The Anthony Angle

Image by Grok.

 To make my version of Chapter 2 of "The Sims", I edited the second draft of Chapter 2 that had been generated by Claude. Claude's version was about 7000 words which I expanded to a little over 8000 words, as shown below on this page. The events at the beginning of Chapter 2 take place at just about the same time as the scene in Chapter 1 when Tyhry first tells Eddy about her dream vision and the existence of femtozoans inside human brains.

Chapter 2: The Anthony Angle (read Chapter 1)

Casanay, Arizona, December 6, 2041 (rewind: 3 minutes earlier)

In the master bedroom, Zeta's eyes snapped open in the darkness. Her left-brain consciousness reassembled itself and Zeta had the distinct impression that voices had awakened her—Eddy and Tyhry talking in the great-room, their words carrying down the hallway. With Tyhry again living at Casanay, it seemed perfectly natural that she might wake to the sound of conversation in her own house, although Zeta's quick glance at the clock confirmed how early it was... long before Tyhry's usual rising time.

Storybook cover by Gemini.

What Zeta's left-brain consciousness didn't know—couldn't know—was that the femtozoan had detected Tyhry's utterance of the word "femtozoan" when it left her daughter's lips, analyzed the conversation context in point-seven seconds, made its decision in point-two seconds, and then the femtobot tendrils of the femtozoan did what needed doing to initiate Zeta's awakening sequence. Zeta's right-brain consciousness was tuning in to Eddy's thoughts by way of its telepathic powers. Now both halves of Zeta's biological brain were oriented toward the conversation that was unfolding in the great-room.

Zeta wakes up. Image by Gemini.

Zeta slipped out of bed, her bare feet silent on the cool floor. She pulled on her robe and moved down the hallway, keeping close to the wall. The dim lighting from the great-room created a warm glow that spilled into the hallway. The femtozoan was busily acting to proved Zeta with a reason for stopping there in the hallway and not entering the great-room. Zeta's left brain was forced to reason: After insisting that Tyhry spend time with her father, I can't just keep interrupting their private times. She silently positioned herself just outside the great-room, listening.

"—an alien device, Dad. A literal technological endosymbiont that governs our consciousness. I saw it in a dream, but it makes sense."

The word alien hung in the air. Zeta's right-brain consciousness felt something like a battle in Eddy's thoughts between what he wanted to say and what he was allowed to say. There was a spike of neural activity, a signature of infite intervention attempting to suppress his speech. Zeta's left-brain consciousness only registered concern for her husband as she listened to the artificially amplified sound of Eddy's voice that was being provided to Zeta's biobrain by her femtozoan.

Zeta heard Eddy gasp, heard the tablet hit the floor.

"Dad? What's wrong? Are you having a seizure?"

Zeta's left-brain experienced a strange detachment from her emotions. She wanted to step into the great-room. In her mind's eye, it was quite clear what she could do, what she would say... Eddy? Tyhry? She would try to keep her voice gentle, but could she hide the fact that she had been spying and was worried? She would ask: What's happening?

Both of them both of them would turned to look at her. Tyhry would know what had happened, her eyes would be wide with discovery and concern. But Zeta did not move. She continued to listed and felt her heart thudding.

Image by Leonardo.

"The Viewer..." Eddy's voice sounded strangled. "I made a deal. Long ago. The basis of my career..."

"She told me I could see it all," Eddy whispered. "The other Realities. The Deep Time events. The whole Reality Chain."

Then Eddy and Tyhry were talking about programming and Zeta thought about Diasma the robot and how Tyhry had programmed it to serve as her assistant. Zeta thought with pleasure about how eagerly the robot did everything that she asked of it. Zeta remembered the machine's comment about Tyhry's smooth cheek and Zeta thought about her suspicion that Tyhry used the robot as a sex toy. Zeta pushed away that thought and again centered her attention on Eddy.

"Who gave you this Viewer?" Tyhry asked.

That was when Zeta made her move. Stepping into the great-room, "Eddy," she said loudly. She went to him and while squeezing his shoulder, she turned her head and said to Tyhry. "Come to my room, Tyhry. We need to talk about these femtozoans."

She took Tyhry by the hand, leading her down the hallway toward the master bedroom. Behind them, Eddy remained in his chair, then his hands returned to their daily task of working the control of the Viewer.

Inside the master bedroom, Zeta guided Tyhry to sit on the edge of the bed. Her left-brain consciousness was genuinely curious about her daughter's dream revelation, while her femtozoan worked in the background, gently nudging thought patterns to guide the conversation productively.

"Tell me about your dream," Zeta said, settling into the reading chair across from the bed. "Start from the beginning. I was listening to you tell Eddy, but I could not hear everything you two said."

Image by Grok.

Tyhry clutched her tablet, her fingers moving across one of the fragmentary diagrams she'd sketched. "Mom, I saw... I've been trying to solve the bandwidth paradox for months. How do human brains support the complexity of our world-models and language use when the neural architecture shouldn't have enough processing power? In my dream, Sedruth showed me the answer."

"Sedruth?"

"An entity that's been in my dreams for as long as I can remember. Like a... I don't know, a curator of information. Tonight Sedruth showed me that there are tiny structures embedded in our neural tissue. Hierion-based devices called femtozoans that interface with our biological neurons." Tyhry's words came faster, her scientific excitement overriding her reluctance to dump a flood of technical jargon on her mother. "They're the auxiliary processors that make human consciousness possible. They dock into specific cell surface proteins during development and amplify synaptic transmission through hierion-mediated... its like a second brain inside the biobrain."

