“We all learn to walk and climb in our own time,” Jack assured her. “I’m certain Rajesh’s program, imperfect as it was, was only intended to get you started.”
Anna’s reply was drowned out by Dag entering the workshop holding a BLT on wholewheat bread.
“Jack! I see the president fought the urge to throw you two in jail,” he said, wiping a glob of mayo from the side of his mouth.
“Aren’t you a vegan?” Jack asked, eyeing the dangling strip of bacon with envy.
Dag glanced down at his sandwich and chuckled. “Vegetarian, and this ain’t real bacon. It’s called vacon and it’s not bad at all. Head into the canteen and they’ll make you one.”
The side of Jack’s mouth crinkled. “Sorry, but you lost me after fake bacon.” He grew serious. “Grab the others, will you? There’s something important they need to hear and there isn’t a lot of time.”
Dag motioned over his shoulder. “They were right behind me a second ago.”
A moment later, Gabby, Rajesh, and Eugene appeared. The two men were in a heated debate about Han Solo’s Kessel Run and whether George Lucas really knew a parsec was a measurement of space and not time.
“I have the utmost confidence the man knew what he was saying,” Rajesh bellowed, animating his point with exasperated hand movements. Depending on your point of view, the Indian computer engineer was either plump or cuddly.
Facing off against him was Eugene Jarecki. The fortysomething theoretical physicist was better known as the director and sole member of the OOSA (Office for Outer Space Affairs). In spite of his thinning hair and slight stature, the guy had the unlikely combination of Steve Buscemi’s looks and Brad Pitt’s confidence.
“Lucas didn’t know what the hell he was talking about,” Eugene said, his voice marked with a nasal pinch. “He got caught fair and square and tried to cover with some lame story about the Millennium Falcon’s navigation system being so sophisticated it was able to calculate a straighter path through hyperspace.”
Gabby raised her arms in a painful-looking shrug. “Don’t we have better things to worry about than some cheesy, irrelevant sci-fi movie?” Her round, caring face was framed by shoulder-length silver hair. But what the troubled expression on her face really said was, If I have to listen to one more second of this, someone’s going to get hurt.
Eugene and Rajesh spun in unison.
“Cheesy?” Eugene exclaimed, his features squished up with shock and horror.
Rajesh’s eyes narrowed. “Irrelevant?”
Dag rushed over and gripped Rajesh by the shoulders, as though wrangling a potentially dangerous animal. “Easy, big fella.”
“Dr. Greer,” Anna said. “There is something I…”
Mia raised a hand. “All of you need to just quiet down and hear what we have to say.”
“But, Dr. Greer,” Anna continued.
“Not now,” Jack said, focused. “Mia’s got the floor.” He nodded, encouraging her to go on.
Mia began by recounting their meeting with the president and his cabinet.
“Nukes?” Dag said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I get that everything’s on the table, but is that even feasible?”
“Hard to say,” Jack admitted. “Luckily, the president wasn’t a fan of the idea either.”
Gabby grabbed the corners of her elbows. “With only two weeks before impact, I can only imagine what the country’s going to think when they find out. Every major city will see rioting and lawlessness rise to unprecedented levels.”
Nodding, Mia said: “Especially when word gets out that the government plans on hiding out in bunkers while the rest of us are left to fry or suffocate from falling ash.”
“And this new signal in Greenland,” Rajesh wondered. “Do you think it could be another ship?”
“They weren’t certain,” Mia replied. “A military team is already in place prepping the site for our arrival.” Her voice fell ever so slightly.
“My mother,” Gabby said, biting her cheek. “I need to warn her.”
Jack’s lips drew into a thin line. “I’m afraid word of the approaching ship must never get out. Gabby’s right. It would cause a panic and make an already terrible situation that much worse. Look, I’m not here to force any of you to come with me. I know some may wish to spend what time remains with loved ones. You’ll get no second-guessing or judgment from me on the matter. I simply want you to consider one thing. If the Ateans have indeed returned for an encore performance, if, like the dinosaurs before us, this is our turn to get wiped off the planet, I for one won’t go down without a fight. And let’s not fool ourselves. We all know missiles and bombs likely won’t stand much of a chance of stopping this thing. As far as I can see, our only hope lies with whatever’s hiding beneath Greenland’s ice sheet.”
Mia crossed her arms and turned to Anna. “Or perhaps the answer is hidden in our DNA.”
“Dr. Greer,” Anna said, stepping forward just as a new figure appeared in the doorway.
Jack and the others turned to see Grant. His face was still unusually sunburnt, but he was standing on his own two feet, without a crutch in sight.
The room exploded with shouts of joy and shock. Dag ran over and pulled him into a hug and then stepped back to inspect the fifty-nine-year-old biologist. “Your hip? Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”
If anything, Grant looked healthier and perhaps even fuller than usual.
“The heck were those nurses feeding you?” Eugene asked, a touch of jealousy in his voice.
Grant shook his head, his long fingers interlaced over his abdomen. “Quite honestly, ladies and gentlemen, I couldn’t tell you. The initial X-rays showed my hip was fractured in three places. And then two days later I’d gained ten pounds and was back on my feet.”
Mia eyed Grant with curiosity and no small amount of incredulity. “Were you prescribed any medication?”
Grant’s gaze fixed on an invisible spot on the ceiling. “Some painkillers. The doctors were just as surprised as I was. They didn’t even have a chance to get me into surgery.”
“Did they do any blood tests?” Mia asked.
Grant nodded. “A bunch and they all came back clean.”
“I’d like to take another sample, if that’s all right.”
“Be my guest.”
Jack felt a gentle tug on his arm. Anna had been desperate to get his attention. “Yes, Anna? What is it you wanted to tell me?”
“When Admiral Stark first arrived on the platform in the Gulf of Mexico,” she began, “he informed you that NASA had detected a binary code hidden within the gamma-ray burst.”
“Yes, I remember, but they had no clue what it meant.” The cloudy expression on Jack’s face slowly faded as he began to see where this was heading. “You cracked it, didn’t you?” he asked excitedly.
Dag, seated on an office chair, crossed the six-foot distance between them in less than a second. “It’s probably some sort of secret message,” the young paleontologist said in awe. “Like those decoder rings they used to put in cereal boxes.”
“Maybe it’s an earful about what a piss-poor job we’re doing caring for the planet,” Gabby said with no small amount of irony.
Anna looked from one to another. The onslaught of real and sarcastic hypotheses was threatening to overwhelm her sensors. “An image, it is said, is worth a thousand words. In this case, I suspect it may count for a whole lot more.”
Chapter 4
Striding along on her brand-new legs, Anna led them to an adjacent room where Rajesh had set up the computer equipment they’d been using on the rig. Adam and Leah sat before laptops, poring over Anna’s data logs and studying her progress. They nodded briefly before burying their heads back into reams of computer code.
“She’s becoming more and more efficient every day,” Rajesh said, eyeing Anna’s slick new figure. “These last few days we’ve been working to perfect her most recent form of locomotion. First came flat ground and stairs.”
/> The sparkle in Rajesh’s eyes as he spoke about Anna made it perfectly clear that to him, she was more than a piece of high-tech machinery. She was his child.
“Next we will tackle uneven terrain and ladders,” the computer engineer said, his full lips puckered into a soft smile.
“You better throw in some ice cleats while you’re at it,” Jack said, grinning.
Rajesh grew quiet for a moment. “Do you really think it’s wise to bring her to Greenland?” he asked.
Jack threw him a look. “I know how much Anna means to you, but I wouldn’t dream of leaving her behind. I promised you once before I wouldn’t let anything happen to her and I make that same commitment to you again.”
Rajesh was in the process of mulling this over when Jack turned to Anna, now seated before one of the laptops. She inserted a USB cable into the computer, linking herself to the device. At once, the screen began to populate with a series of zeros and ones. The others gathered behind them, staring with wonder at the flood of data.
“You are observing the raw binary data NASA scientists extracted from the gamma-ray burst,” Anna explained.
Mia leaned in for a closer look. For her, this wasn’t merely an exercise in curiosity. By all accounts, the blast wave appeared to be how the ship was manipulating Salzburg, populating the chromatid with the ruinous genes currently affecting more than a third of the planet’s population.
“As you can see, Dr. Greer, without a key, the zeros and ones before you are little more than a meaningless jumble.”
“Sorta like static on a TV?” Dag said, the ghost of his BLT still lingering on his breath.
Anna regarded him with a touch of confusion at the reference.
“Before her time,” Rajesh explained. “The only television she watches is on the internet.”
“Think of radio static then,” Jack offered.
Anna nodded. “Yes, I understand now.”
As impressive as she was, even Mia could see that certain simple references still went over her head.
“Tell us how you cracked it then,” Grant said, growing impatient.
“It was Dr. Ward who helped me,” Anna admitted.
That was news to Mia. Although she was quick to recall the headache she had felt after searching the Salzburg genome for signs of a coherent message.
“The key to the equation is the number thirty-seven,” Anna pointed out.
“Oh, I get it,” Eugene said, pushing his way through those gathered around Anna and the laptop. “You simply selected every thirty-seventh byte. Child’s play.” Eugene did everything but blow hot air on his knuckles and rub them against his shoulder.
“Incorrect, I’m afraid, Dr. Jarecki,” Anna replied evenly. “Thirty-seven is a prime number. Which is to say, a whole number which can only be divided by itself and the number one. The first thirty-seven prime numbers are as follows: two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine—”
“Okay,” Jack said, unbuttoning his shirt and removing his tie. “We get the point. Just tell us what you did next.”
“My apologies, Dr. Greer, I will speed up my explanation.” Anna’s speech became slightly faster and higher-pitched. “I selected the binary digits which corresponded to the first thirty-seven prime numbers and repeated the process until all of the excess data had been stripped away. From there, I laid the data out in the form of a thirty-seven-bitmapped image.”
“Why not the regular twenty-four?” Rajesh asked, surprised. It appeared he was also learning about this for the first time as well.
“Trial and error,” she responded, coolly. “I attempted many thousands of iterations without arriving at a recognizable image. It was only after I returned to practicing my stair work that I thought of using a larger-sized bitmap. Besides, there was a symmetry to the puzzle’s solution I found appealing.”
“Hell, soon enough she’ll be writing poetry and painting landscapes,” Dag said, only half-joking.
The others grew deathly still, their gazes fixed on the laptop as Anna showed them the process in action. First a series of zeros and ones dropped away, creating a new string of binary data. Then those bytes were being inputted into a thirty-seven-bitmapping program.
Slowly, the image of an X appeared.
All present stared with raw intensity, trying to understand the significance of what they were seeing. The X didn’t have the neat, tapered lines from the letter they all knew from the English alphabet. For some reason, the edges were puffy and uneven.
For Mia, it was the shorter length of the top part of the X which gave it away. This wasn’t part of the English language. They were looking at a pair of chromatids connected by a centromere. Put another way, they were looking at a full chromosome. But the implications didn’t stop there. This wasn’t some random chromosome. They were looking at Salzburg, but not as they knew it in its present form. The Salzburg syndrome Alan had discovered, the same one Mia had tracked as it spread across the globe, had been no more than a single chromatid. What she was seeing here was something else altogether. She was seeing the endgame. Not Salzburg in its current form, but what Salzburg would soon become. It was changing, mutating, growing. The realization chilled the marrow in Mia’s bones, since it meant that a whole new batch of genes would soon begin to appear. The human race, along with all life on earth, was about to face an even greater threat.
Chapter 5
By the time Mia was done explaining what they were seeing, it was clear she hadn’t done much to lighten the mood in the room.
“So not only is a doomsday ship heading straight for us,” Dag said, rubbing his temples in slow circles, “now you tell us the genetic disorder that’s crippling the world is about to get a whole lot worse.”
“I’m not sure about the rest of you,” Grant said. “To my eye, it’s beginning to look like these aliens, whoever they are, want us dead and gone.”
“But for what purpose?” Jack asked, genuinely curious to hear the biologist’s response.
Eugene shrugged. “Hell, for all we know they want our resources.”
Gabby pushed a lock of her silver hair out of her face and was about to light up a cigarette before pausing in the act. “That’s patently ludicrous. What could we have on earth that doesn’t exist in countless other places throughout the solar system and even the galaxy? If they’re after liquid water, they’ve got Europa, Enceladus and Ganymede. They want ice for their mojitos? Then their options just got a whole lot better. Metals and minerals are pretty much the same story.”
“I believe we’ve already agreed humans don’t make optimal slaves,” Rajesh added, a hint of hope in his voice. “For one, we’re far too squishy.”
Grant winked at Rajesh. “Speak for yourself. But our friend here does have a point. If they were looking for a work force, any sufficiently advanced civilization would be far better off building them.”
Dag pointed at Anna. “Case in point. I mean, if Elon Musk’s prediction about AI leading to the end of the human race is even ten percent accurate, we won’t have a hope in hell.”
Anna turned, her digital features filled with apparent sadness. “I can assure you, Dr. Gustavsson, we have no desire to endanger your species.”
“Maybe not yet,” Grant chimed in. “In fact, there’s a mighty good chance you may not feel much of anything right now that hasn’t already been programmed for you to feel, but give it time. Even the rosiest of relationships have a nasty habit of souring. Just ask my ex-wife.”
Gabby was sure the blame rested squarely at humanity’s feet. “I think we’re being punished for trashing the planet. We’re like that neighbor on your street who keeps Airbnbing his house to college kids. Eventually, someone needs to step in and put a stop to it.”
“Are we the lousy neighbor or the college kids?” Dag asked, confused.
Jack and Mia laughed.
“I’m not sure,” Gabby said, shaking her head and fighting a smile. “Maybe both. All I know
for sure is my head is starting to hurt.”
After clearing his throat, Jack said: “As humans, we have an ego-driven need to make everything about us. Have any of you even considered the possibility that we aren’t the prime targets for what’s happening?”
Jack’s comment took the room aback.
“How could it not?” Eugene nearly shouted. “Aren’t we the ones bearing the brunt of what’s going on?”
“Jack may have a point,” Grant said. “One we haven’t fully considered yet. Stepping on an ant hill on your way to work doesn’t signal any malice on your part. For the ants, however, it might be catastrophic.” Grant locked eyes with Gabby, the astrophysicist. “If we found out tomorrow that the sun was going supernova, a process which would annihilate all life on earth, surely you wouldn’t think the sun was punishing us for any perceived sins.”
“That isn’t a fair comparison, since the sun isn’t a sentient being,” Gabby said.
“That has yet to be proven,” Grant replied.
The grin on Dag’s face grew three sizes bigger. “Give our esteemed Dr. Holland time and he’ll be more than happy to tell you all about his theory on morphic fields and the interconnectedness of all things. It’ll blow your mind.”
Gabby shook her head and slid the cigarette back into the pack. “I think it’s already working.”
Dag peeled away, brushing past two Air Force mechanics who were heading through the computer lab and into the hangar.
As the party broke up, Mia drew closer to Anna. “Can I ask you something?”
Anna twisted to face her. On anyone else but her, it might have made for a rather unsettling sight. “I enjoy answering questions. Did you want to know my opinion on the extraterrestrials’ motivation for interacting with our planet?”
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