Syon

Syon

Back in February I was in the process of discovering the characters in the story Exode who would be at Lendhalen with Parthney while he is trained for his mission to Earth. My first conceptualization of Robin was that "she" would be a fairly primitive and clunky robot. Giving this robot the name "Robin" was a kind of joke.

By the end of February I had decided that Robin would have a "split personality". Part of the time she acts like a pre-programmed computer, but at other times the nanites hidden inside her "come to life" and endow Robin with extraordinary abilities.

During March I had some fun picturing Robin as a devious spy inside the secret Interventionist base at Lendhalen. The advanced nanites inside Robin were not recognized by the Pla, but they were able to pass important information about events on Earth to Parthney. By the end of March I realized that there were nanites inside Robin that had originated from Noÿs, a time traveler who I had inserted into the fan fiction story The Foundations of Eternity, which is the prequel to Exode.

Syon

In May I finally had a revelation about how Noÿs was able to interact with the Huaoshy: Noÿs had extensive interactions with a group of Kac'hin "puppets" just prior to the events described in Exode.

Importantly, those Kac'hin gave Noÿs access to the Huaoshy technology for viewing Realities, thus allowing her to select the "Buld Reality" as the future of Earth. I like to think that Noÿs went through a similar Reality viewing process previously when she first selected the Foundation Reality.

Syon and Parthney at Lendhalen

By the time Noÿs was done working with the Kac'hin, she had accumulated two different types of symbionts inside her body: her original "Noÿs nanites" from 10,000,000 years in our future and also some "sedronic symbionts" transferred over to her from the Kac'hin. When Noÿs died, both of those types of symbionts were passed along to Robin. Thus, Robin can provide information to Parthney that originated with Noÿs and also information about the Earth Observers. In some sense, Robin carries a copy of the mind of Noÿs instantiated in a nanorobotic body.

Annike

Since "Robin" is a kind of artificial life copy of Noÿs, I've decided to change her name to Syon, which is "noyS" spelled backwards. The name Noÿs never appears in Exode, but Syon plays an important role in Chapter Three when Parthney is prepared for his mission on Earth. Syon has been at Lendhalen for a long time and has also helped train other Interventionist agents, some of which Parthney learns about while he is in training at Lendhalen.

For special jobs on Earth, Syon prefers to make use of "her" own children. Rechmain was an Interventionist agent who lived about 500 years before Parthney and who was another clone of Thomas. He was trained at Lendhalen by Annike and Syon. Annike was one of several daughters of Noÿs that were created by the pek after the death of Noÿs.

Exode Timeline

Isis (and Mr. Spock)

One of my goals for the science fiction novel Exode is to imagine how a story set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe might conform to the technological parameters established by Assignment: Earth. In that Star Trek episode, there was long-range teleportation, a shapeshifting cat/woman (Isis) and an intelligent computer.

For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I assume that shapeshifting is made possible by nanites.

What can I say about the computer technology that was depicted in Assignment: Earth? Within the Star Trek fictional universe computers were big and clunky until the Next Generation. It never made sense to me that Gary Seven could teleport across the galaxy with Isis in hand and yet have such a primitive computerized assistant.

This technological incongruity might make sense if Gary Seven is simply using technologies that are provided by a much more advanced alien civilization. Gary is stuck with whatever technologies are provided for his use.

Beta 5 computer

Maybe the aliens had decided that providing Gary with a sophisticated robotic assistant would introduce too many opportunities for Earthlings to notice that something strange was going on. Imagine a humanoid robot out and about in Manhattan. While crossing the street the robot is struck by a car and its mechanical guts are strewn across Times Square. In contrast , the big, immobile computer just sits in one secret vault and can presumably be teleported off of Earth in an emergency or simply inactivated and its inner workings reduced to a puddle of melted circuits.

For Exode, I was not willing to adopt a primitive computing technology like "Beta 5". However, I did start thinking about the possibility of having relatively clunky robots at the secret Interventionist training base of Lendhalen. I've been imagining that the alien Fru'wu are the conduit/source of the technology that is available to Interventionist agents like Parthney. Actually, the Fru'wu are "front men" for the Nereids, so some technologies like the teleporters are made by the Nereids, given to the Fru'wu and then the Fru'wu make the teleporters available for humans to use.

