D*etermined

Human Origins by Ivory Fersoni

 I began writing the science fiction story "D*" back in December of 2024 (see Part 1 of the story in a blog post called "Silencing the Imperialist"). Here at the end of April 2025, I'm working on Part 8 of the story which describes the events that occur when Tyna and Mylana visit Earth. Here in this blog post (below) I'll comment on the story arc for "D*" and show some AI-generated illustrations for the story.

 Backstory. The science fiction story "D*" grew out of my fascination with the Fermi Paradox. For my stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I pretend that technologically advanced aliens from distant galaxy (the pek and bumpha) have long been visiting Earth, but they prefer not to reveal their existence to primitive creatures like we humans.

Figure 1. Human origins by Leonardo and ImageFX.

The central character of "D*" is Tyna Travmyn, who was born on Earth in the Asimov Reality. Part 1 of "D*" is a written account of Tyna's origins provided to Tyhry by Tyna's mother, Aymy.

Tyhry is from the Final Reality of Earth's Reality Chain and lives after the end of the Time Travel Era of the universe. Tyhry can study past Realities by using Reality Simulation technology that her father (Eddy) obtained from aliens.

For the composite image that is shown in Figure 1, I asked both Leonardo and ImageFX to generate depictions of Denisovans. I love the idea that during the past several million years, multiple human variants have evolved on Earth. Tyhry's birth mother (Zeta) is a Neanderthal.

Figure 2. A Leonardo-Generated Denisovan.

The "denisovans" generated by ImageFX were uniformly too primitive in appearance (see the ImageFX-generated ape in the lower right corner of Figure 1). The "denisovans" generated by Leonardo we not visually distinguishable from modern humans (see the Leonardo-generated Neanderthal and Denisovan in the upper part of Figure 1). Most of the Neanderthals and Denisovans that were generated by Leonardo were provided with clothing and in many cases also jewelry and tattoos (for example, see Figure 2). Text prompt for Leonardo: "Two beautiful women in a jungle glade. One woman is a tall slender Neanderthal woman with long red hair. The other woman is a tall slender Denisovan woman with long blond hair. In the background is a woolly mammoth."

Figure 3. Aliens Visit Earth.

The oddly-shaped Earth that is seen in Figure 1 was generated by ImageFX using this text prompt: "In 1950 Enrico Fermi suggested that Earth should have been visited long ago by visitors from a distant star. However, we seem to have no good evidence of such visitors. This is now known as the Fermi Paradox."

The spaceship that is in the lower left corner of Figure 1 was generated by Whisk when my text prompt included "a futuristic depiction of a large alien spaceship with a fractal complex array of glowing lights and complex devices covering its surface".

Figure 4. Hierion containment field.

I had ImageFX generate the alien spaceship that is seen in Figure 3 by including, "The alien spaceship is hovering over Niagara Falls," in my text prompt. 

For Part 8 of "D*", Tyna travels to Earth and she plans to use a hierion containment field as part of a publicity stunt. Tyna plans to go over Niagara Falls inside the hierion containment field and use the resulting publicity to attract the attention of aliens, possibly Grendels or other residents of Eternity.

In Part 1 of "D*", soon after Tyna is born, Aymy moves from Earth to the planet Alphanor. While growing up on Earth, Aymy has been guided through life by her "personal Grendel". 

Three Domains. (Hierion Domain)

Upon approaching Alphanor, Aymy's personal Grendel is contacted by the Phari, a technologically advanced alien species that was allied to R. Nyrtia and the positronic robots of Earth in the Asimov Reality. 

 Hierion Domain. The world that we experience with our senses is the Hadron Domain of the universe. For my stories about the Asimov Reality, I imagine that Nyrtia used time travel technology to go into the far past and make contact with the Phari, the first sentient species to arise in our galaxy. The Phari became masters of the Hierion Domain and allies of the positronic robots of Earth.

Figure 5. Robots by ImageFX. Faces generated by Mr. Wombo.

Figure 6. Robots by GenCraft.

Figure 7. Robotics by DreamUp.

Figure 8. Robots by Mr. Wombo.

The image shown in Figure 5 (above) illustrates the default depiction of a robot by ImageFX. Text prompt: "A science fiction scene with two women and two robots. Two human woman who are robotics engineers are assembling a humanoid robot while another humanoid robot watches carefully. The women are placing a fractal complex electronic component into the body of the newly assembled robot where it rests prone on a work bench. In the background are futuristic electronics devices and control panels with many tiny sparkling LED lights. The already-assembled humanoid robot stands to one side, watching the two engineers work." This text prompt is over 500 characters in length. For DreamUp, I truncated the prompt to fit into the 400 character limit. The resulting image is shown above in Figure 7. DreamUp failed to make an obviously humanoid robot, but maybe one or more of what looks like women in the GenCraft-generated image of Figure 6 is actually a robot, identifiable by the weird eyes like those in Figure 7.

