The Exode Trilogy at 3

Giant brains must create humans in
order to save the universe from Evil!

Soon after I discovered the existence of science fiction novels (during the early 1970s) I began imagining how I would construct my own science fiction story, or, better, my own fictional universe within which "my kind" of science fiction stories could be set. For me, the most intriguing issue to be resolved was the relationship between humans and all of the other intelligent beings that have evolved on distant worlds. I knew right from the start that I needed to find a satisfactory answer to the question of why we humans have not previously been visited by beings from other worlds (or have we?).

Exode Origins
Life got in my way and it took me almost 30 years to plan out my very own fictional universe. During the early 2000s I began writing stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe (of course, the first story was called Exodemic). A key feature of the Exodemic Fictional Universe is the idea that aliens long ago arrived on Earth, but rather than make their presence known to the local residents, they set about secretly shaping Earth's biosphere, eventually bringing into existence the human species.

My current writing obsession:
The Exode Trilogy

Through the eons, there were many different factions of alien visitors to Earth, but all those aliens were required follow the Rules of Intervention. Those ethical guidelines strictly limit alien visits to Earth and so the aliens have usually had to work through humanoid proxies (the Sedronites). The Sedronite visitors to Earth have ranged from the most radical Interventionists to the most conservative Overseers. A typical story in the Exodemic Fiction Universe concerns a few special Earthlings who manage to become aware of the presence of Sedronite visitors on Earth.

Three years ago I began a new story called Exode which I intended as a means to explore the origins and motivations of a group of Interventionist agents who had come to Earth and who were here among us, working secretly on our planet, trying to push our primitive culture towards greater technological sophistication. What I initially imagined as a fairly simple writing project soon snowballed and became an extended period of exploration and discovery, an on-going process of learning the secret history of Earth.

blue Sedronite (image credits)

Two years ago I wrote a series of blog posts (see 1, 2, 3) that described the early stages of development on Exode and how I decided that there should be an Exode Trilogy.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image shown to the right.

Last year I tried to make a concise description of how I then imagined the three novels that make up the Exode Trilogy (see this blog post). The third Exode novel that I discovered for inclusion in the trilogy (Trysta and Ekcolir) became the first book in the Trilogy.

Year 3 of Development
During the past year I've continued to develop my thinking about the Exode backstory. I've been aided by several important collaborators such as Anney Fersoni. Slowly, with the help of Anney and her clone sisters (particularly Ivory), I've come to realize that our galaxy is populated by a diverse group of humanoids (the Sedronites) who were all created by the Huaoshy. We can't make sense of human history unless we understand the Sedronites and their reasons for visiting Earth.

The End of Eternity

Fantasy Romance. A major source of inspiration for the Exode Trilogy was Isaac Asimov's character Noÿs Lambent. In The End of Eternity, Noÿs is a secret agent, sent back into her distant past on a mission to change the course of Time. Noÿs also has a personal mission in addition to her official job: she intends to create a happy future for herself and live out her life in the Primitive with Andrew Harlen. When I first read The End of Eternity I fell in love with Asimov's romantic notion that the entire structure of our world emerged from the love affair of Noÿs and Andrew.

Trysta and Ekcolir: book one
of the Exode Trilogy

I had originally intended to make the romantic relationship between two Sedronites, Trysta and Ekcolir, be the "hook" for engaging readers with the Exode Trilogy. However, during the past six months two other improbably romantic relationships have found their way into the Exode Trilogy. Most recently, I've made room for a hard fantasy "story within a story" that tells the story of how Grean brought together Bet and Ghyl in order to help bring into existence the Buld Reality, the universe as we know it. If Asimov was right to use the romantic desires of Noÿs to establish the Reality Chain that leads to our world, then why shouldn't a chain of similar romances (Bet and Ghyl, Trysta and Ekcolir, Thomas and Cecilie) be required to guide formation of our world? No reason.

Quick Tour
In proper temporal sequence, the Exode Trilogy must be thought of as starting with The Legend of Uvadekoto, a book that Isaac Asimov read after he was abducted by aliens and taken to the Moon. Yes, I could not resist writing my favorite science fiction authors into the Exode Trilogy. Asimov appears first as a young science writer, one of the very first investigative journalists of the mid-20th century in the Foundation Reality, the Reality that was brought into being by Noÿs and Andrew.

The story of the first journey to the stars.

Stories within stories. In myth and legend, Uvadekoto was the first interstellar spaceship. Ever. It was built by one of the alien species who eventually became what we call the Huaoshy, the Gods Thonselves. The Huaoshy sent their artificial life forms, the pek, out into the universe on a mission from God: find all the Earth-like worlds in the universe and nurture the life that is found on those worlds.

Asimov learns that after the events depicted in The Legend of Uvadekoto nothing unusual happened on Earth for the next two billion years. Then something went terribly wrong: R. Gohrlay, the first positronic robot was brought into existence at a secret base on the Moon. The Foundations of Eternity tells the story of how a simple Neanderthal girl, Gohrlay, was transformed into a positronic robot.

Creating R. Gohrlay.

Using their telepathic powers, R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots liberated first Earth and then our entire galaxy from the Huaoshy. Further, the positronic robots invented and deployed a powerful time travel technology. Never having previously suffered a defeat, the Huaoshy struggled to understand how they lost control of a galaxy.

The Foundations of Eternity was the first part of the Exode Trilogy that I wrote. I initially conceived it as a fan fiction sequel to both The End of Eternity and Asimov's novel Foundation and Earth. Along the way, the origins of the Laws of Robotics are revealed.

hard fantasy: Star Dance

At the point where Asimov is brought into the story, Grean is trying put an end to R. Gohrlay's revolution. By this time, R. Gohrlay has realized that the Huaoshy are not evil alien invaders and, in fact, Humanity cannot survive without the help of the Huaoshy. Gohrlay and Grean begin to collaborate in a complex project of Temporal Engineering that will give the human species a chance to live long and prosper.

But it ain't easy
Using her Earthly cover identity "Trysta", Noÿs must collaborate with Grean in order to engineer a complex Reality Change that will break the temporal momentum that was built up during the ten million years of R. Gohrlay's meddling in Earth's history. Trysta and Ekcolir tells the story of how Grean uses another secret agent, Ekcolir, to win Trysta's heart and convince her to collaborate with Grean for the good of Humanity.

Exode

In order to snap the binding energy of the strange temporal attractor that holds Earth in its grasp, a paradoxical time loop of great power must be created. That weird twist in time takes the form of an improbable romance between Ghyl and Bet, as told in Star Dance.

Eventually, the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact are fulfilled and the Huaoshy put an end to time travel. The Final Reality, the world as we know it, is the setting for the last novel in the Exode Trilogy (Exode). I had originally started crafting Exode as a strange love story about Parthney and Kach, but along the way I discovered another "story within a story".

The last Interventionist on Earth.

Ivory Fersoni put me in contact with the Dead Widower Society. I'm still trying to investigate and understand the Dead Widowers. They are the last remaining remnants of the Interventionist agents who have long guided the course of human history. I believe that Thomas Iwedon and his soul mate, Cecilie, are still here on Earth, but they want to live out their lives in peace, without becoming celebrities.

I'm still struggling to understand the complex tangle of events that was woven together by Grean in order to bring into existence the Buld Reality. My hope is that Thomas and Cecilie will help me finish telling the secret history of Earth and I will be able to complete the Exode Trilogy. For now, this is an active project and collaborators are welcome.

Creating Zarabeth

Love on Sarpeidon is a slow ice age thaw. Zarabeth waits,
 rather impatiently, for Spock to finish his calculations.

Two of my previous blog posts have discussed the Star Trek episode "All Our Yesterdays" (see my list of 10 great Star Trek episodes and the more recent Leonard Nimoy's Spock). Here, I ask you to imagine a version of this story without Zarabeth. "Why?", you ask.

Watch "All Our Yesterdays".
Read the script for the episode.

When I was about six years old, I was already more interested in the origins of stories than most stories themselves. For example, I couldn't listen to a story from the Bible without wanting to discuss who had written the story and why they had written it.

