Running the Show

1959 - Dodkin's Job

When I started writing stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I first designed a way for residents of Earth to escape from this dingy planet. Sadly, for those who could no longer fit into the primitive civilization on Earth, "escape" only took you as far as a hidden base on the Moon.

Then it occurred to me that there could be a whole series of additional "escapes" to further "levels" of Genesaunt civilization, each even more distant from Earth and closer to the alien Huaoshy.

Who's in Charge?
How many such  levels are there? I don't know, but the idea was that there should be enough of them so that nobody from Earth need worry about actually getting to meet the Huaoshy.

artwork by Bernklau

I've never read the Jack Vance story 'Dodkin's Job' (2019 update) However, I like to think that Vance's story about the source of a stupid work order, actually encapsulates two guiding principles of business life.

"The Peter Principle" says that "managers rise to the level of their incompetence." Dodkin might be a good example of someone who will never be a manager, since he seems to exist on an endless demotion trajectory. If being promoted is the road to incompetence, then systematic demotion could be the path to greater job competence and true power to make effective decisions.

Institutional Momentum

Another principle of business is that no matter how much top managers can screw things up, there is always someone at the bottom of the administrative hierarchy who can keep things running. For example, if the boss builds a new multi-million dollar facility, there are sure to fundamental defects and problems in the design and construction. Anyone trying to get their job done while working in that new facility will need to work with the custodians to find a way to repair and work around all of the defects that were built into the new facility.

For humor's sake, compare 'Dodkin's Job' to "The Spectre General".

A steady theme in the stories of Jack Vance is competence. He never tired of poking fun at characters who had high social status or highfalutin job titles but who were incompetents. In contrast, the typical Vance protagonist was someone who could persevere and get a job done.

Exode

Foundations of Eternity

In the Exode Trilogy, at the various hierarchical levels of Genesaunt Civilization, there is no shortage of earnest managers who bumble around and screw things up. In fact, the only real source of "evil" in the Exode saga is ignorance and managerial incompetence.

The prototypical "man in charge" who first screws things up is Orbho Anagro. In Foundations of Eternity, Anagro becomes fascinated by humans and bends the rules, allowing a few humans to play around with advanced technology such as positronics. All hell breaks lose when telepathic positronic robots discover time travel.

Leymaygn and Vozgrow

In Exode, the folks who are "in charge" at Lendhalen don't really know what they are doing. Leymaygn and Vozgrow do a whole lot of hand-wringing about how far they can push their Interventionist agenda, but none of their worrying actually matters.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original cover art
by Don Sibley and from Planet Stories.

Later, when Parthney goes off to Earth as the secret agent from Lendhalen, he bumbles around on Earth and eventually gets captured by the equally bumbling Overseers. Eventually readers learn who the true power brokers are on Earth; Parthney is little more than window dressing.

Science Fiction in Deep Time
Gohrlay has been regaling me with an account of the science fiction genre as it existed in the Ekcolir Reality. In the Ekcolir Reality, most science fiction authors were women. According to Gohrlay, the analogue of Lester del Rey in the Ekcolir Reality often published under the name Lori del Rey.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
original art work by Leo Morey

Lori del Rey became an influential publisher of science fiction in the Ekcolir Reality. In the 1980s, Lori helped launch a short-lived television network with Kate MacLean. That network was called CERA, a word with  Etruscan origins and meaning roughly "creation" in the jargon-filled English of New England in the 20th century of the Ekcolir Reality.

The television programs on CERA attempted to tell the secret history of Earth. Eventually, Lori was taken off of Earth and the network collapsed. Television programs on the CERA network included 'Some Were Human' and 'Door Between Worlds' which both depicted Kac'hin, Grendel and Fru'wu agents moving freely between worlds of the Galactic Core and Earth.

Should Human Stem Cells Be Used To Make Partly Human Chimeras?

Next:  a science fiction blogging milestone

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The Color of Nanites

A few months ago Ivory tried to explain to me the importance of what she called "Selfies". At that time, I did not understand the importance of nanites for the process by which a biological mind can be instantiated as an artificial mind.

Within Genesaunt Civilization, a Selfie is an artificial life form that originated as a biological organism. Usually, a Selfie is composed of nanites rather than biological cells.

source

All of the memories of human can be encoded in memory nanites (what Ivory calls "infites", or information nanites). Thus, a Selfie can have all of the memories that once resided in a human.

I now realize that although Ivory died on the Moon, she lives on as a Selfie that I call Yrovi.

I have no information about the process by which the Lunar Overseers extracted the nanites from Ivory's body. Maybe Ivory passed those secrets on to the Dead Widowers.

Green Nanites
I've been exploring the hypothesis that my entire life was planned, designed and shaped so as to prepare me for the role of revealing the secret history of Earth. I've previously described my realization that since at least 1971 Trysta made sure that I was exposed to information and concepts that gradually prepared me to deal with the swarms of infites that now reside in by body.

In the early 1970s, I was introduced to Isaac Asimov's science fiction, the work of Thomas Iwedon, and also the ideas of Juan Matus. Of course, when I first read about them, I interpreted all their ideas (including Asimov's stories about positronic robots and the Foundation, Thomas' stories about sedronic matter and Juan's theory of an "assemblage" that resides within humans) as science fiction.

source

Only after receiving infites from Thomas, Izhiun and Ivory have I been able to reinterpret these "science fiction stories" as valid information about the secret history of Earth.

