The Escapist Clan

cover art by Rowena Morrill

At Observer Base in the First Reality, all the children were raised by artificial lifeforms, the orbho. The orboh carefully "programmed" the children so as to prepare them for their role as a Clan member. As soon as they began to transition into adulthood, it was normal for the children to join one of the existing Clans. As I mentioned previously, a few residents of Observer Base preferred to remain as Isolates and not join a Clan.

According to Gohrlay, Prelands were designed so as to be easily guided by religious beliefs. Preland societies formed around tribes or Clans and each of the Preland Clans had its own special religious traditions. In Preland societies, the behaviors of individuals were heavily constrained by "the collective and anonymous force of the clan".

"Reason" by Isaac Asimov.

During the era that Gohrlay was born into, the pek had long since used zeptite endosymbionts to shape the bodies of the residents of Observer Base, forcing them to adopt the Preland body form. The Prelands had been designed by the pek to be simultaneous hermaphrodites who, as adults, all looked like young women. However, Prelands only had small mammary glands that were directed internally so as to provide milk to newborns while they resided in the Preland thoracic pouch.

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At Observer Base, human reproduction was shrouded in religious mystery. When children were born, they were immediately placed in the care of the orboh and the birthing mothers were not even aware that they had been pregnant. Observers lacked a thoracic pouch and could not have raised their own children even if they had been permitted to conceive of the possibility.

While she was growing up under the care of the orbho, it soon became obvious that Gohrlay did not have the appearance of a typical Preland. As a young girl, she was told that she was a "throwback", a genetic mutant who would grow up to have a body form more like a human female than a Preland. This led to Gohrlay's early interest in genetics. Also, Gohrlay was never forced to participate in the juvenile pre-Clan training exercises that were forced on the other children at Observer Base.

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Genetics was one of the sciences that had been developed at Observer Base long before Gohrlay had arrived on the scene. However, genetics had long since been abandoned as an active area of research among the small cadre of scientists at Observer Base. As an adolescent, Gohrlay explored the abandoned records that remained from past genetics research. She discovered how to use chromatin stains and microscopy to perform genetic analysis. For a time, Gohrlay hoped to find a way to visualize the genetic defect in her chromosomes that had caused her to "revert" to a human phenotype. She became something of a celebrity among the Numerists, those residents of Observer Base who believed that all residents of the Base were either intrinsically male or female.

Sedronite sex chromosomes (source)

Performing her own lab work (and not trusting the fully automated devices that were used by most Numerists) Gohrlay was able to confirm that her genotype was XX. However, since the DNA probe that was available to her for chromosome analysis was a set of fluorescent-labeled nucleic acid strands designed to "paint" the X chromosome, she was not able to visualize any of the other human chromosomes.

Gohrlay also discovered that most residents of the Base were XX and only a small minority had the single X genotype. This result conflicted with the results from automated genotype analysis, results that routinely reported close to a 50-50 balance between the X and XX genotypes. Strangely, a few individuals who she tested had no detectable chromosomes. When she began investigating the hypothesis that there was one single X member of each Clan, the supply of DNA stain available to her suddenly disappeared, putting an end to her study of genotypes.

During the time when Gohrlay was receiving assistance from the scientists, she began making plans to visit Earth. She wanted to obtain cell samples for genetic analysis from both humans and the Prelands who lived on Earth. She won a position among the Observer Corps, but after her first year in the Corps she received a rejection of her request to begin training for on-Earth assignment. Her Division Director (Cliph), the Chief Planetary Observer, was among many Clan leaders who offered Gohrlay membership in a Clan. Gohrlay toyed with the idea of joining Cliph's clan as a ploy that might gain her an on-Earth assignment.

Water's Edge

Rol, Jaqy, Meppen and Gohrlay

When the biannual Clan membership drive came around, Gohrlay was still very angry that future consideration of her request for on-Earth assignment had been made contingent on her joining Cliph's Clan. Given her unusual biology, Gohrlay had no desire to join a Clan. She went "on vacation", leaving the confines of the Base. As part of her vacation, she went on a walking tour of the outer limits of the Base and wound up at Water's Edge, a kind of resort.

Within Clan society, resorts such as Water's Edge had a negative reputation. By convention, sexual relations were supposed to be carefully guided and shaped by the Clans. Resorts such as Water's Edge provided a way to explore sex outside of the Clans.

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Terry Lee

The dominant religion of Observer Base held that the next evolutionary advance of the Prelands would be made by careful breeding among Clan members at the Base. However, when two Clan members fell in love, they often slipped away to resorts like Water's Edge so that they could spend time together alone.

In the Ekcolir Reality, an extensive account of religion in the First Reality was published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.

Future of Earth

When Gohrlay arrived at Water's Edge, she found that only three other guests were present, all of them Escapist authors.

Gohrlay was familiar with the literature of the Escapists, but she had never previously met a writer of Escapist stories. Gohrlay quickly became friends with Rol, Jaqy and Meppen. Soon they were experimenting and trying to discover if they could form their own Clan.

Next: The Future of Earth in the Asimov Reality.

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Partial Analogues

original cover art by Kelly Freas

Gohrlay has been telling me about the analogue of Ivory Fersoni in the Ekcolir Reality. I'm still struggling to conceptualize how Ivory could have existed before the Final Reality since the assembly of the genetic basis for her (in particular, the creation of the Ek'col) is what allowed our Reality to be brought into existence.

According to Gohrlay, I need to appreciate the fact that there can be "partial analogues" of people in previous Realities. In particular, in the Ekcolir Reality there was a woman named Ivory Fersoni who was the daughter of an Earthman named Adão Fersoni.

In the Ekcolir Reality, Ivory's mother did not have the name 'Marta', but apparently there was a woman who was a partial genetic analogue of Marta and so her daughter, the Ivory of that Reality, even had some of the physical features of the Ivory who I met here in our universe.

the origins of Ivory

In the Ekcolir Reality, the Ivory Fersoni partial analogue wrote science fiction. In that Reality, much of the story of how Prelands and the Buld were crafted was told by authors such as Ivory.

Just as startling as the revelation that there was an Ivory analogue in the Ekcolir Reality is the idea that Prelands existed on Earth all the way back in the First Reality. I'd made the incorrect assumption that Prelands were a relatively recent arrival on Earth. The original Prelands in Deep Time were somewhat different than the species that exists in our Reality.

Preland

In particular, the pek of the First Reality did not have access to Asterothrope gene combinations. However, the basic physiology and lifestyle of First Reality Prelands was the same as later versions of the species, including their dependence on nanites for survival. The Preland respiratory, digestive and reproductive systems are all artificially engineered.

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Most startling for we humans is the fact that Prelands are hermaphroditic. For Gohrlay, who was raised as a Preland in the First Reality, the most distressing feature of Preland life was the fact that juvenile Prelands of Observer Base were traditionally not raised by adult Prelands. Normally, it was the robot-like orbho who cared for the maturing juveniles.

Gohrlay spent a great deal of time with juvenile Prelands at Observer Base. Since her brain was not colonized by the nanites that would normally provide Prelands with technology-assisted telepathy, Gohrlay learned to use fluent spoken language and she even learned how to sing. Her singing was very popular among the juvenile Prelands, but the orbho constantly chastised Gohrlay for over-stimulating the juveniles with her singing.

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Dream Time
The more I learn about Gohrlay's first life, the more I seem to be re-activating old memories about the First Reality. It is possible that these memories originated from the nanites that were provided to me by Ivory. Gohrlay is much more willing to talk to me about her past when I allow myself to believe "her version" of the odd micro-culture that existed at Observe Base. Still, I must struggle to ignore by previous conceptualization of the Observers.

in the Hierion Domain

Another possibility that I am reluctant to ignore is that I might now be accessing information about the First Reality by way of the Hierion Domain. I've been assuming that my replicoid is actively blocking my access to the Hierion Domain, but it is possible that I am being "fed" specific facts that are useful for the tryp'At to allow me to know. Of course, my fear is that I am being "brain washed", not simply obtaining new information about Deep Time.

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According to Gohrlay, there may have been a partial analog of me all the way back in the First Reality. It seems certain that a true analogue with my exact genetic composition did not exist until the Ekcolir Reality.

Gohrlay believes that she was not the first resident at Observer Base who was cut off from participation in the clans. For some reason, she's reluctant to tell me any details about one such Observer who she knew in her first life. I can sense that this one particular mysterious Observer had a major impact on Gohrlay in her first life. My detective work continues.

Related Reading: 2019 update on the Ekcolir Reality

Next: the origins of cyberpunk

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Decay

cover art by Gray Morrow

I've been thinking about science fiction stories that depict a culture with access to some advanced  scientific knowledge and technology, but nobody quite knows how to do new science and generate scientific progress or even keep in repair the existing high tech gizmos. This is on my mind because of the strange culture that develops on the Moon in The Foundations of Eternity.

