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.

Time Warp

The events in Chapter One of Exode all take place within a 24 hour period, the day when Parthney abandons his life on the world where he was born, Hemmal. Chapter Two describes Parthney's journey from Hemmal to the nearby planet Oib, a trip that only takes a couple of days. Counted in Earth time, Parthney is 18 years old when he leaves Hemmal.

Chapter Three of Exode encompasses four years of Parthney's life, the years during which he is trained for his mission to Earth. Jack Vance's novel Araminta Station starts with a similar chronology. The main character, Glawen, is 16 years old at the start of the story. The first two chapters (147 pages) describe Araminta Station on the planet Cadwal as well as Glawen's budding romance with Sessily Veder and her mysterious disappearance. The first six pages of Chapter III outline the next three years of Glawen's life: time spent by Glawen in his studies at the Araminta Station Lyceum and in training as a cadet in the local police force.

Gwyned Iwedon

As is the case for the first section of Chapter III in Araminta Station, the first pages of Chapter Three in Exode must mesh with the events that brought the end of the "innocent years" of the protagonist's early life. Parthney arrives at Lendhalen, the secret base of the Buld revolutionaries who have liberated themselves from their pek masters. Most of the elements of Pathney's past life begin to fade away, including his rather bumbling romantic adventures with Reginal, Muchlo, and Pla'va. At Lendhalen, Leymaygn and Gwyned teach Parthney to read and write and also how to use musical notation. Parthney is fascinated by the musical instruments of Earth, but repulsed by the more dreary aspects of life on Earth: hunger, disease, crime and war.

After Parthney has lived for three years at Lendhalen he is seriously considering the possibility of living out the rest of his life there and never going to Earth. The co-directors of Lendhalen, Pla'mak and Pla'kao, must reveal more than they would like to Parthney about the dangers facing the people of Earth. It is 1970, Earth is struggling with an exploding population, pollution, and a nuclear arms race.

Earth

For seven million years the Overseers have guided the course of primate evolution on Earth. The people of Earth have never known that alien visitors arrived on Earth long ago, but now a Buld spaceship is nearing Earth after a 15,000 year long journey from the Galactic Core. Pla'mak and Pla'kao inform Parthney that if the Buld make contact with the Earthlings then the Overseers might abandon their management of Earth. Parthney is led to wonder: could humanity survive on its own or might human civilization self-destruct, as happened to the alien Fru'wu? By explaining that events on Earth are reaching a critical juncture Pla'mak and Pla'kao manage to rekindle Parthney's desire to go to Earth.

At the end of Chapter Three, Parthney must say goodby to Gwyned. He likes the idea she return with him to Earth where they could work together as Interventionist agents, but she is left behind at Lendhalen, still struggling to make sense of the alien technology that has been given to the Buld. Gwyned makes Parthney promise that if he ever has the chance to liberate someone like herself from Earth he will do so, even if he would personally prefer to do otherwise. She offers her opinion, "Earth is giant mistake, a world of the half-living...you owe it to yourself, for the sake of your own sanity, to aid anyone who wants to get out."

So Chapter Three must have two lengthy time warps, one jumping over most of Pathney's first three years at Lendhalen and another over his final phase of training. Parthney matures dramatically and goes through many changes during his years living at Lendhalen. The care-free days of his youth are put behind him and he leaves for Earth with many doubts and great apprehension, having been informed that he has a good chance of being recognized and captured by Overseers soon after his arrival on Earth. So great is that risk that he is not even told how he will reach Earth so that he cannot reveal that secret if he is identified as an Interventionist agent and captured.

Poster
The Exode poster, above, is having some fun with an old James Bond poster (image to the right). Since Parthney arrives on Earth from Oib (so he thinks; he never knows the true location of the Lendhalen training base) I put in an image of Earth. The woman at the computer terminal is meant to be Hana. Like Gwyned, Hana is a physicist. Parthney uses the name "Henry Montpellier" during some of his time on Earth, in particular, at the time when he reveals his true identity to Hana and then teleports her away from Earth.

In the original poster, I suppose that the woman behind Bond is meant to be Daniela Bianchi, in the role of a soviet intelligence agent who is used to lure Bond into a trap. In Exode, Parthney must duel with an Overseer who lives on Earth using the name Belinda Tement. Belinda's search for the source of new gene combinations that have been appearing on Earth leads her to Hana's son. Belinda befriends Hana and ultimately captures Parthney, taking him to the Observer Base on the Moon. The woman standing in the background beside Parthney is meant to be Overseer Tement.

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?


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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.

Robots of Lendhalen

by Sabine Vogel

I've been sketching in details about the people who prepare Parthney for his mission to Earth. Parthney's training as an Interventionist agent is the subject of Chapter Three in Exode. For previous stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe the Interventionist agents have simply appeared on Earth and gone about their duties. Providing a detailed account of where Interventionists come from was one of my major goals for Exode.

Parthney spends nearly four years in training, learning to read and write and discovering how people live on Earth. During that time he only "interacts" with five other people: two Pla, two other Buld and one human from Earth. I put "interacts" in quotes because during his training Parthney has no nanites in his body and he does not come into physical contact with any source of nanites. The two Pla carry nanites in their bodies so they only communicate with Parthney by electronic communications. The other two Buld, like Parthney, have been cleansed of nanites. They live in the same small community with Parthney and a woman from Earth named Gwyned Iwedon. The Buld call this isolated little community "Lendhalen", meaning, in the ancient Buld language, roughly "tamed spring"; a name applied long ago with the intention that good things would hopefully flow from a place where people could live without interference from nanites. The exact location of Lendhalen is never revealed to Parthney; it has gravity like Earth's but since the Buld have technology that allows them to modulate gravity, Lendhalen might be anywhere in the Koly star system.

apologies to Cornelia Klimek
  and Liz Watt

In addition to the four human residents, there are some robots living in Lendhalen. These robots are of Buld manufacture, but they are not very sophisticated compared to the artificial lifeforms that Parthney has lived among his entire life: the pek. For the past 20,000 years the Buld of Oib have been slowly developing the ability to make complex devices. Initially they worked to build spaceships and by 15,000 years ago they had copied and come to understand much of the spaceship technology that had been originally provided to the Buld Clan by the pek. Originally developed as part of the Buld spaceship technology, they have the means to generate artificial gravity. A major limitation on the pace of Buld science and technology has been the small number of Buld scientists and engineers.

About 10,000 years ago the Buld learned how to make space elevators that were strong enough to lift people off of Oib. As was the case for Buld spaceship technology, Buld understanding of space elevators was possible because they could study and copy the space elevators installed by the pek on worlds like Hemmal.

Another major technology development project of the Buld has been the creation of humanoid robots. The Buld science of robotics reached its peak about 5,000 years ago when it became possible for them to manufacture humanoid robots that could comfortably live among the Buld as servants. It is not difficult to distinguish between these robots and people, but they have proven useful, particularly as assistants for those Buld who choose to live without the conveniences provided by pek nanites.

During the past 5000 years no star system of the Galactic Core has sent more humans to Earth than the Koly system. This productivity in recruiting and training Interventionist agents within the Koly system can be attributed to the strong influence if the Pla and their efficient utilization of humanoid robots. Not all of these robots take human form. Some Buld keep robotic pets that usually take the form of mammals like cats.

During the past 500 years the Interventionist agents from the Koly system have had unusually good luck avoiding capture by Overseers. This has been attributed to the fact that the Koly system has been provided with a fairly steady stream of humans from Earth. Occasionally the  Interventionist agents who are working on Earth teleport an Earthling off of Earth. All three of the Interventionist teleporters on Earth transmit to the main Interventionist base of the Fru'wu. The Fru'wu can greatly influence the final destination of these humans who arrive in the Galactic Core from Earth (see Klyz). In most cases the Fru'wu send these displaced Earthlings on to places like the Koly system where they can help train Interventionist agents for survival on Earth.

photoshop some eyes

Before Parthney arrives at Lendhalen for training, Gwyned has already been living there for three years. During that time, Gwyned has been "debriefed" by the Buld. For Interventionists, such debriefings are the main source of information about conditions on Earth. Gwyned had formed a kind of "family" with the Buld and the robots of Koly, but she is more than anxious for human companionship when Parthney arrives. However, she quickly dismisses Parthney as an ignorant and chubby kid. Also, due to her unusual parents, Gwyned is almost like a different species than Parthney, so they are not physically attracted to each other.

Under Oib

One of the first science fiction novels I read was John Brunner's Born Under Mars. I have not seen that book for 40 years, but I fondly recall the mood that it created: Mars as a kind of rundown slum of the galaxy.

Brunner depicted Mars as the first world settled by colonists from Earth, but with time, humanity reached the stars and Mars became a nearly forgotten backwater. Brunner imagined that the human residents of Mars were very tall due to the low gravity of their home world.

In Exode, there are obvious similarities between Mars and the planet Oib. The Huaoshy selected the Koly star system as the key base of operations for Buld revolutionaries because of similarities between that star system and the Solar System. Specifically, because of their attempt to terraform Oib, the Buld develop technology for transmitting vast amounts of power through space. Later, they can share that technology with Earth.

Oib is not as dead as Mars and the pek have put some effort into making Oib more human-friendly during the past 7 million years. Hemmal and Oib are called the "paired planets" by the residents of Oib. Nobody would be living on Oib if it were not right next door to the Earth-like Hemmal. The pek have fun terraforming Hemmal and providing it with terrain that is modeled on Earthly locals. In a joking mood, the pek even provided Oib with moons that look like the Moons of Mars. It is almost as if the pek want people from the Koly system to feel right at home in our Solar system.

welcome to Oib

At the end of Chapter Two of Exode, Parthney's adventure has brought him into orbit over Oib and he believes that he will soon be on his way down to the surface of Oib. Of course, the surface of Oib is a lethal environment for humans. People live under the surface of Oib.

In Brunner's story the protagonist, martian Ray Mallin, returns to his home and surprisingly finds his quiet world involved in the galactic equivalent of cold war spy shenanigans. In Exode, Oib is like Cuba, close to the affluent shore of Hemmal/Florida, but the technology of Oib is dull and home-spun compared to the flashiness of Hemmal.

Oib is the home of a band of revolutionaries who have freed themselves and run away from the "slave society" of Hemmal. The revolutionaries view the people of Hemmal as little better than cattle, being bred and fattened by the mysterious Creators who brought humans from Earth to the distant worlds of the Galactic Core. However, what if you start a glorious revolutionary and you boldly declare your independence and go where no Buld has gone before...and nobody cares?

Or, even worse, what if it appears that the capitalist pigs on the mainland have co-opted the glorious revolution and are manipulating it so as to slyly advance their own diabolical domination of humanity? On Oib, the spiritual fire of revolution is now 20,000 years old and only a few "grumpy old men" remain to stir the last dying ember. When Parthney arrives at Oib, having missed the party by 20 millennia, he has to wonder what he is getting himself into. In a galaxy dominated by the high-tech equivalents of stealth bombers and cruise missiles, Parthney is sent off to the front line battle on Earth without even a toothbrush.

Prison of Space

I just reached the end of Chapter Two of Exode and the story has now reached 34,000 words. I had originally planed to call the second chapter "Oib", a chapter about preparing Parthney for a new life on Earth, but then I became aware of an entirely new aspect of the history of human Interventionists, a kind of cultural fossil that adds a new dimension to Parthney's adventure. "Prison of Space" is the new title of Chapter Two.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, Parthney meets a Buld named Pla'va on the way to Oib. Pla'va is a Pla. The Pla are a small subgroup of the Buld Clan that came into existence about 20,000 years ago as a result of Fru'wu intervention into Buld culture.

Sci Fi in the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Howard Brown;
Science and Invention, August 1924.

The Fru'wu are an alien species from our galaxy with advanced technology. The Fru'wu helped the Pla learn how to use nanites of their own design to prevent pek nanites from infecting Buld brain tissue.

In the ancient Buld language "pla" means "free". Without pek nanites in their brains the Pla were able to develop and use a written language. Buld who have pek nanites in their brains have altered brain function: the parts of the brain that normally allow humans to read, write and efficiently manipulate tools are used for other functions, particularly for producing a kind of nanite-assisted telepathic resonance between Buld individuals.

Double Negative

One model of how light is detected. Double negative.

During the past seven million years the pek have worked to modify the brains of primates. The human species was brought into existence by the pek who wanted

A) a primate with the ability to use written language, make and use tools and function within a technologically advanced civilization.

At the same time, the pek wanted to design a primate that would

B) not misuse technology or destroy itself.

For humans, the desired combination (both A and B, above) has not yet come together, so for most of the past 200,000 years the pek have been placing nanites into human brains. Those nanites prevent humans from efficiently using written language, making and using tools. However, it is a trivial process for the pek to inactivate those nanites and liberate humans from their inhibitory effects on brain function.

The pek were forced to begin allowing such liberation of human mental abilities about 20,000 years ago. By negating the effects of the inhibitory nanites human civilization and written history were begun on Earth. (This is accomplished by making use of special nanites provided by a time traveler from Earth's future.)

Arrival of aliens

How were the pek forced to to allow Earthlings to develop a technological civilization? This is a long story, a story that is is never fully explained within Exode. However, the part of the story that is included in Exode centers on the fact that about 15,000 years ago, with the assistance of the Pla, the Buld Clan was able to send one of their spaceships towards Earth. Buld spaceships cannot travel faster than the speed of light, so the pek knew that it would take nearly 15,000 years for the Buld to reach Earth and make contact with Earthlings. The pek were forced to accept a plan aimed at producing a technological civilization on Earth so that when the Buld arrived the Earthlings would at least be able to understand what was happening.

Fountain of Youth

The Pla discovered that without pek nanites in their brains they suffered from neurodegeneration and senility. However, they found a trick that allowed for rejuvenation of their brains. Normal Buld physiology protects against the possibility of the hermaphroditic Buld experiencing an auto-fertilization. However, the Pla developed the technological means to achieve auto-fertilization. A Buld embryo that is genetically identical to its parent will not completely replace the parental cells with new cells from the embryo. However, the most aged and decrepit cells of the parent are replaced and the presence of new stem cells from the embryo can rejuvenate Pla brain tissue.

When the Pla went through this "partial Change" they were able to retain their protection against having their brains infected by pek nanites. However, there were subtle effects from repeatedly going through the "partial Change" rejuvenation. Most importantly, over time the bodies of the Pla accumulate cells that have lost the extra chromosome that genetically distinguishes the Buld from Earth humans. In effect, the Pla slowly become phenotypically part human. They grow larger than typical Buld and start taking on some human morphological features not seen in Buld. Pla'va is phenotypically intermediate between Buld and human, which initially puzzles Parthney.

Pla'va is something of an outcast, condemned to loneliness on thons spaceship. Pla'va tries to talk Parthney into staying on the spaceship, but Chapter Two ends with Parthney saying goodby to Pla'va and heading for the surface of Oib. Pla'va remains alone, trapped in the prison of space.

Oib and its Interventionists

Oib and one of its moons

At the end of Chapter One of Exode, Parthney is ready to leave the planet of his birth and will soon be on his way to Oib where he will be trained as an Interventionist agent.

The Paired Planets
Is Oib a planet or an asteroid? According to the definitions used by the Buld Clan both Hemmal and Oib are asteroids because they both received large amounts of water by having been at the edge of a forming asteroid belt in the Koly star system. The Buld residents of Oib call the star of the Hemmal/Oib system "Koly", one of the words for "star" in the ancient Buld Clan language.

Hemmal is slightly larger than Earth while Oib is about half the size of Earth. Since they are large and they both have liquid metal cores they also meet the Buld definition of being planets. The Buld who live on Oib refer to Hemmal and Oib as the "paired planets".

While the crust of Oib has a large amount of water, near the surface there is only frozen water and Oib has no oceans of liquid water. Hemmal orbits closer to Koly and has a large water ocean with little land. Oxygen producing organisms in that ocean long ago gave Hemmal an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Oib has a thin atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and some water. The weak magnetic field of Oib does not completely shield the planet against stellar or cosmic radiation. The Buld inhabitants of Oib, about 50,000 in all, live under the surface. Like Hemmal, Oib has space elevators that facilitate movement between the surface and orbit.

The Buld Clan colonized Oib about 15,000 years ago. At that time, Oib had three moons the smallest of which was transformed into a spaceship construction facility where during the past 15,000 years many Buld spaceships have been constructed and sent off to travel between the stars, mostly moving between the many planets of the galactic core where humans reside. Even more colony stations have been built that remain in the Koly star system, mostly within the asteroid belt beyond Oib. Some of the Buld colony stations are in orbit around moons of the system's gas giants. The total population of Buld living in the scattered space stations of the Koly star system is now greater than the population of Oib.

Oxygen-producing artificial lifeform on Oib

The other two original moons of Oib have become giant factories for the production of solar energy collectors. A long range plan of the Buld is to eventually place enough solar collectors in orbit around Oib so that it will be possible to warm the surface of Oib above the freezing point of water. Several asteroids have been shifted into orbits around Oib where they are mined for resources and they are now counted among its moons.

Another major planetary engineering project is on Oib itself. The Buld have designed several artificial lifeforms that are spreading across the surface where they use Koly light to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. Another family of artificial lifeforms functions under the surface to facilitate the movement of geothermally heated water towards the surface. The Buld have also begun a long-term project that will start to heat the core of Oib and prevent the magnetic field from declining further.

Another major project for the Buld is moving mass to Oib from other parts of the Koly star system. In particular, they have been shifting nitrogen and carbon dioxide to Oib in an effort to build up its atmosphere. For the past 7 million years the space elevators of Hemmal have been used to lift water into orbit. Most of that water is redirected to Oib.

The original Buld who first came to Hemmal wanted to study the Unetic Clan, the Prelands who live on Hemmal. Buld first took up residence on Hemmal, but later, as discussed below, conditions changed and other Buld colonized Oib. Only a minority of the Buld continue to study the Prelands: these Buld were known as the lisden, but now they are more commonly called the Buld scholars.

A major distinction between the Buld who live on Hemmal and the Buld on Oib is the different interactions that they have with the pek. There are no humanoid pek on Oib. On Hemmal the lives of the Buld are constantly supported by humanoid pek who live within Buld society and apply their advanced nanite technology to shape the lives of the Buld. The pek still live among the Buld of Oib, but in the form of the non-humanoid meonuck, as described below. The term "pek" is not used on Oib, but meonuck are a non-humanoid type of pek.

On the Origins of the Buld Interventionists

The Buld on Oib also have access to another type of nanotechnology that was developed about 20,000 years ago with the help of the Fru'wu. The main shift due to Fru'wu intervention into the Buld Clan culture was that some Buld were given the chance to free themselves from dependence on pek nanites: these "liberated" Buld became the Interventionists. The Buld Interventionists originated as a branch of the lisden and after they no longer had pek nanites interfering with their brain function they quickly developed the first Buld written language. With help from the Fru'wu, they were able to exclude pek nanites from their brains and then liberate themselves from the meonuck, having found the means to use Fru'wu-inspired technology to support their existence in the absence of pek nanites. The Buld Interventionists keep themselves apart from the other Buld in order to prevent themselves from again becoming "infected" by pek nanites.

Buld (and humans) that host large numbers of pek nanites in their brains are unable to use written language and almost completely unable to use and manufacture tools. This nanite-mediated modulation of brain function is how the pek prevent humans from developing a technological culture over long periods of time. Other limitations on technology development by the Interventionists are their small number and the fact that they are scattered widely within the galactic core on planets like Oib and lack an efficient means of interstellar communication.

source

Freed of pek nanites, the lisden that would become the Buld Interventionists studied the technology of Buld spaceships (which had been provided to the Buld by the pek) and their newly won understanding that technology allowed for the first Buld-constructed spaceships. The Buld could now make their own colony ships for travel between the stars at near light speed as well as colony stations that allowed the Buld to start settling worlds like Oib.

The first act of "intervention" by the Buld scholars who were becoming the Buld Interventionists was initiated with the further connivance of the Fru'wu who provided the location if Earth. The Buld Interventionists sent one of their spaceships to Earth with the intention of making "first contact" with Earthlings. In Exode, after the long journey out to Earth from the galactic core, that spaceship is finally nearing Earth.

Pla'va (right) and Ka'po, the meonuck, on approach to Oib

With the help of the secretive Buld Interventionists, a faction of the Buld scholars of Oib have been able to adapt available technologies to the goal of terraforming Oib, but most Buld have little interest in technology. This is due to the fact that the brains of most Buld remain infected by pek nanites.

The Meonuck
Unlike the Buld of Hemmal, the lives of the Buld on Oib are not organized around community temples. However, the Buld of Oib each have a symbiotic familiar known as a meonuck, an important Buld cultural element that began on the earliest Buld spacecraft. These meonuck are composed of pek nanites and they facilitate both the feeding of the Buld and a rudimentary reproductive function that allows for slow growth of the Buld population. The meonuck also regulate Buld reproduction in a manner similar to that achieved by temple bothets on Hemmal. The meonuck are also the source of the nanites that colonize Buld brain tissue when Buld go through the Change, although on Oib the Change is viewed as a medical issue and educational opportunity, not cause for a religious ritual.

Parthney and Pla'va

In Chapter Two of Exode, Parthney is transported from Hemmal to Oib in a spaceship piloted by Pla'va. Pla'va is a special Interventionist agent who can move among the Buld of Oib without fear of thons brain being infected by pek nanites. When attempts to remove pek nanites from Buld brains were first successful, it was learned that the normal Buld reproductive process could be subverted and provide a way to "immunize" such "liberated" Buld against reinfection with pek nanites.

The Interventionists are particularly interested in recruiting "false" Buld into their ranks. False Buld (like Parthney) are genetically identical to Earthlings and are used as Interventionist agents on Earth. The Interventionists take pains to keep their operations secret and themselves free of pek nanites, although experience suggests that despite precautions their activities are constantly monitored by the pek. With alarming frequency entire groups of Interventionists are suddenly eliminated.

Asteroid outpost.
image by hailfire191
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

One of the deepest secrets of the human Interventionists on Oib is that they work in coordination with the Fru'wu. Most Buld believe that there was a period of contact between the Buld and the Fru'wu thousands of years in the past, but the Buld Interventionists have secretly continued to cooperate with the Fru'wu.

Of particular relevance to Parthney when he reaches Oib is the fact that about 10,000 years ago the Fru'wu provided teleportation technology that allows the efficient transfer of human Interventionist agents to Earth. The top priority of the Buld Interventionists during the past 10,000 years has been to accelerate technological progress on Earth in an effort to make sure that Earthlings will at least understand what is happening when the first Buld spaceship reaches Earth.

Related Reading:  the Fru'wu of Ver'la

Next: Prison of Space

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Northern Cuisine

I've been crafting the last few characters for inclusion in Chapter One of Exode. Mentioned previously, Yandrey is a 15,000 year old hermaphroditic Buld. In search of an image of Yandrey to hold in my mind, I went online and "googled" away, ultimately finding a young model who looks not at all like we might normally picture as an ancient individual, but I was thinking that almost all Buld look like young adults. Why "almost"?

At first, I entertained the possibility that there would be a fairly conventional way to expand the Buld population, so there would be a way for new Buld to grow through childhood and adolescence. However, the more I think about it, the less I want to make room in Exode for Buld children. Then where do the new Buld come from when the Buld Clan must be increased in number? I've decided that the pek have a special Temple ceremony during which new Buld adult can be "created from scratch" using a Buld conceptus and a nanite-based "template" for the Buld body form. I like the idea that the Buld religion includes the opportunity for such acts of creation. There need be no Buld children in the conventional sense. However, while new Buld individuals will have an adult body, they will have minds that are mostly blank, child-like and ready to learn the ways of their world.

the challenge of growing food on a spaceship

So much for the "true" Buld...but what of the "false" Buld? False Buld, such a the main character of Exode, Parthney, lack the special chromosome that distinguishes the "true" Buld from Earthlings. After being taken from the body of his mother at about 50 days of life*, Parthney was gestated inside a pek surrogate mother and then raised at a special school by a small community of pek. In Chapter One, at the start of Exode, Parthney is a young adult who has been out of school and exploring his world for a few years.

How diverse a biological group is the Buld Clan and what is their evolutionary history? In thinking about this question, I'm reminded of the people in Asimov's imagined Galactic Empire.

synthetic meat

70 years ago the first stories in what was to become Asimov's Foundation Series were published. Asimov imagined a galaxy-spanning Empire of 25,000,000 Earth-like worlds with Trantor as the capitol. That Empire was in collapse and hope for galactic civilization's recovery from collapse rested with Hari Seldon's plan for two Foundations, established at the extreme "opposite" ends of the galaxy as dictated by psychohistorical necessity. 45 years later Asimov finally got around to writing the story of how Hari Seldon came to Trantor and began his efforts to create a useful science of Psychohistory.

eastern

southern

Like many science fiction stories abut the future, the Foundation stories were soon overtaken by the rapid pace of scientific and technological reality, but there are also some interesting gems in the stories, examples of where Asimov's imagination was ahead of its time. In Prelude to Foundation, written long before any of us could "google" the internet and search electronically for information, one of the characters is described as "computering" Hari Seldon in order to learn about his work.

northern Neanderthal

As an example of where Asimov's imagination failed, although Prelude to Foundation was written long after other science fiction stories like Star Trek depicted people in the future as being constantly in communication (by means of electronic communications devices), poor Hari Seldon becomes lost on Trantor, a planet with 40,000,000,000 other people, and the plot depends on Seldon having no means to communicate with anyone or call for help!

Also in Prelude to Foundation, Asimov addressed the issue of there being different types of residents on Trantor: what were known as Easterners, Westerners and Southerners. Seldon lives on Trantor at a time 20,000 years in our future and the telepathic robot Daneel has been careful to make humanity forget about Earth, so Hari must wonder why there are no "Northerners". Asimov wanted to show us that there were distinct populations such as "Easterners" on Trantor. I understad that Asimov needed to show the Galactic Empire in decline, but why did Asimov decide to depict humanity 20,000 years in our future as still being plagued by racial bigotry?

Human Evolution
What has produced the most obvious human phenotypic variations over the course of the past 100,000 years? Current thinking suggests that we are naked apes that spread across the world from an origin in Africa, modern humans have been subject to natural selection for different patterns of pigmentation and other minor genetic changes that set various human populations apart in terms of their superficial appearance.

In contrast to Asimov's vision of a phenotypically diverse future human population, Larry Niven's novel Ringworld suggested that about a thousand years in our future, due to easy travel, all of the original distinctive varieties of humans will have exchanged their genes and the people of Earth will have become a rather homogenous phenotypic mixture resulting from the recombination of all humanity's genes. When I first read the Foundation Trilogy it was in the form of paperback editions of the novels as published by Avon. I found the human figures depicted in the cover art on those editions puzzling and disturbing. For decades, with those Avon Foundation novels on my book shelf, I guessed that maybe the artist imagined an efficient gene mixing process for the people of Asimov's Galactic Empire...with no need for protection from Earth's equatorial sun light, maybe humanity in the future had mostly lost its dark pigmentation. What I found disturbing in those cover illustrations was that the depicted people seemed somehow alien.

I've been imagining that the people of Hemmal are all lightly pigmented. The "false" Buld from Hemmal (such as Parthney) are intended to travel to Earth and function as Interventionist agents in England or English-speaking nations. However, the Buld Clan originated as a group of Genesaunts who traveled between the many human-settled worlds of the galactic core. There needs to be significant diversity in Buld appearance spanning the full range of phenotypic diversity as found among Earthlings. When Parthney leaves Hemmal he travels to the nearby world Oib and meets some Buld who, in contrast to the inhabitants of Hemmal, were not intentionally designed to be genetically similar to the Earthlings who call themselves Englishmen. What should such Buld look like? Surely some of the humans on Oib must be more darkly pigmented than the pale folk of Hemmal.

There is some evidence that darkly pigmented human skin has evolved as an adaptation of "naked apes" to strong sunlight. If proto-human apes with light skin and dark hair were originally taken away from Earth about 7 million years ago and domesticated by the pek on worlds such as Hemmal then what would the first humans have looked like? Would phenotypic traits such as hair and skin pigmentation of the early Buld depend on the specific planetary environment where the first humans were crafted by the pek or would the artificial cultural conditions imposed by the pek be unlikely to constrain phenotypic variable such as skin pigmentation?

Food - another environmental wild card
On Earth, human evolution has been constrained by the need to obtain food from natural sources. What might happen to human evolution under conditions where people had an artificial source of food?

Back when Asimov was dreaming up the first Foundation stories it was hard to imagine how it might be possible to feed a large world population. And what about feeding people in spaceships or space stations where you can't easily grow natural food plants?

Asimov developed the idea that it might become possible (and efficient) to grow large amounts of yeast and process those cultured cells into food for billions of people. In Prelude to Foundation, this idea of manufactured food was developed extensively as an aspect of the strange culture that Hari Seldon finds in the "Mycogen Sector" of Trantor. For the proper development of Psychohistory, it is important that Seldon experience the cultural diversity of the various sectors of Trantor. Asimov depicted the people of Mycogen as being masters of manufacturing palatable synthetic food in their underground factories. Given sufficiently advanced technology, just how exotic might synthetic food become in the future?

Reginal the bothet, Parthney and Muchlo

In Exode, humans have been crafted by the pek under artificial conditions on worlds of the galactic core. For the past 7 million years there has been gene flow from these worlds back to Earth resulting in we Earthlings. On worlds such as Hemmal, the Buld continue to live under artificial conditions. I've decided that the Prelands are fed by artificial means as part of religious rituals in their temples. The pek have at their command swarms of nanoscopic devices. During Preland temple rituals food is shuttled into the bodies of the Prelands in the form of a stream of microscopic particles. Most Prelands believe that eating bulk food is nothing more than the undesirable predicament of primitive creatures. In contrast, Parthney, as a "false" Buld, enjoys eating "real food" and he insists that the temple pek provide him with food that he can eat "the old fashioned way". One consequence of the dietary practices of the Prelands is that they have small jaws and retain their "baby teeth" into adulthood. As mentioned previously, the pek who live among the Buld on Hemmal generally mimic some of the distinctive Preland facial features, particularly their small mouths and jaws.

Another derived Preland phenotype is greatly reduced olfaction and gustatory sensation. The synthetic food that Prelands find a palatable element of their temple rituals cannot be enjoyed by the Buld. However, the pek find it easy to synthesize food that the Buld can tolerate. Most Buld on Hemmal try to emulate the Preland indifference to food, but some Buld partake in the disreputable pastime of seeking out and savoring "bulk food" which the pek will prepare, when asked to do so. Parthney, as a "false" Buld, refuses to participate in temple food rituals and makes no attempt to hide his preference for "bulk food".

the paired planets Hemmal and Oib

Unfortunately for the "true" Buld who enjoy "bulk food", they have very small stomachs and can never consume much "roughage" at one time. This dietary restriction is one of the means by which the pek try to prevent "true" Buld from abandoning the organized Genesaunt culture that is maintained by the pek. However, there are some "true" Buld on worlds like Oib who try to live beyond the reach of the pek. Special liquid diets have been developed for the "true" Buld on Oib where there are no temple feeding ceremonies or pek-directed feeding nanites.

Kach
On worlds such as Hemmal, the "false" Buld are made use of in two distinct ways by the scheming pek. Males, such as Parthney, are recruited for service on Earth as Interventionists agents. Females, such as Kach, are valuable to the Buld scholars because they can live among the Prelands and obtain information about Preland culture. The true Buld carry too many nanites in their brains: their cognitive functions are disrupted when they try to live among the Prelands. In Chapter One of Exode, Kach is established in her career as an observer of Preland culture on Hemmal and Parthney is started on his path towards Earth.

Typically Interventionist agents on Earth remain there until they die, but Parthney is destined to be captured by Overseers and removed from his duty on Earth.

Before Parthney leaves Hemmal, Kach plays a trick on him. After Parthney is removed from Earth and makes his way back to the galactic core he learns how Kach tricked him. By this time, Parthney knows that he has been selected by the alien Fru'wu for a special mission to the Andromeda galaxy.

The Fru'wu initially plan that Parthney and Hana (a woman who was born on Earth) can travel together to the Andromeda galaxy, but Hana believes that Parthney killed her husband. Parthney goes to Hemmal and offers Kach the chance to go with him to the Andromeda galaxy. Kach agrees to give up her work on Hemmal for several reasons: 1) because she views the mission to Andromeda as a way to prevent her son from becoming an Interventionist agent on Earth, and 2) she wants to have a chance to meet the Creators, the alien beings who are venerated in Preland religion as the creators of the human species.

One of the fun parts of the dynamic between Kach and Parthney is that Kach's religious beliefs about the Creators essentially contain the truth about human origins. Parthney is a "skeptic" and believes that humans evolved on Earth.
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* - Note: I later decided that Parthney's biological origin was more complex than what I suggested here in this blog post.

image source - cleaned book covers by aldomann - Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License