The Atlantis Plague: A Thriller (The Origin Mystery, Book 2)

by A. G. Riddle

  “I believe that’s what Martin thought.” A thought struck David; did he have the other piece of the puzzle?

  In Antarctica, when David was in the tube, the Atlantean had released Dorian first—given him a head start. The Atlantean had watched David and Dorian fight to the death, as if he knew the outcome, as if the Atlantean were simply waiting for his champion to triumph—Dorian.

  David had died a second time in Antarctica. But unlike his first death, he hadn’t resurrected in Antarctica. He had awoken in the Atlantis structure in Gibraltar—a section at the base of Jebel Musa in Morocco. Someone had made David resurrect there. Another Atlantean? David had noticed another damaged suit on the floor of the resurrection room. He tried to think back to the holomovie. Neither of the suits had been damaged during the events, he was sure of it.

  Yet, the fact was undeniable: another Atlantean had brought him back—after Dorian and the Atlantean in Antarctica had killed him.

  Another faction? One clearly wanted him dead. The other had saved him.

  David was now sure of two things. One, that the Atlanteans were waging some sort of civil war. And two, that there was no way he was telling Kate or the two scientists what had happened to him. It was too… fantastic, even for him to believe—and it had happened to him.

  “I have a theory,” David said. “I believe what I witnessed—the Atlantis disaster—wasn’t a natural phenomenon. I think it was an attack.”

  “By whom?” Chang asked.

  “I don’t know,” David said. “But what if there were two factions of Atlanteans—or a traitor, someone who sabotaged the ship, preventing some intervention? I mean look at the broad arc of human history. All the major stuff happened in the last thirteen thousand years—agriculture, cities, writing, you name it. The population chart explodes around this time. It coincides with the end of the glacial maximum and warmer weather, but…”

  Janus leaned forward. “I find your ‘missing intervention’ theory intriguing. I see one hole, however. The next step in the chronology: ‘535…1257, Toba 2, Delta’—that implies a change did happen then—recently. And from the videos, you say the ship was destroyed.”

  David nodded. “I think those two Atlanteans must have died in Gibraltar. It’s the only explanation. I think whoever killed them facilitated the change in 535.”

  Janus nodded. “Which leads me to my conclusion: if an Atlantean intervened in 535—another delta, as you say—where are they? If they have the power to control human evolution, where are they hiding?”

  David pondered the question. He didn’t have an answer, and it was, in truth, a very good question. The fact that he had advanced so many ideas made him feel a little defensive, as if he had to keep throwing out more possibilities to corroborate his theory. He felt himself tensing a bit, readying for battle.

  Dr. Chang set his teacup down. “I too find it a valid question. However, I would like to hear more about the actual event—Toba 2, in 535, or is it 1257? Was Dr. Grey uncertain on the actual date?”

  The question brought David back, made him focus. “No. I don’t think so. I believe the dates are the beginning and end of a period, marked by two specific events.”

  “What period?” Janus asked.

  “The dark ages in Europe.”

  “And two… events?”

  “Volcanos and then plagues,” David said. “One that ushered in the dark ages, another that led Europe out. There’s strong evidence that the first outbreak—in 535—was linked to a massive volcano near mount Toba in Indonesia.” He thought for a second. “You could think of it as a sort of Second Toba Catastrophe.”

  “I would have heard about a Second Toba Catastrophe,” Kate said.

  David smiled. Him, telling her about a volcano that changed the fate of humanity. “It’s not well known,” he said, echoing her words to him in Jakarta when she had first told him about the Toba Catastrophe Theory.

  “Touché,” Kate said.

  “What we know is this: in 535, temperatures around the world dropped rapidly. We’re talking about an eighteen-month-long winter—a harsh, bitter winter with very little sunlight. This is what was described in historical records. It’s actually the most severe climate event in recorded history. In China, snow fell in August. Throughout Europe, crops were lost and famine ensued.”

  “A volcanic winter.”

  “Yes. The historical accounts across Asia and Europe attest to it. Ice core samples confirm it, and tree-ring evidence from Scandinavia and western Europe also reveals a huge reduction in tree growth in the years 536 to 542, not recovering fully until the 550s. But it wasn’t the years-long winter that plunged humanity into darkness, it was the plague that followed—the worst pandemic in known history.”

  “The Plague of Justinian,” Kate whispered. “In terms of casualty rates, it was the worst catastrophe in recorded history. But I don’t see how it could be connected to a volcanic eruption. And wait, tell me again how you know all this?”

  “It might be hard for you to believe, but I was this close to a PhD. My thesis was on the origins and impact of the Dark Ages in Europe.” He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged theatrically. “I’m more than a pretty face and a skinny waist, you know.”

  Kate shook her head, her face somewhere between embarrassment and disbelief. “I stand corrected. Please continue.”

  “Here’s what we know: up to a third of the eastern Mediterranean’s population died in the outbreak. The Eastern Roman Empire was devastated. The capital, Constantinople, went from a city of half a million to less than a hundred thousand after the plague. They named the plague after the Roman Emperor Justinian. It’s hard to exaggerate the carnage of this plague. It was like nothing the world had ever seen. Some victims would take days to die. Others became ill and died within minutes. On the streets, bodies were simply stacked up. The smell of death was everywhere. In Constantinople, the emperor ordered the dead be buried at sea.” David’s mind flashed to Ceuta. He focused. “But there were too many of them. Dead bodies were dangerous in ancient cities. So the emperor ordered that mass graves be dug outside the city. Bodies of the dead were burned there. The historical record says that they stopped counting after three hundred thousand.”

  None of the scientists said a word. David took a sip of coffee and continued.

  “As a historian, this plague is remarkable not because of its mortality, but for how it reshaped the entire world. In many ways, the world we inhabit grew directly out of the events of the sixth century.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate asked.

  “In the wake of the plague, we see the end of the supercities of the ancient world. Ancient Persia, once a super-nation, crumbles. The Eastern Roman Empire had been close to retaking its western half—the ‘Rome’ everyone talks about. But in the wake of this pandemic, it’s besieged and almost falls. It eventually becomes the Byzantine Empire. We see these falls across the world—mighty empires recede and barbarian tribes actually gain ground. The major lesson from the Plague of Justinian is that the most connected civilizations, the most advanced, those with established international trade routes and supercities: they suffered the most. It was the isolated, simple societies that fared the best. Take sixth-century Britain—it’s a great example. Britain at the time of the plague was dominated by the Romano-British. Based on artifacts, we know they traded with nations as far away as Egypt—that’s where the plague first appeared, by the way, or that was the first account.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Chang said.

  “The trade routes brought the plague. The British had been at war with several Germanic tribes that had settled their western coast. At the time of the outbreak in the mid-sixth century, these tribes were mostly contained and regarded as barbarians. No one traded with them, and the British mainly refused to intermarry with them. In the wake of the outbreak, these tribes seized the initiative, spreading throughout Britain and eventually taking control. The primary tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. In
fact, some believe the legend of King Arthur is a composite of British knights who fought these Angle and Saxon invaders. The fact that people in Britain and around the world speak English—a Germanic language—is because of the plague… and the Angle and Saxon triumph after. It wasn’t just Britain, this happened around the world: advanced civilizations, with cities and population density and established trade routes, fell. The barbarians beyond their gates rose, invaded, and most of the time, just moved on. In cases where the barbarian invaders set up their own government, they were usually sacked a century later by the next roving band of raiders. This was the real end of an era, a time of great cities and civilizations. The Dark Ages came after and they lasted for a very long time—almost a thousand years. It was the greatest reversal of progress in history. In fact, the Dark Ages only really ended after the next major outbreak—”

  “Hold on,” Kate said. “I have to confess my ignorance here. I’m a geneticist. I just don’t see how a volcano and a volcanic winter are connected to the Plague of Justinian.”

  David smiled. “I can’t believe I’m about to explain a scientific concept to you.”

  “Let’s just see how good your explanation is,” Kate shot back.

  “Part of history is tracing artifacts and looking at patterns. One pattern that emerged from the outbreak is that it began in northern Africa, moved into Egypt, and from there, exploded into the eastern Mediterranean. Once it hit Constantinople, the rest of the modern world fell like dominos as trade ships carried the plague around the world. There’s still some debate, but many historians believe that the plague came to Europe on grain barges from northern Africa, and that it was the rats on the barges that initially carried the disease.”

  “What David says is true,” Dr. Janus said. “It is a great irony: the real danger from rapid climate change has nothing to do with the weather. The danger is destabilizing ecosystems, causing organisms that normally have no interaction with each other to come into contact. We know that most outbreaks are caused when wild-animal reservoir hosts, that benignly harbor a deadly pathogen, are forced out of their natural habitats. In the wake of this second ‘Toba volcano,’ ecosystems around the world were destabilized. If Dr. Grey’s theory is correct, it is incredibly intriguing. The ancient world would have been a very difficult place to manage a global genetic change. A plague is the perfect vehicle, but there remains one very big problem.”

  “Distribution,” Kate said.

  “Precisely,” Janus said. “The world was very disconnected. Visiting all the cultures and spreading a disease would have been impossible. A volcano that blanketed the world with ash would be perfect. On the surface, the plague might look the same. The volcano brings a winter, in some places drought then excessive rainfall. Vegetation growth plummets then rebounds. In places like northern Africa, rodent populations would fare quite well. A breeding explosion occurs. The larger population seeks new territory as their existing ecosystem can’t support their larger numbers. Some of these rats carry plague and they push into areas of human population. While the rats are immune to plague—they are reservoir hosts—the fleas on their backs are not. So fleas die of plague, and the mechanism of their demise causes them to spread the disease. Fleas infected with plague literally starve. The plague bacteria multiply in their gut, blocking the ability to ingest nutrients. They go mad, jumping off the rodents onto any host they can find, spreading the disease to humans. Of course rodents, and the fleas hitching a ride on their backs, have spread plague for thousands of years. The genius, if you will permit the term here, of this outbreak was a genetic modification to the plague bacteria—which I believe was carried by your volcano. The ash that rained down changed the bacteria residing in the rats—it didn’t unleash a pandemic on humans. A human pandemic would have simply burned out and been over with. Dr. Grey’s notation—‘Second Toba? New Delivery System?’—I believe refers to his own uncertainty on the subject. Based on our research, the work Dr. Chang and I have done, we can confirm that it was a new delivery system, an extremely ingenious one. By modifying an existing bacterial line in rats—plague—whoever did this ensured there would be multiple waves of outbreak, a sustained genetic transformation.”

  David nodded. “Because the plague didn’t burn out.”

  “Correct,” Janus said. “It lay dormant, in the reservoir hosts—rats in this case—waiting for the correct moment in time.”

  “That matches the historical record,” David said. “The first wave of outbreak was around 535, but others followed, some even more violent. We can’t imagine the toll. The bouts of plague lasted for two hundred years. Up to half of all Europeans died. Then after about 750, the outbreaks stop until around 1257—which is the next part of Martin’s note. In 1257 another volcano erupted—again from Indonesia. These are recent discoveries, but we are pretty sure that the Samalas volcano, on Lombok Island in Indonesia, erupted with an incredible force. The impact was greater than that of the Tambora event in 1815, which caused what’s known as the Year Without a Summer. From the tree-ring samples, we see the same thing in 1257: a volcanic winter that lasted for over a year. The plague rats return and plague again returns to Europe. By this time, nearly 700 years later, the historical records are more clear. This outbreak is almost exactly like the last but it gets more press—and mention in the historical record. They call it ‘the Black Death’ in Europe. But it was the same plague—”

  “Bubonic plague,” Kate said.

  “Exactly,” David confirmed. “The same plague, separated by almost a millennium, returning to wreak the same havoc—”

  “Stop,” Kate held up her hand. “The Black Death began in Europe around 1348—almost a hundred years after this volcano—”

  “True,” David said, holding up his hands. “Look, here’s the history: in 1257 a massive volcano, strangely similar in location and effect to the one in the sixth century, caused a volcanic winter and widespread famine in Europe. I can only assume the plague returned, but there was a difference this time—some sort of immunity—”

  “CCR5 Delta 32,” Kate said, lost in thought.

  “What?”

  “Martin mentioned it to me. It’s present in up to sixteen percent of Europeans. It’s a mutation that makes them immune to HIV, smallpox, and other viruses. Possibly the bacteria that causes plague.”

  “Interesting,” David said. “One of the great mysteries of history has been the origins of the Black Death. We’re pretty sure the outbreak in the sixth century, the Plague of Justinian, moved up through Africa into the eastern Mediterranean. But the Black Death was different. Same scenario—volcano, same plague—but this time, we believe the Black Death originated in central Asia. The peace provided by the Pax Mongolica enabled the Mongol armies based in central Asia to carry the disease east along the Silk Road. During the Mongol siege of Caffa in the Crimea, the invading Mongols actually catapulted infected bodies over the city walls.”

  “Seriously?” Kate asked.

  “Hey, it was pretty ingenious for the times. Call it medieval biological warfare. After Caffa, the plague quickly spread across Europe. Historians have assumed that migration from Asia is the reason for the one-hundred-year time difference, but it could have been—”

  “The mutation,” Kate said.

  “Possibly.” David wanted to get back to what he knew, away from speculation. “In the following years, thirty to sixty percent of the entire population of Europe died from the Black Death. One third of everyone in China died. In fact, it took a hundred and fifty years for the global population to recover to the level it was before the Black Death. But I’m afraid that’s where my knowledge ends. In general, I don’t know what the chronology is leading up to. I just knew what the references were, and I knew the dates.”

  “I can shed light there,” Dr. Chang said. “As Dr. Janus mentioned before, our working theory has been that the current plague is simply activating past outbreaks, trying to complete some genetic transformation that was half-finished
. We’ve been trying to isolate those past outbreaks to better understand how the human genome changed.” He motioned toward David. “Mr. Vale, you had it right about the link between the plagues. A few years ago, a group of researchers discovered that the Plague of Justinian was caused by Yersinia pestis, or Y. pestis—the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. The discovery was very intriguing: the two worst pandemics in recorded history—the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death—were both instances of bubonic plague. We believe in both cases there was a genetic mutation of the Y. pestis bacteria. We’ve been using the Immari to gather evidence. They procured samples from plague victims from both outbreaks. We sequenced those genomes, as well as samples of Y. pestis, from both eras. We also have samples from the Spanish flu of 1918. We found some common genetic sequences. We think they are connected to the Atlantis Plague. Based on Dr. Grey’s notes and our discussion here, I believe our data is a key piece of the puzzle, the key to finding a cure. Unfortunately, it was lost when the plague barge went down.”

  Janus sat up on the couch. “Dr. Chang, I owe you an apology.”

  Chang’s face glanced over, confused.

  “I never fully trusted you,” Janus said. “I was assigned to you. You went along with our research, but until now I thought that you might have been an Immari loyalist, someone working to obtain my research. I withheld much of what I learned from you.” He took out a memory stick. “But I saved it on this device. Along with the research we did together. It’s all here, and I believe it will reveal the genome changes Dr. Grey was searching for—this Delta-2—the root genetic structure of the Atlantis Plague.”

  Chang glanced at the memory stick. “What matters is that you have the data. In your place, I think… perhaps I would have done the same thing. However, there seems to be one final piece—the Omega. To me, that signifies the endpoint—the eventuality of this genetic change. The notation ‘1918…1979’ seems to indicate that Dr. Grey believed it could have happened in one of those years. The ‘KBW’ in the first line is unfamiliar. Mr. Vale, is this another historical reference?”