The Triatom from Planet Klyz

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I've never seen The Man From Planet X. Apparently that movie involves the same basic alien invasion plot as does The War of the Worlds. The aliens have advanced technology (in particular, spacecraft) but their "world is dying" so they must invade Earth. We bumbling Earthlings get lucky and manage to repulse the invasion.

Think Small
In my previous blog post, I made reference to a fun episode of The X-Files called "War of the Coprophages". In "War of the Coprophages", rather than have a biological entity from a distant world come to Earth, the alien "invaders" are depicted as an artificial life form that resembles a metallic cockroach.

Fly Paper - X-Files fanfiction

 Here, I want to describe The Triatom from Planet Klyz as if it were a new Hollywood film, a variant of The Man From Planet X. Rather than have a green humanoid alien arrive on Earth, the "triatom" is an artificial microscopic biological organism that provides Earth with the means to solve our global warming problem.

  Triatom
Back in 2005 I wrote a fan fiction story called "Fly Paper" in which I depicted Dana Scully as the discoverer of a type of alien DNA that had six nucleotides. In 2014, a journal article called "A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet" reported an artificial life form that could replicate a newly designed type of DNA that has six nucleotides. The "triatom" is an artificial life form with DNA that has six nucleotides.

Dana Scully

 In "Fly Paper" and the following episode, "X-Seven", special alien-derived expression vectors are used to alter gene expression, first in the brain of Dana Scully then in photosynthetic bacteria. The DNA of those alien gene expression vectors makes use of six distinct nucleotides that can form three different base pairs.

 The source of Triatoms

Pre-human origins of the Fru'wu (source)

In the Exode Trilogy, a humanoid alien species called the Fruthwa existed in our galaxy about 10,000,000 years ago, long before the human species.

The descendants of the Fruthwa who are still around to interact with we humans are known as the Fru'wu. The Fru'wu exist on some planets of the Galactic Core including Clu'ten'iun, which is a Fru'wu name for "Clutence". Triatoms are an artificial life form that was designed by the Fru'wu.

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It is common to speak of Clutence as the home world of the Fruthwa, but that seems to be an over-simplification. Linguistic analysis suggests that "clutence" is a plural noun that can be roughly translated as "home worlds". The pek have a technology that allows for entire planets to be "copied". Apparently, a copy of a planet first exists in the Hierion Domain, but according to Fru'wu legend, such copied planets can later be sent back into the hadronic domain of conventional three dimensional space.

Thus, according to the Fru'wu, there are many "copies" of the planet Clutence. Here is the version of this legend that I received from Izhiun. Billions of years ago, in the home galaxy of the Huaoshy, there were several humanoid species that evolved independently on various planets in that galaxy. Eventually, those species discovered how to transcend their physical form and become a type of artificial life existing in the Sedronic Domain.

However, after the Huaoshy came into existence, a form of hadronic artificial life known as the "bumpha" remained behind in the universe of stars and planets. In many ways the bumpha were similar to the pek, but the bumpha and the pek had some philosophical differences.

The pek mission, the reason for their existence, was to assure that the Huaoshy would always remain in control of the Sedronic Domain. The pek mission was to spread outward from the Huaoshy home galaxy, relentlessly taking control of all the sedronic matter in the Hadronic Domain. Sedrons are required for faster-than-light travel, and the pek seek to maintain a monopoly on sedronic matter and faster-than-light space travel.

Probability of extinction as a function of technological
advancement from nucleons to hierions to sedrons.

The pek had little interest biological life forms. This disinterest arose naturally from the fact that biological organisms tend to be self-limiting. Even when technologically advanced species evolve, they tend to exist for only a short time before destroying themselves.

The pek are guided by a fundamental ethical principle which defines planets like Earth as "garden worlds" that should be protected as bastions of biological diversity. The pek feel that technology-using species should not be allowed to freely wield their technology and cause mass extinctions on their home worlds. The pek prefer to hurry new tool-using species towards transcendence of their biological form and on towards merging with the Huaoshy as artificial life in the Sedronic Domain.

Fru'wu

In contrast, the bumpha took it upon themselves to experiment with ways to help young species avoid self-destruction. The fundamental philosophical position of the bumpha is that biological species should have an opportunity to explore space and spread to new worlds among the stars.

With time, the pek and the bumpha attained a kind of dynamic equilibrium governed by a shared set of ethical guidelines. First, garden worlds like Earth were to be protected. Towards that end, when the pek discovered advanced biological life on a garden world, they transplanted such life forms to other worlds, usually worlds of the galactic cores, planets that had simple ecosystems because of exposure to gamma rays from dying stars. The pek then "inoculated" the garden worlds against the development of technological civilizations.

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The second great ethical principle of the pek arose from a discovery that was made by the bumpha. The bumpha could not resist the temptation to help young tool-using species speed up development of their technological civilizations. However, what the bumpha managed to demonstrate was that "helping" a species by accelerating their natural pace of technological advance almost always results in problems. Further, when a biological species is aware that it is being helped by a more advanced life form, there are also negative consequences. Thus arose what we Earthlings know as the Rules of Intervention. We do not know the exact formulation of these ethical principles as they exist for the pek and the bumpha, but there can be no doubt that they guide and shape all human interactions with the aliens.

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Klyz
The original humanoid organisms that evolved into the Fruthwa were brought to worlds of the galactic core and subjected to genetic manipulation. Eventually, the Fru'wu were brought to Clu'ten'iun by the pek from some other world, a planet that exists in Fru'wu legend as either "Reahand" of "Clutence", a world that is not known as an identifiable physical planet by we Earthlings. Izhiun speculated that the bumpha made several duplicate copies of Clutence. In particular, Klyz exists in the Hierion Domain as an archive world of Clutence. Although it seems clear that the Fru'wu did originally call Clu'ten'iun by another name (Clutence or Clustence), doing so was no different from the way we humans might speak of an Earth-like planet as being "Earth-2" or "new Earth". Since the original inhabitants of Clu'ten'iun probably came from Klyz, it would not be surprising if they simple continued using the same word ("Clutence") to refer to the world that they inhabited.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman for
"Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used
to create the blue "sedronite".

What is clear is that Clu'ten'iun has an atmosphere with a high concentration of carbon dioxide. I suspect that when the Fruthwa developed a technological civilization on their home world, they used fossil fuels and had to deal with a sudden increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Later the Fru'wu came into existence as a kind of hybrid biological-nanorobotic artificial life form. The Fru'wu spread to additional worlds, including the legendary Reahand. According to Fru'wu legend, Reahand was an Earth-like planet where the Fru'wu "de-evolved" into a new biological organism that was similar to we Earthlings. However, after being "planted" on Reahand, that new variant of the Fruthwa eventually went down the same technological path of fossil fuel use as had the Fruthwa, resulting in high atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

Climate Fiction

Regardless of the exact nature of the original planet Clutence (which supposedly had a naturally carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere), planets such as Clutence, Reahand and Clu'ten'iun provided the Fru'wu with multiple opportunities to experiment with synthetic photosynthetic bacteria that could efficiently capture carbon dioxide and convert it into sedimentary sea floor deposits. "Triatoms" are the product of such Fru'wu experimentation with efficient carbon-sequestering bacteria. The term "triatom" is a neologism, a kind of verbal joke. It was derived as a combination of "tri" (which refers to the existence of three distinct nucleic acid base pairs in its DNA) with the "tri" as a new prefix on the English word "diatom".

See the original cover art by Ed Emshwiller.

I first heard of "triatoms" from members of the Dead Widower Society. They believe that triatoms are an alien technology that could solve Earth's problem with rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gasses. They believe that Klyz is an archive world not only for the Fruthwa but also for organisms such as triatoms. It would be a trivial matter to bring triatoms to Earth and begin growing them in the ocean.

A fantasy sequel to Emphyrio

However, in order for triatoms to solve the global warming problem, they would have to be carefully integrated into Earth's biosphere. Potentially, if they went out of control, triatoms could damage the ocean ecosystem or even trigger a disastrous ice age if too much carbon dioxide was converted into ocean sediments.

If all this is true, then can we Earthlings find a way to use triatoms or bacteria of our own design to put an end to the relentless rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide that our world is now experiencing? In future blog posts, I'll explore the importance of triatoms in a fan fiction sequel to the Jack Vance novel Emphyrio: see The Dancing Earth.

Related Reading: The Return of Zat.

More book and magazine covers.

The Fruthwa of Clutence

Target: Earth

Rather late in the game I finally realized that the pek have been on Earth far longer than 7,000,000 years. While it is true that they only recently began crafting we humans, about one month ago it finally became clear to me that the pek have actually been puttering around our galaxy for about 655 million years.

I'd originally imagined that the Fru'wu had developed a technological civilization before the arrival of the pek in our galaxy. This blog post is an attempt to correct that error and chart actual Fru'wu history through the twists and turns of the Reality Chain that had led up to the universe as we know it. (also see the summary page about the Fru'wu)

In the Exode Trilogy, the Fru'wu provide a cautionary tale for the Pla. By the time when the final Interventionist mission is launched from Lendhalen, the co-directors Pla'mak and Pla'kao are at each others throats over the issue of whether the Fru'wu are friends or foes.

click image to enlarge

Exode begins on Hemmal and Parthney is quickly introduced to the other planets of the Koly star system. The next planet out from Hemmal is Oib, a Mars-like world just being subjected to planetary engineering in an attempt to make it habitable. At first, Parthney pays little attention to Clu'ten'iun, the planet that is closer to Koly than Hemmal. Clu'ten'iun is hellishly hot and reputed to be uninhabitable, crushed and baked under a dense atmosphere.

While in training at Lendhalen, Parthney hears a few odd stories about the Fru'wu, but it is not until much later, after he completes his mission to Earth, that the truth about the Fru'wu is revealed to him.

The Fru'wu are an artificial life form that can trace its origin back to a biological species that evolved on the planet Clutence. That species, the Fruthwa, was similar in many ways to we Earthlings. The Fruthwa were designed and crafted by the pek and, in the Mallansohn Reality, they eventually transcended their physical form and merged with the Huaoshy in the Sedronic Domain.

Pla'mak and Pla'kao

However, things went terribly wrong for the Fruthwa in the Foundation Reality. When Gohrlay's band of telepathic positronic robots took over the galaxy, Clutence was "copied" by the pek to establish an Archive World where the Fruthwa could continue their existence within the Hierion Domain. The fate of Clutence and its population of Fruthwa was not as happy. Freed from pek Overseers and subjected to Nereid Interventionism, the Fruthwa of Clutence rapidly developed advanced technologies. The Fruthwa became addicted to fossil fuels, just as we Earthlings are. Clutence, went through global warming, but never had any polar ice caps. Eventually the planet became uninhabitable due to atmospheric changes. Due to its high gravity, Clutence had a thick atmosphere to begin with.

The Fruthwa were provided with hierion technology by the Nereids. Koly was artificially cooled in an attempt to combat the global warming of Clutence. This turned Hemmal into a frozen world. The Fruthwa developed artificial life forms, particularly the Fru'wu, creatures that ultimately inherited the planet Clutence. The Fru'wu renamed the Planet to "Clu'ten'iun". Although the whimsical book cover, above, identifies Clutence as an archive world, that is a misnomer. The archive world copy of Clutence in the Hierion Domain is generally known by the Fru'wu name for the copy: "Klyz".

