Foundation Reality

The Foundation Reality

Much of what is known about the Foundation Reality comes from a series of stories that were written by Isaac Asimov. For my Exode Saga, I imagine that the Foundation Reality is part of Earth's Reality Chain.

The concept of a Reality Chain arises from Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity. Immediately before the Foundation Reality was the Mallansohn Reality. The Mallansohn Reality was one in which time travel technology was carefully used to make Earth a safe environment for Humanity, but that led to stagnation and eventually a quiet and pathetic extinction of the human species.

In The End of Eternity, Asimov described how the Mallansohn Reality was terminated through the actions of a time travel agent from the far future, Noÿs Lambent.

Skaña viewing Realities in the 111,394th century

Noÿs was from the 111,394th century and she had access to advanced Reality Viewing technology. She could View the events of her own future, and she was able to see exactly how she could make use of Andrew Harlan to help bring into existence a new Reality in which humans would successfully spread between the stars and win an infinite future of diversity and exploration. As described by Asimov in The End of Eternity, Andrew was a dedicated member of Eternity, but Noÿs worked to convince him that time travel was ultimately going to ruin Humanity, so right at the end of the story Andrew helped Noÿs put an end to the Eternity time travel system.

Noÿs and Andrew are ready
to travel to the Primitive Era.

Sadly, Asimov never wrote a sequel to The End of Eternity. For many years I tried to imagine what happened to Noÿs and Andrew after they traveled beyond the Downwhen Terminus into the Primitive Era and ended the Mallansohn Reality. Eventually, I realized that the Mallansohn Reality was followed by the Foundation Reality.

Earth's Reality Chain

Earth's Reality Chain

In my imagination, the Foundation Reality was the Reality in which the planet Trantor became the capitol world of a vast galactic empire containing 25 million settled planets.

Asimov imagined that the positronic robot Daneel guided Humanity towards creation of the First Foundation and the Second Foundation. An important part of Asimov's Foundation Saga is the idea that humans have some capacity for "mentalics". The positronic robots that Isaac Asimov is so famous for having imagined also could be configured so as to have telepathic abilities. Daneel had learned the secret of how to endow a positronic brain with mentalic powers, so he deployed a cadre of robotic agents throughout the galaxy who could shape the course of human history. However, those positronic robots were always constrained by the Laws of Robotics, so they could never actually take control of the minds of individual humans.

Working secretly, Daneel slowly tried to convert the human residents of the Galactic Empire into a telepathically-linked group mind called Galaxia. In Asimov's novel Foundation and Earth, we see Asimov's depiction of Daneel working diligently to complete Galaxia and there are hints of some looming threat to Humanity from beyond the edge of our galaxy. The Exode Saga explains how the Foundation Reality was terminated and transformed into a new Reality that I call the Asimov Reality.

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Exode Saga
Since Asimov never wrote a story describing events after the end of Foundation and Earth, I created a story that is both a sequel to Foundation and Earth and a sequel to The End of Eternity. My fan-fiction story is called Foundations of Eternity.

In Foundations of Eternity, I give an account of the origins of positronic robots and the Laws of Robotics. The major divergence from Asimov's fictional universe that I develop in Foundations of Eternity is in the area of aliens.

Ancient Aliens

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For the Exode Saga, I imagine that Earth was first visited more than 2 billion years ago by the Phari. The Phari had very advanced technologies that were based on using hierions. Eventually, our galaxy was invaded by another type of space alien, the pek. The pek were masters of sedronic technologies and they were able to take control of our galaxy away from the Phari, who had already taken up residence within the Hierion Domain.

However, Many Sails, a sentient spaceship, made an effort to learn from the Phari. The Phari routinely worked to endow life forms in our galaxy with twitino-mediated "natural telepathy". In contrast, the pek routinely used a form of technology-assisted telepathy to link together individuals, as they had done with the Prelands.

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Endosymbionts
When the Phari began studying life on Earth, they began the process of turning Earthly organisms into mixtures of hadronic and hierion matter. When the pek arrived on Earth, all the organisms already contained a femtobot endosymbiont with nanoscopic components. The pek then added in their own zeptite endosymbionts into the mix. When humans finally evolved, we were composite creatures containing both a femtobot endosymbiont and a zeptite endosymbiont. Because of our femtobot endosymbiont, humans had a type of weak telepathic connection with each other and to other animals. That kind of weak telepathic connection was of interest to the pek and because of it, the pek sometimes delayed shifting advanced species of our galaxy towards like as artificial life forms residing inside the Sedronic Domain.

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In particular, both the Nereids and the Fru'wu had recently evolved in our galaxy and both of those species were allowed to spread from their home planet to additional worlds in orbit around other stars. The Nereids eventually transcended into the Sedronic Domain, but their "descendants", the Grendels, along with the Fru'wu took an interest in the evolution of life on Earth. With the connivance of Many Sails, and in technical violation of the Rules of Intervention, various experiments were performed, exploring the consequences of telastid-mediated telepathy for human social development.

Observer Base

Gohrlay's Brain

In order to restrain Interventionist activity on Earth, the pek established a base of operations "near" Earth that came to be known as Observer Base. It was within Observer Base where a small group of humans became the first human scientists. In an attempt to constrain the pace of technological innovation among the humans at Observer Base, the pek did not allow those humans to develop and use electronic computers. However, they did develop a similar technology based upon positronics. This is what eventually led to the creation of robots with positronic brains.

To create the first positronic brain, the human scientists at Observer Base needed to make a copy of a human brain's neural networks in the format of positronic circuits. The brain of a young woman known as Gohrlay was used as the template for positronic brains. The first two positronic robots, R. Gohrlay and R. Nahan soon discovered that their positronic brains were able to wield powerful telepathic powers. They quickly took control of Observer Base and eventually the positronic robots of Earth drove the pek out of our galaxy. The positronic robots discovered that their new science of positronics also made time travel possible and so the Eternity time travel system came into being and was secretly controlled by R. Gohrlay.

The Kac'hin have the ability to edit genes.

Grean and the Kac'hin
Eventually the pek were able to understand the technological basis of the telepathic abilities of Earth's positronic robots. The pek duplicated that technology and also they eventually developed their own time travel technology. In order to take back control of the galaxy, the pek engineered a new telepathic primate variant known as the Kac'hin. Working within the Foundation Reality, a Kac'hin named Grean was able to lead her team to Earth and take control of the Eternity time travel system. However, R. Gohrlay was not defeated and the positronic robots settled into a Time Travel War with the pek and the Kac'hin.

As described in Foundations of Eternity, Isaac Asimov was caught up in the Time War (see this chapter). Asimov became a time traveler and helped put an end to the Foundation Reality.

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The Asimov Reality
The Asimov Reality was the next Reality in Earth's Reality Chain after the Foundation Reality. During the Asimov Reality a truce was called in the Time War. The Huaoshy were ready to alter the Dimensional Structure of the universe so as to put an end to all further time travel. During the Asimov Reality, both R. Gohrlay and the pek worked to create new human variants that could make use of technology-assisted telepathy. The Ek'col were created and used to implement the Trysta-Grean Pact. Another human variant, the tryp'At was designed to help prevent Interventionists from disrupting the Pact.

Related Reading: the Ekcolir Reality
                   the Buld Reality
           more in the Foundation Reality, 2020
Next: an Interventionist agent on Earth

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