Imaginary Life

cover art by Howard Vachel Brown

About 2 years ago I mentioned the October 1936 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. One of the stories in that issue was "Liquid Life" by Ralph Farley (real name: Roger Sherman Hoar). It is fun to imagine the influence that stories such as "Liquid Life" might have had on the young Isaac Asimov.

Here is a line from "Liquid Life":

"A filterable virus is a living liquid."

This blunt statement is made by Hans Schmidt, a "bio-chemist" working in Boston at the laboratory of John Dee Service, Inc. Eventually, Asimov became a biochemist who worked in Boston. It is no surprise that Farley set this story in New England; that is where he was born and went to school.

Sites for early life? (image source)

The "filterable virus" sample that Schmidt studies was collected from Salt Pond, located somewhere in the hill country of New Hampshire's White Mountains. Strangely, the little pond contains salt water with an ionic composition that is very similar to that of the ocean. Until recently this pond had been stocked with sea creatures (eels, crabs, muscles) by the wealthy patron of Jack Dee, a millionaire named Metcalf. However, the pond is now devoid of all macroscopic life and Metcalf wants help figuring out what is going on. The pond's waters now behave like acid, causing burn-like damage to human skin. When Jack Dee collects samples of the water in glass bottles, he is careful not to get any of the liquid on his skin.

Back at the lab, chemist Jack Dee announces to his lab mates (including Schmidt and Ivan Zenoff, a biologist) that the water in Salt Pond is not acidic. Although he had been warned and knows that he should to take precautions when handling the pond water, Jack still ends up with a burn-like wound on his hand.

In "Liquid Life", Zenoff states authoritatively, "Life originated in the sea." (however, see this) Here in 2018, the origin of life is still mysterious. Three popular hypotheses are 1) life originated on some other planet (maybe Mars) and was brought to Earth (panspermia), 2) life arose from the chemistry of the deep ocean floor and 3) life began on land, maybe in some "warm little pond".

Top: electron microscopy
bottom: structural model

In the 1930s, it was known that invisibly small viruses could pass right through small-pore filters that would trap bacteria. Some viruses are tiny bacteriophage that can infect and kill bacteria. However, it was not until the 1940s that electron microscopy revealed the structure of a bacteriophage.

We now know that a bacteriophage is just one example of the many different types of viruses. A bacteriophage is a subcellular molecular complex of protein and nucleic acid. Unable to function as a complete living organism, a virus must insert its nucleic acid into a living cell and make use of the cell's systems for replicating nucleic acids and making new proteins in order to make more copies of the virus. However, in 1936 the molecular structure of a filterable virus was still unknown to Earthly science and many biologists thought that nucleic acids were too simple to serve as the genetic molecule of living cells. Farley had apparently read about the ability of bacteriophage to lyse and "dissolve" bacteria, so his imaginary creature from Salt Pond does the same to a cat!

image source

In "Liquid Life", Zenoff the biologist (apparently an electrophysiologist) works with cats. After placing an array of electrodes into the brain of a cat, Zenoff could feed the recorded neuronal impulses taking place in the auditory processing center of the brain to a speaker, allowing him the listen to the audio signal that had been picked up by the cat's ears and processed by its neural networks. In "Liquid Life", one of his cats licks up some of the Salt Pond water and within minutes the cat is reduced to a puddle of liquid. Zenoff hooks up his electrophysiology equipment to the liquified remains of the cat and soon he is able to carry on a conversation with the "liquid life"!

Zenoff's experiment for listening in on a brain (as depicted by Farley in "Liquid Life") was ahead of Earthly science as it existed in 1936. However, by the end of that century, neurobiologists were able to perform computer-aided processing of signals recorded from living brain tissue that had been implanted with an array of micro-electrodes (see the image to the left).

At first, the bucket of "liquid life" (the liquefied cat) seems to only repeat back words that it has heard the three scientists speak. (How a bucket full of liquid can hear and think is never explained.) Then, just when Zenoff states that the "liquid life" has a "low order intelligence", the "liquid life" says:

image source

"Fellows, it is you who have low order of intelligence. You, not I."

After a good night's sleep, Zenoff is ready to conclude, "We have discovered a new type of mind!"

Soon the "liquid mind" is proving itself to be very clever, and it helps immensely with the consulting business of John Dee Service, Inc.

cover art by Bill Botten

The rest of the story degenerates into rather standard super-science story silliness. We are told that this highly intelligent "liquid life" arose spontaneously and then in a few months ran its course, eventually dying out.

In 1935, it had been shown that a virus had a definite chemical structure and could form crystals. It would be interesting to know what a non-scientist like Farley imagined was in his "living liquid".

image source

30 years later, after the space race, the same basic plot from "Liquid Life" was played out in The Andromeda Strain. Of course, by the time when Michael Crichton wrote his story, too much was known about viruses, so he could not call his alien invader from outer-space a virus.

By the 1990s, nanites were common ultra-small components of alien artificial life forms in many science fiction stories.

For the Exode Saga, I imagine even smaller forms of artificial alien life that are composed of femtobots and zeptites.

image source

What about stories like Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer? Do writers of fantasy and horror stories ever have coherent thoughts about nanotechnology or other possible explanations for their fantasy plot elements?

SIHA Nomination
I'm nominating the film Annihilation for the 2018 SIHA award. Could the events in the movie Annihilation be accounted for by an alien life form that is composed of nanites?

Alien Search: SIHA 2018

Next: a timeline of events in the Asimov Reality

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Vanishing Science Fiction

Search for interesting aliens: telepathy or nanites?

