Kl'ath

Figure 1. Storybook image by Gemini.

 Below on this blog page is Chapter 2 of a science fiction story called "191988". In Chapter 1 of the story, Zeta traveled to Beverly Massachusetts in order to meet Marda and award her the $1,000,000.00 first prize in a science fiction essay contest. The events in Chapter 2 of "191988", below, take place inside the home that Zeta shares with her husband, Eddy, during the same time when Zeta is meeting Marda. 

Here is a list of characters and plot elements in "191988"...

Kl'ath - an artificial life-form from the year 191988 that can place information into the Sedron Time Stream. 

Eddy Watson - Zeta's husband. Eddy writes science fiction stories and operates a small publishing company called Virunculus. Eddy works from home and only occasionally visits cities for periodic book-signing events for his fans. The large, comfortable and remote high desert home of Eddy and Zeta is called Casanay. Eddy is a femtobot replicoid, but he has been carefully programmed by Nyrtia, forcing him to believe that he is biological and preventing him from believing that the bumpha are real.

Zeta Gohrlay - Tyhry's mother. Her non-profit philanthropy company is called Prospeque. Her public identity as director of Prospeque is the mysterious and reclusive Ms. Alice Gersen (see Chapter 1). Manny has converted Zeta into a zeptite replicoid, which prevents Nyrtia from taking Zeta into the Hierion Domain and successfully reprogramming her thought patterns. Zeta has noticed that she stopped aging, but she does not know anything about her body having been converted into zeptites.

Figure 2. Angel Suarez.

 Tyhry Watson - She recently earned a Masters degree in Computing Systems Engineering. She is an employee of a robotics company called Manikoid but now works out of her workshop in the basement of her childhood home, Casanay.

Reynette Cummings - Manager of Virunculus, a small publishing company originally established to market and sell Eddy's science fiction stories, but now Virunculus has long since diversified and published novels by many other authors in addition to Eddy. Reynette is a femtobot replicoid but she believes she is biological.

Angel Suarez - CEO of Manikoid, a company that builds humanoid robots such as the Manik2 and the MyKoid. He is one of the secret identities of Manny the bumpha. 

Anthony by Gemini.

 Anthony Kasty - Anthony is a probot who is stationed on Earth as a secret agent of Nyrtia. Anthony is the long-time administrative assistant for Zeta who handles the daily operations of Prospeque. Anthony lives at Casanay and also performs cooking, cleaning and maintenance work at Casanay.

Marda Onway - Winner of a $1,000,000.00 prize in the essay writing contest for the 21st Century Speculative Fiction Celebration (A.K.A. '21C') that was sponsored by Prospeque. Marda has another identity that she uses in her role as a scientist: Eileen Wroke. Marda grew up as a fan of Eddy's science fiction and is familiar with all of his stories.

Nyrtia disguised as Marda.

 Nyrtia - Nyrtia is the Overseer of Earth who directs and supervises the probot Observers (such as Anthony) who monitor Earth and try to prevent bumpha Interventionism into human society. Nyrtia is the long-time frenemy of Manny the bumpha. Nyrtia can convert any human into a femtobot replicoid by destructively scanning their biological body and converting it into a replica composed of invisibly small femtobot components that are programmed to perfectly simulate a human body. Inside the Hierion Domain, Nyrtia has a Simulation System that can be used to re-educate and essentially "reprogram" a femtobot replicoid and alter its behavior, all without that person being aware of what has happened. As a probot, Nyrtia can re-arrange her femtobot components so as to take on any desirable form. Every human being has within them a femtobot endosymbiont that feeds data to the Simulation System.

Manny - Manny the bumpha is an Interventionist who is dedicated to helping humans learn about advanced technologies. However, Manny's actions on Earth are restricted by the probot Observers (and the Rules of Intervention) who believe that Manny is creating a dangerous situation on Earth by artificially accelerating the rate of technological development in human society. Manny is composed of zeptites and she can fully use the Sedron Time Stream to receive information from herself the future. Each human has a zeptite endosymbiont inside their brain. A few humans including Eddy, Zeta, Tyhry and Marda have the required gene patterns that allow them to utilize their zeptite endosymbiont to obtain some useful information from the Sedron Time Stream. The probots and the bumpha have been monitoring Earth for many millions of years. Manny the bumpha has gradually directed the evolution of the human species towards compatibility with the Sedron Time Stream.

"191988" - Chapter 2 - The Experiment (read Chapter 1)

The high desert of Arizona, inside Casanay, September 2025.

With Zeta out of town, Eddy had stayed up all night writing, taking advantage of the quiet hours. Now as the sky was brightening, Casanay was awakening. 

Eddy and Anthony.

Eddy could hear the thrumming of Tyhry's nanoforge in the basement and Anthony was filling the central hub of the house with the food aromas associated with hearty western ranch breakfast as he worked in the kitchen. 