Noÿs
I could easily imagine that the Fru'wu and Nereids were "alien Interventionists" who would provide advanced technology to the human Interventionist agents on Earth, but as discussed in my previous blog post, the Huaoshy are much more technologically advanced than the Nereids. I could imagine no good reason to account for a failure of the Huaoshy to step in and prevent the Nereids from using the Fru'wu to help the human Interventionists alter the course of events on Earth. I was in need of a way to trump the god-like powers of the Huaoshy. Finally, I realized that I could use Noÿs for that purpose. Thus, Exode became a sequel to The Start of Eternity, a fan fiction novel in which Asimov's famous time traveler, Noÿs Lambent, destroys Eternity.

Since deciding that Noÿs would provide the backstory for Exode, I've been sketching out the details of exactly how Noÿs can cause the Buld Reality (the timeline that we experience) to come into existence. Since I had originally decided that Gwyned was the daughter of Noÿs, I've been imagining some additional ways of knitting Noÿs into the lives of additional characters who appear in Exode. After a month and a half of this knitting project, I now feel like I can sketch out the timeline for the Buld Reality and the key events that allow Noÿs to shape the world as we know it.

a pek using
Preland facial features

Timeline of the Buld Reality

837,930,298 YBP. The Huaoshy achieve faster-than-light travel. Their home galaxy is far, far away.

~7,000,000 YBP. The Huaoshy reach the Andromeda galaxy and make contact with the Nereids. The Nereids have existed for several million years as a non-technological sapient species on their metal-poor home world.

~6,999,000 YBP. The Huaoshy reach our galaxy. Soon the pek (nanite-based artificial lifeforms that assist the Huaoshy) are domesticating the primates that they find on Earth.

~6,900,000 YBP. The interstellar civilization of the Fru'wu is destroyed by a self-inflicted technological disaster involving their primitive nanotechnology. The Huaoshy have preserved some domesticated Fru'wu on worlds of the Galactic Core.

~300,000 YBP. The Nereids finally establish a technological civilization on their home planet.

200,000 YBP. Needing a tool that will allow them to infiltrate and defeat the Eternals, the Huaoshy begin to develop the Kac'hin, a human variant that can be used like humanoid puppets by the Huaoshy. Captain Hooski is one of the Kac'hin who appear in The Start of Eternity. The Kac'hin are developed on the planet Luk'ru, a world that later becomes the home of Hana and Boswei and their children. By 50,000 YBP the Kac'hin project is complete and no further development of the special abilities of the Kac'hin is attempted on Luk'ru.

~90,000 YBP. The Nereids help some Fru'wu rebels of the Galactic Core achieve independence from the pek. There are some interactions between the Nereids, the Fru'wu and the Buld. The Nereids monitor events on Earth and occasionally they manage to bring a human from the Galactic Core to Earth. However, there are Overseers stationed at Observer Base on the Moon who prevent Interventionists from interfering with the course of events on Earth.

Pla'kao

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

In the Galactic Core the pek begin selecting for human variants on worlds like Hemmal. These variants will be able to breed with Noÿs, a human from 10,000,000 years in the future (in the Mallansohn Reality). Ekcolir is one such human who is born on Hemmal about 1910.

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

~10,000 YBP. Noÿs arrives from the future and lives among a group of Earthlings who have retained genes from Ekcolir. Noÿs helps them develop a written language and learn to read and write. Noÿs talks to these primitives and tells them about the far future of Earth. This initiates the popularity of flood myths on Earth.

Noÿs is present when the Fru'wu establish the first teleportation terminal on Earth. Noÿs is teleported to Klyz where she transfers her advanced nanites from the far future of the Mallansohn Reality into a primitive Fru'wu robot. Robotic assistants containing "Noÿs nanites" can be used on Earth by Interventionist agents and they also become the robotic assistants at Lendhalen.

