“Everything is growing unbelievably well,” Chase replied when the message came to an end. “Unbelievably big.”
Meriting the repetition, ‘unbelievably’ was most certainly a suitable word. Because even though Chase vaguely understood the new technology which allowed the rapid growth and cultivation of targeted plants, it was something else entirely to see it in action. As he understood it, a microsphere — more commonly known as a bubble — could be placed around a small group of trees or plants who could then be exposed to an isolated atmosphere fine-tuned for their optimal and expedited development. Within a distinct microsphere no wider than a large swimming pool, the day-night cycle experienced by the plants it housed could be greatly shortened with no ill-effects. Along with the ability to speed up the apparent passage of seasons and to engineer soil for optimal nutrition, the conditions were conducive for truly optimal and extremely rapid growth.
Christian Jackson’s microsphere-based growing experiments within his Botanical Gardens on Terradox, the success of which had led to these breakthroughs, had captured a level of public interest far above anything normally seen for botanical research. This was largely because of the tremendous visual impact of an image showing two plants which had been grown just a few metres apart and separated only by the invisible ‘wall’ of a microsphere; a microsphere which enabled the plants on the inside to mature and flower within a fraction of the time it took for those on the outside.
There was certainly a lot more going on than seasonal weather manipulation and lighting modifications, including the high-level genetic engineering which enabled seeds to respond so well to these deliberate atmospheric variations in the first instance. At the end of the day, though, everyone knew that it was the variations that made the difference.
Christian would never see the Arkadian forests with his own eyes, but he took pride in the fact that his research had played a central part in bringing them into existence.
And although his father sounded entirely confident that nothing was wrong, Chase Jackson dearly hoped that Christian hadn’t accidentally introduced something unplanned.
Shortly after arriving back at the Karrier, Chase received a new message from Christian passing on a request from Holly to send mapping drones out across Arkadia to check that no more errant plants were growing on any other small patches of ground out of the cloak-cams’ sight.
He waited for Rachel to arrive before readying the drones, and fortunately she wasn’t far behind him.
It had started to get dark outside, prompting Chase to ask if someone on Terradox could give them a few more hours of sunlight so he could give Rachel a quick tour of Arkadia’s incredible sights while they waited for some meaningful information on the plants. He wanted to explore more of the landscape himself, too, but didn’t think it was fair for Rachel to have come all this way and not catch a glimpse of the picturesque beach.
The answer was no, somewhat frustratingly but not at all surprisingly. The day-night cycle couldn’t be changed so drastically without potentially damaging effects on open-air plant life, Christian said, and there was no room for argument.
What proved a lot more than somewhat frustrating was the length of time it took for any further update on the plant analysis to come through. The primary data was all visible to Chase and Rachel but it meant nothing to their botanically inexperienced eyes, leaving them in the dark.
When two mapping drones reported the discovery of plants in other unexpected locations, Christian reacted quickly by informing them that they would need to spend the night on Arkadia. He stressed that the continued analysis wasn’t a sign of a problem and nor was the discovery of two more small groups of plants, but that his team simply needed more time. He told Chase that he would need to go back out and fetch samples from the two new sites in the morning, and encouraged him to again wear his EVA suit — “to err on the safe side.”
Chase was pleased to hear this, granting as it did permission for another day of aerial exploration. Rachel didn’t take the news of the drones’ new discoveries quite so well but tried to accept Christian’s insistence that the plants’ presence wasn’t necessarily a sign of any underlying problem.
She fell asleep long before Chase when night came, and he opted to leave her be even when the reassuring news came in from Terradox that their initial theory was correct: the plants had indeed been seeded by wind and failed to thrive due to a lack of both direct sunlight and access to the right kind of engineered soil.
“This is nothing serious but we’re very glad you noticed it,” Christian said. “Everyone here has been praising your thoroughness in finding those first plants. We’d still like you to gather further samples in the morning and after that we’re going to fabricate microspheres around the out-of-place plants to expedite their deaths and make sure they don’t spread any further. Because of your discovery we’re also going to place partial cloaks around all plants which could be seeded elsewhere by wind, so this won’t happen again.”
Chase wasn’t altogether sure why Christian and his team were simultaneously keen to stress that out-of-place plants posed no danger but also that steps were being taken to make sure the same thing would never happen again. He knew he would get better and clearer answers when he was back on Terradox and could converse with them without having to contend with a communications delay, though, so he contently settled down at the end of a long and unforgettable day.
With Rachel having fallen asleep so long before him it didn’t surprise Chase to find her awake and ready to leave when he rose the next morning.
“Good timing,” she said when he wandered in to the analysis centre. “I was going to give you five more minutes.”
“I guess you’ve spoken to my dad?”
She nodded. “It’s pretty much exactly what we thought. So what do you say, ready to get these samples and finish the tour?”
“Damn right I am,” he replied with a broad smile, rushing away to get ready.
The two went on to gather further samples as requested and then spent the remaining hours of daylight taking in the awe-inspiring vistas that continued endlessly over Arkadia’s rolling horizon.
When night fell once more and the sun quite literally set on their brief expedition, neither felt tired or even sad to leave. Both instead felt energised and excited to return.
“See you again soon, Arkadia,” Rachel said as their Karrier’s outbound countdown to the cloak reached zero.
The manmade world of wonders disappeared as suddenly as it had emerged around thirty-six hours earlier when their Karrier passed in the opposite direction, and just like that it was gone.
“Sooner than you think,” Chase said, counting down in his head. “Keep watching…”
Rachel then gasped in amused amazement as it appeared once more, slowly getting smaller as the Karrier began its long journey back to Terradox.
“They’ll see it on Earth in a few minutes and on Terradox not too long after that,” Chase said. “The invisibility cloak was set to ‘switch off’ as soon as we were clear, once we’d checked everything was okay and made it out safely. Now everyone can see it.”
“Well… we’ll be back soon, Arkadia,” Rachel smiled, modifying her last farewell.
Chase nodded, smiling just as wide. “And next time we’ll have company.”
Part II
One year later
sixteen
Of all the decisions Romesh Kohli had made in his happy and productive life, moving to Terradox had unquestionably proven one of the best. The colony granted him the tools and space needed to take his life’s work to new levels, and his research successes within the so-called Primosphere were as well known as he was greatly respected.
Terradox had also been good for his gifted daughter Nisha, whose prodigious early promise as a then-17-year-old physicist had been a keen factor in the family’s invitation. His wife Farrah, who had been more positive about the move than he was at first, had enjoyed eight fulfilling years in the im
portant role of transport system analyst, and even their youngest child Vijay had grown to love the colony despite some initial misgivings.
With the family’s departure to the new world of Arkadia now less than twenty-four hours away, the roles were somewhat reversed with Romesh being keener than Farrah to uproot. Nisha was once again the primary driver given that her work on large-scale romokinetic propulsion was the foundation upon which the whole Arkadia project was built, and the decision on whether or not to make the one-way trip was ultimately her own.
Nisha knew she would dearly miss Holly and Grav and the rest of her friends on Terradox, and if the only counterpoints to that had been the sense of adventure and limitless potential that awaited on Arkadia as well as a welcome reunion with Viola Ospanov, she would have had a real decision to make. This wasn’t the case, however, as her long-term partner Chase Jackson’s position as Arkadia’s figurehead swung the argument decisively in the direction of adventure.
Although it was going to be difficult to say farewell to Holly in particular, Nisha thought herself lucky that whichever decision she’d made would never have involved a forever goodbye to her family. The same couldn’t be said for Chase, who had been ultimately unsuccessful in his many attempts to talk his own parents into making the trip. She imagined it might have been different if Chase had any younger siblings who his parents wouldn’t have wanted to separate from him, but she also knew that Jillian and Christian Jackson were very committed to their current roles as the colony’s respective Heads of Psychology and Botany.
Very few colonists were leaving Terradox for Arkadia, with the vast majority of the new world’s settlers set to arrive from Earth a week after the initial group’s landing. One reason for this was that although the two key decision-makers in Holly and Dimitar Rusev were firm supporters of the Arkadia project, they were extremely keen to maintain continuity of key personnel on Terradox. Another reason, perhaps even more important, was that few who called Terradox home were eager to leave their comfortable, peaceful and productive lives.
Aside from the Kohlis and Chase, the other colonists set to depart could be counted on one hand. Only two divisional Heads would be on board the Arkadia-bound Ferrier: Rachel Berry of Craft Management, whose desire had held strong despite Holly’s best efforts to talk her into staying, and of course Romesh Kohli of the Primosphere.
Inside the Primosphere, a huge enclosed area with a self-contained atmosphere unlike any other on Terradox, Romesh had spent several years performing experiments and analysis to gain new understandings of the conditions in which life first emerged. The division’s major breakthrough had been the rapid evolution of an organism known to all simply as Nancy.
In a style not a million miles from the kind of atmospheric interventions used by Christian Jackson to intentionally and beneficially mutate plants within the Botanic Gardens, Romesh had overseen the deliberate manipulation of Nancy’s environment in an effort to trigger further cellular evolution. The bulk of Romesh’s giddiness as the hour of departure grew near owed to his suspicion that there would be even less red tape to contend with on Arkadia than there was on Terradox, which was already a researchers’ paradise compared to Earth.
On Arkadia, Romesh Kohli hoped to revel in an absolute autonomy he had lacked on Terradox, where Holly’s cautious approach to delicate research had held him back from attempting some studies and from sharing the results of others. Little did he know that events in his final few hours on Terradox would simultaneously underline this desire and all but eliminate any chance of it coming to pass.
Romesh’s pride in Nancy wasn’t an egotistical pride, but rather the more justifiable kind that came with a major research success. Against his better judgement, this pride drove him to share the full results of recent Nancy-related experiments with Holly, who he had previously taken care to brief no more than necessary.
There was also the point that Romesh had already been told that no active test subjects — even Nancy — were eligible for transfer to Arkadia, meaning that he had nothing to lose by showing Holly that Nancy was more evolved than she realised. The project was set to pass into the hands of Romesh’s assistants, and he was also reluctant to leave them in a position of having to hide anything from Holly or anyone else.
With final departure preparations well underway, his call for Holly to join him in the Primosphere was met with predictable surprise. Several hours passed before Holly was able to make her way over, which she did only because Romesh insisted it would be worth it, and when she arrived she did so with Grav at her side.
“Are you allowed in here?” Romesh asked Grav, well aware that a medical condition he had been dealing with for many years prohibited him from venturing into areas of Terradox with highly modified environments.
Grav nodded. “The new treatments see to that,” he said, a slow grin forming. “And if I forgot to make that clear to everyone, it definitely has nothing to do with their assumptions that I cannot enter the Primosphere or Little Venus meaning that I can relax whenever oversight is needed in those zones! I am here today because you are leaving, Romesh, and the way you phrased your call to Holly made it sound like there is something in here that I really do not want to miss.”
“Well, you won’t be sorry you came,” Romesh laughed. “Follow me.”
He led Holly and Grav down a quiet corridor — a noticeably quiet corridor — before opening a nondescript door and pointing them towards two chairs.
“Romesh, you know how tight my time is today,” Holly said. “Can we save the theatrics and get to the point?”
Unbudging, Romesh kept his hand outstretched. Holly sat down with no little frustration and folded her arms. Grav, meanwhile, sat down quite eagerly and appeared to be enjoying the mystery.
Wasting no more time, Romesh then navigated through some menu screens on his wristband until he found the option to display a recent recording on the wall in front of his audience of two. The brilliant white of the image’s edges took their eyes by surprise, but within a second or two they realised what they were looking at: a sterile experimentation room containing the most remarkable of all test subjects: Nancy.
The organism was jet black and in shape looked more than a little like a human hand. For lack of anything else to compare it to, Nancy’s appearance struck Holly as something between a mini squid and an unusually flexible starfish. The word ‘gelatinous’ was also running through her head as she gazed at the screen, since Nancy somehow didn’t look solid in the regular sense of the word.
There was gentle but noticeable movement in Nancy’s ‘fingers’, almost wave-like, and when Romesh uncovered the other side of the screen things grew even more interesting.
For on the right side of the screen, an ungloved human hand rested in a fingers-spread position.
“During the test you’re now watching back, Nancy could see this hand,” Romesh explained. “It’s my hand, in case you can’t tell.”
Holly and Grav needed no instruction in that regard — by now, their attention on the screen was absolutely total.
Very suddenly, the recording showed Romesh’s hand clenching tightly into a fist. As soon as it did so, Nancy reacted by doing exactly the same.
Romesh spread his fingers again, prompting Nancy to mimic the movement once more.
“My hand was behind a cloak for obvious safety reasons,” Romesh said. “But as you can see: Nancy has become capable of perfectly mimicking the physical movements of nearby organisms. This is a breakthrough unlike anything we expected, and her ability to do this became reliable just a few days ago.”
Holly’s expression, to Romesh’s mild disappointment, contained none of the excitement of his own. There was no great amount of concern, either, just a tense focus on what she was looking at.
“So exactly how big is Nancy at this point?” she asked after an uncomfortable pause. “What’s the scale I’m looking at here?”
“Uh, what do you mean?”
“Magnification,” Hol
ly said. “How much is Nancy’s side of this picture blown up? Ten times? Twenty?”
Romesh could no longer hide his confusion. “Holly… this was all captured in one shot. The scale is one to one.”
“What?” Holly boomed. “You’re telling me this is life size? You’re telling me that this… this thing you created has grown that big since I last saw it?”
“She certainly has,” Romesh nodded proudly. “Because I’ve known for a long time that I can’t take Nancy with me to Arkadia, we’ve been more aggressive with our atmospheric adaptions over the past few months — to see how much we could achieve. And as you can see, the results have been—”
“Kill it,” Holly interjected, the blunt finality of her tone sucking all of the air from the room.
Grav shifted his weight and turned to face her, ignoring the suddenly animated Romesh.
“You can’t be serious?” Romesh said.
Studying her face, Grav had no doubt that she was.
Holly rose to her feet. “Don’t think I’m happy about having to do this, Romesh, but there’s no discussion to be had. We’ve terminated hugely promising AI projects in the past when things have taken unexpected turns, and other than the fact that I’m infinitely more angry at you for doing this than I ever was at those AI researchers, this is no different.”
“How is this anything like AI?” Romesh retorted. “Holly, Nancy is alive!”
“And so is everyone else on this colony!” Holly yelled, losing her composure for the first time.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 97
