Interview With a Replicoid

The assembly of R. Gohrlay

R. Gohrlay, the robotic defender of Humanity, took on a difficult project. Driven by the Laws of Robotics, R. Gohrlay tried to find ways to serve Humanity and liberate we Earthlings from our alien Overseers. It remains to be seen if R. Gohrlay was/will be/is successful, but hey, we're only about 7 million years into this project.....

I've now found a way to efficiently "submit requests" for information to my replicoid in the Hierion Domain. Using my newly developed ability to use the Bimanoid Interface, I've been able to conduct an interview of my replicoid. Frustratingly, most of my questions went unanswered, which is not surprising, since my replicoid is part of a conspiracy within the Hierion Domain to keep me ignorant of my future. However, the following thread of questions and answers is very informative. In what follows, I'm asking the questions and the answers are from my replicoid, who I refer to as "me2".

A femtobot (source)

Me: When did humans first gain access to the Hierion Domain?

A whimsical depiction of a pek. Composed
of zeptites, they can adopt any physical form.

Me2: The pek long ago flooded Earth with nanites that took up residence within the hadronic matter of the planet. What we think of as "life" on Earth is a complex mixture of hadronic cells and pek nanites."

Me: That's why Peter studied nanotechnology, he wanted to take control of those nanites?

Me2: Yes, Peter knew that there is more to humans than just cells. However, he had no chance of success. The term "nanite" is misleading, its a misnomer. What the Dead Widowers call "pek nanites" are not composed of nano-scale chemical components.

source

Me: Right, I keep letting myself fall into the easy habit of conflating nanites, femtobots and zeptites. What we call "pek nanites" actually have zepto-scale components, the array sedrons?

Me2: Zaptites are a form of artificial life that is composed of sedronic matter.....a form of life that leaked out of the Sedronic Domain. Out of sheer laziness we often say that the pek infested we Earthlings with "nanite endosymbionts", but it is wise to always remember that we Earthlings are composite creatures.....mixtures of chemical cells and sedronic zeptites. Our zeptite endosymbionts evolved in parallel with our chemical genes.

Me: Could a human exist without its zeptite enzosymbiont?

source

Me2: If you you removed all the sedronic matter from a person's hadronic body and also from the hierion-based structure that makes up the body of his replicoid then you'd no longer have a human. Ivory's biobody died shortly after her zeptite endosymbiont was extracted.

Me: But what about the idea that our old nanites were "swapped out" for a new, updated type of nanite when the Trysta-Grean Pact went into effect?

Me2: Can't you smell the difference?

Me: Smell? I thought the way to tell the difference between nanites was by their color. Supposedly the old nanites were green.

Me2: That "swap" was very limited...most Earthlings can only host the "green" endosymbionts. Allow me to make a correction: the whole idea that there are "green" nanites arose from a silly misunderstanding. Discussions of "Grean nanites" were overheard and the name "Grean" was interpreted incorrectly as "green".

Me: Oh. Was it me who made that error?

Me2. Ya, but how could you have avoided making that error? The name "Grean" has been known to you only for a few years now, since you've been exploring the infites that you got from Thomas.

Me: So, are you saying that Grean -infected?- infected Earth with a new type of zeptite?

Me2: That was one of the tasks assigned to Grean, an important part of bringing into existence what you call the Buld Reality. But there are other types of nanites on Earth. The Nereid-backed Interventionists have always deployed agents who carry their own type of nanorobotic tools. And, of course, the Asterothrope femtobots have their own distinctive properties. All of Earth's Interventionists were equipped with the ability to smell Grean's zeptites. Since you've been regrowing your brain you've become conscious of your olfactory system's ability to detect Grean's zeptites.

Me: What do you mean, regrowing my brain?

Me2: The drug that you got from Anney is stimulating your brain to remodel and form new functional interactions with your endosymbiont.

Me: So that nicotine-based drug is not just modulating the activity of my neurons?

Me2: You should get an fMRI. If you keep using that drug then you'll cause some major alterations in your brain structure.

