An Extra-Ordinary Beginning (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 1)

by A. D. Winch

  Step by step, as quietly as they could, Eric and Ursula descended the rock staircase. A dull whirring noise, barely noticeable at first, became slightly louder with each step they took. By the time they reached the floor it was the same volume as a car engine ticking over. Away from the stairs and behind the scattered objects was a doorway hidden in the brick work. The sound was coming from behind the doors.

  They tip-toed through the objects and into another brick-walled room. It was much smaller than the first one and about the size of an average kitchen. One side of it was taken up with two large screens, nine smaller ones and a computer the size of six fridge freezers. Lights flashed behind glass doors; metres of multi-coloured cables joined up countless circuit boards, and six fans whirred noisily to keep everything else cool.

  Standing in front of the computer, staring at one of the large screens, were Andrea and Dr. Johansen. They were watching the flickering image of a grey-haired lady.

  Falsely, Eric coughed, something he had inherited from his father. The two adults turned around. Dark bags were visible under Dr. Johansen’s eyes, and both he and Andrea were wearing the same clothes as the previous evening.

  “Good, you are up,” said Andrea and paused the image on the screen.

  She turned to Dr. Johansen and pointed towards Ursula, “Alexander, this is...”

  His tired eyes lit up, and he put out his hand. “Ev...”

  “Ursula,” said Ursula, talking over him.

  “Of course, Ursula,” he said her name slowly as if each syllable was new to him. “A very real pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Eric stepped between them and nodded towards the screen, “Who is that?”

  Neither Andrea nor Dr. Johansen spoke and instead looked from one to the other. Eric recognized this behaviour from his parents. They did it when they wanted to avoid telling him something.

  “Telling them is against my instructions,” Andrea told Dr. Johansen.

  “I think we have debated it enough,” he replied seriously. “It is best that they find it all out now. From what you have told me it is obvious that they have started to piece together some of their story already.”

  In the corner of the room were two swivel chairs. Dr. Johansen fetched them both, placed them in front of the screen and beckoned the children to sit down.

  “This will answer your question,” Andrea said and pressed play.

  Eric and Ursula sat down silently. Each could feel the other’s worry as well as their own.

  Black and white lines crisscrossed the screen and replaced the woman. They flickered some more and then the woman reappeared and began to speak. She looked to be in her seventies or eighties. Her hair was silver and tied back neatly away from her face, which was covered in smooth wrinkles. Her eyes were her most striking feature; they were sky blue and as bright as a child’s.

  When she spoke she did not rush, as if each word brought a new thought into her mind or awoke a distant memory. Even though, she looked content and peaceful, she also seemed sad and tired.

  “This is disc one of four. Both pods contain identical discs. Disc one is a history, an autobiography if you like. Disc two details my research with supportive data. Disc three explains how I spliced together DNA, the building blocks of life. And Disc four goes into depth about how I created life.”

  Andrea stepped forward and pressed pause.

  “There are actually five Compact Discs; Professor Larsen added another after this. However, the fifth was corrupted, and I cannot get it to work no matter what I try.”

  She pressed play again and stepped back.

  The grey-haired lady continued her story. “It is of the most urgent importance that none of these discs fall into the wrong hands. It would be better for the world if they were destroyed than for this to happen. I do not choose my words lightly.

  “My name is not Professor Larsen but that is what I am known as. For reasons that will become clearer later I had to change it for my own protection. From the late nineteen forties through to the early sixties I worked at a top secret military base in the USA with my husband. We were in charge of dissecting an alien craft and using its technology to further our own. At first we worked closely together but in nineteen sixty-one, with the craft’s possibilities exhausted, we were handed separate assignments. Mine was in the relatively new field of cybernetics and artificial intelligence. In simple terms, I was given the job of creating the world’s first robot using the alien technology. My husband was moved into the field of biology and physiology.

