“You wrote that you were unmarried and hoped to remain so. Why have you committed to remaining single, Dr. Greer?”
No doubt a great, if slightly insensitive question, one Gabby had often peppered him with. “I chalk it up to a string of bad luck.”
“I am not clear on what role chance has to play,” she said, her head tilting slightly. “Can you please elaborate?”
“Let’s just say there were a few women in my life I was ready to settle down with. But in the end, it turned out I didn’t know them half as well as I thought I did.”
Anna didn’t seem satisfied. It was tough being questioned about your love life, or lack thereof, by a robot with the emotional intelligence of a ten-year-old.
“Maybe once this is over,” he told her, “I’ll take you out for a beer and explain it all.”
She smiled. “I would like that.”
“All right, it’s a date.”
Those pixelated pink cheeks again.
“In the meantime, we have work to do.” His tone grew serious and Anna straightened. “Our number one priority right now is finding a way to stop those blast waves.”
“I have performed millions of searches on the subject, Dr. Greer, and have found no explanation for the explosion of high-energy particles or a way to stop them from being periodically released.”
Jack rubbed the tips of his fingers together.
“Are you itchy?” she asked him.
“Huh?” He glanced down at his right hand. “Oh, this. It’s just a habit when I’m thinking.”
Anna glanced down at her own fingers and began rubbing them. “I fail to observe any noticeable benefit.” She stopped moving her fingers. “There is something else I came across during my exploration of the ship’s computer systems.” It was an audio sound-bite she fed into his helmet. At once his ears were assaulted by an unearthly racket of clicks and high-pitched whines. His hands rose up involuntarily to the sides of his head. The features of his face distorted in torment.
“What the hell is that?” he asked. “You trying to deafen me?”
“My apologies, Dr. Greer,” Anna replied, cutting it off and reaching out with her robotic arm. “I believe it is a sample of speech, left over by the extraterrestrial race who operated this ship.”
“Coulda fooled me. Sounded more like a room filled with thousands of angry cicadas.” He took a moment to gather his wits about him. “What are the chances you could figure out what they’re saying?”
“In the time we have left?” she said, seeming to contemplate the idea. “The probability is point zero zero zero one percent. There is, however, another file you might find interesting. It was created recently and do not worry, this one will not cause you any pain.”
Jack wasn’t so sure.
Anna manipulated the console. “This next file is a three-dimensional video, although the colors of familiar objects may appear strange because of the way humans process images.”
This was interesting. “The aliens who ran this ship didn’t use the same color spectrum as humans?”
“That is the most likely explanation. Allow me to play the recording.” Anna raised her hands to the console and flicked through a series of displays, all of which looked to Jack like gibberish. She had already uploaded her decryption results to the servers topside, which meant if they didn’t make it out, at least that vital breakthrough would live on.
Seconds later, a mostly green and blue holographic video began to play. He took a large step back to get a better look. He saw the rush of clouds as the earth raced up to meet the object falling through the air. A violent shudder shook the image, followed by a billowing wave of earth sent out by the shockwave.
Slowly the surroundings settled and a tropical forest came into view. Jack wondered what the time period was, a question soon answered by the distant shape of a farmer’s shack. Had the video been transmitted from the pod that was recently released? He watched as the transparent partition slid back and the ‘plesi’ rushed from the capsule. Jack expected it to tear off into the jungle, but it didn’t get five feet before it began writhing on the ground. A moment later, it grew still, dead on the jungle floor. Soon, a swarm of men in bulky hazmat suits rushed in and scooped it into a container.
Just then, Commander Hart radioed Jack to announce the creature had been found.
“Dead,” Jack said, finishing Hart’s sentence.
“How did you know?”
“It wasn’t designed to breathe twenty-first-century air,” he explained.
Hart fell silent for a minute. “I’m not following.”
“The atmosphere today is composed of roughly seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen. The rest is made up of argon and traces of other gases. But sixty-five million years ago, when the ship impacted the planet, the atmosphere was very different. Scientists studying plant matter trapped in amber—sticky tree resin—have discovered oxygen levels on the prehistoric earth were somewhere between ten and fifteen percent. In a nutshell, these aliens not only produced a creature that would one day lead to Homo sapiens, but tweaked its DNA to be perfectly compatible with the environment at the time. But the ship contained thirty-six other pods, which means there’s probably a DNA databank somewhere on this ship.”
“So you’re saying this ship was some sort of interplanetary zoo.”
Jack shook his head. “Not a zoo, it was an ark.”
Chapter 58
Jack was in the middle of changing the carbon dioxide filter on his rebreather unit when the submersible docked with the Orb’s outer airlock.
Thankfully, Captain Kelly and the rest of the ONI team was down in the ship somewhere, likely hunting for more tech they could pillage. Jack understood military intelligence had their own agenda. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
The inner airlock door swung open and out stepped a woman he presumed was Dr. Ward, dressed in an orange biosuit. She was far more attractive than he’d expected and suddenly Jack felt the temperature on the Orb becoming uncomfortably warm. Two men in similar biosuits exited the submersible, the first larger and more muscular than the second. To Jack’s eye, they looked more like bodyguards than they did scientists.
