“Sure, that would be great!” I hoped my relief was interpreted as enthusiasm. That had been easier than I thought. Nutritional Analysis - I hadn’t expected anything so mundane.
“How about tonight? Have you ever been down to the lower level of the Shell?” He asked. Hmm… what was in the lower level?
“I haven’t,” I replied. I felt a strange thrumming in my limbs, not unlike the thrill of solving a new puzzle. “I’m done with my research for the day. I could go after dinner.” I replied. Why was I so nervous?
“Perfect, I’ll take you right after dinner.” He was smiling, but his messy dark hair obscured his eyes.
“-where are you taking her?” Ellis dropped her tray down on the table next to mine.
“I was going to show her the Lower Level Garden Center.” He answered. Ellis looked at me with some unfathomable intent in her green eyes, before looking back at Adam.
“Make sure to give her the grand tour, wouldn’t want to miss any of the sights and smells.” She laughed.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” He shook his head, irony turning up the corners of his mouth.
When we finally finished our meal, Ellis turned to me, “Have fun you two!” She was clearly sharing some kind of inside joke with Adam. Then she winked at me. She actually winked. My face flushed red against my will. It felt like her joke was at my expense, but I wasn’t sure why. Ellis picked up her tray and walked away before I could say anything else. She left with a blonde girl and a younger looking boy I hadn’t seen before.
Adam and I left the cafeteria together after we finished our meal.
“So how does nutritional analysis fit into the project?” I asked, maintaining the small talk I had been attempting throughout dinner.
“Well, the Alliance wants to make sure that Sector 4 is safe, right? So, I’m trying to figure out how many individuals the Alliance’s agriculture program can actually support. It might be safe, but only up to a certain level.” He started leading me towards the large staircase at the end of the atrium.
“Right. That makes sense,” I agreed. “I guess I didn’t know the Alliance had an agriculture program here.” Now we were getting somewhere.
“Yes, every sector has some type of food production system in place, and it is being tested here in sector 4.” He explained.
We kept going, past the floor where all the soldiers slept, and through a number of unused floors.
“The Garden Center is in the lowest level of the Shell currently being used.” He added. It seemed strange that they would have it so far away from the cafeteria where food was served, inefficient even. I tried to determine how they would be able to move crops up to the upper level easily, but nothing was coming to mind. The shell didn’t seem to have elevator shafts, with the exception of the auxiliary entrance Adam and I had used when I first got here. We moved deep into the cold and empty lower levels, floor after floor.
“It’s so quiet down here.” I almost felt the urge to whisper.
“It’s kind of nice to come down here sometimes, It helps me think.” He responded. “It’s only a little bit further.”
I followed behind him watching him turn onto the floor labeled LL-A for Lower Level A. He navigated down a labyrinth of hallways until we came up to a door with a huge glass window. He held the door, ushering me in. The door was tight and I squeezed in against Adam’s lanky frame, his arm propping open the entrance. The smell hit me immediately. It was a noxious chemical odor.
“What is that?” I gasped, unable to breathe clearly through the fumes.
“It’s a proprietary fertilizer of some sort,” He frowned. “But I haven’t been able to figure out what’s in it yet.”
I could see what Ellis had been joking about now, the smell was awful.
“It’s hardly a Garden Center,” I tried to not breathe through my nose, but there was a chemical taste on my tongue. “All I can see is soy.”
There were long fields of it embedded in a synthetic soil substrate, under the enormous grow lights. Adam led me to a door on the other side of the massive room. It opened into a lab, smaller than the one where I worked, but just as nice.
“It’s the only crop as far as I can tell.” He added.“That’s what the Alliance Nutrition program uses to mainly.”
I sat on one of the chairs by a computer, trying to clear the smell out of my airways. I thought back to the meal packets that Ellis and I had eaten on that first day out in the jungle. Adam turned on the computer and microscopic slides appeared.
“This is what I found that seems to be causing the smell. It causes the plants to grow faster, but it’s not like any normal kind of fertilizer.”
I looked at the compound pictured on the computer.
“Are you sure this is it? It looks like a virus or some type of active biological specimen.” I moved closer, pulling my chair up next to him. He flipped through more images.
“It seems to attach to the roots of the plant and then the plant just starts growing like crazy. It doesn’t even really seem to add nutrients, which is why I can’t figure it out.” I was just as confounded as he was. A bio-fertilizer that doesn’t even add nutrients to the plant?
“What if it is like a virus,” I said, a thought beginning to form in my mind. I had seen what viruses could do to animal populations. It could make them act crazy, and do things that they would never actually do. A virus could even cause a prey animal to give itself up to a predator. “What if it is simply rewiring the plant to grow keep growing even without the proper stimuli.”
Even as I said it it sounded ridiculous.
“-but that would mean that the crops produced would be nutritional garbage. There would be no benefit to that. Would there?” He argued, but then I saw a look of horror on his face. I came to the realization only a moment after he did.
“It would be cheap,” I said. “-and fast. It would be a way for the Alliance to produce a lot of food really quickly.”
“The side-effect would be severe malnutrition.” His eyes were hard as he said it.
“If the virus was causing the plant to use waste products for building mass, then it would be calorically rich without containing adequate vitamins and minerals.” I was working it out aloud. It would also explain the smell. It seemed to come together at once, faster than I could get the words out.
“People would starve to death without even knowing it.” His voice seemed to echo around the lab. There was real fear in his eyes now. That was borderline treason, To accuse the Alliance of trying to starve people. Even if the Alliance didn’t know about the fertilizing agent, to even suggest that they would be doing that was worthy of punishment.
“Maybe we should wait to add any of this to our reports,” I said, conjuring an image of Officer Ridley in my mind.
“I think you’re right.” He said determinedly. “We need more information.”
The walk back up to the atrium was long. Every flight of stairs felt like it should be the last, only for us to turn and be faced with another. My legs were growing sore. Things were tense after our conversation. Neither one of us wanted to say anything that might implicate us in illicit activities. When we finally reached the lab up top, we both turned in to go to bed without a word. The questions only seemed to pile up, but at least it seemed I could trust Adam. I was relieved, but I still couldn’t help but feel that there was more to the illusions I had seen in the forest.
Chapter 11
Every day for weeks, I got up and went straight to the lab, trying to get some answers from the data. Several things were clear to me: the jungle was way too organized, the strange waxy vines had something to do with it, and something about it made the Alliance nervous. Somehow, I couldn’t seem to make it all fit together. I dutifully filled out my reports for Ridley every week with the most inconspicuous information I could formulate, but that didn’t keep him from hounding me every chance he got. I kept asking myself, why did they choose me for this project? The Commander had said they had read my p
aper on Starling Migration Patterns. I still don’t know who “they” is exactly and how was that relevant to my research here.
The only similarity so far was that the forest was organized in a way that didn’t seem natural. The way the trees were growing wasn’t random. It was cultivated, intelligent almost. It was like the trees of the forest were behaving more like a group of migratory birds, than a collection of plants. The patterns were very consistent. The trees were organized into concentric circles and each was paired with a symbiotic flowering vine. At the center was the mysterious structure formed by vines that I wasn’t sure if I had hallucinated or not. What were the vines doing for the trees that allowed them to grow that way? With the Starlings, I hypothesized that had formed a mechanism for communication as a group that transcended their individual intelligence. Was that somehow the case here? I had to gather more evidence. My intuition was guiding me towards something and I felt compelled to follow it.
That morning Ellis wasn’t anywhere to be found, so I suited up and went alone. I wore a black full body suit, with gloves and a respirator mask. If I would be going solo, I had to take precautions. The respirator caused my breathing to echo back to me as I walked into the looming mouth of the forest. It felt like I was walking into an alien planet. I walked straight into the heart of Sector 4 where I knew there would be plenty of the vines for me to examine. Even looking through my mask, I could see the structure from afar. It was a complex wall, with a woven pattern that seemed clearly designed. I followed the pattern but couldn’t find any evidence that the vines had been manipulated or trained to grow that way. There were no openings where I could pass my hand through the structure. It was completely solid. I walked around the circular structure before sitting in front of it, frustrated by my inability to figure it out. I waited and watched for a long time allowing the hum of the Jungle fill my senses. After a while, a starling landed in front of the structure. It seemed particularly interested in the fiery red flowers on the vines before it turned toward me. It felt like it was staring at me. If I hadn’t been wearing the full body suit, I might have thought I was seeing things. The bird seemed to want me to look at it. I followed it as it hopped along the edge of the structure. I reached out to touch the flowers, entranced by their strange color. I took a few samples, but the starling never stopped watching me. It was insistently moving its head. I reached toward the vines, examining them. I felt the woven structure give slightly and I felt a tugging sensation in my arm. I reached deeper, my hand passing through the curtain. I was able to move the section out of the way. My heart was racing, but I felt strangely clear-headed. Inside, was a path that followed the circle of vines before leading down in a spiral to a huge open area covered in soft green grass. The sky opened to the canopy of the forest, like a small sanctuary in the jungle. There were people in this room, all wearing woven linen similar to Achi and all covered in a variety of paints. In the middle was a very old woman with long silvery-black hair laying on a straw mat. She wore a shawl that was the pelt of a jaguar. There were people here. Unless this was an illusion as well.
Next to the woman was Adam. It took me several minutes to believe what I was seeing. He was pressing on her lymph nodes and testing her reflexes. I could only assume he was giving her a check-up of sorts. I tried to remain calm, but it was difficult to hide the accusation from my eyes. He was here and had hidden it from me. Why? The IPA didn’t seem to know about this tribe, but he was working for them. To be fair, I was working for them too. Was he helping this tribe hide from the Alliance? He stood up from where he sitting with the woman and she gently released his hand. He covered her with a woven blanket, though it was quite warm. His eyes were bloodshot and weighted down by exhaustion. I felt my anger soften, but I had to stay firm. When he walked over to the edge of the circular structure his tired eyes widened in shock.
“They brought you here too?” He gestured to the woven enclosure.
“What is this place? You better start talking now.” My voice was forceful. “Nobody has given me any straight answers since I’ve been here.”
“Okay.” He fidgeted with his hands for a moment, sighing quietly before conceding. “Fair enough.”
“So?” I pressed, “Where are we?”
“You mean you didn’t get brought here?” He seemed confused.
“Of course not,” I was impatient for him to start giving me some answers.
He looked at Achi who had retreated a few yards away, presumably to give us some space. She nodded as if giving him permission.
“This is one of the indigenous tribes of the Southern Equatorial Forest.”
“I had sort of gathered that,” I said with measured sarcasm.
“Yes, well. Until several months ago, they were completely uncontacted, hidden from the Global Peace Alliance in Sector 4.” He let the words sink in. They were unregistered. That was an international crime. Any indigenous people groups were required to register their status with the Alliance.
It had never seemed possible that there might be groups that the Alliance didn’t know about. The Indigenous Protection Act had been established before I was born. The Alliance said it was for the purpose of ensuring that all people had adequate living conditions and proper nutrition. There had been some controversy a few years back when a tribe in the Upper Frozen Lands of nAM-7 petitioned to keep their traditional form of housing and diet, but the Alliance would not allow it. They were now subsisting solely off of Soyka and living in the Concrete houses build by Disaster Management Crews. We could be in serious trouble for not reporting them if the Alliance found out that we knew they were here. I swallowed hard, thinking of what we had found about the soy crop here. Was it like that everywhere? Was the Alliance starving these tribes?
“Several months ago?” I was confused. “How long have you known?”
“A while.” He sighed again.
“So they’ve been reported?” I asked, feeling the heaviness of my own words. After what happened in the Frozen Lands I knew they would never be allowed to exist undisturbed.
“Well, not exactly.” For the first time since I’d met him, Adam looked uncertain.
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“Okay,” He laid out his hands. “The thing is, this is going to be a sort of long story. Just give me a minute.” He walked over to Achi and began whispering to her in low tones before turning back to me. “Let’s step outside for a minute.”
Achi held open the spot in the vines again, allowing us to exit. She seemed to be able to make the curtain part with ease. As soon as she released the vines, they seemed to close seamlessly behind us. I let Adam lead the way. He seemed very uncomfortable. We headed towards a large tree root that rose up from the ground and sat down on it.
“Who else knows?” I questioned him.
“Just you, me, and Commander Marshall.” He said.
“Why didn’t Commander Marshall report them?” I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. I was going to get to the bottom of this.
“I’m going to answer that, but just… let me start at the beginning.” He was sweating, I could see the sheen on his forehead.
“Okay, so start.”
“Right. Commander Marshall recruited me to come here right after I graduated from The Alliance Medical Academy.” He must have graduated at the same time as I did. That would make us roughly the same age. I considered him, his handsome features twisted with anxiety. He seemed to be telling me the truth, at least his tone was sincere.
He continued, “I was recruited because I have a particular skill set that Commander Marshall thought might come in handy.”
“You’re a medic?” It wasn’t that rare of a placement.
“Yes I am a medic, but before I was a medic, I had other training.”
“Did you attend one of the other Alliance Academies?”
“No, I was trained by my Grandfather.”
“Come on, don’t make me drag it out of you.” I was waiting on his every wor
d, anything to answer some of my questions, but he was taking his time.
“Do you want me to tell you what I know or not?” His tone was precariously strained.
“Sorry,” I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. He looked like he was trying to unburden himself of some terrible secret. I tried to summon every ounce of patience I had.
“My grandfather was an Anthropologist before the Alliance came to power, I mean. Anyway, he trained me to recognize symbols, to study the artifacts of culture, and to try to understand people from all over the world. I went to the Medical Academy, but Anthropology was my true interest.” He was talking fast as the story spilled out. I nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“Commander Marshall knew my Grandfather from when he was a student before Anthropology was declared an inefficient field of study,” He was still looking away from me. “So when Commander Marshall found evidence of a tribe in Sector 4, he sent for me.” He stopped speaking as if that explained it all.
Emergence: Threshold Series Book I Page 9
