WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE: A SECRET HISTORY-Triple Tarzan Tangle

Triple Tarzan Tangle
or
A few incidences of time travel
in the Wold Newton Universe

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This article is by no means an extensive or comprehensive look at time travel in the Wold Newton Universe. rather it briefly examines a few incidences of time travel and their consequences on the Wold Newton universe, as the secret history portrays it.

    The most obvious impact of the Time travel in Wold Newton Universe obviously would have to be in its creation. The Wold Newton Universe was created because of Time Travel, as was every other Universe besides the Primary Universe. The beings known variously as the Ancients, the Long-Gones, Firsts etc. had mastered time travel and understood all its complexities, paradoxes and laws; or so they thought. They felt that they had taken every safeguard before undertaking the awesome and frightening task of traveling back to view the creation of the Universe.

    Yet something was overlooked but even after millennia of double checking their equations and re-examining every step and nano-second of the journey, it was never discovered what exactly went wrong.

    However the time travelers to the Beginning of Time knew something was wrong because they did not return to the same Earth as they had left. Somehow the voyage had not merely created a time paradox but had fractured the time continuum, creating alternate universes.

    The Ancients attempts to repair the ever fracturing time continuum lead to their discovery of how to create Pocket Universes as is detailed elsewhere. (1)

    The second crucial temporal event, so far as we are concerned, was when Doc Savage's great uncle, Bruce Clarke Wildman, began his strange adventures through time (as related to H.G. Wells). (2) Bruce Wildman, an Eridanean agent, tried to create a warp engine from a few Eridanean plans using existing nineteenth century technology. He accidentally created a quantum singularity engine. Although it did not move spatially, the device appeared to move through time. In reality, while moving through time it also moved along a static quantum probability path, so Wildman actually traveled through a set pattern of probabilities as he also moved through time. By the time he reached the far future or distant past, the probabilities also widened. In other words the farther to the past or the farther to the future he traveled, the less likely that future or past was to be any where near his historical reality.

    His fictionalized adventures can be read in The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells.

    Wildman eventually did perfect a true time machine but it was of limited use since it took a tremendous amount of energy to travel temporarily and still remain in one singular timeline. He also discovered the true nature of his original time machine when he attempted to travel to the future and see the how the over-ground people fared against the Morlocks and discovered an entirely different future. (3)

    He returned to 2020 and attempted to refine his original machine, desiring to give it the ability to travel to any quantum probability guided by mere thought. Bruce Wildman created three prototypes, which come to be known as the Orbs. The machine had the unforeseen side effect of greatly magnifying the operator's psionic abilities.

    In one alternate future, renegade Technocrat John Bly will steal one of the prototypes and rule the world for 2000 years

Two copies of the original orb were created to overpower Bly's stolen orb. In a desperate escape, Bly succeeded in flinging himself and the three orbs into Earth's distant past. However he did not know where or when the three orbs were located. He finally located them in the American West circa 1890. Bly was eventually defeated and cast into the time continuum by Brisco County jr. Oddly enough H.G. Wells using a device similar to Wildman's also cast Jack the Ripper into the time continuum (4)

    Wildman refined the orb technology and went traveling among the alternate universes and timelines.

    However his theoretical notes for the true time machine were discovered by a physicist named Jacob Moishe. Moishe constructed time machines and conducted several experiments. The culmination of this effort was to send a crew of four scientists back to 12,000 B.C. to discover what they could about the world at that time. Among the crew members was John Gribardson, a medical doctor, anthropologist and linguist. Gribardson had used all every means at his disposal to be picked for the Time Crew, even it is rumored threats of physical violence.(5)John Gribardson was actually John Clayton, Tarzan of the Apes. Tarzan had been made immortal (6) or was inherently immortal, and so when the time vessel returned to the future Tarzan stayed behind intending to live to the present.

   Tarzan lived into the future, 14,000 years changing even his immortal body enough to fool the temporal laws which would not allow two exact persons to exist in the same time period. This was one of the limitations of Wildman's original device. Other time travelers, using different temporal mechanisms were able to get around this temporal "law".

    This was the original Tarzan whom we will designate as Tarzan-1 He was also the historical Hercules and Quetzalcoatl but tended to stay away from wars and civilizations. One civilization that he did take an interest was that which became known as the Oparian civilization. The Oparian civilization is also connected with Tarzan-2. (7)

    As mentioned before the temporal mechanics of the Wildman-Moishe vessels did not allow two versions of one person to exist in the same time period. (Evidently every person must have some type of unique temporal signature or cloning would be impossible.) So when the H.G. Well's I traveled back in time, of course already having been in the past, it supposedly could not arrive because the original John Gribardsun was already there. We know that did not happen because otherwise Tarzan could not have lived through time and become Hercules and Quetzalcoatl and help found Opar etc.

    Yet there were not two vessels in 12,000 B.C. so what happened to the second one, did it disappear shunted off into a parallel world? I do not believe so. Since Wildman had designed this time machine to remain in a single time track, he must have built in measures to prevent crosstime travel. There was already an existing H.G. Wells 1 at 12,000 B.C. so I believe that the second H.G. Wells was bumped another 12, 000 years arriving in 24,000 B.C.

    The scientists were, while shocked and a bit dismayed were for the most part elated to be so far in the past when they had been told it was impossible to travel that far. However when the time came to return to the future, the vessel stayed put, stranding the travelers in the distant past.

    The travelers were in effect temporarally twinned, one crew traveling to the distant past and the other hitting the 12,000 year mark and returning as planned.

    The crew stranded in 24,000 B.C. intermarried with the Old Stone Ages tribes that they had been studying. While the other crew members eventually died from old age or misadventure. One did not. He is of course, John Gribardson, Tarzan. We will designate this time twinned Tarzan as Tarzan-2.

Tarzan was revered as a god by the stone age peoples who termed him the Undying God. Believing that he was so far in the past that the future could not possibly affected, Tarzan regaled the stone age peoples with tales of the future. (8) These future tales also included a detailed description of his mutant family. He wrote this information down in the form of a memoir, using tree bark and coal ink.

    Years later a fictionalized version of Tarzan's adventures with these Stone Age tribes was written as Warrior of the Dawn, by Howard Browne whose main character is named Tharn. They were continued in The Return of Tharn. Author Richard Lupoff states "Tharn, pronounced Tar'n, is a Cro-Magnon operating in a vaguely Mediterranean setting some 20,000 years or so ago. Brown postulates a higher level of civilization among these early people than is generally held to be the case." (9)

    Eventually tiring of the unceasing adulation and feeling the wanderlust that had defined his life, Tarzan left quietly never to return. His memoirs were carefully preserved in one of the cylinders that the time travelers used to preserve samples. The tribe took this as a sign that the Undying God would one day return.

    By accident a female herbalist/Shaman discovered a compound that promoted rapid tissue regeneration and retarded the aging process much as the Undying God's body had done. This compound was not the true immortality that Tarzan seemed to experience but was rather one that slowed down the aging process so that it takes 30,000 years to biologically age to 90. The herbal compound was kept secret by the herbalist, and her three sons, Their original names are unknown but they later became known as Anana, Xauxaz, Ebn XauXaz and Thrighjaz. The plants later became extinct except as grown by the herbalist and her family. As this family stayed young the tribes began to look on them as the children of the Undying God, naming them the First Mother and the Three. Eventually Xauxaz and his brothers come to dominate and the tribes become known as the Tribes of the Three.

After a few hundred years when the Undying One has not returned, XauXaz develops the theory that The Book of Tharn, the book of the Undying God's life, was meant to be found. Since Tarzan had been created in the distant future and come from the distant future to see them, they would only see him again in the distant future. He had come from the Future and shown them the gift of immortality so that they could make certain of his creation.

    The Three and First Mother take charge of the tribes and conquer others. Discovering a few tribes of Mangani still flourishing they preserve them, knowing that the Undying God's Mother had been one of them. They forced the Mangani to become part of their extended tribal domain. (10)Because the Undying God's Mother had been a Mangani they began a breeding program between the barely compatible Cro-Magnon and Mangani. Few hybrids are born and still fewer that are fertile but there are some.

        About four thousand years after the Undying God had vanished, the tribes of the Three were astonished to discover more Gods on the Earth.

    A squad of Thoan soldiers had found themselves stranded on Earth, having followed a Thokina patrol into a decoy gate. The Thoan were equipped with skimmers, beamer weapons and personal e-m converters and sheild belts. They set themselves up as Gods. Among the tribes ruled by the Three, they were considered demons. History would remember their exploits as some of those attributed to the Titans.

    The Thoan became aware that the Three did not age. The Three also commanded great respect among some of the subject peoples. When The Three refused to become their allies the Thoan captured them and tortured them. Finally to demonstrate their power over the Three, the Thoan subjected them to the rite of abasement. The rite involves castration and cannibalism. The Three and their tribes were enslaved.

    Although it took several hundred years, the Three overthrew the Thoans and killed them. They did however adopt the rite of abasement. The Three also realized that their plan of creating their God (Tarzan) through a breeding program was too monumental for just three people to accomplish. They expanded their council to twelve.

    By 17, 000 BP The Tribes of the Twelve had emigrated to Ancient Greece. Here three of the ruling council attempted to usurp control of all twelve tribes. They called the cult of the Undying God a false doctrine, one dissident even burned the Book of Tharn.

    One of the rebels was killed immediately in the suppression of the revolt, the book burner was given the elixir and flayed alive over and over for a year before he was finally put to death. The last remaining member of the three rebels managed to flee with his people in the furor caused by the book burning. His people first stayed in Khem until they were discovered by scouts of the Nine. They then fled across the land bridge to Africa and down to the Great Sea in Central Africa. This former tribe of the Nine was called the Khoklem. (11) The two dead rebels' followers were either killed or disbanded and absorbed.

   Around 11,500 BP The Khoklem created the great civilization of Opar (Khokarsa) unknowingly aided by their someone who appears to be their ancestor's Undying God. This was however not the Tarzan-2 who had traveled to 24,000 BP but rather Tarzan-1 that had traveled to 12,000 BP

    In 8000, BP Having heard disturbing reports that their Undying God might be residing in Africa, the Nine seny envoys to discover the truth, knowing in their hearts that the person would turn out to be an impostor.

    They found the great civilization that the Undying God had described in his memoirs already in ruins and all traces of the impostor gone. Knowing that one day that the Undying God would be born on this continent and wishing to have a central location from which to operate, the Nine carved out a series of caverns in the mountains of what will be known as Uganda. One of the Nine was chosen to stay in the cavern complex for a year at a time the rest spend their time in Northern climes, knowing from the legends that the Undying One's ancestors will come from that area.

    The Nine had acquired members from the far reaches of the world. The Candidate had made perilous journeys to the heart of Africa seeking the gift of immortality. These candidates, especially those from far flung lands were tested and if worthy were given a seat on the Nine. The Three were thus able to pack the Council with members who had unwavering loyalty to the Nine and their goals.

    They also chose to distribute the elixir to worthy members of their extended families. By doing this they created a system of agents who will be unswerving in their loyalty to the Nine and who do not have to be replaced every few decades.

    Since the Undying God's memoirs were burned the Nine must base their plan on memories guided by the powers of the Blind Seers. (12)

    XauXaz intensified the Nine's breeding program, infusing their Cro-magnon genes, mangani/human hybrids and Ancient Teutonic tribes. The Nine were considered to be Norse gods, reliving the legends of the Aesir and Vanir. XauXaz was thought to be Odin. They offered the elixir of immortality to a few select warrior from among their progeny. The Nine soon discover that the elixir has a odd side effect on some of their offspring that have Mangani genes. The Mangani males are subject to violent insane rages, which is one reason they never dominated as a species. The elixir could trigger that trait in otherwise outwardly human offspring. Although this affliction is rare Rumors of this madness remain as part of the lore of the Nine The Norse warriors call the warriors subject to these killing rages Beserkers.(13) The northern bands of Mangani became legendary as trolls.

    By 1860's the extensive breeding program of the Nine, designed to create their Undying God (Tarzan), culminated with the birth of the three Cloamby brothers of the house of Grandrith. Using half remembered tales of the future world as related by Tarzan in 24, 000 BP. the Nine had carefully engineered events so that history and myth would combine.

