The Fruthwa of Clutence

Target: Earth

Rather late in the game I finally realized that the pek have been on Earth far longer than 7,000,000 years. While it is true that they only recently began crafting we humans, about one month ago it finally became clear to me that the pek have actually been puttering around our galaxy for about 655 million years.

I'd originally imagined that the Fru'wu had developed a technological civilization before the arrival of the pek in our galaxy. This blog post is an attempt to correct that error and chart actual Fru'wu history through the twists and turns of the Reality Chain that had led up to the universe as we know it. (also see the summary page about the Fru'wu)

In the Exode Trilogy, the Fru'wu provide a cautionary tale for the Pla. By the time when the final Interventionist mission is launched from Lendhalen, the co-directors Pla'mak and Pla'kao are at each others throats over the issue of whether the Fru'wu are friends or foes.

click image to enlarge

Exode begins on Hemmal and Parthney is quickly introduced to the other planets of the Koly star system. The next planet out from Hemmal is Oib, a Mars-like world just being subjected to planetary engineering in an attempt to make it habitable. At first, Parthney pays little attention to Clu'ten'iun, the planet that is closer to Koly than Hemmal. Clu'ten'iun is hellishly hot and reputed to be uninhabitable, crushed and baked under a dense atmosphere.

While in training at Lendhalen, Parthney hears a few odd stories about the Fru'wu, but it is not until much later, after he completes his mission to Earth, that the truth about the Fru'wu is revealed to him.

The Fru'wu are an artificial life form that can trace its origin back to a biological species that evolved on the planet Clutence. That species, the Fruthwa, was similar in many ways to we Earthlings. The Fruthwa were designed and crafted by the pek and, in the Mallansohn Reality, they eventually transcended their physical form and merged with the Huaoshy in the Sedronic Domain.

Pla'mak and Pla'kao

However, things went terribly wrong for the Fruthwa in the Foundation Reality. When Gohrlay's band of telepathic positronic robots took over the galaxy, Clutence was "copied" by the pek to establish an Archive World where the Fruthwa could continue their existence within the Hierion Domain. The fate of Clutence and its population of Fruthwa was not as happy. Freed from pek Overseers and subjected to Nereid Interventionism, the Fruthwa of Clutence rapidly developed advanced technologies. The Fruthwa became addicted to fossil fuels, just as we Earthlings are. Clutence, went through global warming, but never had any polar ice caps. Eventually the planet became uninhabitable due to atmospheric changes. Due to its high gravity, Clutence had a thick atmosphere to begin with.

The Fruthwa were provided with hierion technology by the Nereids. Koly was artificially cooled in an attempt to combat the global warming of Clutence. This turned Hemmal into a frozen world. The Fruthwa developed artificial life forms, particularly the Fru'wu, creatures that ultimately inherited the planet Clutence. The Fru'wu renamed the Planet to "Clu'ten'iun". Although the whimsical book cover, above, identifies Clutence as an archive world, that is a misnomer. The archive world copy of Clutence in the Hierion Domain is generally known by the Fru'wu name for the copy: "Klyz".

When the Pla finally realize that Clu'ten'iun was once a world with a thriving ecosystem, and its destruction was made possible by R. Gohrlay, Pla'kao gets "cold feet" and stops trying to accelerate technological progress on Earth. Pla'kao wonders if the Nereid Interventionists are pushing Earth to the same destructive fate as Clutence.

In the Buld Reality, it would have been possible for the pek to "correct" the history of Clutence and save the Fruthwa from self-destruction. However, the strategic decision was made to allow close contact between the Fru'wu and humans. Can we Earthlings learn a lesson from the Fruthwa of Clutence?

More magazine and book covers.

Tau Bootis by David A. Hardy

Image credits. I needed to tweak the colors of David Hardy's gorgeous "Tau Bootis" exoplanet in order to get closer to my mental image of Clutence.

photomanipulated Storm

I imagine that the pek use certain "genetic templates" when they craft new species. Thus, the morphological facial features of the Fruthwa were not very different from we humans. I've never seen an X-Men movie. My best guess is that this (to the left) image started out as a film's publicity photo and it was then altered by a fan.

I was unable to find the original source of this landscape. Apparently this is someplace in Hawaii.

Bimanoid Theory

Excalbian

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

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

Robot, woman, alien Huaoshy?

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

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

Presidents in space

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

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

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

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

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

macroscopic symbiont

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

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

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

a planet with rivers of lava!

