Telepathy 101

Asterothrope feature:
 extra nipples and breasts.

I'm currently writing Part 10 of Old Time Gaming. Now more than 45,000 words into the story, Manny the bumpha has another one of her periodic visits with Rylla. Since coming to Earth in 1814 while inside an artificial body, Rylla has begun to learn how to make use of her telepathic abilities and her femtobot components.

In Chapter 2, Rylla discovered that she could alter her body form by taking control of her femtobot components. Rylla can morph her body by using her telepathic linkage to her femtobots. Manny warns Rylla: "I've taken pains to create a high concentration of Asterothrope genes in Australia." It is not immediately obvious to Rylla why Manny is so interested in Asterothrope genes.

Rylla Outback

In Chapter 3, Rylla discovered that she could telepathically link into the mind of John Smith, Manny's other Interventionist agent in Australia. Both John and Rylla have artificial "replicoid" bodies. Manny had programmed into John and Rylla two halves of the information needed to find gold in the Australian Outback, not too far from Sydney. By working together, Rylla and John were able to discover the location of the gold. However, while busily mining the gold, Rylla and John find plenty of time to explore the fine art of sharing telepathically-generated orgasms.

In addition to telepathy, Manny also makes use of teleportation to assist Rylla and John as they work to complete their mission. When it is time for Rylla to return to Parramatta from the Outback, Manny teleports Rylla back to town, saving her many days of tedious horseback riding along lonely trails.

The mysterious Manny.

In Chapter 4, Manny reveals to Rylla that she can telepathically link into Rylla's mind. When Rylla is sent back to the camel caravan, she finds herself speaking some "pre-programmed" dialog to Sophie's brother, Max. After that experience, Rylla imagines that she can tell the difference between making decisions and doing things for herself as opposed to only functioning as Manny's puppet, which mercifully seems to be a rare occurrence.

Also introduced in Chapter 4 is a second copy of Rylla. Manny sends this copy of Rylla directly to the gold mine where she is free to use her natural body form. This copy of Rylla realizes that the copy of Liza who is working at the mine is actually Manny in disguise. During long rainy nights at the mining camp, Manny fulfills her promise to Rylla that they would someday get to share spectacular orgasms during thunder storms.

How can gold be kept secret?

In Chapter 5, the other copy of Rylla, who was teleported back to Parramatta, meets Abigail Longfellow and discovers that she can weakly connect to Abigail's mind using telepathy. Rylla learns that Abigail has several special Asterothrope anatomical features; particularly, two rows of nipples. Rylla was born with four nipples, but the lower two were surgically removed when she was in training for her first mission to Earth. Rylla hypothesizes that because she and Abigail share certain Asterothrope gene patterns, it is possible for Rylla to establish a telepathic connection to Abigail, but not most other people.

Rylla alters the historical timeline.

Rylla's mission in Australia that is described in Old Time Gaming is her second Interventionist mission. As described in Chapter 2, soon after reaching Earth, Rylla changed her artificial body's shape so that she could live and work in Parramatta disguised as Sophie McKnight, a school teacher. Abigail was taught by her mother how to recognize other people who have Asterothrope gene combinations. Abigail notices that Sophie/Rylla has an unusual dental morphology that is another Asterothrope feature. Rylla begins to suspect that by Viewing the future, Manny anticipated Rylla's decision to impersonate Sophie. Rylla starts to have doubts: is she exercising free will or is everything that she does actually happen only because it was pre-programmed by Manny?

Clara Boyd

In Chapter 6 of Old Time Gaming, Rylla is able to get Abigail to agree to start helping to teach students at the school house in Parramatta. Rylla can't tell if Abigail's decision was influenced by their shared telepathic connection.

memory nanites

In Chapter 7, Manny telepathically warns the copy of Rylla who is using Sophie's body form not to become romantically involved with Captain Doones. The copy of Liza who remains in Parramatta is unable to understand Rylla's explanation for why she rebuffs Doones' gallantries.