There was a small population of humans living on the Moon thousands of years ago because aliens wanted to study the cognitive skills of our species. In the "wild" on Earth there was, at that time, no such thing as science, but in the artificial environment of Observer Base the humans developed an interest in mathematics and astronomy and physics...ultimately resulting in some startling advances in the strange technological field of positronics.

Life was quite comfortable for most residents of Observer Base. They were cared for by sophisticated robotic assistants (the orbho) and many daily conveniences were provided by swarms of invisible nanobots. In fact, life was so relaxed that most humans on the Moon had no interest in science: they took the available technological marvels that sustained their lives for granted.

The sheep look up
Yes, it was all too nice and comfy to last!

R. Gohrlay objected to the fact that the little colony of humans on the Moon were little more than a transient scientific experiment being performed by curious space aliens.

When she learns that humans are puppets for scheming aliens,   Gohrlay revolts and overnight all of the orbho and nanites are destroyed or in serious need of reprogramming and the humans are on their own, stranded on the Moon without a single spaceship and no way to reach Earth.

In The Foundations of Eternity the small cadre of scientists suddenly becomes the means by which the human population of the Moon can survive.

I've been wondering just how far and how hard that tiny island of human civilization would fall, to what extent the budding civilization at Observer Base would decay.

What would happen to the Observers who were on still on Earth?

Decay
As a young lad I fell in love with science fiction stories such as Asimov's Foundation trilogy (Galactic Empire collapses into barbarism, people slide from atomic power back to fossil fuels), Clarke's The City and the Stars (in the far future humans cower on Earth, afraid to return to the stars), Norton's Star Man's Son (post-apocalyptic Earth), Assignment Nor'Dyren by Sydney Van Scyoc (an alien culture throws away the means for progress and collapses into a dark age) and Brunner's Born Under Mars (Earth's first colony on another world has become a dingy backwater).

Swords and spaceships

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I've never read Brunner's The Alter on Asconel. According to Jacob Haller, Brunner imagined a "swords and spaceships" Galactic Empire that reminds me of The Gods Must Be Crazy. If we can drop a Coke bottle on Africa, why can't the ancient remnants of a collapsed galactic civilization include a bunch of spaceships (or teleportation terminals) that bumbling humans can get their hands on? Oh, and throw in a telepath for good measure. Who is the "extra-galactic god", some space alien or just a huckster from the rim of the galaxy who can trick the gullible primitives of Asconel?

In The Foundations of Eternity, humans on the Moon are an alien's science experiment. The aliens have designed and created the human species and with time they will dispose of us, with little more concern than a human scientist might make a genetically engineered bacterium to amplify a spliced plasmid and then destroy it with bleach and flush it down the drain after isolating the desired gene from the recombinant plasmid.

Gino D'Achille cover art

The only times I've ever been tempted to write a sword into a science fiction story is when the story takes place in the past during an era when a sword is high tech. I got my fill of swords in science fiction by watching Star Trek and reading The Faded Sun.

Okay, so Gohrlay does not hack Doltun down with a sword; she fries his brain with a burst of microwaves then conceals the murder by soaking him in liquid nitrogen. I can picture having a klystron and cryogenic fluids around a research lab, but not a sword.

Still, there seems to be a special law of nature within fictional universes...the bigger the sword that a heroine carries, the less clothing she wears.

Telepathy
In The Foundations of Eternity, R. Gohrlay is stranded on the Moon without a spaceship and without any ability to control or reverse engineer the remaining nanites.

R. Gohrlay is able to establish telepathic contact with the biological Gohrlay. I'm currently struggling with the issue of one-way versus bi-directional telepathy. For Gohrlay, telepathy works best between two brains that are similar in structure and function. When R. Nahan is provided with copies of the "Gohrlay brain circuits" telepathic communication automatically begins to occur between R. Gohrlay and R. Nahan.

R. Gohrlay learns about the "Huaoshy" by means of telepathic contact with the biological Gohrlay who is on Many Sails. I put "Huaoshy" in quotes because the word "Huaoshy" actually refers to the Kac'hin, but Gohrlay mistakenly begins the human practice of using "Huaoshy" to refer to the sedronic lifeform that created the Kac'hin. On board Many Sails, Gohrlay learns that she is going to live out the rest of her life on a distant planet of the "Huaoshy" (actually, the Kac'hin).

