Ekcolir

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Cover art by Antonio Schomburg.
Original art work by Zdeněk Burian.

I recently blogged about Trysta and her role in the Final Reality Change. Today I had a discussion with Yōd and Zeta that touched on Ekcolir and his role in creating the Final Reality.

The means of creating the Ek'col were developed in the Asimov Reality. Ekcolir, the prototypical Ek'col, lived in the next Reality, what I call the Ekcolir Reality. Ekcolir was sent to Earth in the 20th century of the Ekcolir Reality; he was deployed on an Interventionist mission. He successfully won the trust of Trysta and made possible constructive interactions between Trysta and Grean, which ultimately lead to the Trysta-Grean Pact and the end of the Time Travel War.

To play his part in creating the Final Reality, Ekcolir was sent back about 20,000 years into the past. According to Zeta, Ekcolir's mission in the past was designed to insert some special gene combinations into the population of humans on Earth.

In the Ekcolir Reality. source

Yōd believes that the Ek'col are "mobile gene editing devices" that can process human chromosomes, producing precisely edited genomes. Zeta suggests that the Ek'col have a specialized femtobot endosymbiont that allows for access to the a vast computational capacity that lies within the Sedronic Domain. Normally, human zeptite endosymbionts only send information from the Hadronic Domain to the Sedronic Domain. According to Yōd, the femtobot endosymbiont of the Ek'col is a kind of "hack" that allows information to flow from the Sedronic Domain to guide the gene editing femtobots inside the body of an Ek'col.

Trysta and Ekcolir

Zeta speculates that all Ekcolir had to do when he arrived 20,000 years in our past was impregnate a few women. That led to the formation of a new tribe of humans who carried their special genes into the future of Earth, eventually resulting in a population residing near Phasi who were "ready and waiting" for the arrival of Trysta 10,000 years after Ekcolir arrived in our past. It was Trysta who then triggered the acceleration of technological process among the residents of Phasi by providing them with their own type of femtobot endosymbiont, the "Phari endosymbiont".

Apparently Ekcolir is a folk hero on Tar'tron, so Yōd is contaminated with many stories about Ekcolir which might not be based on facts. Yōd accepts that the Ek'col were crafted on Yrwerd, but Yōd insists that Ekcolir spent a considerable amount of time living on Tar'tron. Yōd believes that Ekcolir was trained on Tar'tron for his mission to the far past of Earth.

Syon's search.

Rilocke and Syon
Ekcolir came up today in the context of our discussion about who might currently be residing at Observer Base. Both Zeta and Yōd believe that Ekcolir and Trysta probably died on Earth in the far past. However, they both lived on as artificial life forms named Rilocke and Syon.

Rilocke spent some time in the Koly star system, then traveled on the Buld spaceship that came to Earth. Syon arrived in the Koly star system long after Rilocke had already departed. Yōd suspects that Syon eventually teleported to the Solar System about the time when the pek abandoned their control of Observer Base, possibly using the teleportation terminal located inside the Base.

Next: Ekcolir's mission into the past

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Ivory is dead, long live Yrovi

All in the family.

Ivory was the great pioneer of the idea that the time has finally come to reveal the long-held secrets of how aliens shaped the human species and the rise of civilization on Earth. However, she did not want that task to fall solely on herself. Ivory had her own secrets that she needed to protect. For many years she struggled to conceal the identities of her own family members because of the non-human gene combinations that they inherited.

The first time that I met Ivory, she took pains to impress me with her own nonhuman nature. As an Earthling, it was, at that time, natural for me to assume that each person has their own unique physical appearance. I naively assumed that the physical form that Ivory revealed to me was her natural appearance, but I now understand that what she showed me was both a truth and deception.

Ivory's Demise

Artist's depiction of Ivory's
grandmother, Lili, at Atlantis

Recently, Ivory provoked the Overseers and earned herself a ticket to the Moon. She then accomplished what had never been done before: she managed to send back to Earth an account of Trysta's final time travel mission. For that daring act, which was a blatant violation of the Rules of Observation, Ivory was stripped of the tools for deception that she had accumulated and had used so successfully to befuddle people like me.

While growing up on Earth, Ivory's physical form had been shaped by a swarm of nanites. Later, after her return to Atlantis, Ivory began to experiment with her nanites and she explored the extremes to which she could push her physical features. All this became clear to me recently when Yrovi dropped in for a quick visit. After her death, she still called herself "Ivory", but I can't deal with that. I approve of the practice by which new names are given to the dead.