Five months ago I began my search for an online service that would allow me to watch the Japanese film Before We Vanish (Sanpo suru shinryakusha) in the comfort of my own home (see this blog post) and I finally found this movie on HULU where it became available about a 3 weeks ago (July 30th).

Telepathy?
We never get to see the aliens in Before We Vanish. In fact, we are told that humans can't see the true form of the aliens. However, the aliens can take control of human bodies, so during the film we see three "pod people", the bodies of three humans that are under the control of three aliens.

Yuri Tsunematsu as Akira (alien-A)

Before We Vanish is a techno-thriller with a strong horror element and minimal devotion to the science fiction genre. Most of the horror elements of this film cling to just one actress, Yuri Tsunematsu, who plays the role of a woman (Akira) whose body is controlled by one of the three aliens (who I will call alien-A). In the image to the left, Akira/alien-A is causing a car accident by walking down the middle of a highway. Latter, she is killed when struck by a car that is driven by Masami Nagasawa (in the role of Narumi Kase).

Tomohiro Maekawa

Nanites?
We are never told why alien-A does not migrate to a new human body after Akira's body is terribly smashed in the car accident. The story in this movie was cobbled together by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sachiko Tanaka based on a 2005 play written by Tomohiro Maekawa. Is it possible that after a period of time the aliens become "trapped" in a human body and they can no longer shift their nanite components out of that body? This is a movie, so don't ask too many questions.

Original cover art by Jerome Podwil

It is not clear that this film can support the weight of a Sci Fi-oriented analysis, but here I go... The type of alien invasion depicted in Before We Vanish might make sense if alien-A and the two other aliens shown in this film are a form of nanoscopic artificial life. The alien nanites can take up residence inside human bodies and set about the task of trying to understand human culture.

Maybe the aliens in Before We Vanish do not really have telepathic powers. It looks like they can take partial control of nearby people, functioning like thought vampires and rather than sucking blood, they suck out people's thoughts. However, maybe what looks like telepathy in this film is all accomplished by sending nanite probes into people's brains so that the aliens can learn about Humanity.

alien invaders: alternate universe

Borgsan
Why do the aliens in Before We Vanish even bother visiting Earth? We are told that the aliens intend to exterminate Humanity. Why? No explanation is given. The answer is that some human wanted to make an alien invasion movie and, as usual, there need be no further justification... just splash enough blood across the screen, have some loud explosions and watch the money role in.

Stories about invasions are well ingrained in human society simply because our planet is large and human tribes have been invading each others territories for as long as our species has existed. Usually the mixing of tribes is peaceful, but depictions of normal life is not of interest to movie makers.  When human fascination with violent invasions was brought into the science fiction genre by H. G. Wells, he created a fully British invasion story; there was even a "reason" for the alien invasion. The poor Martian's were from a cold, dry, dying world and they coveted the lush green planet Earth.

Invading spores - 1955

It is tempting to imagine that the alien visitors in Before We Vanish are similar to the Borg or the "spores" in The Body Snatchers. Maybe they simply spread from place to place, assimilating other forms of life or exterminating them. However, an alternative reason for the invasion is suggested during Before We Vanish: maybe the aliens arrived on Earth in order to save Humanity from self-destruction. The only way they can do this is to start an invasion of Earth, stimulating the Earthlings to work together.

The Gods Themselves

Wiii 3
The three alien visitors depicted in the film remind me of the aliens in Isaac Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves. Asimov imagined an alien species with three different genders: rationals, emotionals and parentals. In Before We Vanish the three individual aliens seem quite different, each with their own mission on Earth. However, we have no doubt that the three aliens are working together; they appear at the same time, in one small region of Earth and we are told that these three alien scouts must first collect information about Humanity then assemble as a group and transmit a signal that will then trigger a full-scale attack against the people of Earth.

alien-A

Akira (who through most of the film is the human host to alien-A) is introduced to viewers as a school girl who carries home a goldfish in a bag and announces cheerfully, "I'm home." Minutes later she is covered with blood and her two parents are dead; the poor fish is floundering in a pool of blood. Later, "alien-A" tells us that upon arriving on Earth, "she" first was inside of the gold fish, then she transferred "herself" into the body of a woman, but she pulled out her own internal organs in order to study them. Eventually, "she" settled down inside the body of Akira.

"Settled down" is a joke, because alien-A is quite violent, killing a dozen or more people during the course of the movie. Alien-A's mission on Earth is highly constrained: she is supposed to construct a communications device that will be used to signal for the main invasion to start, a fiery battle fought with flaming meteor-like bombs which will destroy human civilization.

Shinji (alien-C) and Narumi

However, soon after the flaming meteor bombardment of Earth begins, the attack is called off. This is apparently due to the fact that alien-C (Ryuhei Matsuda as Shinji Kase) has learned about love from his wife, Narumi.

In The War Of the Worlds, we humans are saved when Earthly microbes kill the invading Martians. In Before We Vanish, the people of Earth are (mostly) saved by love.

The third alien, Amano (played by Mahiro Takasugi) keeps the plot of the movie moving along. Alien-B makes use of a journalist (Hiroki Hasegawa as Sakurai) as his "guide", someone who conveniently has a van with a radio transmitter on the roof. Alien-A is a tech wizard, crafting a hi-tek communicator out of bits of wire and various crappy electronics components that are available on Earth.

school girl vs soldier

I don't know which is sillier: 1) hand-to-hand combat scenes in which a school girl (alien-A) is depicted as incapacitating soldiers who are armed with machine guns, 2) the movie's equivalent of Japanese Men in Black, unexplained dudes who lurk in the background of the film and who are depicted as having the cover story that they are trying to deal with a "new virus" that is relentlessly filling up local hospitals with deranged patients during the course of the whole movie, or 3) Sakurai, the journalist, who after unsuccessfully trying to sell his alien invasion story to the local press outlets then gleefully helps call down the storm of flaming alien meteor bombs that is designed to wipe-out Humanity. Is Sakurai under the telepathic control of Alien-B? Who knows.

