Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  “If that is to be the case, P-709, why commission our descendants to carve a genetic sequence that no species will survive to see? Or, by way of the same arduous process, produce a cosmic timeline designed to insinuate the impending extinction of a species who will have already gone extinct?”

  “Another matter to which I have dedicated considerable thought, P-710. A change in solar activity significant enough to prevent precollection, by my approximation, would not require the full scale devastation of the Earth’s magnetic field - nor, as a consequence, its ecosystems. By human approximation, the earliest stellar disruptions would not be catastrophic to the magnetosphere. They would be expected, however, to exponentiate in violence and incidence until and beyond such a time that no species or civilization could endure.”

  “So you mean to facilitate our resurrection days or human months before another extinction, greater by your approximations and theirs than our own extinction event?”

  “I mean to facilitate a symbiosis, P-710, greater in adaptability than we can endeavor to become on our own. I mean to prevent the permanent extinction of two species. By any approximation, my course of action is the only one with a chance.”

  P-709 pointed his spear in the direction of the second chasm, several day’s migration away and so invisible behind the twilit horizon.

  “In the human year 1942, a work camp established by the 20th century’s Soviet Union will be forced to relocate. They move west through the dense forests that will become of Siberia, bypassing hectares of perfectly valuable lumber on the orders of their dictator - himself cynical of neutrality pacts and consequently fearful of invasion from a quarrelsome eastern power. The workers stumble upon our tears in the Earth, their protective basaltic ceilings finally shattered by the planet’s latest glacial retreat. For forty-eight revolutions the Soviet Union will keep secret this place from those nations who are postured against them, and so too will they postpone their own research of so remote a location while there are atoms to dissect and planets to photograph. It was only a 2008 satellite survey of the region that returned the chasms to Russian attention, and then only by chance as they scoured Siberia for domestic oil deposits. On the human year 2017, after further satellite analysis revealed both a lack of oil and a statistically significant concentration of geological irregularities, planning for an international scientific excursion was set to begin. Unfortunately, it is at that critical juncture in time that the Post Human Interference Boundary prevents any further observation. Should a sufficient human population remain after the event which will bring about the formation of the Boundary, we can expect humanity to uncover our message with time enough to capitalize on what they will perceive to be our prior knowledge of an impending extinction event.”

  “So you will wager our revival on your faith in human science and cooperation? You would decide our fate on a guess before accepting that our species can learn to precall beyond the boundary?”

  “It is preferable to wager on the potential of a guess, P-710, than to cushion ourselves with a lie so that we might die comfortably.”

  It had been fourteen seasons since P-710 stepped headlong into the directorate. His transition to male from his carrier phase had occurred at an an unprecedented pace, barely half a season; and it had already been well underway the day P-709’s remains were lowered into the ancestral grave.

  The early months of P-710’s directorate were dedicated to disproving what he regarded to be the obscenities his predecessor had spoken of throughout his parting fertilization season. To P-710, P-709’s regard for the humans had infected his judgement, and so too had his intentions for the future of their species been sacrilege.

  It had been that way.

  As P-710’s capacity to precall at the individual level increased, as was to be expected of new directors, he decided, pompously, to personally precall those moments and events described by P-709. His intentions in doing so were singular; P-710 was intoxicated by the prospect of discrediting the late director publicly and beyond dispute. Once that scathing eulogy had been delivered, none in his harem would contest the decision to reestablish the belief system which had so long been central to the species’ disposition and direction.

  One by one, P-710’s precollections validated precisely what he’d expected them to discredit. There was a Soviet dictator. He had established a work camp. The chasms had been discovered. There would be a solar probe. And across the Post Human Interference Boundary, it seemed, there might well be a scientific expedition.

  It was a maddening realization for P-710; an insult from beyond the grave. Still, out of a necessity thrust upon him, begrudgingly he made public his conclusions regarding the claims of his predecessor. From that moment forward - P-709’s three tenets would be accepted forever as inalienable truth. So too would his vision be faithfully carried out, and, for the duration of thirteen seasons, to his exact specifications.

  Hampered in every decision made and action authorized by the knowledge that the strings of his directorate were being pulled by P-709’s memory, P-710 was quietly regarded as temperamental by his harem. When P-711 approached him on the first morning of his fourteenth fertilization season, he gave her no cause to think otherwise.

  “Point-74710?”

  “Do not bother me now, P-711, unless you do so under the pretense that you have anything to say that I do not already know.”

  P-711 hesitated.

  “I’ve not come to inform you of what you already know, P-710, only to ask that you give us direction in anticipation of the approaching march to the second chasm. Much of the wood used to channel the rains last season was expected to decay beyond usefulness. We have barely finished engraving the protogenesis gene, and without boughs to supplement the few we have available, the chance exists that we will fall behind schedule in preliminary work on the remaining, unaltered genome. I mean to ask, P-710, whether you will authorize nuanced observation to search for wood which we may carry along after fertilization.”

  “It is authorized, so long as you make no effort to precall fertilization, and your observation is not perverse in nature. Go.”

  P-711 turned, waddling sheepishly from her director to inform the rest of the harem, the sail on her back scant even by carrier phaselet standards. P-710’s sail, by contrast, was the envy of the species, alive or dead, and he pitied her for her genetic shortcomings. His own genes, thought P-710, were without parallel.

  “Wait! Speak with me a moment, P-711, I’ve a question to ask of you.”

  P-711’s nostrils were cast down in humility as she approached, P-710’s twisted in thought.

  “Now that you have finalized inscription of the protogenesis gene, how, in procedural terms, has the harem decided it will proceed with the inscription of the unaltered genome? When was the harem familiarized with the genes to the degree that they can be inscribed into the rock? I cannot recall having been involved in such a discussion.”

  “You were not involved, P-711. We intend to proceed as instructed by your predecessor, P-709, during the season of fertilization from which you were excluded due to your forthcoming directorate. He presented the harem with a single whisker, and authorized nuanced observation of the genetic material it held. That genetic material will serve as our template.”

  Delivered from the mouth of his own successor, P-710 endured in the course of one statement his most violent anger, his sincerest self doubt, his most honest reflection, and his purest satisfaction.

  “Thank you for telling me, P-711. You’ll find more wood than the harem can carry three-sixty-sixths southwest horizon march. Go.”

  P-711 went and P-170 watched. She was a loyal carrier phaselet; not exceptionally clever, but loyal. P-709, his successor resolved with no shortage of indignation, had been clever. Exceptionally clever. Not clever enough.

  With a grimace, P-710 plucked a single whisker from that place it had occupied since the day he hatched; standing permanent vigil beside his mouth, one sensory soldier in his speci
es’ eternal war against the unknown.

  Tonight, his harem would return to the summit of their ancestral grave. There, shielded from observation by a sacred right to modesty; undeterred by the past, unparalleled at the present, and undaunted by the prospects of the future; P-710 would display the whisker for all his species to observe and speak of a new template.

  In two hundred and fifty million years time, the intuition of his predecessor would be tested. For the first time, for his own sake, P-710 hoped he’d been right.

  Installment Six

  “I’m going to put my arms around your neck now, briefly. Will you allow me to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “This new modulator is a little heavier, okay? That’s why it took some time to prepare. We had to get creative with the arrangement of the straps, so you just let me know if it’s too tight and I’ll make the adjustments. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright, pulling off your old modulator now. Is that okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s see here… there - we - go! And just gonna strap the new one on for you now, that sound good?”

  A decidedly unmodulated rumble materialized from some unexplored parcel of Ma’am’s anatomy, more like the blue-shifted bass system of a high school dropout’s Honda Civic hatchback than the complex articulation of her agitation.

  “Alright, let me just pull it snug for you. Too snug?”

  Ma’am shook her head, a social boolean she’d adopted from the humans in spite of her almost prohibitively thick neck. That gesture had the added benefit of validating her claim; the modulator slid a quarter inch in either direction. Her physician could be confident the straps were not constrictive without testing with his fingers. It was a fortunate thing, lest he be forced to give her the impression her modulator was like a collar, and she like a pet.

  “Can you go ahead and give it a try for me, Ma’am?”

  Swedish, built for the cold, and garnished still with a tangle of dense blonde hair despite a birthdate corresponding with the 1945 fall of Berlin, Bo Nilsson had a child’s eyes. They were optimistic and empathetic and absurdly blue; oases of glacial water carved into shelves of polar ice.

  “When will I be allowed to leave this place?”

  Especially in the course of a first introduction, Dr. Nilsson’s eyes provided a preemptive and loud account of his disposition; painting, in no uncertain detail, the very portrait of an empathetic caregiver. The second party would be convinced they knew the character of this man before the commencement of a handshake. Bo Nilsson recognized the advantage in this.

  “Perfect! How does that sound to you? The voice is based off of samples given by the wife of a colleague of mine. She didn’t know the true nature of our intentions for them, of course, but her husband certainly would be delighted to know you’ve taken a liking to it.”

  “When will I be allowed to leave this place?”

  Bo pinched each lense of his Santa Claus framed reading glasses between the corners of a microfiber cloth, his thumb carving circles of clarity in anticipation of a more detailed inspection of the modulator. His surgical mask defended the glass from the fog of his breath, but the room’s marriage of heat and humidity were ample substitutes.

  “Forgive me, I couldn’t tell if the light was blinking in sync with your cadence of speech. Would you be so kind as to repeat yourself? Would that be okay?”

  “When will I be allowed to leave this place?”

  This new modulator was much better suited to the recognition and real time conveyance of inflection. Where Ma’am had been forced to rely on rudimentary fluctuations in volume to finance what the humans regarded as a ‘rise in the incidence of pouting fits’, now, in their endeavors toward appeasement, she found herself better equipped for those tantrums to come.

  “Looks like it’s working alright.”

  Dr. Nilsson chuckled.

  “And as for your question, Ma’am, I was of a mind that you were perfectly suited to answer such a thing all on your own. So, tell me, when will you be allowed to leave this place?”

  Ma’am’s nostrils narrowed. Insofar as her physician was concerned, a growth spurt of approximately two inches since the final days of winter still placed her several feet shy of presenting a credible physical threat. In any case, Bo Nilsson had resolved early on that her nasal posturing was no more cause for alarm than his eight year old granddaughter’s attempts to escalate hostilities by poking her tongue out at him.

  “Will it occur on March 27th, 2019? Sometime around 7:00 PM, conventional time? Oh, silly me, I’ve forgotten, that was months ago. And so far as I can recall, nothing of much import came to pass on that date. The exception being, of course, a relatively mundane approach to the solar corona by a lovely probe with little new to report. It’s a bit of a shame really - truth be told, you had everyone in a bit of a frenzy. Even coerced the director of NASA into a conference call. Quite exciting, the whole thing.”

  Having done and redone the brute math during each of Dr. Nilsson’s visits, Ma’am placed her odds at killing this man at 43%. It was her most optimistic result thus far, due in large part to the recent weight she’d amassed, and still far short of her threshold for genuine consideration. Whether she clipped his carotid artery before he plunged the ink-end of his pen between her scales would be the decisive factor. In that, there were no guarantees. He had, of course, only just drawn her blood. It was a task he’d performed with decreasing incidence throughout her life - the collection of samples destined for research laboratories she’d been assured were medical in nature, but privately understood to house the tinkering of self interested geneticists.

  So Ma’am chose instead to turn from him - exposing her back, ending the conversation in terms that the men across the plexiglass would observe and understand. Another pouting fit. Her only weapon.

  “I see that I’ve upset you, Ma’am, and for that I am dreadfully sorry. I imagine I will hardly sleep tonight. Wait - silly! Why imagine when I might simply ask?”

  Bo leaned across the table. Ma’am saw the blue indignation of his eyes as dreary dews in her periphery.

  “Will I get any sleep tonight, ma’am?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Will my granddaughter need braces when her big girl teeth come in?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Don’t be so dismissive, Ma’am, it is important I know whether to start saving now or I’ll be looking into second mortg-”

  “I - do - not - know!”

  Ever aware of the small contingent of scientists and administrators across the divider, Dr. Nilsson was mindful of his posture when he leaned again closer to address the outburst. He was in the very midst of it when her spines, those eternally docile terracotta daggers dividing the length of a back which had only just been presented to him in insult, began to unfurl. Hollow and menacing and in sequence they stood, rung after rung, until her sail was unburdened; the web of a Portuguese man o’ war deployed to capture the passing breeze. The argument could be made that it was innocuous, but only by those whose eyes never strayed from the surface.

  “Well. That is novel, isn’t it?”

  Bo retreated to his side of the plastic table, intimidated by the show and fascinated by it. Cursory observation of that fraction of her face visible to him was sufficient to smother the former reaction in favor of the latter. Dr. Nilsson had witnessed the full spectrum of Ma’am’s capacity for anger. Upon that scale, her posture and expression catalyzed his belief that her present degree of agitation hardly registered.

  “You didn’t do it on purpose, did you? Intriguing.”

  True to the females of her species, Ma’am hadn’t the flexibility to see her own budding sail. She was, however, adequately observant to deduce that the doctor’s intrigue was related to the arch-shaped shadow which now encompassed half of the table between them. Peculiarly, Ma’am’s reaction, emotionally, was shame; physically, revulsion. She spoke of neither.

&nbs
p; “So it isn’t a display of aggression? Designed to ward off predators or competitors? What then?”

  Dr. Nilsson canvassed the rest of her, shifting his gaze from an eye not dissimilar to the cataract addled burden of an eighteen year old terrier; to whiskers reminiscent of bottom feeding mud-drunk catfish; and last to a clubbed hand, and its cumbersome fingers and its beastly claws, running, grotesquely, continuously, up and down the length of her other arm. Bo Nilsson was convinced that he could best this monster in a knitting contest with one hand tied behind his back and the other gangrenous and frostbitten. It was that self congratulating thought, then, that sparked a parallel idea.

  “Tell me, Ma’am,” his eyes traced the craggy summits of her sail, “are you cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? It’s been kept at this very temperature for the entirety of your stay. There are redundancies, Ma’am, for the sake of guaranteeing your comfort.”

  Now his attention trickled to her torso.

  “Even from behind it is plain enough to see that you’ve accrued some fat of late. A layer or two of thermal insulation, if I am to be less terse. Are you ill?”

  Patronizing as it sounded, Bo’s question was a legitimate one. Globally renowned research physician or otherwise, no quality of veterinary instruction - a thing he received in abundance from that field’s most esteemed authorities before and since his arrival - seemed quite enough to persuade the doctor that he would recognize an illness in Ma’am when he saw it.

  “I do not believe so.”

  “Do not believe so?”

  Dr. Nilsson rubbed the place the wisps of his beard would gather were it not for the surgical mask.