Figure 9. Tyna building a robot. Figures 9 - 14 were generated by Leonardo.

For WOMBO Dream, I had to get the text prompt under the 350 character limit (see the image in Figure 8). For most of the AI-generated images of humanoid robots, the robots do not look like human beings. For my stories that feature positronic robots, I usually imagine that they are visually indistinguishable from humans.

Figure 10. Tyna and Tyhry build a robot.

 Interstellar Space Travel. For my stories such as "D*" that are set in the Asimov Reality, I imagine that humans were provided with technology that allowed for convenient travel to other star systems. This allowed humans to spread to many Earth-like planets in the galaxy and then both R. Nyrtia and Manny the bumpha were able to experiment on the large human population of the galaxy and create telepathic variants of humans. 

I've long imagined that telepathic human variants such as the tryp'At were crafted in the far future of the Asimov Reality, but my story "D*" includes the idea that tryp'At telepaths from the future of the Asimov Reality were sent back in time on missions to the past eras of the Asimov Reality.

Figure 11. Tyna and Marda with a robot.

Although humans of the Asimov Reality had access to alien technology that allows for faster-than-light space travel, other aspects of technological advance were hindered and blocked during the Asimov Reality. The reason that Aymy moves from Earth to the planet Alphanor is because in the Demon Princes saga of Jack Vance, Alphanor is one of the planets of the "Rigel Concourse", 26 habitable worlds in orbit around the giant star Rigel, which Vance had first introduced in Star King. For "D*", I imagine that the Asimov Reality is technologically similar to the future as depicted by Jack Vance in his novels.

Figure 12. Tyna and a Marda-like robot.

In the Demon Princes saga, Vance casually mentioned the existence of robots in the time of Kirth Gersen, but no robots were explicitly introduced as characters in the story. Could there have been humanoid robots living among the people of the Galaxy? In some of my stories that are set in Vance's Alastor Cluster, I include robots, particularly those from the planet Triskelion. I also include robots such as Maz in "D*". Maz is depicted as having interchangeable body parts, although I like to imagine that she essentially looks like a human being.

Figure 13. Robots made to look like Tyna and Mylana.

In Part 2 of "D*",  Maz says, "I was manufactured and trained on planet Cybex, a world developed by the Jarnell Corporation for their robotics research program". However, what might a "home-brew" robot crafted by Tyna look like? Figure 9, above, shows a Leonardo-generated robot and that might be a scene depicting Tyna at work on a robot that she is building.

Figure 14. Crafting humanoid robots in the Ekcolir Reality.

In "D*", Tyhry takes copies of Tyna from the Asimov Reality Simulation into the Ekcolir Reality Simulation. What if Tyhry got the help of Tyna to start crafting robots at her nanite research laboratory in the Ekcolir Reality? Such an effort might be what is depicted in Figure 10. The images shown in Figures 11, 12 and 14 might be steps along the way towards crafting humanoid robots that have the appearance of Tyhry and Marda.

Figure 15. Marda inside a hierion containment field.

Arriving on Alphanor, in addition to meeting Maz the robot, Aymy meets her new room mates, Anyta Klemmer and Vart Othing. In Part 1 of "D*", it is mentioned that Anyta and Vart will have a daughter: Mylana. Mylana is an Asimov Reality analogue of Marda.

In the Final Reality, Tyhry and Marda are components of a Mind Clone Network. The telepathic abilities of Tyhry and Marda are only of full use with other people who have the same genetically-specified mind pattern. However, Marda eventually has a son named Brak who is Earth's first tryp'At telepath with full telepathic powers that are no limited to only other people with a similar mind pattern. Brak has the ability to use the Sedron Time Stream and send information into the past.

Figure 16. The Marda replicoid.

Similarly, in the Asimov Reality, Mylana and Tyna will have children who use the Sedron Time Stream to send information into the past. Thus, Aymy is able to receive useful information from the future that is sent back through time to her by her own grandchildren. Through such temporal back-flow of information, Aymy already is somewhat familiar with Anyta and Vart before Aymy even arrives on Alphanor. When Aymy, Anyta and Vart meet at Sea Province University, they waste no time becoming lovers.

Right at the end of Part 1 of "D*" it is revealed that Aymy is an artificial life form, a replicoid. In the Exode Saga, I've long imagined that the positronic robots of Earth could eventually be transformed into replicoids, artificial life-forms composed of femtobot components. These advanced positronic robots would be very difficult to distinguish from humans. 

Figure 17. Hierion containment field by Leonardo.

This type of "disguised positronic robot" is reminiscent of the short story "Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1943). In Asimov's story, the people of Earth are depicted as being part of a 15,000 year-old experiment. Earthlings are bio-positronic artificial life-forms who think that they are biological organisms, but they are part of an on-going psychology experiment. 