Based on the work of Angela and her efforts to probe the past Realities of Earth, I suspect that there have always been nanites living as symbionts inside humans.

About 20,000 years ago, Rilocke, working with the cooperation of Grean, accomplished a complete swap of the old style nanites of Earth for a new variety that would allow the people of Earth to develop a technological civilization.

I believe that I have seen nanites. Recently, when Ivory transferred some of her infites into me, I saw what looked like wisps of smoke or steam move from her body to mine. In the 1990s, word began to spread on Earth that the type nanites inside people have changed: in the past they apparently had a distinctive green hue.

The "old fashioned" green nanites of Earth prevented the Nereids from triggering the development of human civilization on Earth. At the end of the Time War, the nanites of Earth were changed and we humans began our long steady climb towards the stars. The mystery remains: to what extent can any of us take control of the nanites that reside within us?

2015 update on Luri.

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Speculative Anthropology

Early Homo skull (source)

When thinking of Jack Vance as a speculative anthropologist I always think of his story The Star King. Over dinner with Pallis Atwrode, Kirth Gersen theorizes about the extraterrestrial origin of Cro-Magnon man: "...let's just assume that some race able to traverse space visited Earth. Assume that they captured a tribe of Mousterian Neanderthals, and for some reason conveyed them to Ghnarumen." Gersen goes on to speculate that those Neanderthals might have evolved into Cro-Magnons who were then transported back to Earth.

In recent years it has been possible to sequence the genomes of several human subspecies (Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo denisova) and as discussed in a previous blog post, it does not seem possible that we evolved from Neanderthals, rather, we are just one of several alternative types of humans who originated from a common human ancestor (Homo heidelbergensis ?) along with the Neanderthals.

source

Vance allowed Gersen to speculate about how the natives of planet Ghnarumen had come to so closely resemble humans. Vance imagined that those aliens were simultaneous hermaphrodites and had the ability to pass acquired characteristics from one generation to the next. How could such an alien species adopt the human form with such exactitude that they could walk among we humans and go unrecognized (as did Attel Malagate who posed as a university administrator)?

Disguised as Human
How might a biological species efficiently pass acquired traits from one generation to the next? Humans have "mirror neuron" systems that allow us to respond to perceived facial expressions with motor neuron activity patterns that produce similar facial expressions. Seeing someone else smile automatically activates neurons in my brain that are also active when I smile.

Thaumoctopus mimicus

Here on Earth, mimicry has been studied as an adaptation that can evolve by Darwinian mechanisms. Some octopuses can control their appearance and even mimic other animals. This shows that it is possible for an animal to evolve a nervous system that can signal widely to the parts of its body in order to take on the appearance of another animal. Both the changes in body form and coloration changes in cephalopods involve regulation of skeletal muscle contraction.

Directed evolution
Could the camouflage mechanism of cephalopods be extended to include a mechanism for passing acquired traits into the genome and on to future generations? One easy to conceptualize mechanism for regulating gene expression involves simple sequence repeats. We can imagine a gene transcription regulatory process by which mRNA abundance in a cell is controlled by the number of repeats of a short nucleotide sequence in a gene's enhancer element. For example, more copies of a specific short nucleotide sequence might recruit additional proteins that increase gene transcription.

octopus brain (source)

How might use of a cephalopod's camouflage/mimicry system be coupled to lengthening and shortening inheritable gene expression enhancers? We can imagine a protein complex that regulates the insertion of additional simple sequence repeats adjacent to existing ones. We can also imagine a signal transduction mechanism that would respond to growth factor molecules released from active motor neurons. An individual that was frequently activating a specific pattern of motor neurons in order to mimic another animal would expose cells in its tissues to a particular pattern of growth factors. In the short term, this might enlarge or shrink particular tissues in some parts of the animal's body. If the protein complex that regulates the insertion of additional simple sequence repeats were sensitive to such growth factor signals, then genes for the control of muscle development could be altered.

oral sex

Fwai-chi

Vance imagined that the "proto-Star Kings" were hermaphrodites who reproduced by emitting spores. We are used to thinking of animals that have specialized organs for producing gametes, but for purposes of passing on acquired characteristics, I imagine an animal that can produce spores from any part of the body, allowing individuals to convert somatic mutations that arise in a tissue like skeletal muscle into germline genetic alterations.

Vance suggested that the proto-Star Kings released spores with their breath, evoking an interesting image of oral sex among the natives of Ghnarumen. Maybe enzymes in the mouth are required to activate spores, requiring that the desired spores for reproduction be nibbled from one specific part of the body. In Marune: Alastor 933, Vance described how the alien Fwai-chi reproduced by nibbling on each other and gestating young in their stomachs. Recombination of genes carried by the spores would allow generation of offspring with somatically-selected gene expression patterns leading to the growth of more muscle in a specific part of the bodies of those in the next generation.

dangerous snake: target for mimicry

As an example, imagine that an octopus needed to be able to mimic a dangerous snake. It might be possible for two of the eight octopus limbs to be selected for expansion and attempted duplication of morphological features of the snake. The other six limbs might actually be reduced in size over the course of several generations, eventually resulting in an octopus with two large limbs and six small limbs and great skill at taking on the form of the snake.

The Man Trap

What might be particularly effective would be if an intelligent animal could make use of its memory to judge which patterns of changes to gene expression would be most useful in the next generation. "Dang, most everyone else has been expanding limbs 2 and 6. I better do the same!"

The Man Trap
The "salt monster" was supposed to be able to use McCoy's memories against him, tricking him into imagining that he was seeing a human woman. The "salt monster" could telepathically manipulate the entire crew of the Enterprise, but in the end our heroes prevail because....well, you can't kill off the cast in the first episode of a three year television program.

When I was young I imagined that telepathy could not be the entire explanation for how the crew of the Enterprise was fooled...the "alien monster" in The Man Trap must have been able to physically take on human form. Which is more technologically plausible, that an alien could over the course of a few years learn to take telepathic control of human brains or that an alien could mimic the appearance of a human body?

Deltrijoshnypwannem

Genesaunt Civilization
For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I imagine that there is an intergalactic civilization with thousands of different species. They all have access to sophisticated technology for modifying their own genes. Typically, by the time species become part of Genesaunt Civilization, the Huaoshy have spent millions of years carefully crafting them into organisms that work and play well with others. The Huaoshy allow those many species a large amount of freedom to explore different genetic modifications, but the pek continually direct their evolution towards forms that will be able to smoothly make a transition from the domain of biology to artificial lifeforms than can "cross over" into the domain of sedronic matter and leave behind our dingy three dimensional universe of conventional matter.

Kac'hin
I've been thinking about the origin of the Kac'hin. I've been imagining that hundreds of millions of years after the biological source species of the Huaoshy transformed themselves into artificial lifeforms composed of sedronic matter, the Huaoshy would have lost interest in the universe of conventional matter. The pek, an artificial lifeform that was designed by the Huaoshy, can efficiently spread Genesaunt Civilization from galaxy to galaxy without close supervision. From the perspective of the god-like Huaoshy, creatures like we humans are not much more interesting than pond scum or weeds in a pasture.

But then, as told in The Foundations of Eternity,  positronic robots suddenly upset the quiet and calm of the pek. Positronic robots did what the Huaoshy assumed was impossible: they developed telepathy and time travel and so the Huaoshy suddenly needed to again pay some attention to an annoying biological organism...specifically: Homo sapiens.

I've been imagining that the Kac'hin become the "conduit" by which the Huaoshy can make a dramatic return to the world of conventional matter and deal with the pesky humans and "their" positronic robots. What is the backstory for the Kac'hin? What is the story of their biological origins and eventual use by the Huaoshy to put the upstart humans back in their proper place?

Hundreds of millions of years ago when the Huaoshy were perfecting the pek, there might have been a biological species that had gone down the evolutionary path that Vance envisioned for the natives of the planet Ghnarumen. Such a species would have been particularly well suited to the task of interacting with newly-discovered lifeforms, particularly those that already had technological civilizations before ever achieving first contact with the pek.

If that species were the original "Kac'hin" then they might have become a problem for the Huaoshy because of their superior ability to deal with other lifeforms. I'm imagining that the Kac'hin might have been an important part of the development of the Interventionist faction of Genesaunt Civilization. From an early time the Huaoshy might have found ways to "keep tabs on" the activity of the Kac'hin in order to regulate their interventionism and the extent of their interference with the cultural development of other species. This special relationship between the Huaoshy and the Kac'hin might have been the earliest origin of what eventually became the "bimanoid interface", the means by which the Huaoshy can have contact with humans in Exode and The Foundations of Eternity.

When Many Sails becomes aware of Orbho Anagro's little science project (the development of positronic robots), suspicions are raised about the "mental powers" of Neanderthals. Many sails is intrigued by the social cohesion observed among both Neanderthals and Denisovans and how it contrasts with the individualism of Homo sapiens. However, before Many Sails can sort out this mystery, R. Gohrlay develops a powerful form of telepathy that far outstrips the weak form of telepathy that is naturally present in Neanderthals. Using telepathy as a weapon against the orbho, R. Gohrlay takes control of Observer Base on the Moon. It takes many thousands of years for the Huaoshy to finally realize that the positronic robots of Earth have telepathic powers...by then, Galaxia is almost complete.

R. Gohrlay in the Assembly Room

The Huaoshy have two important technological advantages over the positronic robots: 1) advanced nanite technology and 2) more advanced space travel technology. In order not to allow their nanite technology to fall into the hands of the positronic robots of Earth, the Huaoshy place Kac'hin in command of Many Sails and the effort to regain control of Earth. The Kac'hin do have a symbiotic component that is composed of sedronic matter, but R. Gohrlay and her team have never developed the advanced technology that is required to detect those symbionts.

The pek are masters of shape shifting, but they rely on zeptoscale components that could be detected by R. Gohrlay's primitive hierion technology, so the pek are kept away from the positronic robots. The Huaoshy need the Kac'hin, but the Kac'hin have long been devoted to undermining and skirting the Rules of Intervention. The Huaoshy make use of the Kac'hin and start down a road that will put an end to positronics, but by involving the Kac'hin and Noÿs, they do so at the cost of having to compromise over the ultimate fate of Humanity.

Pallis at the Nautilus.

