Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “Yeah, first off, there are some limits to what we can learn from these tissue samples. I can’t tell you much about the brain, vital organs, and such, but I can describe the nervous system, or what works as such in this creature. I can also nearly guarantee that it is synthetic, a bit of a chimera.”

  “So, Thrall’s people built it, from what, the image in the Sanctuary?” Cade asked.

  “Sanctuary, is that what we’re calling it now?” Jaz replied.

  Cade had forgotten he and Doris hadn’t shared much that they had learned from Mila. Briefly, he wondered how the girl was doing. Better than her victims, that was to be sure.

  Jaz was answering, “No, they apparently had an original sample. Maybe not organic tissue but, at least, a genetic blueprint.”

  “What, like DNA?”

  “Not exactly, Cade, as this organism is not like anything else. I am putting it all into a ReLoad pack for you and your team. Simple answer is, every living multi-cell organism on the planet uses DNA, whether it be animal, plant, bacteria, or something else. You do need to keep in mind, though, that ‘life’ is a rather vague term. One that doesn't have a single generally agreed-upon definition.

  “One variation of this is that some viruses use DNA, but others use an alternative called RNA for the same purpose. Viruses fit the general definitions of life in some areas, but not others. So, we must accept that there may be creatures with some very different ways of passing genetic material to an offspring.”

  “Okay, I sorta think I get that, Jaz,” Cade said slowly.

  “Good, cause you need that as a starting point for what comes next. Several years ago, scientists discovered that humans carry a second type of DNA, something called an i-motif. It looks nothing like the classic double-helix of a DNA strand. In fact, the structure is normally referred to as a twisted knot. The interesting thing is, where DNA has two strands, you know, the classic image of the rails of the spiral helix staircase, well, i-motif has four strands.”

  “You’re losing me, Doc, I’m not following this or why it’s important,” Cade said.

  “Believe me,” Jaz said, “we don’t fully understand it either. Essentially, four strands offer more connections, more resilience, and we think, more options for adaptability. You need to understand that even though the human genome has been fully mapped, for the vast majority, we have no idea what it does. Honestly, less than six percent is even partially understood.”

  “Yeah,” Cade remembered. “The rest they call Junk DNA, right?”

  “Exactly,” Jaz answered. “It obviously isn’t junk, it does something, or did at one point, in our evolutionary past but now may be dormant, or maybe it's just waiting for the right time to be needed. The information packed into our DNA is usually referred to by the chemical bases or nucleotides called A, G, C, and T. Think of these for a moment like computer code—instead of binary zero and one, it is quaternary. That is essentially binary squared. I know it’s confusing, but the point is, DNA is capable of carrying a tremendous amount of biological information in an extremely small, densely packed space. I-motif has the potential to be an order of magnitude greater than that.”

  “We aren’t computers, though, Jaz, and that sea dragon isn’t either. Where is this going?”

  “Cade, you heard the accounts Micah and Nance have given of the dreams, the visions, and all the data that seemed to come at them after their encounter with the Saraph?”

  He had heard and seen the recordings the team had made. He and Charlie had gone to see the kid before they transported him back up to Georgia. He still looked rough, but now fully conscious at least. “Yeah, part of the animal’s defense system. What did you call it, a neural pulse?”

  “I did, yeah, but that’s just because I have nothing known to base it on. Think of it this way: DNA is capable of carrying tons of data about who you are and where you came from. Forensic geneticists can now track back your family tree for centuries, and Doris has analyzed human evolution back to an event about 70,000 years ago when the human species very nearly went extinct. Something they refer to as the Toba Catastrophe. So, my point is that DNA is an extremely capable mechanism for transporting data and passing it along to others, namely your offspring.”

  “I’m with you, so far, but we’re still not computers.”

  “Cade, you know you can be exhausting?” Jaz laughed. “No, human DNA is not a computer, it’s better. Better even than Doris.”

  “Wait, what?” Cade asked, the tempo of his voice rising sharply.

  Jaz added, “Amazing things about DNA, so basic, and yet, so complex. What is so astounding, though, is the density of information that can be crammed into one strand of DNA. What I am describing is something that exists already called molecular-based data storage. DARPA has been investing heavily in it for years, starting with…you guessed it, Cryptus.

  “Thrall seemed to have an innate understanding that what he had in his hands was some ancient biochemical way of storing encoded data in DNA. Scientists now say that all the world's data can fit on a DNA-based hard drive the size of a teaspoon. Think about that for a minute, Cade. A single gram of DNA could theoretically hold up to around 500 exabytes of data.”

  “So, our sea monster is a swimming, eating, fish-shitting, giant hard drive?”

  “Rather crude way of phrasing it, but yes. DNA, but even more advanced than our i-motif. The Saraph’s DNA uses a sixteen-strand molecular structure. It doesn’t use any of the nucleotide, but instead, another type of marker, which, if I am correct, would be about a hundred times more complex than our G, T, C, A system.”

  Cade could feel Ace crawling around inside his skull; it seemed like the analyst persona was busy opening and slamming shut mental filing cabinets trying to make sense of all this. “So, Thrall built the Saraphs not for protection, but for information? And when the creatures attack, it is what, trying to communicate?”

  “That’s one likely possibility, yes,” Jaz said.

  “So, what’s the information you’ve analyzed, its…its data file?”

  Jaz replied, “That got moved out of my hands to Izzy, Jimmy, and Doris. They’re using a section of the linguistics team to work on it, but yeah, it's encrypted, but they believe it’s familiar.”

  “No fucking way,” Cade said, sliding down the wall. “It’s like our original alien message?”

  “Doris can recognize certain passages as being very similar to the Dhakerri primer, not the same, but very similar. She says it looks less refined, perhaps much older,” Jaz answered.

  “Holy shit, two-billion-year-old dino-dragon-DNA and out pops an alien manifesto.”

  “That’s not all, Cade.” Jaz paused before going on. “When Micah saw the dataset, well, he could read it, he’s able to interpret much of the code now. Apparently, what the Saraph imprinted on him, maybe inadvertently, was the ability to understand at least some of the Angel code. Doris thinks he may be able to read the Dhakerri version as well now.”

  65

  The Cove

  Micah didn’t understand all the fuss. It wasn’t a superpower or anything, but for whatever reason, he could kind of understand a lot of what he was seeing. Riley was by his side as Jimmy teased ever more of the exotic data from the Molecular Data Storage. “Riley, please don’t look at me like that, you make me feel like a freak.”

  She leaned in and hugged him. “You’ve always been a freak, just now we know why. You have an alien brain!”

  Micah shook his head and laughed. “Gimme the next one, Jimmy.”

  “Okay, looks similar to the last one,” Jimmy said. “Definitely something about—whoa—that can’t be right.” He and Doris were attempting to compare the data Jaz was extracting from the DNA to the primer she’d received years earlier. Some of it was exactly the same; some was in one, but not the other, and some, like this piece, was only in the DNA based data.

  Micah looked at the display screen, “Okay, uh, I see, and, oh yeah, that is something new. At first it looks like
one of the chemistry tutorials, like the one for our polysteel composite, but not this one, well, it relates to gravity.”

  Jimmy nodded. “I thought it might be. Some of it looks familiar when I translate it into Doris’s code.”

  Micah worked at the keyboard for quite a while, interpreting what he saw into a basic index of understanding. Izzy could add it to the Codex if it all checked out. She was a math prodigy and one of the true natural geniuses at The Cove.

  “Riley, if Micah’s translation is correct, that would show that gravity is not as fixed or as weak as we’d assumed,” Doris said.

  Riley just shook her head in amazement as Doris continued. “Based on what Micah has already interpreted, I can make a logical guess as to much of the rest.”

  Jimmy’s head snapped up. “You’ve interpreted it all?”

  “No,” she responded. “I am talking about the size of the file, it is incomplete. Not enough here to be even the entire primer, much less what was in the rest of our complete Dhakerri messages.”

  Micah nodded. “I sense that as well, Doris. It’s almost like this is one part of a bigger riddle. Somewhere inside of this is the key to the next part of the message.”

  “In your visions, did you see any other creatures, anything besides the Saraph?” asked Doris.

  “I don’t know, maybe, just don’t recall. I wouldn’t have recalled any of this had Riley not shown it to me.”

  “What are you thinking, Doris?” Jimmy asked.

  “I have cataloged some two dozen creatures within the images scanned in the Sanctuary cave in Antarctica. Alan’s BallCam is still there working to capture all the other images in incredibly detailed resolution, but only two of these animals are what we now call Saraphs. I have determined that there’s a hierarchy in how they are displayed. This could be random or purely aesthetic. I don’t yet understand any other reason to the grouping, but the Saraph is relatively low in that hierarchy, occupying the first few slots essentially.”

  “So, other creatures might hold other parts of the data?” Micah asked.

  “That is one hypothesis, yes, if the aliens wanted to ensure that all of their creatures, and possibly themselves as well, were reconstituted at some future time.”

  “Holy shit,” Riley said, using language that she reserved for only the most special of occasions. “That would be unbelievably clever and diabolical. Encode parts of something so important, so revolutionary, that no species could resist it. Design various parts of it into all the important species in your world and have some future race re-engineer all of you back to life to get to it. Chances are, they start with the most basic, at least to them. They would want you to make all the mistakes, figure out all the science, before moving onto more complex creations.”

  “Such as intelligent creatures,” Jimmy said.

  “The Saraph seemed pretty intelligent to me, I mean for a claw-footed sea dragon.”

  Doris answered, “No, Micah, I think your first instinct was the correct one. I believe it was designed to broadcast parts of the data encoded within its DNA. That would get any researchers pointed in the right direction. Obviously, any civilization with the capability to create life from ancient DNA should have a rudimentary understanding of the rest of it. And, if Margaret is correct, this sample has been in our hands, and by our, I mean humans, for at least eighty years.”

  “Probably took that long for the fields of genetics to advance enough,” Riley said.

  “And computers, no way you could do all this without a supercomputer, or a warehouse full of them,” Jimmy said.

  “Or possibly a single AI.”

  “You aren’t talking about yourself are you, Doris?”

  “No, if Thrall was working on this at Cryptus, then it stands to reason he may have built Janus to handle the decoding.”

  “But Janus knew nothing about any alien message, he nearly burned down the world just to get to more of the fragment he thought you had,” Micah offered.

  “And that is what bothers me. There is only one reason Janus wouldn’t have retained some of that knowledge deep in his original neural network.”

  As usual, Riley got up to speed faster than the others. “He was superseded by something more advanced.”

  “Yes, Thrall wiped Janus clean before giving it up to DARPA. Meanwhile, he was already using something even more advanced. We may have another Level 4 or above AI out there,” said Doris.

  Riley stated what all of them were thinking, “No, no, no….oh, God, no.”

  66

  Guantanamo Bay

  “Captain, they have updated you with the latest findings?”

  Cade was growing impatient with the lack of knowing when and where to deploy. “Yes, Director, we all got ReLoad updates from Doris, and Riley is keeping us posted on anything that might help get past the Saraph and gain entrance to the Kalypso.”

  She nodded. “I understand we have some new toys on the way.”

  “We do, Director. And normally, I’d be wary of anything untested on an actual mission, but I don’t think we have a choice here.”

  “You understand Thrall has had access to this alien information possibly longer than Doris. That means you may well be going up against weapons and tech as good or better than what Talon carries.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cade answered. “That is my assumption as well. We’ll have to rely on tactics and combat skills to give us the edge. We train for this; we’ve been using most of the gear for months, and we can work as a team.”

  “Okay, Rearden, I’m heading back to The Cove and will direct the operation from there. The Navy is standing by to offer any assets it can, but they will not enter Cuban waters. Not without an express order from the president. And…I would really prefer to leave President Ortiz out of this, Captain. Do you understand?”

  Cade nodded. “I do.” That meant no backup and no escape plan except what they could come up with on their own.

  “Director, one thing. The briefing indicated this all came about because of Israel attacking one of our warships in the late sixties. How deep does this thing go?”

  She poured herself a coffee, checked her watch, and sat down at the table, motioning Cade to join her. “It wasn’t a warship. The Liberty was a spy-ship. Actually, she was the sister ship of the USS Pueblo.”

  “Pueblo,” he said, thinking aloud. “That was the one seized by North Korea back around that same time?”

  Margaret nodded. “About a year after the attack on the Liberty, but the Pueblo got lots more attention. Became an international media event. The eighty-odd member crew was taken prisoner, tortured, but eventually all were released. The North Koreans still hold the ship as a war trophy.” She took a sip of the coffee and arranged her thoughts.

  “I’ve been reassessing what I thought I knew in light of this new information. I must say that Project Saraph offers a great deal more clarity to what most consider to be one of the most bizarre moments in America’s history. Apparently, Israel had acquired the basics of Project Saraph. One of the scientists on the exploration team in Operation Highjump was an Israeli. We apparently didn’t think much of whatever it was she took from the Sanctuary, or maybe we just didn’t know. Byrd had gone nuts, ships were sunk, soldiers were missing. That whole thing was a shit show, Captain,” the director explained.

  “So, we let Israel have the alien DNA, or instructions on recreating it, or whatever she got from the mountaintop cave,” Cade offered.

  “Quite right….it was not precisely a secret. A few knew, mostly back in the U.S., but also a few of the Arab states who probably were tipped off by Soviet intelligence. All of that came to a head in the summer of 1967. That June, three of Israel’s neighbors decided the time was right to retake the Holy Land and remove Israel from the board. The U.S. was distracted, bogged down in a damn hopeless war in Vietnam, and honestly, tensions over the Jewish state had been building since its inception. Was there Soviet pressure on the Arab nations to invade Israel? Our sources say yes
, but that’s irrelevant.”

  “You’re talking about the Six-Day War. I read about it in history class. How is this relevant to the artifact?” Cade asked.

  “It is relevant for what happened the third night of the conflict. The United States’ interest in the lab at Tel Aviv had increased. They were closely monitoring Project Saraph and were concerned the technology might be compromised, possibly even being destroyed, or worse, fall into enemy hands. The U.S. demanded Israel return the project, which now was beginning to show great promise. Israel refused, so several operatives were handpicked to go into the labs, secure the research, and acquire any of the original samples. Everything else was to be destroyed.”

  “We sent spies into Israel?”

  “Of course, Captain, don’t be naïve, we still do. And they spy on us—it’s what keeps us good allies,” Margaret responded.

  Cade shook his head and motioned with his hand for her to continue.

  “In the last few days, Doris has uncovered information that we stole the research, and the lab was destroyed that night. The explosion was apparently supposed to make it look like Egypt had been the culprit, but somehow that didn’t happen. Two of the operatives were wounded but made it back to a small U.S. ship that had been ordered to pick them up. From here, it gets muddy.”

  “The Liberty?” Cade asked.

  The director continued, “Yes, exactly, the USS Liberty. Like I said, she was a secret spy ship bristling with intelligence gathering and surveillance equipment, and I suspect Israel had already been watching her closely. They don’t like being snooped on, and some had already suggested that America might make a play for Saraph, which had quietly become one of the most closely guarded secrets in the young nation. Despite all the tension with their enemies, Israeli intelligence knew we might use the war as a good excuse to reclaim what we felt was rightfully ours. Whatever the case, it is apparent they tracked the escaping spies in the general direction of the Liberty, which was cruising down the coastline a bit closer than it should have been.