3 aliens

A Cinelogue Concerning Two World Systems
Salviati (alien-C) and Simplicio (alien-A) represent the Interventionist and pek factions of these alien invaders. Salviati becomes intrigued by the importance of family and love for Humanity, and ultimately "he" decides to stay on Earth. Simplicio casually kills any human who gets in "her" way while she relentlessly works towards the destruction of Humanity; from "her" perspective, humans are no different than fish. Sagredo (alien-B) just does his job, although he seems to have fun doing his work. In particular, "he" seems vastly amused that Sakurai is ready and willing to place Humanity's fate in the hands of the alien invaders.

In a sense, Before We Vanish is a study of contrast in human nature. On one side there is the human capacity for curiosity, cooperation and caring for each other. Those aspects of human nature are contrasted with human isolation, indifference and narcissism. In this film, Sakurai embodies the human capacity for isolation, indifference and narcissism; he is quick to abandon all hope for his zombie-like fellow humans and join forces with the aliens who seem to wield vastly greater power than we Earthlings.

When the end grows near, Narumi's first impulse is to give up on life and reach for death. She asks her "husband" to strangle her. Only in a final act of desperation does she finally decide to give-up her mental construct of love and allow her understanding of love to be transferred from her brain on to alien-C.

Sakurai calls for the alien invasion.

results from Google translate

It's green.

Welcoming You
I feel like parts of Before We Vanish were simply lost in translation. I've seen various translations of the Japanese title of the film, usually these are a variant on "aliens wandering"; the three alien "scouts" of the film seem to spend a lot of time just wandering around... even bumbling around in full-on inept alien invader fashion. However, none of the bumbling in Before We Vanish quite rises to the level of Scotty drinking an alien invader under the table during a Star Trek episode ('By Any Other Name').

invading Martians

At the end of the movie, Earth and Narumi are slowly recovering from the aborted alien invasion. Alien-C is at her side, waiting for Narumi's damaged memory system to heal.

aliens save us from ourselves

As viewers of Before We Vanish, we can't avoid making comparisons to The War of the Worlds. Near the start of Before We Vanish, we see a sign that says "Yankees Go Home!" However, at the end of the film we are left with the idea that the alien invasion somehow "saved us from self-destruction".

I'm not sure if the people of Japan ever feel that the American military occupation of Japan saved the Japanese from self-destruction, but that seems to be an idea that is raised by this film. The European view of invaders from Asia has often been that militarily powerful barbarian invaders disrupted European civilization. An alternative view is that contact with Asia brought technological innovations to Europe.

invasion of the heptapods

In the case of alien invasions, it is certain that any space-faring civilization that reached Earth would be far more technologically advanced than we are. Such technologically advanced aliens are not going to come to Earth for some mundane purpose such as briefly living as a gold fish or collecting our gold. So why would an advanced lifeform travel across vast interstellar distances to a planet like Earth?

The recent film Arrival also played up the idea that aliens might arrive and unite the people of Earth, saving us from self-destruction.

SIHA Nomination

Arrival: the 2016 SIHA winner

I'm nominating Before We Vanish for the 2018 SIHA award. At least in my mind, I can imagine the aliens of Before We Vanish as being an artificial lifeform composed of nanites. These aliens are able to recognize that Earthlings have some interesting features, so at least until the sequel, we humans are allowed to survive.

Related Reading: Aliens and Hollywood
Next: Another 2018 SIHA nomination.

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The Last Infites

1973

In another blog post, I previously explained how I came to be aware of the most recent swarm of infites that were provided to me. Below is the rest of that story....

Teleportation

Star King (1978)
cover art by Gino D'Achille

Also, I'm still caught up in my 2018 celebration of the life of Jack Vance. Back at the end of the 1970s I discovered the stories of Jack Vance. When I read Vance's novel Trullion, I was hooked on his stories that are set in a future time when humans have spread out from Earth to thousands of distant exoplanets.

Lucky for me, by the time I began reading Vance's novels, the DAW editions of Star King and The Killing Machine were already in book stores.

1973

Trullion was first published in the March and June 1973 issues of Amazing Science Fiction. but I never saw those magazines. Later, I bought a copy of the 1973 Balantine Books edition of Trullion with cover art by Gene Szafran.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Also published by Vance in 1973 was his story "Rumfuddle". For that story about teleportation, Vance adopted an approach to science fiction story telling that I generally despise. One dude, working in his lab, invents teleportation technology. Not only can this teleporter send people to distant locations, it can also send you into the past.

The power of this super-duper teleporter to send Earthlings through space and time is complicated by the fact that Vance's imagined universe is a multiverse in which it is possible to select a precise place and time as your destination, but you always end up in an alternate universe. Your only hope of reaching the same universe twice was to constantly keep open a teleportation gate connecting your home universe to each newly visited universe.

Ernest Rumduddle Award

According to Yōd, in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jaqy wrote a novel called Rumduddle, that was a parody of science fiction stories that made use of teleporter technology. Rumduddle was self-referential and featured Sam and his friends who were also writers. The story chronicled their adventures after teleportation technology was invented. Sam and his writer friends took their families to live on a parallel Earth, but they frequently traveled back in time, inserting new stories they had written into the timeline of Earth, all as part of a contest to win the Ernest Rumduddle Award, an annual award that was the most prestigious prize for story writers.

In Rumduddle, time travel was only possible into the past, and it involved creating a "duplicate copy" of the time traveler. Yōd's replicoid read a copy of Rumduddle in the library of the Writers Block. According to Yōd, another feature of Rumduddle that was not in Jack Vance's "Rumfuddle" was a new strategy for  interplanetary teleportation that solved the problem of teleported people ending up materialized inside distant stars. The effect of gravitational distortion on the accuracy of long-range teleportation could be overcome by "phase shifting" the atoms of a teleported person. Yōd claims that in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jaqy was aware of the existence of sedrons and the "phase shifting" described in Rumduddle was actually inspired by Sam's knowledge of the the existence of "copies" of people that were composed of sedronic matter (zeptites). While there was no practical way to achieve long-distance teleportation of people, artificial lifeforms composed of sedrons could be teleported even through the high gravity fields at the center of the galaxy.

_____________ previously ________________

From the Archives of the
Writers Block by Lydya Olivano
Original cover art by
David Hardy.

Zeta and I were driving home together. I was impatiently watching each mile of the highway glide under our wheels. Zeta reached over and took hold of my right hand, prying it off of the steering wheel. I sensed that she was trying hard to look into my memories, but we only had a weak telepathic link that allowed us to share our completely formed verbal thoughts. There is something more.... She asked, "What did Yōd tell you while I was asleep?"

I squeezed Zeta's hand reassuringly. "The main thing she wanted to tell me was that there are some information nanites waiting for me back home... what she called a gift from R. Gohrlay." I continued via our telepathic connection: Somehow a second copy of Yōd was involved.

Zeta asked, "You mean Yōd's replicoid?"

"No. An actual copy of Yōd."

Zeta nodded. "Then it is true." She stated with full conviction: "There is a teleportation-created copy of Yōd."

I was certain that a correction was needed. "Well, there was." During my final brief telepathic contact with Yōd, I had been able to look deeply into her mind and see that there were two overlapping versions of Yōd's mind there, sharing the same physical substrate. I asked Zeta, "How is it possible for two copies of a person to be merged together?"

For a minute Zeta thought about that problem. Another mile of highway went by. Finally she said, "For we Gohrlay clones, the easiest way would be if the memory pattern of one copy was reduced to infites. We were designed to smoothly take up infites into our Phari endosymbionts. That trick provided us with a major part of our education and training."

"You are lucky." I complained, "My zeptite endosymbiont allows me to access infites, but it is not a simple process for me to process and absorb information from infites. For me it is not a natural process... it is hard work."

"Yes, I was remotely monitoring you back when you absorbed the Thomas and Izhiun infites. I know that almost broke your mind." Zeta suggested, "Maybe it would be safer if I took these new infites on-board." I could sense an unspoken comment in her mind: You are not getting any younger.

I muttered, "Ya, I'm an old man."

Zeta laughed at me. "You are a dirty old man. I can sense that your biggest regret over Yōd's departure from Earth is that you never got to spend a night alone with her."

I laughed. There was no question that Yōd had tantalized me with her beauty for many years, but there had never been a time when we were anything other than collaborators in our shared search for knowledge and a better understanding of human history. I corrected Zeta, "No, we had many nights together, doing what we did best... piecing together the mysteries of the past."

Zeta pressed her point, "Well, for the first few years with her in our house I feared that you liked her more than me."

"And I've apologized repeatedly for that. You know that I could not trust you when you tried to impersonate my wife... my first wife. There was a long, painful period of time when I thought that your sister Alpha might return to Earth. Eventually I realized that was not going to happen and by then I had fallen in love with you."

"Still, every day I could see your eyes and how you looked at Yōd and I was also inside your mind. I know what you were thinking every time you saw her."

I shook my head in wonder. "I still don't understand why she worked so hard to... oh, well... I don't know what she was trying to accomplish. She seemed to enjoy showing off her body. And I did not understand why you put up with it."

Zeta sighed. "It is probably best if you don't know."

I tugged on her hand. "Tell me. I know that she was trying to monitor my mind and determine if I could get around Irhit's block and regain my access the Interface, but that doesn't explain..."

Zeta finally explained part of the mystery that had been her sister Yōd. "When she arrived on Earth, she saw how you barely tolerated my presence in your house. She quickly resolved to make you like her."

I was still puzzled. "But after I accepted you as my new wife, Yōd continued trying to... no... I still don't get it."

We fell silent for a few minutes. Zeta said, "Really, it began long ago with R. Gohrlay's obsession..."

For a good ten minutes we continued along the highway, both of us thinking about the ancient robot, R. Gohrlay. I've never been able to comprehend how even a robotic mind could last through the millions of years of time that R. Gohrlay traversed. What was important was the end point: R. Gohrlay had won for we humans a chance to reach the stars.

Finally Zeta again spoke, "When she learned that the biological Gohrlay still existed, R. Gohrlay decided that Gohrlay would have descendants who would live on Earth... descendants who would see a future of human exploration of the galaxy. Later, she changed... after the Huaoshy put an end to time travel and R. Gohrlay lost her telepathic powers. By then it was too late. My sister and you had produced three wonderful children, but that was no longer of importance to R. Gohrlay."

It was mind-boggling that R. Gohrlay's million year struggle had come down to the biological Gohrlay and I having children. It seemed crazy that R. Gohrlay had worked so long and hard to make that happen and then... What? Just lose interest? I asked Zeta, "Why not? What had changed?"

Zeta shrugged. "I'm not sure. I can only speculate."

"Maybe the new infites will provide an explanation."

Zeta suggested, "Well, it is certain that R. Gohrlay had seen the future and that must have influenced her plans. Then when the tryp'At took control of Observer Base, R. Gohrlay must have realized that she had seen a different Reality, and alternative future that did not match the Reality that was actually unfolding. All bets were off."

"I suppose she had become lazy and spoiled. After millions of years of controlling the future, suddenly everything was out of her control."

"Yes. She could only control her own actions and there was no more advantage for R. Gohrlay in having a positronic brain."

I thought of Isaac Asimov's stories about robots who wanted to abandon their positronic brains and become human. "Not even immortality?"

"Immortality in a future that she could not control? That was probably the worst existence that she could imagine." Zeta was looking off towards the far horizon. She said quietly, "so,  R. Gohrlay totally changed her goals."

I asked, "To what?"

"Again, I can only guess."

Several more miles flew by. Finally I asked, "What is your guess?"

Zeta shrugged. "I really don't know."

"You mist know more than I do."

"I never studied R. Gohrlay and after I came to Earth, I was cut off from all sources of information... except for Yōd."

I thought that might be all I would get from Zeta about R. Gohrlay, but then after a long pause she said, "R. Gohrlay seemed to give up on Earth and her attention went elsewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

I had an image of another world that I had snatched from Yōd's mind. "Yōd mentioned another planet, a world called Cynk."

Zeta asked, "Sink? Like a kitchen sink?"

"I saw the name in Yōd's mind. It is c-y-n-k."

Zeta shook her head. "I've never heard that name." After a moment she added, "I can tell that you are thinking about Ivory."

"Yōd said that Ivory is on Cynk and that she will never return to Earth."

 Zeta now squeezed my hand and smiled. "That's a relief. I've never been able to compete with your memories of Ivory."

"Well, she was the third source of the infites that are inside my head. In a very real sense, I can't get Ivory out of my thoughts."

"And now you are eager to take up infites from Yōd."

I chuckled uneasily. "I have no choice. I must know what are in these new infites."

"Even if it damages your brain?"

"Why should there be a problem now? This will be the 4th set of infites that I process. I'm used to the deleterious effects; I know what to expect from absorbing infites."

"But Yōd had memories that her brain was programmed to not share with you. If that conflicting data structure gets dumped into your mind... who knows what could happen."

"I must know what is in those infites. Your worries don't scare me."

"What if you take into your brain an information editing virus? It might erase memories that you now have. Truths about the history of Humanity that you have struggled to learn might be edited out of your mind."

"That's a risk I have always faced. I can't live my life avoiding sources of new information because of fears that I might learn too much. No, as soon as we get home, I'm going to access those infites. The thought fragments I saw in Yōd's mind tell me that Cynk was an important Phari world. I've imagined that our only chance to learn about the Phari is through the information content of the AR Simulator, but that path towards the truth may be a dead end. I need to know what Yōd learned about the Phari while she was on Cynk."

The rest of our trip home was dominated by speculation about what was happening at Observer Base. I was hoping that the Yōd infites might provide me with Mahasvin's mind pattern and allow me to establish a link to Observer Base.

After the long drive we finally arrived home. I went to Yōd's bedroom and immediately I felt dizzy. I sat on the floor and tried to pick up a single thread in the new information avalanche that was now in my mind. The Yōd infites "unlocked" some of my early memories. I became aware of my mother teaching me to communicate with Irhit via the Bimanoid Interface. In those old memories I was very young, maybe four years old.

It had been important that my young brain be shown how to use the Interface. Once that had been accomplished, a set of false memories had been inserted into my brain by infites. Those were memories of me with my mother, saying prayers. I had always resented the fact that I had been indoctrinated into saying prayers to an imaginary god. As I grew up, only the resentment remained and now, with the help of Yōd's infites, I realized that I had never actually been forced to pray. I mumbled, "How much of the memories of my life is false and never happened?"

Zeta was holding on to my arms. She could sense the turmoil in my thoughts. She asked, "What is happening in your mind?"

Too much was happening for me to explain. The fact that I had been trained to use the Interface by my mother gave me a confidence boost, but I could sense that it would take me years to sort through all of the information I had just received from Yōd. Sadly, there was no obvious solution to the problem of how I might telepathically connect to people such as Mahasvin at Observer Base. I muttered to Zeta, "This is not fun." I was very dizzy and I tried to vomit, but thankfully there was nothing in my stomach.

I stretched out on the floor and closed my eyes. I quickly reviewed the memories of the Yōd copy that had been teleported to Cynk. At the end of that memory chain, Yōd was teleported inside Many Sails. I said, "Not just one copy."

Zeta was holding a cold cloth to my forehead. She asked, "Another Yōd?"

The copy of Yōd who has spent time on Cynk was duplicated again. One of these copies was put into stasis for the trip to Tar'tron. The other entered into a kind of virtual reality existence within the Sedronic Domain. She had been "phase shifted" into sedronic matter. From her place in the Sedronic Domain, she could listen to the discussion that Many Sails had with R. Gohrlay as they departed from Cynk. Then that sedronic copy of Yōd was teleported to Observer Base and merged into the zeptite endosymbiont inside of the copy of Yōd who had lived on Earth for several years.

source
(Sedronite, image credits)

I opened my eyes and managed to sit up with Zeta's help. I said, "Now I understand. R. Gohrlay is on her way to visit the home galaxy of the Huaoshy. Many Sails is taking her...."

Zeta asked, "What happened to Yōd?"

"Our copy of Yōd took up a set of infites that contained all the memories of the Yōd copy that went to Cynk. Included in those infites was the code signal that allow people to enter into the AR Simulator. Yōd is gone. She's with Azynov inside the Simulator. They won't be coming back."