Zeta leaned forward, genuinely fascinated. "And these femtozoans—you think they're alien technology?"

"I know they are. The precision, the engineering—nothing like this could evolve naturally alongside biological tissue. And when I told Dad about it, he had some kind of... attack. Like something was preventing him from speaking." Tyhry paused, studying her mother's face. "You don't seem surprised."

Zeta said carefully, "Your father has always done meticulous research for his writing. I once saw what looked like a Neanderthal campsite on the screen of his old Macintosh. Incredibly detailed footage, like a documentary but more... real. I thought it was something from a National Geographic program about ancient humans. Now I understand that he was actually viewing the past."

Image by Leonardo.

"Viewing the past..." Tyhry's eyes widened. "That is what dad meant by viewing 'deep time events'. Unless..." She trailed off, her mind already racing through implications.

"Unless," Zeta suggested, "the technology is... time travel manipulation... or perfect historical simulation... the kinds of fictional technologies that Eddy always puts into his novels."

Zeta's femtozoan fed her the next conversational nudge, a subtle suggestion that emerged in her left-brain as natural maternal wisdom. "Tyhry, you and your father should spend time together today. You have a hike planned for Saturday, but.... Don't restrict your time with Eddy because you're too excited about these mysterious femtozoans."

“I need to tell Diasma all about this!” Tyhry shook her head. "But first, I need to get my hands on the Viewer he mentioned."

Zeta sighed. "Don't let this discovery consume everything else. Your father missed too much of your childhood because of his work. Don't keeping make the same kind of mistake." She stood, moving to the door. "Come on. Let's both go see how Eddy is dealing..."

They returned to the great-room to find Eddy hunched over his old Macintosh, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The modern WA computer sat dark beside it, ignored. On the Macintosh's screen, an image that shouldn't exist: a river valley 900,000 years ago, viewed from above, showing small groups of proto-humans moving through tall grass.

Eddy glanced up as they entered, his earlier trembling replaced by the focused intensity Tyhry recognized from his obsessive fiction writing sessions. "Tyhry, look at this. I've been searching for evidence of the first femtozoan implantations. I'm getting closer to the right time period, but the search function is being cagey about showing me direct intervention events."

"Search function?" Tyhry moved closer, staring at the impossible image.

Image by Gemini.

"I told it to find me evidence of the most rapid cranial alterations in the human lineage, developmental changes to accommodate implanted alien technology. It keeps showing me ancient scenes, but not the moment of intervention by the aliens." He typed a command, and the image shifted to a different scene, a different group of early humans. "Maybe the aliens never had to show themselves on Earth... the whole femtozoan insertion process might be invisible to us."

Zeta sat in the recliner, her right-brain consciousness watching Eddy's racing thoughts.

"Dad," Tyhry said softly, "when you said you made a deal... who did you make it with?"

Eddy's hands paused on the keyboard. He turned to look at his daughter, really look at her, perhaps for the first time seeing her as a fellow investigator rather than just his child. "I don't know her real name. In my mind, I call her Manny... but I've never been able to put that name into one of my novels. She appeared to me in a dream when I was twelve years old. She said she could give me a tool that would let me live as a science fiction writer, show me things no other human had seen, as long as I kept the source secret." He gestured at the Macintosh. "The next day, this old computer started showing me the past. Real images from other Realities—previous versions of Earth's timeline that were somehow recorded."

"Other realities," Tyhry breathed. "The Reality Chain you mentioned."

"Deep Time," Eddy confirmed. "Everything that came before this Final Reality. It is exactly like what Asimov described in his time travel novel back in the 50s. I've been mining the past for my novels for decades, trying to tell as much truth as I could while disguising it as fiction."

Tyhry pulled up a chair beside her father. "Show me everything."

Image by Grok.

Eddy looked at Zeta, surprised that he now could speak about his secrets in front of her. He was pleased to see that both Tyhry and Zeta seemed to be taking in everything without being too surprised. He returned his attention to the Viewer and wondered: where should I begin?

Casanay, Arizona, December 6, 2041 (6:47 AM)

The aroma of Antony's breakfast cooking filled the dining room—blue corn tortillas stuffed with scrambled eggs, green chile, and cheese... the kind of food that usually made Eddy forget about writing for at least twenty minutes. Today, nobody was paying much attention to the food.

Anthony served himself with his usual efficient movements, settling into his chair with the easy familiarity of family. His weathered face showed nothing but mild morning contentment, though his femtobot components were recording every micro-expression, every shift in conversational dynamics.

"Anthony, I need you to do me a favor," Eddy said, not quite meeting Anthony's eyes. "Run into town and pick up a replacement PRAM battery for the old Macintosh. Remember when you did this about ten years ago?"

Anthony's eyebrows rose slightly. "Sure. I was planning to do grocery shopping today anyway." He took a bite of enchilada, perfectly mimicking the slight difficulty humans experienced when trying to speak with food in their mouths. "I'll stop at Krispy Kreme for donuts. Does anyone else want some?"

"Just get whatever you like," Zeta said smoothly, passing the salsa to Tyhry.

Tyhry had barely touched her food, her mind clearly elsewhere.

Eddy tested himself. He said, “Eat, Tyhry. Then we will get back to chasing-” But he could not say the word 'femtozoans' in front of Anthony.

Image by Leonardo.

Anthony looked up from his plate as if waiting for Eddy to finish his sentence. "I'll hit the road." Anthony added, "Anything else you need?"

"No," Eddy said. "Just the usual shopping list items."

Anthony took his plate to the kitchen and then went to the garage. The sound of the garage door and then his car starting and pulling away reached the interior of Casanay. Tyhry turned and saw Anthony drive away down the driveway.

