Imaginary Books

see the original magazine cover
Image credits.

30 months ago I played a little game with Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories bookshelf.

Astounding Stories, November 1932
Cover art by Hans Wessolowski.

Shown to the left is an 85 year old magazine cover from Astounding Stories. I used Photoshop to alter that old cover image and mix in an image of model Rose Wood from photographer Cathleen Tarawhiti. I imagine that there was a magazine called Future Science (see the image to the right) in another Reality and a story called "Creatures from the Sedronic Domain".

Imaginary Books

The X-Phile Intervention
Image credits.

What can be more fun than imaginary stories in imaginary pulp science fiction magazines? Imaginary novels!

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 2 - stock" that I used the image shown to the right. 

The Last Grendel on Earth
Image credits.

The Exode Saga is about aliens who have visited Earth for millions of years and who are responsible for creating the human species.

One type of alien visitor who helped guide the development of the human species are the Grendels. The Grendels were artificial life forms that could take on any convenient physical shape. Due to their origins and their desire to remain hidden from humans, Grendels often hid under water.

Hierion Crossing
Image credits

The Grendels and the Kac'hin are two types of Sedronite.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Dauntless - Action Heroine stock 4" that I used the image shown to the right. 

The Sedronite with blue skin might be a Kac'hin, the type of humanoid that was crafted by the pek and designed to function as an interface in the Hadronic Domain for the Huaoshy. In this scene, there is a confrontation between a human from Earth and the alien that takes place in the Hierion Domain.

Luri of Tamari
Image credits.

The Anney Archives
Anney Fersoni is one of the Atlantis clones. Anney played an important role in making known the lost events of Deep Time, events that took place in the previous Realities of our Reality Chain. Anney might not have written any of the imaginary books shown here, but she did provide the Editor with a wealth of information about the Interventionists who have shaped Earth's history.

Parthney was the final Interventionist from Hemmal, but with the aid of time travel technology, there was a long sequence of Thomas clones who visited Earth in earlier ages. One of these was Thrukta. While working on Earth, Thrukta was befriended by Luri of Tamari. While Luri was fated to die at a young age, Thrukta stepped in and teleported her off of Earth. Two thousand years later Parthney provided a similar service to Hana.

Searching Earth
Image credits: see this and this.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Dauntless - Action Heroine stock 8" that I used the image shown to the right. Tryp'At Overseers are humans, but they have been genetically altered to have special gene combinations that give them the ability to use their femtobot endosymbiont for access to the Bimanoid Interface.

The Scutinary Vitalists
Image credits

After hierion physics began in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jackie published the idea that hidden within the human body might be a form of hierion matter. Only much later was that "Vital Residual" recognized as sedronic matter, the residue of destroyed zeptites.

"Sam Jackie" is an invented name that was used by the analogue of Jack Vance in a previous Reality.

The Toad Goddess saga.
Image credits.

In previous Realities, the names of famous science fiction story writers were sometimes slightly different, such as Mary Bradley rather than Marion Bradley.

Clarke's Law
If an Interventionist agent living on Earth had amazing abilities such as the power to teleport to and from the surface of Earth, are we justified to think of such a being as a god?

The Yōd Intervention.
Image credits.
Original photographs by Jessica Truscott.

After Ivory Fersoni and the Dead Widowers worked hard give me access to the stories of Anney, the tryp'At Overseers worked hard to cut me off from further contact with Anney and continuing access to her revelations about Deep Time. Currently, my chief collaborators in the investigation of Deep Time are Zeta and Yōd.

Photomagic

In the Ekcolir Reality.
The Lost Sea.
Image credits.

When I go to the DeviantArt website and browse the photography and computer-rendered images, I'm always dazzled and amazed. The stock image accounts of photographers such as Miranda Hedman, Jessica Truscott and Marcus J. Ranum generate millions of webpage views (currently, about 20 million views for these three photographers). I particularly appreciate the ability of these photographers to capture images of models while they are in realistic and interesting poses.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Journey to Proxima Centauri.
Image credits.

I like to imagine that in an earlier Reality of our Reality Chain, the analogue of H. G. Wells was a woman named Hafren Wells. In the Ekcolir Reality, the science fiction genre was used to prepare Earthlings for First Contact with the alien Fru'wu. In that Reality, Hafren Wells published stories that told the secret history of Humanity and how Interventionist agents have often visited our world and shaped human cultural development.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
The C laser.
Image credits.

Similarly, in the Ekcolir Reality, Jade Verne (the analogue of Jules Verne) was a famous author. Jade died young, but then had a second life as an artificial life form.

Nanomancy.
Image credits.

The pace of technological development was slightly faster in the Ekcolir Reality than here in the universe as we know it. Rather than rockets and ray guns, the golden age of Sci Fi in the Ekcolir Reality featured teleporters and lasers. Jade Verne wrote stories about teleportation to distant worlds and Hafren Wells included laser microscopy in her stories.

Ereus and Behgi. Image credits.

Hafren Wells wrote a book called Nanomancy which was later discovered by Cecile Eclore, a member of the Dead Widower Society. Hafren provided the first written account of replicoids that ever reached the people of Earth. However, in the Final Reality, knowledge of the existence of replicoids was a more closely held secret.

When Ekcolir traveled back in time and helped bring the Final Reality into existence, he provided the human population of Earth with special gene combinations that first existed on our world among the descendants of Dehla and her two daughters, Behgi and Suem.

A Search Beyond

The Atlan Intervention. Image credits.

In the Exode Saga, I pretend that the analogue of Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction story called The Atlan Intervention. "Atlan" is short for "Atlantis". Special thanks to Miranda Hedman for the stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image to the left.

In that story, the analogue of Asimov struggled to convey to a naive audience of Earthlings the idea that the universe as known to us here on Earth, a universe of stars and cars and minnows and Dead Widowers, is only a small subset of a vaster universe. The Asimov analogue of the Foundation Reality had been taken into the Hierion Domain and had been told of the existence of the Sedronic Domain.

Image credits.

Zeta is fascinated by The Atlan Intervention because it explores the hypothesis that hadronic life forms such as humans must eventually transform into artificial life forms. The pek function so as to transform species like we humans into sedronic artificial life forms that reside in the Sedronic Domain. Atlan is a "place" in the Hierion Domain where Interventionist agents are based. Ignorant humans made the mistaken assumption that Atlan was a place on Earth and it became known to us as Atlantis.

Hapha

According to Yōd, Pla'tron is one of the human-settled worlds of the Galactic Core along with Tar'tron. The last positronic robot on Earth (Rycleu) was taken from Earth to Atlan and "de-programmed". That robot was then teleported to Pla'tron for "re-programming" and trained for a new mission to Earth. That new mission took place in ancient Athens and led to the origin of the legend of Atlantis in the writings of Aristocles.

Related Reading: the Hapha'iston Intervention

Next: haunting the Writers Block with femtobots

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Timeline - the Exodemic Trilogy

The books of the trilogy:
Trysta and Ekolir,
The Foundations of Eternity
and Exode

Most of the time I simply say "Exode Trilogy", but for this blog post I want to emphasize the fact that within the Exodemic Fictional Universe a story must deal with how we lowly humans of Earth confront knowledge of the Huaoshy, the "ancient aliens" who have been visiting Earth for billions of years.

Previously, I've imagined that the Huaoshy have existed for "only" about a billion years, but during the past year, I've had to change my thinking about some key aspects of history. The timeline that I constructed back in 2013 (twice) needs to be updated again so as to reflect new information that has been obtained by Angela and Ivory.

Reminder: this timeline is for the Buld Reality, the universe as we know it. Some of the key events are due to the arrival of time travelers from the previous Reality (the Ekcolir Reality), and I've marked those in green, below. Time travel events within the Buld Reality are marked red. The key event by which Grean initiates the Ekcolir Reality is marked in blue.

~2.5 billion YBP. The original biological species that gave rise to what we Earthlings know as the Huaoshy first developed technology for faster-than-light travel. Their home galaxy was far, far away from Earth. Not much later, the Huaoshy transcended their biological nature and began a new existence as a form of artificial life in the Sedronic Domain.

~ 2.0 billion YBP. The pek reach our galaxy. The pek are an advanced artifcial life tool of the Huaoshy, so when I say that the Huaoshy "have been visiting Earth", that means that the pek visited Earth. About two billion years ago the pek began engineering terrestrial planets (such as Rain World, see below) of the galactic core for use as "incubators" of sapient species that arise on the Earth-like worlds of the galaxy.

~7,000,000 YBP. In the Andromeda galaxy, the pek revealed themselves to the Nereids. The Nereids had by then already existed for several million years as a non-technological sapient species on their metal-poor home world and had only recently developed a space-faring civilization.

Artist's depiction of a Fru'wu

At about the same time, the pek began taking special interest in the primates of Earth. Some early human/chimp ancestors were taken from Earth to Rain World. The pek began experimenting with how to biologically transform an ape into a life form that could transcend its physical existence in three dimensional space and become an artificial life form existing in the higher dimensional Sedronic Domain.

At this time (about 7 million years ago) other biological species in our galaxy such as the Fruthwa (see below) have already long been "domesticated" by the pek.

Extinction curve, based on pek data.

~6,000,000 YBP. The initial interstellar civilization of the Fru'wu that had spread out from the home world Reahand was destroyed by a self-inflicted technological disaster involving their primitive nanotechnology. The biological species that originated on Reahand and gave rise to the Fru'wu is called the "Fruthwa", but humans have had no contact with the Fruthwa since that species was extinct long before humans existed. The Huaoshy had preserved some domesticated Fruthwa on worlds of the galactic core. What we Earthlings know as the Fru'wu were actually derived from a variant of the original Fruthwa; a subspecies that evolved further on the the planet Clutence.

By this time (six million years ago), the Nereids had transformed themselves into artificial lifeforms that existed within the Sedronic Domain, but their artificial life creation, the nanorobotic Grendels, had by then given rise to an important new faction of the Interventionists.  The Grendels began having Interventionist contact with some of the Fru'wu. In general, humans have only ever had contact with Grendels, so in the timeline below, mention of "Nereids" should be thought of as meaning "Nereids acting through their agents, the Grendels".

724,000 YBP. Some early humans were taken from Rain World and cultured on Hemmal, another world of the galactic core. Creation of the hermaphroditic Prelands begins. By the present time, the biology of the Prelands has been radically transformed by the pek and they are nearly ready to be moved to Earth as a replacement for we Earthlings.

source

200,000 YBP. Needing a tool that will allow them to infiltrate and defeat the Eternals, the Huaoshy begin to develop the Kac'hin, a human variant that can be used like humanoid puppets by the Huaoshy. Captain Hooski is one of the Kac'hin who appear in The Foundations of Eternity. The Kac'hin are developed on the planet Luk'ru, a world that later becomes the home of Hana and Boswei and their children. By 150,000 YBP the Kac'hin development project is mostly complete.  Only further refinement of the special ability of the Kac'hin to link into the Sedronic Domain is attempted on Luk'ru. Some Kac'hin are sent to live on Rain World. Later, Tar'tron becomes the main Kac'hin world and it is there that the Kac'hin "selfies" are developed.

~80,000 YBP. Delphys Ghreanamar, a hermaphroditic Kac'hin, lives on Rain World. Wyzalex Torvaya, a female Kac'hin, lives in the same time period. Much later, Grean, a clone of Delphys, plays an important role in shaping the Buld Reality. Similarly, Kach and Lycaun are two clones of Wyzalex who live in our time.

Trysta and Ekcolir

~40,000 YBP. The Nereids help establish a faction of Fru'wu rebels on a hidden (within the Hierion Domain) world of the galactic core (known to Earthlings as Klyz). Those Fru'wu were able to maintain independence from the pek right up to the present time, although some of their agents were occasionally captured by the pek. Starting about this time, there were some early interactions between the Nereids, the Fru'wu and the Buld. These Fru'wu were all hybrid lifeforms with some biological components and some nanorobotic elements. The Nereids monitored events on Earth and occasionally they managed to work through the Fru'wu and the Buld and helped bring a human from the galactic core to Earth. However, there were Overseers stationed at Observer Base on the Moon who prevented Interventionists from interfering much with the course of events on Earth.

At about this time, Grean arrived from the future of an earlier Reality and began the creation of another human variant, the Ek'col, on Rain World. The Ek'col males were designed to be reproductively compatible with Asterothrope females.

From this time onward, there was also a fairly large population of "liberated" Fru'wu in the Andromeda galaxy. This group of Fru'wu had been taken there from our galaxy by the Nereids. To facilitate interactions with the Buld, the Nereids also moved some Fru'wu to the planet Clu'ten'iun.

~20,000 YBP. Ekcolir, a modified human (an Ek'col) from the galactic core in the Ekcolir Reality who had been brought to Earth as an Interventionist agent, arrives in the Buld Reality from the future. He lives among a group Earthlings near the end of the last glacial maximum and passes his Preland genes into the human gene pool of Earth. For that crime, he is captured by Overseers and taken to Observer Base on the Moon where he completes his mission to the past by preventing the development of positronic robots. At about the same time, the pek allow the Fru'wu rebels to make it possible for some Buld to transform themselves into the Pla, a group of rebel Buld.

source

~15,000 YBP. The Fru'wu provide the Pla with the location of Earth. A Buld spaceship, traveling close to the speed of light, begins a journey from the galactic core to Earth which will take about 15,000 years.

Syon

~10,000 YBP. Trysta arrives from the future and lives among a group of Earthlings near the Black Sea who have retained Preland genes that originated from Ekcolir's intervention into Earth history about 10,000 years previously. Trysta helps these Earthlings develop a written language and learn to read and write. Noÿs talked to these primitives about her origins and describe to them the far future of Earth and the danger of sea level rise from melting ice caps. Trysta's time in the neolithic coincide with a dramatic Black Sea filling event, which combined with her explanations of glacial ice melt contributed to the popularity of flood myths on Earth.

Luri

Trysta helps the Fru'wu establish their first teleportation terminal on Earth. When her work on Earth is done, Trysta is teleported to Klyz where she transfers her advanced Asterothrope nanites from the far future of the Mallansohn Reality into a primitive Fru'wu robot, allowing Trysta to have a "second life" as the artificial life form known as Syon. The Interventionist agents of the Pla later started working on Earth with robotic assistants containing "Trysta nanites". The pek collect some nanites from Trysta and use them in their human breeding program to perfect the Ek'col and phenotypically craft them into their final human form.

~2,000 YBP. Thrukta, a "Thomas clone" carries out his mission on Earth. His main mission on Earth is to assist in the shift of cultural momentum from the Mediterranean towards northwestern Europe. He teleports Luri to Klyz. Luri eventually has an important influence on Earth through her work at Space Energy Missions (see below).

~1,500 YBP. Rathuf, a "Thomas clone" carries out his mission on Earth. Stationed in England, he helps bring advanced technologies like glass manufacturing to England. He teleports Rotharkin to Klyz. While in training under Oib, Rathuf meets Luri, who seems to have an elastic personality. In fact, "Luri" is two people: one a newly instantiated copy of the original biological woman while the other "copy" is an artificial life form, designed to resemble the original. Only after their arrival on Earth does Rathuf learn that his partner in adventure is the artificial Luri.

Rathuf

~750 YBP. King Henry III's daughter Katherine is teleported off of Earth when her unusual interaction with Earth's nanites is noticed. She lives out her life at the Urgark training base in the Koly star system and helps train Humget for his mission to Earth (~ the year 1270).

Syon runs a primitive scientific laboratory at Urgark where she trains Katherine in the principles of metallurgy, steam power and coal-fired furnaces. Katherine and Humget meet at Urgark when they are about 12 years old. Since they have never before known other humans, they grow up experimenting socially with each other as well as learning how to make guns and cannons. A thousand years later, Parthney is not pleased when he learns of the role of Humget in the death of Llywelyn.

~500 YBP. Lendhalen is established as the last in a series of Pla training bases for Interventionist agents. Syon is present at Lendhalen and arranges to have an efficient training program in place for Parthney. The "magnetic pulse" method that is used to inactivate pek nanites has no effect on the "Trysta nanites" that are inside Syon.

Jane Grey is one of the first Earthlings who is brought to Lendhalen. Rechmain is the first "Thomas clone" trained at Lendhalen for a mission to Earth.

1910. Deomede is born on Hemmal. He is later trained at Lendhalen and teleported to Earth. Deomede is the Buld Reality analog of Ekcolir.

1936. Trysta arrives from the future and meets Deomede. They have a daughter, Gwyned (born 1939) and then a son, Andy.

1940. Thomas arrives in the Buld Reality from the future. Born in the Ekcolir Reality, he was the son of Trysta and Ekcolir. He carries nanites of several types that provide Thomas with an unusual collection of memories, including some from the Isaac Asimov of the Foundation Reality. Thomas transfers his nanites into John Campbell. This allows Campbell to help the Asimov of the Buld Reality start writing science fiction stories that are based on events from the Foundation Reality. Without the nanites in his brain, Thomas needs intensive psychiatric care during the 1940s.

Gwyned

1949. Thomas retrieves his nanites from Campbell. Thomas develops close friendships with Janet Jeppson and his writing becomes known to Asimov. Ideas from Thomas help stimulate Asimov to write The End of Eternity and to develop his interest in global warming.

1964. After working to develop alternatives to fossil fuels, Gwyned is teleported off of Earth by Deomede. She arrives first at Klyz and then moves on to Lendhalen. She tries to understand the advanced technologies that are available to the Buld including teleportation and the robot assistants of Lendhalen. She is not allowed to remain consciously aware of the fact that Syon carries advanced nanites that originated with her mother, Trysta.

1965. Parthney arrives at Demon Lodge on Hemmal. He meets Yandrey and begins to learn about Earth as a real planet, the home of Humanity, rather than a place of legend.

Yandre

1967. Parthney arrives at Lendhalen for training as an Interventionist agent on Earth. Gwyned and Parthney both suspect that there is more to Syon than meets the eye. Syon has a physical appearance that reminds Gwyned of her mother and Syon tells Gwyned that she has 10,000 year old memories of Trysta from the time when Trysta first arrived at Klyz. Parthney is impressed by Gwyned's knowledge of Earth and advanced technologies.

Katherine and Humget

When Parthney stops his training with the expectation that Gwyned should be the one to go to Earth, Syon convinces Parthney that he is the one who must go to Earth. Parthney asks Syon about Trysta and the robot suddenly and mysteriously delivers a message from Trysta: "Thomas, remember to meet Izhiun on the mall". This is the last time that Syon acts outside of the normal behavioral pattern for the robots of Lendhalen. Gwyned asks Parthney to look for her mother (Trysta) and a mysterious half-brother (Thomas; who Gwyned has never met) when he reaches Earth.

In addition to his interactions with Syon and Gwyned while in training at Lenhalen, Parthney also receives information about conditions on Earth from Luri, Jane, Katherine and Rotharkin.

Grean and Delpha

1970. [From the Asimov Reality, Grean is passaged through the "Eternity" time bubble on the Moon and then sent back through time, first to ~200,000 YBP to begin development of the Kac'hin then to ~40,000 YBP to initiate development of the Ek'col (see above). This creates the Ekcolir Reality]

Betty

1971. From within the Buld Reality, Trysta travels back in time to 10,000 YBP (see above). Before this final time travel event, working with Grean, Trysta gets a chance to look into the future of the Buld Reality. She confirms that the desired future is becoming increasingly more likely. Also, in the guise of "Aunt Mayness", Trysta makes sure that The Editor is able to read a copy of Thomas' book The Miners of Earth.

After Trysta travels back in time, the Huaoshy initiate a shift in the dimensional structure of the universe which makes time travel impossible. In the Buld Reality, Parthney and Luri are teleported to Earth where he meets Deomede and the robotic assistant Betty. Deomede tells Parthney that Trysta is gone, but they begin searching for Thomas.

Trysta & Ekcolir

1972. [From the Ekcolir Reality, Ekcolir (the Interventionist analog of Deomede) is passaged through the "Eternity" time bubble on the Moon and then sent back through time about 20,000 years to initiate the Buld Reality.]

1973. [In the Ekcolir Reality, Thomas was kept inside the time travel device on the Moon during the time when the Ekcolir Reality was changed into the Buld Reality by Ekcolir. Thomas was then sent back to 1940 of the Buld Reality (see above).]

1974. [Trysta, who originated in the Mallansohn Reality and lived on Earth through much of the 20th century, is passaged through the "Eternity" time bubble on the Moon and then sent back through time from 1974 in the Ekcolir Reality to 1936 in the Buld Reality (see above).] Trysta lives through much of the 20th century again, this time in the Buld Reality, until 1971 (see above).

1977. Parthney's search for Thomas is mostly futile, but the trail of people who have known Thomas and have corresponded with him leads Parthney to Janet and Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov digs out an old manuscript from Thomas: a "fantasy story" about a man named Izhiun who meets some mysterious "Buld" who appear on Earth in the year 2012.

In 1977 Asimov attends a science fiction mini-convention at the Triversity. He meets Peter, Thomas and "the Editor".

Asimov never took seriously the idea that "Daveed the Luk'ie" should be published because it was written like some kind of spoof of Asimov's science fiction style. Of course, Asimov is unaware that some events in the story are based on what Trysta saw while looking into the future from her perspective in the Ekcolir Reality when she was viewing alternative Realities and making plans with Grean for establishing the Buld Reality. Janet is not able to say much since Thomas was her patient for many years, however she tells Parthney that Thomas believed that his "science fantasy story" about the Buld was not fiction, that events would actually happen as described in the "story". Asimov has only corresponded with Thomas. Janet further mystifies Parthney by asking him, "Is Thomas your brother?" At that time, Parthney does not know that he is a clone of Thomas.

Trysta views
Realities

Before traveling back through time, Trysta arranged for Thomas to give a presentation at a SciFi "convention" being held on a university campus. Thomas talks about his science fiction, including The Miners of Earth, but he mysteriously disappears right after the talk.

1980. Deomede tells Parthney that he will test the idea that the Overseers can now detect teleportation events. He gives Parthney his list of contacts among the Earthlings in case he is captured. He is captured by Overseers shortly after he teleports an Earthling to Klyz.

1984. Parthney has come to believe that one of Deomede's contacts, Hana, might be the "Hana" mentioned in Thomas' "story" about Izhiun and the Buld. Parthney has discovered that Hana has been having "email" communications with Thomas by means of messages sent over CSNET. The man on Earth who meets the arriving Buld spaceship is described in the "story" as, "Izhiun, son of Hana, born in the Andromeda galaxy." The story describes Hana as having been born on Earth.

Klyz

Parthney teleports Hana off of Earth and soon he is captured by an Overseer and taken to the Moon. Hana has a daughter, Hilde, who is six years old when Hana leaves Earth.

Thomas, having been warned by Trysta to watch carefully when Parthney is captured, uses his nanites to sneak into Observer Base right after Parthney is taken in.

Thomas and Parthney confirm that Observer Base is being phased out in preparation for the arrival of the Buld spaceship. They make use of the hierion-based communications equipment at Observer Base to contact the Buld spaceship which has now dropped below light speed on approach to Earth. Thomas uses the teleportation terminal at Observer Base to send Parthney back to Klyz. Thomas takes the place of Parthney as a prisoner of the Overseers and the swap goes undetected since they are genetically identical.

Kach

1985. The Fru'wu at Klyz want to send a human delegation to the Andromeda galaxy to make contact with the Nereids. Believing that Parthney was responsible for the death of her husband, Hana refuses to work with Parthney.

1987. Kach and her son Boswei leave Hemmal and go with Parthney to the Andromeda Galaxy. Hana, Muchlo and Steph go along.

Hilde

1991. Hana and Boswei settle on Luk'ru in the Andromeda galaxy. Their son Izhiun is born.

1998. Kach goes to Earth on a mission to contact the secret Nereid agent who is on Earth. She is captured by the Overseers and taken to Observer Base. Kach meets Thomas who is still living at Observer Base.

