New Eden

by Kishore Tipirneni

  For the first time since he’d known her, Vinod saw Williams crack a smile.

  The second species of life on Petri consisted of numerous green trees that dotted the red landscape of the planet, offering a stark contrast of colors. To the human eye, they resembled coconut trees in that they had long gray trunks ending at the top with a burst of large green leaves. The leaves themselves resembled those of a banana plant, and under the leaves were large spherical pods that contained a milky-white nectar. Connected to the pods were hollow vines that dangled almost to the ground. The trees, which Joshua nicknamed nectar trees, had a singular purpose, which was to produce nectar as fuel for the final species on the planet.

  To all teams, the final species was the most interesting. It was the only one that they considered as a true animal life form. They looked like enormous dark brown spiders the size of an elephant.

  “Oh, my God!” Vinod exclaimed. “They Came from Planet X. It was a B movie from the 1950s. Man, truth really is stranger than fiction.”

  They had a central body, analogous to a spider’s abdomen, from which emanated eight articulated legs, and their movement resembled that of a tarantula. Four snake-like appendages also originated on top of the central body. At the ends of these extremities were sensory organs. Each appendage ended in an eye, an organ that could hear, and olfactory receptors for smell. Due to the fact that their sensory organs could move freely through space on the ends of the appendages, the creatures had acute depth perception and spatial orientation. Not only could they accurately discern from which direction a sound was coming from, but they could also detect exactly where a smell originated. Despite their enormous sensory capability, however, they didn’t have anything more than a rudimentary brain. Appropriately, the teams named these creatures arachnids.

  The arachnid brain, despite being vestigial in nature, contained eight spookyons that were able to interface with petrins. In essence, the arachnids were the eyes, ears, and bodies of petrins even though the two species were not physically connected; they didn’t need to be. A petrin could connect to the spookyon in an arachnid and “remote control” it as well as get input from its sensory organs. It was almost as if petrins and arachnids were one species in which the body of the organism was separated from the brain. Petrins could therefore explore their planet remotely via the arachnids. If the need ever arose for a petrin to be physically moved, an arachnid would be summoned and the petrin was scooped into a chamber located on the undersurface of the arachnid body. This feature was also used when the environment of petrins became too extreme for petrins to physically endure. They could be safely protected in the abdomen of an arachnid until the environmental danger had passed.

  Any petrin could control any arachnid on the planet. While the eight spookyons in an arachnid brain were only directly connected to eight petrins, the dominant species of the planet had the ability to relay information through the collective by way of spookyons. In essence, this gave any petrin the ability to remotely control any arachnid on the planet. Petrins could instantaneously and virtually transport themselves to the other side of the planet by controlling arachnids no matter where they were located—another example of the sophisticated network of communication via spookyons.

  When not being controlled by petrins, arachnids existed in a form of hibernation, which meant they didn’t move independently of a spookyon connection with a petrin. When in hibernation, therefore, they would position themselves at the base of a nectar tree and slowly drink from the hollow vines, using small mouths at the front of their central bodies.

  The nectar trees and the arachnids were clones of each other, possessing the exact same genetic makeup. Petrins, on the other hand, were genetically diverse from each other. This genetic diversity, although small enough that they wouldn’t be considered different species, was sufficiently varied so that petrins, even though part of the collective, could retain some degree of individuality. Petrin culture was therefore a unique mix of individuality and communality, with individuals being able to disconnect from the collective for short periods of time even though no individual was allowed to remain apart from the community permanently. As Vinod put it during one of the debriefings, they were not permitted to “go rogue.”

  Since there were only three species of life on Petri, and because there was little environmental variation on the planet, the pictures from Petri transmitted by Seth became somewhat monotonous.

  “Seen one, seen ‘em all,” Vinod said. “Who would have thought that extraterrestrial life could be so bland? I mean, we’re not exactly looking at the Star Wars bar on the planet Tatooine.”

  “But fascinating and educational nevertheless,” Joshua pointed out. “The symbiotic nature between petrins and arachnids is more than amazing. Symbiotic relationships exist on Earth in both the plant and animal kingdoms. Orchids are a perfect example, as are various kinds of fungi.”

  “And then there are corals and algae, as well as cleaner fish, like remora that attach themselves to sharks and whales,” Langdon said after one of the lengthy transmissions as the personal team gave him their preliminary onsite report before official debriefing. “Our biologists will be able to study this for decades.”

  Despite the monotony of Petri, the pictures sent from Earth, with its enormous diversity of life and environmental habitats, were anything but monotonous for the petrins.

  “Really interesting,” Seth told his listeners on Earth. “We find your images to be pretty cool. You have a lot of environments over there. You must be a highly adaptable species to be able to exist in so many places.”

  “I’d say that’s true,” Joshua said.

  The comment was made during a session when the general’s adjutant was present. He swiped his thumb across his throat, indicating that Joshua was not to relay anything further about humanity’s adaptability. “It could convey the wrong signal,” he said.

  “Such as?” Joshua said.

  “Such as whether we could live on Petri, or whether the petrins could live on Earth.”

  Joshua sighed. “Remind the good general,” he said, “that colonization isn’t even a remote possibility.”

  “As I said, this is off limits,” the adjutant reaffirmed. “If they extrapolate the information for themselves, that’s another matter.”

  Vinod rolled his eyes. “Like they can’t—or haven’t—already done so. Hell, dude, they’re a billion years ahead of us and have the computing power of thirteen trillion individuals. You think they can’t put two and two together even from the limited pictures your boss allows us to transmit? Tell Porter to go back to basic training. All this rigorous screening of each and every pic we send is pointless and stupid.”

  The adjutant made no reply.

  Vinod drove the point home with his trademark directness. “Just look at the quality of pictures the petrins are sending, and you’ll see the disparity between their technology—and certainly their raw intelligence—and ours.”

  The latter statement was true. The images received from Seth were extremely high resolution, over one gigabyte in size even with JPEG compression. In fact, when technicians zoomed in on images showing the entirety of Petri, individual nectar trees could clearly be seen. When the image of Seth was magnified, the teams were able to see the cellular structure that made up his skin.

  Seth alluded to the fact that petrins had colonized numerous other planets besides Petri, but the method as to how they had done so, as well as any other information about these planets, was redacted. The three teams wondered what petrin spaceships looked like and what mode of propulsion they used, but this information was not forthcoming from Seth. How the petrins had colonized other worlds was a complete mystery to the researchers.

  “We can’t reveal anything related to our technology,” Seth said. “You know the drill.”

  “That’s my damn point exactly,” General Porter shouted at a monthly meeting with Langdon, Williams, and himself again sitting opposite Joshua, Rachael, and Vin
od in the conference room of the particle center. “You’ve spouted all this talk about how they can’t possibly come here, but how did they colonize thousands of planets? There’s something they’re not telling us.”

  “It’s a valid point,” Williams said. “How do creatures that resemble sea anemones travel across vast interstellar distances? They can’t even travel across their own planet without help from arachnids. And we’ve yet to see any machinery.”

  “Because they’re hiding it,” Porter speculated.

  “They’ve revealed aspects of their biological engineering,” Langdon stated. “Why not tell us how they travel through space?”

  Joshua shrugged. “I don’t have an answer for that.”

  In point of fact, it was something that Joshua wondered about himself over the course of the next year, during which they’d learned the rudiments of petrin culture as the renovations of the bat cave were completed. He completely trusted the petrins, and Seth in particular. And while Seth was never hesitant to use the word “redacted,” a fact everyone had grown accustomed to, Joshua had the feeling that something was being withheld for other reasons, something very important.

  22

  Session 103

  Joshua drove his Harley-Davidson through the streets of Berkeley, Rachael sitting behind him, her chin on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist as her brunette hair, bunched into a ponytail, whipped in the morning wind from underneath her helmet. Rachael was exhilarated as the bike, Joshua, and she felt like a single mechanism traveling the road. At the end of the ride, Joshua downshifted as the bike eased up the driveway of the NASA BOWMAN PARTICLE RESEARCH CENTER. It had been almost a year since NASA had procured the center from the university.

  Rachael felt content and at ease as she did almost every morning since she’d met Joshua. Their relationship had blossomed into one of true love, friendship, and mutual respect. Rachael had imparted to Joshua her love for the outdoors as evidenced by the frequent hikes they took through the forests close to Berkeley.

  “Whew!” Rachael said. “Maybe this is what it feels like when petrins and arachnids travel together. It’s like a symbiotic relationship!”

  “Maybe I should teach you to ride one day,” Joshua suggested as he dismounted and removed his helmet. “You seem to understand the Zen of riding a Harley.”

  “It’s a great machine, but it pollutes the atmosphere,” Rachael said, “but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But it’s also really kick-ass fun. And you weren’t kidding. You’re really good on that thing.”

  “That thing is a Harley-Davidson Street Bob—a bobber—and it has a Milwaukee-Eight 107 engine with one hundred and ten foot-pounds of engine torque. You went sky diving with Vinod, so why not push another envelope and learn to ride.”

  “Tempting,” she said. Rachael looked at the handsome scientist and the Harley as she smoothed her hair. “Okay. Deal.” They walked hand in hand towards the atrium.

  “Good morning Dr. Andrews, Miss Miller,” Charlotte said as she greeted the couple with a smile. She was seated at the counter in the atrium as usual.

  “Good morning, Charlotte,” Rachael replied as she and Joshua walked around her into the main corridor of the facility while Charlotte logged them in on her computer.

  “She’s always so formal,” Rachael remarked after they had gotten out of earshot.

  Joshua shrugged his shoulders and replied with a one-word answer, “British,” as if that alone was a justification for her formality.

  As they walked through the complex, they ran into Rodrigo, who was wearing an ill-fitting lab coat with a tee shirt underneath that read I EAT AT THE RESTAURANT AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE. He walked towards them eating a donut, its powdered sugar coating covering his fingers and a small portion around his mouth.

  “Hey Rodrigo,” Joshua said as he approached. “That’s a new look for you.”

  “Hey, boss. Maybe they can force me to wear this coat, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve—and in my pocket.” He produced a second donut from the right-side pocket. “The NASA people look at me all weird, but they don’t know crap about the tokamak, so they usually steer clear of me.”

  “Don’t let ‘em get under your skin,” Joshua advised.

  “Mamacita, que pasa?” Rodrigo asked turning to Rachael.

  Rachael replied in Spanish. “What’s up, Rodrigo? I see you’ve found your breakfast.”

  “Breakfast of champions. So you still hanging out with this loser?” he asked jokingly.

  “Yeah, our relationship does have its benefits,” Rachael replied.

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “Like, I get to ride in the HOV lane when we come to work every day so we can avoid that Berkeley traffic.”

  “Right,” Rodrigo said with a chuckle.

  Rachael held out her fists as if revving the handles on a motorcycle. “He’s going to teach me to ride.”

  “Pretty cool. That’ll make you a biker chick. I know a chopper shop where you can buy a mean black leather jacket.”

  “Hey, I really like the sound of that. Text me the name of the place.”

  “Come on,” Joshua interrupted. “You two do know that it’s rude to speak Spanish in front of someone who doesn’t know the language, don’t you?”

  “Yes, we know, honey,” Rachael replied as she turned to Joshua and patted his face. “That’s why we’re doing it.”

  “Boss, you coming down to the tokamak today?” Rodrigo asked

  “Maybe later this afternoon,” Joshua responded. “We’ve got some work to do in the bat cave this morning.”

  “I’ve tried to get down there to talk to you about the new lids, but ever since those NASA guys took over, they have the place locked up tighter than Fort Knox,” Rodrigo remarked. “Say, what do you two do down there?”

  “Well, if we told you, we’d have to kill you,” Joshua replied. “And I don’t want to do that just yet.”

  “Some of the staff think you’re planning the first manned mission to Mars,” Rodrigo said.

  “No, it’s more of a think tank down there.”

  Joshua knew his statement wasn’t far off the mark.

  “Right,” Rodrigo remarked as he started to walk away. “You two have fun.”

  “I really hate feeding him half-truths,” Joshua said after Rodrigo had turned the corner. “The guy deserves better.”

  “The entire world deserves the truth,” Rachael said, “but Williams and the feds aren’t going to let that happen. Hey, I’ve got to grab the laptop from my office. I’ll meet you down there.”

  “Okay,” Joshua said as he gave her a kiss on the cheek and walked away.

  Joshua continued through the halls of the facility to the freight elevator that led to the bat cave. Gordon the security guard was there as usual, although Porter had installed electronic surveillance in the hallway leading to the elevator as well as the armed guards that Rodrigo had alluded to. At least Gordon now had a chair and a desk with a computer on it. Joshua had often wondered what he did to avoid getting bored sitting for hours at a time guarding the only entrance to the bat cave. He was sure some YouTube videos might be involved.

  “Morning, Gordon,” Joshua said as he placed his thumb on the thumbprint detector that activated the elevator. The doors opened, and he rode down for the two minutes it took to get to the redesigned bat cave.

  As he exited the elevator, motion sensor lights illuminated the entirety of the converted mine. He took a seat at a chair in front of one of the desks and looked at the Bowman sphere encased in the front wall behind its bullet-proof glass, glowing its usual green color. While he still had issues with the way NASA and the federal government had handled the discovery of Seth and his civilization, he had to admit that the test facility had grown in size and scope beyond all expectations, and its new purpose always caused his heart to beat faster when he entered the space. The text on the overhead screen read CONNECTION: INACTIVE. He pushed a button on
the desk’s touch screen to unmute the mics, and text now read CONNECTION: ACTIVE.

  “’Sup Seth,” he said.

  “’Sup, Josh.” Seth’s voice emanated from multiple speakers in the room. Since he didn’t sleep, he continually monitored his connection with the humans and was always available for conversation.

  Seth had figured out the difference between formal and informal English. It was a running joke between Joshua and Seth that the first word that humanity had received from an alien intelligence was “’sup.” It was a point of some embarrassment for Seth which Joshua kiddingly rekindled each morning by addressing him with this same greeting.

  “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Seth asked.

  “Never.”

  “It was Vinod’s fault. He didn’t tell me the significance of the words in the dictionaries he sent. English is a very versatile language with many colorful idioms since I’ve now learned standard English as well as a part of my introduction to elements of art, history, literature, music, and anthropology. They’ve all been greatly redacted, and psychology and sociology have been omitted altogether, although I’ve gleaned much information on the latter two through our conversations.”

  Joshua hesitated. Porter had allowed military intelligence teams to vet and redact the liberal arts that Vinod had sent to Seth in subsequent transmissions. In the general’s estimation, some disciplines exhibited too many human weaknesses and failings. Joshua felt that, given the petrins’ raw computing power, Seth could probably extrapolate what had been omitted.

  “Yes,” Joshua said. “That’s correct. We thought that certain elements of human culture might seem puzzling—even contradictory—and can be better conveyed gradually as we establish a broader foundation for our relationship.” Joshua knew that he was parsing words and felt a tinge of hypocrisy given his own suspicions about Seth’s redactions. “Sorry.”

  “No apology necessary. You have as much right to redact information as we do. This is, after all, your first contact.”