The World Starter

Araminta Station cover art by Boris
Vallejo. "The Beast and the Butterfly"

Sessily Veder is a tragic character in the Jack Vance novel Araminta Station. She is murdered and her body sealed up in wine keg and shipped off across space. Before her demise, she shares her personal outlook on life with her boyfriend, Glawen: "I like to pretend that the world started when I was born and will go on forever, and never change."

Building on that romantic world view, I've written Sessily into the Exode Trilogy. She is one of the few people who are transported from the Ekcolir Reality into the Buld Reality. In a way, Sessily did create (or is in the process of creating) the world as we know it.

I've previously described some of the basic facts about the version of Sessily who lives in our world. Recently I learned about the "original Sessily" who lived in the Ekcolir Reality.

Svahr's family tree

Here (to the left) is the "family tree" that Anney provided for the "original Sessily". According to Anney, the inspiration for Sessily was actually named Svahr.

Svahr was an interventionist agent who was stationed on Earth during the 20th century in the Ekcolir Reality. Svahr carried a heavy load of Preland genes, but while stationed on Earth she used facial nanites to provide her with normal human features.

art by Boris Vallejo

The true appearance of Svahr is not certain, but I've provided fanciful depiction (image to the right). When Svahr visited Earth, she was able to modify her physical appearance by using advanced nanites.

Svahr apparently played a role in many Reality Changes that were engineered during the Time War. Most of Svahr's work was erased, but Angela Fersoni recovered the story behind many of her exploits from information that still exists in the Sedronic Domain.

Eight months ago Angela and Ivory passed along some information to me about Meropa, one of the early interventionists who helped shape human civilization on Earth. I wish I had also known about Svahr back then.

Micro-changes

Ivory once tried to explain to me some of the intricacies involved in initiating the Buld Reality, the world as we know it. However, I still don't understand exactly what finally triggered the Reality Change that converted the Ekcolir Reality into the Buld Reality. The initial time travel events that contributed to that Reality Change only cause "micro-changes".

I've been struggling to understand the distinction between "micro-changes" and Reality Changes for years. Here is one (probably incorrect) way to think about Trysta's last time travel mission, when she went 10,000 years into our past. Imagine that her trip to Phasi and the second part of her mission, in Bermuda, did NOT trigger a Reality Change. This is analogous to what Asimov described in The End of Eternity when Cooper was sent back into the Primitive. When Trysta was stationed in Bermuda, she met Athlash and they had a son named Hyanti.

source

The fate of Athlash is unclear, but it might be that he died while on a mission in South America. What is clear is that Trysta teleported off of Earth, perhaps while pregnant with Hyanti. At that time. Lendhalen did not yet exist, but there was some equivalent Interventionist base in the Koly star system. That is where Hyanti met a Kac'hin named Karonis.

Karonis and Hyanti were the parents of a woman named Tayge. Tayge was eventually cloned, giving rise to Meropa, Mintha and Psamatha. Psamatha was the mother of Svahr. Svahr somehow ended up as an Interventionist agent in the 20th century of the Ekcolir Reality. Anney has suggested to me that Svahr's mission to the 20th century involved moving an Earth human from the Ekcolir Reality into the Buld Reality. This "move" required a precisely timed process by which one selected Earthling was taken out of Time, kept safe in Eternity, and then he was "transplanted" into the Buld Reality, the world as we know it. There are parts of this story that Anney refuses to explain to me, in particular, the identity of the person who Svahr "rescued" from the Ekcolir Reality, someone who apparently now exists here in our universe as a member of the Dead Widowers Society.

"The old observatory" by Leon Tukker

When the Reality Change finally became complete and the Buld Reality replaced the Ekcolir Reality, then all the micro-changes caused in Earth's past by both Ekcolir and Trysta became part of the Buld Reality. In some sense, Svahr "began" in the Ekcolir Reality, but she must have come safely into Buld Reality where her genetic template was used to make the "version of Sessily" that exists in our Reality. Further, Anney insists that Svahr had (has?) a replicoid in the Hierion Domain that guided the cognitive development of the "version of Sessily" that exists in our Reality.

The Kac'hin

source
The identities of Resk^Ki's father and grandfather remain
unknown. The name of Resk^Ki's mother has not
been revealed to me, although I suspect Anney knows it.

According to Anney, Svahr and Resh^Ki ended up on the same planet of the Galactic Core, a world where they are struggling to resolve one last dispute that was left "up in the air" at the end of the Time Travel War. Anney still has doubts as to whether we are actually in the true Buld Reality that was the basis of the Trysta-Grean Pact. Apparently we are in unexplored territory, possibly still with micro-changes yet to be "completed" that will determine the final form of our Reality, even though time travel is now no longer possible.

Here is how Anney explained it: "Some of the effects of time travel are still propagating through the information flows of the Hierion and Sedron Domains." It is like the dramatic last scene of The End of Eternity when Andrew must decide if he will trust Noÿs or kill her.

When Anney told me that the Buld Reality is, in essence, still forming, I asked if we are actually still in the Ekcolir Reality. She assured me that the Ekcolir Reality ended after the pek brought into existence the Kac'hin and deployed them on Battle Field Earth.

Hermaphrodites
If you ever want to watch Anney get "fired up", just mention hermaphrodites. Apparently the Prelands were designed as hermaphrodites for a fairly innocuous reason, but then the whole "hermaphrodite thing" snowballed. Thus, we ended up with hermaphroditic Buld, Asterothropes, Ek'col, Kac'hin and tryp'At. According to Anney the tryp'At hermaphrodites are the "problem" because they were specifically crafted so as to be superficially indistinguishable from Earthlings.

source

Thus, the tryp'AT have claimed (based on a technical interpretation of the Rules of Intervention and the Trysta-Grean Pact) the right to become the self-appointed Overseers of Earth in the Buld Reality.

Anney claims that the grab for control of Observer Base by the tryp'At has prevented the "true Buld Reality" from coming into existence, threatening a collapse of the Trysta-Grean Pact. Kach and Parthney have gone off to the Galactic Core in an effort aimed at discovering the home of the tryp'At. Anney and the Dead Widowers are trying to act as a counter force to the tryp'At here on Earth.

World Starter

"Hydratellian Archaeology" by
Hannah Rose Williams

Anney says that the final nature of the Buld Reality is still being determined. Along with the "version of Sessily" that exists in our Reality and the other Dead Widowers, Anney is struggling against Resh^Ki and the tryp'At Overseers to decide the fate of we Earthlings.

I'm baffled and confused by what Anney has told me about her continuing struggles against Resh^Ki. Sometimes I feel that Anney is impatiently waiting for me to develop my ability to control the Bimanoid Interface. I suspect that Anney's talk about "propagating information" through the Hierion Domain is specifically in reference to me and my ability to consciously retain information that is already available to my replicoid inside the Hierion Domain.

My working hypothesis is that there is some "deep secret" surrounding the particular hermaphroditic tryp'At who was the father of Resh^Ki. Anney refuses to discuss the matter with me.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers