Marda's barosyntexis

Tyhry disguised as Marda.

  Below on this page is Chapter 14 of the science fiction story "The Hierozyme Intervention", the last chapter before "The Hierozyme Intervention" merges with "That Kind of Think".

Part 1 of Chapter 14 is in the year 2032, when Marda is 33 years old. She returns from Germany to Arizona, having completed her work on Pseudoalteromonas barosyntexis, an ocean microbe that she has engineered to solve Earth's global warming problem. Related music: A Song.

Part 2 of Chapter 14 is set at Observer Base, where Manny and Nyrtia discuss positronics and the repairs that have been made by Tyhry1 to her Reality Viewer. Nyrtia complains to Manny about her method for intentionally concealing how Earth's global warming problem was solved.

Manny triggers another Reality Change, bringing into existence the Final Reality (the reality of "That Kind of Think"). Manny makes another teleportation duplicate of Tyhry. This is the same Tyhry who was given the physical form of Marda (see Chapter 13). This newly-created copy of teleported to Earth.

The Hierozyme Intervention Chapter 14 - Eckhard (Ch. 1)(Ch. 2)(Ch. 3)(Ch. 4)(Ch. 5)(Ch. 6)(Ch. 7)(Ch. 8)(Ch. 9)(Ch. 10)(Ch. 11)(Ch. 12)(Ch. 13)    

Part 1. 

September 29, 2032

Marda and Eckhard.

Eckhard had fallen asleep, but Marda was still nursing their shared telepathic mind link and sorting through his memories and judging the level of his anxiety about moving to Arizona. She started composing lines for a song about Eckhard, letting them swirl in their joint mind-space like clouds. Suddenly, a strange thought startled Marda: I'm pregnant?

Later, when they had reached Ranch0 Henrito, they found Zeta, who was still disguised as Rylla and still guiding the Henrito Research Institute, although the Institute now ran quite smoothly on its own institutional momentum. Rylla now spent most of her time monitoring the on-going studies of the evolution of Pseudoalteromonas barosyntexis in the oceans. Anthony had taken their luggage to what was still referred to as 'Marda's suite', where Tyhry had stayed until her departure for Hawaii, back when Tyhry had been disguised as Marda.

Eckhard, Marda and Zeta briefly chatted about the long flight from Germany and then Anthony arrived and set out snacks and drinks. Anthony then settled in on a couch beside Zeta who told Eckhard and Marda, "You can stay here until next week, then the guest house will be available for your use."

Marda heard Anthony, but she was gazing out the window to where the sparkling buildings of the Research Institute spread out across the valley. The campus had grown much greener through the years, under the benign influence of all the water being pumped up to the surface from a deep aquifer. Marda briefly thought about the first time Tyhry had visited the guest house, back before Ranch0 had been completed. However, she was mainly thinking about the possibility of being pregnant and so she was telepathically programming a new type of zeptite probe that could investigate the contents of her uterus.

Eckhard told Zeta, "I'd like to visit Ranch7 and meet my new colleagues, although my new job does not begin until next month."

Zeta said, "You two deserve a vacation. You've worked non-stop for over a decade." Seeing that Marda was lost in thought, Zeta asked her, "What is it, dear?"

Intensely focused on her zeptite programming, Marda wanted to select a topic for discussion that Zeta could carry on her own. "The usual... barosyntexis."

Zeta shook her head slowly and noted, "I'm rather baffled. Having dominated the Atlantic, the TD23 strain is now moving into the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Nobody can explain what makes 23 so robust at all temperatures and salinities."

Marda was the only person on the planet who knew that the TD23 strain was the one that had secretly been modified by Marda so as to have a special zeptite endosymbiont. TD23 had many metabolic advantages that made it a champ, but most important was its ability to use zeptites to shunt carbon dioxide through a crack in the Sedron Domain and into the atmosphere of Venus. Marda mused, "As long as it is doing its job, I'm satisfied."

Anthony sounded rather prickly when he said, "The measured rate of carbon transport to the sea floor does not match the rate at which atmospheric carbon dioxide is decreasing."

Eckhard seemed to not be concerned by that discrepancy. "The measurements of carbon transport to the sea floor are notoriously soft. That's why Tyhry is onboard the Deep Probe."

Zeta used her phone to project a holographic image that Tyhry had recently sent from the deck of the Deep Probe. "Tyhry is making measurements for the Arctic Ocean, the shallowest ocean."

 Marda knew that the measured rate of carbon transport to the sea floor would always seem low since most of the carbon was leaving Earth and being sent to Venus. She was now monitoring the data from a swarm of new probe zeptites that were searching her uterus and oviducts for a conceptus. 

Zeta was intrigued by the far-away look in Marda's eyes. "Marda, have you made any progress on your job search?"

It had been important that the conventional variant of Pseudoalteromonas barosyntexis, the one she had published results for, had seem to be a failure. With that ugly failure on her record, it was easy to imagine Marda being ignored when applying for new research positions. Eckhard waited for a dozen seconds, but when it seemed that Marda would not reply to Zeta, he said, "Marda has not been trying very hard to find a new job. Her grant funding runs through next year."

Marda was telepathically viewing data from her probes which had found a beautiful blastocyst already implanted in the wall of her uterus and already having been contacted by synapex link fibers. Marda smiled and told Zeta, "I'm going to alter my priorities. I'll be winding down my research and that will allow me to start devoting time to making babies."

Eckhard said to Marda, "It is not easy for me to accept that... for six years I've tried my best to get you pregnant and I'm still trying."

Marda told Eckhard, "Well, for the next week, I'll spend more time on my back." She gestured towards a bottle of water. "Heep yourself hydrated. Here in Arizona it is too easy to dry out. I want you making a high volume of semen."

Zeta giggled and told Marda, "It sounds like a good plan. Don't feel obliged to sit here talking to me when you could be letting Eckhard bounce you around on the bed in your suite. I also recommend doing it in the pool by moonlight."

Part 2.

The biological copy of Tyhry who had been shaped into Marda's physical form by body-sculpting zeptites and then had been teleported to Observer Base by Manny the bumpha, seemed not to age. She was accepting of being called 'Marda' and was still living with Tyhry2. 

Tyhry1 had completed her study of positronics and now had a fully functioning Viewer that showed her the future of the current Reality. Other possible future Realities could also be seen, but there was no way of knowing which of those Realities was a high probability future. And neither Tyhry1 or Nyrtia was satisfied with how they had been treated by Manny the bumpha.

Nyrtia was still annoyed that she had no way of identifying the means by which Earth's global warming problem had been solved in the current Reality. Pseudoalteromonas barosyntexis had been given the credit by Earthlings, but Nyrtia was skeptical. Finally, Manny the bumpha appeared inside Observer Base for the first time in more than a decade, arriving inside Tyhry1's home during one of Nyrtia's visits. Manny told Nyrtia, "Don't worry about this current Reality. It will soon be replace by a better one."

Nyrtia refused to accept Manny's advice. "I suspect you deployed advanced bumpha technology on Earth. When I find it, I'll clean up the mess you made."

Tyhry1 hated to see Nyrtia and Manny bickering, but Tyhry1 was irked at Manny. She was proud of the understanding of positronics she had developed with the help of Flynt, Rynry and Systolina, but she could not convince herself that it was her repair nanites that had returned her Viewer to full operation. She told Manny, "I feel like I just wasted the past twenty years of my life."

Manny smiled and produced a delicate shrug of her shoulders. She was back in her preferred physical form for visiting Earth and her flamboyant artificial hair swirled and sparkled. "Be honest with yourself, Tyhry. You never had more fun than when you were solving the mysteries of positronics. Sure, it is hopelessly inefficient technology, but it is what powered the positronic robots of Earth and allowed them to invent time travel."

Tyhry1 complained, "Here and now, since the Huaoshy altered the Dimensional Structure of the universe, positronics seems to not be worth the trouble."

Manny nodded. "True, but try to be philosophical. The journey is its own reward."

Nytia objected, "So, you gave us ancient Viewer technology with defective positronic control circuits. And mad me believe I was getting a real Viewer."

Manny acknowledged, "Yes, I tricked you beautifully. And I forced you to wait while Tyhry1 re-created the science of positronics. That is all history and we can move on. A new Reality for Earth will begin soon." Manny dissolved into her component zeptites and disappeared. 

Manny waited a short time until the Reality Change took place. The required temporal energy for this Change was being generated by a vast collection of femtozoans who had been sent into the far past of Earth where they made a complex alteration to the gene patterns of early humans, bringing into the human gene pool the NOTCH2NL gene variants that would later make possible Manny's Casanay Intervention.

Right after the Reality Change, after sliding herself down the time axis to the precisely correct point in time of the new Reality, she activated the Observer Base teleportation equipment and then teleported one more teleportation duplicate of Tyhry to Earth. Satisfied with her transfer of Tyhry from one Reality to the next, Manny slipped back into the Sedron Domain.

Manny allowed herself to think of Earth as now being in the Final Reality of Earth's Reality Chain. Yes, there might be some required adjustments to the development of human civilization, but those would not involve the creation of a whole new Reality.

End Chapter 14.  Jump to: Chapter 15.

Having now reached the end of Chapter 14 of "The Hierozyme Intervention" (above on this blog page) and also previously having completed Chapter 14 of "That Kind of Think", it is time to merge the two stories at a shared Chapter 15. The copy of Tyhry who was teleported to Earth at the end of Chapter 14, above, is in the physical form of Marda. In Chapter 15, that Tyhry/Marda copy will arrive inside Litheblanc and meet Antoine. 

The Trysta-Grean Pact.

That Tyhry/Marda copy will have a difficult time explaining her origins. Her last memory is of being on a beach in Hawaii and she will retain no memory of having been teleported. The fact that her body is in the physical form of Marda will be amusing, reminding her of when at the age of 12 she was sculpted into Marda's body form so as to swap places with Marda (see Chapter 8). However, before going to Hawaii, that copy of Tyhry was given back her own physical form by means of zeptite body sculpting.

In crafting Chapter 15, I want to shift to focus away from (1) climate fiction (a viable solution to Earth's global warming problem was found my Marda in "The Hierozyme Intervention", a solution that is used a second time in the Final Reality, with little discussion in "That Kind of Think") to (2) what now remains for Manny the bumpha to accomplish for Earth: complying with the terms of the Trysa-Grean Pact. 

In the Ekcolir Reality, Trysta Iwedon (R. Gohrlay's Asterothrope agent on Earth) and Grean the Kac'hin collaborated to find a way to prevent Earth from going through global warming and catastrophic sea level rise. It was their plan for a Final Reality that is known as the Trysta-Grean Pact. In order to get Trysta to abandon the Time Travel War, Manny the bumpha was forced to promise that in the Final Reality, humans would have the opportunity to spread to millions of habitable planets in the galaxy.

The tryp'At.

So far, it has been revealed that Manny's plan is for a human variant, the tryp'At, to spread through the galaxy while conventional humans transcend into the Sedron Domain and exist there as artificial life-forms. At the time of the formation of the Final Reality, Tyhry has one of the most complete assemblages of tryp'At genes on Earth and Manny must arrange for Trysta's descendants to spread through the galaxy.

Trysta was the name used by Gohrlay when she went to Earth in the 1930s. Zeta Gohrlay is a clone of 'Alpha' Gohrlay, and so the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact demand that Zeta's daughter, Tyhry, be in the Final Reality. However, it was most advantageous for there to be a copy of Tyhry in the Final Reality who was of interest to Antoine.

In advance of writing Chapter 15, I'm trying to imagine what would happen when a "second copy of Marda" appears inside Litheblanc. The first copy of Marda is in an intimate relationship with the Tyhry analogue who is from the Final Reality. I'm thinking that the copies of Marda and Tyhry who grew up at Litheblanc will go off to college while the teleported Tyhry/Marda will stay at Litheblanc with Antoine. Possibly the Marda and Tyhry analogues of the Final Reality will have already departed from Litheblanc by the time when Tyhry/Marda from the previous Reality arrives.

 Pek femtobots. The Tyhry/Marda from the Hierozyme Reality was infected by Anthony's memory-editing femtobots. Do Anthony's femtobots also make it into the Final Reality? It might be amusing to depict Tyhry/Marda in the Final Reality as still being unable to contemplate the possibility that the pek and the bumpha are anything more that fictional plot elements from science fiction stories.

Inside Casanay.

What would it like for Tyhry/Marda to suddenly find herself in a new Reality where her home is now only a fictional construct in science fiction stories? There would seem to be an opportunity to have an amusing meeting between Élodie and Tyhry/Marda. Possibly upon arriving at Litheblanc, the first person who Tyhry/Marda speaks to could be Élodie. Élodie would have to discover that this 'Marda' is not the Marda who grew up at Litheblanc. Tyhry/Marda could learn that in the Final Reality, 'Casanay' is Élodie's fictional construct.

Manny. I'm currently imagining that the final scene in Chapter 15 will include a visit by Manny the bumpha to Litheblac. Manny can tell Antoine and Tyhry/Marda how global warming was prevented in both the Hierozyme Reality and the Final Reality. Manny can also hint that Antoine and Tyhry/Marda will have descendants who explore the galaxy.

Tyhry/Marda.  For Chapter 15, I need to devise a suitable name for Tyhry/Marda. I provided Claude with chapter summaries for both "The Hierozyme Intervention" and "That Kind of Think" and explained that upon arriving at Litheblanc Tyhry/Marda needs to adopt a new name.

Me: I have completed the first 14 Chapters of both "The Hierozyme Intervention" and "That Kind of Think" (see the Chapter summaries for these two science fiction stories that are in the uploaded PDF). Note that the events of "The Hierozyme Intervention" and "That Kind of Think" take place in two successive Realities. Manny the bumpha transfers a copy of Tyhry from the Reality of "The Hierozyme Intervention" to the next Reality, the Reality of "That Kind of Think". I want a new name for that copy of Tyhry since there is already an analogue of Tyhry in the Reality of "That Kind of Think". When there are two copies of Tyhry at Observer Base, one is called 'Tyhry1' and the other is called 'Tyhry2'. I want the Tyhry analogue who is native to the Final Reality to retain the name 'Tyhry'. 

Marda's tryp'At features.

Body sculpting zeptites have been used to alter the physical appearance of the copy of Tyhry that Manny transfers from the Reality of the "The Hierozyme Intervention" to the final Reality. This copy of Tyhry now has the physical appearance of Marda. However, there is also an analogue of Marda in the Final Reality, so I do not want to call the copy of Tyhry who has the physical appearance of Marda, 'Marda'. Claude, do you understand what I an trying to do?

Claude: Yes, I think I understand. Here is the situation as I read it.

The transferred character is a copy of the Tyhry from the Hierozyme Intervention Reality. She is also the person who has been playing "Marda" (Tyhry in disguise) since the identity swap in Chapter 8. She will arrive in the Final Reality looking like Marda. That Reality already has a native Tyhry (Marda's companion and fellow researcher, Élodie and Zach's daughter) and a native Marda (Sally's daughter). The Observer Base convention of Tyhry1 and Tyhry2 doesn't work here, because the native Tyhry should keep her plain name. Calling the newcomer "Marda" would also collide with the native Marda. So the newcomer needs a distinct name that works as her identity in the Final Reality.

Before I propose candidates, I need to check a few things:

1. Who chooses the name? Does she choose it herself, does Manny assign it, or is it a name the other characters give her? The answer affects the tone. A self-chosen name suggests she has accepted a new identity. A name from Manny suggests Manny's control. A name given by Antoine or the others suggests how the community absorbs her.

2. Should the name carry meaning? Your EFU names often have an etymological flavor, such as Systolina, Ylyndra, Nyvad, and Nyrtia. Nyvad is the online handle Marda used as Eddy's super-fan, and it could be used as a callback, though that might confuse things because it is tied to the native-Reality Marda. Do you want a name that signals her origin (Tyhry-derived), her disguise (Marda-derived), or something new?

3. 

   Image by ChatGPT.

    Does she keep an in-story link to her original name? In Chapter 15 she will talk with Antoine and with Manny. Will she tell them she is a Tyhry from a prior Reality, or will Manny make the explanation? If she tells them, a variant of "Tyhry" could work as a nickname or middle name. If not, a wholly new name is cleaner.

4. One missing detail: Does the Final Reality's Marda know about her? Chapter 15 says only that she meets Antoine, so I don't know whether the native Marda and Tyhry are present, absent, or unaware. If the native Marda sees someone with her own face, that is a major plot event. It also affects whether the newcomer can be seen in public under a name that sounds like Marda's.

Also, a technical point for the narrative. Because the copy has Marda's body form from body sculpting zeptites, the genetic and physical situation gets odd. Her DNA is Tyhry's, but she looks like Marda. In the Hierozyme Intervention, the Ada sequencing report showed that Tyhry and Marda share an identical NOTCH2NLC variant. That means a casual genetic test in the Final Reality would not necessarily distinguish her from the native Marda on that gene, though other markers might. If you want that to matter in the plot, it is worth deciding on now.

Once I have your answers, I can offer several name options with brief rationales, or I can propose a first batch now if you prefer to react to concrete choices.

Me: Firstly, I must say that the speed with which you (Claude) responded startled me. I'm curious about how it is possible for Anthropic to deliver such fast responses to users.

1) "Who chooses the name?" I'm thinking that when the copy of Tyhry from the previous Reality arrives at Litheblanc, the first person she meets will be Élodie. This meeting will be rather comical because both Tyhry and Élodie willl quickly become confused. Élodie will immediately confuse Tyhry (who was given the appearance of Marda by Manny the bumpha) with the Marda analogue who grew up at Litheblanc and who Élodie knows well. 

Image by Flow.

Thus, early in Chapter 15, it is possible that Élodie and Tyhry will quickly decide on a new name that (first) Élodie can use for this copy of Tyhry, and then others will also adopt this new name.

2) "Should the name carry meaning?" Élodie is the equivalent of Eddy Watson in the Reality where there is Litheblanc rather than an actual Casanay in Arizona. Élodie has written many science fiction stories that are set at Casanay. Possibly Élodie would suggest that this mysterious Tyhry/Marda (who claims to have grown up at Casanay) use a name that already exists in one of her works of fiction. Possibly Élodie would simply "invent" a new name on the spot that is borrowed from some famous novel, an existing fictional character that is a mysterious surprise or has a seemingly impossible origin story. Alternatively, Tyhry might suggest a name that she would like to use, and she could select a name that is meaningful to her.

3) "Does she keep an in-story link to her original name?" Just as I often say 'Manny the bumpha', once Tyhry's NewName is established I might routinely use a phrase such as: 'NewName from the previous Reality'.

4) "One missing detail" I'm thinking that the copies of Marda and Tyhry who grew up together at Litheblanc will go off to college while the teleported Tyhry/Marda will stay at Litheblanc with Antoine. I'm leaning towards the idea that the Marda and Tyhry analogues of the Final Reality will have already departed from Litheblanc by the time when Tyhry/Marda from the previous Reality arrives.

5) Genetics. I'm imagining that the Tyhry from the Reality of "The Hierozyme Intervention" has the most complete assemblages of tryp'At genes that Manny has so far produced on Earth, and Manny wants to shift Tyhry and her set of tryp'At genes over to the Final Reality where they can be successfully passed on to her descendants. The Tyhry of the Final Reality is in a relationship with the Marda of the Final Reality and the Tyhry of the Final Reality is not going to pass her genes to any descendants.

 Claude: On speed: I can't observe my own latency, and I don't have inside knowledge of Anthropic's serving systems, so I can only describe what's generally true of large language model inference. Models like me run on specialized accelerator hardware (GPUs or similar chips) in large data centers. Requests are batched together, and previously computed intermediate results are cached so the model doesn't redo work. Some systems also use tricks such as speculative decoding, where a small fast model drafts text that the large model verifies in bulk. Anthropic also offers models in different size tiers, and the smaller ones are faster. Your reply starts streaming as soon as the first words are generated, which makes it feel quicker still. For specifics, Anthropic's engineering posts and documentation would be more reliable than I am.

Your plan is clear. Élodie's confusion comedy gives the name a natural origin, and I like that "[NewName] from the previous Reality" works as a tag, like "Manny the bumpha."

A caution about initials. Your cast already has many names starting with A, M, T, N, and S: Annette, Antoine, Ada, Marda, Manny, Mady, Michel, Tyhry, Tynyo, Nida, Nyrtia, Sally, Systolina. A new name starting with one of those letters would add to the confusion. The names below avoid those initials.

Name candidates, in the spirit of Élodie borrowing from famous fiction:

• Lyra (Pullman's His Dark Materials): a girl who moves between parallel worlds. It fits a Reality chain and gives Élodie an easy literary joke. The sound is also close to Tyhry's.
• 
   Dors (Asimov's Prelude to Foundation): Dors Venabili is a mysterious companion who turns out to have a hidden nature. It suits the positronic and Asimov flavor of the EFU. In French, dors means "sleep!", which Élodie could joke about.
• Dorothy, shortened to Dot or Dory: a girl who arrives from somewhere impossible and has to be absorbed into a new community.
• Mélusine: a figure from French legend with a concealed nature and origin, which is very much Élodie's literary territory. The initial M clashes with Marda and Manny, so I'd use it only if you like the legend more than the clean initial.
• A self-chosen name, if Tyhry picks it: something derived from her old name, like "Ryn" or "Tyr," or something she invents. It would show her keeping a thread to who she was. Since Tyhry and Marda swapped identities in the previous Reality, she might also prefer to drop both names.

 Questions about missing information:

1. Timeline. Chapter 12 of "That Kind of Think" is set in 2046, with the native Marda and Tyhry already working as researchers at Litheblanc, and Chapter 13 comes after that. Chapter 14 of "The Hierozyme Intervention" says the duplicate sent back is the Tyhry "from when she was young." If Chapter 15 comes after 2046, how are the native pair still leaving for college? Is the arriving duplicate a teenager, and roughly how old is Antoine at that point? The answers decide whether she is meeting Antoine as a peer or as someone older, and whether the native pair's departure works as a plot device.

2. What does the arriving Tyhry know and can she do? In the Hierozyme Reality, Nyrtia's mind-control nanites kept Tyhry from believing in aliens. Does the duplicate still carry those nanites and the memory erasure, or did Manny clear them? Can she link telepathically or program zeptites yet? It changes both her conversation with Élodie and what Manny has to explain.

3. Where is she at the start of the chapter? Is Manny the one who sends her to Litheblanc, and does she arrive knowing she is in a new Reality, or does she think she is going to Observer Base?

 Also, your genetics point works well, because it gives Manny a clear reason to move her. One consequence is that this Tyhry becomes the bearer of the full tryp'At gene set for the galaxy-spreading future you describe. Is she meant to have children with Antoine, or through the blastipositor? I'd want to know before suggesting dialogue, since the name will carry more weight if she is the ancestor of a lineage.

__

I was satisfied with Claude's suggestion of the name 'Lyra'. Maybe when Tyhry/Marda from the previous Reality learns that Élodie is confusing her with two girls who grew up at Litheblanc, she simply tells Élodie, "Just call me Lyra, I like that name."

Claude's questions. (1) In the Final Reality, Antoine and the analogues of Tyhry and Marda are all born several years later than in the Hierozyme Reality. 'Lyra' is about 16 years old when she is teleported away from the beach in Hawaii and she is held in the Observer Base teleportation buffer until she is correctly age-matched for Antoine. (2) Earlier on this page (above) I mentioned my thinking about Chapter 15: 'Lyra' is still under the influence of Anthony's infites and cannot imagine that the pek and bumpha are real. (3) As mentioned above on this page, from her perspective, 'Lyra' was just teleported off of the beach in Hawaii, so for her it is quite confusing to arrive inside Litheblanc. Maybe Manny drops her into Élodie's library and 'Lyra' starts reading one of Élodie's novels that features a 'fictional' Casanay. Then Élodie walks in.

Next: Chapter 15.

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