GalaȼtiⒸ Ḉore

Figure 1. Generated by Whisk.

Below on this blog page is Part 2 of my Decade in Review (see Part 1). I'm looking back at the past ten years of the wikifiction blog with two main goals: 1) to find old science fiction stories that I never completed and 2) I'm also revisiting old story illustrations and updating them as new AI-generated images. For this series of blog posts, I'm also making blog post titles that use unusual characters such as the "c"s in "GalaȼtiⒸ Ḉore". For my stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I imagine that the central region of our galaxy is a convenient location for alien Interventionists to maintain experimental populations of humans on habitable exoplanets (see Figure 1).

Figure 2. The Writers Block.

I continue to make use of software tools such as Whisk to make illustrations. Lately I've been wondering if Whisk has a size limit for both uploaded reference images (it may be that images of unusual dimensions are the problem) and for text prompts. Often large image files fail to load into Whisk, but so far I have not reached a length limit for text prompts. With the current version of Whisk, when image upload fails there is a never-ending spinning wheel of death. I can let that spin and upload another image. 

Figure 3. Alien First Contact with
a rare Whisk-generated nipple..

In the older Whisk interface of a few months ago, you could delete old reference images, but that feature was apparently too useful for Jimmy the intern at Google who continues to tweak the Whisk user interface. For Figure 2, I asked Whisk to add an alien device to Figure 1. As a bonus, Whisk placed another humanoid figure inside a "communications pod". For Figure 3, I had Whisk make it clear that it is a woman inside the communications pod. I had no trouble using large reference images that had been generated by Whisk.

Figure 4. A tryp'At.

 Star Trek fan-fiction. In November of 2015 I had a blog post called "Star Trek: Galactic Core" in which I provided an outline for an imaginary Star Trek television series. I wrote: "I'd love to see the folks at CBS do something dramatic in 2017 such as bring Gene Roddenberry back as a CGI character, possibly as an artificial life crew member of the Enterprise and member of away teams." I like to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, Earth's space age was similar to what is depicted in Star Trek. In 2024, I wrote a Star Trek fan fiction story called The Fesarians which was a tribute to the old Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver".

Figure 4 shows a Whisk-generated depiction of a tryp'At hermaphrodite on the planet Elemacha-Z. I explicitly asked Whisk to make an alien woman with "two distinct rows of small human-like breasts" (an anatomical feature of the tryp'At), but Whisk ignored that request. I had to manually add in the second row of breasts to the Whisk-generated image.

Figure 5. Yrinna.

At the end of 2015 I began writing a bit of Jack Vance fan-fiction called The League of Yrinna. My motivation in writing that story was that I had long wondered what might happen to Glinnes Hulden after the end of Vance's novel Trullion. I wrote a second part of the story that was placed on a blog page at the start of 2016 (see "The Connatic's Library"). Those two parts were over 30,000 words. In 2018, in a blog post called "Fleharish Broad", I outlined more of The League of Yrinna, but I never completed the story. However, I did later write additional stories that were set in Alastor Cluster.

I imagine that in the  Asimov Reality, Alastor Cluster was used by aliens as a place to breed telepathic humans. In The League of Yrinna, I began exploring the role of the Pheni, the Phari, R. Nyrtia and the bumpha in these efforts to craft telepathic humans and I later continued writing additional stories built around that theme. The image in Figure 5 is a composite, with most of the image made by Whisk, but the exoplanet was generated by ImageFX. Whisk insisted on making exoplanets that had the same continents as Earth.

Figure 6. This Pheni (right) generated by ImageFX.

At the end of 2015, I was just beginning to develop my thinking about possibility of humans having two endosymbionts: one a zeptites endosymbiont and the other a "Phari endosymbiont".

For the image that is shown in Figure 6, I had trouble getting Whisk to to generate a depiction of a Pheni, so I gave the job to ImageFX. Most of Figure 6 was generated by Whisk, but I added the text manually.

Figure 7. Erkre (left), Lori and Ivory Fersoni (right).

 More Star Trek. In March of 2016, I wrote a story about Ivory Fersoni in a blog post called "The Ivory Infites". In that story, Ivory helps write an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (see Figure 7) that depicts an Asterothrope Interventionist ho brings positronic robot technology to Earth.