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

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

Hollywood geology

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

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

Parthney and Robin

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

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

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

"we've learned not to fear words"

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

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

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

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

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

Kirk: "Continue to our next assignment".

An hermaphroditic Pla takes the place of Balok

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

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

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

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

Balok

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

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

Original art by Pat Brennan

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

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

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

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

Kach and friends

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

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

Top, Pla'mak; bottom, Pla'kao

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

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

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

____________________

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

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

Counter Revolution

I'm in the middle of writing Chapter Three of Exode where Parthney meets his first Earthling: Gwyned. She was trained as a physicist and now trying to understand the advanced technological gizmos at Lendhalen, the secret Interventionist base where Parthney is being trained for a mission to Earth.

Gwyned has a chip on her shoulder. Nothing seems to work out well for her. First of all, she got booted off of Earth. Second, she got booted out of Klyz, the Fru'wu base that controls Interventionist missions to Earth. Third, when she finally meets Parthney, things are not going well for Gwyned at Lendhalen. Surrounded by amazing technological devices, the secrets of their functioning are not revealed by Gwyned's systematic attempts at reverse engineering.

While on Earth, Gwyned did not develop a good working relationship with Deomede, the Interventionist agent who preceded Parthney to Earth. As far as Gwyned can tell, Parthney is just a younger and even more ignorant version of Deomede. Gwyned has been asked to help train Parthney for survival on Earth, but her heart isn't in it.

Pla'kao (fake covers)

When writing fiction I don't usually go out of my way to create a villain, but I've started wondering if I should paint Gwyned as an outcast, possibly a Trotsky-like figure within the revolutionary cabal at Lendhalen. Gwyned does not stick to the party line. She is asked to help keep secret from Parthney several of the important ways that aliens have helped the Earth Interventionists, but Gwyned blurts these out at her first meeting with Parthney.

If this analogy holds and Gwyned is like Trotsky then who plays the role of Stalin in Exode? Some of the Buld begin to wonder if the Earthlings are rushing towards their own destruction because of their inability to avoid technological disasters. Gwyned has some sympathy for those who are beginning to question the wisdom of the 20,000-year-old Interventionist program on Earth, but her perceived solution for Earth's troubles is more technology for Earth, not less. The top two directors at Lendhalen are Pla'mak and Pla'kao. Pla'kao has been the main developer of the idea that it is time to stop trying to push the Earthlings ever faster towards science and technological advance.

The fake magazine cover featuring Pla'kao is silly: in 1925 the people of Earth certainly don't know about the existence of the Buld Clan and their rebel off-shoot group, the Pla. However, there is information transfer from Earth to Lendhalen and soon after the application of 19th century science and technology such as chemical warfare during the "Great War" become known to Pla'kao, thon has the realization that the Buld, by living in an artificial and protective environment designed by the pek, are unable to imagine the kinds of technological horrors that can arise on Earth. After 20,000 years of scheming to bring Earthlings out of the stone age, the Buld begin to feel a moral responsibility for the misuse of advanced technology on Earth. Pla'kao can't avoid the thought: maybe there is a good reason why the Overseers have worked so hard for so long to prevent Earthlings from developing a civilization based on science and technology.

Gwyned

When Deomede is trained for his mission to Earth, he becomes the first Interventionist agent to shift away from helping Earthlings to develop new technologies. Rather than help Gwyned with her plasma physics research, fearing that she will greatly advance nuclear technology on Earth, Deomede teleports her from Earth to the Interventionist base at Klyz.

After spending time at Klyz, Gwyned resents the fact that the Interventionists are not doing everything that can possibly be done to bring to the people of Earth the advanced technologies that have been available to the Buld for thousands of years.

Another fanciful magazine cover is shown to the left. Gwyned is born in 1939. By 1953 Gwyned is already scheming to involve herself in physics research. Unfortunately, her efforts to research fusion power as an energy source are derailed by Cold War military research.

By the time Parthney arrives at Lendhalen, Gwyned is trying to find a way to get back to Earth. Knowing that Pla'kao's cautious position is now dominating Lendhalen, Gwyned doesn't trust Parthney to take needed action on Earth to help the Earthlings move away from primitive "first generation" technologies like burning coal towards more advanced and cleaner energy technologies like fusion power. Gwyned is also feeling guilty about being tricked by Deomede and losing her chance to stay on Earth and work to prevent nuclear war.

