The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Imagine the Reality that existed before time travel was used to bring into existence the world as we know it. In that previous Reality, let's suppose that the analog of Jack Vance wrote a somewhat different version of Araminta Station.

I usually call that previous Reality the Ekcolir Reality. Thomas was born in the Ekcolir Reality. Thomas is unique: the hybrid son of Trysta, an Asterothrope, and Ekcolir, an Ek'col. Trysta came to Earth from the far future, a time when humans are extinct, replaced by a new species, the Asterothropes.

Trysta travels through time, back to the 20th century. As an Asterothrope female, Trysta has an innate desire to have children, but she is unable to breed with humans. The Ek'col are a special human variant that was crafted and designed to be inter-fertile with Asterothropes. As told in Trysta and Ekcolir, Ekcolir is sent to Earth to woo and impregnate Trysta.

As a boy, Thomas was a precocious writer of science fiction stories. As an adult, he read the Ekcolir Reality version of Araminta Station and become infatuated with the fictional Sessily Veder character. Thomas lived out his life in the Ekcolir Reality without ever having a successful romantic relationship with a woman. He spent his teens in New Your City mental health facilities. Eventually, Thomas was plucked out of the timeline of the Ekcolir Reality; he traveled through time and continued his life in the Buld Reality, the universe as we know it.

Further, imagine that while carrying out the Reality change that ended the Ekcolir Reality and created the Buld Reality, it was possible to make the fictional Sessily Veder character appear as a living person here in our world. To accomplish this seemingly magical feat, Grean cheated. Grean arranged to have a Kac'hin born on Earth in the 20th century.

Sessily in her butterfly costume (see)

The Kac'hin are another specially designed human variant, crafted by the pek on a world of the Galactic Core. The Kac'hin were carefully designed so that Kac'hin females can breed with Asterothrope/Ek'col hybrids such as Thomas.

Before agreeing to the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact, Trysta insisted that Grean make it possible for her grandchildren to live on Earth. In order to comply with this requirement, Grean used nanites to craft a version of the fictional Sessily Veder character who would fall in love with Thomas and give birth to Trysta's grandchildren.

source (click to enlarge)

Poor Thomas grew up as a hybrid alien living on Earth among we humans. At the request of Trysta, Grean created a mate for Thomas. Sadly, Thomas was in his seventh decade of life before he met the living version of the fictional Sessily Veder character. However, due to his Asterothrope genes, he was physiologically similar to a 40 year old human.

Near the start of the Sessily Trilogy, Thomas meets the living version of the fictional Sessily Veder character and he is shocked to find a living person who is a flesh and blood incarnation of a fictional character from Deep Time. Thomas tells her about his past as a time traveler and she is intrigued. Eventually they fall in love and start collaborating as authors in an effort to explain to the people of Earth how aliens brought the human species into existence.

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