Return to Tar'Tron

Other Examples of the Living Dead
The biological father of Thomas was Ekcolir, but after the point in his life when he died and went into his second life as an artificial life form, it became convenient to think of him as being a new person named Rilocke. Just as Rilocke and Syon now use their new names, Ivory should learn to use the name "Yrovi" to refer to her new artificial self.

Yrovi (I pronounce it ear-ovi) is not a biological organism. Ivory's biological cells were all abandoned when she died on the Moon. Physically, Yrovi is a swarm of nanites, submicroscopic nanorobotic devices that are able to assemble into any convenient form. And also any freakishly astounding form. Yes, Yrovi put on quite a show for me.

Yrovi's Brief Visit to Earth
It all began on a recent fall day when I was busy and distracted by the mundane details of life on this miserable little world. I'm tormented by the fact that the alien Huaoshy could, if they wanted to, rescue all we Earthlings from death. Okay, so maybe that is like saying we humans could go to the trouble of rescuing every bacterium that is in our food before we eat it. The truth is, consuming bacteria and hosting bacteria in our guts is part of being human, so it would be self-defeating to try to avoid the normal way that bacteria interact with our bodies. Yes: in this analogy we Earthlings are like bacteria to the alien Huaoshy.

Artist's depiction of
Ivory's mother, Marta

I suppose the Huaoshy must let primitive creatures like we humans live and die. We're the pond scum of the universe, so why should the Huaoshy put an end to something as trivial and useful as death?

Anyhow, leaving my emotional bitterness to the side, I must explain how Yrovi popped into my life. "She" could have taken on any physical form, but Yrovi does have a favorite physical form. Eventually she "explained" all this to me, not with words, but by sending a packet of memory nanites into my brain.

When Ivory first began experimenting with how to use nanites to alter her appearance she still suffered from a lingering self-loathing and a very negative body image. She'd grown up developmentally delayed and freakishly thin. That was all due to her many Preland and Asterothrope gene combinations, a fact that nobody bothered to explain to Ivory.

Artist's depiction of
the young Ivory Fersoni

Other kids called her names like "toothpick". Her emaciated appearance caused her to be dogged by the nickname "pick" during the long years of her adolescence which did not end until she was in her early 20s.

I now understand that Prelands were engineered to only store body fat immediately after giving birth. There is a lingering mystery about Ivory's father and to what extent he carried alien gene combinations, but what is clear is that by the luck of the genetic dice, Ivory grew up as a human female without the human gene combinations that normally give females a higher amount body fat than males. Given the combination of her oddly Preland-like physical appearance and her intellectual brilliance, Ivory never experienced satisfying relationship with a man.

Almost two years ago now, on the day when I first met Ivory, she showed me the version of herself that she had by then grown comfortable with, a version that included freakishly long thin fingers and alien facial features. However, it had taken Ivory many long years of experimentation to reach the point where she accepted her nonhuman nature.

Artist's rendition of Ivory Fersoni while at
Moon Base and deprived of nanites.

When Ivory first used the technology that allowed her to craft her own appearance she had to yield to her own decades of pent-up desire to look like a "normal" human female. Initially, Ivory set herself the goal of shaping herself into a new physical form that she viewed as "cute" and "desirable". Her chosen model was a young actress known to the world as Hilarie Burton.

So that's how Yrovi showed up on my door step looking like a very young Hilarie Burton. At first I did not recognize her and she had a bit of fun teasing me and testing to see how long it would take me to realize that the sassy little girl I was talking to was what now remains of Ivory.

After a few minutes of befuddlement, when I finally recognized her physical resemblance to Burton/Ivory, I suspected that Yrovi was a young clone of Ivory. Then she put on a display of her shapeshifting ability. At first, I could not be certain if I was dealing with an Atlantis Clone or someone else who might be trying to deceive me.

I was more than a little afraid that my own activities (or possibly the unusual swarm of nanites that I carry) might have finally attracted Overseer attention. I carry inside me the infites that had for decades accumulated a record of the thoughts and memories of Thomas. I now realize that Thomas had given up his chance to live on as an artificial life form when he decided to give his infites to me. That all became clear in an instant when Yrovi sent a small cloud of her infites into my mind. I experienced a form of rapid information transfer that quickly convinced me of Yrovi's identity as the artificial life remnant of what had been Ivory.

Top: Thomas and Parthney standing over
Orbho Jandra who is pretending to be dead.
Bottom: Ekcolir and Trysta.

I'm still exploring the rich information content of the memory nanites that Yrovi gave to me.

At that moment when I received Yrovi's "gift" of artificial memories, Orbho Jandra materialized in the room. I recognized "her" because "she" was well known to Thomas. I'll persist in calling Jandra "she" even though I know that the orbho are artificial life forms that simply take on human physical form. The orbho work closely with the Overseers at Observer Base. Since the Lunar Overseers all have the physical appearance of human females, the orbho also all adopt that physical form. Since the Overseers and the orbho all call each other "she", I'll go along with that fiction.

When Jandra appeared in the room, Yrovi exclaimed, "I'm not done yet!"

Jandra settled into a chair and said, "I'm in no hurry, but I want to get to know your friend. Will you introduce us?"

source

Yrovi shook her head, "You already know each other."

Thomas had not enjoyed the time that he spent on the Moon as a prisoner of the Overseers. He had known Jandra as the robotic aide to the Overseer who seemed to be in charge of Observer Base. My first thought was that Yrovi had led the Overseers to me and I would then become their prisoner, removed from Earth, and I'd no longer able to share with my fellow Earthlings what I know about the secret history of our species.

Yrovi explained to me, "Jandra is going to teleport me to the Galactic Core, so I don't have much time."

For a moment I wondered if I was being given my opportunity to escape from Earth. The more I learn about the lucky Earthlings who have been able to escape from this world the more envious I become. It would be a grand adventure to go off to the Galactic Core and explore Genesaunt Civilization.

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I lamely tried to apologize for the role I had played in Ivory's death, "We should never have published your report from the Moon."

Yrovi had no regrets, "It has worked out well. Yes, the Overseers were embarrassed that I could trick them and transmit information from Moon Base to Earth, but we proved that the people of Earth can now be told the truth about this world's past. I died knowing that you would be able to continue telling the secret history of Earth. I'm now free to go my own way and get on with my second life."

I complained, "Forgive my disappointment, but I'd hoped that the physical evidence of your biological body would one day be revealed. All my wild stories will be useless without physical evidence."

The Dead Widowers

Yrovi shook her head, "Well, that approach might still be possible. I'm here to tell you that there are still others like me on Earth."

I'd long known about Ivory's mother and I knew that there were several clone sisters of Ivory. However, Ivory had always insisted that her family members were private individuals who could not risk revealing themselves to the world. But suddenly I could see clearly in my mind which of Ivory's family members were still living on Earth. In a flash I became aware of the Dead Widower Society. Confused by the implications of the name, I asked, "Like you, all your family is dead?"

source

Yrovi laughed, "Only in a sense. They want the people of Earth to believe that they are dead and not try to study them like freakish biological specimens. They want to help you Earthlings reach the stars without sacrificing their own chance to lead normal lives." Yrovi and Jandra stood up and I could sense that they were ready to depart.

I put my arms around Yrovi and tried to thank her for all she had done towards our shared goal of revealing secrets of the past to the people of Earth, but my words stuck inside me. Yrovi had not bothered to provide "her" body with human warmth and I was shocked by the artificial feel of her artificial body. I knew that there was no sense in thanking Yrovi for the actions of Ivory. Ivory is dead.

Orbho Jandra and Yrovi stepped off and slipped back into the Hierion Domain.

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Ekcolir and Gohrlay

The pek think of the human species as just one in a series of primate variants that will ultimately become extinct and be replaced. Our replacement, the Prelands, are being honed and perfected and will soon take our place as the dominant species on Earth.

The pek are an artificial lifeform composed of of hierions and nanites rather than conventional matter and cells. In general, the pek confine their activities to the Galactic Core. On planets like Hemmal they have been gradually crafting the hermaphroditic Prelands over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.

At the same time, humans have been evolving on Earth under the watchful eyes of the Observer Corps and a police force known as the Overseers. The Observers and Overseers reside at a secret Base on the Moon. The Observers are humans, and occasionally Observers are sent to Earth for special missions. Observers who go to Earth must be genetically indistinguishable from Earthlings. The Overseers are a genetically distinct human group that can trace its ancestry to a now extinct human variant.

Gohrlay the Observer
The Foundations of Eternity starts with the story of Gohrlay, an Observer. The mysterious device on the cover of The Foundations of Eternity might be a teleporter or a time travel device or a magnetic field generator used to inactivate nanites. However, Observer Base is equipped with a teleporter for emergency use. For routine travel, such as when Gohrlay visits Earth, she rides in a shuttle; an unsophisticated spaceship that is used by Observers for short distance travel between the Moon and Earth.

Gohrlay on Earth

The Overseers believe that they are in command of Observer Base. During the time when Gohrlay is in training as an Observer, Overseer Doltun is the top ranking Overseer. Doltun and the other Overseers enforce the Rules of Observation which assure that external forces do not alter the course of events on Earth. Occasionally there are visitors to Observer Base from the Galactic Core. Sometimes genetic material is collected from Earth and taken to the Core Worlds.

