High Seelie

Anti-gravity research in High Seelie.

This page continues the science fantasy story "Final Change" which takes place in the Ekcolir Reality. Previously, Joanna MacDonald was teleported from Earth to the Hierion Domain. For almost 25 years, Joanna worked with a group of sy'Paz physicists in High Seelie, exploring the physical basis of how the synpaz and the sy'Paz were able to fly.

As the mind clone of Mary, Joanna was able to telepathically transmit knowledge about Hierion Physics to Mary in the Writers Block. However, Mary was never consciously aware of how Joanna was helping with her efforts to discover a negative mass hierion.

hierion physics

Now, with the imminent arrival of the Reality Change that will end the Ekcolir Reality and initiate the Final Reality, Joanna must be extracted from High Seelie.

Artep, newly instantiated in the Hierion Domain as a synpaz replicoid, must travel to High Seelie and not only find Joanna, but convince her to end a 20,000 year-long feud and return to the 20th century.

5. The Quest.  1973 (read parts 1 - 2) (read parts 3 - 4)

Artep arrived just in time for the second experiment telepathically linking her mind to Petra. She was carrying a necklace that was small and light by human standards but was a pretty big load for her. She gave the necklace to Mary then she settled into her chair and told Mary, "I ran into Wendy. She asked me to give you that."

"A gift? From Wendy?" Mary had never previously exchanged gifts with Wendy. "What has gotten into her? It is not even my birthday."

"Wendy said it is from Grean. Something about celebrating your discovery of a negative mass particle."

The fine metal chain of the necklace was tangled. After un-knotting the chain, Mary put on the necklace. Asimov commented, "It looks very pretty on you, my love."

Artep told Mary, "Émile is going to come over for a chat latter today. You'll be able to quiz him about his last mission on Earth."

"Wonderful!" Mary sat on the couch and prepared to observe the replicoid telepathy experiment. "Thank you for arranging that."

The experiment went smoothly.  On Earth, Sven was trying some more hierion modulation patterns and collecting detailed brain activity data from Petra. He was trying to understand exactly what part of the human brain could be influenced by a modulated heirion field.

During the experiment, Artep shared telepathically with Petra every detail of her recent visit with Petra's parents at Observer Base.

Petra had lived her whole life not knowing her parents, so she was pleased to now receive an account of Kate and Émile from Artep.

As the experiment was ending, Asimov told Mary, "Sven is puzzled. His results from testing a wide range of hierion field patterns show that there are two families of patterns. He's advancing the theory that there may be two lobes to the femtobot endosymbiont, one for each side of the brain."

Hierion Physics research in High Seelie.

Mary had been waiting rather impatiently for the experiment to end. She was trying to think of a satisfactory strategy for enticing Artep to journey into High Seelie. After Isaac spoke, something instantly began nagging at Mary's mind: the idea that some nanites were composed of hierions and some were composed of sedrons. Could the two families of field patterns observed by Sven somehow correspond to the two families of particles, hierion and sedrons?

Mary was startled by that thought. She wondered: Now where had that idea come from? Mary began thinking about Joanna, but just then, before Mary could mention her idea to Asimov, the experiment ended and Artep floated up and out of her little chair.

Because the chair that Mary had provided for Artep was so comfortable, Artep feared she might fall asleep if she stayed in it. Communicating with Petra was a full-brain experience, and now Artep felt physically tired from flying between Observer Base and the Writers Block and mentally exhausted by the telepathy experiment. Neither flying or telepathy was magic: they both required that Artep work. In order to engage her cerebellum and achieve smoothly coordinated flight, Artep had discovered that she needed to move her arms and legs in a kind of simulated flying pose. She landed a bit clumsily on the couch beside Mary and said, "I hope you did not mind that I slept here last night."

"Not at all." Mary tried to ease her way towards pushing Grean's agenda upon Artep. "How are you adjusting to flight?"

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"I've found a way to smooth out my movements. The trick is rather like having training wheels, but I suppose I will eventually be able to stop moving my arms and legs while I fly. People like Naj make it look so easy."

"Well, she's been at it for a long time."

Asimov ended his little telepathic post-experiment de-brief with Petra and told Artep, "Sven is swamped with data. He'll send word when he is ready for another run... maybe a few days from now." Isaac told Mary, "Also, Sven may need to switch things up and do an experiment with Gina's replicoid before he can get back to working with us."