  “We were government scientists and sworn to secrecy. For this reason, we never discussed our work in our own quarters, or anywhere else for that matter.”

  She paused and ran her fingers over her hair until she was happy that it was still in place. For a moment her eyes lost their shine and became vacant, as if something inside her had died, and then she continued.

  “One morning in nineteen sixty-six, I felt sick and did not go into the lab. By the afternoon, I felt much better and decided to busy myself at home by tidying our quarters. After finishing every other room, I decided to clean my husband’s study, a room I rarely went into. Unlike me, he always brought his work home. It was what he lived for and what eventually took his life away. On top of his desk was a file marked ‘OPERATION MULATTO. TOP SECRET.' Curiosity got the better of me, and I sat down to read it. The documents detailed plans to create a separate and superior race of beings who would, initially at least, be soldiers. They would be fitter, stronger, smarter and able to communicate between themselves without words if necessary. To build such an army they were experimenting with joining together alien/human DNA to create Identical Hybrid Beings or IHBs. I simply called them Hybrids. I was shocked and appalled. It went against everything I believed in but, as I was not meant to see these files; I said nothing.

  “Two or three days later my husband brought his Director back for dinner. After a few bourbons had loosened his tongue, the Director talked at length about his vision for the future. It was to be a future in which the USA was the only global superpower, unchallenged by the rest of the world, with its own superior army. I looked over at my husband. He had drunk too much, and his eyes had glazed over.

  “After the Director left I quizzed my husband on what had been said about superior power. His eyes were animated, sparkling even, and after another glass of bourbon, he probably said much more than he meant to. I still remember his words to this day. ‘Imagine a world where everyone is fitter, stronger, healthier, cleverer and no one is different. No poor people, no sick people, no needy people. A new era. Isn’t that something to aim for, a leap forward in human evolution orchestrated by science.’

  “Maybe I should have said something there and then but, regrettably, I said nothing. Fear held my tongue. I couldn’t say a word. I didn’t see a new era. I saw a catastrophe for humankind. Evolution takes millions of years. To mess with it in this way was against the very meaning of life. We evolved until we could breathe on land; we evolved thumbs until we could pick up objects and use tools; we evolved an advanced brain until we ruled the planet, and we all evolved differently. No two humans are the same, not even twins, and it is this difference that makes us human and keeps us advancing or evolving. A race of Hybrids who are all identical would not be a step forward in evolution. It would be a step backwards. If they succeeded in creating an army of genetically engineered soldiers what would be next? Who is to say that it would stop there? Would they then create different hybrids to fill different roles? Hybrid police or scientists or fruit pickers or accountants or cleaners, each of them with a life mapped out for them before they are even born. It would be like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”

  She stopped talking, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she pulled a metallic bag from off camera. A clear tube protruded from one end, and she placed this in her mouth. After a few gulps, she let go of the bag. Slowly it floated away.

  “I’m sorry. I am p
reaching and speculating. Speculation is guesswork, and it is not Science. I will return to my story and the facts.”

  She paused and looked apologetic.

  “It was at this time that I discovered I was pregnant. I wanted to bring up a child in a world full of diversity and colour. Not a world dominated by one global power and full of Hybrids. My next actions were not thought out; each was impulsive, and each act led to the next. I began a chain of events which, once started, I was unable to stop.

  “I had been feeling unwell for a while and one evening I used this to my advantage. We had already agreed that I would leave the base for a few days to recover, and I had been granted permission by Major Marshall. The evening before I was going to leave I packed one suitcase with my essential belongings and alien DNA that I had already taken from the labs. I had a second suitcase which I filled with explosives I had stolen from the stores that afternoon. I told Major Marshall I had to leave early and needed to say goodbye to my husband. Major Marshall was extremely busy, but he was also understanding, and even drove me by jeep to the old hangar. The time was just after six when I arrived, and I had made my husband promise to leave before this. The underground lab was empty, and I quickly placed explosives set the timer and left. Fortunately, Major Marshall had not waited for me, so I walked out of the old hangar and into the desert away from the base. I never returned and never saw my husband again.

  “Only twenty years later did I discover, at least to some degree, what had happened that night. The explosion had indeed stopped my husband’s work, and he was moved from this assignment to creating engines, rockets and missiles instead. At the time, I had no way of knowing that I had been successful. A secret explosion, underground, and on a secret base was never going to make the public news.

  “I managed to disappear off the radar. From the USA, I tried to travel into Canada but failed but then I managed to get to the Soviet Union instead. After some time, I fled down to the Ukraine as it is called now, into Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia as it was then and finally fleeing into Austria and Western Europe. Times were harsh, especially after giving birth, but behind the Iron Curtain, I was an enemy of the United States of America, with secrets to sell, and at first this made me a very dear friend of the Soviets.

  “As I mentioned I had no way of knowing if my husband’s work had been destroyed or not. Eating away at the back of my mind was one thought and one thought alone. What if they were still working towards the creation of their Hybrid army? And if they were, how could they be stopped? Over the following years, I debated with myself, almost daily, the best response to these questions. In the end, when I arrived back in the West, I felt I had no choice but to follow a similar course of action myself. If they were to create an identical army of Hybrids to help them take over the planet then I would create two unique humans who could help defend it. Two people who would be made up of the greatest human beings on the planet.

  “In justifying this to myself, I argued that these two may assist the next stage of human evolution but this would not be for certain. They would not be a leap forward, but rather the scientific equivalent of giving evolution a helping hand. If Darwin was right, as I feel he was, nature would decide whether this next stage would live on or die out - the survival of the fittest.

  “Over the next few years I collected the genes and DNA from many great and talented people to go with my alien samples. On days when I was not trying to splice them together, I worked on creating a test tube baby. All my research was conducted in complete secrecy. Only two others knew what I was doing, but I am one hundred percent certain that they will not share this information with anyone else unless it is essential.

  “In the early nineties the person I was running from found me working at the European Space Operations Centre. He wanted me to come back to the USA and, when I refused, I feared for my life. If my visas and travel patterns were to be believed, I had vanished into India. In fact, I had moved not more than two hundred kilometres away, to a place that was impossible to find on Earth.

  “I moved into space and have been living here, on the European Space Station, for a number of years. Mostly I am alone.” She paused, lost in thought.

  “I refuse to go back to Earth. The European Space Centre tolerate me and my whims because some of my work here provides a large percentage of their funds each year. Truthfully, I know I am an embarrassment to them - a cranky old lady who refuses to come back down to Earth. For this reason, my existence is barely mentioned within the centre walls in Germany and never outside. John Glenn travelled into space at the age of seventy-seven, and he is applauded as a hero. I travel into space at seventy-eight, and I am spoken about in hushed whispers.

  “Really, I should be grateful. The peace, solitude, closer proximity to the sun and environment here have allowed me to complete my research and make discoveries I could never have made on Earth.”

  She stopped talking and stepped out of the camera shot. White plastic walls, covered with faint flashing lights, were revealed. Floating around in front of them and leaking tiny droplets of water was the bag from which she had drunk earlier.

  A large, white blur filled the screen and then Professor Larsen appeared back in the shot. A broad smile had appeared across her face; her eyes were warm, and she looked as if she had suddenly blossomed. She placed two small objects far too close to the camera and let go. They were very blurred, and all that Eric and Ursula could make out on the screen were two splodges of colour, one blue and one yellow.

  “These little wonders are Adam and Eve,” she announced proudly.

  Gradually the small blobs floated away from the camera and came into focus. They were two smiling babies. One had beautiful ebony skin, black hair and was obviously a girl. The other was a pale boy with blond hair.

  Black and white lines filled the screen. The CD stopped and quietly ejected. Written in its centre was a small number one.

  Eric and Ursula did not move.

  Back to Contents

  ***

  Chapter 23 - Explanations

  Silence.

  No one spoke. No one moved. Even their breathing seemed quieter and only the whirring of the fans could be heard.

  Behind Eric and Ursula, Dr. Johansen began to shuffle nervously from one foot to the other. Beside him, Andrea stood like a statue, waiting patiently for someone to speak.

  One, two, three minutes passed and still not a word was uttered. More time ticked away, and the silence became deafening.

  Eventually, Eric spoke, his voice strong and a little too forceful to be fully believable. “I don’t care. Really I don’t. This explains a lot, and I don’t care that they were not my real parents. They were hardly ‘real’ parents anyway, even when they were alive.”

  “Genetically speaking it is highly probable that they were a fraction of your parents,” said Andrea. “Both Mr. and Mrs Meyer donated their genes for you and Ursula.”

  On hearing her name, Ursula joined in the conversation. She spoke softly. “Does this mean that they were partly my parents as well?”

  “Yes. And a number of others.”

  “So is that why I am here? They knew who I was all along.”

  Dr. Johansen moved so he could face Ursula. His fingers were in his mouth, and subconsciously he was biting his nails.

  “I am unable to say with definite certainty as I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr or Mrs Meyer. However, I am almost certain that they knew nothing about you,” he said and turned to face Andrea. “Would you agree with that Andrea?”

  “Yes. That is true.”

  “Nobody on Earth knew of your and Eric’s existence, except for Andrea and myself. However, until last night, rather surprisingly, neither of us knew that the other knew. We had both been kept in the dark by Professor Larsen. If there had been any problems on the Space Station or if your safety had been compromised in any way, you were to be sent back to Earth in specially constructed capsules or pods. We each had been given the rou
gh co-ordinates of one pod and assumed that you would travel together. Alas, that was a mistaken assumption.”

  He paused and fought to keep his fingers away from his mouth.

  “When the OSS discovered Professor Larsen’s whereabouts on the space station, they sent her a well-wrapped present of a guided missile that was almost invisible to radar,” the sarcasm in Dr. Johansen’s voice was impossible to miss.

  “Moments before the Space Station exploded she jettisoned the two of you towards Earth. Andrea set off for her coordinates but when she arrived at the location she found nothing, the cupboard was bare. By analysing the data and comparing it with her knowledge of the explosion, plus a meteor storm around this time, she was able to pinpoint a nearby location. Fortunately, she did this extremely quickly. I had to do the same. Andrea found Eric, and I found Ursula. When we each discovered only one of you, we assumed that the other needed, and had to be, located as soon as possible. We have independently spent more than a decade fruitlessly attempting to find you and to retrieve the two missing pods, before the OSS. I located Eric’s pod in Romania, but I had a run in with the OSS. It was not my first and unfortunately will not be my last.” He stroked the scar on his cheek. “Until sixth months ago, when I saw Eric at a gymnastic tournament in Paris, I had assumed that he was dead. Andrea had believed the same to be true of Ursula until luck, or fate, brought her to the Meyer doorstep.”

  “Do my grandparents know?” asked Ursula, her voice almost cracking.

  Dr. Johansen started to chew his fingers again and replied, “Your grandparents know nothing except that they found you in a shopping trolley, in a rather grotty underpass in Paris. I had placed you there. Madame Benjamin found you and I walked away.”

  The moment he had finished Ursula jumped up from her chair and stepped towards the open doorway.

  “I want to speak to my grandparents.”

  “Not yet,” Dr. Johansen told her, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. “You need time to think about this and I recommend quite strongly that you take your time. Mr. and Mrs Benjamin are good people from what Andrea tells me. They have brought you up and taken a great deal of care over you. In all the ways that matter, they are your grandparents. I am wholly convinced that someday, when they felt that you were old enough, they had planned to tell you. Let us not upset them and disturb this happy equilibrium just yet. Please sit back down.”