Related Reading: 1) Yōd's first visit to Earth: My Yōd
2) This time for sure: Nora's infites
Next: a SIHA nomination before we vanish

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Vance Clones

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This is my annual August blog post in honor of Jack Vance who was born in August of 1916.

Clones
I've recently been concerned with the "positive feedback" phenomenon that occurs when multiple copies of the same mind link to the Bimanoid Interface. This topic is of importance to the Gohrlay clones, two of whom were present on Earth when the Bimanoid Interface received an upgrade (as described here).

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Stephen Fabian

In The Palace of Love, protagonist Kirth Gersen meets several cloned sisters, all the daughters of Jheral Tinzy. The last of the clones that Gersen meets is named Karalin Umdys. The mysterious Retz, who worked with Viole Falushe, was secretly an agent for Zodiac Control and Karalin played a role in revealing his secret identity.

August 1952: the sequel

In 1952 Vance published two stories featuring Jean Parlier;  "Abercrombie Station" and "Cholwell's Chickens". Jean discovers that she is one of a group of 8 identical women, all derived from a single fertilized egg cell.

Minus Yōd
__________________prequel_________________
I could sense that Yōd was trying hard to resist connecting to me by way of the Bimanoid Interface. As soon as Zeta slipped into sleep, Yōd was there, in my mind: Turn around.

I had been driving north, trying to put as much distance between us and Yōd as quickly as possible. I thought Yōd was suggesting that I return home. Well, now that Zeta is sleeping... but what if she wakes up?

Yōd continued: Just turn around. I'll explain while you drive. I'll have no trouble keeping her asleep now.

I exited off the highway, trusting that I should follow Yōd's instructions. In her thoughts, I could sense a feeling of confidence, that she knew what was best. However, I was unsettled by the idea that she could control Zeta's mind and keep Zeta in a state of sleep. I asked Yōd: You can control her mind?

Yōd asked me: What do you think was going on this morning when you woke up? For years Zeta and I have been time-sharing her body. She did the same with Alpha for decades. Of course, you never noticed.

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Looking into Yōd's mind, I could see that she was telling me the truth. Yōd continued: Right now, Zeta has taken control of her replicoid at Observer Base. At times like this, I can even wake up her body and live vicariously through her senses, but with the change to the Interface, it is best that she stay asleep until you reach the antinode.

I now had the car headed south and I could see in Yōd's mind what she meant by the 'antinode'. I asked: So it is true? Picacho is a special telepathy node?

Anti-telepathy. Yōd explained: That's one of the three places on Earth that is shielded from the hierion tubes that link Earth to the Hierion Domain.

I asked: Why those three places?

Hykrafa and Ruth

I could sense that Yōd was unable to answer that question. This was one of the subjects that her zeptite endosymbiont prevented her from discussing with me. I could not resist jumping to the conclusion that there must be some sort of hidden alien technology at Picacho. Yōd warned me, Remember. Under the terms of the Pact, you are not allowed to have any physical evidence of the existence of aliens. You should satisfy yourself with knowing the hidden history of Earth. Zeta is searching the archives at Observer Base for information about how the Bimanoid Interface effects clones.

For a minute I was simply shocked and dismayed by the fact that I had previously been made aware of the existence of Mt. Picacho as a location near my home that was of special importance for telepathic communication. Of course, at that time, I had no appreciation for the fact that I would one day be faced with the problem of Yōd and Zeta trapped in some feedback loop generated by the Bimanoid Interface.

I suddenly felt Zeta's thoughts in my mind, stronger than I ever had before. She told me: I'm looking at some of the stories that the Vance analogues published in the Ekcolir Reality.

in the Ekcolir Reality

I could sense that Yōd was also receiving Zeta's telepathic signal. I asked: Is it safe for you two to be linked via the Interface?

Yōd explained: As long as I keep Zeta's brain in a deep sleep state, the positive feedback problem is temporarily restrained.

Zeta added: Here at Observer Base, it was quickly found that replicoids can function in a low bandwidth mode, strictly limited to sending verbal thoughts through the Interface. The positive feedback phenomenon seems to involve deeper, perhaps unconscious parts of human brain activity.

I could see in Zeta's mind that she was reading a story that was the Ekcolir Reality version of Vance's story that was known in the Final Reality as "Cholwell's Chickens". The Ekcolir Reality story was called "Inverse Zodiac". In that version of the story, the Mycroft character was named Hykrafa and she was a special agent of the secret organization known as Zodiac Control.

While I drove south and Zeta slept, her replicoid described to me and Yōd the plot of "Inverse Zodiac".

The planet Codiron was not the home of extinct "Trotters", but rather a humanoid species called the Pharithould. Zodiac Control had identified Codiron as a world where the human inhabitants had a high rate of psychological problems. Dr. Cholwell was one of many scientists and physicians sent to Codiron by Zodiac Control to investigate.

Alastor Cluster

Dr. Cholwell reported to Zodiac Control that a local woman named Ruth, a nurse working with the psychological patients at Dr. Cholwell's research facility, claimed to have telepathic connections to some of the patients. Upon arriving on Codiron, Hykrafa and Ruth soon experienced an unusual type of telepathic contact. Their mutual telepathic connection seemed to allow them to connect to remnants of the ancient Pharithould civilization that had once existed on Codiron. However, that contact had psychosis-inducing effects. Hykrafa and Ruth were forced to leave Codiron and they went to Earth, however, they both provided Dr. Cholwell with some of their egg cells.

Dr. Cholwell created a new individual, the daughter of Hykrafa and Ruth, by combining one of Hykrafa's eggs with a pronucleus from one of Ruth's eggs. Dr. Cholwell isolated a dozen blastocytes from the early embryo and implanted them into women who were being studied at a research facility on Codiron. When the "Jean clones" were born, Dr. Cholwell discovered that the 9 surviving clones were telepathically linked.

Dead or taken to Earth?

One of the children, Angela, seemed to become a nexus for the focused telepathic signals of all 9 of the clones. However, Angela became increasingly disturbed and died at age three. Jean then began to take over as the nexus of the clones. Desperate to avoid another death, Dr. Cholwell tried to separate Jean from her sisters. Jean and her birth mother were quickly released from Dr. Cholwell's research facility while her clone sisters remained there, together. Jean's sisters seemed to live vicariously through Jean via a low intensity, mostly unconscious type of telepathic connection. While Jean became a precocious young woman, her sisters lived quietly at the research facility. Over time, the various patients at the facility were released and Dr. Cholwell was able to completely devote himself to study of the clones and their special telepathic abilities.

Jean grew up about 100 miles from the research facility, forgetting her early life, she grew up unaware that she had sisters. Finally, at age 10, Zodiac Control moved Jean to another research facility, an orbital station near Earth where additional clones of Jean were created and tested for the effects of developing in the presence of Jean's powerfully telepathic mind.

Jean was never told about her clones, but she eventually became aware of telepathic links to them. Her own telepathic abilities continued to develop and strengthen until she finally became aware of the minds of her parents.

Agent of Zodiac

Finally, Jean escaped from the orbital research facility and went to Earth. Using her telepathic abilities, Jean was able to find her parents who worked at the headquarters of Zodiac Control.

Zeta's replicoid told Yōd and I: In the Ekcolir Reality, "Inverse Zodiac" was published first, as part of a planned series of novels. A year later, Sam Jaqy published "Amplification Station", which ended with Jean's return to Codiron, accompanied by some of the "second generation" clones. There was to be at least one more novel in the series, but no further stories about Jean and her sisters was published. According to Mahasvin, there were many different experimental groups of clones created on Codiron, but the so-called "Parlier" clones were the most interesting and had the most impressive telepathic abilities.

I could sense that Yōd and Zeta were rapidly exchanging additional information that they did not want to share with me.

I had long been curious about the effect of distance on telepathic communication. I asked Zeta: When Jean moved away from Codiron and went to Earth, another of her sisters then became the nexus for the remaining clones?

in orbit

Yōd replied: According to Mahasvin, there was an age dependence for human contact with the Pharithould remnant species. When Jean went to Earth, one of her clone sisters became a new nexus, but her contact with the Pharithould was weak and she simply became something of a trouble maker... occasionally sneaking out of the research facility and having a brief adventure in the nearby towns of Codiron.

I was now driving into Picacho park on a rather rough side road and wondering if Zeta might be awakened. Yōd told me: You are almost at the telepathy antinode. Stay there with Zeta and we will try to find a solution here on our end. We'll-

Suddenly I lost telepathic contact with Yōd and Zeta. The next bump in the road shook Zeta and woke her up. She gazed out the window at Mt. Picacho then looked at me, "I can't sense a connection to the Bimanoid Interface."

connections to the Hierion Domain

I was just pulling into the parking lot of Picacho Lodge. "Mt. Picacho is one of the few places on Earth that is not connected to the Hierion Domain by telepathic conduits." I parked and turned towards Zeta. "Do you you know that Yōd was in control of your body?"

Zeta rubbed her forehead and replied, "Yes, it is like a dream. Yōd really clamped down on my brain this time, almost shutting it off, but I know that I ... my mind... has been at Observer Base, researching what is known about experiments performed in the Asimov Reality. Mahasvin is certain that Zodiac Control used the clones of Jean Parlier as detectors. Using the telepathic sensitivity of the clones as a probe, Zodiac Control were able to find dozens of planets where the Phari had visited and guided the evolution of species like the Pharithould."

I muttered, "Zodiac Control seems to have recognized the importance of clones even before Jean was born."

I could tell that Zeta was trying to tell me something, but no words came from her mouth. We went into the lodge and got a room for the night. It was a blistering hot day, but the room was cool and had a fantastic view of Mt. Picacho. We went to the Lodge's restaurant for lunch and continued our discussion. Zeta said, "Mahasvin told me that Hykrafa was herself a clone, developed by Zodiac Control and deployed as a field agent searching for other people with advanced abilities to use the Bimanoid Interface. Of course, at that time in the Asimov Reality, no human knew of the existence of the Bimanoid Interface. Humans were spreading outward from Earth, but Alastor Cluster had not been found yet."

Weirdlands

I said, "Vance placed the time of Kirth Gersen about 1,500 years in our future. When did Hykrafa and Jean live?"

Zeta replied, "I'm not sure. I'd guess that it was approximately 1,000 years in the future."

I was impressed by the vast scope of the research project that had eventually led to a system of technology-assisted telepathy for humans. "Zodiac Control carried out human breeding experiments for centuries... for millennia... and kept the existence of human telepathy secret..."

Zeta shrugged. "In the beginning, it wasn't telepathy of the type that we now have. Jean's access to the Bimanoid Interface was mostly at a subconscious level. Speech-like communication via the Interface did not become possible until much later, when the home world of the Phari was finally discovered in Alastor Cluster. Ultimately, someone had to create the specific type of Phari endosymbiont that the tryp'At can use for telepathy."

I asked, "Is there any doubt that R. Gohrlay was the one responsible for the development of human telepathy?"

The tryp'At Overseers

Once more Zeta fell silent. I've long suspected that there is a genetic trail that could be followed on Earth which would prove that certain artificial gene combinations were introduced into the human population of our world. However, I've resigned myself to never learning the details of how R. Gohrlay engineered a change in the human brain making it compatible with Phari endosymbionts. When Ivory got close to identifying the key gene combinations that allowed her cloned sisters to access the Bimanoid Interface, she was taken off of Earth and exiled to Observer Base.

I believe that the special genetic make-up of the tryp-At was engineered on another world, but somehow the key tryp'At genes were "smuggled" into the human gene pool of Earth. Technically, that was a violation of the Rules of Intervention, but under the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact, the pek seem to have not objected.

That afternoon we explored the unusual geology of Mt. Picacho. Zeta and I suspected that a buried and unmovable object deep in the crust might have created Mt. Picacho. When I explicitly stated that hypothesis, Zeta fell silent. I take that as evidence that there must be something of alien origin down below Mt. Picacho.

After dinner we speculated about the location of the other places on Earth that might, like the Mt. Picacho area, be isolated from the Hierion Domain. Previously, I had imagined that there are several special locations for telepathy and that they were all equally spaced out around the globe, but I had absolutely no evidence to support that idea.

the Trysta-Grean Pact

In the morning we investigated the extent of the protected zone around Mt. Picacho. For approximately five miles around the mountain in all directions we were blocked from using the Bimanoid Interface. The third time we strayed too far and made telepathic connection to Yōd, she warned us: I've been teleported to Observer Base. I'm going to try to enter the AR Simulator. She added: Now don't distract me. We quickly moved back into the antinode and lost our telepathic connection to Yōd.

Zeta and I spent one more night at the Lodge. Zeta stayed awake all night and planned to be sleeping when we departed from Picacho park. The next morning we checked out and headed home. Zeta was tired, but too excited to sleep. When we moved back into contact with the Bimanoid Interface, I could sense that Yōd had been waiting for us to emerge from the shadow of the telepathic antinode. Zeta quickly fell asleep and Yōd was hurriedly bombarding me with information. Yōd told me: I'm ready to enter the AR Simulator, but there is something I need to tell you.

Suddenly an image appeared in my mind; a clear visual image of Yōd's bedroom back at the house. Via telepathy, Yōd had just shown me the exact place in her room where she had left a packet of infites. You can thank R. Gohrlay for this gift. She is leaving the galaxy on-board Many Sails, but she wanted you to know what Ivory's fate was. The infites that I left for you explain that... Ivory will also not be returning to Earth, but you will now be able to accept Ivory's fate.. she will be happy on Cynk.

Exoditions on Cynk

At that point, I lost my connection to Yōd's mind and I knew that she had somehow shifted herself into the AR Simulator. I also had seen clearly in her mind that she expected to become trapped inside the AR Simulator with Azynov and they would never be able to escape from that virtual reality generator. My mind was overloaded with information and I had to pull to the side of the road to sort through the swarm of memories and thoughts that I had just received from Yōd.

When I slowed the car rapidly and hit the warning ridges in the shoulder pavement, Zeta opened her eyes sleepily. She tried to ask why I had stopped the car, but her speech was slurred. After a minute of grogginess, she finally became more alert and confirmed that she no longer had any telepathic contact with her sister.

During that minute, I was able to process most of the swirl of information that I had just seen in Yōd's mind. I knew that Yōd had become a dual mind, containing memories from a teleporter-generated copy of herself who had been sent to the planet Cynk five years previously. That copy of Yōd had seen Ivory on Cynk and knew that a teleporter-generated copy of me was going to stay there on Cynk with Ivory. That copy of Yōd had provided the infites that were now waiting for me back home.

Zeta said, "Yōd is gone."

I pulled the car back onto the highway. I was eager to get home. "She found a way to enter the AR Simulator."

the AR Simulator

I could sense uncertainty in her thoughts. Zeta replied, "Yōd wanted me to believe that, but there is another possibility. She may have simply gone into hiding, within the data array of the teleportation equipment at Observer Base."

I asked, "Can you shift your mind into your replicoid at Observer Base and find out for sure?"

Zeta shook her head. "Not without Yōd's help." In her thoughts she told me: Unless someone in the Hierion Domain contacts us, we are on our own.

I knew that there was another possibility. With effort and practice, I might be able to learn how to establish a connection to Mahasvin. I could still occasionally sense the faint touches of her presence in my mind.
_______________END______________

human cloning

Around 1900, it was observed that calcium ions were involved in holding together the cells of early embryos. The molecular basis of that role for calcium was later shown to be the presence of calcium-dependent call adhesion proteins on the surface of blastomeres. By the 1940s, tiny mammalian embryos could be manipulated and it was then shown that individual mammalian blastomeres could develop into complete embryos. It is interesting that Jack Vance was writing about cloning humans by blastomere isolation in 1952.

another set of clones from Codiron

There have been several sets of clones who played roles in creating the Final Reality, including the Tayge clones. It would be interesting to know which sets of clones were carriers of Phari endosymbionts. I suspect that the clones of Wyzalex Torvaya were like the Gohrlay clones: carriers of zeptite endosymbionts.

Mahasvin seemingly remains as an outlier; someone who can use the Bimanoid Interface, but who apparently relies on neither a Phari endosymbiont or a G-sym. Still, Yōd's expectation was that I might eventually learn how to communicate telepathically with Mahasvin and that might be my only remaining opportunity to learn more about the hidden history of Humanity.

Next: the last infites
Next Year: another celebration of Jack Vance in 2019

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