Artep sank down and sat cross-legged on the couch. "That's fine with me. I could use a break. These experiments are rather draining."

Feeling rather guilt, Mary asked, "When do you plan another trip to Seelie?"

Rusan

Artep was tantalized by the idea that she could return to Seelie and visit Rusan, but otherwise she was in no particular hurry to leave the Writers Block. "I have no plans to travel. I'm rather more interested to maybe meet more of the writers here in the Block."

Mary stammered, "I... there is... could you do me a favor?" Mary now felt certain that she was in telepathic contact with Joanna. Or, was this an indication that Grean had slipped some new infites into her? She touched the necklace.

Artep nodded. "Anything. What do you need?"

Mary now understood what Grean had been trying to tell her earlier, before Mary had interrupted Grean with her excited account of finding a negative mass hierion. "I was intrigued when I first heard about mind clones." She gestured towards Isaac, "I've been a bit jealous of Isaac and his telepathic connection to Petra."

Artep said, "This is so embarrassing. I'll tell Petra to stop linking to Asimov while you two are making love."

Mary laughed. "I'm not surprised to hear that she can't resist that temptation."

Artep flew over to Isaac, "I hope Petra has not been disrupting your sex life."

"Not at all. Every man has fantasies about making love to two women at the same time."

Mary said, "Relax, Artep. I don't care if Petra joins in our sex play. What I need is help finding my mind clone."

Asimov was surprised. "You have a mind clone, too? Where on Earth has she been hiding?" When Mary did not immediately respond, Isaac asked, "Or he?"

G-Robot

Mary explained, "My mind clone is a woman. I believe you know her. Joanna MacDonald."

Isaac had not thought about Joanna for many years. "It was long ago... she visited my analogue on Earth, then..." He'd almost completely forgotten about Joanna. He'd last thought of her when Ariel started making movies about positronic robots back in the 50s. He'd checked carefully, but Joanna had never published any more of her own robot stories after the little-know "G-Robot" short story.

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Mary added, "Joanna is here, inside the Hierion Domain."

Isaac was astounded. "And you are only now mentioning this?"

"Joanna has been hidden away, in the highest chamber of Seelie."

Isaac laughed. "That's nuts! An Earth woman in High Seelie?"

"She's been studying Hierion Physics. Apparently the sy'Paz are not entirely ignorant of science."

Asimov sputtered, "Double nonsense! Everyone know that Grean prevents the sy'Paz from learning about science."

Mary suggested, "Well, maybe things are changing." Rusan had just been visiting the Writers Block. Mary had shown her the chart of hierions and Grean did not seem to care.

"Even so, humans can't fit into the tiny passageways that link between the chambers of Seelie."

"When Joanna was brought here from Earth, she was given the artificial body of a synpaz."

Artep reminded Mary, "You said you need help finding her."

"Grean told me today that Joanna is living in High Seelie. We need someone who can travel to High Seelie and tell Joanna that she is needed here."

Artep said, "I'd be glad to help, but I don't know anything about the high chambers of Seelie. I suppose I could ask Naj or Rusan..."

Mary shook her head and again touched her new necklace. "I have a better idea. We'll get help from Wendy. She already traced Joanna to the High Chamber, but she is not allowed to enter. However, I'll bet that Wendy can teleport you to High Seelie."

6. The High Chamber.

Wendy inside Chamber Five of Seelie.

They found Wendy tending the garden near Grean's workshop. She admitted to Artep and Mary, "I've been expecting you."

Mary pointed to the necklace that she wore around her neck. "Is this a way of delivering infites or... something else?"

Wendy finished smoothing the soil around a small shrub she had just planted. "I'm only a gardener, so don't expect any technical answers from me. Grean wanted you to have the necklace."

Mary asked, "It is some sort of Hierion Field generator, isn't it?"

Artep seemed surprised. "That little thing?"

"Why should a hierion probe need to be large?"

Wendy led the way inside the workshop while telling Artep, "In the far future, our leading expert on sy'Paz physics completed her mission inside High Seelie, but now she is refusing re-assignment. She wants to stay in Seelie. I can teleport you close to her location, but they have a positronic shield in place, so I can't enter the highest chamber."

