by JC Ryan
But first, he must find the DNA, re-engineer the monster, and raise it to adulthood. The scheme came to him while watching an old movie, Jurassic Park. In the movie, a wealthy man had used DNA found in samples of amber to recreate extinct animals – dinosaurs – for use in a theme park as entertainment. Of course, the experiment had gone horribly wrong. It didn’t occur to Ahab that his own plan might have disastrous consequences. He was too arrogant to consider he might fail, or that a monster like the myth of the Minotaur described might be difficult or impossible to control. Might even destroy him. It was one of the typical traits of sociopaths – they got so hypnotized by the reward of achieving their goals that they ignored the risks and consequences.
From the moment he conceived the idea, he was obsessed with planning. He felt he was very close to seeing his dream fulfilled. All he needed now was the money to mount his expedition in search of the DNA. Once he found it, he’d need more funds to develop the technology to recreate the monster. Of course, nothing of the sort must be revealed in his grant requests. He’d financed his explorations so far by taking jobs on other archaeologists’ digs, using any free time he had to explore on his own.
One of the archaeologists he’d worked under was a rebel like himself, his idol, Carter Devereux. The man had pulled off some frankly unethical moves and had come out smelling like a rose because of ‘the greater good’. Ahab had studied him. Devereux kept a low profile on his background, but Ahab had discovered he was wealthy, and had met his wife, Mackenzie. Now that was a juicy morsel, but too old for his peculiar tastes. Though he was an equal-opportunity killer, he preferred children.
Of course, he thought, he wasn’t a pervert. Sexual sadism wasn’t his thing. No, he was a scientist of death. How much terror would cause the death on its own? How much pain could a normal human endure? With these questions and his ‘experiments’, he was unwittingly continuing the work of the scientists who had created him. He didn’t recall those buried memories, but he’d been raised in the same laboratory where many such experiments informed the work that led to his artificially enhanced abilities.
4
The following year
IT TOOK MONTHS to build Mackenzie’s lab and recruit top-notch scientists to assist her. Especially since weather on Freydis was not conducive to construction. November and December typically saw the most rainfall of the year, and January and February were too cold to pour the foundations, so work on the building itself hadn’t begun until spring.
Mackenzie tried to curb her impatience by conducting more research, investigating the equipment she would need for her facility, and starting the recruitment process for scientists to work for her. The latter was not a straightforward process. It was not as if she could place a few advertisements in the media or employ a recruitment agency to get the right candidates. Due to the top-secret nature of all A-Echelon work, she had to first identify candidates without them knowing about it. Then each candidate had to be background-checked and vetted by the CIA.
The candidates who passed through that process could then be approached but could not be told the details of for whom they would be working and the details of the project, other than using phrases such as “top-secret”, “highly classified”, et cetera. If the prospective worker had not been scared witless by then or refused to have anything to do with it, the next step was to get an appropriate security clearance. Only when all those things were in place was she able to tell them about the project and where they would be working. In the process, many candidates who initially seemed to be suitable were found not to be. Even among those who got through the wringer and obtained the required security clearance were some who had no desire to spend any time working on a project out in the wilderness of Quebec.
However, if that was not enough, there were more things to keep Mackenzie’s plate full. Thanksgiving and Christmas were spent amid their growing community and her parents, Steven and Mary Anderson, and brother Ray, as well. It was her pleasure to entertain the company, while Bly planned and provided the feasts and planned the parties that made the dreary late-fall months and stormy winter days more bearable.
She reveled in the enjoyment of her children, too. They were growing so fast, both physically and mentally. Occasionally she and Carter took them out of school to go hiking or snowshoeing or to visit Keeva and her growing pups. Keeva had turned up in late October with them, Loki following to keep guard, and gently nudged the two young wolves toward the children. Since then, they’d played together often.
Beth showed signs of having the same sort of connection to the female pup that Mackenzie had with Keeva, as Mackenzie had hoped. Liam loved the pups, too, but his first loyalty was to his little Cavoodle, Jeha. Jeha took it upon herself to teach the pups how to behave around the children, and Mackenzie thought the little dog somehow knew that Liam would need a special relationship with a bigger creature as he grew older and more independent. Jeha was fiercely loyal to him, and to a lesser extent to Beth, but her tiny size meant there was little she could do to protect them. What was surprising was how tolerant Keeva was of the little dog’s nips and corrections when the pups bit too hard in their play.
On occasion they also took the children with them when Carter had to visit the underwater archaeological site in the Alboran Sea. On those occasions, Carter would drop Mackenzie and the children off in one of the cities of Europe. He would visit the site for a few days, and then return to spend time with his family.
In the middle of February, an unexpected warm spell allowed the contractors to pour the foundation for the new lab. Mackenzie happily supervised until the weather turned cold again, and construction was frustratingly delayed. Carter suggested they take the children with them to Italy the following week, and everyone enthusiastically agreed.
So, it was March by the time construction got underway in good earnest. From then on, Mackenzie was involved in supervising every aspect of her new lab. By June, the building was finished, the interior furnished, and supplies laid in. The first party of the summer was a welcome for the new residents of the community – her assistants. They had all arrived on Freydis on a Saturday via the milk train, as they called the plane that visited Freydis twice a week, sometimes more, to bring in supplies, and transport personnel between the US and Freydis. This arrangement between the Canadian and US governments assured that neither the milk train nor Carter’s jet or EA’s plane would have to clear customs on any side of the border.
On the first Monday after Independence Day, at eight a.m. local time, Mackenzie and her five assistants assembled for the kick-off meeting. She had explained their roles to each of them when she recruited them, but for the first time they were together and ready to understand the big picture.
“My research to date has been a survey of ancient texts to determine whether scientists in the distant past and even prehistory have solved one of the medical necessities of today before their technology was somehow lost. I have concluded that they have. When I hired you, I explained why you were all required to pass background checks and have each been granted top-secret clearance. You understand that we work strictly on a need-to-know basis. Apart from the information that I have already divulged to you before today, the next piece of secret information you need to know is that we will have access to the two libraries of the ancients that my husband has discovered. We refer to those as the Library of the Giants and the Alboran Codex. Both of those libraries were created by a race of giants who wandered the earth more than 70,000 years ago.”
At this point she had to stop talking because of the collective gasping sound coming from her audience. She was sure she even heard a few mutters of “what the hell” spoken under a breath. She looked up from her notes and was met with the bewildered stares on their faces. It took her a split second to realize that none of her audience had the means or opportunity to have had the benefit of being part of those human history-altering discoveries which had been part of her life for so many years. She had to pause her
briefing and divert into the history of Carter’s discoveries. As could be expected, and as with anyone in the past who had to come to grips with Carter Devereux’s discoveries, the reaction of her assistants ranged from outright rejection bordering on rebellion, to maybe contemplating resigning immediately. However, it all gradually turned into guarded skepticism, and when Mackenzie ended her explanation two hours later, had become I’ll-stick-around-for-a-while-to-see-just-how-crazy-you-are.
After this unplanned but necessary departure, Mackenzie could get back to the original brief. “From the information we have extracted out of the parts of those libraries translated so far, we are convinced that we will find what we’re looking for there. We have also, through the good offices of our agency, A-Echelon, negotiated a contract with DARPA, who will support us in our endeavor in any way they can. In exchange for their funding and support, they’ll have the rights to become the first adopters of the respirocyte technology when we develop it. Please note my choice of words, “when” not “if”. DARPA’s chief purpose will be medical, and the first commercially-deliverable stores will be used to save the lives of our soldiers on the battlefields.
“While the libraries’ existence is known publicly, some aspects of what they contain are closely tied to national security. We will be working with some of those aspects to complete our mission, and that is part of the reason you have received your security clearances and been required to sign the non-disclosures.” At this point Mackenzie paused and looked around at everyone seated at the table. “Any questions?”
There were none, and she proceeded. “Okay, with that part out of the way let’s jump straight into the details. “Our mission here is aimed at one thing, though we will take several paths to get there. It is my greatest hope that we can successfully produce an artificial blood cell, one that will medically extend the lives of millions of people suffering from diseases that could be eased if we could only deliver more oxygen to their bloodstreams.
“You are all aware of the theoretical work done by Robert Freitas in 1998. He proposed a nano-molecular device he called a respirocyte. The device would be made from a diamondoid fullerene, sometimes known as a ‘buckyball’, sub-microscopic in size, and yet capable of storing and transporting two-hundred and thirty-six times more oxygen than a natural red blood cell.
“At the time, his ideas were thought interesting but impractical — technology had not yet advanced to the point of creating the artificial intelligence, nor the mechanical function that would make such a device possible. My research indicates that not only have we approached that horizon, but by other means available to scientists in the distant past, it has already been done.
“As we develop ways of duplicating those discoveries and mass-manufacturing respirocytes, they will revolutionize medicine for the masses. You, ladies and gentlemen, will help me make that dream a reality.”
The meeting in the cozy conference room broke up, and everyone took a tour of the rest of the building, took note of where each scientist’s lab was located, and chattered excitedly with their new colleagues. Mackenzie considered it a great start as she visited each in his or her own lab later in the day.
She had a separate office off her lab, where she’d moved her extensive personal research library. A separate entrance to the office was for the others to enter when they needed to meet with her or consult her library, and the door was always open. Her molecular biology assistant, a PhD in her own right, shared her lab, while the data analyst, the veterinarian, the research clinician, and the nano-engineer each had their own. Liu would work in a cubicle set off from the rest of Mackenzie’s office when she needed to be in the lab in person, but she would usually communicate from the translation building where she had her main office.
Mackenzie had already gathered research on ancient technologies, and there was more to study. But the most promising area of research would probably be found in the Library of the Giants, housed on secure servers only a few yards away in the translation building, or even in the Alboran Codex. Liu had found promising references there, leading to the DARPA deal. Now she was searching in the Library of the Giants for the knowledge those references had mentioned.
Mackenzie had established that in the intervening millenia, oxygen levels in the atmosphere had become much lower now than they’d been in the Giants’ time, about 70,000 years ago. She hypothesized that the levels had fallen in small increments that had allowed the earth’s animals, including humans, to adapt to them through evolution. It was the same kind of acclimatization that allowed modern mountain climbers to adapt over a few weeks to the lower levels high in the Andes or Himalayans, just in a longer time-frame.
From her prior research she had also learned that the higher oxygen level was one way to explain the evidence of gigantism in prehistoric humans. Scientists knew that the Earth’s atmosphere had changed drastically over the millennia. She had found quite a few scientific studies showing that sometime in the distant past, Earth’s atmosphere had contained about 30% oxygen compared to only 20% today. This had been determined when air analyzed from bubbles inside drops of amber showed a higher concentration of oxygen than in modern times.
Humans are limited in how tall we grow because of our skeletal structure, but high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere could provide a feasible explanation for gigantism. “Just look at the dinosaurs and how big they were,” some scientists pointed out. “Granted, they were probably a lot slower than elephants because of the time it takes for neurons to fire, but we haven’t seen creatures of such size for millions of years.”
Mackenzie recalled a conversation, years ago, she had with James Rhodes discussing this very topic, when she said, “Based on what has been discovered at the City of Lights, I set out to find more supporting data about giant humans, animals, and plants. I was not disappointed. There are masses of evidence from all over the world. Houses and graves, fossil footprints, bones, artifacts, the Bible - all these tell the same story about the existence of Titanic humans, incredible lifespans, superiority, and nobility. But sadly, it seems we their descendants have all but forgotten them.”
She pulled her laptop closer, searched for a file, and once again read the information provided by Dr. Carl Baugh of Glen Rose, Texas. He had constructed a large high-pressure oxygen chamber, also known as a hyperbaric biosphere. His purpose was to recreate the conditions of our original world. After concluding his experiments, he’d written: We’ve been doing extensive research into the ancient atmosphere, the one that produced the fossil record. Our research indicates that essentially everything was larger in the past. For instance, the club mosses, which today reach sixteen to eighteen inches, often approach two hundred feet in the fossil record. The great dinosaurs, with their relatively small lung capacity, reached tremendous stature. Seismosaurus could reach his head almost seventy feet in the air. Something has to explain this anomaly in terms of today’s atmosphere.
In today’s atmosphere, we have fourteen point seven pounds of atmospheric pressure per inch at sea level. But to oxygenate the deep cell tissue of these great dinosaurs, we need much greater atmospheric pressure. Research has shown that when you approach two times today’s atmospheric pressure, the entire blood plasma is saturated with oxygen.
Our research indicates there was about 27 pounds per square inch of atmospheric pressure in the past. That would beautifully solve a problem even paleontologists admit exists.
In addition, the oxygen supply in the fossil record has been found to be 30 percent oxygen compared to 20 percent today. Ancient air bubbles trapped in amber have been analyzed and revealed this heavier concentration of oxygen. If we had those conditions today, we could run two hundred miles without fatigue.
However, Mackenzie’s hope was that the Giants especially had seen a need to develop a way to more efficiently use the diminishing oxygen levels and had at least made a start. In every other field of human knowledge, they’d been advanced beyond the current knowledge. Carter and his team
were still working to discover what had destroyed their civilization and plunged the world into the ensuing thousands of years of human history leading to the present time. If they had worked on the oxygen level problem, and if the technology could be duplicated, it would save her team perhaps years, even decades, of research.
On her rounds, her colleagues had specific questions regarding their own roles. The veterinarian wanted to know when animals might arrive, and what he should do until that time. Mackenzie assured him that several pairs of healthy rats would be delivered within the week. She hated the necessity of testing on helpless animals, but the potential for toxicity or immune reaction was too great to first test on humans.
“We’ll be as kind to them as we possibly can, but let’s not lose sight of the goal. Every day, thousands of people die who could be saved by this technology. I consider this an urgent mission, and our DARPA sponsors even more so.”
“I wish DARPA weren’t involved,” answered her assistant. “How do we know they won’t use the research to make super-soldiers?”
“The short answer is, we don’t,” Mackenzie said, a slight frown marring her expression. “If you have moral objections, I will understand, and now is the time to tell me. I can’t afford to lose you halfway through.”
“I’ll be okay. I guess I’m just a passionate pacifist at heart, Dr. Devereux.”
Mackenzie favored him with one of her brilliant, disarming smiles. “Please, it’s Mackenzie. Please don’t hesitate to talk with me any time. We are dedicated to relieving human suffering, but as you may know, I have a particular soft spot for animals as well.”
“I’ve heard you have a mystical connection with a pack of wild wolves who live here on the ranch,” he remarked. “That’s fascinating. I’d love to meet them.”
