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Feb 4, 2017

Genes of Dar Sai

image credits
Zeta reports that the Asimov Replicoid has completed another session inside the AR Simulation of Eternity. Asimov discovered that after the death of Demon Prince Howard Treesong, Alice Wroke, Kirth Gersen and Karalin Umdys visited the Cora System. They had originally suspected that they might find evidence of human genetics experiments on the planet Methel, but their investigation soon led them to Dar Sai where they discovered a secret human genetics laboratory.
1971

Mind Transfer
Back when I was in my personal golden age of discovering printed science fiction, I read the story "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Poul Anderson earned a degree in physics, but his fictional biology was quite disappointing for me to wade through even as a teenager.
Jack Vance (left) and Poul Anderson (under the dart board) [image source]


Trilateroids
In "Call Me Joe", Anderson not only imagines complex life on Jupiter but some sort of hyper-accelerated evolution of an advanced human-like pseudojovian by Earthly scientists (starting from atmospheric spores scooped up from the high clouds of Jupiter). With a few decades of artificial evolution, a replica of the human brain is crafted inside a beast with Jovian biochemistry.

In the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Ken Distler
Special thanks to Miranda Hedman
for "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used
to create the blue sedronite.
The pseudojovian must have a human brain in order for it to be psionically linked with the brain of a human. In "Call Me Joe", Anderson tells us little about the future science "psibeam" that is used to link a human in orbit to the pseudojovian on Jupiter. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that the basis for telepathy was a strange type of physics involving imaginary particles: hierions.

source
According to Zeta, in the Asimov Reality, the bumpha "revealed" the fact that the Trilateroids had been developed as part of an ancient study of telepathy. In that Reality, human telepathy was pushed to its peak through intensive human breeding experiments.

Jerdian
Writing here in the Final Reality, Jack Vance left many hints in his stories that Gersen and Glawen both had a low -but noticeable- level of telepathic ability. Apparently, the bumpha could provide any human with a "telepathy amplifying" nanite prosthetic, and Gersen and Glawen were two of the people in the Asimov Reality who had their innate telepathic abilities boosted by the bumpha.

According to Zeta, Kirth Gersen was able to make use of his amplified telepathic abilities to find the secret laboratory on Dar Sai where the pek were carrying out human breeding experiments. Those experiments culminated in the creation of special combinations of genes derived from both the Methelen and the Darsh.

Next: Isaac Asimov as a character in the Exode Saga
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