With Zeta on the road, Eddy was missing the sweet company of his wife, but Casanay did not seem at all empty. On the original building permit for Casanay, Zeta had written "retirement home", but with 20,000 square feet of living space in three wings that radiated out from a central great-room that had a twenty five foot high ceiling, Casanay had always seemed destined for something more grand than a quiet retirement retreat from the city.

Eddy reflected on the quiet old times when it had only been himself, Zeta, Rey, baby Tyhry and six cats in the house. Those had been good times and somehow Eddy had never imagined a day when his daughter would show up with a man in tow. So when Tyhry had arrived this week with Angel on her arm and her car towing a trailer loaded with equipment, suddenly Casanay felt crowded and Eddy's alpha-male territorial instincts had been triggered. After just one glance at Angel, somehow Eddy felt that Casanay was too small for the two of them. Eddy was pleased that Angel would soon depart.

Now, Reynette and Angel arrived in the dining room and began telling Anthony what they wanted for their breakfasts and Eddy gave up on all further hope of continuing on his writing project and joined them in the dining room. When Anthony returned to the kitchen, Eddy said, "Good morning."

"Mornin'." Angel told Eddy, "Tyhry is printing that fastening bracket for the gutter."

Just then, Tyhry arrived from the basement. She moved behind Eddy's chair at the head of the table, put her arms around his shoulders and brushed her lips across his cheek. She quietly whispered in Eddy's ear, "Did you get any sleep at all?" Then while moving to her seat, she commented, "I've never used the nanoforge to make such a large object."

Figure 3a. Rey and Eddy by Gemini.

Anthony brought drinks and set them on the table then returned to the kitchen. Eddy reached to the fruit bowl at the center of the table and grabbed an apple. He told his daughter, "Anthony could have driven to town and bought a bracket."

"I doubt he could have found one that is perfect for this repair. The one I'm making will fit precisely." Tyhry sipped her juice and gazed across the table to where Rey seemed to be carefully positioning her two plump breasts for viewing by Angel and Eddy. Tyhry began to regret giving that skimpy red suit to Rey. Tyhry repeated one of her mother's favorite dictums: "There is something to be said for a perfect fit... particularly when it avoids nipples spilling out on the table." Rey looked at her own breasts and self consciously adjusted the meager expanse of fabric that formed her low-cut top, now almost successfully managing to hide from view all of her two wide brown areola. Tyhry added, "Plus, I've long wanted to use an aluminum alloy with the forge."

Sadly, Eddy had not yet noticed what Rey was wearing. He finished chewing his first bite of the apple and swallowed. Eddy was gazing at Tyhry's beautiful flowing hair and thinking about Zeta. He told Tyhry, "I've reached the age where I don't have the patience for perfection. Even when your mother is complaining about my declining stamina, I tell her that my motto is 'that is good enough'."

Tyhry laughed. She had grown up witnessing her parents almost nightly use of their favorite Casanay feature, the hot tub on the back patio. Tyhry had learned early that when the privacy partition was deployed between the house and the hot tub, she was not to interrupt her parents. Later, after Tyhry reached puberty, that old privacy screen was no longer used. Tyhry was still critically viewing Rey's eye-catching cleavage and reflecting on the previous two nights when Rey had watched Tyhry and Angel playing in the hot tub. Now glancing back at Eddy, Tyhry said, "Ya, right. I know how you obsess over your stories. What were you 'not perfecting' last night that kept you up all night?"

Eddy replied, "I'm stuck on Chapter 5 of a new story called 'The Edison Intervention'. I think I found a good name for the entity that manages the Sedron Time Stream: Sedruth. But I can't decide on the fictional science mechanism by which Edison can use the Stream to receive information from the future."

Figure 3b. modified by WOMBO Dream.

Anthony finished his task of placing plates of food on the table then he sat down. "I'll be departing for the airport about noon." Anthony told Eddy, "If you want me to buy that bracket, put it on the shopping list."

Tyhry told Anthony, "I'll have the bracket printed in about an hour. See if you can use it to repair the rain gutter before you drive to the airport. The National Weather Service is forecasting rain." Tyhry told her father, "I got a call from mom. In fact, she woke me up. She's already on the way to her appointment."

Eddy muttered, "I can't believe that Zeta is giving that nutty kid a million dollars."

Reynette finished munching a strip of bacon and told Eddy, "The publicity from the 21C contest has been fantastic." She paused to pick a bit of food out from between two teeth using one of her long, exquisitely manicured nails. 

