by Greig Beck
It would be months yet before the land would begin to thaw. And then the frogs and insects would emerge and begin to get active. And following them, would come the foxes and the birds.
It only needed to touch one of them.
Once.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Many readers ask me about the background of my novels – is the science real or imagined? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters, and their expertize from, and just how much of it has a basis in fact?
As a fiction writer I certainly create things to complement my stories. But mostly, I’ll do extensive research on the science behind my tale.
In regard to my novel The Dark Side, there are no moon bases established just yet. However, China, Russia, and the United States all have plans to establish a permanent presence there before 2040.
Besides the strategic advantages of a base being established to “look down” from the near side of the moon, I envisage it also being the ultimate fire wall for storing and experimenting on hazardous biological materials. But there are always accidents in laboratories, human error persists, and in my novel, I hypothesized about what those accidents might entail if you gave the spark of intelligence to something that was already an efficient predator and/or parasite.
And there are none more efficient and deadly, and alien like, than the cordyceps fungal parasite.
CORDYCEPS – The Fungal Parasite from Your Nightmares
Mind control is real. Zombies are real. To find examples of one of the most terrifying living things on the planet, you can either read about them in horror novels, or you can travel deep into a humid rainforest jungle like in Brazil, and then look underneath a leaf hanging just ten inches above the ground.
You might see a deformed-looking ant hanging there, clinging tightly to the leaf with its jaws clamped tight. But the ant isn’t alive. Oh, it does contain life, just not its own. Its body was infiltrated and taken over by the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the cordyceps zombie-ant fungus. When the spores touch the carapace of the ant they stick, and then single cells of the cordyceps penetrate the exoskeleton armour. Once breached, the cells move around in the ant’s bloodstream, budding off new copies of themselves.
At this time, the ant doesn’t even know its fate and that it is already condemned. But just like in John Carpenter’s The Thing, a single spore cell of the fungus is enough to eventually infect the entire insect.
The next stage of growth for the fungus is for the cells to work together – they connect to each other by a webbing of filaments and begin to work as a single organism – think of a living creature inside another living creature. They then invade and insert themselves into the ant’s muscle cells or ingest and replace them with their own cells.
So far, the parasite has left the brain untouched. Even after invading the entire body, the fungus basically turns the ant into a zombie slave, its mind trapped in its own shell that now is under the control of the invader.
If you continued to observe the ant, you’d see this internal life begin to bloom from the body – a long stalk grows out through the ant’s head, swelling into a bulbous capsule full of spores. And because the ant is commanded to scale a leaf that overhangs one of its main hive’s trails, the fungal spores rain down onto its ant kin below. And the horror cycle continues.
This behavior is not unique to the cordyceps as there are other parasites that manipulate their target hosts while leaving their brain untouched. Examples are a species of flatworm that form a net-like layer over the brain of the California killifish, leaving the brain untouched while making the fish swim erratically at the surface to bring it to the attention of birds – the flatworm’s next host.
Some researchers believe that the cordyceps fungus acts as another brain and exerts direct control over the ant’s muscles, literally controlling them like a puppeteer controls a marionette doll. This is where the name “the puppet master”, comes from.
Sadly for the ant, it ends its life a prisoner in its own body. Does the ant know? Does it try and warn its kin that it is in effect a Trojan horse held hostage inside its own body? Without doubt, it would be a horrible way to die.
What Would Happen to You on the Moon with No Suit?
As far as we know, no one has died on the moon due to being without a suitable spacesuit. Or at least, no country owns up to it. However, through simulations and research where similar conditions were generated, we have a pretty good idea what the results would be.
The first thing you would notice is the lack of air. But more than likely you wouldn’t immediately lose consciousness; that might take up to fifteen seconds as your body uses up its oxygen reserves in your bloodstream, and as long as you don’t hold your breath, you could probably survive for up to two minutes without significant injury.
However, if you do hold your breath, the external vacuum would cause the gas inside your lungs to expand, which would cause hundreds of tiny ruptures in the lungs and release air into the circulatory system. Therefore, the first thing you would need to do if you ever find yourself in the vacuum of space is to exhale every bit of air out of your lungs.
But the other effects are out of your control. After around ten seconds, your skin would start to swell as the water in your body vaporizes in the absence of external pressure. Also, the moisture on your tongue would begin to boil. And we know this due to the case of Mr. Jim LeBlanc, who was exposed to a moon-like atmosphere in a test chamber in 1965. LeBlanc’s suit had a leak, and though he remained conscious for about fourteen seconds, the last thing he remembered was the feeling of his tongue bubbling and popping in his mouth.
The other interesting thing is that if you did die in space or on the moon, your body would not decompose like it would on Earth, since there is no water nor oxygen, and therefore no bacteria. You would either be frozen solid, or if subjected to warmth, mummified for eternity, perhaps becoming an artefact for some future alien race to discover.