2001. Hilde contacts the man who she believes might be her father. She passes along what she has been able to learn from her contacts at Space Energy Missions. The Editor begins to write Exodemic.

site of the Buld visit to Earth

2011. Izhiun arrives on Earth with a clone of Kach, Lycaun. According to the arrangement that was made between Trysta and the Huaoshy, the Nereids are supposed to stop interfering with Earth. The Overseers try to capture the secret Nereid agent on Earth. To the Overseers, it looks like Kach was killed in the raid, but Kach is teleported back to Klyz. Izhiun contacts Hana's husband who is still living on Earth.

2012. The Buld spaceship makes a quick visit to Earth. The existing Overseers retire. The Nereids agree to back off and work through the Buld to indirectly influence events on Earth. The Buld know that the Earthlings need a clean, safe energy source.

Foundations of Eternity

  Izhiun meets the Buld at the Washington Monument and obtains instructions for how to build an energy receiver that will collect energy transmitted by hierions from a solar energy collection station that the Buld can put on Mercury. Izhiun finds Hana's daughter, Hilde, and learns that her company (Space Energy Missions, including people like Luri) is designing a solar energy facility that can be easily converted to receive energy from Mercury.

The Huaoshy make the remaining Observers on the Moon into the next Overseers, but they begin operating under a new set of rules that allows Earth to receive some technological assistance from the Buld. Hana's husband begins placing the Exode story on the internet. Izhiun and Hilde leave Earth and they go with the Buld to start constructing the solar energy collector on Mercury.

The Atlantis Clones

Thomas returns to Earth from the Moon and gives up his nanites, wishing to end his life living as a "normal" Earthling. Thomas and Izhiun deposits their "information nanites" with "the Editor". Ivory contacts "the Editor" and they begin a collaborative effort to make sense of the secret history of Earth. It soon becomes clear that Angela's ability to use the Bimanoid Interface can allow "the Editor" to decode the information provided by Thomas and Izhiun.

2013. Working together, Angela, Ivory and "the Editor" begin to make sense of the Reality Chain that led to the universe as we know it.

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Zja'na

Exodemic: the first story set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe

The science fiction story Exode originated with a fairly specific and detailed sketch of the main character, Parthney, an Interventionist agent working on Earth. I wanted to craft a story in which he was particularly aggressive in his dealings with Earthlings. In stories set in the Exodemic Fiction Universe such agents mysteriously arrive on our planet much in the way that gods magically appeared among the people of Earth in the stories told by poets in ancient Greece. I wanted Parthney to easily have his way with Earthlings.

In my previous stories the Interventionists traveled to Earth in spaceships that were technologically advanced and easily able to avoid detection by the primitive Earthlings. For Exode, I decided to adopt the transportation mode that was used by Gene Roddenberry in Assignment: Earth and so I allow Parthney to make use of teleportation technology.

My early decisions about allowing a more active style of Interventionism and providing Parthney with somewhat more advanced technology than in previous stories set in the "Exodemic" Fictional Universe have led me along a chain of subsequent subsidiary modifications and elaborations to the typical relationship between we Earthlings and the god-like alien Huaoshy. Here, "god-like" is in the sense of Clarke's third law.

Dream of Flight

I'm generally pleased with the rich and complex relationship between humans and the Creators that has been emerging from my careful examination of Parthney's life during the past year. For me, the process of discovering the fine points of Genesaunt civilization has been fun and, at times, this process has led to rather startling revelations...most notably my realization that Exode is a sequel to the time travel story, The Start of Eternity.

This surprising twist did not turn Exode into a time travel story, but it did force events in Exode to conform to constraints imposed by how time travel came to an end.

The End of Time Travel

source

Time travel is a great danger to science fiction. Science fiction authors can't resist the fun of writing time travel stories, but taken to a logical conclusion, the invention of time travel usually leads to some dreary and tedious time war. Isaac Asimov brilliantly constructed his time travel novel, The End of Eternity, so that his story ends with the conniving Noÿs Lambent, a woman from 10,000,000 years in the future, putting Earthlings out of the time travel business.

John's Time travel theorem: a good science fiction story about time travel puts an end to time travel.

Dealing with technological genies...Burn baby, burn.

But how can you ever put a technological genie back in the bottle? In The End of Eternity, time travel caused the extinction of the human species, but Asimov left open the possibility that use of time travel technology might be acceptable as long as its use was delayed until a distant future time, after Humanity had matured and spread itself to millions of worlds throughout the galaxy. So Asimov did not make all future use of time travel impossible, he simply showed Noÿs working to delay further human use of time travel technology until after humans had mastered space travel.

Asimov's time travel theorem: a good science fiction story about time travel does not let time travel technology interfere with space travel.

As much as I enjoy The End of Eternity, for many years I suffered from my personal preference for "John's time travel theorem" over "Asimov's time travel theorem". I worried: what would prevent someone else from the future (maybe a distant descendant of Noÿs) from reinventing time travel and coming back through time and undoing all that Noÿs had done to end Eternity ("Eternity" is the name of the particular time travel device used by Earthlings)? I really wanted there to be a way to put an end to all time wars.

(Full disclosure: I tried to watch Dr. Who back in the previous millennium, but the endless "Exterminate!" sessions with the Daleks put an end to that. For similar reasons, endless wars with the Na'kuhl, Borg, Klingons and Dominions put an end to my ability to watch Star Trek.)

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In addition to my dislike for science fictional warfare, there is also the danger that deep dissatisfaction with the ending of a science fiction story that I enjoy will lead to aggravation of my fanfiction disease. In the case of The End of Eternity, the aggravation of my fanfiction disease really began with Asimov's skill at knitting together many of his novels into what I call the "Foundation Reality". I really enjoy how Asimov found a way to bring positronic robots into the Foundation saga. Intriguingly, Asimov also linked The End of Eternity to his robot stories when he published the suggestion that positronic robots were responsible for time travel ("it was the robots who established Eternity"). That hint set me up to be thinking about time travel as part of the Foundation saga when Foundation and Earth left us wondering about the possibility that aliens might soon arrive from another galaxy intent on disrupting Daneel's plans for humanity. So, because of the way Asimov left open to speculation what should happen after Foundation and Earth, I was "forced" to write a fanfiction sequel to The End of Eternity in which I rudely shifted the Foundation Reality into the Exodemic Fictional Universe. Doing so provided me with a way to really put an end to time travel.

dimensional structure

Long story made short: I realized that the alien Huaoshy, as masters of dimensional engineering, were unwittingly responsible for making time travel possible. After the Huaoshy finally realized that positronic robots had invented time travel, it was possible for them to perform one final act of dimensional engineering that would permanently make time travel impossible, this satisfying "John's time travel theorem" and providing what, at the time, seemed a satisfying conclusion to The Start of Eternity.

It was only after I was already several months into the fun of crafting and designing Exode that I realized I should make this new original science fiction story a sequel to The Start of Eternity. That tardy decision to put Noÿs into the backstory of Exode caused some seismic shifts in the portion of Exode that I had already written. Also, I now realize that within The Start of Eternity, characters like Captain Hooski are Kac'hin, not actual Huaoshy.

family planning

Most significantly, I realized that Parthney is the son of Noÿs Lambent, Asimov's secret agent from the far future in The End of Eternity. Since Noÿs died thousands of years before Parthney's birth, he never gets to meet his biological mother and the name "Noÿs" is never mentioned in Exode. However, I had to do some re-crafting of Exode to take into account the fact that Parthney's genetic endowment is not that of the typical 20th century Earthling. Is Parthney some kind of superman due to his inherited genes from the future? Not at all: I've adopted Asimov's suggestion that although Noÿs was born ten million years in the future her people were still genetically quite similar to us.

Spacevoyagers, Superheroes and Gods
From a young age I was willing to stand with Socrates and question the romantic ancient Greek songs about gods and their perplexing relationship with people. I could never maintain much interest in gods who were depicted as being little different from people and plagued by all the usual human weaknesses.

Humans naturally try to make sense of the world by using innate human cognitive processes to solve perceived mysteries, but that is a failed strategy when applied to biological and cosmological mysteries. We automatically make use of what philosopher Dan Dennett called the "Intentional Stance" and that leads us to imagine human-like gods as "explanations" for natural phenomena.

I also have little patience for assuming that gods are magically immortal and mysteriously endowed with other "super powers". Similarly, to this day I have little capacity to be entertained by comics about fantasy superheros. Now that we are in the age of reason, science and understanding it is fun to write romantic adventure stories as science fiction rather than fantasy.

My original goal in writing Exode was to make a detailed exploration of the life of Parthney and show how he came to be on Earth living among we primitive Earthlings while possessing advanced technology from other worlds. Originally I imagined that Parthney was genetically indistinguishable from we Earthlings, but when that restriction on Parthney's backstory crumbled (his mother, Noÿs, as a time traveler from the far future endowed Parthney with some interesting gene combinations) then I had to think about Interventionist agents in a more flexible way than I had previously in other stories. If you saw Parthney walking down the streets of New Your City you would not notice anything odd, but strip him of his nanite prosthetics and you would be able to see that he has no toe nails and his finger nails are about half the size of those for typical Earthlings of our century.

While in training for his mission to Earth, Parthney learns that it is standard protocol for Interventionist agents to be genetically indistinguishable from Earthlings because Earth is watched over by Observers and Overseers who are constantly on guard for anything out of the ordinary that might indicate an external invader is operating on Earth. However, in Exode the Interventionist agents are not without the power to disguise themselves and their unusual phenotypic traits, so Parthney is allowed to go to Earth as long as he keeps his unusual physical features hidden. With the help of nanites provided by the Fru'wu, it is not to hard for Parthney to hide from the Overseers.

