Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  Alice waited a moment for a response but didn’t get one, so she continued.

  “In the case of the Leucochloridium paradoxum we have a parasite that infects snails. The parasites take control of the snails and have them travel up on leaves in the middle of the day. They even take control of the snail's eyes, making them bulge and change colors. This attracts the attention of birds who eat the snails and the parasite. The bird eventually spreads the parasite around, and the cycle repeats. In both cases, the ants and the snails have a nickname: Zombie Ants and Zombie Snails.”

  “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” Alice heard Kato say over the radio. “You’re telling us that we’ve found complex living life, here, on Europa, and it’s turning people essentially into zombies?”

  “Well,” Alice began. “That’s just a nickname people gave because of the strange behavior of the infected hosts. They’re not actual zombies that are undead or anything like that.”

  “Yeah, I figured that,” Kato responded. “That’s why I said essentially.”

  Alice wasn’t sure what to say to Kato. He seemed on edge.

  “The fungus and parasite you’re talking about,” Navya said. ”You said that they make the infected host do something for them to spread and reproduce. Do you think that’s a possibility here?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s possible,” Alice said. “It is a life form. As part of its definition, life has to try to reproduce somehow.”

  “You mentioned a virus before as well,” Kato said. His voice came over the radio with more static than last time.

  “Yes, I did. There’s debate as to whether or not viruses fit the definition of life. What they do is use the human body against itself. They take over cells and make them create more of the virus until there are so many that the body recognizes there’s a problem. The thing is, I can’t figure out where this thing came from. The parasite in Sonya’s head was surprisingly big and didn’t just come from anywhere. It’s an animal like a parasite, infects like a fungus, and yet must have been small enough to get past all of our decontamination procedures, like a microscopic and resilient virus.”

  As the Nomad got farther from the Habitat their connection was getting worse.

  “Alice, you’re breaking up pretty bad here,” Navya said. “Before we lose connection with you, I wanted to let you know that Kato and I spoke before you called. When you get back, we’re going to run you through the UMAC. We decided to have everyone go through it,” Navya said. “The reason we know about this, to begin with, is because of running Sonya through the UMAC.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” Alice said. She waited for a response, but only heard static. She must have been far enough away that the connection was broken.

  With the auto-pilot turned on, the Nomad continued to drive Alice to Outpost One. She continued to do research, but her findings were slim. Comparing the parasite in Sonya’s head to life on Earth had seemed like a good idea, but the more she thought about it, the less it made sense to do that. Alien life could have evolved in such a mind-bogglingly different way that there might not be any analog to life on Earth.

  Eventually, the Nomad slid into the hangar at Outpost One. Alice was already in the depressurizing chamber ready to get out once the Nomad came to a stop.

  She managed to get Little Missy unloaded from the Nomad and into the elevator, then down to the docking bay. It wasn’t the most graceful job moving something like that by herself, but she managed it nonetheless.

  She had to wait for Little Missy to be decontaminated and lowered into the water. Big Bertha was already decontaminated and ready to go. Instead of driving the Nomad back to the Habitat to pilot the drones, she decided to stay and pilot the vehicles by herself in Outpost One.

  Both drones made their way to the same location they had been before. Luckily, the path they had taken previously was stored on the computer, so all Alice had to do was tell the computer to have the drones follow the same path back to where they had been at the entrance of the cave.

  Alice was hoping that all the extra work on Little Missy was worth it and would allow her to get a closer and clearer look at the area where the sample was taken.

  She had Big Bertha stop near the entrance of the cave and sent Little Missy into the cave. The picture from Little Missy looked much better. The shielding had worked. She told Little Missy to enter farther into the cave.

  Little Missy slowly made its way into the labyrinth toward the location where they had first gathered their sample. As it moved forward, the image got worse again, but it was still clearer than it had been before. Finally, Little Missy stopped near a small ledge. Alice knew that beyond this edge was the spot where they had gathered the sample.

  “This is it,” Alice said to herself. She pushed Little Missy forward and around the corner. The image might not have been perfectly clear, but it was clear enough for her to see.

  There weren’t just a few pieces of bone and cartilage near the sample source like she thought. Instead, she was shocked to see thousands of pieces scattered across the floor. There were also hundreds of the smooth irradiated rocks scattered about as well. No wonder they had managed to get a good sample from one scoop. The entire room was full. It would have been harder to get no sample at all.

  But what was she looking at? In a sudden flurry of thoughts, she put it all together. She needed to get back to the Habitat as quickly as she could and let the others know.

  She programmed both drones to retrace their steps and make their way back to the docking bay. Then she got out of her chair and made her way up the elevator to the Nomad and began the trip back. This time she pushed the Nomad faster than she had done before.

  FIFTEEN

  Infection

  Navya thought carefully about the situation. In the entire half a decade-long trip no one had ever gotten hurt worse than a simple cut. Now she had worked on Felix’s injuries, Kato’s serious head injury, and had performed an autopsy on her friend. And, for some reason, it seemed that everyone was beginning to distrust the others. It was a peculiar situation, she had to admit.

  In fact, the situation was not just peculiar, but truly unique, given their location. No one else in the history of Earth had gone through something like this. She considered her best option to proceed. Always with a cool head, even in the most difficult of scenarios, Navya worked the problem.

  If she could perform emergency surgery in the middle of an ocean on Earth or Europa, she sure as hell could figure out how to approach this.

  “Alright, Kato, first thing’s first,” Navya said. She and Kato had just finished their conversation with Alice about her research. “Let’s go run each of us through the UMAC.”

  As they made their way to the medbay, Navya thought about Kato’s recent surgery. He had endured the entire thing without general anesthesia and without one single complaint. No one she had known had come close to that in her experience. Not only that, but Kato was up and walking around a short time after the surgery. Under normal conditions, she would have told him to rest in bed for several days while she kept a careful eye on him. Kato was one hell of a tough guy. As they walked together Kato began to ask Navya questions.

  “Navya, you were here when Sonya attacked you and Felix. Did you see anything odd about her behavior before we got back?” Kato asked.

  “She came to me a few days before the attack and said she had a bad headache. Other than that I don’t think I saw her. No wait, I saw her in the hallway and told her about our plan with Little Missy. She seemed upset, but that’s fairly normal for my conversations with her.” Navya stopped talking for a moment, lost in thought. “You know, there was something strange. As I was walking away from her I heard some loud cracks. I remember turning around and seeing her crack her knuckles. I thought it was odd because I don’t think she’d ever done that before. When I saw her in the communication room, before she attacked us, she cracked her knuckles again, too.”

  If what Kato was hearing was
correct, anyone who was infected could change their behavior in certain subtle ways before going completely crazy. It wasn’t much help. People would be acting odd no matter what at this point.

  They entered the medbay and made their way to the UMAC. Navya walked over and got the machine ready.

  “Kato, you first,” Navya said.

  Kato responded, “I’ve already gone through it, how about you go first?”

  Navya was worried about Kato. He had never spoken to her like that before.

  “Alright, I’ve got it all ready here. Just push this button and it’ll start,” Navya spoke as she lowered herself in the machine. She waited for a minute, but nothing happened. Normally there would be noises that the machine made when it began to move.

  “Everything alright out there?” Navya asked, but she didn’t hear an answer. She crawled out of the machine and looked at Kato.

  “It’s giving me an error of some kind,” Kato said.

  Navya walked over and saw what Kato was looking at. The machine’s display read:

  *Error Exception*

  Navya did what she always did when she ran into a problem with electronic devices: she turned it off and on again. The simple technique had worked more often than she would have thought possible. This time, however, it did not work. After waiting for ten minutes for the machine to fully reboot, she pressed the ‘run’ button again. The UMAC gave the same error. Navya had never experienced so much as a glitch or bug while using the UMAC before. So she had the UMAC run a self-diagnosis program. Halfway through its diagnosis it crashed and gave the same error:

  *Error Exception*

  “I’ll have to look into this a bit more,” Navya said.

  Navya looked up the terse error message and learned it was a low-level problem that was either the main Central Processing Unit (CPU) or a motherboard failure. She opened the machine and looked at the main motherboard that also contained the CPU. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong at first glance. Navya decided that she would try to replace the motherboard with a new one that was stored with the machine.

  After replacing the motherboard with a new one, Navya booted the machine back up and told it to run a diagnosis. This time, it gave a different error:

  *Fatal Error Exception*

  “Fatal. That doesn’t sound good,” Navya said to herself. She took the new motherboard back out and sat down with both boards. She grabbed the surgi-glasses and used the magnification feature to look closely at each board. After an hour of carefully looking over the first motherboard, she found what she thought was the problem. There was a small droplet-sized burn near the main CPU. It had damaged the internal wires of the motherboard. She took the second, backup motherboard and looked near the same area as the first motherboard. She didn’t see any burn marks. Instead, she noticed that part of the CPU was discolored, probably due to high heat. After doing a few tests, Navya confirmed that both locations were the source of the problems. At first, Navya thought that the boards had overheated and left the burn marks, but the closer she inspected them, the more they looked like burns of a different nature. As if something was eating away at the board. Something like acid.

  “Ah, I think I’ve found something now,” she said as she looked around the room, but it was empty. Navya had been so absorbed in her work that she hadn’t noticed Kato leave the room.

  ----------

  Felix couldn’t understand what was going on but was beginning to care less and less. He was extremely annoyed at Alice. Over the years they had spent together, Felix had admired Navya. She could do brain surgery and had the most interesting stories. But every time she told an interesting story, Alice had to ruin it with a stupid comment.

  He had always hoped that Navya would ‘warm-up’ to him. He appreciated her rare combination of beauty and brains. Her slender body had the perfect hourglass shape that Felix loved, and her long black hair always looked perfect. It made him feel like he was spending time with a model.

  Felix never mentioned these thoughts to anyone because he and everyone had signed the agreement that they would not fraternize. Despite the agreement and the food ‘supplements’ that were designed to curb any sexual appetite, nature has a way of prevailing and Felix was a healthy young specimen. He admired and respected Navya’s skill, even if he couldn’t tell her so. He could barely look at blood without feeling faint, but Navya could literally do brain surgery. To Felix, she was perfect.

  Felix shook his head. There was no doubt he had had his share of thoughts about Navya, but for some reason, today, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. This was not normal for him.

  Felix was on his way to the generator room. It was always important to check the generator to make sure they got a steady supply of precious electricity. Without the generator, the backup batteries would take over. They had a limited capacity though, and the whole facility would be considered on emergency power if that happened. As he made his way there he received a call from Kato. Apparently, Alice wanted to tell them something important about her research.

  The anger he felt toward Alice returned and along with it a nagging feeling. He didn’t want to even talk to Alice, so he had told Kato he had work to do.

  At first, the nagging feeling was about Alice and her stupid, stupid comments. Why couldn’t Alice just let Navya have her say without saying anything stupid or interrupting? But as he was walking to the generator room, he happened to pass by and heard part of the conversation between Kato, Alice, and Navya. They said they were going to run everyone through the UMAC.

  The nagging feeling grew more intense. Finally, Felix understood what was bothering him. The UMAC was a problem. The biggest problem he had ever known. He forgot about Annoying Alice and immediately got to work.

  All it took was removing a single panel and gaining access to the main motherboard. Felix smiled as he imagined the high concentration of hydrogen ions stripping away at the layers of the motherboard. A single drop of concentrated sulfuric acid was enough to ruin the complex circuitry that lay within. Thinking about the back-up batteries had given him an idea for a way to take the UMAC out of commission without making it too obvious.

  Felix was very familiar with the graphene batteries in the Habitat. Technically, they were super-capacitors, but everyone still called them batteries. It was finally beginning to irritate him that he seemed to be the only person who bothered to check on the batteries. He knew the batteries were made from millions of ultra-thin layers of graphene and lithium and were designed to be ‘resurfaced’ about once every other year. This ensured the batteries would provide peak performance over the long duration of the mission.

  The resurfacing process involved disassembling the battery and exposing the layered grid to vaporous, dilute sulfuric acid. The need for sulfuric acid in the ultra-high tech batteries of today was somewhat ironic since the ancient lead-acid batteries so common in the 20th century used the same acid as an electrolyte. The sulfuric acid stored in the Habitat was concentrated to reduce weight, it being understood that water would be available and used to dilute it as needed. Felix simply used the sulfuric acid without dilution.

  Felix had spent years studying the technical manuals for every aspect of the Habitat. While reading about the UMAC, he had previously made note of the fact there was one backup motherboard among other spare parts for the UMAC. It only took a moment for the computer to reveal to Felix that the extra motherboard was stored inside the UMAC.

  Sabotaging the backup motherboard was easy but Felix had to contort his hand around the heatsink to drop the sulfuric acid around the corners of the CPU on the main motherboard. The liquid filled in the gaps and began to burn.

  He didn’t know exactly how it would affect the UMAC, but he knew that it would take a full diagnostic passover to find the droplet-sized problems. With the replacement also ruined, it would take even longer to properly diagnose and repair the small circuits that were destroyed. They might not even have the proper equipment to fix it.

&nb
sp; With that, he felt extremely good. Next, he had to take care of Annoying Alice. Felix would make sure that Alice would no longer be able to interrupt or make snide comments to Navya. He went into BSL1 and grabbed a centrifuge he had seen Bailey and Alice use thousands of times over the years. He removed the cover that surrounded the vials as they spun. Then he took the vials and gave them a solid whack on the table, cracking them slightly. Next, he filled each one of them with the concentrated battery acid he had used on the UMAC.

  Finally, he accessed the software for the centrifuge and began to look at the programming. All it took was changing a few snippets of code to disable the safety features that limited how fast the centrifuge would spin. He tried to get control of the doors, but he found he couldn’t deactivate all the safety features for ingress and egress. It looked like the code for the doors was built into the foundation of the software; he couldn't easily make changes without affecting all the doors and locks. He would need to come up with something else to get the result he wanted. He looked closer at the code for the doors and found something that could work. If a fire alarm was activated, the doors would close automatically until manually opened. That would have to do.

  SIXTEEN

  S.O.S.

  Li, Bailey, and Dimitri were floating in the communication room looking at the monitor in front of them. They were just about finished downloading files from Earth. One file contained a video. Video files were not common because they were expensive on bandwidth, which was a rare commodity this far out in the solar system.

  “It must be serious if they’re sending a video,” Dimitri said. “The only time we used video was for live streams when we first left for Europa.”

  The crew on the Seeker had been anxiously waiting for a report from Europa for two weeks after the previous strange ‘report.’ The report from Europa was late and it was now fifteen days since they had received anything from Europa. They had been in frequent communication with Earth and the Moon Base.