Artep flew to a position above the teleportation platform. Wendy went to another device and said, "First you need to be sent into the future."

Mary asked, "Joanna is in the future?"

Wendy explained, "Yes, of course. It is in a future era, thousands of years in our future that the sy'Paz finally have their scientific age."

Artep positioned herself in the maw of the time travel machine that was used to send Grean's operatives into the future. She asked, "What if I can't find Joanna?"
 
"The sy'Paz physics laboratory is in the far future of this Reality. The sy'Paz population in that era is quite small. Anyone that you meet in the high chamber of Seelie is likely to know Joanna."

With a small nod, Wendy activated the time travel machine and sent Artep into the future.

______________

The entrance to the tunnel that links Chamber
Six to the highest chamber of Seelie.

The workshop of the future looked almost identical to that of 1973. Of course, Wendy and Mary did not arrive in the future with Artep, but Grean was there, waiting. She gestured towards the teleporter. "I'll send you to the sixth chamber of Seelie. The seventh chamber is shielded by an Hierion Field that blocks the activity of positronic brains and also prevents teleportation. You'll have to fly through the connecting tunnel that links chamber 6 to the High Chamber."

Artep had a hundred questions. "What if I can't convince Joanna to return with me?"

Grean sighed. She did not like her operatives to be aware that she could link into their brains telepathically. All she told Artep was: "I've examined the future. You will succeed." Grean activated the teleporter and Artep vanished.

________________

Inside the sixth chamber of Seelie, Artep slowly turned and tried to orient herself. She was inside an artificial environment that was unlike any place she had ever experienced on Earth. Spread below her was a simulated location famous on the planet Paz, the site on the Hurzhul river delta of Vehda, the summer palace of the Oraudian dynasty.

Flying upwards, against gravity, she approached the ceiling of the chamber which simulated the redish-orange sky of Paz. Upon close inspection, the roof of the chamber seemed to be composed of a mass of gently writhing pipe-like living vines. This was a genetically engineered superorganism, originally derived from the Paz taklea, a plant-like creature with a type of muscle tissue.

After five minutes of searching through the vast tangle, she found the tunnel that led on towards the highest chamber of Seelie. Artep knew that she was tired, but she was also invigorated by the oddness of high Seelie and driven by curiosity to make the flight into the Seventh Chamber.

It took another five minutes of monotonous flight through the tunnel before she emerged into a kind of entryway for the Seventh Chamber. Through a portal ahead she could see what looked like an artificial mountain, perhaps composed of rock candy rather than geological stone. This was Mount Seelie as conceptualized in the ancient mythology of Paz.

In order to exclude positronic robots, entry to the
High Chamber is blocked by an anti-positron shield.

The air in front of Artep seemed to shimmer. She slowed and saw what looked like a semi-transparent net that blocked entry into the High Chamber. Artep reached out and pushed her hand through the net. There was some tingling and little flashes of light. She moved forward and flew through the barrier and then quickly she passed on into the chamber proper.

It now seemed as if the air had become viscous. Something was making it more difficult for Artep to fly. She sank down to the ground so that she could rest.

From the direction of the mountain ahead came a flier. She landed close to Artep and demanded, "Why are you here?" Her accent was unusual, but Artep could understand her meaning.

Artep had a question of her own. "Are you Joanna?"

"Please answer my question. You are trespassing."

"Grean sent me to find Joanna. May I ask your name?"

"I'm Pytyrnella, one of Joanna's colleagues. If you came to Seelie because you are on some quest for knowledge, I advise you to go home."

Pytyrnella

Artep kept glancing behind Pytyrnella at an ugly red totem. "How do you know that I can't provide you with knowledge. I've studied physics."

Pytyrnella seemed intrigued by that possibility and by the fact that this girl looked like Nyseth, one of the senior scientists. "Who are you?"

"Everyone has been calling me Artep. I'm a copy of Petra Nicholls."

Pytyrnella laughed. "I should have known. Petra was an ancestor of mine, about fifty thousand years ago. I could not understand why you looked so familiar. Now that I think about it, the old lore has stories about Petra in Seelie. I always dismissed those stories as impossibilities, but maybe they are actually about you... an artificial copy of Petra."

Another voice could be heard, coming both from a small device that Pytyrnella wore on her hip and the mouth of the totem: "Bring Artep to the laboratory. I'll shut off the anti-H flow field."