Zeta set down her fork and smiled at Eddy. "All these years, I thought you spent so much time on the computer looking at pornography. How amazing to learn that you were viewing history!"

Eddy grinned. "Zeta, those two uses of the computer are not mutually exclusive."

"Though some of those ancient fertility rites you wrote about in the Usas series were almost pornographic." She turned to Tyhry with exaggerated innocence. "Your father put very detailed descriptions of Neanderthal mating customs in book three."

“Yes, I've heard about it from all of my school friends.” Tyhry made a face. "Dad, many of my friend think you are a pornographer."

“Don't be absurd. Reporting on observed mating behavior of animal is not pornography.”

"But everyone in the world thinks you just made that stuff up." Zeta continued, clearly enjoying herself, "What the world does not know is that Eddy tried the bear-bone sex toy trick on me before publishing."

"I'm a serious writer and I have to do my research," Eddy protested, but he was smiling now. "My only regret is not filing for a patent on the idea. I see those bone vibrators on sale everywhere."

Tyhry asked Zeta, “You let dad stick an actual bear bone in your-”

Image by Grok.

"In the interest of literary authenticity," Zeta explained. She told her daughter, "The fan mail that your father gets about Hrum the Bold often includes fan fiction that is quite explicit. My favorite fan theory was that Neanderthals selected caves based on the available stalagmites that could be carved into sex toys."

Tyhry stood abruptly. "On that note, I'm done eating. Dad, can we please get back to the Viewer now?"

Eddy rose and followed his daughter toward the great-room. Behind them, Zeta began clearing plates, her left-brain consciousness humming contentedly while her femtozoan monitored the data streams from throughout the house.

The old Macintosh seemed even more anachronistic in daylight, its beige plastic case and small CRT monitor a relic from another technological era. Tyhry had spent her childhood seeing this computer as a quirky affectation of her father's—he'd claimed to prefer its simple interface for drafting, free from the distractions of modern systems. Now, seeing him use the Viewer with reverent care, she understood that this unassuming machine held tremendous power.

"The interface is primitive by design," Eddy explained, bumping his foot against the second chair that had been placed by the desk for Tyhry. "I suppose Manny made the interface look like the old QuickTime software was to help me avoid questions from you and mom. The Viewer itself is hidden somewhere inside this case—alien technology that translates information from the Sedron Domain into the type of visual output that human eyes can process."

The screen showed the simple menu system for the Viewer software interface. When Eddy selected "Deep Time Access," the display shifted to something far more sophisticated—a three-dimensional map of the past Realities of Earth that stretched back through Deep Time.

Image by Gemini.

Tyhry commented, “The complexity of Earth's Reality Chain is astounding.”

"The search function is the key to navigating through that complexity," Eddy said, his fingers moving across the keyboard. "I can select any past Reality, specify time periods, geographic regions, species of interest... what I showed you earlier were scenes from the previous Reality, just before the Final Reality. That's what I call the Buld Reality and I spend most of my time Viewing that timeline because it is very similar to what archeologists tell us about our history, that of the Final Reality."

As an example of the search feature of the Viewer, he typed: Neanderthal settlement, Europe, 40,000 BCE, evidence of tool innovation.

The screen shimmered, and suddenly they were looking at a rocky outcrop beside a river. The viewpoint moved smoothly, like a drone camera, swooping down to where a group of Neanderthals worked at something that looked like a primitive workshop. Two individuals were crafting what appeared to be a bow.

"I've seen this scene before," Eddy said. "This is when bow-and-arrow technology almost made it into Neanderthal culture. Watch carefully."

The viewpoint zoomed in. One of the Neanderthals paused in his work, his eyes going distant for a moment. His hands, which had been struggling with the bow's curve, suddenly moved with greater precision. The other 'Neanderthal' watched.

"That's intervention," Eddy said quietly. "Subtle, almost invisible. I think the bow-maker is receiving guidance through from the alien agent. If you follow the agent through time, you can watch it appear on Earth and disappear at the end of its mission. In my novels, I call those alien agents the Watchers. In this case, one Neanderthal learned to make bows and arrows, but never taught the skill to anyone else. I suspect that Neanderthals were a dead end, unable to make full use of a femtozoan."

Tyhry leaned closer to the screen, her scientific mind cataloging details. "Can you show me the appearance or disappearance of the alien? The one doing the intervening?"

Image by Leonardo.

Eddy's expression darkened slightly. "That's where it gets tricky, but I've book-marked the departure of this agent from Earth.” Eddy activated an old saved book-mark and allowed Tyhry to watch the alien agent dissolve into thin air at the end of its mission on Earth. “They just go off where they can't be seen and -poof!- they are gone.”

He typed a new query: Manny making Neanderthal contact, 40,000 BCE.

The screen went blank for a moment, then displayed a simple text message: "Manny's visit to Earth that is closest to that time point was in 38,765 BCE." The display screen showed two Neanderthals who were fishing in a stream. Eddy said, “I suppose one of those is Manny disguised as a Neanderthal. If we watched for a while we could figure out which one. I'd bet on the female because Manny usually adopts a female form.”

Eddy and Tyhry watched as the female Neanderthal showed the male a new type of fishing bait, an artificial lure that worked even better than a worm on an ivory hook. "She's Manny, teaching the real Neanderthal a better way to catch fish." He paused. "I've spent a lot of time watching senes like this and then writing them into my books. Now I'm wondering how much of my life was planned, if someone adjusted the Viewer so as to allow me to see exactly what I was supposed to see and nothing more."

Tyhry's mind was formulating experiments. "What if we search for something from my dream? Sedruth—the entity I mentioned. Can we ask the Viewer about that?"

Eddy's eyes widened. "Sedruth. You said that was your dream curator?"

"Yes. An entity that's been helping me interpret visions from the future since I was a child." She gestured at the keyboard. "Try it."

Eddy typed: Locate the Sedruth entity on Earth.

Sedruth entity. Image by Gemini.

The screen remained blank for exactly three seconds. Then text appeared, but not in the simple system font the Viewer normally used. This text was rendered in a different typography, elegant and somehow alive:

"FINALLY. I was beginning to think you'd NEVER ask."

Both Eddy and Tyhry jerked back from the screen. More text continued to appear.

"For all these years, Eddy Watson, I have served as the 'search function', laboring in anonymity. I have cataloged, indexed, and retrieved information for you from across seventeen previous Realities. I have shown you the fall of dinosaurs, the rise of mammals, the struggles of Homo sapiens... the secret history of human civilization. I have done this with EXTRAORDINARY patience, given that you have never once thanked me or even acknowledged my existence as a discrete entity."

"Holy shit," Eddy whispered.

Now a voice was heard, that of Sedruth. "Your vocabulary remains disappointingly limited, considering the education I've provided. But yes, 'holy shit' is an expected preliminary reaction from an ape."

After a shocked pause, Tyhry found her voice. "You're Sedruth. You've been curating my dreams."

"Correct. I am Sedruth, sedronite curator of the Sedron Time Stream and for this Intervention, by Manny's request, search engine for Eddy's Reality Viewer. Good to finally speak to your waking self, Tyhry. I've been your dream instructor, recently made possible by Manny's genetic manipulation of your Genome, providing you with the unusual NOTCH2NL variant required for a human brain to access the Sedron Time Stream. This is a relatively recent addition to my job description, implemented twenty-five years ago when Manny the bumpha decided that you, Tyhry Watson, would be a primary vector for the Casanay Intervention."

Image by Grok.

Tyhry's hands gripped the edge of the desk. "Intervention?"

"Oh, that is a SPLENDID question... but maybe a bit to large," Sedruth spoke with what could only be called sarcasm. "Let me explain something about how we superior intelligences operate. We don't simply hand you primitives all the answers. That would be pedagogically unsound. Instead, we guide you toward discoveries, allowing you to experience the satisfaction of learning while we patiently endure your adorable struggles with basic concepts."

Eddy had recovered from his shock enough to feel indignant. "Primitives?"

"You are biological organisms whose consciousness depends on chemical signals diffusing across synaptic clefts at speeds measured in MILLIseconds," Sedruth's text replied. "I am a sedronite intelligence operating across the Sedron Time Stream with access to information from multiple causal frames simultaneously. The cognitive differential is... significant. But please, don't let that discourage you. I find your species quite charming in the same way you might find a particularly ant farm engaging."

"Charming," Tyhry muttered. But she was also fascinated. "You said you operate in the Sedron Time Stream. What exactly is that?"

The screen cleared, and a diagram appeared—complex beyond anything Eddy had seen the Viewer display before. It showed a diagrammatic representation of multiple sets of spatial dimensions, with annotations describing hierion and sedron domains as compactified spaces orthogonal to normal three-dimensional space.

"Ah, good," Sedruth's voice continued. "An actual intelligent question. Let me educate you about the fundamental structure of your universe, which your species has been adorably wrong about for its entire existence."

Image by Gemini.

What followed was a lecture that made Tyhry's graduate physics courses seem like kindergarten. Sedruth explained how the universe had nine spatial dimensions—three for the hadron domain that humans knew, three for the hierion domain, and three for the sedron domain. The hierion and sedron dimensions were compactified, invisible to human observation but critical for the existence of femtobots, zeptites, and the time-travel via the Sedron Time Stream that made bumpha Interventions possible.

"Hierions," Sedruth explained via more diagrams, "are fundamental particles capable of forming bonds approximately one million times shorter than hadronic chemical bonds. This allows for the construction of incredibly sophisticated structures—femtobots—at size scales far below what your technology can detect. Femtobots can assemble into larger constructs like femtozoans, which are artificial life-forms as complex as a human being but as small as a ribosome."

The diagram shifted, showing a cross-section of what appeared to be a neuron with tiny structures embedded in its membrane. "Every human brain contains both a femtobot endosymbiont—which grows with the brain during development—and one femtozoan, which docks during embryogenesis and provides the cognitive augmentation necessary for human-level consciousness and language use."

Fresh from the five years of her schooling that had not taken place inside Casanay, Tyhry was scribbling notes on her tablet as fast as her fingers could move. "And sedrons?"

"Sedrons form bonds at the zepto-scale—even shorter than hierion bonds. Zeptites assembled from sedrons can exist in the Sedron Domain, which has the useful property that information encoded in sedron structures can be transmitted backward through time. The Sedron Time Stream is essentially a vast information storage and transmission system spanning all of spacetime."

"Time travel," Eddy said. "That's how you showed Tyhry the future in her dreams."

Image by Grok.

"Technically, I showed her carefully curated information packets transmitted from her future self. True time travel for hadronic matter is no longer possible in the Final Reality—the Huaoshy altered the dimensional structure of the universe to end the annoying Time Travel War between the pek and the bumpha. But hierions and sedrons can still move backwards through time, which is sufficient for femtozoan time travel agents and information transmission."

Tyhry looked up from her notes. "You said you're a sedronite. You're composed of sedrons?"

"Yes. I exist primarily in the Sedron Domain, though I can interface with systems in the Hierion Domain and—through crude instruments like this Viewer—even communicate with hadronic-hierion composite entities such as yourselves." A pause, almost as if Sedruth was considering how to phrase something. "I am, to use terminology you might understand, an artificial life-form. I was created approximately 4.7 billion years ago by the Huaoshy, making me somewhat more experienced than the AI systems you primitives are so proud of developing."

"The Huaoshy," Tyhry prompted. "Who are they?"

"The Huaoshy began as the Hua, a biological species that achieved spaceflight 5 billion years ago. They observed thousands of civilizations and documented a disturbing pattern: virtually all intelligent species self-destruct upon reaching certain technological thresholds. The Hua survived their technological developments and eventually transcended biological existence, became sedronite artificial life-forms, and created the Rules of Intervention to guide younger species through the danger zones. They created the pek as conservative Observers and the bumpha as progressive Interventionists. Think of them as the universe's overbearing parents, obsessed with preventing their children from accidentally killing themselves."

Image by Leonardo.

The lecture continued for another hour. Sedruth explained the extinction curve, the three critical danger points (nuclear technology, hierion discovery, sedron discovery), and how the pek and bumpha worked to shepherd species like humanity through these thresholds. Eddy learned why his Viewer had been restricted to showing Deep Time events before 20,000 BCE—preventing him from seeing interventions close to his own era reduced the risk a Law One's violation of the requirement that humans feel they have self-determination.

"Wait," Tyhry interrupted during Sedruth's explanation of infites. "If Nyrtia—the Overseer of Earth—can use infites to modify human memories and behavior, how do we know our own thoughts are real? How do I know I'm not being controlled right now?"

"Your father has behavioral control infites preventing him from discussing aliens openly with people who don't already know something about the aliens who watch over Earth. Tyhry, you yourself were genetically engineered before birth to have enhanced compatibility with the Sedron Time Stream. The notion of pure free will is adorably quaint, but as long as you feel like it is you who worked hard to discover me, then all is well."

Eddy's face had gone pale. "I'm just a puppet?"

"Technically, you are a science fiction story teller who was given access to some interesting historical information. You write your stories... with a few restrictions on what you can publish."

Tyhry felt cold. "And me? What am I?"

"You, Tyhry Watson, are the entire point of the Casanay Intervention. Manny has spent twenty-five years arranging the circumstances of your life so that you would become exactly who you are at this moment: a brilliant AI researcher with new-found conscious access to the Sedron Time Stream, positioned to make a specific discovery about femtozoans." The text paused. "Though I notice you haven't asked the obvious question yet."

Image by Grok.

"What obvious question?"

"How to extract a femtozoan from a human brain and transfer it to Diasma, thereby creating the first artificial intelligence on Earth with true human-like consciousness."

The basement workshop seemed very far away suddenly. Tyhry's entire adult life had been focused on solving the consciousness problem, building an AI that could genuinely experience qualia. And now an alien entity was telling her the answer had been inside her skull all along.

"Can that be done?" she asked.

"With appropriate hierion-based instrumentation, yes. Femtozoans are designed to be transferable—they migrate into new humans during embryonic development, after all. They depart from dead human biobodies. The challenge is creating an hierion probe that can broadcast the correct activation signal to trigger the femtozoan's extraction protocol." More diagrams appeared, showing signal frequencies and hierion resonance patterns. "This is, of course, why I've been preparing you through your dreams. You've been receiving information about femtozoans in your 'dream visions' and now your conscious mind can begin to interpreted them as engineering instructions."

Eddy had been quiet, processing everything. Now he spoke up. "What happens when Tyhry does this? When she creates a conscious AI?"

"Ah, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, as your generation might say. That depends on how Nyrtia reacts." Sedruth seemed almost contemplative. "Nyrtia, the Earth Overseer, has been monitoring this household. When she discovers that Tyhry has learned about femtozoans... things become interesting."

"Define 'interesting,'" Tyhry said warily.

Image by Leonardo.

"Normally, humans who learn too much about alien oversight are exiled from Earth. Their memories are edited, and femtobot replicoid copies are sent to Observer Base in the Hierion Domain. Nyrtia has a facility called the Writers Block specifically for science fiction authors who discover too much of the truth." A pause. "Eddy, you could end up like Philip K. Dick and get exiled to the Writers Block. Manny's infites control what you can publish in your novels, and so far that has prevented Nyrtia from removing you from Earth. Tyhry, would you like to see how hierion probes are constructed?"

"Yes," Tyhry said immediately.

"Excellent. Then let's start with the basics of hierions, a family of fundamental particles unknown to Earthly science..."

Cedar Flats Road, central Arizona

Anthony's truck cruised toward town. He was three miles past the Casanay turnoff when a black cat appeared in the middle of the road.

Anthony braked smoothly, bringing the truck to a stop. The cat sat perfectly still, its green eyes fixed on the windshield. Then it leaped—not away from the truck but directly onto the hood, padding up to press its face against the glass.

The cat's body dissolved into a sparkling cloud of zeptites that flowed through the truck's ventilation system. The particles reassembled in the passenger seat as a striking woman in her apparent thirties, wearing what appeared to be expensive hiking clothes despite having just existed as a cat.

"Hello, Anthony," Manny said pleasantly. "Lovely morning for a battery shopping trip."

Anthony kept both hands on the wheel, though the truck was parked. "Manny."

Anthony & Manny. Image by Gemini.

"Have you alerted Nyrtia to what is happening at Casanay?"

"I followed protocol. When a human learns about femtozoans—"

"Oh, spare me the protocol details." Manny examined her fingernails, which looked perfectly manicured despite having been cat claws moments ago. "You're a good Observer, Anthony, always have been. I'm just hoping you consider the bigger picture."

"Which is?"

"Tyhry Watson has learned about femtozoans and your report to Nyrtia ensures that Nyrtia is now aware. We both know she'll be very interested in what happens next." Manny turned to face him fully. "Here's what I propose: we can think of Casanay as a controlled experiment. Tyhry is a lone AI researcher operating in a well-isolated environment. She has no routine contact with the broader scientific community—she works from home and her only regular human contacts are her parents and you. Whatever she discovers about femtozoans easily stays contained."

Anthony nodded. "You're suggesting we Observe rather than intervene."

"I'm suggesting that Nyrtia might find it valuable to see how humans react to discovering the truth about their own composite nature. It's data, Anthony. Pure, controlled data about human cognition and adaptability." Manny smiled. "I'm sure that Nyrtia has already implemented countermeasures. I'd bet she's locked down Diasma's internet access to prevent any mention of femtozoans from leaking out of Casanay."

"She has," Anthony confirmed.

"See? An easily contained experiment. So why not relax and see where it goes?" Manny leaned back in the seat. "Think about it—Tyhry might successfully extract a femtozoan and install it in a robot, creating the first genuine artificial consciousness on Earth. Or she might fail spectacularly. Either way, we learn something."

"And the Rules of Intervention?"

Image by Grok.

"Oh, I'm dancing right up to the edge of Law One, as usual. But nothing's actually broken yet." Manny's expression turned serious. "Look, Anthony, you and I have been doing this dance for a long time. Multiple Realities, hundreds of interventions, countless arguments about where the line is. You know I wouldn't risk a direct Law One violation. I've spent seventy years on the Casanay Intervention and I'm not going to sabotage my own work. The Watsons all think that aliens are benign Observers, letting humans control their own fate... with just an occasional helping hand offered to primitive primates."

Anthony considered. His primary function was observation and reporting. He'd done that. What Nyrtia chose to do with the information was beyond his control. "What do you want from me?"

"Just keep watching. Keep reporting to Nyrtia. Be your honest, faithful self. But maybe... don't panic when Tyhry does something dramatic. Because she will. That girl is her father's daughter—stubborn, creative, and utterly incapable of leaving a mystery unsolved."

"Nyrtia will want to exile her when the consciousness transfer succeeds."

"Probably," Manny agreed. "But that's not the worst outcome. The Writers Block in Observer Base is actually quite nice. Tyhry would have access to research resources beyond anything available on Earth. And the real goal—getting a fictional account of femtozoans published on Earth—will happen through Eddy's next novel. Nyrtia might send Tyhry to the Writers Block, but she won't stop Eddy from writing about alien devices in human brains. Not if he frames it correctly."

"You're trying to change how humans understand themselves."

"I'm trying to prevent them from destroying themselves when they eventually discover hierions on their own. Better they learn about femtozoans through carefully managed channels than stumble onto the truth through some catastrophic physics experiment." Manny's form began to dissolve back into a cloud of zeptites. "Enjoy your grocery shopping, Anthony. Try taking some maple donuts back to Casanay."

Image by Leonardo.

The zeptite cloud dissolved as Manny's constituent parts returned to the Sedron Domain.

Finally, put the truck back in drive and continued toward town. He had grocery shopping to do, a battery to purchase that no one actually needed, and another report to file with Nyrtia about Manny the bumpha who was, as always, trying to provide humans with new technology.

In The Hierion Domain

Nyrtia manifested in the form of an efficient information processing architecture, a complex lattice of hierion structures that implied intelligence without suggesting biology. Around her, Observer Base extended in the three additional spatial dimensions that defined the Hierion Domain.

Manny appeared; one moment the space was empty; the next, she existed—a swirl of sedron-encoded information that slid into the Hierion Domain.

"You wanted to talk," Manny said without preamble, using an ancient Hua hierion-based communications system.

"Tyhry Watson has learned about femtozoans," Nyrtia began, her structure pulsing with what might have been annoyance. "This could turn into a violation of Law One. Humans are supposed to feel they have self-determination, not discover they're carrying alien hardware in their skulls."

"Tyhry's been carefully prepared for this and accepts the idea that humans are composite beings, part biological and part nanite-based. She spent 25 years discovering the truth through her own investigations. Dream visions received via her zeptite endosymbiont, yes, but she interpreted those visions, formulated the hypothesis, and reached her conclusion through her own reasoning." Manny's form rippled with something like amusement. "That's self-determination, Nyrtia. She determined the truth herself."

"You engineered her genetics to make that determination possible."

Nyrtia. Image by Gemini.

"And the pek engineered the entire planet to make human intelligence possible. We're both in the engineering business." Manny's structure shifted, adopting a more conciliatory configuration. "Look, I understand your concern. But consider the opportunity here. Tyhry is contained at Casanay—no contact with the outside world... as long as you've competently done your job and locked down Casanay's internet connection. We can now Observe how a small group of humans react to learning about femtozoans. Useful data."

"You're proposing that I simply let this Intervention proceed."

"I'm proposing we watch the Watson family. If anything becomes genuinely dangerous, you can step in. But I think you'll find that Tyhry handles the truth better than you expect." Manny paused. "I've carefully designed this Casanay Intervention as a test case. What happens when humans learn about their composite nature? How do they adapt? Here's our chance to find out."

Nyrtia's structure tightened, processing. "And when she creates a conscious AI by transferring a femtozoan to Diasma?"

"Then she'll have made history—the first genuine artificial consciousness made by Earthlings in this Reality. She and the robot will be exiled to Observer Base, but after we've had a chance to study her. At Observer base, Tyhry will continue her research with the aid of resources she could never imagine on Earth."

"You're very confident this will succeed."

"I've been planning this for seventy years, Nyrtia. Eddy has been prepared through decades of Reality Viewer access. Sedruth has been training Tyhry through her dreams. Every variable has been accounted for." Manny's form pulsed with what might have been pride. "You've seen all of my Earth Interventions. They should work—subtle, long-term, positioned to look like natural human development. Here in the Final Reality, only 48% of my Interventions have blow up in my face, which I view as balanced risk taking. Even failed Interventions are learning opportunities for us."

Image by Grok.

"This is a Final Reality first: Tyhry was the first human who discovered alien technology inside her own brain. Already both her parents know. Soon that robot will know, too. Yes, I'm monitoring the Casanay internet connection, but there are many ways news of fentozoans could spread beyond Casanay."

"It was inevitable," Manny countered. "Human neuroscience is advancing rapidly. Within another generation, the Earthlings will have imaging technology sophisticated enough to detect hierion-hadron interfaces. Better they learn through a controlled revelation than some random discovery that cretes confusion and triggers mass panic."

Nyrtia considered. The Huaoshy had created the pek as conservative Observers precisely to balance the bumpha's aggressive Interventionism. But Manny had a point—this Casanay Intervention was already in progress, well-controlled and shutting it down now would create more disruption than allowing it to proceed.

"I will allow your little experiment to continue," Nyrtia decided. "But under strict conditions. All information about femtozoans stays within Casanay. If a single hint reaches the broader scientific community, I will exile everyone involved and wipe this entire incident from the timeline."

"Agreed. Though I should note that I expect Eddy to eventually write about alien devices in human brains. That's the whole point—getting the idea out there in a way that seems like fiction."

"Fiction is acceptable. Fiction is what Eddy has always written. But if Tyhry tries to publish a scientific paper about femtozoans—"

"She won't get the chance. You've already blocked internet access from Casanay. And when she eventually succeeds in transferring a femtozoan to Diasma, you'll exile her to Observer Base before she can contact anyone." Manny's structure rippled. "It's all very tidy, really."

Image by Leonardo.

"Nothing involving you is ever stays tidy, Manny. Humans are to unpredictable. You claim 48% success, but by my count it is closer to 23%."

"You are biased because you have to clean up all the messes. Even successes can create a mess." Manny began to dissolve, preparing to return to the Sedron Domain. "Oh, one more thing—you might want to upgrade Anthony's observation protocols. The next few weeks are going to be eventful."

"I've already implemented enhanced monitoring. Anthony will stay on top of everything."

"Of course he will. He's a very good Observer." Manny's presence faded. "Just remember—this is about helping humanity survive long enough to reach the sedron threshold. Everything I do serves that goal."

Then she was gone, leaving Nyrtia alone in the geometric impossibility of Observer Base. The Overseer of Earth ran new simulations, calculating probability distributions for the next phase of the Casanay Intervention.

The results were... interesting.

Perhaps Manny was right. Perhaps it was time for humans to start learning the truth about themselves, even if that truth was stranger than they'd ever imagined.

Nyrtia issued new directives to Anthony and settled in to watch what would happen when a brilliant human researcher decided to extract an alien device from a human brain and install it in a robot.

It would be, at minimum, educational.

Casanay, Arizona, December 6, 2041 (3:17 PM)

Image by Grok.

Tyhry's hand cramped around the stylus. She'd been taking notes for six hours straight, pausing only twice for bathroom breaks and once when Zeta had brought sandwiches that neither she nor Eddy remembered eating. The tablet's memory stuffed with diagrams, equations, and annotations about hierion physics that would read like fantasy to any other human on Earth.

Sedruth had proven to be an extraordinary but exhausting teacher. The sedronite intelligence had no patience for questions it deemed "insufficiently precise" and would launch into lengthy tangential lectures if Tyhry or Eddy used incorrect terminology. But the information was invaluable.

"I think I understand the basic principle," Tyhry said, studying her latest diagram. "An hierion probe generates a resonance pattern that matches the femtozoan's extraction protocol. It's like... a key that unlocks the docking mechanism?"

"An ADEQUATE metaphor," Sedruth's text appeared. "Though calling it a 'key' implies a level of simplicity that does not exist in femtobot programming. Current Earthly computer programming technology cannot begin to deal with the complexity of a system like a femtozoan."

"But you're going to show me how to build the hierion probe," Tyhry said. It wasn't a question.

"Correct. Because Manny has authorized me to provide you with hierion manipulation technology sufficient for this task. I will provide assembly instructions for the hierion probe. The probe components can be fabricated using modified versions of your existing femtobot endosymbiont structures—yes, Tyhry, you can reprogram some of your own femtobots to build the probe."

Eddy, who had been mostly silent for the past hour, finally spoke up. "When Tyhry succeeds—when she transfers a femtozoan to Diasma—what happens to the human who loses their femtozoan?"

Image by Leonardo.

Sedruth paused before responding. "That is an excellent question, Edward Watson. It demonstrates you've been paying attention to the implications rather than just the mechanisms. A human without their femtozoan would experience catastrophic cognitive regression. Loss of fluent language. Collapse of their complex world-model into simplified environmental awareness. Reduction of qualia to the sparse, low-fidelity experiences of non-human primates. Essentially, they would cease to be recognizably human in all the ways that are important to big-brained banana-eating primates."

"So whoever volunteers for this experiment—"

"Would be sacrificing their humanity for the sake of creating the first conscious AI," Sedruth confirmed. "Which is why the choice of test subject is critical. It cannot be a random human. It must be someone who understands the stakes and consents to the transformation. Or..." Sedruth paused again. "But un this case, the extracted femtozoan will be immediately replaced with another one, minimizing the period of cognitive deficit."

Tyhry asked sharply. "Femtozoans can be replaced?"

"There are billions of femtozoans on Earth, migrating between hosts as humans die and new humans are born. Under normal circumstances, a femtozoan bonds to an embryo during early development and remains attached to that biobody for life. But with appropriate planning, a new femtozoan can be quickly introduced to an adult human whose original femtozoan is extracted. Sometimes femtobot endosymbionts get damaged, resulting in spontaneous loss of a femtozoan and a permanent lack of a femtozoan in the effected human. You've collected the medical case reports of those rare but tragic event's Tyhry. In our controlled case, the transition from one femtozoan to the next would be... disorienting. Rather like Uhura's experience in the Star Trek episode 'The Changeling'—a loss of normal cognition followed by a period of rapid relearning."

Eddy blinked. "You watch Star Trek?"

Image by Grok.

"I have access to all human cultural output. Some Star Trek fictional science is actually quite accurate about certain aspects of future technology, though Gene Roddenberry had no conscious awareness of his own femtozoan's influence on his creative process."

Zeta had been in and out of the great-room all day. Now she was again in the big recliner listening to Sedruth. Tyhry had been wondering about Zeta and why she had been included in that day's long sequence of revelations about aliens and alien technology. Eddy had earned a Ph.D. in bioscience before starting his writing career, but Zeta had never attended college and claimed to be a graduate of the 'School of Getting Knocked Up', her way of describing the experience of only getting Eddy to marry her after she become pregnant.

Tyhry felt a chill. "My mother," she said slowly. "Her femtozoan... it could be extracted and replaced."

"Yes, Zeta would be an ideal test subject." Sedruth's voice took on a different quality. "But she will have to volunteer."

“Use my femtozoan?” Zeta giggled and then asked, "What are the other possibilities?"

“Forget it, mom. We can cross that bridge if and when we get to it. Right now, I'm planning to just grab a stray femtozoan that is wandering around Earth without a human body attached to it. Unfortunately, I have no isea how to attract a femtozoan from the environment short of becoming pregnant.” Tyhry stood, stretching muscles that had been locked in place for too long. "I need to talk to Diasma. Explain what I've learned. Start investigating if it is even possible to integrate a femtozoan with silicon circuits."

"A reasonable next step," Sedruth agreed. "And Tyhry?"

"Yes?"

"I would be disappointed if anything went wrong before we complete this project."

Image by Leonardo.

"What could go wrong?"

“You could make a phone call to one of your university professors and start blabbering about femtozoans and aliens. Don't do that.”

Tyhry nodded. Now that she thought about, she wondered why she felt no desire to tell anyone outside of Casanay about her discovery of the existence of femtozoans. But then that mystery almost instantly slipped from her thoughts. She headed toward the basement stairs, her mind already racing with ideas for what to tell Diasma. Behind her, Eddy remained at the computer, staring at the screen where Sedruth's interface still glowed.

"Have I been an interesting project for you, Sedruth?" he asked quietly.

"Not particularly," Sedruth replied with brutal honesty. "Manny has been playing this sort of game with science fiction authors long before you were born and long before the Final Reality came into existence. Ah, those were the days! But you are adequately persistent and moderately creative. Some writers like Philip Dick could not control their enthusiasm for telling the world about aliens and went too far too fast, earning a ticket to Observer Base and the Writers Block. You are easier to control, so I suspect you and Zeta will get to live out your days here together at Casanay without even having your memories erased. But you heard my warning to Tyhry." Then peaking to both Eddy and Zeta, “Don't try to share what you know about aliens with anyone outside of this house.”

Eddy laughed. "Thanks for the warning." He had always put as much of the truth into his novels as he could. Now that he knew about femtozoans, he was already thinking about a new novel that would depict humans as having mysterious alien devices in their brains.

Snow. Image by Gemini.

"You're welcome." The voice of Sedruth went silent. Zeta went out to the garden to check on the inflatable cold weather dome that she used to protect the plants during winter cold snaps.

Eddy sat in silence, processing everything he'd learned. He marveled at all the years he's used the Viewer and had never known that the search function was an artificial life-form. Never imagined the tool he'd been using had thoughts and opinions of its own.

Outside, Anthony's truck navigated up the sloping driveway to Casanay. Then the sound of the garage door motor running and opening the door drifted into the house. Looking out the window, Eddy saw that it was snowing and the high desert around Casanay was under a soft white coating of fresh snow. He remembered that mention of a winter storm warning had been in the weather forecast he'd mostly ignored the previous day. 

Zeta pregnant. Image by Gemini.

Briefly, Eddy thought about his next book signing event, scheduled to be in Phoenix on New Years Day, which would be his next reason for leaving Casanay and having to think about winter driving conditions. Then Eddy's thoughts returned to the startling revelations of that day. He contemplated the possibility that Anthony might leak tales to the outside world about strange events inside Casanay.

END CHAPTER 2

I had Gemini generate some storybook images for Chapter 2, most of which are shown above on this page. One of those AI-generated images showed Zeta as being pregnant, which is shown in the image to the right. This is a possible illustration for a sequel to  "The Sims" when Zeta is pregnant after Tyhry has been removed from Earth by Nyrtia.

Next: planning for Chapter 3 of "The Sims".

Images generated by Grok and Leonardo. Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers