The Marta Maneuver

Trysta viewing Realities

Earlier this year, with the help of hints from Ivory and her clone, Angela, I began making sense of some mysterious memories that I inherited from Thomas and Izhiun. In particular, starting from clues related to the existence of "extra dimensions", I was able to remember and understand parts of a dream that I had long ago in which I first began to realize that there is more to the history of Earth than the mundane story found in history textbooks.

During the course of the past several months, I've been slowly discovering how my life was shaped by Trysta so that I would become "the Editor" of the Exode Trilogy. Here, I outline some new revelations about yet another way that Trysta found to manipulate me.

Dreams or.....?

Alien dreams.

In Assignment Nor'Dyren, Sydney Van Scyoc wrote about the "transmission of dreams". What if we humans are particularly sensitive to telepathic communication while we sleep?

When I was young I went through a period of time during which I studied my dreams. I've now renewed that study and I'm making use of new hints that were encoded in the infites that I recently received from Ivory.

Artist's depiction of
Ivory when she was
about 25 years old

I've discovered that when we were young, Ivory and I were connected by our "shared dreams". However, I believe that it is an error to refer to what we shared as "dreams". The problem is, I'm not sure how else to describe what we shared.

Of course, this whole mess seems to have started with Tryst's meddling in our lives. The extent of that meddling amazes me. Ivory, in particular, seems to have been carefully crafted by Trysta as a tool that would make it possible for Earthlings to begin to understand the secret history of Earth.

Poor Ivory was not really human in the conventional sense. Yes, her physical form was carefully shaped so that she appeared to be human, but her mother, Marta, knew the truth. And kept the truth from Ivory.

Ivory grew up knowing that she was not "normal". Every minute of every day her body relentlessly informed her that it was not the body of an Earth girl. However, Ivory could not guess what was "wrong" with her body. Nothing was "wrong", she was simply experiencing part of what it is like to be a young Preland. Ivory's large complement of alien genes made her body unusual. In particular, for the first two decades of her life she had no adipose tissue. When all of her friends had matured into women, Ivory remained freakishly thin.

Artist's depiction of Marta

Since Marta knew what was going on, there were no visits to endocrinologists and no medical hormone treatments for Ivory. Trysta and Marta worked out their own less conventional therapy.

Trysta had foreseen a future in which Ivory and "the Editor" would collaborate to tell the secret history of Earth. Even with that collaboration still decades in the future, Trysta realized that it was not too early to begin familiarizing the Editor and Ivory with each other. Trysta had Marta introduce "the Editor" to Ivory in 1975.

I'm still not sure how Marta did it. Ivory never knew, either. All I am certain of is that when Ivory was "converted" into Yrovi, she took the time to visit me and slip some of her memories into my mind. Her memories of our time together inside the Hierion Domain triggered the release of my own repressed memories from our shared "dream time". My brain is gradually reactivating all my old memories from when I first met Ivory, but there is a wicked twist in this story that involves Ivory's mother Marta.

The Hierion Domain

Artist's depiction of Lili

I'm not sure exactly what the Hierion Domain is, but apparently I first "met" Ivory "inside" the Hierion Domain. Words fail to describe what actually happened. I believe that the Hierion Domain exists outside of normal space-time as we know it. In some sense, the Hierion Domain is a "parallel universe" that exists along side the three dimensional world of hadronic matter.

Most hierions cannot exist within the universe as we know it. Hierions are not normally constrained to only three spatial dimensions. The infites (information nanites) that I received from Izhiun include an account of his journey into the Hierion Domain. That "trip" into alternative dimensions took place on the planet Luk'ru and was facilitated by the Kac'hin. I'm guessing that either Trysta had access to "Hierion Tube" technology or, less likely, but still possible, Marta had "inherited" the means to access the Hierion Domain from her mother, Lili, who was a Kac'hin.

Dream Boat

"Magical Dream"

I've been told that it is possible to "teleport" into/through the Hierion Domain, but I don't think I've experienced that. There seems to be some other way of "entering" into the Hierion Domain that involves a kind of virtual reality interface. I'm not sure if my experience of "being in" the Hierion Domain was made possible by a "low resolution" version of the Bimanoid Interface.

I've previously assumed that the Bimanoid Interface is used to gain access to the information resources within the Sedronic Domain. However, in some important sense, the Hierion Domain is in an intermediate "position" between the Hadronic Domain and the Sedronic Domain.

Suspended City by Jeremiah Humphries

Either Ivory was teleported into our shared "dreams" or else her experience was just a higher fidelity version of our time together than what I was provided with. In either case, I can recognize the places recorded in Ivory's memories of the Hierion Domain and I can easily match them to fragments of odd "dreams" that have long haunted me. Once that process of recognizing my own past in Ivory's memories began, it started an avalanche that is quickly unlocking all my old memories from the Hierion Domain. Something had always been suppressing my conscious awareness of the time I spent with Ivory in the Hierion Domain, but those restraints have now been broken....or lifted.

In some sense, our time together in the Hierion Domain benefited me and prepared me for my future, but in another way I was simply used to satisfy Ivory's need for companionship while she was going through a difficult period in her life.

Somehow Ivory had the power to extract my mind from my body while I slept. Back in those days of our youth, she was exploring the Hierion Domain. That was a big project that apparently dominated the fist two decades of her life.

The portion of the Hierion Domain that was accessible to us seems to be a type of virtual Earth that has been constructed by the combined thoughts of every human who has ever lived on Earth. According to Ivory, all humans carry a nanite endosymbiont that has a natural extension within the Hierion Domain. In some sense, we each have a nanorobotic self that exists inside the Hierion Domain.

The first problem this creates is that the nanorobotic versions of people that "live" in the Hierion Domain never die. The second problem is that the "nanorobotic people" of the Hierion Domain can reproduce and, in fact, they have their own unique culture that is, to a large extent, independent of what happens here on Earth.

Ostuni by subversif

Sometimes Ivory talked about the Hierion Domain as being the Museum of Humanity. She told me that she was searching for her ancestors so that she could learn about her origins and why she was so different from everyone else on Earth.

I don't think Ivory ever showed me her true physical form during our meetings in the Hierion Domain. She was an expert at controlling her appearance and she took pleasure in playing tricks on me. For example, she once took on my own appearance and pretended to be an older version of me who was visiting from the future.

Eventually Ivory took pity on me and stopped surprising me with new disguises. From then on she devoted her "dress up" efforts to crafting a physical appearance that most appealed to me. At the time I was going through puberty and struggling to adjust to the high levels of reproductive hormones that were in my body. I could not help but fall in love with the dream creature that could pull me into the Hierion Domain.

Well of Souls by Joe Slucher

Now that I have access to Ivory's memories from that time, I see that she mostly felt pity for me and how I was used by Marta. By matching Ivory's memories to mine, it is clear that when I first visited the Hierion Domain, Ivory was not yet with me as my guide and mentor.

Marta's Move
Just when she was on the brink of making a conventional life for herself, Ivory turned her back on the heard of Earthlings and went back to her birth place, the sentient spaceship called Many Sails. I have access to a particularly important and revealing memory from Ivory that is from her time at Atlantis. Ivory was the conditions and circumstances under which Marta had selected me to be Ivory's partner in the Hierion Domain.

Marta had been struggling to deal with her daughter's growing unhappiness which grew out of Ivory's frustration over not being able to discover the basis for her biological uniqueness. Marta had long since given Ivory access to the Hierion Domain and launched her on the endless search for her ancestors.

Marta in the Hierion Domain
Model: Kahina. See credits, below.

Then, with Ivory growing increasingly frustrated and depressed, Trysta suggested to Marta that Ivory and I be "introduced" and allowed to interact in the Hierion Domain. At that time, Marta knew nothing about me. Trysta explained that Ivory and I would meet in the future, but Marta was skeptical about the value of introducing her daughter to some unknown Earthling.

Apparently, when I first met "Ivory" in the Hierion Domain I was being tricked and I was actually interacting with Marta. Ivory always knew that Marta had "tested" me in some way, but Marta never revealed to her daughter how extensive that "testing" had been.

Marta did not simply meet me and "interview" me and verify that I would be of no danger to Ivory. I suppose that Marta felt obligated to shape me into the kind of companion that she thought her daughter deserved. Of course, at that time I was dealing with my own problems. I'm not sure how much time I spent attending Marta's Finishing School. With no corresponding memories for that period of my life from Ivory, I'm so far only able to retrieve fragments of memories from my time in the Hierion Domain that was spent with Marta.

"Dream Gothic Garden VI" by Kahina Spirit

I can't bring myself to resent the way that Marta used me as a kind of therapy for her daughter. I'm forced to wonder to what extent she also used me for her own purposes. Marta's interactions with me were only revealed when Anney became skilled at using the Bimanoid Interface. In a future blog post I discuss Anney's role in "ratting Marta out".

Image credits.
To illustrate my dream-like memories from the virtual reality of the Hierion Domain, I made use of some images from the deviantArt website (see above and to the right). To represent the dream world Marta/Ivory, I used the image "Dream Gothic Garden VI" by Kahina Spirit. For the background, I used "Garden Background stock" by Johanna and "Fantasy castle background 2" by Karen Besant.

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