Pytyrnella took Artep by the hand and they flew towards the mountain. Whatever had been creating resistance to flight was no longer impeding Artep's movement through the air. Pytyrnella pointed towards the entrance of the physics laboratory, "Joanna warned me that a positronic robot has been trying to sneak into the lab."

Artep was rather amazed to think that she was now so far ahead in the future. She had guessed that maybe Grean had sent her a few decades ahead in Time, not tens of thousands of year. "That's just Wendy. Why do you exclude robots from this place?"

"We had a bad experience with robots."

They landed at the mouth of a cave. The ground seemed to be covered by a type of alien plant life. Artep asked Pytyrnella, "Are you really a sy'Paz?"

"I suppose you could call me that. Long ago the process if interbreeding Paz and Human resulted in a stable human variant. I carry many Paz gene combinations, but I have almost the same body form as a human like you."

Artep noticed that Pytyrnella was not actually touching the ground. She hovered a few inches in the air. Atrep warned her, "Remember, I'm a synpaz, so I can change the form of my body."

"Then you are like Joanna, essentially immortal. I wonder... are you from this era or did you come here from the past, from Petra's time?"


"Grean sent me through time. I know nothing about this era or the past 50,000 years of history."

Pytyrnella giggled. "Ballsy of you to suggest that you could teach us anything."

From inside the cave, another woman approached, slipping through the air gracefully but in a perfectly upright posture. She greeted Artep, "Welcome. I'm who you are looking for."

Artep tried to take a step towards Joanna but she tripped on the alien plants and fell at Joanna's feet. Joanna helped Artep get up and said, "You seem tired and weak."

"I'm new to flying and this has been a busy day for me." Artep was gazing intently at Joanna. There were differences, but Joanna looked like she could have been the sister of Artep's mother, Kate.

"Would you like to rest? You don't want to hear this, but I've been existing as an artificial lifeform for so long, I no longer sleep. After your first year, you will only need about an hour of sleep. It takes a while to transform your biohabits to conform to an artificial body."

Artep wondered if for some reason Joanna had adopted the bodily form of her mother. "Grean seemed in a hurry to get me into the High Chamber. I'm not sure that I have the luxury of resting."

"It sounds like you were poorly briefed. That probably means that Grean is dealing with vicious Temporal Paradox effects."

Artep felt a wave of dizziness. Unable to remain standing, she sat down on what looked like a flower. Alarmed by her weakness, Artep suggested, "Maybe I was damaged by that force field."

"I doubt it, not unless you have hidden positronic components inside you." Joanna sank down beside Artep. "Why did you come here?"

"I think you know. Grean needs you. What I don't understand is why you are hiding from her."

Joanna chuckled quietly. "When you get to be as old as I am, you know all the dirty tricks in the book. I used to do odd jobs for Grean, then I got wise. She controls the brains of her operatives. I no longer feel compelled to do Grean's bidding."

Pytyrnella added, "We've freed ourselves of the zeptite endosymbiont. As a Kac'hin, Grean was able to take control of Earth because she can take control of anyone's zeptites and guide their behavior."

Artep asked Joanna, "Zeptites?"

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Joanna explained, "Like femtobots, but smaller. It was only after walling ourselves off and inactivating the links between our femtobot endosymbionts and our zeptites that we came to understand that the people of Earth were puppets of Grean."

"Grean no longer exists in this Time?"

"The biological Grean must have died long ago. I suppose there is some remaining remnant of her, some artificial life copy. Maybe on Taivasila or some other planet."

Artep asked, "What do you know about mind clones?"

Joanna seemed puzzled. "I'm not familiar with that term. Of course, human cloning became quite popular during the early space age in order to send exactly the most suitable people into deep space. Clones of Earthlings were sent, frozen, and used by robots to populate distant exoplanets. Later, when humans finally had faster-than-light space travel technology, clones lost their usefulness."

Artep explained, "Grean had mind clone technology long ago, so I find it interesting that you know nothing about it. Giving a second person a brain structure that matches your brain allows for technology-assisted telepathy."

"The Bimanoid Interface?"

Artep nodded. "I think you are the mind clone of Mary, a woman I know in my time. Back in the era that I just arrived from, she was also very interested in physics. In fact, she recently discovered a negative mass hierion."

