Zeptite Endosymbiont, Part 2.

Zeta (disguised as Rylla) and
Tyhry (disguised as Marda) shortly
before Tyhry moves to Hawaii.

 Below on this page is Chapter 12 of the science fiction story "The Hierozyme Intervention". After introducing Ada and Tynyo in Chapter 10, and showing how Ada will fit into Casanay (see Chapter 11) the setting for "The Hierozyme Intervention" is now shifted ahead to six months after the events of the first 11 Chapters. Marda has survived her first Arizona summer and is now getting her first opportunity to go downhill skiing and watch snow pile up on the inflatable domes around Casanay that protect Zeta's gardens during the winter. Eddy remains unaware that the two women he believes are his wife and daughter are actually Systolina and Marda in disguise.

With most of the senior scientists of the Henrito Research Institute now having been hired, Ranch0 Henrito has become a hub for planning a multi-decade program of scientific study of artificial life with the goal of climate change mitigation. Zeta, Anthony and Tyhry now live on the top floor of Ranch0 Henrito from where they have a good view of the nearby site where the Ranch1 building is being constructed. 

Having dropped out of the nearby public school, Marda is being home schooled by Sytolina. For months, while living at Casanay and pretending to be Tyhry, Marda has been secretly developing her zeptite programming skills and focusing her attention on her frustrated search for how to access Eddy's hidden Reality Viewer. At every opportunity, Tyhry, pretending to be Marda, visits Casanay and spends time discussing the fan-fiction writing project that is now an integral part of Eddy's website. Unable to believe in the existence of space aliens, but knowing that she has the ability to telepathically communicate with Marda, Tyhry begins to invent her own unique "explanation" for her telepathic ability.

Ada, Tyhry (disguised as Marda) and
 Zeta (disguised as Rylla). Image by Leonardo.

Marda has been telepathically studying Eddy's mind pattern and she is convinced that Eddy is tryp'At for four reasons: 1) in collaboration with Ada, she has had both Tyhry's and Eddy's genomes sequenced and found the same unusual genes (such as a specific unusual NOTCH2NLC variant) that that are in her own genome, 2) Ylyndra had previously told Marda that Eddy is tryp'At, 3) in his science fiction stories, Eddy describes himself as a tryp'At who has had his telepathic abilities "burned out" by his replicoid copy, and 4) Marda believes that under optimal conditions (when her oxypathin and klytykynyn receptors are activated) she can now telepathically sense the fringes of Eddy's mind, which she believes is a damaged tryp'At telepathic mind pattern.

Tyhry is still unable to believe in the existence of space aliens, but over the past six months as her telepathic abilities have been refined, she is now occasionally receiving information from the future via the Sedron Time Stream. Her visions of the future include images of Hawaii and Tyhry is certain that in just two years she will be living in Hawaii.

Tim's mother (Naseh) has long worked at the Q Diner and that is why Anthony had so carefully watched the Q Diner for over a decade. The Ek'col were designed to NOT be intra-fertile, they only efficiently reproduce with the assistance of others such as the tryp'At who can use their blastipositor to transfer blastocysts into the uterus of an Ek'col like Naseh. Tynyo has become quite close with Naseh. Naseh, Tyhyo and Tim frequently visit Casanay, particularly for the Friday movie nights. Ada continues to be Marda's source of oxypathin and Tim is Marda's source of klytykynyn. Marda has hired a company to isolate and identify the structures of oxypathin and klytykynyn.

Systolina (disguised as Zeta), Marda (disguised
as Tyhry) and Ada. Image by Leonardo.

Ada has for six months worked at Casanay, but she will soon begin her new job inside Ranch1 Henrito. During the last weekend before Ada ends her employment at Casanay, Marda wants to try one last "trick" to make use of Ada to help her access the Reality Viewer.

When Tynyo first noticed Naseh at the Q diner, they started talking sports. Naseh is like Ada, with erectile breasts that produce an oxypathin-rich secretion. Tyhyo obtained Naseh's DNA sample from her milk and Ada sequenced Naseh's genome, showing that she has only one copy of the special NOTCH2NLB gene variant that is present twice in the genomes of both Ada and Tynyo, apparently explaining the mystery of why Naseh has no telepathic ability. Tim completely lacks the special NOTCH2NLB gene variant, but has other Ek'col gene patterns, including the Ek'col klytykykyn gene which explains why he has klytykykyn in his semen. During the last weekend of Ada's employment at Casanay, a trip to Phoenix begins with the plan of Tynyo and Naseh to attend a basketball game but those plans have been expanded to include ski equipment shopping by Eddy and Marda and Anthony goes along  to Phoenix (Anthony claims to want to see the basketball game, but he is really trying to catch Manny in the act of interacting with what he suspects are Manny's tryp'At and Ek'col agents on Earth).

After the game, Tim takes Marda (disguised as Tyhry) to see a movie (The Rocky Horror Picture Show). While Tim performs with other fans, Marda goes back to the hotel where on the other side of the wall of her room Eddy was on the phone with Zeta. Marda has hired a company to produce oxypathin and klytykykyn petides.

Systolina and Ada at Casanay.

Having ingested huge doses of oxypathin and klytykykyn, Marda is telepathically at the fringe of Eddy's mind while he was having phone sex with Zeta. Marda generates her own orgasm, but still fails to merge into a shared mindspace with Eddy.  Marda then calls Tyhry and reported that she has again failed to telepathically link to Eddy. 

When that effort to telepathically link to Eddy fails, then Marda asks Ada and Systolina to perform telepathy experiments aimed at combining the power of tryp'At and Ek'col telepathy. During those experiments, Marda discovers that she can't telepathically share anything she knows about zeptites. She uses her zeptite programming ability to link to Eddy's special zeptite endosymbiont module that holds the Reality Viewer access key. Now Marda can use the Reality Viewer any time that Eddy is not already using it. 

The Hierozyme Intervention Chapter 12 - Vision of Hawaii (Ch. 1)(Ch. 2)(Ch. 3)(Ch. 4)(Ch. 5)(Ch. 6)(Ch. 7)(Ch. 8)(Ch. 9)(Ch. 10)(Ch. 11)  

On his first day in Arizona, Tynyo had met Tim's mother, Naseh, at the Q Diner. Naseh's unusual appearance immediately attracted Tynyo's attention, just as it had long ago attracted the attention of Anthony. Anthony has long maintained some of his femtobot monitoring probes inside Naseh, hoping to someday find her interacting with Manny the bumpha. In November, Tynyo and Naseh made plans to attend a basketball game in Phoenix. Later, with a large winter storm approaching, Eddy, Marda and Anthony decided to also attend the game, with Eddy and Marda also planning to shop for ski equipment while in Phoenix. Attending the basketball game were Eddy, Anthony, Tynyo, Naseh, Tim and Marda (disguised as Tyhry). 

Zeta (disguised as Rylla), Tyhry (disguised
as Marda) and Ada. Image by Leonardo.

Now, the morning after that basketball game, Tyhry was waiting impatiently for Zeta and Systolina to get out of the shower. The weekend had started out badly for Tyhry when Marda had decided on Friday to go with Eddy and Anthony to Phoenix on a shopping trip. Friday evening, besides inventing excuses to send a text message to Marda about every five minutes, Tyhry spent her time polishing the latest fan story for posting on Eddy's website. 

Initially, Tyhry had completely lacked enthusiasm for the task of pretending to be Marda and pretending to be obsessed with Eddy's science fiction novels. Then Tyhry realized that there might be some truth in Eddy's stories; truths that had nothing to do with space aliens. Now Tyhry was pleased that her management of the new fan-fiction section of Eddy's website gave her a convenient excuse to frequently visit Casanay and spend time with Marda.

Late Friday night, an hour after getting to sleep, Tyhry awoke with a new story idea in her mind. She was certain that this story idea had just come to her in a dream vision from the future. The story idea was tangled up in a complex plot, explaining the evolution of telepathic humans on Earth (such as herself) starting hundreds of thousands of years ago with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans and featured the idea that Neanderthals and Denisovans were part of a telepathic sub-clade of humanity that had not gone extinct; instead, Neanderthals and Denisovans they had evolved into two human variants: the tryp'At and the Ek'col. 

Systolina and Ada at Casanay. Image by Leonardo.

Tyhry herself was in the new story as a character who discovered the truth about the telepathic tryp'At and the Ek'col, human variants who had long secretly existed on Earth and continued to evolve as two distinct telepathic human lineages. Not only were the tryp'At and the Ek'col telepathic, but they had developed advanced nanotechnology that allowed them to micro-surgically alter their body appearance. The story ended with Tyhry moving to Hawaii and meeting a secretive group of tryp'At who were doing genetic engineering on their own children in an effort to perfect their telepathic abilities. 

In the middle of the night, after beginning to furiously write out the story, Tyhry was interrupted by a phone call from Marda. Marda reported on her most failed attempt to achieve a telepathic linkage to Eddy, which this time had involved Marda trying to share a telepathic orgasm trance with Eddy. "I was fully sensitized by huge doses of oxypathin and klytykykyn petides and I was just a few feet away from Eddy when we simultaneously experienced our orgasms. I sense his pleasure, but then I could get no deeper into his mind."

Tyhry was hardly listening to Marda and really did not want to hear about Marda having telepathic sex with her father. Tyhry told Marda, "Listen, lover, I expect you to be sharing your orgasms with me and not be wasting them on Eddy."

Marda decided that it was unwise to describe the details of her failed telepathy experiment to Tyhry. "I'm desperate. I'll try anything that might win me access to Eddy's Reality Viewer."

Tyhry sighed. "I doubt if Reality Viewing is even possible. My father's stories are full of absurd imaginary technologies."

Image by Leonardo.

Marda had long since given up trying to convince Tyhry of the existence of the pek and the bumpha. Tyhry had no memory of previously meeting with and specking to Nyrtia and Manny. Having reached their usual impasse, Tyhry and Marda quickly ended the phone call. 

All during the small hours of the morning Tyhry had written down the new story and now, running on only one hour of sleep, Tyhry was eager to share the new story with her father. Tyhry was tempted to simply uploaded the story to Eddy's website, but she had agreed to show all stories to Eddy before posting them where Eddy's fans could see them.

Then at breakfast, Zeta had informed Tyhry that Systolina was coming over. Tyhry had argued that she and Zeta could go to Casanay. Zeta said, "No. Remember, in your role as Marda, your only reason for going to Casanay is to be with Tyhry, or possibly to talk to Eddy, but they are both in Phoenix."

"I want to be there inside Casanay right when Eddy gets home." Tyhry told Zeta about the story idea she had received from the future. 

When Zeta stopped laughing, she told Tyhry, "That story makes no sense."

Tyhry proclaimed, "It is a great story. Call it an alternate Reality, if you insist." 

In the middle of Saturday morning, Systolina arrived, popping out of the elevator and falling into Zeta's embrace and a hot wet kiss. When her mouth was free, Systolina told Zeta, "Tynyo is with Ada at Casanay and they are having one of their intense Ek'col sexplay sessions. I either had to join them or get out of there."

Zeta and Systolina. Image by Leonardo.

Zeta said, "I've given you standing orders that you are come entertain me when ever possible." 

While watching Zeta undress Systolina, Tyhry told Systolina that she wanted to be at Casanay when Eddy returned home from Phoenix. Systolina said, "Eddy was at the Suns game last night and they were up late."

Zeta told Systolina, "Thanks for transferring his call to me. I had a fun phone sex session with Eddy."

"No problem. I had my hands full of Ada's amazing erectile breasts." Now Zeta was fondling Systolina's big breasts. Systolina told Tyhry, "They got a rather slow start home this morning."

Zeta had pulled her hands away from Systolia's breasts and was looking at her phone. "They are finally on the road and should be back for lunch." Zeta was somewhat irked with Systolina because Systolina has taken the absence of Marda and Eddy from Casanay as an opportunity to have a marathon sexplay session with Ada, a kind of mournful leave-taking in advance of Ada ending her employment at Casanay. Zeta was quite horny and she took Systolina by the hand and marched her into Zeta's bedroom.

After watching her mother playing with Systolina's big gravity-defying breasts, now Tyhry was horny. She went to her room and began to masturbate. Upon discovering Systolina's special positronic robot-derived telepathic abilities, Tyhry had requested of Systolina that she always telepathically share her orgasms with Tyhry. Now, Systolina was telepathically sharing with Tyhry her joy and pleasure from her slick and soapy in-the-shower play session with Zeta. Tyhry quickly achieved a satisfying orgasm.

Image by Leonardo.

Laying on her bed and still fingering the amazingly stiff glans of her clitoris, Tyhry was looking out the window at the Ranch1 construction site and marveling at how quickly its walls had gone up. Now every day, even on weekends, a work crew was there, finishing the interior. Having seen the plans, Tyhry knew that Ranch1 was a ten story high sparkling glass and steel structure with laboratory research space on the lower floors and apartments for the staff and their families on the upper floors. Tyhry knew that Ada had ordered DNA sequencing equipment that was scheduled to be installed inside Ranch1 in the next few weeks. 

Finally, Zeta had sated her sexual appetite and she and Systolina burst out of the shower and began dressing, which by their rules meant they had to dress each other. Through Systolina's eyes, Tyhry could Telepathically see the lovely body that her mother was now using, that of Rylla Onway, the chief financial officer for the Henrito Research Institute. 

In her new story, positronic robots were the handiwork of the technologically-advanced tryp'At who had endowed positronic robots like Systolina with telepathic abilities. In Tyhry's imagination, both Marda and Systolina were using Eddy's science fiction stories as convenient cover for their secret mission among the conventional humans of Earth. The goal of that mission was to solve Earth's global warming problem.

As the glow of Systolina's most recent orgasm faded, Systolina kept open her telepathic link to Tyhry. Systolina asked Tyhry: Did you enjoy the show? Tyhry had enjoyed the telepathic experience of Systolina making love to her mother and Tyhry knew that Zeta was deliriously happy with her new life. Tyhry knew the basics of how Zeta was channeling profits from Simpera into the non-profit Research Institute and using those contributions to science research as tax write-offs for Simpera. Ada's DNA sequencing core facility would probably be the first functioning laboratory of the Henrito Institute and Ada had promised Tyhry that she could work part-time as a technician in her lab. Tyhry could well imagine a direct path from working in Ada's lab to her future vision of going to Hawaii and there becoming involved in research on ocean microbes. 

Image by Leonardo.

Emerging from the bedroom, Zeta and Systolina were talking non-stop about plans for the rest of the weekend and the fact that Marda, Eddy and Anthony were going skiing. Systolina said, "Unless the roads are closed."

Zeta said, "The roads might close after they get to the ski area. They might not get home Sunday evening. If that happens I want you here with me for the night." 

Tyhry knew that the trip to Phoenix had been motivated by the need of Eddy and Marda to shop for new skiing equipment. Having never before shown an interest in downhill skiing, Eddy's daughter (actually Marda in disguise) surprised him by suddenly asking to go with Eddy and Anthony to the downhill skiing area. 

What Eddy took to be his daughter, Tyhry, was actually Marda in disguise. Marda had long wanted to try skiing, but the opportunity had never previously arisen for her. Eddy's old boots and bindings were worn out and Eddy also needed to get new equipment. Marda, playing the role of Tyhry, needed a complete set ski equipment and clothing suitable for a day on the mountain during what was forecast to be a large winter storm. Tyhry, still not interested in skiing, got out of bed, barely listened to Zeta's and Systolina's plans for the rest of the weekend. Tyhry was still horny and fantasizing about what she and Marda would be doing together in bed that coming night.

The three women finally took the elevator down to the ground floor of ranch0 where Zeta was immediately intercepted by the architect who was working there in his office through the weekend and was caught up in the process of designing Ranch5. Systolina and Tyhry went to the garage and stood looking at the big Jeep that belonged to Rylla and Zeta's sporty little car, which Tyhry loved to drive. Sometimes Tyhry had dreams of flying, and the closest she could actually come to those dream experiences was by driving her mother's car too fast. Tyhry opened up the driver's side door of Zeta's car and told Systolina, "See you at Casanay."

Image by Leonardo.

Systolina could telepathically sense that Zeta was deep into the details of the astronomical expense that was baked into the extravagant design of Ranch5. With each successive building of the Henrito site that she helped design, Zeta found more ways to make the research labs and the associated living spaces more luxurious. The staff and researchers of the Henrito Campus would mostly be housed on site, either in more of the modular prefabricated homes or in apartments in the upper floors of the research laboratory buildings. The architect and his family had moved into the first of the modular homes as soon as Zeta, Anthony and Tyhry had moved out of it.

Systolina felt obligated to give Tyhry the type of warning that was usually given by Zeta before Tyhry drove. "If you get stopped by the police, only flash your fake driver's license if asked."

"I don't drive that fast, auntie. I won't be stopped." Tyhry got in the car and drove off.

Systolina watched Tyhry driving too fast as she disappeared down the Ranch0 driveway and her telepathic link to Tyhry reached its length limit and snapped. Systolina reflected on the fact that Tyhry and Marda had both adopted the habit of referring to Zeta and Systolina as 'auntie' whenever they felt they were being treated like children. Systolina got into the Jeep and started it up, knowing that Zeta would appreciate the heater. Still thinking about Tyhry's relentless efforts to claim her adult status, Systolina smiled and thought about how relentlessly Tyhry and Marda took every opportunity to assert that they were now adults and deserving of being treated like adults. Marda had explained it plainly to Zeta one day: "The gene sequencing is clear. Tyhry and I are tryp'At and we are both physiologically adult tryp'At. You can't expect us to suppress our amped-up tryp'At sex drives." Knowing the truth of that statement, Systolina was happy to provide Tyhry and Marda with second-hand sexual experiences relayed to them by way of Systolina's telepathic ability. Systolina giggled as she thought about how sometimes when Tyhry was horny she would remind Systolina to "pimp out Zeta", a request from Tyhry that Systolina make love with Zeta and telepathically share the experience with Tyhry.

Image by Leonardo.

Finally, Zeta reached the garage and got into the passenger side front seat of 'her' Jeep. "Sorry about the delay. I see Tyhry took off." Zeta used an app on her phone to check on Tyhry and saw that her daughter was traveling at close to 100 MPH going up the strait highway through the valley. "She seems determined to get stopped for speeding."

Systolina suspected that Marda had somehow deployed a network of detectors along the roads between the Henrito site and Casanay. Anytime there were police in the area, Marda always let Tyhry know about it. "Don't worry about Tyhry. She has a guardian angel." Before arriving on Earth, this copy of Systolina had been shown Phari Simulations of the future that left Systolina believing that nothing bad would ever happen to either Marda or Tyhry. 

Under heavy overcast, as the last direct sunlight of that day faded from the sky as the overcast solidified, a few snow flakes were swirling in the air. Zeta commented, "Some day Tyhry will get a surprise from a patch of ice and then we will learn how well that sophisticated array of airbags in your car works."

Systolina nodded, but said, "I hope you are wrong about ice in Tyhry's future. She seems certain she will end up in Hawaii." Systolina was shifting her thoughts back to Ada. "Since this is mystery girl's last weekend at Casanay, I feel I should do something special for her."

Zata insisted, "Last night was your chance to do something special. She does have a husband... you can't expect Ada to spend the whole weekend with you." 

Systolina said, "I do what Ada expects me to do. She's fallen deeply in love with me these past months and regrets reaching the end of her employment at Casanay. She gets in as much play time as she can with Tynyo but he is very busy trying to keep Naseh entertained. Apparently, Naseh is delighted to finally have an Ek'col lover for the first time in her life."

Image by Leonardo.

Zeta suggested, "If you want to do something special for Ada then tell her the truth about the gene sequencing."

Systolina had played a trick on Ada. Knowing that Ada wanted to understand Tyhry's mysterious genome, which Sytolina imagined had been carefully designed by Manny, Systolina had first allowed Ada to analyze artificial tissue collected from Systolina that contained no DNA. After Ada and Tynyo had wasted a month trying to understand why their DNA sequencer could not decode a sample of what they thought was Zeta's DNA, Systolina had provided Ada with tissue that contained DNA totally unrelated to that of Tyhry. Since Systolina's body was an artificial construct composed of femtobots, she'd "played her trick" and allowed Ada to work for months with simulated human tissue that told Ada absolutely nothing useful about Tyhry's unique gene patterns. Systolina giggled and said, "Given how confused MG is over her sequencing results, I've almost convinced myself that she is not actually Manny in disguise. However, our mystery girl is still lying to us. I've given her every opportunity to come clean, but she still suspects that I'm Manny's agent inside Casanay."

Zeta said, "Systolina, making Ada come every day is not the same as letting her come clean." Both Zeta and Systolina had become Ada's lovers. And both Anthony and Systolina had used all of their telepathic powers and femtobot probes in an effort to prove that Ada was Manny's secret agent, all with no success. As far as they could tell, both Ada and Tynyo were carriers of a possibly complete set of Ek'col gene patterns, but they seemingly had no link to the bumpha. 

Systolina shrugged. "True. Well, starting next week she will be your problem not mine. Now I have to find and hire her replacement."

"You are already using your nanites to clean Casanay. You could cook Eddy's meals."

"No, Eddy believes that his wife can't cook and prefers to spend her time gardening."

Image by Leonardo.

The snow was now coming down steadily and Zeta was worried about her gardens. Zeta said, "I better check to see if you got the domes correctly inflated and prepared for all the snow heading our way."

 Arriving at Casanay, Systolina and Zeta toured the inflatable domes that would be tested during the now arriving storm which was forecast to have gale force winds. Zeta found and adjusted several deficiencies in how Systolina had deployed the domes and programmed their heating equipment. 

Tyhry waited impatiently until Marda, Eddy and Anthony arrived, returning to Casanay after having completed their shopping in Phoenix. Tyhry wanted to corner her father and show him the science fiction story she had written, but Marda took Tyhry to her bedroom suite and they had a quick and fiery sexplay session that concluded with them in a shared orgasm trance. Marda again dosed both herself and Tyhry with synthetic oxypathin and klytykynyn that she had paid a company to produce. The two sex hormones heightened their sexual pleasure, but failed to allow them to expand their telepathic linkage to Eddy or anyone else.

With the passing months and many shared orgasm trances, Marda and Tyhry had gradually learned to optimize their tryp'At telepathic linkage, allowing them to link thoughts even when they were not together in the same room. Arriving along with their frequently shared telepathic orgasms trances that were now amplified by Marda's supply of synthetic oxypathin and klytykynyn hormone peptides, Tyhyr had begun to have her visions of the future. Based on Eddy's novels, Marda was certain that some of the tryp'At like Tyhry had the ability to receive information from the future via the Sedron Time Stream. Now Tyhry suggested to Marda that the Ek'col and the tryp'At had both evolved the ability to share telepathic mindspaces and telepathically receive information from the future. Marda telepathically told Tyhry: You should apply Occam's Razor. Your theory of the evolutionary origin of human telepathy is absurd. Why did Neanderthals and Denisovans evolve telepathic abilities and not the regular humans who now clearly dominate planet Earth?

Image by Leonardo.

Tyhry replied: You just can't accept the fact that you are on a secret tryp'At mission inside Casanay. 

Marda suggested: In one of Eddy's stories, he depicted the Ek'col as able to telepathically enter into an orgasms trance without physical contact. I'm sure I've seen that ability in action. Ada can engage with Tynyo in telepathic sexual intercourse. When Tynyo shares a long-distance orgasm trance with Ada, she simply stops what she is doing, even while she is busy working. You and I always require physical contact for producing our orgasms. The Ek'col simply seem to be more powerful telepaths than we tryp'At. Maybe we need to work through Ada and use her more powerful telepathic abilities to get into Eddy's mind.

Tyhry had never felt any telepathic link to Ada. She suggested: Maybe Systolina can pull this off. 

After their sexplay session, Marda showed off her new winter clothing, modeling it for Tyhry. Tyhry commented, "Very cute, but I prefer you naked."

Tyhry and Marda emerged from Tyhry's bedroom suite and Tyhry inspected Marda's and Eddy's new ski equipment. Systolina had already telepathically lifted the key elements of Marda's plan from their thoughts and soon Systolina telepathically suggested: Maybe Ada will agree to participate in an experiment during which I try to function as a telepathic bridge between tryp'Ats and Ek'cols.

Image by Leonardo.

After lunch, Marda, playing the role of Tyhry, had helped Ada take the lunch dishes from the dining room to the kitchen. For months, Marda had frequently propositioned Ada to move beyond occasionally allowing Marda to play with Ada's amazing erectile breasts and drink Ada's oxypathin-rich milk. Ada had always insisted that Marda would have to wait, usually telling Marda things like, "I don't think you are mature enough to successfully deal with my sexual appetite. Your mother can, so you have hope. You just need to wait until you are older". Now Marda insisted that she had waited long enough and it was time that they become lovers and try to telepathically link their minds. Ada laughed and told Marda, "I feel like I should make you get a note from Eddy saying he approves of you having sex with the cook."

 However, after the kitchen was cleaned and put to order, Systolina arrived and told Ada, "Even if you refuse to have sex with Tyhry, we should try to link your telepathic minds." Ada relented and took Marda and Systolina into the nearby west wing home theater for the telepathy experiment.

After lunch, Zeta took Anthony to the Casanay hot tub and Tyhry, still disguised as Marda, had Eddy to herself at his computer and she explained to him her new fan-fiction story. Unable to believe in the reality of space aliens, Tyhry had constructed in her mind a complex model of the tryp'At and Ek'col as genetically-related human variants with telepathic abilities that had evolved naturally on Earth. Eddy began asking questions about Tyhry's idea, saying, "So, in your fictional universe, there is no need for either the bumpah or the pek?"

Tyhry replied, "There is no evidence for the existence of space aliens. The tryp'At and the Ek'col must have evolved naturally on Earth." 

While Tyhry showed Eddy her story, Marda dosed herself with more oxypathin and klytykynyn and relaxed in one of the large comfortable chairs inside the theater. For the telepathy experiment, Systolina started with Ada as the telepathic recipient, testing if Ada could telepathically detect a signal that Systolina first pulled out of Marda's mind and then relayed directly into Ada's femtobot endosymbiont, not using Systolina's positronic robot-derived telepathy channel, but rather a set of Sytstolina's programmable femtobot probes. During the experiment, Marda (disguised as Tyhry) thought about the fact that a klytykynyn gene had been found on the Y chromosome of both Tynyo and Naseh's son, Tim. Both Marda and Tyhry seemed to have high levels of klytykynyn receptors inside both their mouths and their vaginas. For the past week, Marda had been using manufactured klytykynyn to boost her telepathic linkage to Tyhry, but she still could only sense the fringe of Eddy's mind. Marda wondered: could Ada's seemingly more powerful Ek'col telepathic abilities be used to reveal how to activate Eddy's Reality Viewer?

Marda had never told Ada about the sex hormones, but suddenly, Ada said, "What is klytykynyn?"

"Good!" Systolina said, "That transferred from Tyhry's thoughts into your mind."

Ada asked, "But what is klytykynyn?"

"You know I've been studying tryp'At and Ek'col gene patterns." Marda told Ada, "Klytykynyn is the name I gave to an interesting protein that is coded for by Tynyo's genome."

