The Phasian Knot

Ivory was trained as a scientist.
She wrote her account of First Contact
in the form of a journal article.
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion

Back in 2014 I wrote a short science fiction story called "The Phasian Knot", a tale of First Contact with alien beings from a distant world. For several years the story was available online at another website. That other website seems to have evaporated, so I'm placing a copy of the story here.
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The Phasian Knot
by Ivory Fersoni

Abstract
This is a report on my recent and largely successful investigation into the question of how Earthlings achieved First Contact. Sadly, for what should have been a momentous occasion, Earth's First Contact with beings from another world was something of a PR flop for the Buld. Regardless, the technology that allowed Earthlings to reach out and converse with the Buld spaceship before its arrival in the Solar System was based on hierions, a form of matter that until this century had been unknown to our world's science of physics. Our still primitive understanding of hierion physics was a gift from Trysta, a non-human visitor on Earth. As an Earthling herself, Trysta's arrival from the far future did not in itself count as First Contact, in the technical sense. Of course, I should not have been surprised to find that my research efforts reveal that hierions, as a quantal advance in Earthly technology, and, indeed, the whole story of First Contact, can be traced back to the machinations of Trysta and her Kac'hin partner in Time, Grean.

Abbreviation used: PR - public relations

Introduction

Ekcolir viewing Trysta viewing a Reality.

This story begins in our previous Reality, the Ekcolir Reality, at a time within the key temporal nexus of the late 20th century. That was when Trysta used alien technology for Reality Viewing to peer into the Buld Reality: the universe as we know it. Here, I use the technical term "Reality" in the sense popularized by Isaac Asimov in his first ever account of the principles that govern travel through time (see his novel, The End of Eternity). When a time traveler such as Trysta goes back in time and alters the historical course of events, the old Reality is destroyed and a new Reality comes into existence.

source

While searching for a rare and precious Reality in which we Earthlings might survive to reach the stars, Trysta had stumbled onto the fact that her son, Thomas, would end up on the Moon, altruistically sacrificing his freedom so that his clone brother Parthney could be teleported back to the waiting arms of his lover, Kach. (Pardon the sarcasm ... I remain sadly bitter over the cruel course of my own romantic misadventures.)

Asterothrope hermaphrodites are
smaller than Asterthrope females

Thomas and his travels through time provided an important loop during the creation of the Phasian knot. The existence of Thomas, as the remarkable hybrid entity that he is, only became possible when the alien pek designed the Ek'col as a modified type of human organism that could capture Trysta's Asterothrope genes for use in the human gene pool. Thomas' father, Ekcolir, the prototypical Ek'col, was the great love of Trysta's life.

That love, brought to fruition from across a gulf of ten million years and lasting across a span of 20,000 years, from their first shy meeting and on into Trysta and Ekcolir's second lives as artificial life forms, constitutes a twisted love story that must be told in another, larger forum. Suffice it to say that the product of that romantic collision in space and time, Thomas, played out an essential role in the story of First Contact.

Location of the ancient "city" of Phasi

During their planning of our universe, Trysta and Grean took to referring to their jointly conceived plan for bringing the Buld Reality into existence as "the Phasian Knot". They did so because the complex Reality Change they devised involved Trysta going back in time to visit the ancient "city" of Phasi.

Given its size and function as a seasonal destination for semi-nomadic people, we of this age would not recognize Phasi as having been a true city. However, the rocky shoals of the area provided a rich source of shore foods and over the millennia a megalithic temple complex had slowly built up on a bluff fifty feet above the point where the river met the sea. The trivalent Phasi temples of the Moon, the Earth and the Sun formed the core of that early city.

That Earthly locale, at the east end of the Black Sea, was selected for Trysta's time travel mission for several related reasons, not the least of which being that the local population had retained high levels of expression of alien genes. Those genes had first been introduced to Earth during Ekcolir's time travel mission of about 20,000 years ago.

The Phasi children were golden-haired and efficient manufacturers of the D vitamins that their brains needed in large amounts in order to attain contact with "the gods". In contrast to the golden children of Phasi, the adults grew to have dark hair as they passed through adolescence, and their childhood telepathic contacts with the gods remained for them only a fodder for their highly developed cultural practice of story telling and myth building.

Of course, there never were any gods, but the children of Phasi did have real and largely unconscious contact with hidden Nereid agents, watching and waiting, tricking and treating, from within their secret refuge in the Hierion Domain. Those innocent children of Phasi were an obvious choice for Trysta when she went in search of a tribe of primitive Earthlings who could fulfill the strict requirements of her time travel mission.