Jack extended a hand and introduced himself, as well as Commander Hart, who stood nearby.
Mia shook their hands and then introduced her colleagues. “This is Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones.”
“Tom is fine,” the slightly shorter man said, correcting the record. He motioned to his colleague. “And this is Sven.”
Sven grunted.
“A man of few words,” Hart said, shaking his hand. “I like you guys already.”
Sven’s full lips curled into a smile.
Despite their jovial air, Jack took careful note of the dangerous glint in the men’s eyes. Real doctors or not, they meant business. “I hate to break up the party,” he said, tapping his wrist, “but the sooner we get started, folks, the sooner we’re able to get off this tin can.”
Mia stepped closer to Jack. “I need to speak with you first. Is there somewhere we can go?”
“Of course. Follow me.” He led her down two decks to the Orb’s small science lab.
“There’s so much you need to know,” Mia began.
“Let’s start with your two fake doctor friends.”
She fell into a nearby seat, struggling with where to begin. How could she ever hope to condense everything that had happened over the last few days into a five-minute conversation? “You’re right, they aren’t doctors. They’re here to stop Sentinel.”
Jack sat as well and rolled over to her. Mia’s hair was tied in a ponytail. Even in her biosuit, she somehow managed to smell of lavender. “I didn’t mention it before, but I’m familiar with Sentinel,” he said, telling her about the bug in Anna’s software.
“Anna?”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll meet her soon enough. But watch out, she’s the jealous type.”
Mia smiled and raised her hands.
“She’s got nothing to worry about from me. I’m here strictly on business.” Her face fell slightly with those final words.
Jack saw the change. “This is very personal for you, isn’t it?”
“My daughter,” she explained. “I’ve been searching for a way to treat the effects of Salzburg, but it seems every time I get close, fate has a way of snatching victory right out of my hands.” She glared down at her palms in something resembling despair.
“Then you agree the ship’s triggering changes in people’s DNA?”
“That’s the confusing part,” she said. “I mean, Salzburg syndrome’s been around since at least the nineties. These flashes only just began. If an extraterrestrial intelligence has been tinkering with our genome, then why would the extra chromatid appear so late in our genetic history? Here’s what we do know. A year ago, Salzburg was present in one in five million people. Today, that’s closer to one in a hundred and it’s not even including animals.”
Jack told her how some of the animals on his rescue farm had also been affected. “Skin rash, weak bones, aging and forgetfulness,” Jack said, recounting the signs he’d also seen in Grant and Olsen.
“Yes, and in some cases it’s far worse.”
“So you’re here to figure out how the ship is reassembling people’s genes.”
Mia straightened her back. “A good scientist would want to study the phenomenon, understand how it works and what it can teach us about our own genetic makeup.”
Jack agreed.
She fixed him with a determined stare. “I just want to make it stop.”
Jack’s features shifted. “Anna’s managed to teach herself part of the alien language and has gained access to the ship’s computer system. If there’s a way to shut it off, I’m sure she’ll find it.”
“She sounds like a quite a woman.”
A smile tugged at Jack’s lips. “She’s very special, although she does have her limitations.”
“Do you think if I showed her the Salzburg genome she’d be able to search through it?”
“If you’re asking if she can find a hidden message, I couldn’t think of anyone better to ask.”
“In the beginning I assumed it would be a message,” Mia told him. “But now I’m not so sure.”
Over the phone she had mentioned the rather ominous ‘MAN MUST FALL’ she claimed to have deciphered from the DNA in the Salzburg chromatid. “I think you have good reason to doubt the message is real. I mean, this ship has been down here for millions of years. Long before humans, let alone language, were even a twinkle.”
Her eyes flared with surprise. “I had no idea it was that long ago. Nothing on the news…”
“Course the news got it wrong. Those same Sentinel creeps have done everything they could to spread scary videos and half-truths for no other reason than to scare people witless.”
Mia drummed her fingers against the sample kit on her belt. “I’m not sure how much you know, but up there, civilization is pretty much falling apart. Sentinel’s got everyone convinced the world is about to end because aliens are coming to kill or enslave them. Has Anna seen anything in the ship’s computer systems that might shed light on why they’re here?”
“No memo yet, although that would be nice.” Dimples formed in Jack’s cheeks. “Here’s what we do know. When this craft crashed into the planet it led to a mass extinction, killing off not only the dinosaurs but nearly all life on earth.”
Mia shook her head. “So the asteroid story we were all taught―”
“Was only partly right. Scientists have speculated the extinction rate following the event was close to seventy-five percent, but I believe it was much higher, closer to ninety-nine percent.”
“Then how did life bounce back so quickly?”
“We believe much of the life was replaced by this ship.” He explained the pods they had found. “It only took a few centuries for the planet to begin recovering.”
“I’m sorry,” she argued, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t match with the genetic evidence. We can trace the evolution of life all the way back to single-celled organisms. If an intelligent race wiped out life on earth and replaced it, there would be a pretty glaring line of discontinuity.”
Jack acknowledged her point. “I don’t pretend to have all the answers. We’re still putting the pieces together. Which is why you’re here.”
Mia opened her sample kit and removed a test tube filled with a pinkish substance.
Jack studied it, drawing a blank. “What is that?”
“A piece of the dead animal they retrieved near the pod,” she said. “They asked me to draw up a genetic profile while they ran their own battery of tests up top. We were being outfitted for the trip down here when I overheard a Dr. Bishop suggest the creature might represent an undocumented species, perhaps the earliest known primate.”
Jack opened his own kit and grinned. “You’re not the only one with gifts.” He unsnapped a vial of his own, one that contained a brown fibrous material. “If we’re about to start drawing up genetic profiles, then here’s the first one on our list.”
She took the glass tube and studied it. “This looks old.”
“Sixty-five million years, to be precise,” Jack said. “It’s from one of the extraterrestrial crew.”
Chapter 59
When the human genome first began to be sequenced in 1990, it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and took over a decade to complete. The Human Genome Project had also established a template that helped speed up future work in the field. Nearly three decades later, what had once required years could now be completed in less than thirty minutes.
These were precisely the thoughts coursing through Mia’s head as she tapped her foot, impatiently awaiting the results to come in. Her frustration said something about human nature, didn’t it? About how quickly we grew accustomed to the conveniences technology provided us. Anyone who thought otherwise was free to toss their television set in the dump and listen to the radio instead. Still don’t agree? Then donate your microwave to Goodwill and fire up the stove whenever you needed to reheat your leftover pasta. Ironically, in the end, the joke had been on us, since the seconds and hours freed up by one modern gadget were often spent staring like a zombie at another.
Already, Mia had sequenced the plesi’s genome, a rather quick affair compared to the genome for the arthropod race the team had recovered from the ship. While waiting, she had watched the autopsy video over her OHMD glasses, giving her a vague idea what the aliens might have once looked like. She still couldn’t help looking at her situation from the outside and shaking her head. Had someone told her while landing in Brazil that she would soon find herself swept up in an international game of espionage, she would have laughed. Had they followed that up with the notion she’d soon find herself in an underwater habitat sequencing an alien genome, she would have wondered what drugs they were on.
Still, ever since the Navy helicopter had brought her to the rig, she’d been overwhelmed by the scale of the operation. She was sure even Jack was unaware of how many ships and aircraft were in the area. It looked like a warzone. And in more ways than one, it was.
Once the ship’s location had become common knowledge, news helicopters had raced to catch a glimpse of whatever they could. They didn’t seem to care that the military had declared a no-fly zone over the entire western part of the Gulf. Why should they? This was the biggest news event of the century. Heck, it was the biggest news story ever. And weren’t reporters ravenous for Pulitzers and Peabodies the way actors craved Oscars and Golden Globes?
The accidents that had followed were hardly a surprise. Yesterday, a chopper for Miami’s WPLG News had collided with New Orleans’ FOX8 chopper a few miles from the rig. All on board were killed, including a top reporter from each station. The resulting blame game had only made a bad situation worse and fed the online conspiracies that the military had shot them down for straying too close.
These were crazy times, ma
de far crazier by the public’s insatiable need to know. It didn’t matter that only dribbles of truth were being served up with an abundance of theory and conjecture. And it was the same pattern Mia had witnessed from the moment those images of the ship had first showed up in the news and online. To put it bluntly, the world was shitting itself and she was partly to blame.
In moments like these, when she had time to be alone with her thoughts, the role she might have played in stirring the insanity pot began to meld with her anxiety over Zoey’s health. It was then that she took a deep breath and tried to keep her eyes on the prize. Oh, how a Xanax or a Valium would help take that searing edge off. She could feel her physiology begin to react at the mere thought of self-medicating. The muscles in her stomach began to seize into a painful knot. Bolts of electricity shot up her legs. Mia had been down that road before, more than once, and every time it had always ended in the same dark place.
Speaking of dark places, there was another one not too far away, a real place referred to as the lab—a spot down in the bowels of that monstrous gunmetal ship she’d eyed through the submersible’s porthole window. That was where Jack, Tom and Sven were right now, searching for a DNA databank Anna suggested they would find there. Understanding which species had been grown in those tubes and sent to the surface might better help them figure out why these beings had come here in the first place.
When it came to sequencing the alien genome, she hadn’t expected the biological matter Jack found to provide much of a genetic signature. Not only on account of its age—sixty-five million years was a heck of a long time—but also because there was nothing to say that all life in the universe was carbon-based. And no carbon meant no DNA.
The sequencer made a low beeping sound, indicating that it was finished. Mia scanned the results and as she did the color began to slowly drain from her face. She had been wrong. The aliens’ genetic material was carbon-based. But more than that, when she compared their genome to ours, she saw that seventy-five percent of our DNA was the same.
Extinction Code Page 23
