The Phasi Heights

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art work by Zdeněk Burian.

Zeta, Yōd and I brought in the new year with an argument over the fate of Trysta. There is agreement among investigators of Deep Time that both Ekcolir and Trista played major roles in the Final Reality Change. For her part, Trysta went back in time about 10,000 years and helped initiate the development of human civilization, then she died on Earth in our distant past. After her death, the replicoid of Trysta became active.

Yōd grew up on Tar'tron where Trysta is a legendary figure. Apparently the replicoid of Trysta spent a long period of time living on Tar'tron and her casual comments became source material for speculative fiction writers.

According to Zeta, the historical archives of the Writers Block hint at the idea that before Trysta's replicoid was sent from Earth to the Galactic Core, she first had a mission on Earth.

Vigil on the Phasi Heights.

The Phasian Elf

 Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image, above.

That mission of Trysta's replicoid might have involved retracing the path of Trysta's journey across the world and efforts aimed at "cleaning up" all of the unacceptable relics that she left behind. First of all, it was not acceptable to leave the physical remains of an Asterothrope on Earth, available for some possible future analysis by a molecular anthropologist.

Grendels
Last year I began investigating how Grendels assisted Ekcolir when he went 20,000 years into our past. Along similar lines, apparently Zeta has been reading the various accounts in the archives of the Writers Block of how Grendels assisted Trysta during her time on Earth about 10,000 years ago.

According to some accounts recorded in the Writers Block, there was an elf-like Grendel who became known as Vauhgaun among the people who lived in the area around Phasi. In the Vauhgaun legend, Trysta and Vauhgaun helped the local residents adjust to the submersion of Phasi then they departed. Many years later Vauhgaun returned and haunted the hills of the Phasi district.

Tales from Tar'tron

It became a ritual to sing songs and perform chants with the goal of driving Vauhgaun from the world of humans (dry land) back into the sea (according to legend, the natural abode of Vauhgaun). Eventually, Vauhgaun's haunting of the land was restricted to Vauhgaun Hill, the site of an elaborate burial complex.

According to Yōd (repeating tales that she grew up with on Tar'tron), Vauhgaun was tasked with guarding the relics of Trysta. Eventually, a spaceship arrived and removed Trysta's remains and other artifacts from the site at Vauhgaun Hill.

Zeta finds no confirmation for the Tar'tron legends in the archives of the Writers Guild. Zeta suggests that there would be no need for Vauhgaun's long vigil at Vauhgaun Hill since Trysta's remains could have easily been teleported off of Earth.

source

During our late night discussion, Yōd complained that absence of a particular story in the Writers Block archives does not mean that story does not exist. At that point, I dozed off.

When I awoke, Zeta and Yōd were discussing Asimov's next mission in the AR simulator. They are awaiting news about the mysterious origin of interstellar space travel in the Asimov Reality. The major nugget of information that is sought by this mission is to resolve once and for all the source of the  sedrons that were used to launched the age of interstellar space travel. Apparently Yōd is currently cut off from her replicoid again. Yōd suspects that the Yōd replicoid is currently with Asimov inside the AR simulation.

Next: The 3rd life of Arthur C. Clarke

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Land of the Setting Sun

The Phasi Intervention

At the end of the last ice age, Trysta began the process of shaping Western civilization into the form that was required for the Final Reality. The location of her Phasi Intervention became ground zero for a westward migration of a tribe of humans who spread special gene combinations that had previously been deposited on Earth by Ekcolir.

In the Ekcolir Reality
The course of European history was significantly different in the Ekcolir Reality. Ultimately, in that Reality the analogue of what we know as the Etruscan people came to culturally dominate most of Western Europe in the same way that Greek/Roman culture influenced Europe here in the Final Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality, Eastern Europe came to be dominated by a second cultural group known in that Reality as the Mosivites.

A whimsical version of an early world map of the Ekcolir Reality; mixing in place names from the Final Reality.

Gohrlay

I've previously described some features of the New World as it developed in the Ekcolir Reality. In that reality, the first flowering of science within the Etruscan culture led to a sophisticated understanding of geology and an appreciation for glaciation and evolution. Gohrlay has been expanding my appreciation for how European culture developed along unique lines in the Ekcolir Reality.

When Etruscan and Mosivite cultural influences arrived in Northern Europe, a strong division arose between the indigenous people who retained their rural life style and an almost exclusive urban setting for the encroaching Etruscan and Mosivite cultural influences. One of the segments of the boundary that developed between East and West was in what we know as the region of Belarus where the Dnieper–Bug canal was constructed.

Caterina Vonnegut

In the Ekcolir Reality

In the Ekcolir Reality, Etruscan influences dominated civilization to the west of Brisk while the lands to the East were strongly influenced by the Mosivite culture. According to Gohrlay, the analogue of Kurt Vonnegut in the Ekcolir Reality was a woman named Caterina Vonnegut. Caterina was trained as a biochemist who, like Isaac Asimov in the Final Reality, became well known for writing science fiction. Caterina's aunt, Emmily was a famous fiction writer in Europe where Vonnegut's family was influential in the nicotine industry.

According to Gohrlay, the Vonnegut family purchased tobacco that was raised in Eastern Europe. Using what was for two centuries a well-kept secret process, processing plants in several cities of Northwest Europe would extract the nicotine which was then used as a food additive until that practice was was finally terminated in the early 20th century. In the Ekcolir Reality, after restrictions were placed on the consumption of nicotine, Caterina's branch of the Vonnegut family moved to New England.

Baltic Sea - Black Sea route

Asimov's family arrived at about the same time in New York. I'll continue to use the name "Asimov" here, although Gohrlay insists that the analogue of Asimov's family in the Ekcolir Reality used a different last name. Their family name apparently reflected their employment as owners of an important shipping depot on the Dnieper-Bug canal. However, one of Asimov's uncles established an important publishing business in Kiev which happened to publish translated editions of Emmily Vonnegut's important novels.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Edmund Emshwiller

Since some of my own ancestors came from that part of Europe, I asked Gohrlay about my family's analogue in the Ekcolir Reality. Apparently I had a partial analogue in that Reality, although I still don't entirely understand what a 'partial analogue' is. According to Gohrlay, a branch of my family included several members who worked in the shipping industry along the Baltic Sea-to-Black Sea transportation route.

Time Travel
According to Gohrlay, Caterina and Asimov's analogue in the Ekcolir Reality collaborated on a series of stories about the Time Travel War (known collectively as the Peace Reality saga). Ivory and her sisters previously made me aware of how time travel was used to alter the course of the Civil War. Apparently the major struggles in Europe were also primarily economic, with much less actual warfare taking place in the Ekcolir Reality than in other Realities of our Reality Chain.

source

Besides a large number of shorter stories set in the Peace Reality and written by either Caterina or Asimov, there were three major novels. The first of these books, called Playtime, was written by Caterina in 1952 (as the years are counted in our Reality). With Caterina's permission, Asimov followed up with his novel Hidden Centuries, published in 1955, and expanding on many events mentioned in passing in Playtime. Then they collaborated to write Tar'tron, the final book of the Peace Reality Trilogy.

Tar'tron in fiction

The theme of the Peace Reality Trilogy was concerned with free will and the question of if it was possible to create a Reality in which warfare was completely eliminated from a civilization. After much travail, the conclusion was reached that our world (the Ekcolir Reality) was the best of all possible universes because warfare mostly existed in the form of the Time Travel War, which functioned as an optimization process for perfecting human existence on Earth.

One last item that came up in a recent discussion: according to Gohrlay, Trysta died near Blaubeuren, having traveled from the Land of the Setting Sun, near Phasi to the head waters of the Danube.

Next: the link between tobacco and femtobot endosymbionts

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Horse Punk

Magazine cover for Thomas' short article.

Bringing into existence the Buld Reality, the universe as we know it, was not easy. As part of that complex Reality Change, Trysta went back 10,000 years into our past to the ancient city of Phasi.

image source

The story of Trysta's final trip through time has (so far) been told to the world in fragmentary parts. If the Overseers don't mind, more details are on the way.

Horse Punk
Trysta's departure from the 20th century and her arrival in the past is documented in Horse Punk, as told by Trysta's son, Thomas. {UPDATE: the website where Horse Punk originally appeared is defunct, so I'm reproducing the text of that short story here.}

___Horse Punk___

Trysta was ready to travel into her past one last time. She was eager to get on with her pursuit through time of Ekcolir, but still having trouble with the idea of abandoning her children and grandchildren in the Primitive. However, she had viewed the future and seen that Syon would eventually complete the time loop and return to the 20th century, so she was not really being a bad mother.

For one last moment she allowed herself to marvel at how it was all working out. By completing this one final trip through time she had/would bring into existence the Buld Reality and make possible both her second life as Syon and her second family with Deomede as the father of her second brood, the one that would achieve Gohrlay's great plan for liberating Humanity from the pek.

To business. Now Trysta was examining herself and trying to imagine how she would appear to the Phasians. She'd discussed this matter with her son, Thomas and he'd suggested a clever plan of attack -a way to shock the Phasians and quickly win their respect.

Grean was watching Trysta primping and trying to be patient. Finally Grean stifled a yawn and said, "You know, if anything goes wrong in Phasi then we can simply try again."

Trysta did not even try to control her competitive nature and her desire to get this right the first time. Although Grean was not sharing any details about the fate of Ekcolir on his mission into the past, Trysta knew that she would not be sent off on her own mission if things had not gone well for Ekcolir. The Phasians themselves were "living proof" of Ekcolir's success, even if they had all died 10,000 years ago.

Life. Death. Just a matter of perspective.

Trysta wanted to be efficient. It was a source of pride among time travelers, those who were tasked with bringing into existence new Realities, to trigger Reality Changes with a single Touch, a single alteration to the old timeline. Trysta wanted no re-dos.

And really, given her technological advantages over the Phasians, her mastery of the nanites that she carried inside her body (and, in fact, now wore as her costume), it was silly to worry that anything might go wrong on her mission into the past. She muttered one of her favorite 20th century phrases to Grean, "A walk in the park."

Grean chuckled, "You're going to be about seven thousand years too early for a park."

Trysta felt a small shudder at that thought. She was a creature of civilization, heading back through time to the very dawn of human civilization on Earth. Would her Asterothrope instincts and training as a time travel Technician serve her adequately among the Phasians?

Trysta looked into Grean's eyes and took comfort in the thought that Grean would be watching to make sure that all went well on this mission. Trysta and Grean had started out at war, but they had grown quite close over their many long years together as collaborators, planning the future of Humanity. Now, almost certainly, this was their last minute together. Trysta reached out her hand to Grean and they briefly shared the Kac'hin-style hand clasp.

Then, one last time, Trysta glanced at the settings for the Hierion Tube that would take her 10,000 years into the past. She would appear in Noah's lodge exactly one day after thons last planning meeting with Grean.

Grean had done the preparations for Trysta's mission, coordinating with the Preland who had been/would be recorded in history as Noah. Noah was there in the past, expecting Trysta.

Finally, Trysta stepped from the Hierion Domain into the Tube and her next step landed her on Earth, some 10,000 years before First Contact. Trysta ignored the shift in temperature and odors and commanded her optical nanites to let all the dim light of Noah's lodge reach her eyes. There he was: Noah the Preland. Of course, he looked like a human of the Primitive.

Noah said, "Greetings," in the local dialect, but also established a direct link to her mind. Using nanite-assisted telepathy, Noah asked: Are you ready to go?

Trysta wanted to practice her nanite-assisted speech, so she replied verbally, "Yes, let us be on our way, but I do have one suggestion."

Noah led the way outside and they set off towards Phasi. The Sea could be seen glistening in the distance and the afternoon sun was at their backs. Trysta said, "I want you to be my horse."

Noah stopped walking and glared at Trysta. "A horse?" Noah voiced incredulity. "These people eat horses."

Trysta shrugged, "I know that. If you insist, you could adopt the appearance of a unicorn or a cherub or possibly a dragon, but the point is to make a quick impression on the Phasians."

Noah complained, "I don’t have a nanite template for horseback riding."

Trysta lifted a finger and sent a small swarm of nanites across to Noah's body. "Now you do."

Noah's thought leaked across to Trysta: I despise this sort of last minute improvising. Still, Noah smoothly shifted from human form and adopted the shape of a horse. Trysta leapt up on Noah's back and they set off again towards Phasi.

Trysta began singing a song about the golden-haired children of Ekcolir, timed nicely to Noah's hoof beats....

Golden children of Phasi
Creators of the gods
Witness to the Flood
Oh, my dear lovelies!
Make the Final Reality
_____________

source

I've previously blogged about the Phasian Intervention. The main objective of Trysta's mission into the past is to establish on Earth a teleportation terminal that will facilitate the work of additional Interventionist agents.

Noah
When Trysta arrives in ancient Phasi, she works with a Preland who we know as Noah, of biblical fame. Noah helps Trysta impress the people of Phasi by serving as Trysta's mount. Noah can make use of advanced nanites to morph and take on any convenient physical form.

Trysta times her arrival at Phasi to occur just before a dramatic rise in the level of the Black Sea. Noah makes such a fuss about the impending flood that the name "Noah" is forever linked in myth and lore to the Flood.

Ivory
The other published story about Trysta's last time travel mission is The Phasian Knot by Ivory Fersoni. Ivory tried to constrain her enthusiasm for the topic by writing The Phasian Knot in the format of a scientific journal article.

Thomas: the rest of the story
The image to the left is the cover for Thomas' more complete telling of Trysta's adventures during her final time travel mission.

Related Reading: Trysta's further adventures in the far past
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Related item. I spent some time searching the interwebs for illustrations of nanite-mediated morphing.

see also

source

The Exode Trilogy is full of artificial lifeforms that can morph their bodies by rearranging their nanite components

Take a look at this animation: "Under Her Skin" by CrinitusArt.

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The Phasian Elf

Licensed under the Creative Commons
Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License 

A week ago I started working on illustrations for the Sessily Trilogy. Here I describe an illustration that is taken from an imaginary account of two Prelands who visited the temple complex at Phasi during the Trysta's time travel mission into our past, about 10,000 years ago.

Imagine an account of events at Phasi as written by Ivory Fersoni, a story call The Phasian Elf. Ivory's story would describe how two Preland visitors to Earth "helped" Trysta create the the Flood myth that eventually led to the biblical story of Noah.

Of course, Trysta did not need their "help". But shit happens.

Model: Rhea (source)
©2012-2014 skydancer-stock

Noah
To make this illustration I used three stock images from the DeviantArt website. To depict the Preland named "Noah", I used an image from Marion Skydancer (image to the left). Prelands are hermaphroditic aliens, but humans tend to see them as females. Noah was specifically crafted so as to have a near-human appearance.

The Elf

LOTR (source)

The other Preland at Phasi was a Preland Overseer. Preland Overseers were not designed to interact with humans. Preland Overseers did have shapeshifting abilities and the ability to take on a human appearance, but  they often came from the planet Hemmal where the Prelands have a natural "elfish" appearance. To make my "Preland elf" I used "Elf 15" by "chirinstock" (image to the right).

by Michael Finley (source)

I wanted to show Noah and the Elf taking control of cloud formation at Phasi. Noah was trying to help Trysta convince the local primitives that the level of the Black Sea would rise and flood Phasi. Realizing that Trysta's logical description of water flowing from the ocean into the Sea made no sense to the residents of Phasi, Noah wanted to put on a dramatic display of rainfall.

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The image shown to the left was used to provide the Elf with a dramatic visual display of power! I used a computer-generated image that is a type of fractal art. The original image is called "Solar Flare of an Eclipse" by Michael Finley.

Related Reading: The Sessily Trilogy
2018 update: The Phasian Knot

Additional illustrations for The Sessily Trilogy.

The Phasi Intervention

source

About a year and a half ago I started getting some detailed reports from Ivory concerning the origins of the universe as we know it. The Reality Change that ended the Ekcolir Reality and brought into existence the Buld Reality (the world as we know it) involved a complex combination of time travel events. One of these was Trysta's time travel trip of about 10,000 years ago to the ancient city of Phasi.

Phasi was located at the eastern end of the Black Sea where what we now know as the Rioni river flowed into the Sea. Why did Trysta select Phasi as the destination for her time travel mission into our distant past?

Trysta the Asterothrope
During the past year, with help from her sister Angela, Ivory has been gradually revealing the complex and temporally twisted story of Tryst'a life....and her after life. I originally misinterpreted some of what I was told about Trysta. In the first Reality within which she lived in the 20th century, Trysta used the name Noÿs and she lived with Andrew Harlan.  This was mentioned by Isaac Asimov in his book, The End of Eternity. (2015 update: how Asimov knew about events in past Realities)

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At first, I mistakenly assumed that Andrew had been the father of Trysta's son Thomas. Trysta worked hard to make Andrew believe that he was the father of Thomas. Eventually I realized that as an Asterothrope, there was no way that Trysta could have successfully reproduced with a primitive Earthling like Harlan. As members of two different primate species, the gametes of Trysta and Andrew were not compatible and they could not have children together.

I now understand that Trysta came to the 20th century equipped to initiate pregnancies on her own. Her first two children were Asterothropes, their cells carefully guided and sculpted to produce a bodily morphology similar to that of we humans. Andrew was completely fooled and he was happy to assume that he was the father of Tryst'a children. In their first Reality together in the 20th century, the Foundation Reality, Andrew and Trysta and their children had the long and happy life together that Trysta had foreseen.

Asimov's Foundation

That rather magical Reality, which most Earthlings only know through the writing of Isaac Asimov, was replace by a horrific Reality in which our world suffered through a devastating nuclear war in the 20th century. Ironically, it was Asimov's time travel mission that ended the Foundation Reality and resulted in nuclear war. In that dismal Reality, sometimes called the Grean Reality, Andrew was captured by the Overseers and taken to the Moon where he lived out his life, separated from Trysta and their children.

Grean had caused that Reality to come into existence for the sole purpose of capturing the last positronic robot agent who had been stationed on Earth by R. Gohrlay. With that task complete, Grean next set out to work collaboratively with Trysta and put an end to time travel. Grean's main tool for breaking down Trysta's resistance to collaboration was Ekcolir. Ekcolir, an Ek'col male, had been designed, crafted and trained to win Tryst'a trust. Ekcolir was completely successful in his mission. Ekcolir and Trysta fell in love and he had been specifically designed to make it possible to father hybrid human-Astreothrope children. Thus, the Thomas of our Reality is the son of Trysta and Ekcolir.

National boundaries in the New World as found within the Ekcolir Reality (source)

Of course, Thomas was born into the Reality that preceded ours, the so-called Ekcolir Reality. Within the Ekoclir Reality, global warming and rapid sea level rise became a serious problem during the 20th century (see this account). The City of New York, Virgina, was prone to flooding as the level of the oceans steadily rose while the ice caps melted.

The Phasi Intervention

The Phasian Knot

In order to create a Reality in which Earth might not suffer either nuclear catastrophe or melting of the Antarctic ice cap, Trysta devised a complex Reality Change that brought our Reality into existence. As part of that Change, Trysta traveled through time to the ancient city of Phasi.

About 10,000 years in our past, Trysta established a teleportation terminal at the site of Phasi. The terminal was quickly inundated by the rising waters of the Black Sea, but it continued to function as a portal linking Earth to the distant planet Klyz.

The Phasi teleportation terminal was intended for use by both Grendels and human Interventionist agents who would be trained for their missions to Earth on planets located in the Koly star system of the galactic core. However, there were some "unauthorized" teleportation events that I'll discuss in a future blog post. Eventually a new teleportation terminal was created (on land!) for human Interventionists and the Grendels continued using the aquatic terminal in the Black Sea.

Why Phasi?

Breaching the Bosphorus

Of all the places on Earth that might have been chosen by Trysta for the teleportation terminal, why did she select Phasi?

1. The geography of Phasi was ideal for Trysta's mission. A low-lying area next to the Black Sea was perfect. Trysta arrived just before water rushed into the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea, quickly and dramatically flooding Phasi. Phasi was not much of a city, but it had a built-up temple complex on a low bluff where the teleporter could be assembled before the Flood.

2. The people of Phasi carried Preland genes that had been introduced into the human population of Earth some 10,000 years earlier by Ekcolir. This made the people of Phasi particularly easy for Trysta to control and work with during the Phasi Intervention.

3. There was no difficulty operating the undersea teleportation terminal for the next 10,000 years. Neither the Observers nor the natives of Earth ever discovered the location of the Phasi terminal.
___________________
Related reading: Ivory's account of the Phasi Intervention.

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