The pek collect genetic material from Noÿs and use it in their human breeding program on planets such as Hemmal.

Robin

~5,000 YBP. Lendhalen is established as a training base for Interventionist agents. Robin the robot is present from the very start. The "magnetic pulse" method that is used to inactivate pek nanites has no effect on the "Noÿs nanites" that are inside Robin.

1910. Deomede is born on Hemmal. He is later trained at Lendhalen and teleported to Earth.

1936. Noÿs arrives from the future and meets Deomede. They have a daughter, Gwyned (born 1939).

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

Gwyned

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

1964. Gwyned is teleported off of Earth by Deomede. She arrives at Klyz and then moves on to Lendhalen. She tries to understand the advanced technologies that are available to the Buld like the robot assistants of Lendhalen.

1967. Parthney arrives at Lendhalen for training as an Interventionist agent on Earth. Gwyned and Parthney both suspect that there is more to Robin than meets the eye. Robin has a physical appearance that reminds Gwyned of her mother and Robin tells Gwyned that she has 10,000 year old memories of Noÿs from the time when Noÿs arrived at Klyz. (note: Gwyned knows Noÿs by the pseudonym "Trysta Iwedon"...the name "Noÿs" is never used in Exode.) When Parthney stops his training with the expectation that Gwyned should be the one to go to Earth, the Huaoshy step in and "take control" of Robin, eventually convincing Parthney that he must go to Earth. Parthney asks Robin about Noÿs and the robot suddenly and mysteriously delivers a message from Noÿs: "Thomas, remember to meet Izhiun on the mall". This is the last time that Robin acts outside of the normal behavioral pattern for the robots of Lendhalen. Gwyned asks Parthney to look for her mother (Noÿs) and brother (Thomas; who Gwyned has never met) when he reaches Earth.

Betty

1971. Noÿs travels back in time to 10,000 YBP (see above). Parthney is teleported to Earth where he meets Deomede and the robotic assistant Betty. Deomede tells Parthney that Noÿs is gone, but they begin searching for Thomas.

1972. Ekcolir (an Interventionist from the "Noÿs Reality") is sent back in time about 20,000 years to initiate the Buld Reality.

1973. Thomas (from the "Noÿs Reality") was kept inside the time travel device on the Moon during the time when the Noÿs Reality was changed into the Buld Reality by Ekcolir.Thomas is now sent back to 1940 (see above).

1974. Noÿs of the "Noÿs Reality" is finally sent back in time to 1936 (see above). Before this final time travel event, she gets a chance to look into the future of the Buld Reality. After she travels back in time, the Huaoshy initiate a shift in the dimensional structure of the universe which makes time travel impossible.

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

Asimov comments that the story could never be published because it was written like a report describing an actual event (actually it is based on an actual report from the Noÿs Reality that Noÿs saw while looking into the future). Janet is not able to say much since Thomas was her patient for many years, however she tells Parthney that Thomas believed that his "science fiction story" about the Buld was not fiction, that events would actually happen as described in the "story". Asimov has only corresponded with Thomas. Janet further mystifies Parthney by asking him, "Is Thomas your brother?"

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

Klyz

1984. Parthney has come to believe that one of Deomede's contacts, Hana, might be the "Hana" mentioned in Thomas' "story" about Izhiun and the Buld. Parthney has discovered that Hana has been having "email" communications with Thomas by means of messages sent over CSNET. The man on Earth who meets the arriving Buld spaceship is described in the "story" as, "Izhiun, son of Hana, born in the Andromeda galaxy." The story describes Hana as having been born on Earth. Parthney teleports Hana off of Earth and soon he is captured by an Overseer and taken to the Moon. Thomas uses his nanites to sneak into Observer Base when Parthney is taken in.

Thomas and Parthney confirm that Observer Base is being phased out in preparation for the arrival of the Buld spaceship. Thomas uses the teleportation terminal at Observer Base to send Parthney back to Klyz. Thomas takes the place of Parthney since they are genetically identical.

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

Kach

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

1991. Hana and Boswei settle on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Their son Izhiun is born.

1998. Kach goes to Earth on a mission to help make it possible for the Overseers to capture the secret Nereid station on Earth. She is captured by the Overseers and taken to Observer Base. Kach meets Thomas who is still living at Observer Base.

2011. Izhiun arrives on Earth with a clone of Kach. The secret Nereid station on Earth is destroyed during raid by the Overseers. To the Overseers, it looks like Kach was killed in the raid, but Kach is teleported back to Klyz. Izhiun contacts Hana's husband who is still living on Earth.

2012. The Buld spaceship arrives in the Solar System. The existing Overseers retire. The Nereids explain to the Buld that the Overseers have quit and that the Earthlings need a clean, safe energy source. Izhiun meets the Buld at the Washington Monument and obtains instructions for how to build an energy receiver that will collect energy transmitted by hierions from a solar energy collection station that the Buld can put on Mercury. The Huaoshy make the remaining Observers on the Moon into the next Overseers, but they begin operating under a new set of rules that allows Earth to receive some technological assistance from the Buld. Hana's husband begins placing the Exode story on the internet. Izhiun leaves Earth and goes with the Buld to start terraforming Mars.

Bimanoid Theory

Excalbian

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

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

Robot, woman, alien Huaoshy?

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

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

Presidents in space

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

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

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

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

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

macroscopic symbiont

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

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

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

a planet with rivers of lava!

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

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

Hollywood geology

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

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

Parthney and Robin

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

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

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

"we've learned not to fear words"

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

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

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

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

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

Kirk: "Continue to our next assignment".

An hermaphroditic Pla takes the place of Balok

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

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

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

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

Balok

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

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

Original art by Pat Brennan

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

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

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

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

Kach and friends

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

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

Top, Pla'mak; bottom, Pla'kao

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

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

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

____________________

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

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

Role Reversal

Robin as a poster girl.

In my previous blog post I discussed how in Chapter Three of Exode, Robin becomes a conduit for contact between Parthney and the Huaoshy. While at Lendhalen and in preparation for his mission as an Interventionist, conversations with Robin start Parthney along the path of discovery towards a realistic understanding of the role that the Interventionists play on Earth. This is a bit of a tease for readers, because a central mystery that lasts through the entire story is just how things will ultimately turn out for we Earthlings, so Parthney is only given hints. For part of Chapter Three it looks like Robin is going to be a distraction that will keep Parthney from completing his mission to Earth, but that is just a trick that results in desperate moves by Parthney's handlers, moves that reveal critical information to Parthney that he otherwise would not receive before his trip to Earth.

By the relentless logic of stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, the role of Interventionists is intimately tied to that of the Overseers. In this blog post (and continuing on into the next two posts) I expand on the dynamics of the interaction between Interventionists and Overseers and how that dynamic will ultimately be changed by the arrival of a Buld spaceship in the Solar System.  

left, Parthney; middle, Robin; right, Leymaygn

Major Spoiler. A key issue is that the Interventionists have been led to believe that they are causing dramatic changes in the culture of Earth, but in reality the major source of that change has been on the Overseer side of the balance of forces. The Interventionists have grown comfortable thinking of themselves as the agents of social change on Earth, but the Huaoshy are actually trying to turn the Interventionists into a conservative force that will guard Humanity from technological disaster.

It is the Interventionists who have contact with the Fru'wu, an alien species that managed to destroy their own home world in a technological disaster. The Buld Interventionists are becoming cautious after receiving alarming reports from Earthlings such as Gwyned about growing dangers facing Earthlings, including nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction. In contrast, the Overseers only oppose cultural change on Earth due to a kind of reflexive and automatic programming, an almost religious faith in the validity of their role in preventing outsiders from altering the course of events on Earth. Of course, they are oblivious to the fact that they and the Observers are the major external force that has long prevented Earthlings from developing according their natural potential.

The Observers believe that their role on Earth is the collection of data, but they are the source of the nanites that infect Earthlings. Those nanites had long inhibited the natural human capacity for using written language and developing advanced technologies. All that is needed to thrust the primitive humans of Earth out of the stone age is for the brake imposed by the Overseers and Observers to be removed. The Interventionists need do nothing. So why bother creating an elaborate apparatus that sends Interventionist agents to Earth?

20,000 years ago the Interventionists discovered that the brains of Earthlings were hosts for large numbers of nanites. In contrast, the "false" Buld on planets like Hemmal carry relatively few nanites in their brains. The Interventionists developed the hypothesis that by introducing certain gene combinations found in "false" Buld into the human population of Earth it would be possible to make Earthlings immune to nanites and set them free to use written language and advanced technology. So, for thousands of years Interventionist agents from planets like Hemmal have been spreading their genes on Earth. However, the main reason why use of written language and advanced technology never blossomed on Earth was because of the fact that anytime the Observers reported development of a written language or a new technological advance, the Overseers stepped in and put an end to such changes.

Why were the Overseers so persistent in preventing humans on Earth from developing a technological civilization? The Huaoshy have long experience with many human-like species that developed technological civilizations only to end up destroying themselves with a technological disaster. The Huaoshy use the pek to systematically collect and "culture" creatures like humans; the goal is to domesticate them and transform them into a modified form that will not destroy itself. In the case of humans, the Prelands represent the next step in directed human evolution: a kind of ape that can be trusted with advanced technology.

However, there is a gray area in the data concerning the self-destruction of technological civilizations. First of all, the Huaoshy themselves survived their own technological adolescence without help from outsiders.

Secondly, some Interventionists like the Nereids believe that species like we humans should be given a chance to survive rather than automatically be replaced by the safer Prelands. Were the decision left to the conservative Huaoshy, Earthlings would not have been allowed to make use of written language and develop a technologically advanced civilization. However, the Nereids represent the bolder elements of the Huaoshy who are willing to give species like we humans a chance to survive, rather than simply be replaced by the safe bet, the Prelands.

Role Reversal

Exode takes place about 20,000 years after the Nereids helped initiate a plan for giving humans a chance to develop a technological civilization on Earth. That plan is reaching a critical point: a Buld spaceship will soon arrive at Earth. How will the Earthlings respond to First Contact?

What Makes You So Special?
What was special about the Huaoshy? Why have so many species been destroyed by technological disasters while the Huaoshy managed to avoid that fate? One important factor was that the Huaoshy originated in a dwarf galaxy where the level of metals was low. This resulted in several species that evolved on planets with just enough metal in the core to make a protective planetary magnetic field without there being high levels of metals in the crust. These species slowly developed technology under cultural conditions that allowed for caution in the application of advanced technologies like nanotechnology.

Blissenobiarella

Eventually (and about 1,000,000,000 years ago), several species began interstellar travel and merged together as a new form of artificial life that humans refer to as the Huaoshy.

Again, Asimov
One of the most interesting ideas that Asimov explored in his fiction was that it might be possible to engineer human brains so that people would have the equivalent of the Laws of Robotics built into them. Asimov suggested that it took the telepathic robot Daneel 20,000 years to figure out how to build the equivalent of the Laws of Robotics into human brains. Similarly, the pek have been engaged in a 7,000,000 year long artificial selection process aimed at producing a primate with innate ethical behavior and a low probability of destroying itself by self-inflicted technological disaster. The "big question" in Exode is if we Earthlings have "the right stuff" or if we should be put into the evolutionary "discard" pile and replaced by the hermaphroditic Prelands.

Dors Venabili by Leonardo Falaschini

Interestingly, Asimov also explored ways by which you could program positronic robots to get around the Laws of Robotics. For example, Dors Venabili was able to kill in order to protect Hari Seldon. And going the other way, Blissenobiarella was able to over-ride her ethical programming and kill in order to protect Golan Trevize.

For 20,000 years the Interventionists have been striving to give Earthlings the chance to create a technological civilization on Earth. By the time Parthney is ready to go to Earth, some of the Interventionists are worried that the bumbling Earthlings might not be ready to deal with powerful technologies like nuclear weapons and nanotechnolgy. How can you measure the wisdom of a species? Of course, the Huaoshy have been developing their science of wisdom for hundreds of millions of years. Just as a horticulturalist might be able to make an educated guess about the ability of a particular tropical plant to survive in a harshly cold climate, the Huaoshy can accurately predict if a species is likely to destroy itself with its own technological excesses.

Major spoiler. The Huaoshy know that there is a good chance that the Earthlings will not survive their technological adolescence. After all, that is why the Huaoshy have long been designing the Prelands as a replacement for we Earthlings. The Huaoshy have been forced (by the Nereids) to go down the same path with Humanity that was explored with the Fru'wu. Lesson previously learned: don't leave all of the eggs in one basket.

Some species like the Nereids don't like the standard strategy of the Huaoshy that involves replacing naturally evolved instincts of species like ours with a new set of artificially generated constraints on behavior. Still, even the Nereids recognize that they have sent the Earthlings down a dangerous path. The Huaoshy, in keeping with their ethical rules, don't allow themselves the luxury of directly altering the behavior of Earthlings, but they are willing and able to make sure that Parthney is prepared for his mission to Earth.

The Huaoshy have long sought human gene combinations that will make human behavior patterns that are compatible with a technologically advanced culture. Having succeeded in that goal with the Prelands, the question during the past 20,000 years has been if those same gene combinations can be transferred from Prelands into Earthlings and still adequately constrain human behavior. The Huaoshy can make an educated guess, but it will be up to we Earthlings to find out for sure if we are an evolutionary dead end. In Chapter Three of Exode, Parthney begins to understand that the key issue facing Interventionists is not removal of nanites from the brains of Earthlings, but rather, the transfer of Preland gene combinations into Earthlings and the question of the ability of those foreign genes to provide we humans with an innate ethical sense that can guide our species through the dawning age of science and advanced technology.

Seldon

Robin, as a tool of the Huaoshy, prepares Parthney for his participation in the process by which the old Interventionist-Overseer dynamic can be replaced with a more sophisticate mechanism for trying to make sure that Earthlings don't destroy themselves. The Interventionists need to adopt a new role, one in which they start taking responsibility for necessary controls on the pace and nature of human technological change.

In Asimov's Foundation saga, he developed the idea that First Foundationers needed to be unaware of the details of Seldon's plan and the role of the secretive Second Foundation. For 20,000 years the Interventionist forces in places like the Koly star system are kept ignorant of their true role. Why? Until the people of Earth begin to construct a technologically advanced civilization the Genesaunts of the Galactic Core are cognitively closed to the dangers that powerful technology can pose for a primitive species like we humans. During those 20,000 years the Interventionists are given a simple and powerful motivation: the belief that they are liberating the people of Earth from the evil clutches of alien invaders. Finally, in Parthney's generation, the Inteventionists can begin to understand the true role for which the Interventionists have been created. After 20,000 years of imagining that they are rebels working in defiance of the Huaoshy plan for Humanity, the Interventionists discover that they have been carefully crafted by the Huaoshy as the only chance that we Earthlings have for long-term survival.


Traditionally, Interventionists have been sent to Earth without even being aware of how they were teleported from the Galactic Core to Earth. However, Gwyned tells Pathney about her efforts to understand teleportation technology. Parthney has a terrifying dream about being teleported. In his dream, when he materializes on Earth he can see all the elements of his body being coalesced and among those elements are alien nanites that effectively make him the puppet of the Huaoshy. In his dream he is able to fight off those alien elements and liberate himself from alien control. There is some truth in Parthney's dream.

While at Lendhalen, the Interventionists make sure that they have none of the crudest type of nanites in their brains; no simple nanites that can be inactivated by a powerful magnetic field. However, those crude nanites are like a Trojan Horse. The Huaoshy have more sophisticated and even smaller zeptoscale nanites that the Buld have no technical means to actually detect, even if they do suspected their presence inside humans. Through his discussions with Robin, Parthney develops an intuition about the possibility of there being multiple "generations" of nanites, the most advanced of these having even smaller components than atoms.

In my next blog post, I discuss how Pla'kao, co-director of Lendhalen, is changing the goal of the Earth Intervention program and engineering the Interventionist's role reversal.