When the Pla finally realize that Clu'ten'iun was once a world with a thriving ecosystem, and its destruction was made possible by R. Gohrlay, Pla'kao gets "cold feet" and stops trying to accelerate technological progress on Earth. Pla'kao wonders if the Nereid Interventionists are pushing Earth to the same destructive fate as Clutence.

In the Buld Reality, it would have been possible for the pek to "correct" the history of Clutence and save the Fruthwa from self-destruction. However, the strategic decision was made to allow close contact between the Fru'wu and humans. Can we Earthlings learn a lesson from the Fruthwa of Clutence?

More magazine and book covers.

Tau Bootis by David A. Hardy

Image credits. I needed to tweak the colors of David Hardy's gorgeous "Tau Bootis" exoplanet in order to get closer to my mental image of Clutence.

photomanipulated Storm

I imagine that the pek use certain "genetic templates" when they craft new species. Thus, the morphological facial features of the Fruthwa were not very different from we humans. I've never seen an X-Men movie. My best guess is that this (to the left) image started out as a film's publicity photo and it was then altered by a fan.

I was unable to find the original source of this landscape. Apparently this is someplace in Hawaii.

Homo sapiens vs. the Cosmos

Cosmos "A Spacetime Odyssey"
Life on Earth exists at the end of a delicate chain of DNA molecules stretching back through billions of years. We humans only discovered DNA's role as the genetic molecule back in the 1940s. Just in this century we have begun to chart what makes our genome distinctly human. Will our knowledge of the molecular basis of life provide us with god-like power to transform our biological nature? Will we transcend our biology, will our billion year genetic chains be snapped by we humans?

Episode 11: The Immortals

Can we humans do better than DNA? DNA is unreliable. Changing one chemical bond among millions in a DNA strand can be lethal. Why shouldn't we transform ourselves in artificial lifeforms, new forms of life that would not be subject to the whims of random mutation?

The commercials that were used during the leadup to Episode 11 included images of "artificial DNA", a CGI fantasy of the genetic material looking like a ladder of pixie dust. Here I've shown the DNA ladder as being strong enough to support Dr. Tyson, but how many times in the history of Earth has the long evolutionary chain of DNA been snapped by bursts of cosmic rays and storms of stellar radiation?

Has Earth periodically been subjected to cleansing blasts of radiation that reset the pattern of evolution? But here we are. We survived it all. Only to self-destruct? Are we, with our technological grandiosity, initiating the most devastating mass extinction ever?

Earth becomes engulfed by a red giant: video

In Dhalgren, an angry red sun appears, prompting readers to imagine the ultimate fate of our species. Through my whole life I've been amused by people who display angst over the fact that the Sun will not last forever, who fret about the chances that humans will be able to escape from Earth before it is baked by the Sun.

Does anyone really expect we humans to be around 5 billion years from now? In his novel The End of Eternity, Asimov imagined that we humans could create an artificial environment in which our biological evolution would stop. How likely is that? I suspect that we are at the start of a new era for life on Earth, an era for rapid development of artificial life.

Prelands: human 2.0

How are we to think about our future and our growing power to transform ourselves as a species? That transformation has been going on for millions of years already. When our primate ancestors became tool users who could pass tool-using skills from generation to generation we created our own evolutionary environment and began a process of auto-domestication.We have guided our own evolution. The human species is an artificial construct generated by artificial selection.

I'm a science fiction fan and I enjoy imaginary tales about aliens who visit Earth. For the Exode Trilogy, I imagine that aliens helped create the human species. Those aliens who guided our evolution have moved on and created other primate species. In particular, on worlds of the Galactic Core, the Prelands already exist as the planned replacement for we primitive humans.

Calvin

Science fiction stories provide entertaining ways to stimulate thought about how technology will impact Humanity. I don't take seriously the idea that aliens have guided human evolution.  As far as I can tell, we humans are alone here on Earth. One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that soon after a biological species becomes a tool-using creator of technology, it will learn how to alter its own genes and transform itself into new forms of its own imaginings. It might not be all that hard to self-evolve into artificial life forms with interests and concerns that are quite different from those of we primitive humans. It is probably far easier for species to transform themselves into artificial lifeforms than it is to traverse the vast distances of interstellar space.

Immortality
Bright eyes, burning like fire
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale? 
(apologies to Mike Batt and Art Garfunkel)

Isn't life a flux of change, death, rebirth? Can immortality be achieved by living creatures? In the Exode Trilogy I imagine that the Huaoshy long ago transcended their biological existence and became a form of artificial life residing within the Sedronic Domain. During the course of the story, humans are force to confront the possible ways by which technology can confer immortality.

The human condition?

Immortality is a popular theme in science fiction. A fundamental question is if immortality is compatible with the human condition. We might find a technological means of achieving immortality, but would the application of that technology necessarily put an end to our humanity? An important issue in Exode is if an immortal alien intelligence can have meaningful and constructive interactions with we humans.

May 25, 2014
Apparently car racing is more important than the Cosmos. Burn, baby, burn!

Episode 12: The World Set Free
Can we Earthlings break our addiction to fossil fuels or will we push Earth through global warming and catastrophic sea level rise?

Clu'ten'iun

In Episode 12 of Cosmos, differences between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus are discussed. Without oceans and biological/geological processes that can convert atmospheric carbon into rock deposits, Venus is crushed under a stifling atmosphere that traps heat.

On Earth, we have little carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. How much can our  use of fossil fuels drive up atmospheric carbon levels before we over-heat this planet?

Dr. Tyson went through an historical account of scientists who for the past 100 years have explained the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in trapping heat and warming Earth. Recently, with dramatic warming in the Arctic Ocean, permafrost is being lost and another greenhouse gas, methane, is being released into the atmosphere. Another positive feedback process has begun: less arctic ice means more sun light is absorbed rather than being reflected away from Earth.

In Exode, Clu'ten'iun is a Venus-like planet, well suited for the Fru'wu. Clu'ten'iun was the origin world for the one Fru'wu individual who appears in the Exode Trilogy. The Fru'wu are a type of artificial life form that originated from a biological species: the Fruthwa. The Fruthwa civilization triggered runaway global warming on their home world (originally called Clustence), making it uninhabitable. The Fru'wu are a "bionic" artificial life form that was crafted after the Fruthwa could no longer breath the atmosphere of Clustence.

The Nereids and the Fru'wu share a secret: it was the Nereids who intervened in the development of Fruthwa civilization and "liberated" the Fruthwa from their pek Overseers. Standard pek protocols would have suppressed any development of a technological civilization by the Fruthwa, allowing Clustence to remain a Garden World inherited by the Fruthwanian Prelands.

Episode 13. Dark matter.
In this episode, Dr. Tyson uses the Spaceship of the Imagination to follow the two Voyager spacecraft out into the galaxy. What are the forces that give shape and organization to the galaxies? Gravity from "conventional matter" alone does not seem to account for the observed distribution of stars. What unseen "dark matter" adds additional gravitational force to galaxies?

In the Exode Trilogy, I imagine that there are whole as-yet-unknown families of fundamental particles. What great unanswered questions about the Cosmos remain? Does our civilization have "the right stuff" to push back the boundary of the unknown?

How do we compare to other civilizations? Like Carl Sagan in the original Cosmos, Dr. Tyson uses the ancient library in Alexandria, Egypt, as an example of how a culture can value knowledge and learning.

For the past 15 years, our civilization has known that Dark Energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe. This mysterious force of expansion seems to dominate the energetics of our universe.

Dr. Tyson explains Dark Energy.

What other features of the Cosmos will we discover if we can keep pushing at the frontiers of knowledge?
_________________
Cosmos:
Episodes 7-10
episodes 3-6
episodes 1 and 2