Figure 8. Wayness on Nion,
the World of the Nineteen Moons.

In April of 2016, in a blog post called "Vance +100", I wrote an outline for The Search for Sessily, a fanfiction sequel to Vance's Cadwal trilogy. The main reason for the existence of the imaginary novel The Search for Sessily, is that Vance's character Sessily, was murdered by Glawen's "friend," Kirdy. However, what if there was more to be said about Sessily?

In The Search for Sessily, Flitz, a young woman of many charms, has an unusual pregnancy: "her mysterious four-month-long pregnancy has altered her from a slim girl to a bulging bedridden mass of tissue now twice her former size". Flitz splits open and her "daughter" emerges from Flitz's body as a fully-grown young adult and she looks just like the long-dead Sessily.

Also included in The Search for Sessily was the idea of Glawen being able to access information that is inside the Sedron Domain, a concept that I would later develop as the Sedron Time Stream.

Figure 9. Gohrlay as a
replicoid in the Galactic Core.

In a blog post from April 2016 called "7 Collaborators", I provided a brief outline of important steps in development of my approach to writing stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. The listed collaborators for the Editor included: 1) Gohrlay (see Figure 9 ),  2) Ivory Fersoni, 3) Izhiun, 4) Irhit and 5) Thomas Iwedon. Eventually, Yōd and Rylla also became major helpers in the task of telling the Secret History of Humanity.

Figure 10. Karalin Umdys.

 Jack Vance fan-fiction. In a May 2016 blog post called "Lerand Wible", there is a short story fragment from what I call the Aquarius Trilogy, a series of novels written by an analogue of Jack Vance who lived in the Ekcolir Reality. One of the clones of Jheral Tinzy (Karalin) collaborates with Kirth Gersen to reveal that a minor character in the novel The Palace of Love, Retz, was an Interventionist mastermind guiding the amazing life of Viole Falushe. As part of her mission to reveal Retz's secrets, Karalin must color her hair red (see Figure 10).

In 2016, I began one chapter of what was to be a novel about the First Reality. At that time, I was doing much of my fiction writing at other blogs while doing "meta blogging" about my stories here at the wikifiction blog. Some of my thinking about the First Reality was put into a May 2016 blog post called "The Gaia Intervention" and a September 2016 blog post called "1st Reality".

Figure 11. The Escapists.

In my imagination, before Gohrlay's brain was destructively scanned, she lived for a time with a group of Prelands at Observer Base. 

The original illustration that I made showing Gohrlay with the Prelands is shown in Figure 11. In my imagination, the Prelands were a human variant that had been genetically modified by aliens as part of an effort to generate humans who would easily give up their existence in the Hadron Domain and willingly transcend into the Sedron Domain.

Whisk refused to accept the image shown in Figure 11 as a reference image. 

Figure 12. Gohrlay with two Prelands.
Generated by Leonardo flow state.

I made use of Leonardo to generate some images depicting, "three beautiful humanoids standing beside a tall, slender human woman, " and I specified that, "The three humanoids have long hair and look into the viewer. The humanoids are cute and they conform to conventional standards of human beauty except for their very large eyes and long pointed ears. The three humanoids have pretty faces and very small breasts and their chests are nearly flat like the chest of a human male." However, Leonardo was quite adamant about giving the Prelands big breasts (see Figure 12). The image in Figure 12 shows some of the smallest humanoid breast that were generated by Leonardo.

Figure 13. Gohrlay with three Prelands.

As seen in Figures 12 and 13, Leonardo had definite bias for how to depict a "humanoid". Often Leonardo wanted to place odd bumps and ridges on the face of these humanoids. Mention of Gohrlay having blond hair usually led inevitably to the humanoids being depicted as having blond hair.

I don't know why Leonardo made the humanoids in Figure 12 have such red skin. In most cases, Leonard found a way to hide the nipples of Gohrlay either with her hair (Figure 12) or with clothing (Figure 13). Leonardo does not mind generating images of naked aliens.

Figure 14. Gohrlay with three Prelands.

As usual for AI-generated images, the one's from Leonardo had a variable number of Prelands. My text prompt specified three Prelands with Gohrlay, but Leonardo often made just two (see Figure 12) or four (see Figure 14) or even more. In Figure 14, Gohrlay actually got to go topless.

