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Sep 12, 2021

Monument Cliff

Manny at Monument Cliff in the Asimov Reality.
Original art by Jim Carson.
When I was about 2,000 words into writing Chapter 11 of my science fiction story Old Time Gaming, I suddenly realized that Chapter 11 would fail to wrap up all the remaining threads from the first ten chapters. I took a slight detour that necessitated a Chapter 12 (the complete story is about 57,000 words).

In The Killing Machine by Jack Vance, he casually mentions Monument Cliff as an alien artifact. I suppose some reader had complained about Vance's "Rigel Concourse", 26 habitable worlds in orbit around the giant star Rigel, which Vance had previously introduced in Star King

Alastor Cluster
Vance suggested that "ancient aliens" must have used their fantastic technological powers to move the planets of the Rigel Concourse to that location from distant star systems. Vance never explained exactly how it might be possible to move planets across vast interstellar distances, but I like the idea so much that I also imagine something similar for my Exode Saga in which the Phari were able to assemble thousands of star systems into Alastor Cluster.

In Chapter 1 of Old Time Gaming, mention is made of "a secret underground alien base near Pine Gap". Previously, in my story "Exoditions on Cynk", Ivory Fersoni and Trysta Iwedon had a brief visit to an underground alien base, deep below the surface of Earth. I have no reservations about introducing another secret Interventionist base in Australia for Old Time Gaming.

source
In Chapter 12 of Old Time Gaming, John Smith arrives in Perth after having traveled by land across the continent of Australia. During that trek, he saw sights such as Uluṟu. When arriving in Perth, traveling with John's camel caravan are a copy of Liza, Max and Sophie McKnight.

Early in Old Time Gaming, Manny warns Rylla that Asterothrope gene combinations have been highly concentrated in Australia. When Rylla finds that Abigail Longfellow and Sophie McKnight have Asterothrope phenotypic features, it might be natural for readers to assume that the Asterothrope genes are to be found only in the European colonists, but I prefer to think that human telepathy experiments were being performed in Australia for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. That work was coordinated by Interventionist agents operating out of an alien (tryp'At) base located north and slightly east of Pine Gap.

Asterothrope
Asterothropes are taller
than typical humans.
The tryp'At were the result of a previous attempt by R. Nyrtia to craft telepathic humans, however, the tryp'At are not human enough to mingle with Earth's humans and pass unnoticed.

When John's camel caravan reaches central Australia, he finds Sophie McKnight who is studying the remnants of an abandoned tryp'At base. Sophie provides John with a confused account of having met Manny. Manny told Sophie that the abandoned tryp'At base had been used for telepath breeding experiments performed by R. Nyrtia. The goal of those experiments was to discover a way to adapt Asterothrope gene patterns to humans and create telepathic humans that would be phenotypically indistinguishable from a typical Earth human. Suspecting that there is little more she can learn at the abandoned base, Sophie terminates her study of the tryp'At base and rides off into the wilderness accompanying John's camel caravan.

R. Nyrtia, the positronic robot
Later, after reaching the west coast, Sophie comes to the attention of Maria Green, R. Nyrtia's agent in Australia. Tracing back through time, R. Nyrtia discovers the branch point at which Manny allowed two copies of Sophie to be living in Australia at the same time. At first, Maria believed that multiple copies of Liza were at the heart of Manny's alteration to Australia's timeline. However, after removing all three copies of Liza from Earth and not solving the problem, Maria then turns her attention to the two Sophies. After removing them both from Earth and still not preventing the unwanted changes to the timeline, Maria finally notices Rylla, now living quietly near Perth. 

The Trysta-Grean Pact
R. Nyrtia is concerned that the changes to Earth's historical timeline being caused by Manny will invalidate the Trysta-Grean Pact and lead to a resumption of the Time Travel War. Manny allows Maria to seemingly correct the timeline by removing Rylla and her children from Earth, but then Manny secretly returns copies of Rylla and her children to Earth, allowing them to live out their lives in the Australian Outback. Manny has bragged to Rylla about her ability to control the minds of the positronic robots of Earth, but what action Manny takes directly against R. Nyrtia is not described in Old Time Gaming.

antigravity
 Everywhen. The newly created copy of Rylla is able to successfully raise her children and grandchildren on Earth and begin the process of accelerating the development of Perth's education system. This ultimately allows two important events in the future: 

First, Rylla is born, becoming her own descendant/ancestor. 

Second, Georgy White, another descendant of Rylla discovers the existence of hierions while working on a research project at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

Next: Part 11 of Old Time Gaming.

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