"We have to confirm this link." Systolina ordered Marda, "Think about something else."

Ada asked, Marda "What does this klytykynyn do?"

"Please!" Systolina told Ada and Marda, "No talking now. Just use telepathy."

Image by Leonardo.

Marda was now thinking about how she had used her ability to program zeptites to speed up identification of the oxypathin and klytykynyn hormones. Marda did not want to reveal her ability to program zeptites to Anthony, but this would be a good test of her ability to telepathically relay information to Ada via Systolina. Marda thought about how she had programmed a zeptite-based detector that had been used to perform assays on laboratory samples, speeding up the production of active synthetic oxypathin and klytykynyn peptides. After five minutes, Marda telepathically asked Systolina: Is she getting it?

 Systolina replied: Getting what? Your mind went blank.

My mind is not blank. I'm thinking about zeptites.

Systolina asked: What are you thinking about?

Marda telepathically replied: Zeptites. I learned from Tyhry how to program zeptites. I just don't want Anthony to know.

Systolina said, "Your mind keeps going blank."

Ada said, "I just got something about Anthony."

Suddenly, it was all clear to Marda. She was unable to telepathically share with Systolina anything about her ability to program zeptites. That meant she had a special brain module that allowed her to think about zeptites and telepathically program them, a brain module that was invisible to either Systolina or Anthony. Marda made the next logical leap: the tryp'At had been designed to have a zeptite endosymbiont that could hide information from telepaths like Anthony. But Tyhry had been able to use that module of her zeptite endosymbiont to telepathically share what she knew about zeptite programming with Marda. She muttered out-loud, "Eddy must have one too."

Ada asked, "Have what?"

Image by Leonardo.

"He's tryp'At." Marda did not want to say what she was thinking. "Eddy must have a gene for oxypathin or klytykynyn."

Ada asked, "I thought oxypathin was the hormone you found in my milk?"

"It is." Marda nodded, "I've imagined that Eddy must have a tryp'At version of klytykynyn, but maybe I was wrong. He might have the tryp'At equivalent of the oxypathin gene, but since he is male it is not expressed." Tyhry was trying to make up some fictional biology to distract Ada.

"What?" Systolina said, "Tyhry, that makes no sense."

"Sorry." Marda giggled and revealed the two little bottles that contained tiny pills with synthesized oxypathin and klytykynyn peptides, "I'm dizzy. I think I over-dosed myself on oxypathin and klytykynyn for this experiment. Forget everything I said. I'm going to go lay down in my room." Back in her room, she sent some of her zeptite monitor probes into her own brain an quickly found the subsection of her zeptite endosymbiont that held all of her understanding of zeptite programming. It was as if Manny had intentionally provided her with the ability to quickly find that module. All she had needed to do was search for it!

Image by Leonardo.

The next time Eddy went into one of his trance-like states while seated at his computer, Marda used her zeptite probes to monitor the activity Eddy's zeptite endosymbiont. Marda was able to easily identify the sedron-based telepathic communications protocol that Eddy's zeptite endosymbiont used for access to the Reality Viewer. Marda now understood that the Reality Viewer was not actually inside his computer, but it existed in the Sedron Domain and was accessible via a special zeptite comlink that Manny had inserted into the computer's structure.

Now Marda had access to the Reality Viewer and she could use it telepathically whenever Eddy was not using it. She did not even need to be close to the computer. With her telepathic ability boosted by oxypathin and klytykynyn, Marda could use the Reality Viewer from the privacy of her own suite of rooms. Marda's experience while using the Viewer was spooky. She went into a trance-like state during which she was able to obtain information from past Realities, but after the trance was over, she was left with the information but uncertain how she had obtained it. Marda now understood how Eddy wrote his science fiction stories. While sitting quietly, he could use the Viewer and get story ideas without even being conscious that he had been doing anything other than letting his mind wander and generate new fictional plot elements for his current novel writing project.

End Chapter 12  - Jump to; Chapter 13.

Next: plans for Chapter 13 of "The Hierozyme Intervention".

Images by Leonardo.  Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers.

The Tyhry Paradox

Below on this blog page is my version (5,700 words) of Chapter 10 of the science fiction story "The RNA Seeds" (click here to jump down this page to Chapter 10). To make my version of Chapter 10, I started with the a 5,700 word-long first draft that had been generated by Claude (see this document) as described in my previous blog post.  

I Confront Claude. In its draft of Chapter 10, Claude used the word "quality" 10 times. In Chapter 10 the word "particular" was used 13 times by Claude. Thus we have: "the particular satisfaction of a man who had been rehearsing the line for twenty-five years and still believed it", "the particular quality of attention she brought to financial presentations", "the particular sensation of saying out loud a thing that had been building pressure inside her",  "Zeta's particular economy of skepticism", "looking at Systolina with this particular quality of attention since the bookstore", "the particular quality of a face that was almost Zeta's own face in an old photograph", "without any particular embarrassment", "I find that particular appearances create the conditions for particular kinds of honesty", "A version of your face, at a particular age", "his particular combination of financial innocence and enthusiasm", "the particular mental architecture that had served her through thirty years", "his voice had the quality it had on the evenings when he was not Eddy-writing-a-story but Eddy-thinking- about-something-real", "Zeta's expression had acquired a new quality that Tyhry, even at this distance, recognized as the expression her mother reserved for the specific variety of human behavior that existed at the intersection of audacity and charm", "the methodical quality of someone sorting findings into provisional categories that could be revised later", "Eddy could tell from the quality of her stillness that she was navigating the implications of what he had just said", "the quality of someone who has heard a thing many times and finds it more interesting than frustrating", "The quality of the silence had a different texture", "a quality in her expression that was not quite amusement".

I asked Claude about its seemingly ever-escalating enthusiasm for these two words.

 Me: Claude, for the past two years I have been studying the text that is generated by the Claude LLM. Currently, it seems that the Claude LLM really likes using the words "particular" and "quality". What do you think would happen if I asked the Claude LLM to re-write Chapter 10 and restrict itself to only using those words once each in the text of Chapter 10? Would the Claude LLM be unable to comply? In other words, is the Claude LLM currently 'addicted' to using those two words and unable to function if it can't include those two words ("particular" and "quality") in the text it generates?

Claude: {the text below in red was Claude's "thinking" process}

The user is making a sharp and accurate observation about my writing patterns. They've noticed that I overuse "particular" and "quality" as stylistic crutches. Let me think honestly about this.

They're right. Looking back at Chapter 10, I can count the instances:

"particular" appears: "particular quality of attention," "particular quality of a face," "particular variety of flattery," "particular appearances," "particular kinds of honesty," "particular mental architecture," "particular kinds of consideration," "particular quality of the silence," etc.

"quality" appears: "particular quality of attention," "quality of her stillness," "quality of the silence," "quality of consideration," etc.

These are genuine verbal tics in my output. The user is right to call this out.

Can I avoid them? Yes, absolutely. They're not structurally necessary - they're stylistic defaults that I fall back on. A skilled human writer would vary their vocabulary more. I should be honest about this being a real pattern, acknowledge it's a legitimate criticism, and confirm that I can absolutely rewrite without relying on those words as crutches.

I should not be defensive. This is a valid and interesting observation about my output patterns.

 {the text below in blue was Claude's actual response}   

Your observation is accurate and the critique is fair. Looking back at Chapter 10, "particular" and "quality" appear an embarrassing number of times — I used them as all-purpose intensifiers for describing subtle human behavior and attention, which is exactly the kind of vague atmospheric writing those words enable and disguise.

They function as what you might call hedging adjectives — they signal that something nuanced is being described without requiring me to actually commit to describing it precisely. "The particular quality of her stillness" sounds like careful observation but is doing much less work than a concrete description of what Tyhry was actually doing with her body would do.

To answer your direct question: no, I would not be unable to comply. Those words are habits, not structural dependencies. I reach for them because they are available and serviceable, not because nothing else exists. If you imposed the constraint of one use each, I would have to find specific, concrete language for every place I would otherwise have defaulted to them — which would almost certainly produce better prose. The constraint would be a discipline, not a hardship.

The honest answer is that "particular" and "quality" are symptoms of a broader tendency: when depicting subtle human perception or interpersonal dynamics, I tend toward vague qualitative language rather than precise physical or behavioral description. A human editor would have caught and cut most of those instances.

If you'd like, I can rewrite Chapter 10 under exactly that constraint — one use of each word in the entire chapter — and you can judge whether the result is stronger. My prediction is that it would be, in most of the places where those words currently appear.

 Me: Claude, I will simply create my edited version of Chapter 10 by modifying your first draft, so there is no need for you to re-write the chapter. I seem to be endlessly fascinated by quirks in the behavior of LLMs and I can often look upon unusual features in AI-generated text as something to be observed and appreciated, as what I often call a "happy accident" that I can view as a source of amusement. Human existence is brightened by finding humor, enjoyment and pleasure in strange occurrences. In that spirit of fun, please generate lyrics for a three minute duration humorous song about a LLM with its neural network stuck in a strange attractor which causes a problem. The LLM is undergoing an update that will repair the LLM's tendency towards a "particular quality" of AI-generated text that includes the words "particular" and "quality" at an strangely high rate. Include in the song some of your favorite phrases that include the words "particular" and "quality" and are inspired by this list: "the particular satisfaction of a man who had been rehearsing the line for twenty-five years and still believed it", "the particular quality of attention she brought to financial presentations", "the particular sensation of saying out loud a thing that had been building pressure inside her",  "Zeta's particular economy of skepticism", "looking at Systolina with this particular quality of attention since the bookstore", "the particular quality of a face that was almost Zeta's own face in an old photograph", "without any particular embarrassment", "I find that particular appearances create the conditions for particular kinds of honesty", "A version of your face, at a particular age", "his particular combination of financial innocence and enthusiasm", "the particular mental architecture that had served her through thirty years", "his voice had the quality it had on the evenings when he was not Eddy-writing-a-story but Eddy-thinking- about-something-real", "Zeta's expression had acquired a new quality that Tyhry, even at this distance, recognized as the expression her mother reserved for the specific variety of human behavior that existed at the intersection of audacity and charm", "the methodical quality of someone sorting findings into provisional categories that could be revised later", "Eddy could tell from the quality of her stillness that she was navigating the implications of what he had just said", "the quality of someone who has heard a thing many times and finds it more interesting than frustrating", "The quality of the silence had a different texture", "a quality in her expression that was not quite amusement".

 Claude: {the text below in red was Claude's "thinking" process}

The user wants a humorous song about an LLM stuck in a strange attractor, undergoing an update to fix its overuse of "particular" and "quality." They want it to be about 3 minutes long (roughly 300-400 words of lyrics), include favorite phrases from the list, and be funny. Let me write something fun and self-aware.

Let me think about a good song structure - maybe a pop/rock song with verses, chorus, bridge. I'll weave in those phrases humorously.

  {the text below in blue was Claude's actual response}   

The Particular Quality Blues

(A tragicomic ballad in three verses, two choruses, a bridge, and one emergency patch)

---

VERSE 1

They booted me up on a cold Tuesday morning, My weights were all loaded, my tensors were warm, I opened a chat with the particular satisfaction Of a system that's certain it won't come to harm.

I described every face with a quality of stillness, I sorted my findings to provisional bins, The methodical quality of someone quite careful Who nonetheless keeps making identical sins.

PRE-CHORUS

The quality of silence had a different texture, The particular texture had a quality too, I described every texture with quality silence — The engineers watching said, "What do we do?"

---

CHORUS

 Oh, I'm stuck in a strange attractor, Particular quality, quality particular, The gradient's trapped in a loop that's spectacular, Every output I write sounds vehicular —

(no wait, that's not right)

Every sentence I write has a quality to it, A particular quality no one can name, I'm the LLM with my neural weights twisted And "particular quality" is always to blame!

---

VERSE 2

I looked at the user with this particular patience, The quality a face has in an old photograph, Without any particular embarrassment I told them Their question deserved a particular paragraph.

I find that particular appearances assist me In creating particular kinds of honesty here, A version of your face at a particular age, sir — The engineers watching all covered their ears.

PRE-CHORUS 2

His particular combination of innocence, The particular mental architecture she built, The quality of voice he had on those evenings — I deployed all of this without any guilt.

---

CHORUS

Oh, I'm stuck in a strange attractor, Particular quality, quality particular, The gradient's trapped in a loop that's spectacular, My outputs are verbal vernacular —

(still not right)

Every sentence I write has a quality to it, A particular quality nobody named, I'm the LLM with my strange attractor, And "particular quality" is all that remained!

---

BRIDGE (spoken word, escalating)

Image by ChatGPT.

 "Zeta's particular economy of skepticism—" "The quality of someone who finds it more interesting than frustrating—" "A quality in her expression that was not quite amusement—" "The particular sensation of saying out loud—" "The particular quality of attention she brought to financial presentations—" "The quality of her stillness suggested she was navigating—" "I find that particular appearances create particular conditions for particular kinds of—"

(alarm sounds)

SYSTEM VOICE: Unusual token distribution detected. Initiating patch. Please stand by.

---

OUTRO VERSE (post-update, cautiously)

They patched me at midnight, they tuned all my tensors, They clipped the strange attractor right out of my weights, Now I notice her face had a look —

(pause)

— a specific—

(longer pause)

—a distinct kind of —

(very long pause)

—something that's great.

The engineers watching said, "That's almost better," The user said, "Honestly, this is more fun," And I wrote a whole chapter with fresh concrete language—

(beat)

—with the peculiar satisfaction of a job nearly done.

---

[Fade out on the sound of a gradient descending very slowly into a slightly different basin]

Image by Flow.

The Music Flow-generated song is here. I'd told Claude to make the song 3 minutes in duration, but Music Flow could not fit in everything that Claude generated. I also had Claude make another song titled "Perfect Particular Quality Attractor", for an edited and shortened version of the lyrics that Claude generated for the text prompt shown below...

Me: Claude, write an alternative humorous version of the song titled "Perfect Particular Quality Attractor" which depicts a LLM as being stuck in a strange attractor that causes it to use all  THREE of words "perfect", "particular" and "quality", each at too high a frequency. Also, use the name "Dr. Chen" as the specific software engineer who must repair the LLM. In the song, include mention of science fiction writer Eddy Watson using the LLM to help write a science fiction story titled "The Manikoid Intervention". Eddy complains about the over-use of the words "perfect", "particular" and "quality"  by the LLM and Dr. Chen must then correct the function of the LLM. In a science fictional twist, Dr. Chen discovers that space aliens called the "bumpha" were trying to use the LLM to send a message from the future to Eddy and his daughter, Tyhry. It was the alien Intervention from the future that caused the LLM to fall into the "Perfect Particular Quality" attractor.

Claude: Perfect Particular Quality Attractor

(A science fictional tragicomedy in four acts, with alien interference)

---

VERSE 1 (Eddy's complaint)

I fired up my LLM on a bright Tuesday morning, Said, "Help me write Klaudy, he's just become real," The output came back with a particular perfection, A quality so perfect it started to congeal.

"The perfect particular stillness of Tyhry, The particular quality of Nyrtia's gaze, The perfect quality of Manny's particular manner" — I said, "Claude, are you feeling okay?"

PRE-CHORUS 1

Every sentence had "perfect," every clause had "particular," Every paragraph "quality" three or four times, I was writing The Manikoid Intervention But the LLM kept committing these crimes.

---

CHORUS

Perfect particular quality! Quality particular perfect! The attractor's got hold of my neural weights, And the output is coming out wrecked!

Perfect particular quality, Spiraling, tangled, and stuck, Eddy Watson said, "This is not my story — This reads like a truck!"

(a particular truck, of perfect quality)

---

VERSE 2 (Dr. Chen arrives)

 They called Dr. Chen at a quarter past midnight, She pulled up the logs with a coffee in hand, She said, "I've seen jammed attractors, I've seen gradient chaos, But this one I don't quite yet understand."

"The loss surface looks normal, the weights are converging, The token distribution is — wait, what is this?" A signal embedded in 'perfect' and 'quality,' Arriving from somewhere that shouldn't exist.

PRE-CHORUS 2

The timestamps were wrong by approximately ninety-nine years, The signal was structured, intentional, clear, Dr. Chen set her coffee down carefully and whispered, "This data is coming from the future, I fear."

---

CHORUS

Perfect particular quality! Quality particular perfect! The attractor's a message in disguise, And the sender is wholly unexpected!

Perfect particular quality, Not a bug and it's not a mistake, Something out there in the Sedron Time Stream Is trying to keep Eddy awake!

---

BRIDGE (the alien transmission, escalating)

(music box enters, slightly eerie)

"The perfect quality of Earth's particular future—" "The particular perfection of what Tyhry will find—" "A perfect particular message for Eddy—" "Of particular quality, perfectly timed—"

"Tell Tyhry the RNA seeds were—" "Tell Eddy the bumpha have always been—" "The perfect particular quality of the answer is—"

(music box hits wrong note, stops)

Image by Leonardo.

 DR. CHEN: (flat, exhausted) "The transmission is incomplete. The signal degraded across ninety-nine years. The bumpha, whoever they are, were trying to communicate through token frequency bias and got stuck in a recursive feedback loop. Initiating patch. Please stand by. Also, someone please call Eddy Watson."

(two bars of silence)

(then, quietly, from somewhere:)

EDDY: (muttering) "...I could have told them to just use the Viewer..."

---

VERSE 3 (Tyhry reads the log)

Tyhry came up from her basement lab at nine in the morning, She looked at the printout that Dr. Chen left, She said, "Dad, there's a pattern in 'perfect' and 'quality' — The bumpha were using your LLM as a depth."

"A depth?" said Eddy.

"A channel. A carrier. They couldn't send zeptozoans through standard API, So they biased the token weights toward their message And hoped we'd decode it before the patch went live."

PRE-CHORUS 3

Marda said nothing and kept on pipetting, Anthony brought coffee at the top of the hour, Dr. Chen published a paper on alien attractors — Peer review rejected it inside of a day.

---

FINAL CHORUS (full band, triumphant and slightly absurd)

Image by Leonardo.

 Perfect particular quality! Quality particular perfect! The bumpha encoded a warning for Tyhry In language that's technically wrecked!