Leonardo seems quite certain that humanoids should have ugly corded necks. I manually edited most of the Leonardo-generated images that are shown in this blog post so as to minimize the ugly features in the AI-generated images. I completely reject the idea that non-humans in science fiction stories should be ugly.

Figure 15. Prelands with darker hair.

For the Leonardo-generated image in Figure 15, the Prelands were depicted as having darker hair. For Figure 15, I did not try to hide their high-relief necks. In Figure 15, Leonardo provided Gohrlay with a low-cut black dress. My text prompt specified that in the background there should be a "futuristic resort that is located on an island in the ocean".

Figure 16. Giant Prelands.

For the image shown in Figure 16, Leonardo made some larger Prelands. In most cases, I depict Prelands as being rather small, but there is a special category of "Giant Prelands" who have sometimes served as Interventionist agents on Earth. These "giant Prelands" were shown as being bald. I had to do cosmetic surgery on their necks, but I left the faces as generated by Leonardo.

Figure 17. Big breasted Prelands.

Although I was intentionally trying to get Leonardo to generate Prelands without breasts (as for Figure 11), some of the Leonardo-generated Prelands had very large breasts (see Figure 17 ). Also, as in Figure 17, Leonardo sometimes gave Gohrlay a pointed ear or two. I did significant cosmetic surgery on the original Leonardo-generated version of Figure 17, particularly for their necks.

Figure 18. Gohrlay with large eyes and pointed ears.

Sometimes Leonardo went beyond simply giving Gohrlay pointed ears. For the image in Figure 18, Gohrlay was given an appearance that was partially like that of the Prelands. This fits with my original thinking: that humans living inside Observer Base at the time when Gohrlay was born had developmental control nanites in their bodies that gave them some Preland features.

Figure 19. Gohrlay with the Escapists.

The Prelands that Gohrlay lived with were called "escapists" because they believed that they were being held prisoner inside Observer Base and they could possibly escape and then go live in freedom. The Prelands in Figure 19 are less alien than those shown in Figures 12 - 18, above. Once again, Gohrlay (at the center of Figure 19) was given a pointed ear by Leonardo. 

Repeating what was a common pattern, in Figure 19 Leonardo took pains to provide clothing to Gohrlay while the two Prelands to either side of Gohrlay were free to openly flaunt their large breasts. The third Preland (standing in the back) seems not to have been given a body by Leonardo.

Figure 20. Gohrlay's first family.
Click image to enlarge.

The Leonardo-generated image shown in Figure 20 has Prelands with dark hair and also some diversity in their ears, with two of the Prelands having the kind of "double ears" that Leonardo sometimes generated (see also Figure 18). For Figure 20, Leonardo also generated some diversity in the apparent height of the three Prelands. 

Gohrlay the Neanderthal. I wonder if human variants such as Neanderthals and Denisovans might have had pointed ears. The version of Gohrlay in Figure 20 seems to have short ears with pointed tips. Maybe I should have a character in the novel First Reality who is explicitly described as being Denisovan.

Figure 21. Hideous humanoids.

Some of the Leonardo-generated Prelands were quite hideous. For the image of humanoids in Figure 21, I felt that the label "badlands" was  more appropriate than "Prelands". 

I don't know what effect Leonardo was trying to accomplish with the breasts that were generated for the humanoids in Figure 21. It almost looks like there are scars on their breasts and the nipples look quite odd.

Poor Gohrlay is looking at these "Prelands" in dismay. For Figure 21, Leonardo did get more creative with the "island resort" (the name of the resort is "Waters Edge") that is shown in the background.

Figure 22. Smaller Prelands.
Click image to enlarge.

In Figure 16, above, the Prelands were significantly taller than Gohrlay. In some of the Leonardo-generated images, the Prelands were shorter than Gohrlay (see Figure 22). See also Figure 23, below.

Figure 23. Three small Prelands.

The Prelands that were Generated by Leonardo for the image shown Figure 23 in are quite interesting. The only changes I made to the AI-generated image in Figure 23 was to slightly darken Gohrlay's nipples and to add the text: "The Escapist Clan". I prefer the style of ears that points up more vertically, but I'm not going to complain about these more horizontal ears for the Prelands.

Figure 24. Preland Prison.
Click image to enlarge.