Pillars of creation: the Huaoshy have crafted us from star dust.

Parthney's mother is the main source of power and advantage that the Interventionists of Exode hold over the Overseers of Earth. As told in The Start of Eternity, the Huaoshy were initially taken by surprise when humans developed positronic robots. Most alarming for the Huaoshy was the fact that positronic robots developed time travel technology. However, Noÿs, a time traveler from the far future of Earth, could look into her own future and see the ultimate demise of Humanity, a sad fate that was caused by human use of time travel technology. That realization that the human species was going to become extinct provided Noÿs with strong motivation to worked with the Huaoshy and develop a plan that would put an end to time travel. For her cooperation in that task, we Earthlings were granted a second chance to survive and not be replaced by the Prelands.

Prelands: human v2.0

For the past seven million years the Huaoshy have worked to design a primate that could exist successfully within a technologically advanced civilization. First the Huaoshy designed and brought into existence various proto-human primate species then we humans and most recently also the Prelands, our designated replacements.

As planned by the Huaoshy, the Prelands were to have been the first primates of Earth who would be allowed to develop a technological culture. The hermaphroditic Prelands were nearing the end of their development phase on worlds like Hemmal when the first scientific humans at Observer base on the Moon invented positronic robots. When those robots realized that they could use their telepathic abilities to liberate Humanity from the Huaoshy, the carefully laid plans of the Huaoshy for the Prelands were derailed. 

Vec'te and Na'ma

Zja'na
After I realized that

1) Parthney's biological mother is Noÿs

and

2) Noÿs died thousands of years before Parthney was born

I then turned my attention to the details of Parthney's birth. Motivated by the name of the secret agent in Assignment: Earth (Gary Seven), I've long played around with the idea that Interventionist agents should be clones. I was perfectly comfortable with the idea that the pek can routinely make clones of Thomas. I decided that not only was Parthney a clone, but he was not the first such clone born on Hemmal. But who was Parthney's birth mother?

Parthney's unusual family tree.

I had previously divided Parthney's time on Hemmal into two parts. First was his time as a child during which he lived at a settlement (not shown in Exode) where he learned to speak and read at a young age. After about the age of five, Parthney had no good reason to continue reading and his interests turned to the major preoccupation of the Buld on Hemmal: music.

The second part of Parthney's life on Hemmal was the years after he transitioned through puberty and became sexually active. During these years Parthney traveled, walking across Pelis Kel and staying temporarily at a series of isolated communities where a musician like himself could develop his skills. Ultimately he found his way to Demon Lodge and his wandering across Hemmal came to an end.

When I tried to imagine Parthney's birth mother I never even contemplated a woman in that role. The pek, an artificial lifeform that serves the Huaoshy, are perfectly capable of gestating human embryos. Parthney comes to suspect the truth: Reginal is his birth mother.

While still living on his home planet Hemmal, Parthney assumes that he was born a mutant child of  Buld parents. However, Parthney is a genetic copy of Thomas, the son of Noÿs. Parthney has an ear for music and from an early age one of his favorite ballads is the Song of Nama which celebrates the power of the drug yerney to change the demon Veet into Nama's lover.

Vee'te

Later, upon arriving at Demon Lodge, Parthney is shown a carved relief that depicts the Demon Veet emerging from the underworld through the mouth of a cave. Yandrey tells Parthney an alternative version of the "Nama" legend. Yandrey explains to Parthney that in the ancient language of the Buld Scholars, "Nama" is "Na'ma" and "Veet" is "Vee'te"; Na'ma and Vee'te being the first two humans who were parents of another human being. Yandrey continued, "According to legend, the "plain of zja'na" was the ancient name of the coast plain to the east of Pelis Kel. When Vee'te and Na'ma fell in love and went off together on their Quest they came to the hot springs here and wintered over in the caves. It was humans who carved this relief during that far past age. Later, when the Buld settled Pelis Kel they interpreted the male figure of Vee'te as a demon and called this Demon Lodge."

Plague of Thebes

The story of Zja'na ends up being included near the start of Exode as part of Parthney's attempt to explain to his grandchildren how it came to pass that his first lover was his mother. Hana, who was born on Earth and is trying to provide a "normal" environment for her children, is not enthusiastic about Parthney telling such tales to Izhiun and his young siblings.

While he is active on Earth as an Interventionist agent, Parthney takes pity on Hana and liberates her from Earth. Hana comes to suspect that Parthney killed her husband, so their relationship goes into decline. Parthney gets a second chance to regain Hana's good graces when Hana and Boswei (Parthney's son) fall in love. It is only when Izhiun reaches Earth that the reader of Exode learns the fate of Hana's husband. He is alive and still living on Earth. Unfortunately, Hana is far away, in the Andromeda galaxy. I'm having trouble imagining how she can ever truly forgive Parthney, both for the loss of her husband and her loss of Izhiun.