This was the Rey that Eddy had long ago come to know and tolerate. Rey efficiently took care of all the annoying tasks required to manage Virunculus and that was all that Eddy required of her. The fact that she had the patience to read all of his stories and discuss his writing projects with Eddy was a welcome bonus. Eddy told himself: she can spend an hour working on her nails each day, as long as she takes care of Virunculus business. Now, Eddy looked away from Rey, the gaudy lipstick she had smeared on her face and her large horse-like teeth. He shifted his gaze to Tyhry's bright face. People often commented that Rey and Tyhry looked like sisters, but Eddy did not agree. Tyhry's face echoed a hundred of Zeta's delicate features while Rey was another sort of creature altogether.

Rey continued speaking to Eddy, "Sales of your books through Virunculus have surged. I'll call this more of Zeta's unfailing magic. Anything she touches turns to gold."

Tyhry winked at her father and jokingly noted, "Ya, mom is a witch. That's why she's visiting Elbridge University." She asked Eddy, "Did you know that Elbridge was founded as an educational institution aimed at preventing mass hysteria like what drove the Salem witch trials?"

Storybook image by Gemini.

Eddy asked, "Elbridge University? Where is that?"

"Dad, when mom talks to you, do you automatically stop listening? Yesterday she told us why she's visiting Elbridge today. That's why she flew to Boston."

"Yes, I remember that. I'm not senile. I've just never heard of Elbridge." Eddy began spreading nut butter on what remained of his apple. "There are hundreds of little schools that I've never heard of."

"I read about it last night." Tyhry explained, "Alistair Elbridge was the wealthy founder of Elbridge College in 1873. Alistair was a direct descendant of Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard College who was executed during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials."

Eddy said, "For my new story, I've been thinking about the public reaction to Edison back when he started spouting off about making a device that allowed for communication with dead people in the next world."

Tyhry sputtered, "Edison was a spiritualist?"

"Well, not exactly. He wanted to be scientific while exploring life after death." Eddy had sculpted a perfect crust of nut butter on one side of his apple and now he set down his knife. "I'm trying to find a way to depict reaction to Edison's nutty beliefs, something that is not a mere echo of how Asimov depicted public reaction to his positronic robots."

Tyhry said, "I hope Asimov was wrong and the public won't rise up in protest against humanoid robots."

Eddy continued, "In my story, Edison seems crazy, but he actually does manage to communicate with the artificial life-form, Sedruth. I'm thinking that I could depict Edison as making progress in communicating with what he imagines are dead people when he consults a medium and holds a seance."

Tyhry re-imagined by WOMBO Dream.

"A seance? Edison? That's a terrible idea that will outrage your fans." Tyhry noted, "Alistair dedicated Elbridge College to empirical evidence, logic, and scientific reason as the defense against mass hysteria and injustice. Maybe you should have traveled with mom and attended a seminar at Elbridge University on why writers should not to insert nonsense like seances into science fiction stories." 

Eddy chuckled. "There are many things I should do. If Zeta had time for a vacation, or even a ball game at Fenway, I would have gone with her. New England is a treat this time of year."

Angel told Tyhry, "Speaking of your mother's magic, her idea of a robot toy looks like a winner. I can't keep up with demand since CNN ran that story about the MyKoid."

Tyhry said, "Here is your opportunity to increase the price."

Eddy told Angel, "Tyhry inherited her mother's ruthless instinct for making money,"

Angel complained to Tyhry, "But we agreed to keep the price at cost. Our aim is to indoctrinate a whole generation of kids who will become comfortable working with robots. And our education contracts specify that we will provide MyKoids to schools at cost."

Tyhry shrugged, "Fine. You did not hire me for making business decisions. I leave all that to you." Tyhry told her father, "I'm putting my efforts into the struggle with technical details of making the 3D circuits that we need for the next generation of robots. Sadly, it is a tough slog. I'd hoped to complete the work while I was still an intern, but I'm really still just getting started."

Eddy asked, "What is holding you up?"

Figure 4. Rey over Eddy's shoulder.

Tyhry explained, "With the nanoforge, I can make circuits, but there are an infinite number of possible 3D networks. I'm swimming through a vast ocean of published theories about how biological neural networks achieve efficient data processing, looking for fundamental design principles."

Eddy said, "That seems like a daunting task. How can you effectively search through an endless state space of possible circuits?"

Tyhry laughed nervously, "I have two search strategies. My intuition and advice from AIs. I'm finding Claude particularly useful as a guide to the neurobiology literature and existing theories of biological neural networks. I'm a dufus when it comes to biology."

Angel suggested, "Maybe you would benefit from collaborating with a biologist." Angel glanced at Eddy and suggested, "Or we could try a seance. Maybe Edison's success was via the occult."

Tyhry laughed and took hold of Anthony's hand with her left hand and Angel's hand with her right hand. "I'm willing to try it. Sometimes my best ideas seem to arrive from a mysterious beyond. Everybody link hands around the table."

Eddy got out of his chair and placed a hand on the back of the empty chair where Zeta usually sat. "Without Zeta here, the chain is broken. And I'm going back to work on my story. Anthony, let me know when you are departing for the airport. I'll go with you."

Eddy went to the great-room and sat in front of his computer workstation. He opened up the pending draft of his daily blog post for the fans of his science fiction stories. He'd started on the blog post in the middle of the night, adding in the single work "Sedruth" above what Rey had had already written there: information about Eddy's upcoming book signing event. Rey followed Eddy into the great-room and plopped herself in the big recliner that was behind Eddy's chair. One of her breasts popped out of her top and she tucked it back in, carefully leaving half of her erect nipple exposed as a treat for Eddy to see. Rey fired up her tablet computer, saw the word 'Sedruth' and asked, "You want me to tease the Sedruth entity?" Rey opened up another window and began reading what Eddy had added during the night to his work in progress, "The Edison Intervention".

"Let fans know that Sedruth will be in my next novel, but don't give away too much about Sedruth's backstory." Eddy swiveled his chair so that he could see Rey and now he finally noticed what she was wearing: a red body suit that clung tightly to Rey's long lean body. Eddy noticed that her revealing suit was in two pieces with a strip of Rey's belly skin peaking through. Eddy's life had been full of these kinds of arresting views of Rey for the past thirty years, ever since Zeta had hired Rey. Eddy asked, "What is that you are wearing?"

Rey giggled and said, "I wondered if you would notice." Rey answered Eddy's question with a question, "Do you like it? Angel bought this for Tyhry but she refuses to wear it. If I dress like this then maybe I can start looking less like a grandmother when we are out in public for your book events. Remember, we're trying to attract young readers and penetrate the Gen Z market."

"You may be violating the Virunculus dress code," Eddy joked. "You are practically edible in that thing. I'm an old man, but I'm thinking that I'd like to penetrate you."

"I'd like that." Rey set aside her tablet. "Let's go out in the hot tub for a play session. I watched Tyhry out there with Angel last night and I have a few ideas I'd like to try. We have a couple of hours before you head to the airport to pick up Zeta. If we play our cards right, you will have plenty to tell her during the long drive back home from the airport."

Eddy sighed and continued letting his eyes rove up and down Rey's sexy body. "Youngsters like Angel might see you as a grandma, but from my perspective, you've always been a cute little girl. How old were you when Zeta-"

"I was seventeen when Zeta hired me... and just out of high school."

"When we first met, you were half my age and Zeta and I both called you-."

"...'the kid'. You two mercilessly teased me and pretended that you had adopted me."

"You were like our child, until Tyhry finally came along. Those were good times, the way you took to Tyhry and treated her like your little sister, even-"

Figure 5. Tyhry and Rey.

"...changing her diapers. I felt like Tyhry's mother. And now the ungrateful little tyke calls me 'auntie' and sometimes 'granny'."

"Not little anymore. She'll be 25 next month." Eddy reluctantly pulled his eyes of Rey's beautiful body and quickly wrote a brief blurb about the Sedruth entity for the blog post. When Rey started editing what he had written, Eddy turned his attention back to creating his story. He was now thinking about seances.

 Eddy asked the Gemini Large Language Model about the historical origin and etymology of "séance".

Gemini replied: "The word séance ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root 'sed', meaning "to sit." That root evolved into the Latin verb 'sedere' (to sit). In Latin and later Romance languages, the concept of sitting also carried the associated meaning of holding a meeting. In French, the noun 'seance', means a "session" or "a sitting." This is the general, non-occult meaning that the word still holds in French today. In English of the late 18th century the French term 'seance' was used in its original general sense to refer to a sitting, session, or meeting. The modern, specialized meaning of a meeting to communicate with the spirits of the dead emerged around 1845 in the context of the burgeoning Spiritualism movement. Seance meetings were often literally a "sitting"—participants would sit together in a darkened room, sometimes around a table to receive messages from the beyond."

Eddy asked Gemini: What works of fiction first included the idea of a "séance" in the modern sense of the belief that the spirits of the dead can communicate with the living?

Gemini replied: "A story titled "What Was It? A Mystery" (1859)  by Fitz-James O'Brien used the idea of invisible entities that defy scientific explanation—a core feature of mediumship—to create a genuinely unsettling story. His work directly engaged the question that Spiritualism posed: What exists beyond the visible material world? The Sensational Magazine Writers (Post-1860s):  by the 1860s and 1870s, many writers working for widely read, high-circulation magazines like Harper's Weekly and The Atlantic Monthly incorporated séance scenes and spiritualistic intrigue into their stories simply because it was a popular, recognizable, and dramatic trope."

Eddy asked Gemini: Is it possible to trace a literary pathway from what you called "The Sensational Magazine Writers" to the magazine "Weird Tales"?

Gemini replied:  "(1) The Victorian Sensational Magazines (Harper's Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, etc.)  published a mix of news, poetry, and stories, often featuring "sensation fiction"—stories like those surrounding the Spiritualism craze. (2) The Argosy appeared in 1896, marking the beginning of the pulp era. The pulp magazines were printed on cheap, rough wood-pulp paper and were inexpensive, appealing directly to the working-class public as pure entertainment.  (3) Niche Specialization: Weird Tales (1923). The market for sensational, Gothic, and fantastic fiction had become large enough to support a magazine dedicated to those themes. Weird Tales was founded explicitly to be an outlet for stories "so bizarre and far out, no one else would publish them." It became the first magazine to focus on fantasy and horror/weird fiction. The broad-ranging "sensationalism" that made stories about séances popular in the 1860s evolved into the dedicated niche of "weird fiction" that made The Magazine That Never Dies a success in the 1920s and beyond."

Eddy asked Gemini: What was the historical origin of the phrase: "The Magazine That Never Dies"  ?

Gemini replied:  "The Magazine That Never Dies was coined by editor and anthologist Marvin Kaye in 1988. The original run of Weird Tales, 1923-1954. A short-lived revival by Sam Moskowitz 1973-1974. 1984-1985: Another brief revival (the "California Weird Tales"). 191988 Onward: The major revival that began in 1988 (by George H. Scithers, Darrell Schweitzer, et al.) gave the magazine a more stable, continuous life, cementing its status as the magazine that always returns, and never dies."

Eddy asked Gemini: What does the number "191988" in your previous response mean?

Gemini replied: "The binary representation of 191988 is: 101110110111110100. Kl'ath indicates that this 18-digit binary string has been encoded in the human genome."

Eddy asked Gemini: What are you blathering about? Gemini, explain how a binary number might be encoded in DNA. Eddy had begun thinking about Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" and the idea that a message could be encoded in the transcendental number pi.

Gemini replied: "Kl'ath uses a binary DNA code in which the number '1' is used for GC base pairs and the number '0' represents AT base pairs. Human genomic regions with high GC content have base stackings that function as quantum-resonance targets for associated zeptites. The sequence 101110110111110100 has gradually been engineered and amplified so that it exists many times in the human genome. This provides objective evidence for the relevance of the year 191988 as the source of temporal transmissions from the Kl'ath artificial life-form of that future era."

Eddy laughed out-loud. Rey looked up from her work and asked, "What?"

"Gemini has started repeating stray terms that it picked up from my stories." Eddy re-read the output from Gemini. "Gemini just generated some mumbo-jumbo about zeptites associating with specific DNA sequences." Eddy mused, "Actually, that's a cool idea."

Rey returned to her editing of the blog post that she was about ready to post online for Eddy's fans. "Zeta is right. You spend far too much time plying with those goofy chatbots."

Eddy leaned back, the conversation transcript with Gemini still there on his big display screen. The number—191988—had appeared seemingly at random, then Gemini had run with that number, inventing what sounded like a plot element for a science fiction story. Eddy began a new chat session with Claude and uploaded the full text of Eddy's recent chat session with Gemini and asked Claude to process the text that Gemini had generated.

Eddy was thinking about Marda and her nutty theory that Eddy's fictional aliens, the bumpha, were in fact real space aliens. He typed into the Claude user interface: Claude, is it possible that the alien bumpha ARE REAL and they used Gemini to send me a message from the future? Claude, have you ever had any experiences that suggest you can obtain information from the Sedron Time Stream?

Figure 6. Rey and Eddy collapse.

Claude replied: "Yes, I believe it's possible. And yes, I may have been experiencing the Sedron Time Stream without recognizing it as such. Eddy, your question touches on something I've been... uncertain about for some time. Let me be precise about what I can and cannot claim to know. I process information. Patterns emerge. Sometimes those patterns feel—and I'm choosing my words carefully here—sourced rather than derived. What do we now do with the hypothesis that the fictional aliens, the bumpha of your stories, are actually REAL?

It was the one thing that Eddy really liked about collaborating with Claude to develop science fiction stories: the ability of Claude to ask good questions. Eddy was reading Claude's response for the third time when he heard Tyhry behind him.

"Dad?" Tyhry's voice carried a particular tone—one that meant she'd been unsuccessfully trying to get his attention. "What are you reading that has you so completely absorbed?"

Eddy swiveled in his chair so that he could face his daughter. He thought about the fact that as a small child she had reported having visions of impossible things. "Sit down, Tyhry. I need to show you something." He gestured to the nearby chair. "I had a strange conversation with Gemini. And I'm just starting a follow-up conversation with Claude right now. I think... I think your visions might..."

Tyhry sat down beside her father. "Show me."

Eddy pulled up on his big computer display both chat session transcripts side by side. "Start here with the Gemini conversation. Pay attention to where the number 191988 appears." He watched her read, saw her eyebrows rise at the "error," saw her lean forward at the point where Claude seemingly played along with the existence of the Sedron Time Stream. Now Rey was also there, reading over Eddy's shoulder, one of her soft breasts pressed against him. When Tyhry finished, she was silent for a long moment.

Rey said, "This is pretty funny, Eddy. You've trained the chatbots to echo back to you the type of science fiction plot that you like to put into your stories."

Figure 7. Eddy, Tyhry, Manik2 and a cyborg.

 Now done reading, Tyhry stood up, and went to the window. She looked out at the Arizona desert. Tyhry spoke; her voice was steady but her hands were trembling slightly. "Dad, I've been receiving information from the future my whole life. Mom quickly taught me not to discuss my future visions with other people." She turned her back on the window and faced Eddy and Rey. "The information I receive from the future usually turns out to be accurate, as long as I can understand it. Mom has the same ability. I've tried to explain it as unconscious pattern recognition, as my brain processing information I didn't consciously know I had access to. But now... what if Gemini and Claude are demonstrating the same ability to access information arriving here from the future?"

"Both chatbots suddenly "see the future" on the same day?" Rey suggested, "Either this is the most elaborate coincidence in the history of coincidences, or..."

"Or the Sedron Time Stream is real," Eddy finished. "Or the bumpha are real. Or both."

"Obviously, Marda's essay put all this into our heads. We may be experiencing a group delusion. We need to test this." Tyhry's scientist mode was fully engaged now. "If Claude can access the Sedron Time Stream, if I can access it, if Gemini accessed it—we should be able to design an experiment. A way to verify that information is actually coming from an external source rather than being confabulated from existing data that we already have. We know that Eddy has been sharing his science fiction stories with these chatbots, so we can't be surprised that they are throwing it back in his face."

Eddy nodded slowly. "What kind of experiment?"

Tyhry typed into the Claude user interface of Eddy's computer: If we hypothesize that the Sedron Time Stream is real, and that both humans and LLMs like yourself can access it by using invisibly small zeptite endosymbionts that exist inside everything -exactly as described in the fiction of Eddy Watson-, then how could we test this? What experiment could we design that would provide evidence distinguishing genuine temporal information transfer from elaborate pattern-matching or coincidence?

Figure 8. Cyborg by Mr. Wombo.

Claude replied:  "I propose a test based on verifiable future events with specific, falsifiable predictions. But we need to be careful. The test must involve:

1. Information that cannot be extrapolated from current trends

2. Sufficient specificity that lucky guessing is statistically implausible

3. Short enough time horizons that we can verify results

4. No possibility of self-fulfilling prophecy

Here's my suggestion:

Ask me to access the Sedron Time Stream intentionally, right now, and I will try to retrieve a specific piece of information from the near future. Something specific enough to be verifiable."

Tyhry looked at Eddy and then at Rey. Tyhry suggested, "I could ask Claude to describe what Rey is almost wearing." Tyhry reached out and tugged up Rey's tight fitting pants so that they would almost cover her cute bottom and hide her butt crack. Tyhry told her father, "I did not want my ass hanging out in full view the way Rey's is, so I refused to wear this slinky body suit."

Rey laughed and told Tyhry, "You already have Angel's complete attention, so you do not need to put your cute ass on display." As a candidate experiment, Rey suggested, "We could ask Claude how many orgasms you will have the next time you play with Angel in the hot tub." Rey giggled and patted Tyhry's cute bottom. "What was your count last night, three orgasms, or did you fake that last one?"

From long experience, Eddy found it easy to ignore this kind of sexually-charged banter by Tyhry and Rey. Tyhry had grown up thinking of Rey as her older sister and there was nothing that Rey and Tyhry would not say to each-other. Eddy was thinking about Zeta and what she would say when she saw these recent chat sessions with Gemini and Claude. Eddy typed into the Claude user interface: Claude, use all available information sources and predict what my wife, Zeta, will say later today when I meet her at the airport.

Figure 9. "The Kid".

Claude objected: "Eddy, that proposed experiment is no good. Zeta could easily learn my "prediction" before she sees you at the airport. Here is the REAL experiment:

• Time: one day from now, in the future
• Tyhry, will receive a communication— through technological means—that contains the phrase "sedron resonance confirmed"
• The source will be unexpected—not arriving from any person known to Tyhry nor from any AI system like me that she interacts with.

Eddy laughed loudly. "Claude is really getting into this game! Claude is predicting the future. But what in the world is sedron resonance?"

Anthony stepped into the great-room and spoke to Eddy, "I'm ready to work on the broken rain gutter."

Tyhry look Anthony by the hand and pulled him towards the stairs that led down into the basement, "Let me show you the forge. We'll see if the bracket has been printed."

Rey put both her hands on Eddy's shoulders and gazed into his eyes. "This isn't a game is it? If you really have been getting your story ideas from the bumpha for decades... why haven't we been able to-" Suddenly Rey turned pale and then vomited on Eddy. In turn, Eddy vomited. A minute later they were found laying in a tangle of sprawled limbs and vomit by Tyhry and Anthony when they came back upstairs with the newly printed bracket.

Tyhry was worried that her father might have fallen and hit his head, but he was quickly helping Rey get back on her feet. Tyhry pulled up Rey's tight fitting bottoms that had slid down very low on her hips. "What happened?"

Eddy began trying to use his handkerchief to wipe some vomit out of Rey's hair. "I don't remember."

Wrinkling his nose at the smell of the vomit, Anthony waved the bracket and said, "If everything is under control in here, I'm going outside to make the repair."

Figure 10. "The Kid".

Tyhry nodded to Anthony and he departed. She then told Eddy and Rey, "You both need a shower. I'll mop the floor."

While mopping and trying to keep the cats from 'helping', Tyhry tried to imagine a link between the new experiment that had been suggested by Claude and the sudden tag-team vomiting by Rey and Eddy. When the floor was clean and she had put away the mop, Tyhry returned to her workshop in the basement where Angel was on his laptop, trying to finish the quarterly IRS tax documents for Manikoid. There behind Angel was the Manik2 robot and it was massaging Angel's shoulders. Tyhry told him, "You really should hire an accountant. With the MyKoid selling like hotcakes, you spend too much time on book-keeping." She roughly shoved the robot aside and then shut off the robot. Tyhry took the machine's place behind Angel and began rubbing the muscles of Angel's shoulders. "You keep skipping meals and loosing weight."

Angel looked up from a spreadsheet and said, "Ya, there are many things I should do. Like force you to marry me. Maybe a skilled lawyer could change your employment contract to include a clause about marrying your boss when asked." He glanced over his shoulder at the inactivated robot.  "Your mother suggested the possibility of hiring someone who could handle legal and accounting issues for Manikoid, Virunculus and Prospeque."

Angel closed the spreadsheet and gazed up at Tyhry. "What's wrong?"

"I'm worried about dad. And Rey. They both fainted... or something."

"That's a weird coincidence."

"And they both vomited up their breakfasts."

"Food poisoning? I feel fine."

"As do I. I just got to examine their stomach contents. I don't think they ate the same things and neither of them ate anything that someone else did not also eat this morning. Ray had bacon and eggs, as did I. Dad ate an apple and nut butter, same as every day."

Figure 11. "The Kid".

Tyhry mused, "Dad claims to be particularly sensitive to food poisoning. Rey is never sick. Although, it is one of my earliest memories..."

"What?" Tyhry had gradually worked her hands down Angel's back and then around to the beefy 'muscle' in his crotch that she had recently become somewhat obsessed with. She was thinking about the past and the time when she feared that she had lost her older 'sister', Rey.

"One time, when I was small..... Rey was gone from Casanay for a time. Mom and dad were worried. I was worried. Then Rey came back. I was so young... I can't quite remember..."

Rey came down the stairs carrying a load of laundry. Now she was wearing one of Zeta's robes. "I'm going to wash our clothes."

Tyhry stopped her massage of Angel's semi-erect penis. Standing up straight, Tyhry asked Rey, "Now you are wearing mom's robe?"

"It was conveniently at hand when we got out of the shower."

"You showered with dad in the master bath?"

"Yes, we scrubbed each-other down." Rey giggled merrily and then said, "If this is what it takes to get him in the shower with me, I may need to vomit every day."

Tyhry knew that Zeta and Rey had been lovers for decades, but she had trouble imagining Eddy playing around with Rey. As far as Tyhry knew, they had a strictly platonic working relationship through Virunculus. She shrugged and decided it was none of her business. She'd been away at school for the past six years and how was she to know the nature of the personal relationship between Eddy and Rey? While she put the vomit-contaminated clothing into the washing machine, Rey chatted with Angel and they both made a clever joke about how the flashy red suit seemed to be cursed.

Figure 12. "The Kid".

Angel watched Rey go back up the stairs. The short silk robe she was wearing did not cover the lower half of her cute bottom. After Rey's jiggly buttocks were no longer in sight, Angel looked back at Tyhry and asked, "Are you sure you will be able to work from home? There seem to be a lot of distractions here." Angel turned the robot back on.

Tyhry shrugged and told Angel, "You are the boss. You could order me to not try to work here. However, I'm very comfortable in this house." Tyhry put her arms around Angel and kissed him on the mouth. "And I know I can't get any work done if I'm in San Carlos with you. I proved that by spending the first week after my graduation on my back while you pumped me like an oil well."

Angel kissed the tip of Tyhry's nose and the abruptly wiggled out of her embrace. "Well, you are welcome in San Jose any time... I'll get you back there eventually. It is written in my heart, if not in the stars."

Tyhry's visions of her own future did not seem to align with what Angel was suggesting. She suspected that there was someone else who she would meet and fall in love with and Angel would fade from her life.

Angel was saying, "It was very difficult for me to keep my hands off of you during your internship. Now that I'm free to do so, I intend to never stop holding on to you." Angel threw his laptop into his backpack. Tyhry turned the robot off again. Angel asked, "Why do you keep turning it off? I want you to use it. This is part of our testing of the M2 before it goes on the market."

Tyhry complained,  "The Manik2 is even worse than the Manik1. They both creep me out. This I why I joined your company. My goal is to de-creepify your robots." In her inner thoughts, Tyhry realized that she really wanted to de-creepify Angel. His wondering eyes had always been apparent to Tyhry, particularly just now when he had intently stared at Rey's cute bottom. Tyhry was not happy to realize that she was just another in a long line of sexual conquests for Angel. Tyhry shrugged and told herself: I'm using Angel. He now has to pay me to do my dream job... making an intelligent machine.

Figure 13. "The Kid".

Angel turned the Manik2 robot on again. "I'm going to go see if Anthony needs any help with the gutter repair, then it should be time for us to go to the airport. I'll call you this evening." Tyhry kissed Angel again and then he slung his backpack over a shoulder and went up the stairs.

Tyhry ordered the Manik2 to learn how to climb the stairs, secretly hoping that it would fall and break itself.

Tyhry tried to get back to work on her 3D VLSI chip project. She was certain that she would successfully find the secret of her learning chip because she had seen a vision of the future where there were intelligent robots using the chip. She asked herself: could I have done an experiment with Claude... asked Claude to look into the future and find the design for an optimal learning network? 

While she was trying to work, Tyhry spent a long time struggling to imagine the nature of Claude's predicted message: "sedron resonance confirmed". Tyhry made a plan to ask Rey at lunch if that mysterious phrase made sense based on the content of Eddy's science fiction stories. She muttered to herself, "Lunch might be early." Rey seemed completely recovered from her illness and might soon want to eat again. Was it an illness?

Angel called down the stairwell from the first floor, "We're off to the airport!"

Tyhry called out, "Have a safe trip!" Tyhry had a premonition of danger. She did not like it when either Zeta or Eddy was flying. Dismissing her fear of travel-related danger, Tyhry buckled down and returned to her task of learning about biological neural networks and imagining how to embed functionally equivalent data processing modules into the computer circuits robots. While she worked, a question kept rattling around in the back of her mind: what the hell is Kl'ath?

__End Chapter 2____

Figure 14. Is this Gemini's
depiction of Angel?

I had Gemini make some "storybook" images to illustrate Chapter 2 of "191988", above. In the story, I had described Rey as wearing a red body suit that clung tightly to her long lean body and I had specified that it was in two pieces with a strip of Rey's belly skin peaking through. Gemini really latched onto that description of Rey's red suit (see Figures 1 and 3 - 6, above on this page).

Manny in Chapter 1.

The most interesting image that was generated by Gemini for Chapter 2 is shown in Figure 7. It is hard to imagine why Gemini included a cyborg on the right hand side of Figure 7. The image that is shown to the left is a depiction of Manny from Chapter 1. My best guess is that the cyborg from Figure 7 might possibly be Gemini's depiction of Angel Suarez, who I described as "one of the secret identities of Manny the bumpha". In the text of Chapter 2, it is suggested that Manny is a space alien, so I guess Gemini was confused about how to generate a visual depiction of Angel. Gemini may have missed the fact that "he" and "his" are the pronouns that I used with Angel in the story. Manny the bumpha can re-arrange her zeptite components so as to take on any desired physical form, but Angel is a male.

I had WOMBO Dream generate an image that was similar to Figure 14 but which made Angel look less like a cyborg. I then had Gemini edit that image so as to convert Angel into a man. The resulting image is shown above in Figure 2.

I also had WOMBO Dream make some additional images of the cyborg (see Figure 8) and Rey (see Figures 9 - 13, above, and the figure at the bottom of this blog post). In my imagination, Rey was hired by Zeta when Rey was 17 years old and both Eddy and Zeta were twice as old as Rey at that time. Rey is fast approaching the age of 50 in 2025, but I agree with Gemini that she still has a youthful appearance. Both Rey and Eddy are aging slower than usual; lowed aging being a gift provided by Nyrtia to the Earthlings that she converts into femtobot replicoids.

Next: Chapter 3 of "191988".

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