Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  The tasters frowned and shook their heads. While the Provenger coveted fat in their diet, their least preferred was this visceral fat of which the Sam subject seemed to have ample quantities. This fat acted as its own gland in his body, producing all kinds of hormones, and while its flavor was not repulsive, it was not considered good. It had the texture of slime and made some Provenger gag. Since there was so much, all three of them would have to taste samples from numerous locations. But they were professionals and would maintain their bearing.

  Sam looked up and saw these bald men eating from his organs on the table beside him. His heart raced and then seized with pain. As he died, Sam knew this must be some kind of nightmare from which he would wake. When he did, he would hug his wife and his son, feed his dogs, and try to lose some weight.

  Sam never woke.

  “…not going to make it to the heart on this one,” Daytnin reported aloud. There was a hum of disappointment amongst the students.

  Kwinon completed some work at the panel and she rolled out a second table. The next slab held a young female. “Let’s get started on you, Laura,” she said as she looked at the nameplate and started in with her samples. Again, all the membrane samples were taken, starting at the head and working down the torso. For the females, mammary gland tissue was vital and obtained easily by inserting the needle into the nipple.

  Observing Laura’s heaving chest, flat belly, and strong heartbeat, Kwinon announced to the class, “I believe we will make it to the heart on this one!” The cuts were started at the groin as Kwinon worked her way up. She would tie off veins and arteries, removing organs one by one.

  The tasters, done with the subject Sam, moved next to Laura. This one proved to be more enjoyable. The removal of the intestines created a buzz among the students. They looked so different that the audience couldn’t believe they were the same organ as in the obese man. The tasters were relieved.

  The teacher chimed in, “As I said, the longer a deficient nutritional environment is maintained, the more the organs suffer. This younger sample does not suffer yet from the chronic effects of carbohydrates.”

  Laura’s heart pounded and her eyes raced around the room, taking in as much as she could see, looking for a way to safety that she knew would not come. The tag on her arm prevented her from screaming, and her panic reached every limb. Contorting to every angle, she vainly attempted to move in any way to stop what was happening. She sensed the release of pressure from her lower abdomen, and a constant dull tension on the insides of her chest, as the pull of gravity and the open cavity allowed her exposed organs to seek level. Laura tried to distract herself, to avoid the sensation of the cutting and pulling inside her, to avoid the smell of her own fluids, to keep from seeing the Provenger eating her organs at the table next to her. But there was no escape from the horror.

  With the specimen named Laura, the heart was reached and slowly lifted, intact and pounding wildly. The students grew excited as it was pried up with two cold metal tongs, above the surface of her rib cage, stretching its plumbing. Laura glimpsed her heart in her lower peripheral vision, still connected, still beating. It tried to pump blood through a liver and kidneys and other organs that were no longer there.

  Slowly, struggling to breathe as her lungs leaked and flattened, she began to suffocate and lose consciousness. Her strong heart continued beating for some time propped up on the outside of her chest, thrilling the students and giving them a new respect for the resilience of the organ.

  And so the technicians continued down the tables that held muted, panicked, and hyperventilating subjects all seeking escape, pulling at the straps holding them down. One by one, the Caldwell family and guests silently waited for their turn, monitoring the progress of the one before them, knowing with undeniable certainty that they were going to be cut apart and eaten while alive. The students watched and learned, asking questions regarding the organs removed and how they would be analyzed.

  Chapter 9

  Results

  Twelve hOurs later…

  Sitting at his desk, Synster raised his monitor to speak to the physiology deck technicians. “What have we got from the samples?”

  “I’m sending the results now,” replied Kwinon.

  Synster looked at his monitor and didn’t like what he saw. Of the six taken from Texas, four were obese, three of those were on statins, one of which had advanced heart disease, two smoked, one was on an antidepressant, the adolescent male had traces of steroids, and the adolescent female was a smoker and pregnant. The five Chinese samples were all adults. Five were smokers, one had traces of opium, one was on statins, and one had cancer. Of the six Afghans, two were malnourished, three had parasites, and four were smokers, two of them contaminated with opium.

  The taste tests were punishing. The liver, kidneys, heart, and flesh of the statin users were described as foul. The lungs, kidneys, and flesh of the smokers were rated the same. Use of the flesh and organs of the ones on mind-altering drugs, antidepressants, and opium were forbidden by law.

  The only samples that would have been economically viable would be one adult, an obese Texan female, and the adolescent female, as the smoking hadn’t tainted her flesh yet. But, of course, the lungs couldn’t be used. Even then, the adolescent would not normally be harvested as a single unit due to pregnancy. And finally, two of the Afghans were acceptable, but even they were too lean to be marketable. If things continued in this manner, the project would be an abject failure.

  Synster was in trouble and he knew it. Almost all were deficient in most of the necessary trace minerals, and their vitamin levels appeared to be near the bare minimum for health. All of them had elevated system-wide inflammation from an over-active, innate immune system. The Algorithm did not project anything like this. Synster knew a more extensive review of recent human history would be necessary to determine why these results were so extreme. He had personally reduced the deleterious effects of wheat to prevent this very situation. They would have to take many more samples. What had promised to be such a profitable venture was transforming into a debacle.

  The Gradient Contact Protocol was being initiated. The Provenger had no desire to conquer a world. Theirs was a management program, an initiative to promote a species determined to be a valuable resource for their flesh and organs. It was much more cost-effective to manage a free and self-sustaining population than it was to conquer, consolidate, manage, feed, and slaughter the entire population of Earth. Everyone knew this. For this reason their project was highly regulated.

  The next stage required secrecy in their interaction with humans. A human population alert to their presence would mean economic chaos and disruptions that would make Natural Proliferation impossible. It would force them to initiate Managed Collectivization.

  The Gradient Contact Protocol allowed Synster one primary operative on Earth. It dictated a professionally and socially mid-level individual so that, if necessary, this person could be eliminated without too many noticing or caring. If the surrogates were at too high a level, they would have too much influence and be damaging, should they decide to reveal the Provenger presence. A mid-level operative could easily be made to look as if he’d lost his mind. Therefore, Synster’s contact would have to fit the requirements as well as be positioned to influence by having higher level contacts within governmental organizations: one human that he could personally rely on to promote their interests. He had to choose strategically who this would be. This human needed to serve many purposes. He would need intelligence, contacts, and resourcefulness. And Synster would need to turn him from his own kind.

  The others on his team also would have their contacts with humans on Earth, each one carefully handled, providing a broad spectrum of expertise. Each human that was contacted would need to be tightly controlled until such time as the individual had been tested. Each one had to have the proper motivation and ultimately see the logic and wisdom of cooperation.

  The Provenger had always conscripted
successfully, with few problems. When provided the proper motivation, their recruits would choose power, personal gain, and the relative security of their people over their own annihilation along with the extermination of their society’s way of life. It seemed a simple choice.

  Chapter 10

  Thursday night Monitor

  Rick sat at his dinner table thinking about Tony Carrian and what he might do about him. The thing that was most troublesome was that he didn’t even know the guy. He understood how people could hate him, in the sense that he knows people might hate him for his NSA work, or any of the other things he’d done in his life. But since he didn’t know Carrian, this meant someone else had put Carrian on to him. Someone must either be paying Carrian or he is a self-employed spy.

  Dinner was on the grill and Rick heard Carson get out of the shower. He needed to check the food and moved toward the door. Barnes and Nobelle were whining and wanted to go out. They pranced to the door with him in excited agitation.

  They must hear something out there, Rick speculated. He stopped at the door and they sat. Rick opened it and walked out. He said, “Go ahead”, and the dogs bolted for the far side of the property. They ran to the edge of the lawn and started barking through the fence. Must be a deer or coyote, Rick thought. He checked the meat, zucchini and onions. They were done, so he piled them on a platter and brought them in, sprinkled on a little sea salt, turmeric, and pepper.

  Carson walked down the hallway. “Is dinner ready? Smells good.”

  “Yep, just about.”

  “Are you going hunting this weekend?”

  “Yes,” Rick said, looking up, hoping he would ask to come along.

  “Cause I have to run some errands, and I was wondering if I could use the truck Saturday.”

  Running errands could be code for Christmas shopping, but Rick knew Carson also had some friends he wanted to hang out with.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Durango, downtown and maybe the mall.”

  “Alright, just drive careful. And watch out for elk.” Rick was always concerned about his new driver. This time of year elk were moving to the lower country and might be crossing the road on the pass to Durango. Carson tended to be vigilant for other cars, but until you encounter an elk crossing the road, you really don’t know what to expect. And when a driver hits an animal that big the results are fairly predictable. The car takes the animal’s legs out and the body stops in the driver’s lap, with the roof and windshield in between. “And don’t eat any junk,” Rick added as he put the platter on the table. “Actually, I think I’ll hunt tomorrow afternoon.”

  Rick and Carson talked while they ate, and Synster stood motionless in the far corner of the room, fully cloaked, undetectable to the eye. He listened to their whole conversation with great interest. They spoke of Rick’s work, a little about what he monitored from satellites. They talked about Carson’s friends and what he might do over next summer now that he could drive. Then Carson asked if his mother would want him to visit over the summer. They talked about the government taking over health care and Rick’s health internet site, Primal Estate, and how he’d like to expand it to a book. Carson talked about some other kids at school that were causing trouble, and hinted at his desire to get another hunting rifle. And Rick hinted that they couldn’t afford it.

  Synster already knew who Rick was professionally. He’d accessed all existing electronic records and had recorded all of Rick’s activities in the last four days with his order of the level four surveillance. Synster even knew his blood type and that he had a pin in his right leg from being shot twenty-five years before. Most importantly, he knew that Rick’s brother was the United States Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Before Synster made contact he wanted to view Rick in person. He seemed to be the ideal target due to his position, abilities and contacts. Synster wanted to make sure. His future and that of his family could depend on this one selection.

  Rick rose from the table and walked toward the back door. He opened it and whistled for the dogs, who immediately came running for the house. Synster decided it was time to leave. He also decided that tomorrow, while Rick was hunting, contact would be made. Synster touched his gauntlet and he was back aboard his ship, a billion miles beyond the sun, orbiting the planet Saturn.

  After dinner Rick sat down at his computer and logged onto his web site. He checked his email and comments from the last few articles, and crafted a few responses. He’d been posting to his site for a few years now. It was one of many on the internet advocating the benefits of a whole foods diet, avoidance of wheat, legumes, and other mass produced agricultural products. The most important thing, Rick felt, was spreading the word about autoimmune disease, and how it could be healed by natural means. And that it cannot be healed otherwise, but only managed, and badly. It had been years since the discovery of zonulin and its regulation of the permeability of epithelial tissue, and doctors still didn’t communicate to patients about the havoc overly permeable tissue creates. Most still didn’t even know what it was. Why should the pharmaceutical companies want them informed? They were making their money from people being sick. Here it was the very gatekeeper, a regulator of the path to autoimmunity, and still no one seemed to know about it.

  Years ago, while travelling in Africa, Rick had come down with a fever. After recovering from the acute symptoms, he had chronic health problems that no doctors could diagnose. He gradually got worse and saw no end in sight. Every so often Rick thought about how bad it might get. Would he become completely disabled? Would he be confined to bed? Would he deteriorate to the point where he was completely physically and mentally disabled? Killing himself at that point wouldn’t be an option. It would hurt Carson too much. His stubbornness made Rick forge ahead. Eventually, after a few years, and acquiring symptoms that some thought might be multiple sclerosis, he figured out how to heal himself.

  It happened slowly. Despite his health issues and weakness, his refusal to give up led him to continue his outdoor activities, though at a much slower pace. One afternoon he’d been scouting an area of the San Juan Mountain range, a place called Lone Cone. He’d stopped to rest, exhausted from a simple walk up a gentle slope

  Sitting on a log at the top, suffering in silence, he looked up to watch an eagle working the updraft on a ridge. He was thinking how this bird was at the top of the food chain and so was he. Only predators, with perhaps the exception of extremely large herbivores, maintained this status, he thought.

  All of the top predators on Earth were fewer in number than their prey, except humans. The success of all the top predators on Earth was an indication of the overall health of the environment in which they lived, except for humans, who seemed to survive in even poor environments.

  All the top predator populations on Earth were either healthy due to a healthy habitat or their numbers in their environments were declining by either natural or unnatural means, except for humans. Humans were unhealthy and yet they continued to survive and multiply even in poor habitats.

  What made humans so different in all these situations? Rick was suffering from autoimmune symptoms. His own immune system was taking him apart. How could that be even remotely natural? And this same thing was happening to hundreds of millions if not billions of people. How could this be? As if looking in a mirror for the first time in his whole life, and seeing his reflection, he could finally understand himself fully. The answer to the question why humans were many and their prey few, why their number was not an indication of their environment’s health, why they were not only sick but increasing in number, had always been there right in front of him, and made perfect sense. Agriculture had kept them artificially prolific. Perhaps it had also contributed to health problems.

  Man, with the same intelligence that had made him a superior predator through the invention of weapons, created foods for himself that were not foods for him. The foods that he’d always eaten in the wild, he now grew for himself, and e
njoyed. The plants he knew would poison him immediately, he naturally did not grow. But what about the foods in between, the ones that were rarely used, that might serve a small purpose occasionally, but ultimately, over the long-term, were poison to him? What if he could just barely tolerate them, but in a way that he was poisoned slowly without immediately identifying it? And if he started farming such a crop and always ate it because he had a surplus, wouldn’t he suffer? Humans eat so many different things; would he even notice?

  Everything works this way, in a matter of degrees, Rick thought. There were poisons that acted slowly, and there were poisons that acted fast. What if there were poisons that tasted good, but acted so slowly that their effects could not be recognized. Rick stood and started home. He’d found what he’d been scouting for that day.

  When he got to his computer he searched, “Common food allergies” figuring that if the human body doesn’t do well with something, it would probably try to make it known with negative reactions, at least for some people more than others. He learned that there were eight very common allergies: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish.