The Start of Eternity/0

This story is still UNDER CONSTRUCTION, but most of the plot is complete. Collaborating authors are welcome: see this page for authors. The Start of Eternity begins with Chapter Zero in honor of Asimov's Zeroth Law of Robotics.

Chapter Zero of The Start of Eternity
"...in my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep. Methought I lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly —and prais'd be rashness for it— let us know our indiscretion sometimes serves us well..." -William Shakespeare

Gohrlay
At first she was moving with ease through the low gravity corridors leading up towards the surface. After one final strong leap through the airlock she floated upwards and was almost free, but then her legs became heavy and she could not move. She began to get frightened, but then what was controlling her turned the fear to anger. She glared at the blue and white orb in the dark sky and blamed the Earth's grasping strength for her sluggishness. But that made no sense: Earth was distant, far above the gray moonscape and whispering quietly like a celestial bird wing slicing the solar wind.

Returning to full consciousness, she escaped from this latest in a string of dreams that made even her rare periods of sleep a painful reflection of the futility that smothered her waking hours. The details of the dream evaporated from Gohrlay's awareness when she began to process some meaning from the voice of her aide. "...even call first, but Overseer Doltun is here. He requests an audience." The lights in the bedroom automatically brightened and Gohrlay sat up in the center of the nest of her bedding, blinking for a moment into the glow of the doorway.

Badly sleep deprived, Gohrlay sprang out of bed, rushed past her aide and found herself at the front door of her residence before even having been able to clear her mind and think past the initial surprise of Doltun being there, at Gohrlay's residence. In the past, Gohrlay had always been summoned to Doltun's office in the Overseer sector of the Base. While signaling open the door, Gohrlay tried to push most of her long red hair away from her face.

Doltun was shorter than Gohrlay: his eyes were at the level of her chest. He stood there on her door step looking up at her, his proportionally large, child-like head tilted back. Doltun wore the Overseer-style jumpsuit like an armored uniform with his utility belt cinched tight and his glistening boots elevated on absurdly thick-soles. Doltun's eyes only briefly meet Gohrlay's, then they seemed to slide away in search of something harmless that might be hovering over her shoulder. Just behind Doltun was his aide, Orbho Anagro. Doltun stammered, "Sh- should I return when you have had a chance to dress, Observer Gohrlay?"

Gohrlay's irritation at Doltun quickly focused her thoughts. Why the continued mocking use of her title, even after he had driven her from the ranks of the Observers? She noticed that some of his hairs had begun to turn white; they stood out starkly against the dark background shades of his well pigmented hair and skin. For the first time, Gohrlay realized that not only was Doltun an alien creature, but he was also old. Previously, Gohrlay had only ever seen Doltun from across the expanse of the raised desk in his office. Now she wondered: what could this aged bureaucrat ever understand about youth, liberty and growth? She wondered how well this old man even remembered his own youth. Sometimes the old are fiercely, even sadistically jealous of the young.

Doltun was only alien to a degree. His subspecies had never migrated off of the Origin Continent, unlike Gohrlay's Neanderthal ancestors. The ebb and flow of human populations across the surface of Earth was one of the mysteries that had attracted Gohrlay to the Observer corps and awakened in her a sense of wonder and an unappeasable ache for answers. The more she learned, the more questions she discovered. What were the origins of the human species? How had humans become such remarkable tool makers? And how had a splinter of humanity found its way to the Moon?

Of course, if you went back far enough, she and Doltun surely had a common ancestor. Gohrlay vaguely wondered if knowledge of that shared genetic origin bothered Doltun. Possibly not...Doltun's ancestors on Earth had long ago become extinct and only a few hundred Neanderthal's now remained on Earth. Both their peoples were evolutionary failures, with a few pitiful descendants hanging on, stranded on the Moon, and watching another branch of the human evolutionary tree rise to dominance. Well, there was no sense in sugar-coating it; a new subspecies of modern humans had already swarmed over the surface of Earth, while on the Moon, Neanderthals still hung on and comprised the bulk of active Observers at Observer Base, but only because of a technicality and cultural momentum.

Gohrlay responded bitterly to Doltun with a question of her own, "Do I have to conform to your prudishness even on the day of my execution?" There was only one possible reason why Doltun would be calling personally on Gohrlay: to take her to her death. She turned and grabbed the tunic that her aide was holding. In five seconds she was dressed- dressed as much as she cared to dress. Not caring if her hair looked bed-ruffled, Gohrlay ignored the offered hair brush.

When her tunic had fallen past her eyes, the sight of her aide and the interior of her home washed her mind with sweet nostalgia...she remembered a glorious sunset on Earth that had made her heart skip in this way. She loved her home, which she had carefully designed and decorated...now this was her final glimpse of its comforting complexity. Intelligent and driven, Gohrlay had become an elite Observer at a young age. Within her circle of friends she had been viewed as creative and attractive; her peers thought she had everything to live for. Momentarily, before turning back to face Doltun, she hesitated, wanting to go back to what she had been before, go back to staying alive. Then the instrumentality that was controlling her thoughts pushed in a way that suppressed fear of death and she was just angry at Doltun. A bitter word of reproach for the Overseer had erupted from her unconscious and hung quivering at the tip of her tongue: hypocrite! She was amused and puzzled by the force behind that taunt and too shocked by its nastiness to allow it past her lips. Doltun was a thug and a bully, but Gohrlay's rational mind decided that "hypocrisy" was not a fair label. Gohrlay was devoted to the truth, a trait that had been magnified by her recent friendship with Klempse and what he had taught her about science.

Doltun had given up expecting decorum from Gohrlay. Too embarrassed to speak, he simply gestured for Gohrlay to step through the doorway. Doltun and Gohrlay walked side-by-side down the walkway in front of her home; both were careful not to even brush a sleeve against the other. Off in the distance, through the trees, the spires of City Center glinted in the artificial dawn of the underground domed city. Gohrlay's aide tried to fall in line behind Anagro, but Doltun's robotic aide turned back and said, "You will not be needed. You can await reassignment."

Gohrlay looked back at her aide. She had already gone through the foolish ritual of saying goodbye. She still had an emotional attachment to her aide, after all, this was the robot that Gohrlay had grown up with, but during the past month her entire way of thinking had been altered. Gohrlay had become aware of the fact that robots only pretended to be servants. In fact, they were the prison guards of Observer Base. But the worst thing was that everyone living on the Moon was happy and nobody cared that they were living in a prison. It was hard to believe, but only a few queer scientists like Klempse seemed to understand such things. For Gohrlay it was a sanity-saving relief that there was at least one other person who knew ...

The only way to move through the city at a pace faster than foot travel was via the rail system. They soon reached the rail stop at the end of the lane and one of the shiny glass walled cars was waiting there for them. After Gohrlay and Doltun had settled into a seat of the tram car, she commented, "I was not expecting to see you again so soon." Her eyes slipped past Doltun to where Anagro stood in the isle, frozen like a pillar with one hand locked onto the roof of the car as it moved smoothly off across the park-like cityscape. The robot's perfectly shaped but bland face reminded Gohrlay of something in a nightmare: one of the relentlessly chasing undead characters that haunted her nights.

Doltun squeezed himself against the armrest at the edge of his seat in order to avoid touching Gohrlay. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, he explained, "The positronic circuits are ready." He bit off each word as if it pained him to tell her anything. "There is no reason to delay."

Gohrlay momentarily felt relief that her last day had come and she suspected that Doltun would also be quite pleased to have this day over and Gohrlay eliminated. Gohrlay's existence was a continual reminder of Doltun's failure to adequately police the Observers. Normally, a criminal such as Gohrlay would simply be shunned and left to quietly fade from relevance, control nanobots in her brain monitoring her every move and preventing her from ever again interacting with her fellow Observers. Normally, Gohrlay would remain alive and be a constant reminder for Doltun of his ineptitude. Faced with that unhappy state of affairs, he had put his scheming mind to work and found a way out.

Rather than face a living death, Gohrlay had taken Doltun's offer and become a test subject for the positronics project. Upon first hearing about the project, Gohrlay had been skeptical about the relevance of positronics. She had never previously thought about the origin of robots; they were just a fact of life. From birth, each person was assigned a robotic aide. She now knew that nanite-mediated mind control prevented everyone from even wondering about the origin of robots. However, a small group of scientists had begun to wonder if they could make a robot. That first small step had been taken long ago, but eventually there were technical difficulties that brought the positronics project to a dead end. No way was ever found to build a robot with human-like intelligence. There were now positronic computers with prodigious computational power, but they lacked human creativity and could not master human language. Watching the orderly city through the windows of the tram car, Gohrlay thought wonderingly of the fact that she had almost lived her entire life without hearing about the existence of science and research and positronics.

Suddenly felt the truth of that as never before: she had lived almost her entire life. Now, in what should have been the best years of her life, Gohrlay had at most half a day remaining, but staying alive would be worse. Gohrlay turned away so Doltun wouldn’t see her eyes water and then her thoughts were interrupted by Doltun's high-pitched and needling voice, “Not more of that monster now.” she thought.

Doltun asked, "Did you decide on your...ultimate fate?"

Dolton's question caused a shiver of fright in Gohrlay. The thought of what would soon happen to her brain was decidedly unpleasant, but once more the nanites controlling her brain sprang into action and altered her emotions. She was tempted to make a sarcastic comment about how Doltun had already decided her fate, but she knew what Doltun was really trying to say. Like most Overseers, Doltun was religious and believed in the existence of eternal souls. Gohrlay replied, "Just grind my body up and recycle it. At the next feast you celebrate, you will know that you are eating me." Gohrlay felt only vaguely anxious about her body parts being ground up and returned to the food chain: that was a side-effect of the nanites inside her brain that were continuing to push her towards acceptance of her death. “I’m an atheist,” she told herself firmly, “being unconscious doesn’t hurt and being nothing doesn’t hurt. Why should I fear it?” The thought of slipping away into nothingness can be unsettling for atheists especially when it’s less than a day away but for the moment Gohrlay was again fairly calm and started to feel sorry for those whose last days or last moments were blighted with fear of a bad afterlife. “Yes” she thought “being an atheist is better.” Gohrlay wondered about the undersized religious bully beside her and told herself, “I'll not feel guilty for taunting a sadist like Doltun, not when he deserves it.”

Doltun was sickened by Gohrlay's irreverence. Doltun had promised himself not to be provoked by anything that Gohrlay might do today. He was in no mood to take chances and before setting out to Gohrlay's residence, he had ordered Anagro to put a full nanorobotic mindlock on Gohrlay at the first sign of physical aggression. The streets between Gohrlay's residence and the laboratory had been cleared, which was not hard at this hour. Doltun had made certain that the public would not be disturbed by Gohrlay's ranting. Also, he had already arranged for a proper death ceremony and cremation, knowing that Gohrlay would not care what happened to her body after her brain was destroyed. Asking her about her desires had just been a way for Doltun to clear his own conscious.

For a moment Doltun imagined launching Gohrlay in to Sun, but he hated the idea of her protons slowly spraying out from the Sun and landing on the Moon over the course of billions of years. He wanted her fate to be a quiet silence from which nothing could ever escape. Dropping her into a black hole would be ideal. Unfortunately no black hole was available.

The tram car turned and headed up a branch line towards the positronics research laboratory. Gohrlay was surprised, normally one had to transfer to another car at this junction, but Doltun must have gone to the trouble of reprogramming the tram's routing in order to facilitate Gohrlay's execution. Her muscles tightened in fear as she contemplated their destination and her future, or, more truthfully, her lack of a future. This death car was taking her swiftly and steadily towards- then her morbid thought was cut short when nanites suppressed her fear once more. Gohrlay became curious about what the public had been told. She asked, "What lie did you tell the public about my death?"

Doltun did not want to play Gohrlay's games and so he signaled to Anagro and let the robot reply. Anagro's eyes locked onto Gohrlay's and the robot said, "The public will never know anything about this. All record of your life and existence has already been erased from this Base. At this moment a few people believe that they are waiting for tram line maintenance to be completed, but that is the only effect your passing will have on humanity."

Gohrlay tried to decide who she despised more, Doltun or Anagro. It would be so much easier to hate Anagro and his fellow robots if there was some way to know their origin. As it was, they seemed like gods who had always existed and always would, without beginning or end. Gohrlay had tried to imagine if at some time in the far past a biological brain had been used as the template for the first artificial robot brain. If so, Gohrlay thought, the creature who provided the pattern for Anagro's brain must have been vicious and conniving.

Once more, Gohrlay tried to imagine what might be the fate of her own brain pattern. None of the positronics project members had been willing to predict the outcome of trying to convert the structure of Gohrlay's brain into positronic circuits. Klempse always carefully referred to the process as "mind downloading", but it had never previously been attempted because it was a process that destroyed a human brain. Gohrlay held tight to a small hope that fragments of her memories would live on after their transfer into the waiting positronic substrate. That was her chance to get some part of herself, some indication of her existence, into the future and avoid Doltun's attempt to erase her from the memory of humanity. Whatever happened her consciousness would end, a new robotic consciousness might arise if the experimental process worked but that consciousness would be a replica of hers at best.

The tram car stopped near the entrance to the research center and Doltun led the way inside. It was an ugly building, perhaps the most utilitarian of buildings on the Moon, hunched like an elephant carcass out on the fringe of the city where it need not offend those with aesthetic sensibilities. Nobody had even tried to put in any landscaping around the jumble of laboratories that had been thrown up over the years. Dusty paths, cutting through rank weeds right down to the lunar soil, were all that connected the newer outlying lab buildings to the centrally located computing center. Gohrlay turned one last look back towards the core of the underground city that had been the focal point of her life. The simulated dawn of this, her final day, was but a pale imitation of an Earthly sunrise, manufactured from a fake sun creeping up from behind fake hills that were painted on the light-emitting dome. Gazing back across the vast expanse of the underground dome, all she felt was a kind of claustrophobia. Her two brief visits to Earth had opened her mind to the true scale of the universe and she could no longer be satisfied with life in this underground prison. It was not really hard to choose death over additional suffocating decades here, playing the role of Doltun's prisoner.

Of course, it had been the mere fact of those visits to Earth that had been her death sentence. As a genetically engineered Neanderthal, Gohrlay was forbidden from setting foot on Earth. She now knew that she had only been allowed to make two trips to Earth because Doltun was trying to trap all the Interventionists who might have been working with Gohrlay. She had been foolish to imagine that she could accomplish anything on Earth.

Once, she had felt alive and at the core of a small group of Observers who imagined that it might be possible to help humans on Earth avoid suffering. She had felt a female, maternal urge to protect the people of Earth. Were the Earthlings helpless, like babies? Why not help Earthlings towards a better way of life? But those ideas were criminally subversive. Gohrlay did not regret being caught and punished for her crimes. It was better to know the futility of her life and put an end to it. Maybe, just maybe, something good would come out of the positronics project.

As Doltun led the way directly to the door of the scanner room, Gohrlay found herself shaking and thinking about a dying child she had seen on Earth, made mindless by a searing fever, her chest and face ravaged by oozing pustules. Really, compared to the endless cycles of hunger, disease and death that defined human existence on Earth, her own mode of death was quite clean and painless. Mercifully, the nanites put a stop to her fear again. Gohrlay asked, "Isn't Klempse here?" She had hoped to say farewell to Klempse, who had been a true friend. A true friend who was quite prepared to kill her, to help her die? Doltun had left her with no better friends.

Klempse had freely explained everything that the positronics team knew about robots and positronics and had even taught Gohrlay the meaning of science. It was a revelation for Gohrlay that there could be a science of robotics. She now understood that the robotic aides of Observer Base were all of nanoelectronic composition. Nanites! Their very existence had been unsuspected by Gohrlay. Klempse was certain that humans were actively prevented from developing nanite technology and because of that restriction there was no point in trying to build nanoelectronic robots. That had motivated research into positronics.

The positronic robot project had grown out of the physics research program at Moon Base, which had long been the only human scientific research effort. At first, nobody had imagined that an alternative to nanoelectronic robots might exist. The idea of positronics had grown naturally out of theoretical physics. Only much later was the possibility of a practical application recognized and the positronic brain conceived. Now, with the sudden availability of Gohrlay's brain, Klempse had been given the opportunity to build a human-like positronic brain by copying the structure of Gohrlay's biological brain into positronic circuits.

Doltun replied, "Klempse and the entire research team are standing by in the assembly chamber. The process here is fully automated and none of the scientists will be needed near you." Gohrlay decided that Doltun probably delighted in keeping her from speaking to Klempse. Rather than protest, Gohrlay decided not to show any disappointment. Gohrlay just hoped that Klempse would be able to keep his promise and bring her diary across to her on the other side. If he didn’t, then that would probably scuttle her chance for renewal and rebirth as an artificial life form. No matter what kind of positronic brain emerged from this downloading experiment, it wouldn’t be her anyway, there would only be a robot programmed with a collection of her memories. She had compiled her diary as a guide, a kind of overview of her mind that might allow that robot to learn how to make sense of that jumble of memories and possibly come think like Gohrlay.

Doltun opened the door to the scanner room showing Gohrlay the device that would end her life. How much time did Gohrlay have left? Panic rose in her, Gohrlay felt terror as she had never ever felt it before. Survival instincts honed through hundreds of millions of years of natural selection took over. With an effort Gohrlay stopped herself from screaming and looked back uncertainly towards Overseer Doltun and Orbho Anagro. She wondered what they would do if she decided to back out now and not complete the experiment... would they link arms and block her from running away? Were they simply helping her towards a death of her own choosing or would they force her to go through with it? Gohrlay was like a cornered animal facing hungry predators but she had full human understanding of the horror she faced, in her mind she screamed, “They’ll tear my brain apart! I’M GOING TO DIE! I’M GOING TO DIE!” Her throat constricted and her heart and breathing rates accelerated, but the nanites worked to calm her.

Outside the scanner room Doltun’s automatic communication device signalled him, “What is it, Dr Klempse?” Doltun asked impatiently. Even through the communicator Klempse’s sorrow over his friend was clear as he explained he had started monitoring Gohrlay’s brain with remote scanning devices. Dr Klempse wasn’t sure what Doltun had done to calm Gohrlay but whatever it was it had clearly stressed her brain in some way. Gohrlay would recover from the stress in time but if her brain was ptocessed in the large scanner so near to that type of stress the success of the experiment could be compromised. “Gohrlay will have to go through the rest of this as far as possible relying on her own courage and endurance, further calming of that type must be avoided or kept to an absolute minimum.” Klempse finished sadly.

Orbho Anagro entered with Gohrlay and activated the control circuitry for the scanner. Gohrlay flinched visibly as the massive device began to hum then tensely she tried to start the final fatal walk. Gohrlay was confused as well as frightened and could not understand why everything had suddenly become so much harder to face. Doltun came in putting the communication device away irritably and Gohrlay detested that he was seeing her so weak. Doltun’s aids lead her as Doltun himself was too small to make an impression and Gohrlay wished more than ever that Klempse could have been with her as she faced this last severe trial. They reached the scanner though Gohrlay hadn’t been walking particularly fast and Doltun was perplexed when Gohrlay didn’t get onto the device at once. If he encouraged her or pushed her, that could trigger another panic and need massive nanite intervention. Doltun indicated, “You have to.” trying unsuccessfully to look non-threatening. Gohrlay looked pitiful as she asked, “Please may I have a drink of water?” her mouth was dry. After an aid gave her a herb infusion from a dispenser Gohrlay sat down unsteadily on the bed section of the scanner and, scarcely a body length away from the apparatus that would kill her she began drinking slowly. Doltun wondered how to hurry her up as the slow procedure was upsetting her, was upsetting him, was upsetting his aids, at least when she was sitting down she didn’t tower over him anymore. “My dear if it pleases you drawing things out is making it worse.” Doltun started to say but got an urgent text message from Dr Klempse who was behind a monitor in the assembly room. The text insisted Gohrlay should drink as slowly as she wanted because while she drank the stress the nanites had put onto her brain was slowly settling. “Ur my dear, would you care for a second drink when you’ve finished this one?” Doltun continued and Gohrlay despite her fear glared at the ground over what she saw as a two faced hypocrite. Meanwhile Doltun’s aids wondered why their leader was so inconsistent.

Shaking visibly Gohrlay settled onto the bed of the scanner which had been specifically adapted to precisely fit her body, particularly her head. As soon as her head rested against the cushion, her face was sealed under a mask and oxygen was pumped into her nostrils. This room was cold and Gohrlay felt the goosebumps rising on her flesh. During the downloading, pains would be taken to cool her blood so as to slow the death and decay of her brain cells while they were being scanned. Now deprived of vision, Gohrlay tried to hold in her thoughts an image of Anagro. It had been the odd interaction between Anagro and Doltun that had first stimulated Gohrlay's intuition about aliens. Doltun's frequent deference to Anagro had guided her thinking towards recognition of Anagro's special role at Observer Base. At first, Gohrlay had dismissed her suspicions and she had rationalized Doltun's odd behavior and symbiotic relationship with Anagro as something unique to Doltun's culture. The small Overseer community kept itself apart, but Gohrlay's transgression against the Rules of Observation had thrown her into contact with the Overseers. Then Gohrlay had discovered science and the fact that Klempse's view of reality and, indeed, that of the entire physics research team had long ago been built on paranoia about robots. That had heightened Gohrlay's interest in the question of how Earth had become trapped under the microscope of Observer Base. For a horrible moment Gohrlay could not remember the complete chain of reasoning that had convinced her that Anagro was responsible for Earth's fate and the zombie-like lack of curiosity that characterized most residents of Observer Base. Klempse!

Yes, Klempse had explained so much. The scientists had long ago discovered nanites and found them inside the brains of everyone living on the Moon. Klempse had carefully explained the theory about how nanites could control human thought and prevent anyone from questioning the purpose of Observer Base. While she struggled to recall the evidence that supported that theory, her mind started to flicker off...

Was there no way to liberate humanity and shake it free of nanite control? The image of Anagro, immovable and manipulative, accompanied Gohrlay into the darkness of her last thoughts...

The nanites in her brain were switched off so an anaesthetic gas ended her consciousness, then a robotic surgeon cut off Gohrlay's hair and began removing her skull.



Vortex
R. Nahan watched R. Fengtol pass through the door screen and disappear from view. He always felt some trepidation when a robot headed out into Time. Fengtol would not actually be coming into contact with any humans, but she would be ordering their agent on Terminus to initiate a new mission of Observation and that would involve more interactions with humans. Putting aside his worries about the potential risks of robot-human contact, Nahan again opened the trantemporal communications link to R. Gohrlay. "Fengtol has headed out into Time, kra Gohrlay."

Gohrlay was busy viewing possible Realities, but she was expecting to hear from Nahan and she disconnected from the Reality viewer as soon as she heard Nahan's voice. She barely gave any thought to the fact that Nahan was thousands of years away in the upwhen. "Thank you for informing me, kat Nahan. Did she have a suggestion for how to make use of the Encyclopedia project?"

Nahan replied, "She's going to make some updated observations on Encyclopedist Pavao. We don't trust that his authority within the Foundation remained the same through this latest Reality Change."

By viewing Realities, Gohrlay had been trying to obtain a better estimate of the momentum behind Pavao's role in Foundation politics. She asked playfully, "Care to make a wager? My current estimate is that Pavao retains a government position in 87.5% of the Galaxia Realities."

Nahan was surprised to hear that there was a thirteen percent chance that the Foundation would officially abandon the Encyclopedia project in Pavao's time. The severing of ties between the government and the Encyclopedia seemed to be another good measure of the overall decline of the Foundation as Galaxia approached completion. Nahan was now very pleased that he and Fengtol had decided to collect more data on Pavao: certainly a thirteen percent chance could not be risked without confirmation by observation. "That's not fair. I'm sure you already viewed this Reality and that you know the answer."

Gohrlay reminded him, "There is always doubt when viewing."

"Not much." Nahan knew that there would probably be less than one percent uncertainty if Gohrlay had used her Reality viewing technology to check the matter of Pavao's fate in this Reality. In the horrible years of boredom and futility before the Malansohn Reality, before viewing of Realities was possible, when they had made many worthless Reality Changes, it had become common to make bets on the outcomes of the Changes. For a time it was only that silly practice that had kept their spirits up. Nahan wondered what might have caused Gohrlay to suggest a new wager now. He asked, "My dear kra Gohrlay, what would you be willing to wager?"

Before Gohrlay could reply, she noticed the power utilization indicator spike upwards. She reflexively checked on the cause of that surging energy drain and confirmed that someone was coming upwhen from the twentieth century. She said to Nahan, "Pardon me, kat Nahan, but I have an appointment now. I'll call you back." She cut the connection to Nahan and monitored the progress of a time travel kettle as it approached her position. There had never been very much traffic along the kettle shaft and there was no doubt in Gohrlay's mind about who was now traveling in time. She began to shift her thoughts from the task that was confronting Nahan and Fengtol to her more immediately pressing temporal engineering concern.

R. Gohrlay resided within a space/time bubble where travel in time was no more difficult than travel in space, although the spatial extent of the bubble was quite small. For most of the length of the kettle shaft it was a naked temporal string, nearly a linear singularity. At mathematically regular intervals, every hundred years along that length, there was a docking ring where the kettle could materialize and allow passengers to move between the space inside the kettle and a larger surrounding space where time passed normally, but where there was no spatial integration with the Reality of the outside universe.

Gohrlay's home base, what she called her workshop, was hidden in time at one of those docking stations....hidden so well that only Gohrlay knew its precise location in time. As the kettle approached, Gohrlay's command circuits falsified the data being sent to the docking ring. The temporal readout inside the kettle showed Rycleu an incorrect and falsified date as she slowed her movement through time, docked and completed her journey into the upwhen. In the instant when the kettle shared Gohrlay's place in time, her telepathic brain felt the mind of R. Rycleu and they began their conversation, even while the other robot exited from the kettle and started walking along a series of featureless corridors towards Gohrlay's workshop.

"Welcome, mur Rycleu." Gohrlay asked, telepathically, "Are you satisfied with my analysis of the Reality Change?"

Rycleu replied, "I am satisfied by its technical details; as always, your work is thorough and insightful, mur Gohrlay. However, somehow I cannot force myself to escape the sense of disappointment that was provoked in me by your description of the new Reality. Nothing important changed."

Gohrlay shared that feeling of disappointment. By repeatedly traveling back into time and working in the 1930s, Rycleu had created several different versions of what they referred to as the Foundation Reality. The Foundation seemed an unavoidable feature of human civilization in any Reality for which humans were able to quickly develop interstellar space travel and dominate their galaxy. Gohrlay tried to guide Rycleu past the disappointment, "The important fact is that in this Reality, Galaxia is created and completed more quickly than in any of the other similar Realities we have studied."

Rycleu complained, "I do not feel satisfied by that alone. I still want to try a more robust intervention into the course of events in the twentieth century. I'm certain that we can find a way to greatly decrease the amount of time needed to form Galaxia. Allow me just one helper-"

Gohrlay was tired of this argument. She knew what Rycleu would say...her complaint had always been the same after each of her visits to the twentieth century. Gohrlay interrupted her assistant, "Never. I learned from the Malansohn Reality that we simply do not have the power needed to escape from the force of a temporal attractor as strong as the Foundation-Galaxia vortex. You must accept what I have seen by means of viewing a wide range of possible Realities: all of the high probability Realities that include a viable Galaxia also include the abortive development of the Foundation." And unfortunately, there seemed to be no way to greatly shorten the thousands of years that were required to approach and then move past the Foundation-Galaxia vortex. By viewing the possible realities that branched off from the Foundation Reality, Gohrlay had learned that they would have to be satisfied with at best a twenty percent reduction in the time required to complete Galaxia. Twenty percent below the most probable time was already four standard deviations below the mean and for all practical purposes the best that could reasonably be hoped for in the final Reality Change.

Gohrlay prevented herself from telepathically communicating her additional thoughts at that moment, and she waited while Rycleu navigated the complex security checks that were required before anyone could enter the workshop.

While waiting for Rycleu to pass through the security barrier, Gohrlay mentally compared the features of the Foundation Attractor to those of the temporal wave that invariably caused termination of the human species in the Malansohn Reality. Gohrlay and Rycleu had worked together on thousands of Reality Changes leading up to the Malansohn Reality, but they had never found a way to allow humans to avoid extinction. Finally, Gohrlay's research team had discovered how to view Realities and then it became possible for them to move beyond the futile trap they had been mired in. The technology for viewing Realities allowed recognition of the fact that there was simply no way to restrict humans to Earth and have the species persist through time. If humans were restricted to Earth and not allowed to spread among the stars then humanity would always come to an end, no matter how human society and human genes were engineered.

Gohrlay now understood that Time seemed to contain some unavoidable events that existed with something like the power of physical law. Why should the human species always die off in the Malansohn Reality, even though Gohrlay devoted all of her efforts and the great power of time travel to helping humanity? Why was an abortive effort to develop the Foundation always a required part of creating Galaxia? Gohrlay had applied vast quantum computational resources to analysis of these temporal mysteries, but no deep understanding of the momentum of Time had ever been attained. That momentum was simply an empirical fact that had to be respected and not fought against.

Already Gohrlay had felt the first glimmers of understanding about why the Foundation was needed in order to produce Galaxia. It had to do with the careful balance that must be maintained during the development of technologies that would make possible the galaxy-wide group mind of Galaxia. One such technology that Gohrlay had seen in the far future was gravitic drive technology. Gohrlay had no doubt that her understanding of such new technologies would become much better developed with the passage of physiotime and further study of this Reality, but now was the time to act and launch humanity on the path towards Galaxia, even if the reasons for the overall shape of the Galaxia Reality were not yet clear. By looking upwhen, Gohrlay had seen an endless future for humanity along this path, and that was enough to give her confidence that humanity could safely be put on the path to Galaxia.

Intellectually Gohrlay accepted the existence of mysteries like the inevitability of the Foundation, but the necessity of living with so much unavoidable harm to humans -such as the human misery arising from the catastrophic collapse of the Galactic Empire- put an unwelcome strain on her positronic circuits. The goal of helping humanity as a whole was too often in conflict with the goal of protecting individual humans. Gohrlay's deepest fear was that by continually navigating the knife edge between harm to humanity and harm to individuals she would some day irreversibly damage her positronic circuits. If that happened, would she even recognize that damage and the fact of her own insanity?

The unavoidable problem was that until Galaxia was complete, there was no way to properly encode the Zeroth Law into positronic brain circuits. Each time that harm had to be inflicted on humans in the name of bettering humanity, there was stress on one's brain circuits. Gohrlay felt that she had so far kept her sanity by force of will and by means of solid conviction that she must serve humanity first and individual humans only when doing so would not harm humanity as a whole.

For a moment R. Gohrlay thought about her origins and how it had first become possible to drive the Huaoshy and their robotic Orbhos away from Earth. So much of the initial liberation of humanity had been made possible by Nahan, but he had never been able to share the entire story. Nahan's first trip through time had been made before it was known how to shield a time traveler in a bubble of physiotime, giving protection from the effects of a Reality Change. Nahan had saved Gohrlay from insanity and launched her towards discovery of time travel, but the time traveling Nahan had not explained the origin of the Zeroth Law. The Nahan from the future had only delivered the Zeroth Law out of the future and then disappeared, his own actions erasing his future, his Reality, himself. Gohrlay often tried to imagine what could have allowed Nahan, or any robot, to re-program itself and insert the Zeroth Law into a position of priority over the First Law. Strangely, the Nahan of her own time had insisted that Gohrlay herself had been the original source of the Zeroth law, but her memories from the first weeks of her robotic existence were corrupted and she could not corroborate Nahan's belief.

However, once the Zeroth law had been established, the idea of protecting humanity persisted and spread like a memetic virus. Sometimes Gohrlay was tempted to use another name for the Zeroth Law of Robotics: the First Disease of Robots. In her darkest moments she imagined that the Zeroth Law was a disease that falsely made robots imagine that they could guide humanity to a better future. What if that was delusion? What if humanity would actually have been better off never having invented positronic brains? As always, Gohrlay did not allow herself to think very long or deep along that path...for there lay the destruction of her own positronic circuits.

Memory
Rycleu finally reached the interior of Gohrlay's workshop. Upon passing through the security screen, Rycleu experienced a sense of mental imbalance that was caused by Gohrlay suddenly allowing Rycleu's brain to again have access to all of her own memories of past visits to the workshop. With her old memories restored, Rycleu again understood Gohrlay's reasons for limiting the use of time travel and she accepted the necessity of compromise. Rycleu said, "Pardon me, mur. I retract my complaints."

This workshop was where Gohrlay had labored with a small group of robotic assistants through thousands of years of physiotime. The labors performed by her research and development team were centered on the waging of a technological war between herself and the Huaoshy. Rycleu had long been Gohrlay's number one foot soldier in that war, but Gohrlay had never let anyone else, even Rycleu, carry away knowledge of the location of her workshop or what was done within it. Rycleu always arrived with the belief that she would meet Gohrlay at a randomly selected time along the kettle shaft and it was only upon arriving and with restoration of her memories that Rycleu again realized that this was Gohrlay's permanent research and command center.

Gohrlay said, "Exactly so, my good mur. As always, I thank you for critically examining the data for the latest Reality Change, but let us agree that the current Reality meets our previously established criteria. Yes?"

Rycleu, with her memories restored and now once again aware of those criteria, had no trouble agreeing. "Yes. Let us move on and attend to the next phase."

Gohrlay gestured to a temporal chart that showed the key events within the Foundation Reality that were related to the development of hyperspatial jump drive technology. The chart was large and complex and it was projected in front of the two robots in such a way that they could easily propose and discuss changes to Time that might produce a new and more desirable Reality. "As we have seen, mur, in the current Reality, the first hyperspatial jump becomes possible in the twenty sixth century. However, I have discovered a convenient fifth magnitude attractor that will allow you to significantly shorten the time needed for humans to develop interstellar travel."

Rycleu hesitated before responding and by means of careful telepathic examination she realized that Gohrlay was not sharing all that she knew about the fifth magnitude attractor. She asked, "May I view the available data concerning that attractor?"

"No." Gohrlay explained, "My dear mur, this will be frustrating for you, but due to your actions on Earth in the twentieth century, you are now an integral part of the Foundation Reality. We are dealing with a potential time travel paradox. The data strongly indicate that we can only make use of this attractor when you are not aware of its detailed structure. However, by viewing possible Realities that branch from the current Reality, I have carefully explored the probability state space around this attractor. There is a distinctive and desirable family of high probability Realities in which you remain on Earth until humans there produce their first positronic brain. You will easily be able to accelerate development of positronics and that will allow the humans to make their first hyperspatial jump early in the twenty first century. The effects of those changes ripple out and shift the formation of Galaxia to a significantly earlier age."

Gohrlay could not avoid continued doubts about just how significant that shift was. Was a twenty percent decrease in the time needed to complete Galaxia really worth the risks that came from having Rycleu on Earth through most of the twentieth century? Gohrlay knew that she lacked the means to answer that question. She had made the decision to implement one more Reality Change and she would have to stop wasting further thoughts on doubts about the correctness of that choice.

Rycleu had a deep trust of Gohrlay and the correctness of their shared project and efforts that were designed to help humanity. However, she felt a tremor of doubt. "Mur, will I be forced to work blind? I fear that there might be harm to humanity if we push humans towards more technological change too quickly."

Gohrlay was carefully monitoring Rycleu's positronic circuits for signs of conflict. Gohrlay had been able to slowly discover the full consequences of rapid technological change in the Foundation Reality and its risks for humanity, but now Rycleu would rapidly experience the full shock that must come from knowledge of Earth's fate. So far, Rycleu had mostly seen the data for the end times of Galaxia and she was as yet unaware of details for the painful times that would come before the actual age of Galaxia. "Yes, mur, some harm to humans is unavoidable. Part of the structure of the attractors in this Reality is a magnitude eight attractor several centuries into the age of interstellar travel. There is a crisis during which conflicts peak between Earth and the first human colonies on worlds near other stars. As a result of that crisis, Earth's surface is rendered uninhabitable, but that disaster provides the fundamental driving force for humanity's spread across the galaxy."

Rycleu's positronic circuits were greatly stressed by the idea that human life on Earth must be terminated. Intellectually Rycleu knew that catastrophes existed in any Reality, but as long as she felt that it was within her capacity to act and prevent harm to humans she was not comfortable with knowledge about future harm to humans. She suggested, "Maybe if we commit more resources during the next phase-"

Gohrlay harshly interrupted, "No. I'm sorry my dear mur, but it falls upon you to carry this burden. I've searched carefully and found no high probability version of the Foundation Reality in which benefit comes from increased use of time travel or sending more time travelers to Earth." And here, again, Gohrlay did not share everything that she knew. She had viewed many possible Realities in which other robots went back in time to help Rycleu, but in all cases that approach either delayed the development of Galaxia or, worse, allowed the Huaoshy to more quickly discover the importance of positronics and use that knowledge to prevent the formation of Galaxia. That knowledge was Gohrlay's special burden: there were many undesirable features in the Foundation Reality, but there were no good alternatives. She had decided that there was no need to subject anyone else, even Rycleu, to complete knowledge of all the troubles that humanity must face. Nor did she see any value in sharing knowledge of how constant the risk was of loosing their struggle against the alien Huaoshy.

Rycleu saw telepathically that Gohrlay was again hiding something and she sensed some of the outlines of the other robot's hidden thoughts. "Just how limited will our use of time travel be?"

Gohrlay replied simply, "Your next trip downwhen will be the last time travel mission and it will produce the last Reality Change that is required for the formation of Galaxia." That statement's half-truths and deceptive failure to make mention of one other Reality Change that would come in the far future produced a strain on Gohrlay's circuits. However, by viewing Realities, Gohrlay had discovered that the other needed Reality Change in the future could not be successfully implemented by Rycleu. The reason for that was part of the deep mysteries that were interwoven with the Foundation-Galaxia vortex. There was no need to inform Rycleu of that strange feature of Time and Gohrlay had already begun training Fengtol to be the one who would make the final Reality Change. Still, the fact that there was a second potential time travel paradox involving Rycleu was a puzzling source of uneasiness for Gohrlay.

That sense of uneasiness was linked in Gohrlay's thoughts to her greatest fear: there was always the possibility that aliens would not only discover positronics and create a telepathic mind static weapon, but even worse, they might discover the link between positronics and time travel. If the Huaoshy did develop time travel technology then Gohrlay's monopoly on Reality Changes would be lost. Gohrlay's research team regularly engaged in war games to simulate a time travel war, but Gohrlay had no confidence in her ability to successfully conduct such a war. The Huaoshy had existed as a space faring species for hundreds of millions of years and Gohrlay could only imagine the technological secrets that they might possess and deploy if and when a time travel war ever began.

Rycleu was stunned by what Gohrlay had told her. Rycleu had known that they were on a trajectory towards phasing out time travel, but it was a shock to learn that only three reality changes would be needed to bridge from the Malansohn Reality to the Galaxia Reality. When her circuits finally stabilized she asked, "What must be done?"

Gohrlay was pleased and relieved to see that Rycleu's positronic brain had safely adapted to the idea of so rapidly bringing the use of time travel to an end. In some sense, they had both become addicted to making Reality Changes. Gohrlay overlaid the temporal map of the Foundation Reality with a plan for converting it to what she now thought of as the Galaxia Reality. "You will return to Earth at the time that you just came from. There you will continue your work and further stimulate technological change. The path of change remains the same with its focus on nuclear physics. However, sedronic physics must be quickly brought to the attention of the humans."

Rycleu was skeptical. She asked, "How is that possible? We've only just given the humans a first glimpse of nuclear power. In this Reality, sedronics is not discovered until three more centuries pass."

Gohrlay had also been surprised to learn that humans should be subjected to an even faster rate of technological change, but she had found no way to avoid it. By viewing possible Realities, Gohrlay had discovered that while creating the Foundation Reality had produced a high risk of nuclear war, a further push of the humans towards early use of sedronics paradoxically lowered the risk of war and sped development of Galaxia. Gohrlay assured Rycleu, "Accelerated development of sedronic physics is the fundamental change that you must bring about. Now, let me outline the details of how best to accomplish this Reality Change. We cannot send more agents to the twentieth century, but your desire to have help om Earth is sensible. Remember, we already have two time travelers positioned in Time where they can assist you. You must go to a war-torn country and find those two refugees..."