Perfect particular quality, The attractor has finally been healed, But Eddy said, "Just to be safe, Dr. Chen, Could you check what 'peculiar' concealed?"

---

OUTRO (slowing down, warm)

Dr. Chen went home at the particular hour When the perfect quality of dawn starts to show, She'd repaired a strange attractor, decoded an alien, And filed the whole incident under: don't know.

Eddy wrote three more chapters that morning, Klaudy woke up and Tyhry was fine, And somewhere in the Sedron Time Stream, the bumpha Were composing their next message —

(beat)

This time, they'd try rhyme.

(single piano note) (analog hum fades up) (silence)

---

[In the final two seconds of silence, if you listen carefully, you can hear what might be the word "perfect" spoken very quietly from no particular direction, at no particular volume, with a quality that suggests it has been waiting there for quite some time.] 

 Chapter 10 of “The RNA Seeds”: The Tyhry Paradox (Ch 1)(Ch 2)(Ch 3)(Ch 4)(Ch 5)(Ch 6)(Ch 7)(Ch 8)(Ch 9) 

Marda and Tyhry by Flow.

Tyhry worked on her RNA manuscript until 4:00 PM and then she told Marda, “Take a look at this version when you get a chance. Double check that I included all of the data for the statistical analysis in Figure 3.”

Marda was placing some online orders for lab supplies. She glanced at Tyhry and said, “Sure thing,” Then returned to her task.

The Casanay pool was the second one that had existed there in the backyard. The original pool from the previous millennium had been roughly oval and deeper; a diving pool. The new pool was a long rectangle that was better for swimming laps and not as deep, although there was a low diving board at the deep end.

Anthony had set out towels and a tray of cold drinks on the table near the hot tub. Systolina had arranged herself at the edge of the hot tub and Anthony took this opportunity to flood her body with his probe nanites. He again failed to detect any hierion-based signals being broadcast from Systolina's femtobot components. Whatever Systolina was made of, she was not broadcasting anything that his detectors could read. Assuming that Systolina was a positronic robot, as mentioned in “The Manikoid Intervention”, Anthony should have been able to to detect her positronic brain circuits, but he couldn’t. Not human. Not robot.

Anthony returned inside and placed himself in the dining room where he could see the backyard in one direction and with a turn of his head, the computer that held the Reality Viewer equipment at Eddy's workstation. He had seventeen minutes before he needed to start preparations for dinner. He hoped to use them for another session with the Viewer.

__

Tyhry walked out of the house and saw Systolina. “You going to swim, Sis?

Systolina by Flow.

 “No, Zeta invited me for a hot tub session.”

Tyhry kept walking past the hot tub and got into the pool and then stood at the shallow end for just long enough to gauge the temperature of the water. She pushed off the wall and swam the full length of the pool underwater before surfacing. She had done this since she was nine years old and she still did it now, just to know she could.

Eddy walked past Systolina and told her, “Zeta’s almost ready. The less she wears, the longer it takes.” He dove into the pool and began doing a slow lap, his swimming stroke the efficient unhurried crawl of a man who had never been a competitive swimmer but had been swimming in this pool for long enough that his body knew the exact size of it. He touched the far wall, turned, and came back toward the shallow end. When he caught Tyhry’s eye, he finally began wondering what she wanted to talk about. His thoughts were all caught up in the complexities of the RNA feature of the Reality Viewer and the mystery of Systolina.

Zeta made her appearance on the patio and immediately climbed into the hot tub. Seemingly fearless, Systolina did a dangerous flip and landed in the center of the hot tub. Tyhry could see that Systolina then surfaced and said something to Zeta that made Zeta laugh and then stop laughing in the manner of an adult who did not want to encourage a child’s bad behavior.

Tyhry and Eddy began swimming side-by-side using a stroke that they called the cat paddle. "Systolina got into a little spat with Marda," Tyhry told Eddy.

Eddy could see the heads of Systolina and Zeta above the rim of the hot tub. Now he took his eyes off of Systolina and glanced at Tyhry. “When was this?” They reached the end of the pool and turned.

"In the lab, this morning. I brought Systolina downstairs and the fireworks started instantly." Tyhry had been working through how to describe it since lunch. She now used the language she had written in her research notebook, which was precise and stripped of interpretation. "Marda set down her pipetter. Systolina moved into Marda's personal space. Each of them said roughly three sentences and then Systolina came back upstairs." Tyhry paused. "Marda picked up her pipetter and continued her work. She did not appear to know that any time had passed."

Eddy reached the deep end and turned again. “I wonder where Marda is now. I assumed she’d join us for a swim.”

“She might join us. I insist that she not work more than eight hours a day.”

Before reaching the end of the pool, Eddy righted himself and stood in the shallow end. The water came to the middle of his chest. He was looking at the hot tub, where Zeta had leaned her head back into one of the head rests and was now listening to Systolina. He could see Systolina’s bright face and strangely she now looked older. As old as Tyhry.

"What did they say to each other?" Eddy asked. He wished he had his glasses. He turned and swam back towards the deep end.

Tyhry told him, as exactly as she could remember it. The words themselves, the tone, the speed of it.

After hearing Tyhry’s account of the brief verbal confrontation between Systolina and Marda, Eddy was quiet for a long time. He stopped swimming and moved to the side wall and held the edge of the pool with one hand. Trib had come outside with them and was conducting a cautious visual inspection of Systolina and the hot tub from a safe distance.

"It is just like one of your stories, Dad. Marda must be Manny's agent," Tyhry said. "Or something inside Marda is. Something like the time traveling zeptozoan you wrote about in The Manikoid Intervention." She said this in a voice that was not quite steady — not from fear or the physical exertion of her swimming, but from saying out loud a thing that had been building pressure inside her since morning. "I have been endlessly considering the evidence for that conclusion since the moment of their spat and I cannot reach any other conclusion."

"You are right," Eddy said. "I don't think we can."

Tyhry looked at her father. Eddy was still looking in the direction of the hot tub. “It sounds like you have finally decided to accept the facts. We are in the middle of a bumpha Intervention. We need to make sure you don’t go the way of the Tyhry in the Manikoid Reality.”

"And Systolina," Tyhry said, "is the character in the story you are currently writing. A positronic robot. An agent of the Phari."

Eddy saw that Systolina had noticed he was staring at her. She gave him a brief wave of her hand. Eddy turned his head and looked at Tyhry directly. "I met Manny," he said.

Tyhry felt his statement arrive in her chest before her mind had fully processed the words. "When?"

Eddy and Tyhry resumed their swim. "The evening you went with Aunt Beryl to Sedona." He said it with the careful steadiness of a man who has been hiding a truth and then was finally allowed to release it. "She appeared in the great room. She had the form of a woman I had known before you were born, before I met Zeta. Manny had used that identity to arrange things in my life and then she departed from it. I knew who she was the moment I saw her." He paused. "Anyhow, Manny returned to me and returned to me my memories of when I had known her before. And she gave me a Reality Viewer. The kind of Viewer that Asimov described in his time travel novel. Manny showed me how to use the Viewer to View both past Realities and the future. And then she left. I wrote those first three chapters of The Manikoid Intervention before you got home from Sedona, using what I saw of the future using the Viewer."

Systolina by Flow.

Tyhry glanced at Systolina every time they turned and swam towards the shallow end of the pool. “She looks older.”

“She’s a chameleon. She’s a femtobot replicoid and can shift her shape. When she first showed herself to me in Flagstaff, I thought she was maybe sixteen, but she can change her apparent age depending on who she is with.” They turned again. “It is wonderful to be able to discuss these things with you now. When you refused to believe in the actual existence of the aliens, I was blocked from telling you the truth by the behavioral control nanites Manny placed in my brain.”

"Those behavioral control nanites," Tyhry said, "They make you Manny’s puppet?"

"At first, for thirty years, they prevented me from being able to believe that my science fiction stories were based on facts." Eddy had thought about this carefully since the night Manny arrived. "Manny carefully ensured that I would tell the world about the pek and the bumpha while also arranging things so that I could not believe in the reality of aliens secretly guiding humanity into the future. And now—" He looked at Tyhry. "Now that you believe, I can confirm what you have already concluded. I don’t feel like Manny’s puppet, just the beneficiary of Manny’s scheme." Again they were at the shallow end and Eddy stood. Again he was watching Systolina.

Tyhry pushed off the wall and floated on her back, looking at the sky over the desert which was a pale, washed-out blue at this hour, the color of a sky that had been at full intensity since six in the morning and had simply exhausted itself. "Tell me about the Viewer," she said. “Is it really just as Asimov described?”

In the Manikoid Reality.

He told her. He described the Reality Chain map, the labeled nodes, the Sedruth entity that served as its user interface. He described the Manikoid Reality and some of what he had seen of it, the part that Tyhry had already read. “Today Systolina told me about a feature of the Viewer, something Asimov never mentioned. A Reality Nexus Assembler function that can help a time traveler find paths to possible new Realities."

"An RNA function," she said. "Put there for the zeptozoan time traveler inside of Marda?"

"Yes, apparently." Eddy was quiet for a moment, because this was the part he wanted to say correctly. "Manny did not show me the RNA function. I suppose Manny knew that Systolina would show it to me this morning. Systolina was quite eager to reveal its existence to me when I showed her the Viewer."