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Should the biological Gohrlay have some sensation of being in telepathic contact with R. Gohrlay? If so, would Gohrlay be able to keep secret from the Kac'hin the existence of telepathy? I imagine that telepathy depends on the presence of a type of hierion in brains. In order for R. Gohrlay to receive meaningful information by telepathy there must be a resonance between "her" brain and the brain of the biological Gohrlay. Because of "her" positronic brain, R. Gohrlay has more hierions and better control over them, but the biological Gohrlay should have some change in her neural network activity when R. Gohrlay is looking through her mind. Would R. Gohrlay be able to send a specific message to the biological Gohrlay, such as: Don't let the aliens know that we are in telepathic communication?

When R. Gohrlay takes over Observer Base she uses her telepathic ability to send a destructive pulse of hierions into Orbho Anagro. Her positronic brain can alter the behavior of the hierions that are a key component of the Huaoshy nanite technology that is used in the orbho. Never having explored positronics themselves, the Huaoshy never developed a defense against Gohrlay's surprise attack.

Fun with google image search...
Searching for Gohrlay's descendants

In contrast, Many Sails uses even more advanced sedronic components, so the biological Gohrlay is carried away by Many Sails when the orbho lose control of Observer Base.

I've started thinking about the fate of Gohrlay when she is taken off to the galactic core by Many Sails. In Part II of The Foundations of Eternity when Many Sails finally returns to Earth, many thousands of years have passed. Still, it might be fun to assume that one of the humans on board Many Sails is a clone of Gohrlay or maybe a descendant.

The positronic robots such as R. Rycleu are programmed to protect Humanity, but they have been taking orders from R. Gohrlay for thousands of years. What would they do if confronted by a clone of the original Gohrlay who told them that it was a mistake for positronic robots to struggle against the Huaoshy? Would R. Gohrlay finally be willing to admit that a small gang of positronic robots can't compete against the god-like Huaoshy?

Related reading. The details of Gohrlay's telepathic powers are described in my next blog post.

Orbho Anagro

The Foundations of Eternity is a science fiction story that begins far in the past when there are still a few Neanderthals living on Earth. The main character of the story is Gohrlay, a genetically modified Neanderthal who lives at Observer Base on the Moon. Gohrlay has been trained as an Observer and she has already visited Earth once and is anxiously awaiting departure on a shuttle that will take her to Earth for the second time.

Gohrlay was not officially scheduled for either of her missions to Earth. She is acting as a junior Interventionist, sneaking down planet in an effort to illegally alter the natural course of human evolution. Gohrlay has decided to introduce a key disease resistance gene into the dwindling Neanderthal population of Earth.

The rule that forbids outsiders from interfering with the natural course of events on Earth is enforced by the Overseers. The Overseers are an artificially modified type of Denisovans, one of the human subspecies that are descendants of Homo heidelbergensis, and they watch over the Observers as a kind of police force. During the time when Gohrlay joins the ranks of the Observer Corps, all of the Observers and Overseers believe that Overseer Doltun is in command of Observer Base.

Evolutionary tree of H. heidelbergensis. Click image to view entire tree.

Orbho Anagro

The actual director of Observer Base is Orbho Anagro. Anagro is an artificial lifeform. The human residents of Observer Base believe that the orbho are convenient robotic helpers. Every human on the Moon has a personal assistant: Doltun's is Orbho Anagro. Anagro has at his command swarms of nanorobotic devices. Anagro can control the nanites that exist in the brains of every human resident of Observer Base. Any human who starts to suspect that the orbho are anything more than servants can quickly have their recent memories erased by the nanites.

The orbho are really the helpers of the alien Huaoshy. For the past 7,000,000 years they have been genetically modifying and artificially selecting primates. We humans are the product of their efforts. The goal of the orbho is to construct a primate that is well suited to have a technological civilization.

An early goal of the orbho in designing humans was perfecting the ability of nanites to interact constructively with the human brain. Most of that design work took place on planets of the galactic core such as Hemmal. An important side effect of that design became apparent when early humans were returned to Earth. They displaced the existing australopithecines and developed sophisticated human cultures. At Observer Base, Anagro allowed various human subspecies such as Denisovans and Neanderthals to explore science and some advanced technologies, but those early humans were not very adept scientists.