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Methods
Observer Base on the Moon holds vast detailed records of how humans spread across our planet's surface. I've lived at Observer Base on the Moon for months, but I have no hope of ever being granted insight into how such records were -and still are- collected. My guess is that Observers secretly live among the people of Earth, constantly making a record of our planet's history.

Across the millennia, tribes have flowed from place to place across the surface of Earth like amoebae in search of food. I've been able to watch the rhythm of that flow as recorded in the Observer databases here on the Moon. Of central importance to this particular story are a people who I will call the Phasi, although that name was never actually used by them.

The Phasi were descended from a human tribe that Ekcolir had originally selected and genetically modified based on the fact that they had inherited some key genes from Neanderthals. Their special genetic endowment simplified his work in the past and reduced the number of genes he had to insert de novo before a functional bimanoid interface could be established within the brains of some humans on Earth.

The bimanoid interface is what provides humans like myself with technology-assisted telepathic powers. The necessary technological assist is provided by the alien nanite swarms that have existed, unseen, on Earth for millions of years. The trick of telepathy is simply to match one's brain structure to the nanites so as to achieve a functional symbiosis: the bimanoid interface.

The Neanderthal brain was naturally adapted for non-technology-assisted telepathic contact. The full implications of that unusual evolutionary outcome must be told another day, but it is perhaps the most unique historical fact about our planet and we should acclaim its importance as the root of the twists and human contortions that formed the Phasian knot.

Trysta lived in the city of Phasi at the time of the Great Black Sea Flood. After the Flood, remnants of the Phasi community eventually migrated westward and played their role in establishing the cultural foundation for what we think of as ancient Greek civilization.

Overseers

In order to tap into the historical databases of Moon Base, I needed to complete two methodologically difficult tasks. First, I needed to attract the attention of the Overseers and trick them into pulling me out of human society and taking me to the Moon. Second, I needed a way to transmit what I learned while on the Moon back to the ignorant and oblivious population of Earth.

Future Science

To get my ticket to the Moon, I made strategic use of Future Science magazine to provoke the ire of the Overseers. Moon Base is still dominated by Overseers who believe it is their duty to enforce the terms of the agreement that was reached between Trysta and Grean, the pact that ended the Time War. The Time War itself was brewed up by R. Gohrlay and it pitted her robotic self against the alien Huaoshy. That epic struggle provides the back story and framework for the story of the Phasian knot.

The true physical form of the
alien Nereids is unknown.

By publishing a few inflammatory stories in Future Science, stories in which I lied about receiving help from the alien Nereids, I was soon blessed by a visit from above. The Overseer who came to Earth in order to collect me was a real bitch. She called herself Ecce Maria, a kind of joke name, equivalent to a soldier operating in foreign territory as a spy who might be trained to tell the enemy, should he ever be captured, that his name is "John Doe".

Ecce Maria invaded my home, Atlantis, like an avenging angel. Knowing that my method of attracting Overseer attention would provoke such an exaggerated response, I'd already evacuated my fellow residents of Atlantis, all except for myself. At a later time I will reveal the fate of Angela and my other clone sisters, but for now I'm respecting their privacy and allowing them a chance to gain a head start on their pursuers

In the First Reality: Gohrlay aboard Many Sails.

My former base of operations, which has long been jokingly called Atlantis, is actually an alien spaceship. That sentient spaceship, known a Many Sails, was in complete "idiot mode" during the raid by Ecce Maria. Maria never guessed that Many Sails was watching, so she was quite rude and overbearing. After berating me for my stupidity in allying myself with illegal Interventionist forces, Maria seemed to slowly notice my calm demeanor. She quieted somewhat and seemed to lose a grip on her self-confidence. Ecce Maria then demanded, "What were you thinking, Ivory?"

Not wishing to risk provoking Maria to the extent that she would insert her vile Overseer thought control nanites into my brain, I played dumb. "I thought we Earthlings were now free to discuss among ourselves the secret history of Earth."

Maria shook her head and expressed her exasperation, "Don’t be a fool. Well, you can't help yourself, but at least don't take me for a fool! The Nereids should never have been on Earth and the Trysta-Grean Pact explicitly forbids them from operating on Earth now and in the future. The Nereids are forbidden from having contacts with humans until -or better put, if- you Earthlings ever manage to merge into galactic civilization."

The Trysta-Grean Pact

I meekly complained and pretended ignorance, "How was I supposed to know that? Can I see a copy of this Trysta-Grean Pact?"