    Their plans were almost ruined when Alexandria Applethwaite chose James Cloamby over John Cloamby. In order to preserve the genetic line, the Nine hypno-conditioned John to rape his sister in law. Unfortunately, the conditioning conditioning drugs also caused a chemical imbalance in the brain which manifested in a combination of lust and violence. James believed that his brother was Jack the Ripper, however more recent evidence tends to discount this. James probably did kill a couple of prostitutes in the villages near the family's Cumberland estate but that may have been the extent of his crime. That he was in Whitechapel during the times of the Ripper murders was simply a case of a shark being drawn to a bloody carnage. On the eve when his brother and bride are to leave for Africa they gave one final try to discover John's whereabouts.

    John discovered them first and raped Victoria. Her voyage to Africa was traumatic and after a "mutiny" on board their ship, James and Victoria Cloamby were set ashore in Africa. She gave birth to John's son, John Cloamby 1889, whom the Nine believed was the Undying God.

    The Nine quickly use John's temporary madness to their own ends and after removing his previous conidtioning, convinced him through hypnotherapy that he must atone for his evil by training his son to be pure and to fight evil.

    Two of the original Three have begun to believe that their original plan has gone awry and that they have not truly set in motion events that will create their Undying God but rather they have duplicated historical events to create a similar but altogether different person than their Undying God.

    Unbeknownst to XauXaz, they used John to create a doppelganger of their Undying God's cousin. They believed that the time has come to abandon their Undying God and create a new one for a new age. Thus John Cloamby's other son is created and molded into Doc Caliban.

    1889 John Cloamby, Lord Grandrith son of John Cloamby and his raped sister-in-law is born in a the caverns of the Nine in the mountains of Uganda. His parents are eliminated and he is given over to the care of a band of Mangani. His progress is carefully monitored to make certain that it coincides with the legends that the Undying God told the Three about his life. He is whom we have designated as Tarzan-3, although he is in reality an ersatz Tarzan. However his appearance, his mutant abilities and his life experiences (to a certain degree) so paralleled Tarzan that he could easily have been mistaken for Tarzan and in some cases was. (14)

    His life was carefully controlled by the Nine. This was especially so, when shortly after they placed little John Cloamby with the tribe of Mangani, Anana's agents accidentally discovered another child being raised by another tribe of Mangani. Her long life had inured to most shocks but his one shocked her to the very soul, shattering the foundation of her faith. She told the other in the Nine and XauXaz was, immediately declared that this other child was a false god created by the demons from another world to prevent the Undying God from being created. Anana eventually convinced him of the possibility that this other child could be Undying God and that the one they were creating was not.

    Rather than admitting his supreme error, XauXaz agreed that the other child was the Undying God they would meet in the past but this child they were monitoring was the avatar of the Undying God who would replace him when he left for the past, so it would behoove them to monitor both lives and families and make their lives as parallel as possible. This at least was what XauXaz told most of the Nine. Privately began to suspect that Tarzan's travel back into time and the Nine's concentrated attempts to manipulate history had in fact resulted in an alternate reality in which, although it was possible that Tarzan could eventually travel back in time, that it was not necessary for him to do so. The probabilities that Blind Seers saw might be glimpses into alternate realities. This world that the Nine had shaped was just another branch on the Great Tree of the Universe. Yet at the same time XauXaz was not quite ready rule out the possibility that Tarzan needed to be created. Since Grandrith was a disappointment and Clayton was too uncontrollable, XauXaz tried a couple of more experiments in creating a feral man. (15)

    The Nine also decided to carefully condition, through yearly (more often if necessary), hypno-control, their child to ignore any idea of another version of himself) to dismiss them as fantasies or legends based on his activities.

    After the wake of his bloodlust madness, John Cloamby, Lord Grandrith, (Tarzan-3's true father) having recovered from the conditioned madness finds himself gripped by a compulsion (implanted by the Nine) to combat evil. Changing his name to Caliban he vows to raise his son to be pure, fight evil and destroy the Nine. He is thoroughly manipulated by the Nine all the way. And they eventually use untraceable agents to kill James Caliban senior, tailoring it in such a way to make it seem as though he were killed by enemies of the Nine, thus strengthening James Caliban's jr.'s loyalty to the Nine.

    January, 1901 James Caliban was born. Anana and a few other formed a faction of the Nine that began grooming him to be their candidate for living godhood, a new man for a new age, a man of technology as opposed to a man of the jungle. As with Tarzan-3, they monitor and manipulate his life so that it will bear certain parallels to that of Doc Savage However he was not Doc Savage nor was his cousin, John Cloamby, Lord Grandrith, Tarzan. Nor, for obvious security reasons, did they allow him to become as famous as Doc Savage but rather had him keep his activities pretty much covert. Apparently Doc Caliban unlike Doc Savage did not fight many super villains but rather concentrated on the basic criminal element.

    Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith had their lives deliberately shaped to resemble the lives of Doc Savage and Tarzan, as much as the memories of the original Three would allow. This notion is not entirely mine but rather also that of Lord Grandrith's in p. 50 "I am convinced the Nine were dictating the course of my life before birth. I believe that I was deliberately injected with something which made me immune, just as I believe that the Nine deliberately set things up so that I was raised as a feral human by the Folk." ....."Thus, my unique way of life was not entirely "natural" any more than Doc Caliban's was natural."

    He further states this, ..."how many other men, known or unknown to history, have been "modified" by the Nine. How many geniuses owe their shaping to the grim ancients who pull their strings from their mansions"

    In the late fifties or early sixties something caused XauXaz to change his mind about the entire plan of the Nine to create their Undying God. of the Nine. Iwaldi informed him that his people are close to creating an elixir modification that will not only extend their life spans but rejuvenate them back to their youth. This convinced XauXaz that they have indeed broken the chains of Time and created a Universe unlike the one in which the Dying God came from. Yet he still felt a need to hedge his bets and so continued with an outward support of Grandrith while attempting to create other feral men.

    Once Iwaldi's formula began to work in the mid sixties, XauXaz no longer felt the need to maintain the status quo with the rest of the Nine. With the gift of true immortality, he saw them as a dire threat to his existance. It was only the mutual goal that had held the Nine together for as long as it did. Because of the power that each of the Nine had accumulated through the ages, in terms of being able to mobilize forces within various national governments through legislative or military means, he moved slowly and methodically making certain that the rest of the Nine did not discover his or Iwaldi's plans.

When Xauxaz discovered that the other two of the original triumvirate no longer believed that John Cloamby was the Undying God given flesh and that they are planning to pit John Grandrith and James Cloamby against one another to become the avatar of the Undying God he was pleased. He used their heresy as a means of creating dissension among the ranks of the Nine and their clans. Xauxaz protested their heresy by attempting to assassinate the other members of the Nine. Their retaliation gave him the perfect opportunity to fake his own and work from the shadows to kill them. Although he managed to fake his own death and aided Iwaldi in setting up the destruction of the Nine, XauXaz disappeared shortly after he faked his death. (16)

    After Xauxaz had "died" and it is quite possible that the Nine never knew that they had been decieved, Anana and her cohorts deliberately activated the killing lust in Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban probably once again using the same sort of hypno-conditioning that integrated their sexual and violence behaviors. They then set them against each other by arranging the kidnapping of Caliban's lover/cousin, of Lord Grandrith's wife and arranging for Grandrith's Kenyan homestead to destroyed.

    On March, 21 1968 the vents of A FEAST UNKNOWN began and the two modified heroes, after they underwent the rite of abasement were told to kill one another. The winner would assume XauXaz's seat on the Council of Nine. They were dropped in different areas and told to find each other and kill one another. During the course of their journey they discovered that their entire lives had been one large manipulation. They became the sworn enemies of the Nine.

By 1970 Having turned against the Nine, Grandrith and Caliban were marked for death. They hoped to join with Iwaldi, the Mad Goblin, one of the Nine who was also declared a renegade. Although they meet up at Stonehenge and succeed in destroying the Nine, they discover that Iwaldi has his own deadly agenda. (17)

    Although the characters of Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith can be placed in the Wold Newton Universe, we must ask if they were members of the Wold Newton family. I would doubt that they were immediately related to the Wold Newton line but a relationship possibly exists. Farmer claimed that both Tarzan was descended from Odin. In all three of the Doc Caliban/Lord Grandrith series the claim is made that XauXaz was Odin. If not all of XauXaz families and progeny were designated for the Nine's breeding programs then it is a possibility that he was a distant ancestor to Tarzan and Doc Savage.

    Then there are the Rutherfords, elsewhere I stated that the Rutherfords ape-like appearance was due to the infusion of Kane's Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon genes in the distant past. This trait was then strengthened in one of Marra's experiments. I still believe this to be the case but the argument can be made that the Rutherfords also had a strain of the Nine's Mangani hybrids in their gene pool.

Special Thanks to Brad Mengel for Tharn information.

1. See the Essay entitled Ozdyssey or How the Yellow Brick Road lead me to the Riverworld

2. H.G. Wells wrote of the Time Traveler's adventure's in The Time Machine although he did not name his protaganist. It was Philip Jose Farmer's researches in Doc Savage An Apocalyptic Life that uncovered the Time Traveler's Identity.

3. The further Adventuers of the Time Traveler can be seen in Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, Harper, 1996

4. Bly got his comeuppance in the Adventures of Brisco County espisode Bye Bly and H. G. Wells destroyed Jack the Ripper in Time After Time, Warner Brothers, 1979

5. Gribardson and the voyage of the H.G. Wells I is depicted in Times Last Gift, Del Rey 1977

6.Tarzan recieved two different immortality treatments. The first was from a Witch Doctor who made him drink an elixir and transfused some of his blood into him. The second came from pills stolen from the Kavuru. These pills were synthasixed by Dos Savage. From information obtained in Tazan Alive, Philip Jose Farmer, Popular Library 1976

7. The entire history of Tarzan-2 is not known. We do know that he had changed sufficiently over 12,000 years so that his temporal signature was significantly different from the Tarzan that landed in 12,000 BP. There is some evidence to suggest that he may have survived into the 1930's-40's, his body---anyway. Tarzan-2's mind and most of his intellect was gone due to some great brain injury so vast that it could not be fully regenerated. There are legends of an Apeman, a White man who lived on an escarpment on top of a single mountain that thrusts up deep into clouds, rising from a plain in heart of Africa He was called Tarzan and his history is obscure. MGM motion picture studio made a series of films based on accounts of this particular individual. More on this speculation is in the article Tarzan? Jane?

8. Despite thorough searching by paleoantolgists, there has never been any evidence for a stone age civilization which mirrored the mid twentieth century by utilizing domesticated animals that included the remnants of dinosaur population and stone age species as power sources or labor savng devices. Nor has a automobile carven from stone and wood ever been found. In short, all research points to Bedrock being a myth and the rumors that the mysterious Immortal known as Flint was also known as Flint-Stone should be considered spurious.

9. The Richard Lupoff quotation is from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure, Ace, 1968

10. One of these Mangani tribes may be the one depicted in The Lair of the Beast-Men, Marvel Comics' Conan the Barbarian issue 2, by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. The Ape-Men who capture young Conan and keep humans for slave labor all have Mangani names, perhaps pointing to the distant origin of the tribes which survived to live in 19thCentury Africa.

11. For the whole story of the civilization of Opar and the Khoklem, please see Hadan of Opar, by Philip Jose Farmer, Daw, 1974

12. For more on the Blind Seers please read the article entitled Daredevil

13. Of course this was not the only explanation for the existance of berserkers As seen in Hydden Heritage.

14. S ee the articles Tarzan? Jane?    and   Tarzans in the Valley of Gold

15 A discussion of two of these efforts can be bound at the fourth section of the Tarzan? Jane? article

16. Details can be found in the Tarzans in the Valley of Gold

17. These events occur in Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin, Philip Jose Farmer, Ace books, 1970. Interestingly enough, there is a character named James Murtagh who was an agent of the Nine. He has all the physical traits of Dr. James Moriarity. He is said to be the son of a great mathematician. Although he appears to be one of Moriarity's sons, I am not certain that he was indeed a member of the Moriarty family or part of a different Murtagh family.

Revised 11-01

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© 2000, 2001 Dennis Power