CHAPTER 16
Proxima b
“Holy shit!” Polkingham echoed, looking at the screen and probably not even realizing that Pearl had just said the exact same thing.
“Methylation?” Sentell said out loud and directed toward nobody in particular. “Methylation…hmmmm.”
“We’ve found it! Filip, we’ve found it!” Polkingham declared, excitedly pointing at the multicolored charts and the exploded view of the CATSPER genes on the screen.
“What have we found, Neil?” Filip asked.
“Dr. Chris?” Grag looked at him with wild-eyed excitement.
“Dr. Pearl,” Polkingham cleared his throat loudly to calm the room. “Would you please explain methylation to Professor Cromntinier?”
“Uh, certainly.” Pearl made a couple of hand-waving motions in front of her and expanded the section of the CATSPER gene on the female sperm sample. “You see, Professor, DNA methylation involves the addition of methyl groups, one carbon atom covalently bonded to three hydrogen atoms, to specific regions of DNA. We are interested in sperm motility, so we are looking closely at this gene sequence here, the CATSPER genes. You see, the genes aren’t supposed to have these methyl groups bonded to them here and here and here. This ‘methylation’ leads to gene silencing or reduced gene expression. In other words, if DNA methylation were to occur in the regulatory regions of CATSPER genes in female human sperm, it might affect the function of CATSPER channels, which are essential for the elevation of intraflagellar calcium and the induction of hyperactivated motility in sperm.”
“I’m not sure I see.” Filip looked puzzled.
“Simply put, sir”—Pearl smiled—“these genes here make the sperm swim. These methyl groups on them turn off those genes and therefore keep the sperm from swimming.”
“Ah.” Filip leaned in closer to the screen and studied the sequence. “A switch to turn the tails on and off.”
“Exactly,” Polkingham agreed.
“That’s our smoking gun. But why? I mean, why are they methylated and others are not?” Sentell asked.
“Would this, em, methylation as you call it, be hereditary?” Grag asked. The strange Fintidierian stammers and studders in his conversational skills continued to improve but were still quite noticeable.
“Great question, Grag,” Sentell said. “Yes. This is a particular genetic modification that would be passed on to the offspring.”
“Troubling.” Filip watched with bated breath, his eyes darting between the team and the displays. “So, you’re suggesting this problem might be genetic and not environmental?”
“It’s a possibility,” Polkingham replied, pointing at the methylated gene base pairs. “But something caused this. It’s too specific. How did these genes only become hyper-methylated while no others have? So, while it is genetic, the cause of it came from within the environment. Now the question we need to be asking is, was it natural or not?”
“Well, assuming that…Hang on,” Pearl said and held up her left hand. “Amico, full statistical analysis across both samples. Any other sequences unusually methylated?”
“Processing…” Amico replied. “No other base pair island groups are methylated.”
“And what are the odds of that occurring by accident, randomness, or natural causes?” Polkingham added.
“The statistical analysis suggests that the specific targeted genes could not be methylated so concisely by random events within the lifetime of the universe,” Amico explained.
“Dr. Polkingham,” Grag asked hesitantly, “you know our legends speak of the Atlanteans and their incomprehensible powers, which we now understand were technologies. Could it be possible…that they left behind some form of tiny machinery that’s affecting our sperm?”
“You mean like nanomachines, Grag?” Polkingham asked.
“Yes.” Grag nodded. “Machines so tiny they could influence or tamper with our biological functions at a cellular level. Machines that could place these, em, methyl groups on the sperm cells in just the right places, the same way you are using the little machines to move the female sperm to the egg?”
“Such a machine would have to be incredibly tiny!” Filip exclaimed. “And if it’s affecting every single sperm, there would need to be…trillions of them?”
“Well, I wonder about that,” Sentell added. “Given the size of a sperm, if a machine were to interfere with it, then the machine would have to be in the tens to hundreds of nanometers in scale. But we’ve examined the sperm under scanning electron microscopy, as you see on that screen there, and we haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. No nanomachines or viruses. No…nothing.”