Joanna mused, "So that's how Grean did it..."

"Did what?"

Joanna waved her hand and a moment later a swarm of flashing metal plates flew out of the cave and the hovered in the air where Joanna was pointing. She went over and grabbed one of the metal objects and brought it to Artep. "Be careful, this is heavy."

Artep took the golden plate in her hands. Left to itself, the plate floated in midair and she could push it around, but it had a lot of inertia. "This is gold?"

"This is a hadron-hierion hybrid metal. Its density is over 100 times that of water, but due to the presence of negative mass hierions, this metal is not pulled down by a gravitational field. It was my team, here in Seelie, that worked out how to use negative mass hierions for tricks like this. Somehow, Grean made it possible for me to send information back through time, using technology-assisted telepathic signals... I helped Mary find the negative mass hierion. That was long ago."

Artep said, "I suppose Grean took your discovery far back in time and used it to give the sy'Paz their power of flight."

"Yes." Joanna took the golden plate from Artep, smacked it with her hand and sent it tumbling end-over-end. "During the past 20,000 years we have done mostly exotic materials research, exploring the vast state space of stable hadron-hierion hybrids."

Artep was baffled by the implications of telepathic signals that could pass backwards through Time. "Telepathy from the future, back into the past? Using the Bimanoid Interface? How can such telepathic signals be focused on one point in Time?"

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"Why not send telepathic signals through time? Grean had access to every technology known to the Huaoshy. Actually, I don't think Grean used the Bimanoid Interface for this particular trick. It was something similar... another system that worked with sedrons rather than hierions. Unfortunately, Grean was never willing to share what she knew about Sedron Physics."

Artep looked deep into the cave. She wanted to see Joanna's physics research laboratory, but something was telling her that now was the time to push at Joanna. "This Reality is going to be replaced by the Final Reality. Grean wants to take you into that Final Reality."

Joanna nodded. "And all I need to do is wait. All of us here in Eternity will be protected from that Reality Change."

Artep asked, "Are you sure?" Artep felt a strange new source of information in her mind, whispering to her that Joanna was wrong. "Tell me about the barrier I flew through in order to get into this chamber."

"Long ago I had a dispute with Grean. She tried to enforce her will by sending a team of positronic robots to infiltrate my lab. Ever since, this chamber has been protected by a special hierion field that I designed."

in the Ekcolir Reality

"What if that field nullifies the physiotime generator of Eternity? When the Reality Changes comes..."

Pytyrnella asked Joanna, "Is that possible?"

Joanna replied, "I suppose we cannot take the risk."

Pytyrnella said, "But you told me that positronic robots are still trying to infiltrate this chamber. We can't shut off the field generator and bring down the barrier."

Joanna flicked her fingers and the golden plates all flew back into the cave. "I'll go investigate." She asked Joanna, "How did you get here from the past?"

"The usual way, using the time travel device in Grean's workshop. She is here, in this time."

"Yes, I can sense her mind, but I have been blocking her telepathic signals from entering my mind." Joanna let down her telepathic shield and conferred with Grean: Maybe it is time to end our feud.

Grean agreed. There is nothing more for you to accomplish in Seelie. Nobody needs more types of hadron-hierion hybrid materials.

Joanna asked: Why should I return to the past?

Grean explained: In the Final Reality, time travel will become impossible. I'll need you and your knowledge of hierions in the 20th century. Now is as good a time as any for you to come back. Most of the operatives who I will need in the final Reality are here already. We are waiting for you."

Joanna could see deeply into Grean's mind and she felt that Grean was being honest, with no hidden agenda. Okay, I'll shut down the shield. Give me a few minutes before you teleport us.

Joanna shut off the barrier and put her arms around Pytyrnella. "I'm going to go investigate what Grean is up to. I just turned off the barrier. I may not be back."

There were tears on Pytyrnella's cheeks. "I'll come with you."

"No, this is your place. Continue as always with the research. Tell everyone else where I have gone. I may be back, but this may be the end of Seelie. Wait a year. If you do not hear from me, then return to Paz."

Knowing that most of the sy'Paz had long ago returned to their world of origin, Pytyrnella nodded, "It will be as you say. Destiny is upon us." She turned and flew into the cave. A moment later, Artep and Joanna were teleported back to Grean's workshop.

Next: the conclusion of "Final Change".

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