Gwyned views the people of Earth as being trapped in some kind of horrible experiment that is being conducted by the pek or the Huaoshy. She is willing to risk her own life in an effort to get help to Earth, even in the face of dire warnings from the Buld and the Fru'wu about past events when Interventionist forces pushed their cause too aggressively, provoking push back with resulting elimination of entire Interventionist bases. Pla'kao tells Gwyned that prior to the existence of Lendhalen, there was an earlier Interventionist base in the Koly star system that was simply obliterated, presumably by the Huaoshy.

Pla'kao is not a dictator. Pla'mak and Pla'kao are co-directors of Lendhalen and Pla'mak favors Gwyned's bold strategy for trying to help the Earthlings towards a level of technological sophistication more on par with that of the Buld who will soon arrive in the Solar System. With support from Pla'mak, Gwyned is able to get access to even the critically important teleportation terminal at Lendhalen that is used to send agents to Earth.

Initially dismayed by her inability to understand the control circuits of the teleportation terminal, by the time Parthney arrives at Lendhalen she has begun to imagine that the Buld revolutionaries have never had a viable research and development program. The earliest recorded history of Lendhalen describes success in creating humanoid robots, but Gwyned can find no detailed description of robotics research or evidence of any further progress in robotics research during the past 5,000 years.

Gwyned suspects that all of the technology in use by the Buld has been given to them by the pek. If Lendhalen is a hot bed of revolution against the pek, then why does it seem that nothing has ever happened in the course of that revolution without the help of the pek? Gwyned manages to pass these doubts along to Parthney before he is sent off to Earth.

Counter Revolution
How can it be a "counter revolution" if it comes 20,000 years after the start of the revolution? Slowly grinds the mill of the Huaoshy. Key Buld revolutionaries like Yandrey and Pla'kao have worked together in their rebellion against the pek for thousands of years. It is Pla'kao who pioneered use of the term "Huaoshy" to refer to the hypothetical alien creators of the pek. Pla'kao is a pragmatist, willing to accept that the Buld are puppets of the Huaoshy: any puppet who gets out of line and defies the wishes of the puppet master will be harshly punished. Pla'kao is willing to work for change on Earth within the constraints imposed by the Huaoshy. Pla'kao is sympathetic to Gwyned's idealism, but unwilling to risk violating the fundamental rules of the game being played out on Earth.

Pla'kao hypothesizes that the Huaoshy do not allow themselves the luxury of revealing their existence to the people of Earth. However, the Huaoshy long ago removed primates from Earth and "cultured" them on worlds of the Galactic Core like Hemmal, thus creating "domesticated" primates. In a slow and gradual process of gene flow, new gene combinations that arose in the Galactic Core were transferred back to Earth. All such intervention into the course of events on Earth is made possible by the Interventionists and regulated by the Overseers. Pla'kao does what is possible to help the Earthlings while working within the constraints that have been imposed on the Interventionists. Gwyned is far too undisciplined to function as an Interventionist agent on Earth, but Pla'kao wants to make use of Gwyned as an agent of change so that the Interventionists can remain flexible and quickly adapt to changing conditions on Earth.

_______________________

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

The Klyz Teleportation Hub

Pla'kao

I've been making decisions about the nature of the secret training base for Interventionist agents in the Koly star system where Parthney is prepared for his mission to Earth. One of the key issues is the location of Lendhalen. The directors of Lendhalen, Pla'kao and Pla'mak, believe that the locations of Interventionist training bases must be kept secret from the pek. This belief arose because of the fact that some Interventionist bases have been quickly and efficiently eliminated.

The truth is, it has never been possible for the Buld to keep secret the location of the bases where they train human agents. Such training facilities are allowed to operate as long as the Interventionists are playing the role that is desired by the Huaoshy. What the Huaoshy object to is Interventionists who try to undermine on-going efforts to keep primitives like the people of Earth unaware of the existence of the Huaoshy.

During the past 10,000 years, the greatest danger for Buld Interventionists has been the continual possibility that a group of true revolutionaries will arise at places like Lendhalen, revolutionaries who could start to disrupt the plans of the Huaoshy. This has happened many times, most recently in the Koly star system about 1,000 years ago.