The spaceships that arrive at Observer Base from the Core are commanded by a Kac'hin. The Kac'hin are a human variant that the pek originally designed for the purpose of mediating human interactions with other species from other worlds. In particular, the Fru'wu and the Nereids have occasionally tried to interfere with the course of human evolution and human cultural development. The Kac'hin are much more interested in the events of the Galactic Core and they are generally bored and uninterested when they visit Earth, being well aware that eventually the humans of Earth will be replaced by Prelands.

orbho Nan

Observers, Overseers, Kac'hin, Prelands and all lifeforms that trace their ancestry back to Earth are known as Genesaunts.

The Observers, Overseers and Kac'hin have robotic assistants. These artificial lifeforms are much less sophisticated than the pek. At Observer Base the robots are known as orbho. The orbho are composed of conventional matter. Their nanorobotic components have some capacity to shapeshift, allowing orbho to alter their superficial layers and appearance at will. Humans believe that the orbho are nothing more than useful assistants who do manual labor and boring jobs.

In fact, the brains of Genesaunts are routinely infested by a swarm of symbiotic nanites. The nanites in their brains allow the orbho to essentially "read the minds" of Genesaunts. For example, Gohrlay can keep no secrets from her personal aide, Nan, but in general Genesaunts are not consciously aware of the fact that they have nanites in their brains. They think of nanites as useful tools that perform functions like cleaning and it is known that medical nanites can enter human bodies to repair tissue damage, but the fact that nanites provide a means by which Genesaunt behavior can be controlled is kept secret from the Genesaunts.

At Observer Base there is a small cadre of "executive orbho" who are actually in control of the Base and the Earth Observer program. The personal aide of Overseer Doltun, Orbho Anagro, is actually in command of the Base and its operations. In addition to their role in watching for and preventing Interventionist missions to Earth, Anagro and his executive staff carry out experiments on the humans that evolve on Earth. Also, the orbho do not completely prevent Interventionist operations on Earth. Sometimes the pek want to introduce certain gene patterns to Earth from the Galactic Core and this can readily be accomplished by letting Interventionists do the "dirty work" that violates the Rules of Intervention. As long as the pek do not directly alter the course of evolution on Earth they are technically in compliance with Huaoshy ethical standards.

Gohrlay is a key player in one of Anagro's experiments. Anagro is testing the capacity of humans to create and use advanced technology. He is particularly interested in the instincts that shape human ethical thought and the degree to which humans are likely to misuse technology. Through long experience, the pek know that primitive tool users like humans are at great risk of developing advanced technologies that can lead to their own extinction. Earth seems a near perfect laboratory for a strange phenomenon that has been observed in many species: human subspecies like the Neanderthals that instinctively have a high degree of ethical self-control over their own use of tools and technology tend to be exterminated by other subspecies who have weaker instincts for ethical behavior. Thus, the Neanderthals have nearly become extinct on Earth by the time Gohrlay is born.

There has long been a population of Neanderthals at Observer Base who were permitted by the executive orbho to develop a small scientific subculture. These Neanderthal scientists and engineers developed a sophisticated science of positronics and, not being allowed to develop nanite technology or electronics, they began to apply positronics to their goal of making robots. Searching the vast data bases of Genesaunt Civilization, which contain the records of thousands of species across many galaxies, Anagro has found no previous example of extensive research into positronics.

Over time, Anagro has been worked into an uncomfortable position. During the slow development of positronics at Observer Base, the populations of human subtypes on Earth with strong ethical instincts have been in rapid decline. Wishing to continue to experiment on Neanderthals and Denisovans, Anagro has taken extreme measures to prevent those human subtypes from becoming extinct.

Anagro's most recent frustration is that just when the Neanderthal scientists were ready to create the first positronic brain with human-like cognitive abilities, they abandoned the project. In order to make a human-like positronic brain, the Neanderthal scientists needed to "destructively scan" the structure of a human brain. Rather than destroy the brain of a human, they terminated their positronic robot project.

After much thought and scheming, Anagro finally devises a plan that will allow the positronic brain research to continue. By revealing to her the fact that artificial means have been used to keep Neanderthals from becoming extinct, Anagro knows that he can trick Gohrlay into violating the Rules of Observation. Gohrlay will then be given the choice: live out her life with her memories modified so as to erase her past criminality or she can volunteer to have the structure of her brain converted into positronic circuits.