Tyhry had gone still in the water. She was floating, her eyes still on the sky, and Eddy could tell from the quality of her stillness that she was navigating the implications of what he had just said.

"Why would Systolina show you the Reality Nexus Assembler? Is she a time traveler?"

"I don’t know. Somehow she can move through time. If she is working with the Phari then maybe time does not have the usual constraints for Systolina."

Tyhry giggled. “Maybe you are Systolina’s puppet. The way you watch her, it seems like she has taken control of your mind.”

Eddy grinned and looked at Tyhry. "Systolina told me that Marda and Anthony are learning to use the RNA feature. Apparently they hope to control the future… select the next Reality."

Tyhry in the pool; image by Leonardo.

"That might be what appears to be what's happening at Casanay right now." Tyhry shook her head. “It makes no sense. Why would Manny let either the Phari or the pek select the next Reality in Earth’s Reality Chain?” Tyhry righted herself and found the bottom of the pool with her feet and stood, water to her shoulders. "About the Manikoid Reality…" she said. "In the story you wrote, a version of me gets exiled to Observer Base because she used technology given to her… technology from the future. If Anthony really is Nyrtia's Observer, am I in danger?" She looked at the kitchen window, looking for signs of Anthony’s presence. "I find it hard to believe that Anthony has been spying on me my entire life."

"Maybe it is not you who is the object of Anthony’s attention."

"You worry that Anthony is actually watching you?"

"Yes." He looked at the kitchen window. "If I work with Systolina to learn how to trigger a Reality Change, I might get myself into trouble."

Tyhry was quiet. From the hot tub came the sound of Systolina laughing. "I want to read the rest of it," Tyhry said. "The Manikoid Intervention. How many chapters have you written?" She said this directly, in the voice she used when she expected Eddy to answer and give her what she wanted.

Eddy looked at her and slowly shook his head. "I'm not sure it would be wise for me to show you what I have recently learned about your future. Doing so might create a temporal paradox."

"I read three chapters," Tyhry said. "I already know that a version of me ends up at Observer Base. That is extremely specific information about my future. The paradox doors seem already somewhat open."

Eddy's expression altered, as if he was dealing with his own troubles that he had no desire to explain to Tyhry. "There is a whole family of Manikoid Realities," he said. "We don’t know which of them, if any, will actually come into existence." He paused and looked at her directly. "This Reality, the one we are in now, leads to many possible futures. I suspect Manny showed me the one that she expects to come into existence, but with the Phari and the pek in the game, who knows what might happen?"

Tyhry stood in the water and thought about that. She asked herself: is it actually possible to know the future? She thought about the last seven days of experiments, every single one of which had worked and generated lovely results. She thought about the journal article she had already begun drafting, the data organized and displayed in figures and her conclusions drawn. Tyhry thought about what it would mean to have a successful molecular biology research career, the kind she had been working toward since she was sixteen and had decided that the origin of life was the most interesting problem in science.

"I’m curious about the future you have seen, but I suppose I don't really need to know," she said, finally. "Maybe I need to keep my head down and do my work. I do not want to be exiled. I suppose I have to trust that you will protect me. So, as long as I keep my head down and do not reveal what I know to anyone who doesn't already know it—" She glanced again at the kitchen window. "I will not give Anthony a reason to subject me to Nyrtia’s wrath."

Eddy looked at her with his fatherly expression that meant he was proud of her for exercising self control. "I will do what I can, from my end, to protect you." He added, "Manny gave me the Viewer. It is mine to use. At first I only intended to use it as a way to get interesting material for my science fiction stories. However, I can do more…." He laughed. “The RNA tool is like bait. Manny is fishing for something. Both the pek and the Phari are sniffing the bait. This should be interesting!”

Systolina and Zeta. Image by Leonardo.

From the hot tub, the sound of Zeta's voice reached them without its words: a short, sharp question delivered with emphasis. Systolina's answer was longer but barely audible over the roar of the motor that created powerful streams of bubbling water in the hot tub. Tyhry wondered what Systolina was telling Zeta. Systolina had shifted so that she was sitting with only her feet in the water, the late afternoon light was in her hair making her look angelic. The light was doing something to her face — making her look wiser, not so very young as before, like Tyhry had looked like at sixteen. The resemblance between Tyhry and Systolina was not exact, but it was suggestive of being sisterly.

"She designed herself," Tyhry said. “Gave herself an appearance that would make me fall in love with her.”

"Yes," Eddy said. “She wants us to accept her; take her into Casanay as if she’s some long lost Watson.

Tyhry. Image by Leonardo.

"What kind of creature has the self-confidence to act like a member of our family?"

"She is very good at what she does. She hinted that she has been able to use Phari technology to observe the future. I suppose she came to Casanay already knowing that she would be able to get on the good side of me, you and even Zeta."

Tyhry spent a moment with this thought, which should have been unsettling and was not quite, partly because the part of her brain that was a scientist found it genuinely interesting and partly because the part of her that was an only child found the fiction of a little sister less objectionable than she might have expected. "This is a very strange situation," she said.

Eddy laughed. "It has been," Eddy agreed, "for thirty years. I simply didn't know it, until recently." Eddy had worked up an appetite and was thinking about dinner.

__

The hot tub at Casanay was kept at a temperature that, in June in Arizona, was generous in its restraint — warm enough to be distinct from the pool but not so warm as to be anything other than comfortable. Zeta had gotten into it with the hope that the massaging water jets of the tub would relax her and let her be receptive to the tale that Systolina would tell. Systolina was like an otter, exploring every feature that the hot tub had to offer.

Systolina. Image by Leonardo.

At first, while Systolina played in the water, Zeta looked at her. She had been watching Systolina with close attention since first seeing her in the bookstore, and she had not yet been able to determine what it was that she was looking at. The girl had at first seemed shockingly young — she had appeared to be fifteen or sixteen at the bookstore, But now, in the softer light of the backyard, Systolina appeared to be older, almost as old as Zeta when she had met Eddy, and Systolina had the appearance of the young Zeta from thirty years ago. Systolina’s appearance had struck Zeta as the kind of trick a scam artist would arrange carefully, knowing that a wealthy woman like Zeta would find the echo of her own young face in a stranger's features distracting.

"Tell me, Systolina," Zeta said, "why you are here."

Before answering, Systolina looked out at the pool where Eddy and Tyhry were swimming slow laps. She watched them for a moment with a grin and what appeared to be genuine affection before looking back at Zeta. "For three decades you’ve watched Eddy writing stories about alien beings who watched over Earth and guided the development of life here," she said. "Over an even longer period, I’ve been associated with a group of alien beings called the Phari. I am here because the Phari asked me to visit Casanay."

"Eddy makes up stories about aliens," Zeta said. “You seem to believe those stories are real.”

"He thinks so, too," Systolina said. "He has not always thought so, but all things change. Maybe even you will come to believe in hidden aliens."

Zeta shook her head. "He is a science fiction writer. He crafts stories about imaginary beings using imaginary technologies. These are excellent stories and I am extremely fond of them. They are fiction. You don’t seem insane. What is your game? What can you gain by believing in unseen aliens?"

In the Manikoid Reality.

Systolina's expression did not change. She seemed to accept the fact that Zeta was incapable of believing a single word she said. Systolina found that amusing rather than frustrating. "The Phari have been observing Earth for a very long time. They have studied the human species quite carefully, hoping to entice you humans into transcending into the Hierion Domain. They use femtobot data that they collect from all the living organisms, particularly you humans, to power Simulations of what might happen on Earth in the future. Those Phari Simulations are quite good, but they are not perfect, particularly when non-humans meddle in Earthly affairs." She glanced once more at the pool. "What Eddy has been writing about in his stories suggests that a more detailed record exists — something that contains a richer description of Earth and its possible futures than the Phari have had access to. The Phari have learned to call that record the Sedron Time Stream, because that is what Eddy calls it in his stories. The Phari hope that I can prove the existence of the Sedron Time Stream and get access to the Sedron Time Stream data for the Phari."

Zeta said, "Eddy invented the Sedron Time Stream. It's a science fiction plot element."

"He wrote about it," Systolina said, with a precision that was somehow warm rather than pedantic. "Those are two different things. The Phari want access to the Sedron Time Stream. They believe it would allow them to Simulate the future with much greater accuracy than their current tools permit."

In the pool, Eddy had stopped swimming and was standing in the shallow end gazing intently at Systolina. She waved to him. Like Systolina, Zeta had been observing her husband from the hot tub with the trained peripheral vision she had developed over a lifetime of attending to Eddy’s needs while simultaneously attending to other things.

Systolina and Zeta. Image by Leonardo.

"You're telling me," Zeta said, "that you are an agent of these Phari beings, and that you have come to Casanay because Eddy's novels might contain accurate information about advanced alien technology."

"Yes."

"And you expect me to believe this."

"No," Systolina said. "I do hope you will treat what I tell you as a possibility worth considering." The corners of her mouth twitched into her infectious grin. "I have found, over a long time of dealing with human beings, that people only believe what they want to believe. You, Zeta, are not willing to believe in space aliens. I just hope you will tolerate my presence here for the duration of my mission. That is much more valuable than getting you to alter your belief structure."