When R. Gohrlay takes over Observer Base, humans lose the benefits of "pek nanite" technology. Luckily, the small cadre of human scientists at Observer Base have long been distrustful of the orbho and they are generally aware of the existence of nanites. They have tried to live without orbho and nanites, so when R. Gohrlay destroys Anagro and the small group of executive orbho who control the programming of nanites, the human population of Observer Base survives. They struggle to develop their own technology, eventually developing "hyperjump" space travel, time travel and a primitive nanite technology...all with the help of the positronic robots.

The story of the struggle between the Kac'hin and R. Gohrlay over the fate of Humanity and the establishment of Galaxia is told in The Foundations of Eternity.

The Nereid Objection

Andromeda galaxy

There are three different kinds of extraterrestrials in the science fiction story Exode. 1) The Fru'wu. These aliens evolved on another planet in our galaxy. They are just starting to develop their own nanotechnology and they have some understanding of hierions. 2) The Nereids. These aliens evolved on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy. They are older and more technologically advanced than the Fru'wu. The Nereids have just begun to make use of sedrons. 3) The Huaoshy. These aliens evolved in a distant galaxy about 1,000,000,000 years ago. They long ago transformed themselves into a form of artificial life. They have mastered the use of hierions and sedrons and their advanced technology gives them god-like power over biological species.

The Huaoshy have been spreading through the universe from galaxy to galaxy and systematically converting sapient species into "domesticated" forms that can successfully make the transformation from biological existence into the domain of artificial life that has been developed by the Huaoshy. The Huaoshy view biological organisms like humans in much the same way that we humans view viruses. We might find a virus interesting, but if it become a nuisance then we would not hesitate to exterminate it.

Objection

domestication

The Nereids and the Fru'wu both object to the way that the Huaoshy go around the universe "domesticating" biological species. Interestingly, the Huaoshy are guided by an ethical precept that forces them to give "conscientious objectors" the opportunity to develop on their own as biological organisms without the Huaoshy forcing them to make the transition towards continued existence as an artificial life form.

Objection Over-Ruled
Although the Huaoshy have given the Nereids and the Fru'wu a chance to escape from the Huaoshy "domestication program", the Huaoshy do impose some constraints on the Nereids and the Fru'wu. In particular, the Nereids and the Fru'wu are not allowed to interfere in the development of other species such as we humans.

The Huaoshy arrived on Earth about 7,000,000 years ago. They immediately began "domesticating" the apes and in a very real sense the Huaoshy created the human species. Furthermore, on worlds of the Galactic Core the Huaoshy are busy creating the Prelands, hermaphroditic successors to we humans who the Huaoshy plan to be the next species of ape to dominate Earth. The Nereids and the Fru'wu object to the way the Huaoshy systematically eliminate natural reproductive processes from species like humans.

Fukushima

However, the Huaoshy are not bothered by such objections. The Huaoshy have vast experience dealing with sapient biological species and they know that most human-like species that develop a technological civilization manage to destroy themselves while doing vast damage to the ecosystems of planets like Earth. Huaoshy ethics impel them to protect worlds like Earth and prevent species like we humans from destroying ourselves.

The Huaoshy Hegemony
The Huaoshy have spread their influence through space during the course of the past 1,000,000,000 years and Genesaunt Civilization now spans about 100,000 galaxies. Within that vast Genesaunt Civilization new species evolve, are domesticated by the Huaoshy and gradually transition from their original biological form into an artificial form of life that can merge into the domain of existence that was first pioneered by the Huaoshy. As a form of life, the Huaoshy are as different from we humans as we are from bacteria.

The Nereids are close to the upper right...will they survive?

There are always a few "boat rockers" like the Nereids and the Fru'wu, but they make little impact. Most "boat rocker" species eventually manage to destroy themselves. In fact, when the Fru'wu were starting to spread outward from their home world, they managed to destroy their budding interstellar civilization when their nanotechnology went out of control. They only exist today because the Huaoshy "cultured" some Fru'wu on worlds of the Galactic Core where they were kept safe from the self-inflicted technological disaster that exterminated the Fru'wu on their home world.

The Nereids never tire of pointing out the fact that they have successfully avoided self-inflicted technological disasters. They ask: isn't it possible that we will exist forever as a biological lifeform? They believe that they should be free to visit worlds like Earth and share their lifestyle and technology with primitive creatures like we Earthlings. The Nereids argue that with their help, other species like the Fru'wu can be prevented from destroying themselves.

Interventionism
The Huaoshy systematically guard worlds like Earth from "do-gooders" like the Nereids. The Huaoshy themselves went through an early period when they were "do-gooders" who tried to "help" less technologically advanced species. Invariably their good intentions back-fired. The Huaoshy eventually developed a set of ethical rules that strictly limit how advanced technology can be introduced to worlds like Earth.

The Huaoshy have grown very comfortable with their system of guiding biological species like humans towards existence as "domesticated" artificial life forms. Over time, the Huaoshy have had a few "scares"; situations in which the Huaoshy fear losing control over Genesaunt Civilization. Usually the biggest problems arise when a species like the Nereids begins to develop an understanding of sedrons. There have been species that began zipping around the universe in spaceships looking for opportunities to "intervene" in the course of development of worlds like Earth. Thus, the Huaoshy are always on guard against Interventionists. Normally, the Huaoshy do not hesitate to stop anyone who violates the Huaoshy rules that govern Interventionism. In the case of Earth, something went wrong....

Time Travel
Among the "scares" that the Huaoshy have had, one of the most dramatic involves Earth. In a strange twist of fate, some positronic robots were produced on the Moon (as told in The Start of Eternity). During their long existence, the Huaoshy had never seriously explored positronics, nor had any of the millions of other species within Genesaunt Civilization. The first positronic robots quickly discovered that their positronic brains made possible an efficient form of quantum computation. With that serendipitous technological advantage the positronic robots realized that they could not only communicate telepathically but they could also use their telepathic powers to control the type of nanorobotic artificial lifeforms that the Huaoshy routinely deploy to keep watch over worlds like Earth.

Furthermore, after liberating themselves from the Huaoshy, the positronic robots discovered that their positronic brains not only allowed for telepathy, but they could telepathically receive information from the future! Eventually the positronic robots discovered that they could build devices that make time travel possible. Using their positronic telepathy and time travel they took control of our galaxy. This really scared the Huaoshy who began to fear that they could loose control of their carefully crafted billion year old Genesaunt Civilization.

As mentioned in my last blog post, the backstory of Exode includes a show-down between two competing forces on Earth in the middle of the 20th century. The positronic robots and the Huaoshy battled to a unproductive standoff. That great conflict was finally resolved by an agreement between the alien Huaoshy and Noÿs, a time traveler from the far future.

Dimensional Engineering
When the Huaoshy and Noÿs cooperate to bring into existence the Buld Reality (our timeline, the world as we know it), the Huaoshy then change the dimensional structure of the universe so as to eliminate telepathy by positronics and make time travel impossible. When they do this, the Huaoshy are left with a monopoly on sedrons. This is a great relief to the Huaoshy who have long worried that some other species like the Nereids would push ahead with sedronic technology and disrupt Genesaunt Civilization.

It was the realization by the Huaoshy that they could achieve a monopoly on sedrons that allowed them to compromise their ideals and come to an agreement with Noÿs about the Final Reality and the future of Humanity.

By cooperating with the Huaoshy, Noÿs was given the chance to view possible Realities and she realized that Earth was confronted by two alternative futures, neither of which was acceptable. One set of possible futures involved the development of nuclear technology. Such a future would avoid the use of fossil fuels and global warming, but would lead to a nuclear disaster in the future. The other type of future would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect and a catastrophic rise in sea level. In either case, it would be a future in which hermaphroditic Prelands would inherit the Earth rather than Humanity.

Luckily, Noÿs was able to find another type of alternative future. Noÿs found a way to get help from the Nereid and the Fru'wu Interventionists that would allow her to do an end run around the Huaoshy and provide an alternative source of energy to the primitive Earthlings. The Huaoshy were willing to accept this "solution" even though it would lead to a future in which poorly-domesticated and potentially dangerous humans would attain advanced technology. Due to their new found monopoly on sedrons, the Huaoshy felt confident that the humans could ultimately be controlled and prevented form disrupting Genesaunt Civilization.

In fact, looking into the future, the Huaoshy could see that Genesaunt Civilization would be transformed by their agreement with Noÿs, but not shattered. In the Buld Reality, Interventionists would become much more active and there would come to be more diversity within Genesaunt Civilization. Because of their new monopoly on sedrons, the Huaoshy could tolerate a future with more "wild" and less "domesticated" species like humans having advanced technology.

At the end of Exode, the reader is left wondering if we Earthlings can really make use of this new opportunity won for us by Noÿs.

In my next blog post I summarize the timeline of events in the Buld Reality that shape the story Exode. The Nereids are in the right place at the right time to play a critical role in events on Earth.

Bimanoid Theory

Excalbian

I previously mentioned the idea that in Chapter Three of Exode the protagonist, Parthney, achieves a form of tenuous contact with the alien Huaoshy through the medium of Robin, a seemingly unsophisticated robotic assistant at Lendhalen. For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe I generally imagine very little direct interaction between humans and the Huaoshy. Sure, if there is an emergency, as in The Start of Eternity, then the Huaoshy will step in to set things straight and they might come as close as possible to taking human form so as to facilitate a needed change to human civilization. In Exode, is Parthney facing some kind of emergency when Robin starts "channeling" the Huaoshy?

Pla'kao, co-director of Lendhalen, has plans for Parthney. A Buld spaceship will soon visit Earth and the ancient Interventionist/Overseer dynamic on Earth is threatening to crumble. Pla'kao does not want to risk Humanity becoming the next sapient species in our galaxy to destroy itself in a technological disaster. As he learns about Earth's history, Parthney can't help wondering if he'd only make thing worse by visiting Earth. Maybe Gwyned should return to Earth: isn't she better equipped to manage the technological difficulties that are now facing the Earthlings? When Parthney loses interest in going to Earth, the Huaoshy step in (literally "step in" to Robin) and nudge him back into line, back on the path to Earth.

Robot, woman, alien Huaoshy?

Instantiation
I was never certain what Gene Roddenberry had in mind for the Star Trek episode The Savage Curtain. Did we ever see the "true form" of the Excalbians? Had they developed beyond the biological limitation of having a physical form? Maybe they just looked into the thoughts of Kirk and borrowed from his mind a rock-like body form that Kirk was most likely to believe could be used by a creature from a planet like Excalbia where the whole surface was covered with molten rock and lava flows. Could the Excalbians instantiate themselves in any convenient physical form?

In the case of the Huaoshy, they long ago transformed themselves from biological organisms to artificial life forms composed of "sedronic matter". However, when needed, the Huaoshy can integrate swarms of their zeptoscale components into people or robots, essentially instantiating a locus of Huaoshy consciousness in a convenient chunk of conventional matter. In Exode, this is how Robin suddenly becomes more than a just a robot.

Presidents in space

Creators
Pla'mak, the other co-director of Lendhalen, has long worked to establish a process by which advanced technology might be transferred from Genesaunts living on worlds of the Galactic Core to Earthlings. However, the Huaoshy seem to carefully control the pace of technological advancement on worlds like Earth, so Pla'mak has long felt frustrated. Pla'mak long ago became convinced that the Creators constantly observe the actions of Genesaunts, leaving them little room to intervene into the course of Earthly affairs.

Pla'mak can never forget that prior to the establishment of Lendhalen there was another Interventionist training base on Oib....until the day when it was suddenly and completely obliterated. Interventionists at training bases like Lendhalen try to conceal their rebellion against the pek, but Pla'mak suspects all efforts geared towards secrecy are wasted effort. It might be a simple matter to exclude the pek and their nanites from Lendhalen, but the Huoashy could have as yet undetected ways of monitoring events inside Lendhalen. It turns out that Pla'mak's intuitions an paranoia are well justified!

Let me explain why I've called you here this evening....

For the past 20,000 years the Buld revolutionaries have worked diligently to strip pek nanites from their bodies and cloister themselves in places like Lendhalen where they can live free of pek interference. Pla'mak is correct to suspect that the Creators do not rely on anything as primitive as pek nanites to monitor the actions of the Buld and she long ago initiated a research program aimed at testing the idea that even after a powerful magnetic field is used to inactivate pek nanites in a person's body some other foreign material remains "stowed away" inside humans. Although that research effort has never succeeded, it is true that there are other tiny symbiotic elements inside humans that can replicate and allow for direct interactions between humans and the Creators.

In the theory developed by Pla'mak, the term "bimanoid" is used to refer to the never-interrupted linkage between humans and the Creators. Pla'mak has suggested that every human is continually a functional duality: part biological organism, part non-biological Huaoshy symbiont. This concept has leaked into the general awareness of the Buld revolutionaries and it has developed into the common belief in a "soul" as the homuncular component that is hidden away inside people.

macroscopic symbiont

The typical effort to experimentally confirm the bimanoid theory is to collect tissue from humans, digest away the biological components and attempt to identify a remaining non-biological residue, possibly something like a pek nanite, but different. Sadly, Pla'mak and her Interventionist friends don't have the technological means to detect the swarms of tiny devices, even smaller than pek nanites, that are inside their bodies. A popular science fiction theme is macroscopic symbiotic organisms that can reside in human bodies, but what if there was no way to physically detect a symbiont that was hidden away inside us?

Reincarnation
Last year when I was sketching a fan fiction sequel to Sagan's story Contact, I needed a way to account for the ability of Sagan's Hadden character to be so in tune with the aliens. I proposed that it is possible for a collection of nanites to move from one human body to another, essentially carrying a mobile consciousness from one human body to another. Following his death, the symbiotic collection of nanites that was inside Hadden and which allowed him to function as an Interventionist agent leaves his body then migrates and takes up residence inside Kate. To what extent can we say a conscious being exists as that swarm of nanites...maybe such a swarm is only a
"potentially conscious being"? Does that "being" only really exist after being "incarnated" by the nanite swarm establishing a symbiotic relationship with a human body?

The search for new life and new civilizations leads to...

a planet with rivers of lava!

For Exode, I imagine that the pek keep a record of each person's genome. The truth behind Pla'mak's theory of the bimanoid is the presence in each person of zeptoscale nanite-components that function as symbiotic extensions of the Huaoshy. Can we define a human being as a particular body formed around a specific genome in combination with a particular "bimanoid symbiont"? And is every "bimanoid symbiont" actually a conduit for interactions between Humanity and the Huaoshy? I assume that the Huaoshy have very little interest in what happens to most people: no more than we would be able to generate for each blade of grass in a pasture. However, there might be a few critically important times when the Huaoshy would pay more attention to what is going on in the pasture.

First Contact
The "big impending event" in Exode is the arrival of a Buld spaceship in the Solar System. The Huoashy are inherently interested in how the Earthlings might react to First Contact with creatures from another world. Just as much of our own cortical brain activity might not be worthy of close conscious attention, the Huaoshy might ignore most of the information that is available to them from the symbiotic "bimanoid" elements that are inside each person. However, when something special is going to happen (like a First Contact event) the Huaoshy might "tune in" and pay special attention to human affairs...particularly the few humans who will be directly involved in the First Contact.

Hollywood geology

The Huaoshy have ethical restrictions on the extent to which they can interfere with the normal development of sapient species. Since Parthney is preparing for a mission to Earth, the Huaoshy have a "hands off" policy with respect to his thought processes: they would not make use of their "bimanoid interface" with Parthney to take direct control of his behavior. However, Parthney is not just a "typical false Buld". His genome first arose thousands of years ago on another world of the Galactic Core. That genome has previous been "instantiated" in flesh several dozen times and the "bimanoid-generated record" of the brain structure and thought processes for each of those "versions" of "Parthney" is on hand. The zeptoscale symbiont that now resides inside Parthney was carefully designed and it shaped his mind and personality while he was growing up on Hemmal. Was Parthney thus "reincarnated"? Not in the conventional sense, but the person who is Parthney was selected and shaped by the Huaoshy for his special role during the approaching First Contact event between the Buld and Earth.

This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's character Golan Trevize. Asimov never really explained the basis of Golan's perfect "intuition". In the case of Parthney, he is a great choice to play the role of the last Interventionist agent to go from Lendhalen to Earth because the Huaoshy have spent the past 20,000 years searching for the best candidate to play that role, and Parthney is their choice. 

Parthney and Robin

What about Robin? During different parts of Chapter Three in Exode, Robin operates in two distinctive modes. In the "robotic mode", Robin is simply a useful assistant who can cook and perform mundane tasks for Parthney. At other times, Robin instantiates a complex "bimanoid symbiont" that can provide information about conditions on Earth and help shape Parthney's thinking and prepare him for his mission to Earth. That instantiated intelligence that interacts with Parthney from the locus of Robin's robotic body is not really a "reincarnation" of some individual. It is more of a conduit for Huaoshy interaction with the human species: a "user interface" that functions as a nexus of information about all of humanity: this is quite a resource for Parthney!

Specifically, "Robin" can access a "database" containing the available information from each human's "bimanoid symbiont" from all of past human history and the entire present population of Earth. During the time when Parthney is using the conventional records available at Lendhalen to study Earth history, Robin occasionally allows Parthney to access part of the data stream that is available to the Huaoshy from the entire "bimanoid symbiont network" of Humanity. Is this an unfair advantage to give to an Interventionist agent? Not really; the Observers have always been allowed to tap into parts of this available data stream. When the Huaoshy want the Interventionists to be on equal footing with the Overseers they can step in and grant someone like Parthney special access to the bimanoid data. In this way, the Huaoshy have long been able to precisely maintain a balance of power between Interventionists and Overseers.

This balancing act reminds me of the situation that Jack Vance described for the Institute in his Demon Princes novels. Humanity at large was pitted against the institute and the ruling junta of the Institute sometimes sided against the rank and file members of the Institute so as to prevent the institute from too completely stifling Humanity.

"we've learned not to fear words"

One of the reasons that Parthney was selected to be the last Interventionist agent from Lendhalen is that he has a highly efficient brain for making use of his own mirror neurons, resonance between pek nanites in his brain and the brains of other people and utilizing available resonances between his personal "bimanoid symbiont" and the entire "bimanoid symbiont network" of Humanity. When he is given access to special information about Earth and specific Earthlings by Robin, Parthney processes the information at a largely unconscious level that he never questions- and he never discusses this "special access" with his Buld handlers at Lendhalen.

The Savage Curtain
When I was in my "golden age of science fiction" (age 12) and watching Star Trek, there were some episodes that really annoyed me. The Savage Curtain was annoying on many levels including:
1) it was one of the episodes where "good" was pitted against "evil"
2) it had one of the lame paper machete aliens that seemed biologically implausible
3) after the "reincarnation" of historical figures like Lincoln, the Enterprise just hurries on to the next mission..."we only seek out alien civilizations, we don't actually ever learn anything from them"
4) they had to throw in a Klingon.

I don't care what the readings are...he's dead, Jim.

The alien species (Excalbians) resides on a boiling planet, endlessly simmering on medium-high, apparently waiting until spaceships come wandering past. When the Enterprise arrives, the aliens learn to speak the language (English, of course; even the Klingon and the Vulcan speak English) and they create copies of long dead humans, Klingons and Vulcans complete with memories, copies that cannot be distinguished from normal living creatures. Of course, the aliens can also effortlessly take control of the Enterprise. The Excalbians have all of these amazing abilities, but for some reason they can't understand "good" and "evil". Lucky for NBC, they decide to stage a little experiment that will reveal the difference between good and evil. The script suggests that maybe one of the aliens is able to morph into the form of President Lincoln, or else "Lincoln" is simply materialized from scratch. Don't sweat the details...

Spock sums up the advanced technology of the Excalbians: "creatures able to control matter and to rearrange molecules in whatever fashion was desired. So they were able to create images of Surak and Lincoln after scanning our minds and using their fellow creatures as source matter".

Kirk: "Continue to our next assignment".

An hermaphroditic Pla takes the place of Balok

So, President Lincoln wasn't actually reincarnated. The Excalbian's "simply" looked into Kirk's thoughts and used his conceptualization of Lincoln as the basis for making a "Lincoln puppet" that was able to give Kirk the experience of having met Lincoln.

I previously made a list of other Star Trek episodes that might fit into the Exodemic Fictional Universe:
The Squire of Gothos - 2,000,000
Return to Tomorrow - 1,000,000
What Are Little Girls Made Of? - 500,000
All Our Yesterdays - 250,000
The Menagerie - 125,000
The Corbonite Maneuver - 50,000

In this list, "50,000" means that Balok's people might have been a branch of Humanity created by the pek about 50,000 years ago. I'm imagining that various such branches of Humanity might struggle for survival and struggle to advance their civilizations under the watchful guidance of the Huaoshy, thus resulting in scattered populations of humanoid through out the galaxy. Where might the Excalbians fall on this scale? Maybe somewhat behind the disembodied entities depicted in The Squire of Gothos, about 1,500,000?

Why might so many of the civilizations found scattered around the galaxy be confined to just a single planet? If their technologies are controlled by the Huaoshy then we can view them as isolated experiments, a few of which, like the Buld, are granted access to space travel technology. Maybe the Excalbians are not actually humanoids; possibly something quite alien like the Fru'wu. For Exode, I imagine that there are about 20 other sapient species from our galaxy being "cultured" by the pek.

Balok

Maybe only a few of these "experimental cultures" are designed to test the survivability of species under difficult conditions where there can be competition between "good" and "evil". In the case of the Buld, Pla'mak fears that they have made a mistake by allowing the Earthlings to rapidly develop a technological civilization. The Buld naively worked towards the goal of providing Earthlings with the ability to develop a technological civilization because they  could not imagine the kinds of "evil" that can arise from putting advanced technologies in the hands of the primitive Earthlings.

If the Huaoshy have been trying to "immunize" the Earthlings against the possibility of self-inflicted technological disasters, might Pla'mak sometimes find it useful to design experiments to test the "survival instincts" of people like Gwyned? Gwyned defies the rules that are imposed at Lendhalen, but her intentions are good. Might she actually qualify for service on Earth as an Interventionist agent, particularly if the Overseers abandon their work on Earth? Pla'mak and Pla'kao would have a hard time agreeing on that, just as they have differing views on what role the Interventionists should continue to play on Earth.

Original art by Pat Brennan

Asimov's Angst
For me, this raises the same issues that were explored by Asimov with his Laws of Robotics. Even if you are guided by good intentions, might your actions have disastrous consequences?

In The End of Eternity, Noÿs was ready to risk nuclear destruction in order to make sure that time travel technology did not arise. The interventionists are willing to risk technological disaster in order to give the primitive Earthlings a chance to survive and not be replaced by the hermaphroditic Prelands.

In Foundation and Earth, Golan is troubled by a similar dilemma. Is safety worth the cost of converting Humanity into Galaxia?

In the end, Exode must focus these sorts of questions squarely on the reader. Do we Earthlings have the wisdom to shape our own future as a species? Do we trust ourselves to make choices about the course of our civilization or would we welcome a god-like force such as the Huaoshy who could make decisions for us?

Kach and friends

If, on the basis of irrefutable evidence, that god-like power decided that it is not wise to allow Humanity access to science and advanced technology, would we object and insist that we be given a chance to prove our worth before being dumped into the waste bin of evolution? If given such an opportunity, what would be the wisest course for we Earthlings to take in trying to survive our technological adolescence? Does any one individual (such as Pla'kao) or any group of humans have the right to make such a decision?

In Foundation and Earth Golan Trevize had an ego that was large enough to encompass the entire galaxy; he was ready to decide the fate of the human species. In Exode, the Buld (and the Pla subgroup) have lived through ghastly experiences that make them humble and cautious. Gwyned is ready and willing to act decisively, but she finds no practical means to implement her plans. She is ready, but the time is not right. Kach will be in the right place at the right time.

Top, Pla'mak; bottom, Pla'kao

Pla'mak and Pla'kao
Back in January I started trying to imagine back stories for the co-directors of Lendhalen, Pla'mak and Pla'kao. Every 30 years they each go through "partial change" and they must then begin a period of re-learning who they are. Pla'kao went through partial changes in 1930, 1960 and 1990. During World War I, Pla'kao was profoundly influenced by the way that Earthlings began applying their growing scientific knowledge and technological sophistication to the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Up until the 20th century, Pla'kao and Pla'mak were in fundamental agreement about the mission of Lendhalen as a base for training Interventionists agents. However, after about 1925 Pla'kao began to develop fundamentally new ideas for the role of Interventionists on Earth. Pla'kao now believes that the true mission of the Interventionists has been the introduction of gene combinations to Earth that might regulate human behavior and prevent the Earthlings from destroying their budding technological civilization in a self-inflicted disaster similar to what obliterated the Fru'wu home world.

In contrast, Pla'mak remains true to the original goal of the Interventionists: pushing for ever more advanced technology on Earth. Pla'mak agrees with Gwyned: the Earthlings should be given all of the advanced technologies that are available to the Buld. Both Pla'mak and Pla'kao agree that they need to know more about the Overseers and their plans, particularly what will happen to Observer Base on the Moon when the Buld spaceship reaches Earth in the near future. Pla'kao wants to make sure that The Overseers continue to operate out of Observer Base; thon believes that the Overseers can act to prevent the Earthlings from continuing to develop technology at a pace too fast for them to control. Pla'mak want's to evict the Overseers, making it possible for the Interventionists to freely help the Earthlings adopt the advanced technologies that are available to the Buld who live in the Galactic Core.

Parthney is sent off to Earth, very much the man in the middle between the conflicting views of Pla'kao and Pla'mak.

____________________

Note. This is the third part of a three part series of blog posts in which I sort out the end game for the Interventionists who have been working for 20,000 years to bring we Earthlings out of the stone age.
Part One.
Part Two.

Bimanoid Interface. For more about the "bimanoid interface" see the next blog post.