Maria glowered and blustered, "Just because there is no written copy of the Pact does not mean that it does not exist. Anyhow, your ignorance of the law does not mean that you are not bound by it. I've seen the many recordings that were made of Trysta and Grean during the years when they hammered out the terms of the Pact. As my guest at Observer Base you'll now have access to Observer databases and the entire recorded history of Earth. I suggest that you start by watching the famous recording of Trysta that was made on the day when she agreed to the ban against Nereid Interventionism on Earth"

Maria was true to her word. After my initial orientation period at Moon Base, I did gain access to the Earth Observer databases, which, after all, had been my original goal in attracting Overseer attention.

More challenging than just getting to the Moon was then finding a way to share what I learned while on the Moon with my fellow Earthlings. In general, human travelers who go from the Earth to Observer Base only get a one-way ticket. I accept that travel restriction, but by the laws of divergent thinking there is always a way to cut the Gordian Knot.

Buld spaceship on Earth

Several years ago I began crafting a communications conduit by which I would be able to send information from the Moon to Earth. I developed the necessary receiver, an Earthling who I refer to here only as "the Editor". The Editor is a fellow scientist who was too stupid to hitch a ride off of Earth when the Buld spaceship briefly visited our dreary little world.

Latent within the Editor's body were the genes needed to access the bimanoid interface. Thus, with a little prodding and nudging, the Editor attained the ability to receive my technology-assisted telepathic communications. Now that I have left Earth, sacrificing myself to the zealotry of the Overseers, I must rely on the Editor to publish my account of the Phasian knot.

Results
About 10,000 years ago the city of Phasi grew and thrived on the shore of the Black Sea near a river that is now know as the Rioni. Trysta arrived in Phasi as a time traveler with a primary operational goal and several subsidiary missions. Her task of highest priority was establishing a secret teleportation terminal on Earth for use by Interventionist agents. The plan was to construct the terminal in the days just before the Black Sea attained its final and still current connection to the world's oceans. Trysta anticipated the ocean waters rushing in to fill the Black sea basin, raising the level of its waters and covering the teleportation terminal. The Nereids evolved as semi-aquatic creatures on their native planet, and it was natural for their agents on Earth to hide themselves under water.

Trysta arrived in Phasi well equipped with her brilliant mind and domineering personality as well as a swarm of Asterothrope nanites. Walking into town, she used a telepathic homing signal and quickly gathered most of the local children together. Accompanied by her gaggle of children, she walked into the temple complex, quickly taking over control from the local priestesses. Trysta used some harsh mind control nanites to silence the objections of the priestesses and the entire ruling clan of Phasi.

Surrounded by the children of Phasi, Trysta immediately began telling them the future shape of their lives and she even boldly spoke of the 10,000 year distant future times that we now live in. Of course, most of what she told the people of Phasi became lost in time or was eventually transformed into the stuff of myth and legend.

Trysta explained to the local adults that due to the moral depravity of their former rulers, their city would soon be flooded. Posing as the new temple priestess for the Earth Goddess, she recommended a mass migration to higher ground. Using her nanorobotic tools to perform a few "miracles", Trysta managed to convince most of the residents to listen to her warnings and depart, although most of the Phasi waited until they were forced to leave their huts and camp sites when the waters of the Sea began to rise.

Grendel Time

As soon as the teleportation terminal was assembled and operational inside the temple, a Nereid Interventionist was teleported into Phasi. That Interventionists agent was an artificial life form, what I've previously described (in the context of another story from Earth's past[2]) as a "Grendel". The terminology used to refer to artificial life forms is problematical.

After his journey to the Andromeda galaxy, Parthney introduced the term "Nereids" to refer to the mysterious Interventionists who have long worked to liberate we Earthlings from the tight grip of Overseer restrictions. I personally prefer the term "Grendels", but "Nereids" is perhaps the better term because the Nereids are typically depicted as cute girls rather than hideous monsters, a real PR bonus.

It is only from the human perspective that it makes sense to say that Trysta teleported a Nereid into Phasi. What actually happened was that a swarm of advanced Interventionist nanites were sent to Earth. Some of those nanites adopted the simulated physical form of a humanoid creature, a synthetic being who was known to the natives as Urinemi. Urinemi took up residence in the Phasi temple of the Moon, taking on the role of priestess to the Moon Goddess.

Using the language of the locals, Trysta frequently referred to this new lunar temple priestess in sentences that included the phrase, "uri nemi kas", which can be roughly translated into modern English as, "first source of teaching". The main task of this new Nereid Interventionist being was to teach Earthlings the fine art of domesticating plants and animals.

When the rising ocean waters broke through from the Mediterranean and as the level of the Black Sea began to rise, the people of Phasi were forced to abandon the ancient site of their huts along the shore. Trysta and Urinemi remained in the temple complex, which was soon isolated on a small newly-formed island.

During the time of the Flood, Trysta's phrase "uri nemi kas" became bastardized and transformed, first to the name Urinemi and then eventually that early name descended through time and lore, becoming known as the ancient water-associated deity Eurynome.

Trysta's remaining task was to find a way to preserve through the next 10,000 years a record of the critical hierion-based communications technology that would be needed at the start of this millennium in order for Earthlings to make First Contact with the arriving Buld spaceship. That spaceship, traveling just below the speed of light, had already completed one third of its 15,000 light year journey from the galactic core to Earth. Trysta knew that the safest place to store such information was not on Earth, but rather, on the Moon, at Observer Base.

To accomplish this data storage, Trysta used the same sort of trick I recently used to reach the Moon. When the Phasi Temple of the Moon became, inevitably, half submerged by the rising Sea, Urinemi called for a sacrifice, specifying that the people of Phasi must give up one of the local children.

The sacrificial child was selected and sent to the sinking temple in a small boat. There, on the top of a megalithic arch, Urinemi and Trysta (in her adopted role as the Earth priestess) conducted their last extravagant performance for the natives.

In front of the bewildered people of Phasi, who had assembled and were watching from a nearby hill, Urinemi and Trysta pretended to sacrifice the golden haired child and transform its blood into a beastly sea serpent. Urinemi went through the simulated motions of being raped by the serpent and then giving birth to a heard of small dolphins that proceeded to put on a remarkable display of jumps and antics in the lagoon before swimming out to sea.

It was that over-the-top theatrical performance that finally attracted Overseer attention. Trysta teleported off of Earth, taking the "sacrificed" child with her, leaving Urinemi to be captured by an Overseer and taken to Moon Base.

Of course, the bumbling Overseers lacked the needed technology to detect the true nature of Urinemi as an artificial life form composed of advanced Nereid nanites. The Overseers have their own primitive nanotechnology, but Nereid "nanites" are actually composed of even smaller femtoscale components that can almost perfectly assemble to form simulated bodies of biological creatures. Urinemi lived out a normal human life span as a resident at Observer Base on the Moon. After a simulated death, "her" nanite components quietly went into hiding for the next 10,000 years, only to emerge again upon the arrival of Trysta's son Thomas.

Thomas, as a well-practiced expert in meshing his brain with naites, had no problem learning the secret of hierion-based communications from the Urinemi nanites. Using the same basic technology-assisted telepathy trick that I am now using, Thomas transmitted to Earth the secret of how to use hierion-based communications technology.

Luri selling Project Mercury

With the help of another Nereid agent, Betty, a team of Earthlings at Space Energy Missions was able to receive the information that had been telepathically provided by Thomas, making it possible for them to contact the Buld spaceship while it was still en route to Earth.

Of course, when the Buld spaceship reached Earth, Thomas arranged to accompany the Overseers who rushed to Earth. Once safely back on Earth, with my help, Thomas transferred all of his nanites into the brain of the Editor. Had I known that those nanites included some that had originated as Urinemi, I never would have simply handed them over to the Editor. However, in the end, it all worked out for the best. I was able to leave Earth and the Editor should be able to use "his" nanites to receive my telepathic transmissions from the Moon.

Discussion
It will be interesting to see how the Overseers respond when "The Phasian Knot" is published. Will the Overseers again swoop down upon Earth and this time scoop up the Editor? By the twisted logic of the Overseers, the Editor, by using the "Urinemi nanites", is in violation of the Trysta-Grean Pact.

However, it is not my purpose to win the Editor his ticket to the Moon. I hope to reveal to the Overseers the futility of their misguided attempts to keep the people of Earth from learning the secrets of Earth's past and how alien visitors have for so long shaped the development of human civilization. As far as I know, the Nereids have indeed abandoned their Interventionist efforts on Earth. In fact, the Nereids now seem quite concerned that they might have pushed we Earthlings too far and too fast.

We are now poised at the start of our space age, tantalized by the opportunity to explore the vastness of space, but still struggling to master and safely use the powerful technologies that we now suddenly find in our tool box. Good luck to those of you who remain on Earth: I fear that you will need luck, wisdom and courage to survive the journey down this path that Gohrlay and the Nereids set us on so long ago.

I was justifiably curious about Trysta's time travel adventure 10,000 years in our past. I've learned that she was successful in all phases of her mission. For thousands of years after the destruction of Phasi, young "women" emerged from the waters of lakes, rivers and the seas to live among men and teach the skills required for plant and animal domestication. Of course, those "women" were the nanorobotic "descendants" of Urinemi. After ten thousand years, all that remained as a record of past Nereid Interventionism on Earth was a collection of myths about water deities and creatures like the Nereids of the ancient Greeks.

In contrast, at Observer Base on the Moon there is an amazingly detailed historical record of Earth. Looking through the data now available to me here on the Moon, I can see that the Nereid Interventionists were careful to disguise themselves as humans and not attract unwanted attention from the Overseers. Thus, the Earth Observer databases are not as useful as I had hoped for revealing how our civilization ascended towards the stars over the past 10,000 years.

Nuclear Catastrophy

By cutting we Earthlings off from further contact with the Nereids, Grean knew that we would remain essentially ignorant of the extent to which our civilization was pushed ahead by alien influences. Thus, if we so choose, we can continue to imagine that it was our own innate ingenuity and courage that brought us to where we are today.

However, knowing that we were pushed by aliens into the future where we now find ourselves, we should all feel somewhat daunted. Will we find the wisdom to use for good the advanced technologies that we have been given or will we foolishly destroy ourselves by losing control of our technological genies?

Trysta's goal was to safely guide us between the Scylla of nuclear armageddon and the Charybdis of global warming. Only time will tell us if she was successful in her effort by creating the Buld Realty, the universe that we now find ourselves confined to.

Global Warming

I must insert an important reminder at this point in the story. After the Buld Reality was brought into existence, the Huaoshy altered the dimensional structure of the universe, making time travel impossible. We must make the best of this Reality: there will be no more re-dos.

Why did everyone associated with Space Energy Missions abandon Earth, depart with the Buld and take with them the advanced hierion technology that they had been given access to? The original plan was to use hierion technology to quickly provide Earth with a clean energy source, putting an end to fossil fuel use and removing the threat of global warming and catastrophic sea level rise.

Trysta purposefully chose to visit Phasi at its time of destruction by the rising sea. I believe that when she peered into our Reality she saw that the people of Earth would one day hear the story that I have told in "The Phasian Knot". I believe that Trysta and I are sisters, that we share a hope that Earthlings will learn from the past and find a way to save planet Earth.

My other spiritual sisters who once worked at Space Energy Missions seem to have decided that we Earthlings cannot be trusted with knowledge of hierion physics. Angela has looked deep into our past Realities and seen other Earth histories in which nuclear catastrophe made Earth's surface uninhabitable. Asimov himself published his warning of that all too likely fate for Earth[1]. I can well imagine how the immense forces latent within hierion matter could be an even greater threat to the bumbling primates of Earth than has been our understanding of nucleons.

From within the previous Reality, what Trysta called the Ekcolir Reality, Trysta saw firsthand the horrors of melting ice caps and rising ocean levels. She created our Reality and shaped it so that we have the chance to avoid technology-induced catastrophes. She gave us our chance to not only reach the stars, but save this precious Earth from destruction.

Let's not throw away that chance. With the abandonment of Space Energy Missions and their plan to make use of hierions to efficiently transmit energy to Earth from Mercury, we missed our shot at an "easy fix" for our voracious energy needs. Abandoned by the Buld and the Nereids, we must now roll up our sleeves and make our own future, a future that fulfills the Huaoshy vision of Earth preserved as an eternal garden of life while still making real our dream of reaching the stars.

Note from the Editor: By submitting "The Phasian Knot" for publication, I'm risking a trip to the Moon. I would not mind joining Ivory there, particularly if by doing so I can save her from any pending acts of Overseer retribution that arise from her effort to tell this story. Of course, the more likely outcome is that the Overseers will simply prevent publication of this story. I left this story in the format that was transmitted to me by Ivory, the format of a scientific research paper. I like to think of her as Humanity's researcher in residence on the Moon. With luck we will receive many more such reports.

References
1. Isaac Asimov. Robots and Empire Published by Doubleday Books in 1985.
2. Beowulf, author unknown. Available as the Nowell Codex of the British Library.

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Looking back at "The Phasian Knot" from the perspective of 2018...

I had fun imagining that the "story" was written by Ivory. Ivory was trained as a molecular biologist, so it was natural for her to write her "story" in the format of a science journal article.

Mentioned in the story is Ekcolir's time travel mission of about 20,000 years ago. I later (in 2017) wrote about that mission into the past (see Ereus).

Related Reading: Horse Punk

2019

The Phasi Heights
The Phasian Elf
Assassination by Subtraction
The Sessily Trilogy
 
2018 - Ivory's fate: she ends up on Cynk
2019 - The Dead Widower Society ⎸The last Preland on Earth

Next: Bimanoid Interface 2.0

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