Pla'mak and Pla'kao

Pla'mak

Exode
Pla'mak and Pla'kao are the masterminds behind the training base for Interventionist agents at Lendhalen. For thousands of years they have taken pains to conceal the existence of their on-going contact and collaboration with the alien Fru'wu. The Fru'wu Interventionists are nervous about the possibility of provoking the pek, so they are careful about not revealing too much about themselves to the Pla.

Pla'mak and Pla'kao only know their Fru'wu contact by the code name "Fru'munu" and they have never actually seen the physical form of the Fru'wu species. Pla'mak and Pla'kao have learned from Fru'munu that the Fru'wu are aware of on-going changes at the Observer Base on Earth's Moon. Overseer activity on Earth has been in decline and the Fru'wu suspect that Observer Base will be closed when the Buld reach Earth. A Buld spaceship is almost in the Sol star system after its 15,000 year long trip to Earth from the Galactic Core.

When Parthney has completed training as the most recent Interventionist agent from the Koly star system, he is teleported to Earth. In the past, Interventionist agents sent to Earth arrived unconscious and were never told about teleportation. Parthney is the first agent sent to Earth with knowledge of how teleportation allows for travel from Earth to Lendhalen (Gwyned tells him). How the Buld came to have access to teleportation technology is a rather long story.

The Origin of Interventionists

banded iron formation

The story if interventionism goes back almost 1,000,000,000 years to when the Huaoshy were first spreading between the stars of their home galaxy. At first, the Huaoshy were eager to make contact with other technologically advanced life forms on other planets. In their travel from star to star the Huaoshy made gruesome discoveries: the dead remnants of once glorious civilizations. Caution began to seem wise...the Huaoshy had to wonder: was there something waiting in space, some eager force that would snuff out a growing technological culture like their own?

Eventually the Huaoshy did have contacts with other sapient species on other worlds, but with disastrous consequences. When the Huaoshy tried to help bring the other species out of their condition of primitive barbarism, invariably, everything went wrong. Slowly, the Huoashy realized that they had been lucky to survive their own technological adolescence. Most technology-wielding species manage to find a way to destroy themselves. The Huaoshy view the attainment of a technological culture by biological species in roughly the same way we view the transition of a planet from a reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere. There is always the danger that biological species will not survive such a dramatic environmental change, but if you want advanced lifeforms then you are willing to make that transition and take the risk.

Early Huaoshy efforts to intervene in the cultural development of other species always met with disaster, so the Huaoshy began to develop a new ethical code. Fundamental to those ethical precepts is the idea that primitive species must be protected from knowledge of their comparative primitiveness. In their spread from galaxy to galaxy, the Huaoshy reached Earth 7,000,000 years ago, but the Huaoshy have been careful to prevent Earthlings from becoming aware of the fact alien visitors have been watching over Earth for millions of years.

The Huaoshy learned that by slow and careful domestication it is possible to craft life forms that are compatible with advanced technology. Across thousands of galaxies and hundreds of millions of years the Huaoshy have helped many species merge into a vast intergalactic Genesaunt community. Thousands of these Genesaunt species have subsequently transcended their physical form and become artificial life forms like the Huoashy themselves. For the Huaoshy, their ethical code neatly accommodates the presence of Interventionists within Genesaunt culture.

1947: Gwyned's family moves to Australia

Since the earliest formation of Genesaunt civilization there have been biological life forms that resisted the conventional Huaoshy path to transcendence by way of an hermaphroditic end stage of biological existence. This minority faction that has always resisted the conventional Huaoshy path of social development has become known as the Interventionists. The name is misleading in that it might lead some to imagine that the Huaoshy do not intervene into the affairs of primitive cultures, but the truth is that the Huaoshy only try to make primitives believe that the Huaoshy do not intervene in their affairs.

Over the course of millions of years, the Huaoshy found that a stable Genesaunt civilization and the most efficient facilitation of the long-term survival of sapient species is achieved by allowing for a system of counterbalanced Overseers and Interventionists. If the Interventionist agents working on Earth become too bold in their efforts then the Overseers will notice their presence and capture them.

The Nereids long ago brought some Fru'wu to the Andromeda galaxy. 15,000 years previously the Nereids provided those Fru'wu with a spaceship that was equipped for faster-than-light travel. Those Fru'wu visited our galaxy and helped the Buld acquire the technological means to make their own spaceships, however, the Buld spaceships can not travel faster than the speed of light. The Fru'wu visited Earth and occasionally brought humans to Earth, thus beginning the practice of sending human Interventionist agents to Earth.

Overseer

About 10,000 years ago the Fru'wu decided that the Buld could be trusted to directly teleport human Interventionist agents to Earth. The Fru'wu had placed a teleportation target on Earth about 15,000 years ago and they now gave its transmission code to trusted Buld. The Buld in the Koly star system received the code about 5,000 years ago and became quite efficient at training Interventionist agents about 1,000 years ago. During the past 500 years no other star system in the Galactic Core has had as strong an influence on the pace of cultural development on Earth.

Parthney's Mission to Earth
When it is time for Parthney to go to Earth, the Fru'wu want to find out what the Overseers are planning to do when the Buld arrive on Earth. Previously, the Fru'wu managed to capture an Overseer. Now, the Fru'wu want to intercept an Overseer on the way to the Moon and use the Overseer as cover for a spy mission that will reveal the secrets of Observer Base. There is an Overseer who has been spending a large amount of time on Earth (using the cover identity "Belinda Tement"). Fru'munu suggests to Pla'mak and Pla'kao that it might be possible to use Parthney as "bait" to lure that Overseer into a trap. Parthney is sent off to Earth not knowing how he might be used by the Fru'wu.

Exode Back Cover

At the end of 2012 I made the first draft of a front cover for Exode. I've now made a back cover and a blurb that could go just inside the front cover of a print version of the novel.

For back cover images I used the images from Chapter Two. These images depict Parthney and Pla'va when they are approaching the planet Oib.

For the inner blurb I tried to weave together Hemmal, the pek, Prelands, the Creators, Earthlings, the Buld Clan, Kach, Parthney and the Nereids:

Exode - change your world...or else!

On Hemmal there were four types of people: the alien pek, a shape shifting artificial lifeform; the hermaphroditic Prelands, newly crafted by the Creators as the desired replacement of the barbaric Earthlings; the Buld Clan, engineered to have an extra chromosome that makes them suited for travel between the stars; and two mutant Buld, Kach and Parthney, genetically identical to Earthlings, but born 15,000 light years from Earth. Everyone has plans for Earth...the pek, the Buld, the alien Nereids, but do any of them care if humanity is erased, replaced, forgotten? Kach and Parthney, two false Buld, reached Earth in a last minute attempt to save the human species from elimination...but why bother? After all, aren't humans defective and obsolete? Wouldn't Earth be better off if it was populated by Prelands rather than Humanity? Could Kach and Parthney help the Earthlings change their world -change themselves- or was it simply time to get away, escape from Earth before the Creators swept the human species from the planet, the superseded humans neatly replaced by Prelands?


________________________________________________
Would it make sense to the average reader to have the Prelands described as hermaphrodites and then see the term "thon" applied to the Prelands, replacing "he" in the famous saying, "We have met the enemy and he is us"?

The Prelands are "humans, version 2.0", they are like we Earthlings (we barbaric Earthlings) only better: designed by the Creators to have a chance of surviving in a technological civilization.

I'm currently writing Chapter Three of Exode which describes how Parthney finally achieves a reasonable understanding of Earth and the primitive conditions under which humans live there. Parthney arrives for training at Lendhalen with a very naive view of Earth. While on Hemmal Parthney heard stories about Earth from Yandrey, stories that filled Parthney's imagination with ideas about what it might be like to live on a planet full of other humans. But then, while at Lendhalen, the more Parthney learns about Earth the less enthusiastic he is about going to live there. As Pla'va tried to warn him, "It is a terrible place, full of war and disease and death."

While living at Lendhalen, Parthney is trained by two Buld, Vozgrow and Leymaygn, and a human from Earth, Gwyned Iwedon. Vozgrow and Leymaygn are similar to Yandrey; they are ancient Buld who have lived for thousands of years. Vozgrow and Leymaygn have vast experience gained from studying Earth and training Interventionist agents like Parthney. Gwyned lived on Earth for 25 years then, when given the chance, took her opportunity to leave Earth and join Genesaunt culture at the Galactic Core.

image source

Gwyned is vastly more sophisticated than Parthney, who can't even read when he arrives at Lendhalen. Gwyned was doing research in plasma physics when she decided to leave Earth. At Lendhalen she is studying Buld spaceship technology and trying to apply modern scientific knowledge from Earth to understand Buld spaceship propulsion.  One thing that Gwyned and Parthney have in common is a love for music.

Guiding the training of Parthney for his mission to Earth are two Pla, Pla'kao and Pla'mak, who have begun to question the entire Interventionist plan for accelerating cultural development on Earth. Gwyned has brought word of the thermonuclear arms race on Earth (she leaves Earth in 1964). Pla'kao and Pla'mak have long been collaborating with the Fru'wu to to prepare Earth for the impending arrival of a Buld spaceship. However, by making it possible for Earthlings to develop a technological civilization will Earth face the same fate as the Fru'wu home world? As if the danger of nuclear war is not bad enough, Gwyned brings an additional warning about increasing levels of carbon dioxide on Earth. The Pla begin to realize that Earth is between a rock and a hard place. Is there no way to save the Earthlings from a technological disaster?

Apocalypse New

It is 1967 when Parthney arrives at Lendhalen

Long ago, before the arrival of the pek in our galaxy, the Fru'wu became a space-faring species. The budding interstellar civilization of the Fru'wu was destroyed by a technological disaster: nanites gone out of control. The pek managed to preserve and culture some Fru'wu on worlds of the Galactic Core. Similarly, the Nereids took some Fru'wu to the Andromeda galaxy where a distinctive Fru'wu civilization grew. It is these descendants of the original Fru'wu that have since come in contact with the Buld and participated in the development of the means by which human Interventionists like Parthney are sent to Earth.

Pla'kao and Pla'mak are the two Buld who have contact with the Fru'wu. Their Fru'wu contact is known as Fru'munu. Fru'munu hints to Pla'kao and Pla'mak that Parthney is needed on Earth for a special mission in advance of the immanent arrival of the Buld spaceship in the Sol system.