Rylla is allowed to remember events from an alternate Reality that Manny erased from existence. Since Manny can use "memory nanites" to transfer such memories into a human mind, Rylla wonders if she has the ability to use her nanites to provide new memories to other people. Even-though Rylla feels no telepathic connection to Liza, she tries an experiment and hopes that she can transfer some of her nanites into Liza and in that way successfully implant an artificial memory into the girl's mind. Rylla has no idea how to alter a memory, no more than she could explain how teleportation works, but the experiment still seems to be a success.

in an alternate Reality

 Chapter 8. In contrast to Rylla/Sophie, the other copy of Rylla (the copy that is using her natural body form) makes love to Captain Doones at the end of the first day she meets him. Rylla tries to talk him into helping her get to the west coast of Australia for the next phase of her mission. Rylla has no telepathic connection to Doones and hopes that her love making skills will be enough to influence his behavior. Manny tells Rylla that she will intervene to make Doones remain silent about the gold that Rylla is carrying to Sydney in her saddle bags. 

This second copy of Rylla also begins thinking about the possibility of using memory nanites to control the behavior of other people. Rylla makes the sensible assumption that she might only be able to control the memories of people who happen to have the appropriate Asterothrope gene combinations.

image source

The second copy of Rylla performs a nanite experiment with Abigail. Rylla is able to make Abigail think about one of the stories from Ancient Earth history that Rylla once heard from John. Rylla is left feeling uncertain: was that memory transfer due to the telepathic connection that Rylla and Abigail share or were memories actually transferred to Abigail by means of memory nanites? 

Desperately searching for a way to get to western Australia, Rylla hopes to use her telepathic abilities and nanites to influence the behavior of Abigail's father (Allen Longfellow). Is it only by using her advanced technologies for such trickery that Rylla can obtain transport to the west coast?

Which Reality is Rylla in?

In Chapter 9, Rylla is surprised to find that she need not have worried about having to change Allen Longfellow's behavior. Her gold will buy her passage to western Australia. However, the Governor had ordered that the gold be kept secret, and already there are holes in that secrecy. David Phillips follows Rylla to Longfellow's warehouse and listens while they complete their exchange of gold for the supplies needed to equip Rylla's expedition to the west coast. David is seen by warehouse guards and charged with trespassing in the warehouse, but he suggests a solution to the difficult problem of secretly shipping gold through the port of Sydney. David suggest to the Governor that the gold be transferred to waiting Royal Navy ships by way of smuggler's routes.

oxypathin

Rylla's efforts all seem to be meeting with success except that she has failed to find a way to make Doones agree to join her expedition. In Chapter 10, Rylla attempts to transfer memory nanites into Doones, but she has no way of knowing if her effort was successful. Manny visits Rylla and is rather elusive, seemingly suggesting that Rylla can only expect success in transferring memories when trying to influence the behavior of humans who have particular Asterothrope gene patterns.

Manny reminds Rylla to stay confident that Captain Doones will "do the right thing" while at the same time insisting that due to the problem of temporal paradox, Rylla can not be told much about her future.

Next: Part 10 of Old Time Gaming.

Blogger Bugs...

Back in January, I blogged about bugs in the Blogger software. Most annoying is the bug that erases entire blog posts. This "disappearing blog post" bug struck me again as I was nearing completion of Chapter 10 of Old Time Gaming. The 'undo" button in compose mode did nothing after Blogger had suddenly erased my document. 

However, in this case, after my 5,000 word blog post disappeared from the "compose mode" window, I thought to check the HTML code. Switching over to the HTML editing mode, it also showed a blank document, but the "undo" function actually worked in that mode and allowed me to recover my "lost" document. It will be interesting to see if Blogger ever fixes all the bugs in their software.

General survival advice: if a Blogger blog post gets to about 5,000 words and 20 images, the blogger interface begins to bog down. Take that as a warning. Publish the blog post, even if you are still in the process of editing it, otherwise you risk losing the entire post.