As described in "D*", first Tyna and then Tyhry come to realize that they are femtobot replicoids that were designed to simulate human bodies and human biological processes including childhood growth.

Figure 18. Dual containment by Leonardo.

 Teleportation, too. The fact that Tyhry is composed of hierions ultimately makes it possible for her to us a hierion femtotube to enter into the Eternity space-time bubble that is located in the Hierion Domain. Working with Amiante, Marda had long tried to discover a way to reactivate the teleportation equipment that exists at Observer Base. 

During the time period of events depicted in the story "D*", Tyhry is working towards the goal of finding a way to reactivate the teleportation equipment at Observer Base so that it can be used to move people between Earth and Observer Base.

Figure 19. Two test subjects by Leonardo.

 Tyna's robotic assistant. Having grown up with Maz as a reliable care-giver, friend and lover, Tyna wants to have her own personal robotic assistant. Tyna and Mylana devote much time and effort to constructing robots and they can't resist making robots that have a similar appearance to themselves (see Figure 13, above). 

In Part 8 of "D*", when Tyna and Mylana travel to Earth, they take along one of their robotic assistants.

Figure 20. Tyna confined by Leonardo.

 Hierion Containment. The image that is shown above in Figure 15 was made using GenCraft for the main scene and Mr. Wombo to provide a better face for Marda. I can pretend that these are images of experiments with hierion containment field during efforts to isolate programmable femtobots from the bodies of a test subject. The image shown in Figure 16 was generated by ImageFX. For this scene with a test subject inside an hierion containment field, ImageFX consistently made the test subject smaller than normal. However, replicoids composed of femtobot components can change their shape and their size.

Figure 21. The hierion bulb by Leonardo.

The images shown in Figures 17 - 27 were generated by Leonardo. The text prompt was, "a very tall and slender blond woman is looking at another woman who is inside a clear glass container. The woman inside the glass bottle is very tall, slim, with long black hair and bare feet. The woman who is inside the glowing blue glass container on an elevated platform is hot and her skin glistens with sweat. Another young woman with shoulder-length light brown hair and light-medium skin tone sits in the background which is a dimly lit technological workspace. The background is the interior of a futuristic physics laboratory that features a large screen displaying data, graphs and diagrams that is connected to electronic control consoles with many tiny sparkling LED lights of every color. On the dark circular platform at the center of the scene is the tall female figure with long flowing black hair who is trapped inside the crystal clear glass bubble."

Figure 22. Male observer by Leonardo.

The image shown in Figure 17 is close to what I requested. In contrast, the image in Figure 18 was very unusual with two people being put inside the hierion confinement field at the same time. 

In the original Leonardo-generated image for Figure 19, there were display screens on the left hand side of the image. To replace the display screens, I pasted in another test subject inside another hierion confinement field. 

Figure 23. Seated test subject by Leonardo.

The image in Figure 20 was also very unusual: the only Leonardo-generated image with a blond inside the hierion confinement field. Leonardo generated quite a few images with the test subject seeming to float in mid-air. The image shown in Figure 21 was the most unusual of these "floating test subject" images. There were only two Leonardo-generated hierion confinement field images that included a male figure; one is shown in Figure 22. Half a dozen images had the test subject in a seated position, most of them like Figure 23 with the test subject seeming to float.

Figure 24. Long hair generated by Leonardo.

 More hierion confinement experiments. I'll conclude this blog post with four more Leonardo-generated images depicting hierion confinement field experiments. In my text prompt, I asked for "long flowing black hair" and in some of the images such as the one shown to the right in Figure 24, Leonardo had the test subject's hair going down below her knees.

Figure 25. Hair nanite experiment by Leonardo.

For the image shown below in Figure 25, I'm tempted to call this a hair nanite experiment. None of the other Leonardo-generated images had the test subject's hair flying out behind her in this way. Also, this hierion confinement field was the most globular one that Leonardo generated.

In Figure 26, Leonardo generated one of the busier backgrounds (compare to Figure 20). Maybe the text in these Leonardo-generated images is in a language of the Ekcolir Reality that we are not familiar with.

Figure 26. Busy background.

I liked the Leonardo-generated image that is shown in Figure 27 because usually these text-to-image systems depict women as standing around with their hands hanging at their sides. 

Figure 27. Glowing containment field.

In this image, the test subject in this hierion confinement experiment may have anti-gravity hierions that allow her to raise one hand. 

 Leonardo likes high heels. For these Leonardo-generated images, I specifically asked for "bare feet" in an attempt to stop Leonardo from making the test subjects wear high heels. Even when Leonardo did not generate shoes, often the feet were posed as if she was wearing high heels.

Next: Part 8 of "D*".

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