Seed

by Michael Edelson

  “Yeah,” Alex agreed. “But it’s a lot better than a hundred. Tom, I don’t know what to say.”

  “If you want to thank me,” Tom said. “Then shut up and hear me out. I found a lot of stuff on the servers. I think we have enough to piece it all together. What really happened, I mean.”

  Chapter 31

  “Okay,” Tom said, wringing his hands. “So the way this terminal is set up, you’re not supposed to be able to access the backend, the server, but there are always open ports, and I was able to write a simple program to piggy back on data packets and upload a copy of itself. Once it was there, I had a two way connection and was able to poke around. This is very simple stuff, hacking 101 if you will. They had no firewall, rudimentary passwords…these people really didn’t expect anyone like me around.”

  “I guess they think they have no one to hide it from,” Alex said.

  “And they’re right,” Tom said. “Who am I gonna call? The press? The UN?”

  “Be that as it may,” Alex said. “There’s still us, and maybe, thanks to you, we can learn the truth. I’m glad you chose to be a fake biochemist, Tom. If you hadn’t, none of us would have had a chance at getting the data. Ports, packets. I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll second that,” Barbara added. “To borrow the cliché, it’s all Greek to me.”

  “It’s weird to be appreciated,” Tom said, smiling. “But I like it. So anyway, once I was in there, the first thing I did was to figure out where ‘there’ was. California. Marin County, to be precise, in what used to be Federal park land. I gotta tell ya, Chief, they sure know how to pick ‘em. That’s some beautiful country up there.”

  “So that place,” Alex said. “That’s where the people who built this facility are? The ones we’ve been calling ‘the government’?”

  “Yep,” Tom said. “That’s them.”

  “Okay, what else did you find out? Who did this? Why?”

  “Not so fast, Chief. I don’t know any of those things. But that doesn’t mean we can’t piece it together. I mean…I’ve got my theories based on what I know, but my head’s been reeling, so I’m not the clearest thinker right now.”

  “Alright then, lay it on us.” Alex wasn’t sure he’d be a particularly clear thinker either. His thoughts were churning too fast, out of control. They were discussing the destruction of all of human civilization. He didn’t think any of them had yet wrapped their heads around it. He wondered how long it would take for them to truly accept it, and whether that acceptance would be measured in months or years.

  “Okay,” Tom continued. “I found a bunch of shit. First, the water bears that Fonseca made. I found data on them. Patent filings. They’re called Fonseca ‘WasteAway’ ED REV 3 Transports, U.S. Patent number...um....I forgot. Doesn’t matter. The patent files are full of details, but there’s little there that we haven’t already figured out except technical stuff. So basically, yay us, we were right…mostly.”

  “So they’re not a weapon like we thought,” Yael said, her brow furrowing. “They’re a waste disposal system?”

  “Yep,” Tom said. “At least they were, originally. Genetically modified tardigrades that organically synthesize fast acting nanotech disassemblers that target substances found in our building materials, like calcium oxide, aluminum oxide, and so on. They make the shit like we make mucus and store it in an inert state. Until triggered, they breed like normal water bears, only faster. That makes them self replicating. And until they kill themselves releasing their payload, they’re nearly indestructible. Hot, cold, doesn’t matter. Like real water bears they can even survive in a vacuum.

  “They also communicate, in a rudimentary way. Each one is like a tiny relay…passing information to the one next to it through bioelectromagnetism—that’s a mouthful, ain’t it?”

  “But I thought we established that nanorobotics is science fiction,” Barbara protested. “It doesn’t exist!”

  “Neither do fusion generators the size of minivans,” Tom pointed out. “And yet we have one here.”

  “But the water bears are too big to be nanomachines.”

  “Right,” Tom said. “But we’re talking about the stuff they secrete. Those are the nanomachines.”

  “But how can they build anything that small?” Barbara asked. “If the technology existed we would have seen it in the civilian sector, or at least parts of it! The applications in medicine…can you imagine? Little robots in your body fixing things, killing cancer cells?”

  “I’ve heard of bacteria that eat oil,” Yael said. “It’s not that farfetched. Nanomachines can be organic. They don’t have to be actual metal robots.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Alex said. “The whole waste disposal thing. Why did they dissolve people then?”

  “Organic waste?” Barbara suggested.

  Alex shook his head. “It seems to have only targeted people, not other animals. The jungles around us are full of life.”

  “Well,” Tom said. “Like I said, there’s data. There is data on a version of these things that targets human DNA. No patent notes, no legal stuff, just research. Overcoming body chemistry, getting them to target the brain first, distribution patterns, and activation.”

  “No patent notes,” Yael said. “That means they made them in secret.”

  “If there were body chemistry issues,” Barbara said. “Then that would explain why some people are completely or partially immune.”

  “Wait,” Alex said. “You mean like…these transport things can’t survive in some people’s body chemistry, and they tried to overcome that? That’s important. That speaks to their motive.”

  “I can’t tell you that for sure,” Tom said. “I only have research notes about the degrees of resistance of various body chemistries. Test procedures, results, that sort of thing.”

  “It’s still not adding up,” Yael said. “It seems like Fonseca made these things for waste disposal. That makes sense, because, that’s a huge industry. Billions in potential profits, not to mention environment issues. And maybe they lost control of them and they spread everywhere, and being water bears, they were impossible to kill. But…why would they make ones that target people? Deliberately?”

  “Let’s wait until we have more pieces of the puzzle,” Alex said. “Then maybe we can make it add up. Tom? What else? You mentioned something about distribution patterns?”

  “Yeah. There are detailed plans on their servers for distributing these things all over the world. There’s a lot of emphasis on making sure they get absolutely everywhere.”

  “Who are they, exactly?” Alex asked.

  “About what you’d expect,” Tom said glumly. “There are fancy ways to put it, but in the paradise they built in Marin County it’s rich old bastards and their families, and whatever politicians they had in their pockets.”

  “Figures,” Alex said. He could picture road blocks and park rangers telling people “this section of the park is closed, sir, please take the detour over there,” while helicopters ferried in supplies and work crews. Crews that wouldn’t have had a clue they were engineering their own deaths, and those of their families.

  “What about Fonseca?” Yael said. “When did their involvement cease? Or did it? The nutrient power canisters, the enzyme detergent…is that a coincidence?”

  “It doesn’t appear to be. From what I can tell, they were involved the whole time. It was the others that came into it sometime after the WasteAway transports were created.”

  “Back to the distribution thing,” Alex said. “You’re saying these people, Fonseca and…what do we call them? The government?”

  “Seems accurate,” Tom said. “I have access to personnel data. There are a lot of politicians in that facility.”

  “Okay, the government. So Fonseca and the government distributed these things all over the world on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? Wouldn’t someone have noticed? I mean…how do they
drop them on Russia without starting a world war?”

  “They didn’t drop them, Chief. The servers are full of information on network theory. They’re self replicating, remember?”

  “Network theory?” Yael said. “You mean like Vespignani and Barabási’s work?”

  “That’s right,” Tom said, brightening. “You’re a mathematician. Maybe you’d better explain this part?”

  “Like…right now?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” she said. “You ever heard of six degrees of separation?”

  “The Kevin Bacon thing?” Alex asked.

  She smiled. “Yes, the Kevin Bacon thing. The idea is that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six steps or less. So like if you pick a random guy somewhere in the world, then pick another guy, the first guy will know someone who knows someone else, who knows someone else, et cetera, until we get to someone that knows the second one you picked. You could pick a random guy in some jungle in Africa and a Wall Street Lawyer and there are still only six people between them.”

  “Is that really true?” Barbara asked.

  “It was,” Yael said grimly, then frowned and shook her head, as though to clear it of unpleasant thoughts. “It didn’t always work, but it worked almost all the time, like over ninety nine percent.”

  “That’s interesting and all,” Alex said. “But what does it have to do with these things?”

  “It has to do with distribution points,” she said. “Imagine a football field full of people, standing shoulder width apart. You are on one end, and Tom is on the other, and you want to get a message to him. How do you do that?”

  “Um,” Alex said, thinking. “Assuming it’s too loud to yell, I can ask the dude next to me to ask the dude next to him, and so on, until it gets to Tom. But that’s not six steps.”

  “Right,” she said. “It’s a lot of steps, takes a long time, and the message will get garbled going through that many hops. That’s what each step is called…a hop. Now say you have a cell phone, and another guy at the other end has a cell phone too.”

  “I can call him,” Alex said. “And he can pass the message to Tom, and it will take fewer steps…I mean hops.”

  “Very good. Not only can you talk to Tom quicker, but all the people on opposite ends of the field can talk to each other faster by going through you and the other guy with the phone. In network theory, the people with the phones would be called hubs.”

  “Like a network hub?” Barbara asked.

  “Exactly,” Yael said. “A hub is a point in a network where lines of connection intersect or cross. Hubs exist everywhere, even in nature and human social networks. The popular guy that everyone knows, he’s a hub. If you want to find someone in school, you go to the popular guy, and he’ll get you connected to the person you want much faster than if you ask people in series. And when hubs connect to other hubs, the number of connections increases exponentially.”

  “An airport,” Alex said. “That would be like a hub, right? And they connect to other airports, which are also hubs.” His mind protested the conversation—the things they were talking about no longer existed and that should make him withdraw and shut down while he processed the grief he should be feeling. It wasn’t difficult, however, to put that knowledge aside and ignore it. People were, after all, creatures of habit.

  “Yes,” she said. “If you wanted to infect people with a virus that spreads through contact, you would infect one person in an airport. That airport links millions of people with thousands of places, either directly or through other airports, other hubs.”

  “So that’s how they spread them,” Alex said, finally understanding. “They put them in one or two airports, and in a short period of time people carry them everywhere in the world.”

  “More like several hundred airports,” Tom said. “But yeah.”

  “And no one noticed these things?”

  “How could they?” Tom said. “If you see one of these things by accident, you’ll think it’s a water bear, which are more harmless and inconsequential than dust mites. In any case, we know no one noticed, because it worked.”

  “So why were some things untouched? I don’t mean natural substances, I mean like the boat we used. Glass, plastic, aluminum…it has all of these things.”

  “Easy,” Tom said. “It’s because—”

  “Wait,” Alex said. “Because they hadn’t been used for a long time, right? That boat was covered up and put away…no one went on it in months, so no way to spread them. Right?”

  “You got it, Chief.”

  “And the two who attacked us in Honolulu? Body chemistry?”

  Tom shrugged. “That, or they might not have interacted with anyone. Hermits, survivalists. Two of them together…odds are both were not immune.”

  “So then we can count on more survivors,” Alex said.

  “Sure, plenty. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Spread across the world, I mean.”

  “That’s why they gave us the weapons,” Alex said. “To protect ourselves from them. If they found out what happened, they’d be really pissed, and I doubt they’d wait long enough before trying to kill us to hear our side of it. To them, we’d be part of it. That must also be why they gave us the barrier.”

  “Not so fast, Chief,” Tom said. “The barrier was never designed as a barrier, at least not for people.”

  “What then?”

  “It was designed to kill them. The transports. Destroys their nervous systems, even on low intensity The nausea and death thing was just a fringe benefit. That’s why they gave the terminals the ability to adjust its intensity, but not to turn it off completely.”

  “They must have brought us through the barrier on its low setting,” Alex said. “Like decontamination. We must have been covered in those things.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “So now we know that Fonseca made a nanotech waste disposal system that ended up as a weapon. We know our government got involved and came up with a plan to distribute these things all over the world, and at some point, created a version that targets human DNA, presumably working with Fonseca. And we know they set up this facility to save a bunch of people based on their stupid IQ tests and who the fuck knows what else…wait a minute!”

  “What is it, Chief?”

  “NTF103-B,” Alex said.

  “What?” Yael asked.

  “It’s what they called my current assignment in my general orders,” Alex explained. “NTF103-B. One hundred and three. That means there are at least one hundred and two others out there.”

  “Let’s find out!” Tom said. He turned to the terminal and started pressing keys. “Interesting.” The screen was reflected in his eyes as they moved back and forth, taking it in. His fingers moved with incredible speed and precision. “You’re right chief. There’s a shit ton of data on this.”

  “How much time do you need?”

  “Hang on.”

  Yael and Patrick leaned over Tom’s shoulders and stared at the screen as he worked.

  “Okay,” Tom said. “Lots of shit here. Project New Tomorrow, it’s called.”

  “NTF,” Alex said. “New Tomorrow Facility. Also, the program I use…NTCN. New Tomorrow Communication Network, probably.”

  “Yep,” Tom said. “You got it.”

  “I wonder what or where 103-A is,” Sandi muttered. She noticed the others looking at her and quickly added. “I mean…we’re 103-B. So…where’s A? Maybe it’s nearby.”

  “Good question,” Barbara agreed.

  “Nowhere,” Tom said, still typing and scanning the screen. “The A and B are facility types. There’s no 103-A…but 102 can be either A or B. Does that make sense?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But what are the types?”

  “B refers to a coastal facility meant to rely mainly on fishing, like this one, while A is an inland facility. Farming, that sort of stuff.” He pushed some more keys and moved the mouse around. “W
e seem to be the only facility in Hawaii. The nearest one is on the mainland.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “So now we know something else that’s important. They not only spread these things all over the world, but they created a bunch of these little colonies and populated them with handpicked people.”

  “Right,” Tom said.

  “And the barrier keeps the weapon from destroying the colonies.”

  “Yep.”

  “I was ready to go with Yael’s idea that Fonseca lost control and these things spread all over the world,” Alex said. “But with all the info we have now, it’s starting to look like deliberate genocide,” Alex said.

  “No,” Yael said. “Much more than that. Not only genocide, but the complete destruction of all human civilization, except for whatever they chose to protect. Who—” Her voice cracked, but she swallowed and regained her composure. “Who would do such a thing? It’s evil on an unimaginable scale.”

  “Well,” Tom said. “Let’s be careful about jumping to conclusions. We don’t know everything.”

  “Don’t we?” Alex said. “We know that Fonseca made a waste disposal technology that was used to wipe out human civilization. We know it was bolstered to go after people, and we know who is responsible, because they are the ones sitting in Marin County.”

  “But we don’t know why,” Yael said. “I can’t even begin to imagine why. No sane mind can conceive of a reason to do such a thing.”

  “Who says they’re sane?” Alex said. “Aren’t all politicians and billionaires sociopaths and maybe even psychopaths, to one degree or another? Does it really matter why?”

  “It might,” Tom said. “If there were a compelling reason. Just because we can’t figure it out, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

  Alex shook his head. “No. It doesn’t matter. They murdered our families. They destroyed our world, and they stuck us in these colonies and they continue to pull our strings, telling us how to live. We know what we need to know.”

  A resolution was forming in the back of his mind, fragments of semi-conscious thought coalescing into a plan of action. He tried to put it from his mind, because as it became clear, so did its price. And it was too high.