Homo sapiens
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) were then designed on Hemmal as a human variant that would be a more accomplished tool creator and they were subsequently introduced to Earth's biosphere. With time, modern humans spread across the continents and out-competed all the earlier human variants. For many thousands of years the Observer Corps consisted of Neanderthals, and they had to watch while modern humans expanded across Earth's surface while the native population of Neanderthals relentlessly declined and dwindled.

Anagro was particularly interested in the behavior of hybrids of the modern humans and earlier human variants like the Neanderthals. Hybrids of Denisovans and modern humans were of particular interest to Anagro since they were close to optimal in their skill as scientists while retaining the innate respect for nature that was characteristic of heidelbergensis and the Neanderthals. Since the Overseers were a genetically modified form of Denisovans, Anagro had little difficulty encouraging the Overseers to make sure that a population of Denisovans remained on Earth, even though this was technically a violation of the rules that the Overseers were sworn to enforce. The Overseers devised a sly trick to hide from the Observers the fact that a group of Denisovans were being artificially maintained on Earth. They kept a population of Neanderthals in a ring around the Denisovan group and only allowed the Observers to watch the Neanderthals from a distance.

By the time Gohrlay was born at Observer Base, modern humans were the most numerous human subspecies living at Observer Base, but the descendants of Neanderthals still dominated the Observer Corps. The residents of Observer Base who were Neanderthal and Denisovan descendants were given the superficial appearance of modern humans by the nanites that they carried in their bodies.

Gohrlay

Gohrlay on Earth

By the time of Gohrlay, there has long been a population of hybrid modern human-Denisovan scientists working at Observer Base. Anagro had become intrigued by the positronics technology that was developed by those scientists. In the centuries before Gohrlay's birth, Anagro was frustrated by the fact that these scientists were too ethically conservative. Poised at the brink of creating a human-like positronic brain, the hybrid modern human-Denisovan scientists refused to sacrifice human test subjects as part of their research and they abandoned their innovative and unique positronic brain research project.

Orbho Anagro devised a way to get the positronic brain research back on track. Gohrlay's entire life was carefully planned out for this purpose. She was allowed to learn about sensitive genetic data from Earth that hinted at the fact that someone had long been systematically tampering with the genetic records of humans on Earth. Gohrlay's friend Cliph wanted to carefully investigate these genetic anomalies, but Anagro secretly pushed Gohrlay towards taking reckless action. Convinced that someone else had already been artificially and illegally introducing  genes into populations of humans on Earth, Gohrlay decided that she would do the same in an attempt to protect the dwindling population of Neanderthals on Earth from a microbial disease that had been sweeping through the Neanderthal population.

Interfertile human subspecies: Denisovan, Neanderthal, sapiens

Anagro just as carefully made sure that Overseer Doltun would catch Gohrlay on Earth in the act of violating the Rules of Observation. What Anagro really wanted was a human "volunteer" for the long-delayed positronic robot research project. With the help of the nanites in Gohrlay's brain, she was persuaded to agree to have her brain destructively scanned and its neural network structure converted in to the functionally equivalent positronic circuits.

Many Sails

Occasionally the orbho needed to move primates between Earth and worlds of the galactic core such as Hemmal. The spaceship Many Sails was always available for such tasks. When Anagro was done with Gohrlay he arranged for Many Sails to visit Observer Base and pick up Gohrlay for transport to another world where she could live out her life.

Rather than simply collecting Gohrlay and leaving the Solar System, Many Sails became intrigued by the unusual scheming of Orbho Anagro and the positronic brain project that he was pushing to completion. Many Sails lingered long enough to be observed by R. Gohrlay's developing telepathic powers. Making telepathic contact with "herself", R. Gohrlay was able to develop a basic understanding of the fact that aliens had long ago established Observer Base and were involved in a long and careful process of artificial selection of primates that could exist within the vast intergalactic civilization of the aliens.

Ironically, it is Orbho Anagro's curiosity about the scientific abilities of humans that leads to the science of positronics. Never suspecting that a positronic robot might have telepathic powers, Anagro even uses advanced Huaoshy technology to efficiently convert the structure of Gohrlay's brain into the corresponding positronic circuits. The resulting robot, R. Gohrlay, is able to take control of Observer Base and start down the long road to the establishment of Galaxia, a vast galaxy-wide telepathic mind that R. Gohrlay hopes can keep humanity free of Huaoshy interference.

The story of that struggle between positronic robots and the alien Huaoshy for control of the fate of Humanity is told in The Foundations of Eternity.
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