Trapped in the past, alone.
Cue violins. Spock and Zarabeth
say farewell at the ice cliff. Cue
wind. Zarabeth: "I can't go back."

Skip ahead a few years to grade school. Rather than just meekly answer the questions that my teacher asked about some icy cold Jack London story ("To Build a Fire"), I wanted to take the discussion in another direction.....I wanted to know who it was that was telling the story to me. "But, he was all alone, out in the wilderness.....he died....so who told the story?"

I first saw "All Our Yesterdays" when it was shown as a "rerun", viewed on a small black and white television, received through the wonders of a tiny UHF antenna and watched despite the adversity of very snowy reception. Under those viewing conditions, I had no idea that Spock had alien features such as copper-tinted skin, tilted eyebrows and pointy ears.

Later, in the 1970s, when I finally saw Star Trek in color (on a larger TV screen and with a better antenna) I was amazed.....suddenly I could begin to see the story as it had been intended to be seen. Wow. Similarly, when Mariette Hartley stepped out of her fur coat, revealing her sexy cave woman dress, millions of young boys all gave thanks for color television. "All Our Yesterdays" needed the character Zarabeth in order to be a memorable Star Trek episode.

A Handful of Dust

Zarabeth tells Spock that because of her family ties she
was exiled into the ice age by Zor Kahn, the tyrant.

"All Our Yesterdays" originated as fan fiction. Jean Aroeste, a librarian, submitted a six page story outline with "A Handful of Dust" as the story title. In Jean's original outline, there was no Zarabeth. (a list of story revisions) There was a library run by Mr. Atoz and, at the end, an old book that crumbled to dust in Kirk's hand.

Lucky for us, Robert Justman recognized the germ of a Star Trek episode in "A Handful of Dust". Eric Paddon has described a version of "All Our Yesterdays" dated December 12, 1968, three months before the episode was televised. In that draft of the story, Zarabeth was not depicted as leading a solitary life without any luxuries nor was she shown living as a "cave woman", nor did the "early version of Zarabeth" successfully seduce Mr. Spock.

Spock: "I should be able to resolve this problem logically"
Zarabeth: "Stop talking and kiss me, you silly nerd."

Somehow, between December 12th and the video recording of the episode, some magic was sprinkled into the story. I agree with Eric Paddon that "All Our Yesterdays" is "one of the best episodes of Season 3 and of all of Trek". When Spock is led to believe that it is impossible to return to the Enterprise, he reveals his emotions and allows himself to admit that Zarabeth is beautiful. After years of isolation, alone in her cave, Zarabeth is pleased to be the recipient of his compliments. Spock sweeps Zarabeth off her feet and they proceed to give the local hot spring some competition for steaming up the cave.

source

With Spock's walled-off emotions as a foundational element of the Star Trek universe, many Star Trek fans have tried to imagine all kinds of ways to bring love into Spock's life.

In a very real sense,  Zarabeth is a soul mate for Spock and it is only through the technical magic of the atavacron that Spock and Zarabeth can be transported into the past of the world Sarpeidon, and only then and there can Spock allow his long-suppressed human emotions to be expressed, only there is he free to love Zarabeth. Zarabeth's lonely exile in Sarpeidon's ice age mirrors Spock's life-long need to repress his Human emotions and live as a logical Vulcan. With the creation of Zarabeth, "All Our Yesterdays" became a classical fairy tale in which Prince Spock and Princess Zarabeth could fall in love and rescue each other from lives of loneliness.

Spock and McCoy

Spock's magical visit with Zarabeth is only a brief fairy tale interlude that must end.

McCoy insists that they try to help Kirk and return to the Enterprise. Spock must wait for the violin music to all be played and for the wind machine on the set to toss Mariette Hartley's hair, then he and McCoy finally return to the future, leaving Zarabeth alone in the distant past.

In the Beginning

Star Dance

The question becomes: who created Zarabeth?