Anagro makes continued life so uncomfortable for Gohrlay that she "volunteers" to undergo a destructive brain scan. The rest of the story unfolds in The Foundations of Eternity, leading to telepathic robots, time travel and the entire Foundation Reality as described by Asimov.

Ekcolir the Interventionist
Then, in book two of the Exode Trilogy, it becomes Ekcolir's mission to travel back in time from the 20th century to just before Gohrlay falls into Anagro's trap. Ekcolir arrives on Earth, 20,000 years in our past: his mission, to prevent the creation of positronic robots.

Ekcolir introduces himself to Gohrlay when she is on Earth during her first mission on planet. Ekcolir demonstrates to Gohrlay that she has been duped, that her illegal trip to Earth is part of Anagro's devious plan entice Gohrlay into criminal Interventionism. Ekcolir helps Gohrlay turn the tables on Anagro.

With the help of some advanced nanites provided by Trysta, Gohrlay and Ekcolir penetrate the Overseer district of Observer Base and collect evidence of how Anagro has been systematically intervening on Earth to slow the decline of the Neanderthal population. They are able to document how Anagro has worked to entrap Gohrlay: her entire life was planned and shaped so that the microscopic structure of her brain could become the template for making positronic brains of robots. When Many Sails arrives at Observer Base, Ekcolir teleports on board and presents the evidence he has collected to Captain Ayoost. Believing that Ekcolir is an undercover agent for the Kac'hin, Ayoost terminates Anagro's little science project. Gohrlay and the other Neanderthals at Observer Base become the new Overseers, replacing Doltun and his cadre of Overseers.

Syon

Ekcolir remains at Observer Base, helping Gohrlay establish a new set of priorities for the Earth Observation Program. No longer are cultural and technological advances kept under strict control by the Overseers. Humanity starts the slow climb towards establishment of a technological society. The Overseers shift their efforts towards preventing blatant Interventionism by the Fru'wu and the Nereids, but Nereid-sponsored Interventionist missions by a small group of specially trained humans is allowed, replicating what happened in the Foundation Reality when R. Gohrlay's actions at Observer Base first allowed humans on Earth to develop a technological civilization. Thus, Ekcolir completes the critical first step in his part of the Reality Change by which the Buld Reality is brought into existence. 

Syon and Rilocke
When Trysta travels back in time to play her part in creating the Buld Reality, she lives out her life 10,000 years in our past then transfers her nanite symbiont into a robot of Fru'wu design. That robot uses the name Syon. Syon is able to continue to influence the Pla Interventionists right up until the time of Parthney's mission in the 20th century.

Similarly, in order to shape the Buld Reality, Ekcolir must play a continuing role for 5,000 years. When his biological body reaches its end, he offloads his nanites into a Fru'wu robot. That robot uses the name "Rilocke" and plays an important role in getting the Buld into position so that they can send a spaceship to Earth. That ship, a multi-generation spacecraft that travels just below the speed of light, takes 15,000 years to reach Earth from the Galactic Core, arriving in the Solar System near the start of the 21st century.

Grean also travels into the past. I might arrange for Grean and Rilocke to cross paths in the Koly star system 15,000 years ago.

Time Contraction
I've previously mentioned how Asimov put a 20,000 year limit on Daneel's positronic brain. Rilocke and Syon are quite different artificial lifeforms than Daneel. However, I'm constrained by the fact that even if Rilocke and Syon are essentially immortal, I'm supposed to be crafting Trysta and Ekcolir into a love story. I've been imagining that there is a rather tragic end to that story: Trysta and Ekcolir and Merion make a great team in the 20th century, but then their time-twisted love triangle falls apart. First, Merion is captured by Overseers and taken to the Moon. Later, Ekcolir must travel into the past, 10,000 years further back than Trysta. Is there no way to avoid a tragic ending for this trio? Must the Exode Trilogy end with Trysta, Merion and Ekcolir scattered through time and space, each dying alone and lonely?

When Trysta passes a copy of her mind to Syon, she hopes to eventually find Ekcolir's "robotic instantiation", perhaps in the Koly system. However, Rilocke, having spent 5,000 long years without Trysta/Syon, decides to cheat time. He goes along on board the Buld spaceship to Earth. Due to relativistic time contraction, that 15,000 year journey is only 300 years in duration for Rilocke. I'm now thinking that Rilocke can teleport off of Earth with Kach. At the end of Exode, Parthney and Kach are reunited, as are Syon and Rilocke. I'm still trying to decide if Merion can survive until the arrival of the Buld spaceship. He will be about 110, but given the medical nanites at Observer Base, it is possible that he could last that long.
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