The Leonardo-generated image in Figure 24 was unusual in that Leonardo moved two Prelands "inside", with a dark arch opening to the out of doors. Also, there was another human shown in the background. This image also had something strange going on with the nipples of the Preland at the center of the scene (click the image to zoom in and enlarge). 

In my imagination, the three members of the Escapist clan were named Rol, Jaqy and Meppen and they were First Reality analogues of Asimov, Vance and Clarke. While they could not actually escape from Observer Base, the members of the Escapist Clan did write stories about such escapes.

Figure 25. Preland clan initiation.

One of the more unusual Leonardo-generated images is shown in Figure 25. I can imagine that a new initiate to a Preland clan might be shaved for an initiation ceremony. In my stories, I've included the idea that there are Preland hermaphrodites, and Jaqy was depicted as an hermaphrodite. 

Although the Prelands were selected through artificial evolution and genetic engineering so that they would have a reduced sensory apparatus and reduced sex drive, it seems likely that a clan initiation could involve ritual sexplay. Maybe that central figure in the image to the right is Gohrlay after being shaved.

Figure 26. Preland clothing nanites.

The image in Figure 26 was generated by Whisk. I like the idea that Preland residents of Observer Base in the time of Gohrlay had access to both clothing and feeding nanites. My text prompt for Whisk included the request that the Prelands be, "wearing form-fitting garments made from a futuristic alien material that has thousands of tiny sparkling light sources producing intricate patterns in shades of blue and green".

The text prompt for Whisk also specified that the humanoids, "have unusually large eyes and long pointed ears", but Whisk was much less interested in big ears than was Leonardo.

Fru'wu Intervention.
Generated by Whisk.

 Isaac Asimov Fan-fiction. May 2016. In "The Noÿs Intervention", there is an account of how an Asterothrope named Skaña was given 5 possible detailed plans for how to change the past. Natalya helped to infiltrate Skaña into the 482nd century, where she used the name Noÿs. is a character from Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity. I tried to imagine how Skaña was trained for her time travel mission.

In a Jun 7, 2016 blog post called "Earth Lost", there was an account of the Escapist Clan in the First reality. The story is called "Out" and it explains how Jaqy looked for actual escape routes; a way to get out of Observer Base. Also in June (see "Error Patrol"), Roben returned in a short story about meeting her clone, Phenence Chentz.

In a blog post dated Jul 31, 2016 and called "The Rossi Intervention" I tried to imagine how Mary Godwin might have written an actual science fiction story. The reference image that was provided to Whisk for generation of the image to the left ↖ is at the bottom of that 2016 blog post.

Clones of Gohrlay. (image source)

In a blog post dated Aug 29, 2016 and called "Zeta Gohrlay" there is an account of how Alpha Gohrlay, who lived on Earth for many years with the Editor, was replaced by her clone sister Zeta. That transition was important for the Exode Saga. Alpha Gohrlay was availing herself of an opportunity to visit the home galaxy of the Huaoshy. Zeta had long observed the Editor and was quite happy to take over as his New" wife upon the departure of Aplaha Gohrlay from Earth.

Yōd's arrives on Earth.

 Mind Transfer. In "Illegal Alien" ( Sep 3, 2016) I wrote a short introduction to "Yōd", another Gohrlay clone. Yōd would soon become a major character in the Exode Saga, accompanying a replicoid of Isaac Asimov into the Reality Simulation System. I imagined that Yōd's mind was somehow transferred into the body of Sally, a relative of the Editor. I would now describe that mind transfer as having been accomplished by transplanting Yōd's femtozoan into a new "place-keeper" body that had been carefully prepared for that purpose on Earth.

 Jack Vance Fan-fiction. In my imagination, the science fiction stories of Jack Vance are based on actual events from the Asimov Reality, a Reality in which humans were given interstellar spaceship drive technology and allowed to explore the galaxy. When humans spread to many habitable exoplanets of the galaxy, aliens carried out selective breeding of humans and artificially evolved telepathic humans. 

image source

In a blog post called "Altramar" (dated Sep 4, 2016), I described events that took place soon after Yōd arrived on Earth. Yōd explained to the Editor that a 'copy' of Asimov would return to Earth in 2017, after having visited the Andromeda galaxy. 

The science fiction story that is included in "Altramar" is in the form of a conversation between the Editor, Zeta and Yōd in which there is discussion of how Grendels gave humans Intersplit spaceship drive technology in the Asimov Reality.

image source

 Exode Revolution. With the arrival of Zeta and Yōd on Earth, I had found a way to begin telling the story of the Final Reality in blog posts of the wikifiction blog. In "The Junius Revolution", there is discussion of the idea that in the Asimov Reality, most humans were blocked from developing new technologies, causing technological stagnation during the time period when telepathic humans were being evolved.

In my imagination, every human has a zeptite endosymbiont and in the Asimov Reality, those endosymbionts prevented most people from being able to male new scientific discoveries and blocked the kind of creative thought needed to develop new technologies.

Figure 27. Angela's Exit.

 Investigative Science Fiction. As long as planet Earth was in the grip of Overseers, the only way to inform the people of Earth about the Secret History of Humanity was to present the facts about Deep Time in the form of science fiction stories. As part of that effort, in 2015, Angela published a "story" called "The Asimov Reality" at the website of the Dead Widower Society. 

Then, in October of 2016, in a blog post called "Yōd, Virginia", there was a chance for my collaborator, Yōd, to provide another perspective on the events that had been described earlier by Angela. Sadly, Angela could not provide a rebuttal because she had transcended into the Sedron Domain (see Figure 27). Anney commented that since Angela has been able to cross-over into the Sedronic Domain, "that might be proof that she was not human after all."

Figure 28. A tryp'At Overseer by Whisk (reference).

 You are being watched. Also in October of 2016 in a blog post called "Gharks and Hoos", there was a short Jack Vance fan-fiction story about Efraim being watched over by a mysterious "ghark". Here in 2025, there was a similar role for a "personal Grendel" in watching over in Aymy, a character in my story "D*". When I was written into the Exode Saga, first as the Editor and then as Eddy, the idea of Earthling's being guided and "watched over" continued. With help and guidance, nothing bad could ever happen to Eddy and the story of how Humanity had been crafted by aliens could finally be revealed to the people of Earth.

A tryp'At hermaphrodite.

Towards the end of 2016 there were several blog posts that hinted at major developments in my thinking about the Exodemic Fictional Universe. I began to think seriously about the ability of Many Sails to take on any convenient physical form. Eventually this lead to Manny appearing as a character in many of my stories, including "D*".

 A Search Beyond. Also in 2016, I was writing chapters for A Search Beyond, a story in which Overseer Sachiz arrives on Earth and promises that the tryp'At Council will decide if the replicoid of Isaac Asimov can remain on Earth. The tryp'At were crafted as a human variant that is genetically very similar to the majority of Earth humans (see the November 2016 blog post "The tryp'At"). When alien Overseers abandoned Observer Base, the tryp'At panicked and took it upon themselves to try to make sure that the Rules of Intervention were still followed, assuring that the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact would not be violated by any of Earth's investigative science fiction writers.

source

 Segregation. Although the "tryp'At are fully human" (unlike the Asterothropes) and inter-fertile with normal humans, by 2025, it had become clear that the telepathic tryp'At do not fit in well with the society of conventional humans on Earth and they begin a search of the galaxy for new home, a habitable exoplanet.

 The demise of the tryp'At Overseers. In a December 2016 blog post called "Observerless Base" there was discussion about the question: "Are there any Observers remaining at Observer Base?" and hints that Yōd might depart from Earth and go to Observer Base with Asimov's replicoid, who was then returning to Earth after his travels to the Galactic Core and the Andromeda galaxy. Ultimately, a technological means was found to force the tryp'At to depart from Observer Base, which opened the path to a future where humans would finally be in control of their own fate on Earth.

Mahasvin

The End of 2016. In 2016 I wrote several chapters for the novel A Search Beyond. The December 2016 blog post "Nanomégas" depicted discussion by Yōd and Zeta of what was happening at Observer Base and the nanoscopic artificial life form known as Nivsaham and the efforts of the Interventionist Mahasvin. There is also a "copy" of Mahasvin that is an "appendage" of Many Sails and since "her" body is composed of zeptites, the hapless tryp'At Overseers were incapable of distinguishing that artificial copy of Mahasvin from a biological organism.

Next: Part 3 of my Decade in Review.

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