I'm particularly interested in that question at this time because I've been imagining how Carl Sagan might have been created. For the Exode Trilogy, I imagine that in previous realities there was no Earthling named Carl Sagan. Then, Grean must create a strange temporal loop by which Bet travels back through Time and helps her mother be conceived. Then Carl Sagan can be created as Bet's son....sort of. (It's actually slightly more complicated than that.) Anyhow, the future of Humanity hinges on a strange loop of causality within which Albert Einstein is Bet's grandfather and Sagan's great grandfather. Ah, the wonders of time travel!

atavachron

The Buffalo Effect
Many time travel stories deal with the "Butterfly Effect". However, Isaac Asimov imagined that Time is subject to a type of temporal inertia. It seems like the people of Sarpeidon must have become masters of temporal engineering. They found a way to send the entire population of their planet back into the history of their own planet, all without causing any time paradoxes.

To account for this amazing accomplishment, I suppose there must be a temporal "buffalo effect" by which a heard of people can be sent into the past without changing their own future.

Gary 7 and Beta 5

Maybe the atavachron is actually a sophisticated quantum computer that can determine exactly how to insert people into the past so as to not alter the present. I also suspect that the time travelers of Sarpeidon all carried nanorobotic endosymbionts that guided their behavior, preventing them from altering their own history. It is fun to imagine Interventionists such as Gary Seven watching over Sarpeidon and using artificial life forms like Beta 5 to do the needed computations.

Zarabeth melts Spock's heart

Spring Project: People, Places and Things
Here in this blog post I've taken a look back at Zarabeth, Sarpeidon and the atavachron. Starting here in April I want to make a large number of blog posts about individual characters (example), locations and other "things" (particularly imagined objects such as future technologies) from the Exode Trilogy. An example of the type of blog posts I hope to create in the near future is my blog post from last year about the Fru'wu.

The image shown here, to the right, is a whimsical depiction of Spock and Zarabeth in the ice age of Sarpeidon, with their love affair imagined as the basis for a Disney movie. In the Exode Trilogy, I repeatedly play around with the idea of "soul mates", pairs of lovers who are brought together from across vast gulfs of Space or Time. Kach and Parthney were the first star-crossed lovers of Exode while Ghyl and Bet are the most recent. Trysta and Ekcolir are another important "odd couple" in the Exode Trilogy with Ekcolir, an Ek'col, having been crafted as the "perfect complement" for Trysta, who is an Asterothrope.

Cecilie's song

Actually, I prefer to think of such happy couples as "star-twisted" rather than star-crossed. Another example of my "matches made in the Sedronic Domain" is Thomas and Cecilie. Cecilie is a "constructed human", a woman who was brought into existence as the soul mate of Thomas Iwedon. Here in the Buld Reality, the world as we know it, Cecilie is a living, breathing instantiation of a fictional character who first appeared in a novel that was written in the Ekcolir Reality.

My fascination with characters like Zarabeth, who have mysterious origins, runs deep and has led me to populate the Exode Trilogy with a strange collection of characters who originated from real life (Asimov, Vance, Sagan) or as fictional characters (Trysta, Ghyl, Cecilie) or from my imagination (Parthney, Kach, Thomas, Ekcolir).

our Reality Chain

Not satisfied to simply bring people like Sagan into my fiction, I must provide a fictional account of their origins in earlier Realities. In Star Dance, the origins of Carl Sagan (as we know him in the Buld Reality) must be established in the Grean Reality and the Ekcolir Reality. Pardon me for not being able to resist the fun of creating my own favorite science fiction authors.

More Star Trek romance:
Kirk and Miramanee

Next: Chapter 5 of Star Dance - Bet is off to Prague in order to complete her mission of pushing Earth towards the discovery of hierions.

 

Star Trek book cover by theaven

Related listening: Walter Koenig and Mark Cushman

 
Related Reading: The blog post, above, was written April 1, 2015. 

 

See the October 9th 2015 comment by Eric Paddon, below, indicating that the December 12 draft script for the Star Trek episode "All Our Yesterdays"  was written by Arthur Singer and the final draft, dated December 17, was the work of Fred Freiberger.

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