16th century England becomes a hotbed for Interventionism

After the previous training base in the Koly star  system was eliminated, Pla'kao and Pla'mak established Lendhalen and for the past 500 years they have been very effective at training Interventionist agents with the result that the English-speaking people of Earth came to play an important role in the scientific and technological development of Earth.

One of the keys to the success of Pla'kao and Pla'mak has been their lifestyle as Pla. As described in Chapter Two of Exode, the Pla must periodically undergo a "partial change". They must auto-fertilize and allow most of the cells in their bodies to be replaced. Although not all of their brain cells are replaced, this greatly disrupts their memories and after a "partial change" a Pla individual must undergo extensive re-education. Pla'kao and Pla'mak have been careful to alternate their cycles of going through "partial change" and they take turns re-educating each other so that their strategies and methods do not significantly change through the centuries.

Center: Parthney's residence while at Klyz.

Pla'kao went through "partial change" about two years before Gwyned arrived at Lendhalen. Gwyned's description of recent events on Earth (she left Earth in 1964) startled Pla'mak and so Pla'kao has been re-educated under conditions that make her believe that the Earthlings have become a serious danger to themselves. Thus, Parthney is trained for his mission to Earth while Pla'mak and Pla'kao are in disagreement about what is best for the people of Earth and, in particular, if the effort to advance scientific and technological development on Earth has been pushed along too quickly by the Interventionists.

Klyz Teleportation Hub
While at Lendhalen, Parthney begins to wonder if he will live out the rest of his life on Earth. He is told by Pla'mak that most Interventionist agents on Earth are captured by the Overseers. Gwyned explains to Parthney that the Fru'wu have teleportation technology; she was teleported off of Earth (to part of the Klyz community, see below) and then later teleported to Lendhalen. Parthney believes that when he is on Earth, if he ever comes to the attention of the Overseers then he will be able to teleport off of Earth.

Belinda Tement

In fact, working conditions for Interventionist agents on Earth are quite different from what the Buld Interventionists suspect. The Fru'wu interventionists make use of the Buld to supply humans who are teleported first to a Fru'wu base (Klyz), not to Earth. Upon reaching Klyz, Parthney believes that he is already on Earth. There is a community of humans from Earth who reside at Klyz where they are debriefed and where they provide instruction about their future duties on Earth to new arrivals like Parthney. Further, the Fru'wu infect the brains of new arrivals with Fru'wu nanites. The human residents of Klyz never actually meet any Fru'wu, but at Klyz there are artificial life forms of Fru'wu design who pretend to be Fru'wu.

At Klyz Parthney is paired with one of the artificial life forms who will be teleported to Earth along with Parthney and who functions as his assistant while Parthney is on Earth. The Fru'wu have been working to introduce into the population of Earth some gene combinations that will allow Earthlings to survive the dangers inherent in advanced technology and the coming contact with the Buld spaceship that is on its way to Earth. While at Klyz, Parthney is trained to be aggressive in seeking out opportunities to advance this Fru'wu agenda. While on Earth Parthney's activity attracts the attention of an Overseer using the identity Belinda Tement.

1554: Jane is teleported to Klyz

The pek have designed human brains to function in two different modes. Most human brains have existed in a type of symbiotic relationship with pek nanites. In this mode humans are predisposed to tribalism and religious faith. In the absence of pek nanites humans are able to think creatively about tool use and the invention of new tools and technologies. Humans with no pek nanites in their brains are unable to understand what drives other humans towards "group think" and faith in the supernatural.

Among the first in England to have very low levels of pek nanites were Henry VIII and Jane Grey. Contrary to later constructed legend, Jane was not executed: after being dethroned she was teleported to Klyz and then subsequently resided at Lendhalen for the rest of her life.

After attaining gene combinations in Earthlings that made their brains resistant to infection by pek nanites, the Fru'wu continued to seek additional beneficial gene combinations. In particular, they wanted to produce Earthlings who would be genetically predisposed towards ethical behavior. Parthney is engaged in the pursuit of this goal when he is discovered by Overseers, captured and then taken to Observer Base on the Moon. The Fru'wu take this opportunity to infiltrate Observer Base and ultimately Parthney is teleported back to Klyz.

Related Reading: Earth Day 1

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Pla'mak and Pla'kao

Pla'mak

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

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

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

The Origin of Interventionists

banded iron formation

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

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

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

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

1947: Gwyned's family moves to Australia

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

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

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

Overseer

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

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

Exode Back Cover

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

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

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

Exode - change your world...or else!

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


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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.