Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  “No!” Angel sobbed her retort. “You’re lying!” She wanted Gaia to stop this nightmare.

  “Oh? Am I?” Gaia challenged. “Watch.” She pointed to a large screen on the far wall and flicked a button on a small remote she pulled out of her tunic pocket. “We were fortunate that one of my other operatives had just arrived to witness and record this.”

  Angel saw her mother in her tattered leather shorts and faded blue blouse sprinting down a gully at break-neck speed.

  “She’s chasing Aard,” Gaia explained. The scene advanced to Aard running frantically, aiming his gun over his shoulder to take a pot shot at his pursuer. The scene reverted to Julie, now standing behind a bush with a gun, her face tight with cold determination. She shot. Aard fell. Then she was bending over Aard’s body.

  Gaia’s voice snapped in as the screen blanked, “Your mother worked as an operative for one of the deadliest and most treacherous subversive groups in Icaria, the Dystopians. When she found out that Aard was actually keeping her under surveillance for my assistant, Victor Burke, she threatened him to force him to leave then she chased him down and murdered him. That’s when my assistant picked her up, though he was too late to save your friend.”

  Angel opened her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. She finally croaked in a hollow voice, “This can’t be true...” Then she remembered her mother’s lack of concern when Aard disappeared.

  “Your eyes never lie, Angel. You saw it for yourself,” Gaia said almost gently. “As for leaving Icaria, that’s because your mother had the whole Pol force out chasing her for treason and murder.” Gaia bent and leaned her face so close that Angel was forced to stare into those glacial-cold eyes. She felt Gaia’s warm breath. “Don’t you get it?” Gaia said, her voice suddenly gruff, eyes gleaming. “Your mother was a criminal of the worst kind. First she killed half of Icaria with her disease, then she became an assassin for a terrorist group, and murdered the Head Pol. If your father hadn’t helped her escape, she’d have been caught, tried and executed for treason and murder.”

  Gaia squatted down beside Angel and seized Angel’s jaw, forcing her around to face the screen again.

  “Watch,” Gaia commanded. “See for yourself.” She flicked the button again. The screen came to life and Angel saw her mother looking in her direction. Her mother aimed a look of anguish or was it hatred at a uniformed man, his back to the screen. She looked much younger, dressed in a bright red tunic, her skin ruddy and smooth. She was glaring at the Pol with fierce determination.

  “Time’s up for your decadent government and you lackey lap dogs!” she said in a strangely detached voice of hatred even as her face betrayed anguish. “We’ll destroy Icarian law and order and build a new world from your ruins.” Then she grabbed the gun and screamed, “And you’re the first!”

  Angel tried to look away but Gaia gripped her face tightly with her hand, forcing her to watch her mother shoot the Pol. It didn’t end there. The scene cut to Julie shooting another Pol, too. Angel gasped and mimicked her mother’s own face of horror as the Pol flew backward, guts streaming behind him like a comet’s tail.

  Suddenly, Angel felt sick to her stomach. As she watched her mother drop the gun and flee, Angel gulped in the rising bile that threatened to strangle her. Its vile fluid burned her throat, but she closed her eyes, squeezing out hot tears that took with them all her hope and strength. Her world had just been ripped apart. Not at the hands of this evil woman or her Pols or the Vee-radicators, but by her own mother.

  “In light of this evidence, you might want to reconsider your impression of me and what we’re doing here,” Gaia said in a tone of vindication and mild reproach. Then Gaia stood up and she resumed in a cold detached voice, “Take her back to her quarters, Carl. I think we’ve had enough for today. We’ll proceed tomorrow after she’s had some time to think and is feeling a little more cooperative.”

  ***

  An oppressive silence hung in the air as Carl led Angel down the hallway to her new quarters in the Med-Center. When they got to her room and he opened her door for her, he hesitated, not yet ready to leave. “You going to be okay?”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said in a thin voice she hardly recognized.

  His face twisted and his jaw worked as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. He finally burst out with, “Angel, I think you should know that there’s a good chance they’d tampered with the vid-clip. I personally don’t think your mother said those things. Many people, Gaia particularly, had a lot to gain by putting words into your mother’s mouth and implicating her as a terrorist. Manipulating vid-clips is very common and hard to spot if done well.”

  “But that’s just her words,” Angel countered. “What about what she did?”

  His eyes slid away from hers for a moment and he frowned. When his eyes returned they looked sad. “I’m afraid there was no tampering there. She did shoot those two Pols. There were too many witnesses. But the first man she shot was her old boyfriend. Rumor had it that it was a lover’s quarrel. As for the second Pol, the story was there was a struggle. Apparently, she’d used his gun...” he trailed, seeing that it didn’t really matter. Angel wasn’t interested in extenuating circumstances. Her mother had shot two Pols, one certainly with intention. And there was the matter of Aard, and this other friend Sam who Gaia expected her to shoot.

  “And what about the disease? Did she really spread it?” she asked.

  He blinked and pursed his lips. “She was Prometheus. But I don’t think she caused the epidemic, Angel. Darwin’s transmitted sexually, through...well—” he cut himself off, looking uncomfortable for a moment.

  “Sexual intercourse?”

  “Yes,” Carl said, looking relieved. “Anyway, she was only five years old when Darwin first appeared, so, unless she had her own unique way of transmitting the disease, it’s more likely that some accident in the Med-Center clinic introduced Darwin to the public.”

  “But she didn’t stop carrying Darwin.”

  “That’s right. Because she was a veemeld, Darwin didn’t kill her, but it might have made her a passive carrier, or so some CDC reports suggest. When she became sexually active later in life, she might have been able to pass it on then, but we’re not sure of that either, considering the unique form of the virus she was carrying.”

  “She must have known she had Darwin and might pass it on...”

  He shook his head and looked down, saddened. “I don’t know, Angel. I never met your mother, but from what I do know of her, it doesn’t make sense. She just wasn’t that kind of person. You’d know better, though. I don’t think she would have consciously spread the disease, which suggests that she didn’t know she had Darwin. In fact, she saved people—”

  “Thanks, Carl,” Angel cut him off. Then she forced a smile. “I’ll be all right now.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, Angel. Sorry you had to find out this way.” Then he closed the door behind him and she heard him lock it. Alone with the murmuring machine voices in her head, she stood like a stone, eyes unfocused, in the middle of the room. Reliving the awful scenes she’d witnessed. She’d seen it with her own eyes. How could it not be true? Her mother was a terrorist and a cold-hearted assassin. No wonder Gaia had convinced her to kill her friend, Sam. She’d already killed Aard, Angel’s best friend. How could she have done it? Angel remembered her mother’s glacial reaction to Aard’s disappearance and felt a shiver run up her back—

  Abruptly, the machine murmurs in her head stopped, wrenching her out of her reverie. She shook her head in the ear-ringing silence. Something must have just happened to the A.I.s. Oh, good Earth! The A.I.-core! Her mother had done it. She’d shut down the A.I.s. She’d probably killed her friend, too.

  With the opportunity suddenly thrust upon her, Angel bolted to the vee-com on the desk beside her cot and
wondered if it would work, given what her mother had just done. Carl had given her a basic lesson on vee-coms and Angel was a quick-learner. She sat down and stabbed madly at the grid pad, observing with relief that the rudimentary vee-com system remained in tact. Her relief ended there, though. When she did a quick search for “Julie Crane” she found Prometheus...and Darwin disease:

  JULIE CRANE: Code-named Prometheus and credited with the mass murder of over a hundred million Icarians through Darwin disease from 2080 to 2096 (when the disease was finally eradicated), this Dystopian was ultimately responsible for what has become known as the most pernicious terrorist act in the history of humankind. Crane was injected with Darwin by Dr. Damien Vogel when she was five years old and released to infect Icaria at will. It was only discovered in 2095, fifteen years later, by Zane Nakita at CDC, that Dr. Vogel manufactured the disease and that Prometheus was Julie Crane. By then Crane had already murdered Icaria-5’s Head Pol and eluded her pursuers—SHE REMAINS AT LARGE—Vogel’s assistant, Janet Hardy, conveniently committed suicide shortly after the onset of the disease and both Vogel and his colleague, Dr. Euan Tsutsumi, were murdered by Leonard Crane, the father of Prometheus—

  This was too much! Her grandfather, too?! Were they all murderers? Angel feverishly read on: It is now thought that Vogel, and those with him, may have been veemelds and were attempting genocide in favor of veemelds, given that these genetically unique individuals were immune to the ill effects of the disease. Although not proven, they were considered to be Dystopians attempting to create anarchy.

  DARWIN DISEASE: A neural disorder, caused by the artificial human endogenous retrovirus Pro-V and named after Darwin Clinic in Icaria-11 where the first case was diagnosed on April 21, 2080. Known to be sexually transmitted, the disease may have also been spread by other means. In its pathogenic state, Darwin selectively interfered with several neurotransmitters, eventually destroying cholinergic neurons of both peripheral and central nerves. Symptoms included simple memory loss, heart problems, muscle spasms and eventually dementia and death from complications.

  Duration of the disease from initial symptom presentation to final stages of dementia and loss of critical brain functions varied from a few weeks to five months. The rapid spread of the disease resulted in a major pandemic and the eventual collapse of Icaria-11. Despite full quarantine measures by the Centre for Disease Control, the disease spread to most other Icarias with cases documented as far as Icaria-37. Veemelds, because of their unique genetic makeup, were immune to the pathogenic form of the virus and may even, as in the case of Prometheus (the veemeld, Julie Crane), have served as carriers.

  Icaria-5’s Pielou Lab of the CDC, headed by Zane Nakita, elucidated the origin and specific etiology of the disease and discovered a cure in 2096. Following CDC’s aggressive vaccination program and removal of environmental triggering vectors, the pathogenic aspects of Darwin were reversed. While this HERV remains a part of the human population’s genetic makeup, it is considered benign. Current work by CDC researchers have actually demonstrated some beneficial effects of the virus such as mildly enhanced cognition.

  Angel was devastated. Vogel’s assistant, Janet Hardy, was her grandfather’s cousin! At least the cousin had done the right thing and committed suicide because of her involvement in creating and spreading the worst disease ever known on the planet. Angel’s grandfather was executed in the Pol Station when Julie was twelve years old, before they even knew of his involvement in creating and spreading Darwin.

  Angel clamored for alternatives: perhaps they’d thought to make one thing and had created another, like a huge, failed experiment. Too bad they all died before anyone could piece together what had really happened. Still, how could Angel’s mother have lived with herself, knowing that she was responsible for the death of a hundred million people? And then there were her other terrible acts of violence to consider.

  As Angel watched the vid-clip of her grandfather destroying his laboratory in a terrible rage—no doubt from guilt—Angel was reminded of her mother’s temper and how it flared up like birch-bark tinder at times. No wonder, thought Angel Julie was the end product of a family living a legacy of anarchy, criminal behavior and violence. It was in her mother’s genetic make-up, which meant it was also in her own.

  Angel cupped her face in her hands and wept.

  29

  Angel walks the smooth corridor, bathed in rainbow light filtering through glittering jewels above. Although she is not sure where this place is, she feels at home as though she has been here before. In fact, she has, in a previous dream, one she has been having since she came to Icaria.

  She approaches a corner in the bright hall and knows she will see a figure in a brown cloak. The same one she’s overheard her mother describe to her father from her own recurring nightmare. Incredible, Angel thinks. I’ve entered my mother’s nightmare. But Angel does not feel foreboding like her mother—only curious anticipation.

  As she turns the corner, the cloaked figure stands before her and raises its arms toward her in greeting.

  [Hello, Angel], it says in a chorus of multi-timbral voices.

  Angel smiles. Hello. You’re Proteus, aren’t you? My mother told me about you. You’re the reason my mom and I could sometimes talk to one another.

  [Yes. We can speak to you in your dream state. When you join with us, we will be able to speak to one another when you are awake, during veemeld.]

  I think I understand. Does that have anything to do with those other voices that were in my head but have stopped?

  [No, child. Those voices came from the machines, now silenced by your mother.]

  I think I understand. You mean the A.I.-core of the city?

  [Yes. The city lies vulnerable now, as do those who rely on the machines.]

  Angel smiles darkly. Proteus has given her a prize. Escape will be far easier now that Gaia and her people are busy accommodating this new limitation. Angel frowns suddenly, remembering Gaia’s conversation with Brian Dykstra. But, Proteus, Gaia wanted my mother to shut down the core. Why would Gaia do that if it caused problems in her city?

  [We do not know. SAM, our interpreter, is no longer with us.]

  Angel swallows down a rising apprehension. But her curiosity overcomes her trepidation. Who’s Sam, Proteus? Terror of what her mother has done spikes inside her. Sam, according to Gaia, is Julie’s friend and Julie has obviously killed him.

  [SAM is a machine-intelligence, an A.I.]

  An A.I.? Her mind soars with sudden realization. SAM’s a machine? Not a person?

  [Part of the A.I.-core, which your mother shut down. SAM was also your mother’s AI-symbiont many years ago.]

  Symbiont?

  [Co-existing in a symbiotic relationship, as we are with her and with you. Every cell of every human being contains the remnants of bacterial symbionts—mitochondria—without which you could not live. We are just another symbiont in your body. We accomplish a mutual benefit by creating more than the sum of our parts.]

  Like what a friend does.

  [That is a good word to describe the interaction. Your mother also used this word to describe her A.I.-symbiont]

  Why would she do that to her friend, though? Shut it down?

  [We do not know...]

  I know...Angel wilts with sad acceptance, her mind reliving Julie’s vivid acts of atrocity. Because she’s not what I thought she was...I only saw her one way, in the heath.

  It’s simple, Angel thinks. She’s a living paradox.

  Her mother spoke of stable chaos, the theory that describes how nature and the universe work based on paradoxes. How can chaos be stable, though? Julie tried to explain but Angel’s young mind had balked at understanding. She thinks she does now. It’s all a function of point of view and scope of vision. It’s impossible for any living thing to see the entire world all at once or experience the past, present and future at the same
time. Through her limited perception of her mother’s behavior, Angel reduced this obviously complex person into a simple being. Her mother is truly those things kind, loving and tender but she is also a ruthless assassin, capable of killing another human being or a machine-friend without remorse. Perhaps stable chaos, itself a paradox, represents her mother life itself with more accuracy than Angel cares to admit.

  [We do not understand this...]

  I wish I didn’t either...

  ***

  Angel woke suddenly. She sat slouched at the vee-com with her head resting on her arms. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she straightened out of her stiffness and heard again what must have roused her: a brisk knock at the door and an urgent whisper: “Angel?”

  It sounded like Manfred. Angel bolted to the door and found she could now open it. Manfred darted past her, into the room, throwing a wary glance behind him. Angel shut the door behind him. In reply to her look of confusion, he waggled a card in front of her and said with a smirk, “I have a special key. Besides, the A.I.s are down—the big-brained ones—so the city’s a mess.” He studied her critically for a moment then half-smiled. “So are you. You look like shit.”

  She wiped her eyes and briskly ran her fingers through her sleep-tangled hair, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Did you wake me up—” She glanced at the clock on the vee-com screen. “—at four in the morning just to insult me?” She scowled at him.

  “No,” he gave her a lopsided smile. “I came to take you to see my friends.”

  “Now?” She stared at him. “I don’t think Gaia will let me out “

  “Then we won’t tell her.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Like I said, the A.I.-core is down and half the city’s in chaos. It’s running on an emergency automatic system of non-AIs.”

  “I know.”

  He simply nodded. “So this is a perfect time to break you out. Everyone’s scrambling to keep the basic support systems going.”