A NASA Moon Base – When, Not If
“If you can imagine it, you can create it.”
― William Arthur Ward
When I started planning The Dark Side, I knew that using the moon base as a situational concept was going to be a stretch for believability. That was until I started doing more research. Seems a base has been planned for the moon for nearly half a century. I’m now convinced it’s a matter of when, not if.
The Lunex Project was conceptualized in 1958 as a U.S. Air Force plan to construct an underground Air Force Base on the moon, and just a year later, the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Missile Agency organized a task force called Project Horizon to assess the feasibility of such a project. Bear in mind that it would be still be another decade before humans ever set foot there (July 1969).
Project Horizon planned to use a relay of Saturn-2 rocket launches to pre-build the base while still in Earth’s orbit. Then the almost fully constructed base could be towed to the moon for anchoring and final assembly. Monthly rockets would then ship the base crew and supplies.
A funding boost for the lunar outpost was delivered by George W. Bush in his Vision for Space Exploration, which was later replaced with President Barack Obama’s space policy. NASA was to construct the inhabited outpost over the five years between 2019 and 2024, and Congress directed that the U.S. portion would “be designated the Neil A. Armstrong Lunar Outpost”.
On 4 December 2006, NASA concluded its Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture Study. What resulted from the study was a basic plan for a lunar outpost near one of the poles of the moon, which would permanently house astronauts in six-month shifts.
Just recently, traces of water ice in a polar crater initiated a reassessment of plans (I can’t find out why). However, the discovery of water doesn’t make the lunar base less likely, in fact, it makes them more likely.
Bottom line: watch this space!
Torben and the Canine Guardian Program
In the latest Alex Hunter adventures, I have included more scenes
with the dog Torben, from the U.S. Military’s Guardian Program. Readers of my other stories will recognize the huge and enhanced Guardians from the Valkeryn series and how they became the dominant intelligent species in a strange world of the far future.
Could canine guardians end up a real thing? Well, dogs have a long history of working with mankind on the battlefield and have played a role in war since ancient times, when Romans sent dogs with leather armor and razor-sharp collars into their enemies’ ranks.
Today, war dogs are among the most valuable military assets and can detect scents more than a thousand times better than any human or equipment, which makes them ideal for patrols, finding bombs, and chasing down terrorists. But for all their natural strength, intelligence, and loyalty, there is a desire to make them more than what they are.
In 2015, a team of scientists in China announced they had created the world’s first gene-edited dogs, which possess increased heart and lung capacity and also twice the amount of muscle mass than that of a non-engineered dog. These superdogs have great potential for police and military applications, according to Liangxue Lai, a researcher involved with the project at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health.
In the past, changes to the size, strength, or temperament of animals were achieved through selective breeding. But for rapid and extraordinary results it is now done by manipulating the genome. According to the Chinese scientists, the impressive achievement of superior strength and stamina was attained through the simple deletion of a gene responsible for the production of myostatin, a muscle-inhibiting protein.
To date, the U.S. has relied on dogs it is forced to buy from mostly European breeders, and given the best stock is needed to ensure they are the strongest and smartest and provide the best return on the investment over their lifespan, they can cost around $5000 to purchase and $60,000 to train. The Defense Department wants to breed the dogs domestically to have a secure and stable supply and also cut costs. When they do, will the U.S. ever have a Guardian Program? Maybe – it makes sense to ensure any potential adversary programs are matched or outmatched by our own.
And will they ever be like Tor, or his ancestors as described in the Valkeryn Series? Well, I’ll leave the last word to the American writer William Ward, who once said: “If you can imagine it, you can create it.”
About Greig Beck
Greig Beck grew up across the road from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. His early days were spent surfing, sunbaking, and reading science fiction on the sand. He then went on to study computer science, immerse himself in the financial software industry, and later received an MBA. Today, Greig spends his days writing, but still finds time to surf at his beloved Bondi Beach. He lives in Sydney, with his wife, son, and an enormous German shepherd.
If you would like to contact Greig, his email address is [email protected] and you can find him on the web at www.greigbeck.com.
Also by Greig Beck
The Alex Hunter series
Arcadian Genesis
Beneath the Dark Ice
Dark Rising
This Green Hell
Black Mountain
Gorgon
Hammer of God
Kraken Rising
From Hell
The Matt Kearns series
The First Bird
Book of the Dead
The Immortality Curse
Extinction Plague
The Fathomless series
Fathomless
Abyss – Fathomless II
The Valkeryn Chronicles
Return of the Ancients
The Dark Lands
Pan Macmillan acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. We honour more than sixty thousand years of storytelling, art and culture.
First published 2021 in Momentum by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Greig Beck 2021
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The Dark Side: Alex Hunter 9
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