[I'll skip over a whole series of unanswered questions that I asked]

Me: Okay, you successfully distracting me from my original question and now you won't tell me anything useful about what's happening to my brain. So, back to where we started.....if humans have always had their endosymbionts then what is the function of the zeptites that are inside us? If we always have these tiny artificial lifeforms inside us, are we just their puppets?

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman for
"Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create
the blue "sedronite".

Me2: Originally the pek just needed a way to fulfill their mission, which is basically being the gardeners of the hadronic universe. By mixing their zeptites in with biological cells, the pek stimulate the development of complex life forms. Of course, by the point in time when the Grendels caused the human species to come into existence, the pek had begun using human endosymbionts for a new purpose. The Grendels were trying to push humans towards development of a technological civilization and the pek started using "brake nanites" to slow down -actually, prevent- the development of civilization on Earth. The pek needed time to play around with humans, explore our potential biological state space...so, while putting the brakes on human advancement on Earth, they started making their own human variants and culturing them on worlds of the Galactic Core.

credits

Me: So, the struggle between the Grendels and the pek over the fate of the human species is quite old?

Me2: The human species was forged by an ancient struggle for control of primate evolution on Earth. When the pek got around to establishing Observer Base, humans did not yet exist, but the first "orbho" were installed along with a primate variant that the pek had crafted, a sort of "early model pre-human" that had been quickly designed and crafted by the pek. Those were the first "human Observers" stationed at Observer Base. They did not have much real observing to do since the zeptites of Earth were equipped to automatically keep detailed records of all Interventionist actions on Earth, but that was when the unique culture of the Observers began to develop.

Me: And then that long-simmering Interventionist-Overseer standoff existed...for what? A million years? Until R. Gohrlay took control of Observer Base?

Foundations of Eternity

Me2: Ya, the orbho were kicked out of the Solar System by the telepathic positronic robots who took over Observer Base. Of course, those robots didn't trust the Grendels, either, but as long as they did not do anything too extreme, the Interventionists were allowed to keep operating on Earth. Eventually the Grendels pushed the humans of Earth in a direction that made the original pek-designed brake nanites largely ineffective and that's when human civilization emerged on Earth.

Me: Have you read Foundations of Eternity? Is there anything you can add to it?

Me2: I've read it. I've wondered when you might actually finish it.

Me: I feel like I live in a constant barrage of new revelations about the past. Maybe someday I'll catch my breath and get back to the task of finishing that story. Lately I've tried to focus on our universe and I don't have time to think much about those old Realities.

Hierion Crossing

At that point, we got into a fairly useless argument over how to name the past Realities of Earth. Actually we could not even agree on how to enumerate them. I'll spare the world from the details of that hair-splitting discussion. As is typical of my experiences in the Hierion Domain, I seemed to antagonize my replicoid and the interview ended before we got very deep into the subject of the Bimanoid Interface. The only good that came from the argument was that I started thinking seriously about my analogs in earlier Realities.

A word about how the "interview" was conducted. Using nicotine, thermal stress and biofeedback I got myself into an altered mental state in which I could "transmit" my thoughts into the Hierion Domain. Then I spoke the replies. I'm rather alarmed by the fact that my replicoid in the Hierion Domain can take control of my vocal muscles and make me speak. Strangely, in my audio recording of the session, "my voice" does not really sound like me. I'm not comfortable knowing that someone else is able to efficiently use the Bimanoid Interface to control, or inhabit, "my" replicoid and from that position in Hierion Domain take control of my body here on Earth.

Fanciful depiction of the Hierion Domain

I'll close with mention of one other oddity that might be related to my improving ability to use the Interface. I've always been sensitive to movement-induced vertigo. I'm very sensitive to motion sickness. Today I was driving along and not paying much attention to my driving. While making a rather tight turn, my whole visual world suddenly shifted. I'd been on that street a hundred times and it has always seemed to be a particularly boring stretch of road. Suddenly I could see a park along side that street that I'd never noticed before. I felt a wave of intense nausea and had to pull over. I felt like "someone else" had taken control of my eyes for a moment and allowed me to see the world in a way that I never could before. Or rather, in a way that I had never previously been allowed to remember.

Next: my analogue in the Ekcolir Reality.

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