A Human Library

Heidi Taillefer
Venus Envy
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My original motivation in starting to craft the science fiction story Exode was to explore the lives of Genesaunts, those human-like creatures who have already managed to leave behind their home world and travel between the stars. Exode particularly concerns the Pla, the clan of Interventionists who send Parthney to Earth as their agent.

Virgin Birth
Parthney was "born" on the planet Hemmal, a distant world where Earth is known only through myths, legends and song. Parthney grows up as a "false Buld" who can never be entirely satisfied with his life on Hemmal. With the exception of a few scattered "false Buld" who seem to arise by spontaneous mutation, the population of Hemmal consists of hermaphrodites: the Buld and the Prelands.

Yandrey

I originally imagined that Parthney was born on Hemmal about 20 years before his mission to Earth, but now I've adopted the idea that any particular "Thomas clone" such as Parthney could be "instantiated" at a convenient age (say, 15) and live just a few years on Hemmal before going off planet for Interventionist training.

There are a few residents of Hemmal who know that Parthney is not just some random "false Buld". In particular, Yandrey befriends Parthney and explains that there is more to life than the rather comfortable existence that Parthney has so far had on Hemmal. Parthney is captivated by the idea that Earth is a real place, a world full of people like himself.

Eventually, Parthney abandons his life on Hemmal and is trained at a secret Interventionist base, Lendhalen, for a mission to Earth. For thousands of years the Interventionists have worked to guide Earthlings towards development of a technologically advanced civilization. While at Lendhalen, Parthney studies examples of past Interventionist missions to Earth and is prepared with the special knowledge and skills he will need to accomplish his own mission.

Rotharkin is teleported off of Earth and
eventually (after 1,500 years) meets Parthney

Archived People
I originally imagined that there would only be one other human at Lendhalen: Gwyned. However, I recently decided to include in the Exode Trilogy some use of a pek technology that allows for both
1) the efficient "storage" of humans and
2) their "reincarnation",
where and when convenient.

Thus, it is quite a simple matter for Parthney to "read" the life stories of those Earthlings who exist in the Human Library at Lendhalen. For the Pla who direct operations at Lendhalen, it is easy to just pop copies of those archived Earthlings out of storage and let those copies physically interact with Parthney.

Nereid hermaphrodite

Previously I've sketched out three earlier examples of Interventionist missions to Earth carried out at roughly 500 year intervals. In each case, a clone of Thomas is sent to Earth and subsequently at least one Earthling is teleported back to the Koly star system. Once teleported, the atomic pattern of these Earthlings is stored in the human pattern library at the Klyz teleportation hub. When appropriate, additional copies of these people can be instantiated and they can live out their lives at places such as Lendhalen. The advanced teleportation technology that makes this library of Earthlings available to Lendhalen is provided by the mysterious Nereids and their proxy species, the Fru'wu.

source

In this way, by making use of "reincarnated" Earthlings,  Parthney can learn Earth history and the outcomes of past Interventionist missions to Earth by physically interacting with Gwyned, Jane, Karherine and Rotharkin. Another Interventionist mission in about 100 BCE targeted a Raeti city near present day Basel. Luri, a Raeti princess (image to the right on this page) faces a cruel death on a stormy mountain pass and is teleported to safety on Klyz.

Luri lives out her natural life in the Koly star system, but every time another Thomas clone is being prepared for a mission to Earth she can again be "instantiated" and help prepare the new Interventionist agent for a mission to Earth.

Clu'ten'iun

Fru'wu

The planet Clu'ten'iun is the secret location of Lendhalen, the secret training base where Parthney becomes an Interventionist agent. Settlement of Clu'ten'iun began when the pek needed an Archive World for the Fru'wu species. The Fru'wu had managed to destroy their home world.

While in training at Lendhalen, Parthney incorrectly believes that he is living in an underground city of the planet Oib.

links to Parthney as displayed in the EntityCube's Gunxi Map system

___________________________
Next: more about Luri and her later incarnations.

Gwyned's Parents

Gwyned

In Chapter Three of Exode, Parthney arrives at Lendhalen and he is introduced to Gwyned. Gwyned was born on Earth in 1939 and teleported off of Earth in 1964. For the Buld, Gwyned is an important source of information about conditions on Earth.

What does Gwyned know about her own early life on Earth? She was raised by her parents, Trysta and Merion Iwedon in Australia. However, Merion was not her biological father. Also, Trysta's real name is Noÿs Lambent.

Fanfiction Disease
I've previously incorporated Asimov's character Noÿs Lambent into a sequel for Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity. For Exode, I imagine that Andrew Harlan and Noÿs lived in Hampton Virgina in 1938 where they were trying to stimulate development of research into magnetic confinement of high temperature hydrogen plasma. As depicted by Asimov in The End of Eternity, Noÿs was a time traveler from the far future. When she traveled back in time to the year 1932 she had in her body advanced nanites that could be used for many purposes. However, Noÿs made the mistake of using those nanites to push too hard to facilitate the development (in the 1930s!) of research into fusion power. (Note: this blog post contains early ideas for integrating Noÿs into the Exode backstory. I later developed a more intricate series of events that involves an additional Reality Change beyond those I was thinking of here.) The fusion research at Langley attracted the attention of Overseers and was quickly shut down. Andrew was captured and taken to the Observer base on the Moon. With the help of an Interventionist agent named Ekcolir, Noÿs escaped and went to Australia with her son.

Robin the robot

Like Parthney, Ekcolir was born on Hemmal. Noÿs came to the attention of Ekcolir because of her son, Thomas. As part of the Interventionist effort to speed cultural development on Earth, agents like Ekcolir search Earth for human variants that are resistant to having their brains infected by pek nanites. In first grade at the age of 5, Thomas is found to be reading at the level typical for high school students. Upon investigation of the boy, Ekcolir quickly confirms that there are no pek nanites in his brain, but to Ekcolir's surprise, there are other nanites present in Thomas' body.

Noÿs admits to Ekcolir that she is the source of the unusual nanites in her son's body. Rather than explain her true origin, Noÿs passes herself of as another Interventionist agent. Gwyned's biological parents are Noÿs and Ekcolir.

Parthney and Gwyned
With the help and guidance of Noÿs, Gwyned grew up in Australia and began participating in a research project for study of magnetic confinement of plasma. By 1964 Gwyned has become frustrated by military involvement in fusion research. When the opportunity arises, Gwyned decides to leave Earth. That opportunity arises through her interaction with another Interventionist agent from Hemmal, Deomede. I previously mentioned that by the time Parthney reaches Lendhalen in 1967, Gwyned has been living among the Buld for several years. At first, she is excited to hear that another human will be arriving, however Gwyned soon realizes that she is ten years older than Parthney and, worse still, he is immature and ignorant; he can't even read and he knows nothing useful about science and technology.

Port Master Thorklet

When Gwyned is teleported off of Earth by Deomede, she is first sent to the Interventionist base at Klyz. The Fru'wu are startled to discover that there are nanites in her body with design features that they have never previously seen. Not knowing that these nanites are from the far future, the Fru'wu guess that they might be Nereid nanites. The Fru'wu decide that they must attempt to regain contact with the Nereids.

Robin the Robot
The two Buld who work closely with Parthney at Lendhalen (Vozgrow and Leymaygn) do not want Parthney to become too comfortable while he is living at Lendhalen. With critical events rapidly unfolding on Earth, they want him to quickly train for his mission and then move on to Earth. However, Parthney does not adjust well to life at Lendhalen and when he shows even a small amount of interest in possibly developing a romantic relationship with Gwyned, she quickly arranges for Parthney to have a robotic companion. Among the Buld, the mechanical assistants at Lendhalen are called "pek", although that is a misnomer. Gwyned introduces Parthney to the new Earth-derived term "robot". Gwyned has a staff of robotic assistants who help with her study of Buld technology and with daily chores. Gwyned has previously named one of her robot assistants "Robin" and she loans Robin to Parthney. This almost has disastrous effects when Parthney treats Robin like a bothet.

Port Master Thorklet

Clu'ten'iun

At the end of Chapter Two, Pla'va warns Parthney that Port Master Thorklet is waiting for him. Thorklet is the only resident of Oib who Parthney meets before he is teleported to Clu'ten'iun. Thorklet briefly describes the function of the automated space station where they meet in orbit over Oib then directs Parthney to ride a space elevator down to the surface of the planet. However, rather than descend to Oib, Parthney looses consciousness and he is subjected to a strong magnetic field that inactivates the pek nanites that are in his body. He is then teleported to the planet Clu'ten'iun. When Parthney wakes up at Lendhalen he is told that the magnetic treatment disrupted his memory. He assumes that he is on Oib, as do the other residents of Clu'ten'iun.

The main characters from Chapter Three of Exode. Top row left, Pla'mak, Gwyned, Thorklet, Pla'kao.
Bottom row left, Robin, Parthney, Leymaygn, Vozgrow. Robin is a robot, Parthney and Gwyned are human.
Thorklet, Leymaygn and Vozgrow are Buld. Pla'mak and Pla'kao are Pla.

Andrew Harlen. Parthney later (1984) meets Andrew when he is taken to the Moon.
Izhiun. When Izhiun is on Earth (2011) he gets to meet Noÿs Lambent and her son Thomas.

Related reading:

• Fusion research in 1938
• review of The End of Eternity

Teleportation

Long-distance (interstellar) teleportation appears as an alien-derived technology in Chapter Three of Exode. I previously started exploring how teleportation technology might be used in Exode. In this blog post I try to finalize my thinking about the limitations on teleportation that will apply to Exode.

Asimov's favorite imagined technology for interstellar travel was "the hyperjump", but in 1954 he published a story about teleportation: It's such a beautiful day. Actually, Asimov's story was less about teleportation than it was about people who did not want to teleport. Supposedly Asimov did not like to travel by air, so it is not surprising that he would write a story about people who do not want to teleport.

Exode assumes that within our galaxy there are several distinct cultures that each have their own types of space travel technology. In the case of humans, all interstellar travel by humans is possible only because of technology transfer to humans from aliens. Humans have been provided with limited access to teleportation technology, but humans have no understanding of how teleportation devices work and they certainly can't build such a device.

Teleportation door

The first use of teleportation in Exode is for moving Parthney from the planet Oib to the planet Clu'ten'iun within the Koly star system. Parthney is not aware that he was teleported off of Oib so he believes that the secret Interventionist base at Lendhalen is located on Oib.

Later, after several years of training At Lendhalen, Parthney is teleported to Klyz, an Interventionist base that is run by the Fru'wu and located within the Galactic Core. This kind of interstellar teleportation is intended to be similar that that depicted in Assignment: Earth. Finally, a third teleportation event sends Parthney from Klyz to Earth, a distance of tens of thousands of lightyears. The fourth and final time that Parthney is teleported, he escapes from the Observer base on the Moon and is sent back to the Galactic Core.

By the fourth teleportation event Parthney is quite well informed about all the uses of teleportation technology that the aliens apply to humans. While on Earth, Parthney uses a teleportation device to send Hana from Earth to Klyz.

For Interventionist agents like Parthney there is a serious danger arising from the use of teleportation technology to travel to Earth. In Exode, objects being teleported do not travel through space in any conventional way. Teleportation involves the transmission of information through compact dimensions. The process is similar to the way faster-than-light spaceships move, but teleportation is limited to movement between two locations where teleportation terminals exist. When interstellar teleportation takes place, the effects of the teleportation spread out and it is relatively easy to detect an on-going teleportation event near the destination. However, it is hard to detect the precise location of the teleportation terminal on Earth that receives a teleported Interventionist.

Gary Seven and the shape-shifting Isis

In Assignment: Earth,  Gary Seven teleports to Earth from a distant star system, but he is intercepted by the teleporter device of the Enterprise.

By the time Parthney reaches Earth, the Interventionists fear that the Overseers of Earth can detect the use of teleportation to send people off of Earth and they worry that such detections might lead Overseers to the location of the few teleportation devices that exist on Earth. Because of these fears, those teleportation devices are always moved by the Interventionists right after they are used to send someone like Hana off of Earth. In Exode, the teleportation devices are not small, so moving them creates yet another risk for the Interventionists.

Last summer when I wrote a first draft of the scene in Exode when Parthney teleports Hana off of Earth I was not thinking about the Overseers being able to detect teleportation events. At that time, I started imagining various contorted reasons to account for how Parthney would be captured by the Overseers. I now like the idea that an Overseer (working "under cover" on Earth in the role of an Earthling using the name Belinda Tement) first investigates Hana and her son and then is finally led to Parthney by his use of the teleporter to send Hana off of Earth.

The Search for Kalid

In an earlier story (The Search for Kalid) I imagined that teleportation over interstellar distances requires an array of teleportation devices on the target planet. For that story I imagined an array of 4 such devices at fixed locations equally spread out around the surface of Earth. In The Search For Kalid the teleportation devices were well-hidden and in no danger of being detected by the primitive Earthlings. But what if the teleportation termini need to be moved after use so as to prevent them from being located by Overssers?

For Exode, I'm assuming that the teleportation devices on Earth were provided by the Fru'wu. The Fru'wu do have some nanite technology deployed on Earth, so I'm trying to decide the extent to which a transporter pad can be quickly decomposed into small parts for easy transportation to a new location. Might it be possible to imagine that most of the device's structure is formed from nanites? If so, then in an emergency it might be possible to hide a teleportation device without having to move it. Simply morph the nanites into another form that is not easy to recognize as being out-of-place on Earth. When Belinda Tement swoops in on Parthney he tries to apply the emergency protocol for hiding the teleportation device and disguising himself as an innocent Earthling, but Belinda is able to recognize the truth. She hauls Parthney off to the Moon.

Gwyned in the teleporter at Klyz

In general, the technological sophistication of the Overseers is just high enough to prevent Interventionists from "spilling the beans" and letting Earthlings realize that in the time since the pek arrived on Earth 7,000,000 years ago the course of primate evolution has been altered by aliens. In the late 20th century Earthlings begin to make some anomalous observations that are evidence of teleportation, but they do not suspect that alien teleportation technlology exists. Only the Overseers correctly recognize the anomalies as proof of Interventionist activity and they rush to develop their own detector technology. Using that newly crafted detector technology, Belinda Tement is able to catch Parthney in the act of teleporting Hana.

Feedback

By presenting the story of how Parthney reaches Earth, Exode emphasizes the use of teleportation to send Interventionist agents to Earth. However, not only do the Interventionists send agents to Earth, but Earthlings like Hana and Gwyned are teleported off of Earth. New arrivals from Earth such as Gwyned provide useful information to the Interventionists about conditions on Earth. By the time Gwyned leaves Earth there is a rapid pace of technological advancement. When Gwyned arrives at Lendhalen her knowledge of Earthly science and technology is, in some scientific domains, more advanced than that of the Buld. With her help, Parthney goes off to Earth with a more sophisticated appreciation for technology than previous Interventionist agents.

Related Reading: networking teleportation terminals

Vozgrow and Leymaygn

Dryad

I've been sketching out character and plot details for Chapter Three of Exode. Previously I mentioned that Vozgrow and Leymaygn are two Buld at Lendhalen who train Parthney for his Interventionist mission on Earth. Everyone who lives at Lendhalen is free from pek nanites, but that makes it difficult for the Buld to maintain a stable population. I've decided that Leymaygn makes use of a type of "partial change" that has been developed by the lisden of Lendhalen to help the Buld Interventionists stabilize a small population of rebels. As described for Pla'va, by going through "partial change" Leymaygn can be rejuvenated and also retain some existing brain structure and behavioral patterns although most individual memories are lost in the process.

In contrast, Vozgrow has a long personal history of experimenting with medical nanites provided by the Fru'wu. Leymaygn has the typical youthful appearance of the Buld, but Vozgrow is ancient like Yandrey.  Yandrey shows some effects of extreme age, but since thon lives on Hemmal there are pek medical nanites in thons body that do a good job of preventing most of the deleterious consequences of old age. For example, Yandrey wears a wig to hide thons baldness and makes use of a kind of makeup made from nanite components. The Fru'wu medical nanites are not as efficient as the pek nanites and so Vozgrow does not have a youthful appearance. Parthney is rather shocked by Vozgrow's odd appearance and Gwyned tries to make him appreciate the fact that there are many old and disabled people on Earth. Where Parthney grew up on Hemmal, everyone is genetically perfect and kept healthy by pek medical nanites, so before seeing Vozgrow, Parthney has never really experienced a person with alarming physical features. I've been trying to decide just how hideous to make Vozgrow.

In the Jack Vance novel Star King an alien creature called a "Dryad" is described: "They are at least half plant...bipeds, with a peculiarly human torso and head structure...the head showed...purplish-green bruises which seemed to be eye spots." I'm amused by the idea of a sapient, bipedal plant-like creature and I'm imagining that Vozgrow has been shifted in that direction by the Fru'wu medical nanites.

Glimpsed image of a Fru'wu

The two alien species featured in Exode are the Fru'wu and the Nereids. The Nereids are fairly humanoid, but the Fru'wu have an alarming body form and so they avoid showing themselves to humans. I've previously hinted at the body structure of the Fru'wu. In my thinking, the original naturally-evolved body form of the Fru'wu is lost in the distant past, but we can try to reconstruct their evolutionary origins. The Fru'wu (more accurately, the distant ancestors of the Fru'wu) were an old species when the pek arrived in our galaxy seven million years ago. The Fru'wu are half biological and half artificial; a symbiotic hybrid construct of biological cells and nanite components. Although not complete shapeshifters like the pek, the Fru'wu can easily alter their surface features and it is doubtful that humans have ever seen their unaltered form.

Fru'wu home world

The Fru'wu provided medical nanites to the Buld, but the Buld have never had a very good grasp on biology. The Buld have never been able to make the required adjustments to the Fru'wu medical nanites to fully adapt them for use in humans. With time, Buld who make use of Fru'wu medical nanites begin to have some distinctive morphological features that reflect aspects of Fru'wu biology. I'm trying to imagine how to transform an elderly human part way towards a plant, something about 10% of the way towards Vance's Dryads.

Spoilers
The original planet where the Fru'wu evolved was significantly hotter than Earth, a world with a carbon dioxide-rich reducing atmosphere where oxygenic photosynthesis never appeared. An oxygen-containing atmosphere is poisonous to the Fru'wu and humans cannot survive in the type of atmosphere that is suitable for the Fru'wu.

The star of the Fru'wu home world produced mostly long wavelength light that could be used for a type of photosynthetic acetogenesis that allowed for efficient carbon dioxide fixation and a metabolism based on carbon compounds. Nitrogen fixation was accomplished on the Fru'wu home world by a second linked photosynthetic electron transport system with a specialized vanadium-iron nitrogenase complex.

Orbits of Oib, Hemmal and Clu'ten'iun around the star Koly. Positions of some Pla spacecraft are also shown.

When Parthney arrives at Lendhalen, he believes that he is on Oib. However, the interventionist base on Oib is just for cover...Lendhalen is actually located at the next planet closer to Koly than Hemmal: Clu'ten'iun. The conditions on Clu'ten'iun are not fully compatible with Fru'wu physiology, but the high temperature, high carbon dioxide, no oxygen atmosphere makes it a reasonable place for a Fru'wu base of operations in the Koly star system. When Parthney arrives on Oib he is secretly teleported to Clu'ten'iun. The readers of Exode do not learn about Clu'ten'iun until Parthney returns to the Koly star system after his mission Earth.

Leymaygn and Vozgrow.