Jan 31, 2019

Narratology

Miss Gohrlay
Back in 2016 I began struggling to find the right girl to tell the Secret History of Humanity in Exode Saga. At that time, I was auditioning Alpha Gohrlay, the clone of Gohrlay who received a vast collection of infites from R. Gohrlay containing several million years of accumulated memories. With her access to memories from all past Realities, Alpha Gohrlay was an excellent candidate for the task of narrating the Exode Saga, but any story told by her would be at continual risk of becoming a story about her. So, no. I simply could not allow Alpha Gohrlay to take control of the Exode Saga. However, several other clones of Gohrlay also auditioned for the part, including Roben and Zeta, but they are only supporting cast members in Exode.

Tez in Grendel keep
Then in 2017 there was Tez. Sadly, Tez was never allowed to believe in the reality of space aliens visiting Earth. However, embryonic within Tez was the idea that one of the Editor's grandchildren might be able to tell the Secret History of Humanity.

And why wait for the Editor to exit from Earth before allowing one of his grandchildren to start investigating the the Secret History of Humanity?

Agonist
The Georgy-Verella link.
Towards the end of 2018 another grandchild (Verella) stepped forward and volunteered to to become the Agonist. The Editor begins calling his grand-daughter "Agonist" as a kind of joke. In the Exode Saga, it is as if the Final Reality has been constructed as an opportunity for we humans to spread ourselves to the stars rather than be replaced by the Prelands. At the point in Time when the Huaoshy made all further time travel impossible, the Final Reality had been constructed as a mechanism, as a vast device needing one remaining piece to activate the process by which the human species would successfully ascend to the stars.

The Femtobot Hack
That final required component of the Trysta-Grean Pact is the individual who can tell the Secret History of Humanity as a science fiction story. Human society has been crafted to be like a receptor protein and Verella is like the needed agonist drug that can activate the receptor.

Mind Bridge
As a late arrival on the scene, there are only limited sources of information that are still available to Verella when she starts to investigate the Secret History of Humanity. In order to provide Verella with access to the vast information resources at Observer Base, she is linked into the "mind clone network" which includes two copies of a newborn baby who was genetically constructed with half of its genes from Georgy White and half from Verella. Georgy is now living at Observer Base and caring for one of these "mind clones".

cover art by Jim Burns
Verella can link through her own baby to Georgy's "mind clone" at Observer Base via the Bimanoid Interface. Their daughters are thus a two-way link, a communications conduit between Verella on Earth and Georgy at Observer Base. Georgy comes to function as a important source of information for Verella, allowing her to tap into the available data at Observer Base (particularly science fiction stories from Deep Time that are in the archives of the Writers Block).

The only other source of information available to Verella are the stories that have slowly been accumulated by the Editor during his long life.

True Science Fiction
end of the road
25,000 years ago, the last remaining Neanderthals on Earth lived in North Africa along side their Anatomically Modern (AM) Human neighbors. The demise of the Neanderthals was of great interest to the Observers. Neanderthal-human hybrids were the best natural telepaths that had ever been observed on Earth.

In the First Reality, the introduction of Prelands into Earth's ecosystem had been delayed until the extinction of the Neanderthals. However, a colony of Neanderthal scientists continued to reside at Observer Base and the telepathic abilities of Neanderthal-AM Human hybrids were still being studied when Gohrlay's brain was used as the template for the first positronic brain.

cover art by Bruce Pennington
It is fun to imagine that there was an ancient city of Neanderthal-human hybrids in Africa that was the pride and joy of the Grendel Interventionists and which gave rise to lingering legends and eventually morphed into the idea of a great lost civilization of Atlantis.

Narration Collaboration
The telling of the Exode Saga is a collaborative effort, too large in scope for any one person. Describing the key events that took place in the past Realities of Earth is a daunting task... I hope that Rylla (Verella) will be able to handle the job.

Next: Gift Clone
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