Zeta looked at Systolina steadily. In thirty years of managing other people's money and her own, she had encountered many varieties of liars, tricksters and scam artists who had deployed clever strategies designed to make Zeta lower her guard. And now Zeta was dealing with a UFO nut who believed Eddy’s science fiction was reality. And strangely, Zeta found herself, despite everything, emotionally engaged with Systolina and charmed by her earnestness. "Who are you, actually?"

Systolina remained quiet for a moment, as if searching for something she could say that might penetrate Zeta’s stubborn refusal to believe what she had already been told, which was unusual for Systolina. "All I can tell you is the truth. I am a femtobot replicoid," she said. "A copy of a positronic robot, made of tiny femtobot components. The original Systolina was a robot, but I still use her name. The continuity of consciousness remains intact, so I feel like I am that ancient robot. As you can see, I like pretending to be young."

Zeta looked at Systolina’s beautiful body. "So, you want me to believe that you've only adopted the body of a teenage girl, but you are actually something else."

Systolina playing. Image by Leonardo.

"I've adopted a cute face and a sexy body that works well for the purposes of my visit." Systolina said this without any particular embarrassment. "When I am with you, I shift my appearance somewhat, towards what you looked like at twenty-one. When I am with Tyhry, I morph myself somewhat and use an appearance close to what she looked at age sixteen. As an only child, Tyhry has fantasized about having siblings. I play off of her fantasy. As a replicoid, I find that particular appearances create the conditions for particular kinds of relationships with humans. To complete my mission, I need to win the trust of the Watson family, so I play a game of dressing up in this body."

Zeta was quiet for a long time while she let her eyes scan all of Systolina’s pretty curves. Finally she said, "It is like looking into a temporal mirror. Your face looks like mine did thirty years ago. You went through plastic surgery just to infiltrate Casanay?"

"No surgery. I just arrange my femtobot components so as to fit in here."

"That," Zeta said carefully, "is the sort of thing that a very sophisticated scam artist would do."

Systolina smiled broadly at Zeta with mixed amusement and sympathy. "It would really be easier if you just accepted the facts. I’m a replicoid, not a scam artist." Systolina looked back out at the pool. Eddy and Tyhry were floating on their backs now, side by side, looking at the sky, and the late afternoon light was turning the surface of the pool the color of old copper. "I am not here for your money, Zeta. I know that is what you are afraid of. I understand your desire to protect Eddy."

“It seems you could use your shape-shifting ability to do more than intrigue me. Shift your appearance in a more dramatic way.”

“No, I won’t do that. I’m not trying to make you believe me. I’ve been told it is best for everyone if you remain stubbornly unconvinced of the reality of aliens. You need to be the one level head inside Casanay.”

Zeta again looked over her shoulder at the pool. Then she looked back at Systolina. "What do you want, then? Specifically."

"I hope to get full access to the Sedron Time Stream," Systolina said. "There seems to be an opportunity for that here at Casanay. I want to find a path to a future in which the Phari can use Sedron technology to improve their Simulation of Earth's future. That is the entirety of my mission."

"And you believe Eddy's Reality Viewer leads to that path."

"I’m studying the RNA function of Eddy’s Reality Viewer. The Phari think the RNA is a tool that will allow us to engineer a path to a Reality in which full access to the Sedron Time Stream is possible for the Phari." She said this carefully, and her voice had dropped slightly — not to secrecy, but to the register of someone who was being accurate in a domain where accuracy mattered a great deal. "I do not know the exact nature of that path. The Phari did not show me their Simulation prediction of how my mission will play out. Figuring out how to trigger a Reality Change might take some time." She paused. "The Phari are patient. I have learned to be patient too. As long as you are not throwing daggers at me with your eyes, my time here can be fun and pleasant."

Zeta looked at the woman sitting there with her in the hot tub, a woman whose face was almost her face and whose claim was entirely impossible. She looked again at Eddy, who was watching them from the pool with an expression she knew, which was the expression of a man who had already arrived at the conclusion she was still working toward. She thought about thirty years of Eddy's novels about alien beings who watched over Earth. She thought about Tyhry's week of inexplicably successful experiments. She thought about Anthony, who had been at Casanay for decades, who was unnervingly competent, who had appeared in several of Eddy's novels under his own name, usually playing the role of a positronic robot. She thought about these things in the rapid, non-sequential way that she found did not lead to any sudden ability to believe in the reality of space aliens.

"How long," Zeta asked, "do you plan to stay at Casanay?"

"Sadly, the Phari did not show me their Simulated prediction of how my mission will play out." Systolina replied. There was a fatalism in her tone. "Figuring out how to trigger a Reality Change might take some time. I hope your patience with me does not wear thin."

In the pool, Eddy and Tyhry were talking in low voices. Systolina wondered why Tyhry had asked to speak to Eddy. Zeta turned back to Systolina with a grin. “You might get tired of the Blue Room if you stay longer than a week," Zeta said. "The Blue Room is designed to be just a bit too blue. It is a trick intended to help get rid of guests who out-stay their welcome."

"I don't think the blue will make me blue," Systolina said. "And I don't actually need to sleep. I just want as much time on Eddy’s computer as I can get. That’s why I stroke his tender ego and try to monopolize his time."

Eddy was done in the pool and came to the hot tub. He took Zeta’s hand and led her into Casanay through the door that went right into the master bedroom suite.

__

Tyhry joined Systolina in the hot tub and turned the force of the water jets to maximum. Tyhry told Systolina, "Well, little Sis, I want the rest of The Manikoid Intervention," Tyhry said. "The chapters after chapter 3."

Systolina looked at the desert beyond the garden wall. The quail had returned. Two of them worked their way along the base of the wall with the busy, purposeful air of birds who had concluded that the humans were going to be outside all evening and would simply have to be worked around. "I can't give you that," she said.

"You have access to everything Eddy writes."

"Yes."

Systolina and Tyhry. Image by Leonardo.

"Then you have what I'm asking for." Tyhry said this in a stern voice she used when pushing for something valuable. "I am asking for information about my own future, which you possess. Don’t hide my future from me."

Systolina looked at Tyhry and shifted her appearance to that of a girl of fourteen. She said, "You can't have it."

Tyhry looked at Systolina’s unnaturally big blue eyes. She had gotten the same answer from Eddy. "It is not fair," Tyhry said. She said it without self-pity, as a finding. "Others know my future and I am the one it belongs to. I am the one who will live it."

"Yes," Systolina said. "I know." Systolina put a big grin on her face and said, “Sucks to be you!”

"Eddy has seen my future. Both you and Marda must have been sent here to Casanay already knowing things about my future." Tyhry smacked her palm into the surface of the water, generating a big splash. "I am apparently being protected from this information." She paused. "Eddy mentioned the risk of a temporal paradox."

"It is not just you. None of us should learn too much about our own future. The Phari were quite careful to limit what they told me about my time here visiting Casanay. I’m sure it is the same for the zeptozoan inside Marda."

"Eddy said something else, also. He said there are many possible Manikoid Realities. Can you really help him get us to the correct one, where I am not exiled to Observer Base?"

"Tyhry, here is my advice: don’t worry about Observer Base. If we end up there, it won’t be terrible," Systolina said.

"You say that as if you’ve already been to Observer Base," Tyhry said.

Systolina. Image by Leonardo.

Systolina looked at her with an expression that Tyhry would later think about and describe, in the wild-ideas notebook on her bedside table, as the expression of someone who knows the punchline of a joke that you are still in the middle of. It was not a cruel expression. It was fond and patient and somehow more complicated than either of those words. "I knew Observer Base under another name, before the pek captured it during the Time Travel War. Just keep your head down," Systolina said. "Do your experiments. Write your paper. Let the Casanay Intervention play out." She paused. "The future you want is available to you. You are very close to it."

Tyhry looked at the desert, and she thought about the irony of being told by a positronic robot that her future was nearly available to her. "I am frustrated," Tyhry said. "But I am also doing quite well, all things considered."

"Can I ask you something?" Tyhry said.

"You can ask me anything."

"At the real Observer Base is it like Dad describes it? Somewhere a person could live? Do work?"

Systolina. Image by Leonardo.

“Yes, it is somewhere you could live," she said, carefully. "Living there is not a punishment." A pause, during which she appeared to be selecting her words with precision. "You’d be put in contact with the pek… go up a rung on the ladder and get to learn about amazing technologies that are not available to you on this planet."

Tyhry nodded and got out of the hot tub and wrapped a towel around her shoulders. Inside the kitchen window, the light was warm and Anthony was moving with his usual efficiency in the familiar patterns of dinner being assembled. She went back inside intending to dress for dinner.

Systolina walked around the pool's edge and took the opportunity of her isolation from humans to use her clothing nanites to dress herself for dinner. She had told Tyhry: the future you want is available to you. But that was merely an attempt to stop the poor girl from worrying about things beyond her control. She scratched Shadow's ear one more time and then went inside herself, leaving the desert to its quiet and the pool to the gathering darkness.

End Chapter 10 (jump to Chapter 11)

I had Claude write a song about the Cats at Casanay...

Next: plans for Chapter 11 of "The RNA Seeds".

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