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| the positronic robot, Nyrtia |
I've been searching through the
infites that I recently obtained from
Yōd. I was intrigued when I came across the name of a
positronic robot who I had not previously known about: Nyrtia. Apparently the positronic brain of Nyrtia was created from the
Gohrlay mind pattern shortly after the destruction of
R. Gohrlay in the
First Reality. In a very real sense, Nyrtia was a replacement robot for R. Gohrlay. Before being destroyed, R. Gohrlay recognized that positronic brains held the key to time travel, but eventually, after a long and arduous research effort, it was Nyrtia who became the first time traveler.
"
Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. " -Isaac Asimov
T?
Teleportation,
Telepathy and
Time
Travel. How (and why) have these fictional technologies become part of the fabric of science fiction story telling? For the
Exode Saga, I imagine that the
science fiction literary genre was created by space aliens in order to reveal to ignorant humans the truth about how the human species was created. So, the sequence of events is 1)
ancient aliens developed advanced technologies that made possible teleportation, technology-assisted telepathy and time travel. 2) the ancient aliens with those advanced technologies guided the evolution of the human species (for example, shaping the human brain so that it could make use of technology-assisted telepathy). 3) Science fiction stories about teleportation, technology-assisted telepathy and time travel have been deliberately used to introduced humans to the truth about our origins as a species.
Time Travel
In his time travel novel,
The End of Eternity,
Isaac Asimov introduced the idea of there being a period of time during which humans could engage in time travel, then, at the end of the story, the time travel technology is taken away. That was an interesting twist on time travel that allows a story teller to put an end to otherwise endlessly dismal
time travel wars. In the Exode Saga, R. Gohrlay was the first to fully utilize time travel technology and develop special technology for Viewing the future. Later, the
Huaoshy developed a more advanced type of
Reality Viewing technology that allowed
Reality Chains to be Viewed.
"
Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself." -Ray Bradbury
Eternity Is A Place
In the
The End of Eternity, Asimov left many of the technical details of time travel unexplained. Through millions of years, humans used time travel to shape human culture on Earth, but none of the time travelers shown in
The End of Eternity really understood how time travel worked. In the middle of the story,
August Sennor asks, "Why does Reality possess inertia?" He also asks how it is possible that Harlan can know exactly how to alter the flow of time so as to create a new Reality. The
Eternals were not allowed to know anything about telepathy or the
Bimanoid Interface. Those were secrets held by R. Gohrlay.
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| dangerous technology |
Matter duplication is one of the advanced technologies that the Eternals were careful to edit out of the flow of Time. Matter duplication is a natural consequence of
teleportation, so for as long as
Eternity existed, the people of Earth were not allowed to have teleportation technology.
And of course, the Eternals make sure that humans (through all Time) are not allowed to have atomic power. Simply too dangerous.
It is instructive to compare Isaac Asimov's time travel novel to the work of his contemporaries such as
Poul Anderson. Anderson was also concerned with nuclear technology. Anderson's 1952 novel
Vault of the Ages is a story about events 500 years after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization. Anderson earned a physics degree, so maybe his time travel story can be more sophisticated than
The End of Eternity, written by Asimov, a mere biochemist?
One way time travel
I previously blogged about a story called "Call Me Joe" by
Poul Anderson. If you have seen the movie
Avatar then you will be comfortable with the plot of "Call Me Joe" where the mind of a human must be linked (by magical "psibeam" technology) into the body of an alien creature on another world. Anderson published a time travel story called "Flight to Forever" in
Super Science Stories Nov. 1950 (PDF download
here).
In "Flight to Forever", our hero, Martin, must confront the "
perversity of vacuum tubes" while trying to develop time travel technology. While heading off on his way to work one day, Martin assures his sweetie, Eve, that he'll be right back: after all, he's only making a short trip of 100 years into the future in order to check on an automated time probe that never returned from the future. Of course, the problem is bigger than a faulty vacuum tube. Martin discovers that due to unavoidable facts of physics, you can only travel a few years into your past. Having gone 100 years into his future, he finds that he can never go back through time to return to his beloved Eve. Ultimately, Martin discovers that if you travel into the (very) far future then you go past the end of the universe. However, all is not lost! Everything resets and you magically find yourself at the start of the universe. So, after traversing all of the future and all of the past, Martin successfully returns home to Eve. Whew!
In general, I enjoy imaginary technologies that have constraints. In "Flight to Forever", Martin's time machine is like a battery-powered aircraft. Anderson "explains" that that it takes an infinite amount of energy to travel more than just a few years into the past. In contrast, Martin never runs out of energy during his infinite "flight" into the future.
Through most of the story, Martin stops off at various future times and everyone he meets knows about time travel technology, and everyone believes that there is no way to travel into the far past. Eventually, Martin becomes the first time traveler to discover that you can reach any point in your past "simply" by first going ahead to the far future, past the end of time. Having made this amazing discovery, will the universe suddenly change: won't everyone through all time now have time travelers showing up from their future? Anderson never tells us the answer to that question. Having reached the page limit for
Super Science Stories, the story abruptly ends.
Teleportation
For the Exode Saga, I imagine two very ancient types of space alien. The Huaoshy (masters of
sedronic physics) long ago developed a type of teleportation that has limitations: long-range teleportation of hadronic beings near large amounts of hadronic matter (such as stars) cannot be precisely controlled. Huaoshy teleportation was developed to allow for very long-range transfer of sedronic matter through intergalactic space. In contrast, the
Phari (masters of
hierion physics) found another method of teleportation that allows for teleportation of people between a planet like Earth and a world such as
Tar'tron in the Galactic Core. The Phari method of teleportation even allowed them to move whole planets around the galaxy!
Telepathy
For the Exode Saga, there is both "natural telepathy" and technology-assisted telepathy. I've
previously blogged about the origins of my interest in telepathy. R. Gohrlay discovered that a positronic brain makes twitino-mediated "natural telepathy" practical. However, when the Huoashy changed the
Dimesnional Structure of the universe so as to put an end to time travel, that change to the physical laws of the universe also put an end to "natural telepathy". However, technology-assisted telepathy using
femtobot and
zeptite endosymbionts remain as options for we humans.
Bimanoid Interface
For the Exode Saga, I imagine that when R. Gohrlay needed a way to turn the human population of the galaxy into a telepathically-linked defense network (
Galaxia), she made use of a Phari technology called the Bimanoid Interface. At first, her goal was not to provide humans with a form of technology that would allow for shared language-like communication. Even before R. Gohrlay became aware of the Phari, the Bimanoid Interface had long been used to make possible a
Momentum of Time, a way to make Reality Engineering practical.
Later, at the end of the
Foundation Reality, R. Gohrlay realized that in order to bring an acceptable Final Reality into existence (acceptable in terms of the
Trysta-Grean Pact) she would need to endow a select group of humans with a more sophisticated form of technology-assisted telepathy. During the
Trysta Truce of the
Asimov Reality, human variants were selected that could use a Phari-derived femtobot endosymbiont to transmit language-like signals via the Bimanoid Interface.
The
Asterothropes had a form of "natural" twitino-mediated telepathy, but after the Huaoshy altered the laws of physics to make further time travel impossible, twitino-mediated telepathy no longer worked.
In order to make possible the success of the Trysta-Grean Pact, R. Gohrlay was given access to a
Gohrlay clone that could carry out femtobot-mediated telepathy. At the same time, the
pek created the
tyrp'At in order to monitor and constrain the telepathic Gohrlay clones.
Through all of Time, R. Nyrtia, the positronic robot who became the first time traveler, was kept secret by R. Gohrlay. One of the important tasks accomplished by Nyrtia was that she went far back in time to make certain that one of the Phari Bimanoid Interface modules that existed in a Phari cavern inside Earth got copied, thus ensuring that a momentum of time could apply to all Realities.
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| memory editing by nanites |
The game that I'm playing with the Exode Saga is that I must always explain the sources of information that are used to piece together the hidden history of Earth. There is no omnipotent narrator for the story. So far, all of the sources of information have funneled down to
the Editor. However, what if the "true" Editor has not yet been found? I'm currently exploring this possibility while writing about a newly discovered character named Rylla and her friend,
Georgy White. Rylla and Georgy stumble upon physical evidence for the presence of alien visitors to Earth some 2 billion years ago. Rylla has a "third type" of technology-assisted telepathy that was created specifically for use by humans living under the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact. After their discovery of physical evidence for aliens, Georgy is given a choice: have her memories of the evidence for ancient aliens erased or be teleported to
Observer Base. Rylla is able to
remain on Earth and take over the duties of the Editor.
Related Reading: Poul Anderson shows his nerdy physics side in the 1953 story "
Security".
Next:
Georgy White vs Maria Green
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