“Well, wait a minute, Chris.” Pearl held up her hand again. “Just because we haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they aren’t around. Since these modifications to the CATSPER genes are indeed hereditary, the grandparents or great-grandparents and so on could have been infected generations before.”
“Hey, Yoko, you might be right.” Polkingham seemed to be on to an idea. “The machine—if it is a machine; hell, it could even be a virus with the right payload—could have been around a long time ago. Think about it. The female population started dropping off more recently at rapid rates. We’ve modeled this and it actually fits a reverse-population-growth model of a species with no known predators.”
“Please elaborate on that, Neil,” Filip requested.
“Certainly If you take the a given population of skiezel, for example, and put them in a pond with plenty of food and no predators, they will grow with a known birth rate nonlinearly until the pond becomes overcrowded and then they will die off because they will eat all the food or something else will happen in nature. But in a perfect pond full of infinite food, those fish would continue to populate forever.” Polkingham paused for a breath and to make sure he was being followed. Then he continued. “If we take the female Fintidierian population today and reverse it back in time, using your census data, it grows as expected but in the wrong direction in time.”
“And this means what to you, Neil?”
“Don’t you see?” Polkingham exclaimed. “Since the female population was decreasing as time went on, the cause of the decrease was increasing in time with a similar, maybe more accelerated, nonlinear growth. This suggests an infection.”
“Hold on. We don’t have to speak in generalizations,” Pearl offered. “Amico, plot the female population of Fintidierians before the Samaritan’s arrival backward as far as the census data exists and curve-fit it. Reverse the axis of time so now is at the origin and the past moves to the right on the horizontal axis. Also normalize the graph to unity and adjust the census data to account for average birth rate year-to-year variances.”
“Very well, it is displayed now,” Amico replied.
“Now, plot the population growth over those same years if the female die-off hadn’t occurred and there was a normal population growth, normalized, and adjusted for year-to-year variances,” Pearl said. “Then, plot the population growth curve minus the reversed female death curve. Finally, overlay the actual population growth for that same time period.”
“I understand what you want,” Amico responded. “Here it is.”
On the main screen four curves appeared. The female death curve (reversed in time) was indicated with a blue line that started at an initial population and curved upward slightly to a significant value above zero. That was the population of women hundreds of years prior when the census data started. The male population at the time was estimated to be very close. The second curve, in green, was the estimated population growth minus any die-off. In other words, that curve was the population the Fintidierians should have been at had there not been other problems like ancient aliens interfering with their birth rates. The third curve was a black line that represented the ideal population (green line) minus the female reverse population (blue line). It curved up a little beneath the estimated ideal population line with the gap between them growing slightly with time. The final red line, the actual population of the Fintidierians, overlayed the black line exactly.
“There it is.” Pearl leaned back in her chair and sighed. “The gap between the ideal population and the actual population matches exactly to the female deaths reversed in time.”
“What does this mean, Dr. Pearl?” Filip asked. “Please, forgive my ignorance.”
“No apologies needed. This is complicated stuff even for us. Hmmm…So to answer your question, we can refine the model with more specifics, like the rate of men and women born with the genetic methylation versus not and so on,” she started. “But this death curve here, the blue line, that’s roughly the growth rate of whatever this infection is. If we adjust it for probabilities and generational groups of infected or not infected, we can calculate the exact growth rate. But the point is that it is growing exponentially during this period. Like a virus.”
“It could be a self-replicating machine, Yoko,” Sentell added. “But virus seems easier.”
“Agreed.” Polkingham nodded. “A damned virus is nothing more than a nanomachine anyway.”
“Is there a way to look for such a virus?” Grag asked.
“Uh, maybe.” Sentell rubbed his chin as if in thought. Then he called his AI assistant. “Hey, Susan?”
“Yes, Chris?” she replied. “How may I assist you?”
“How many Fintidierian sperm samples are in the autobay?” Sentell asked. The autobay was an automated system that could pull samples from known storage locations, warm them, and then run them through a myriad of the instruments including the microscope bays.
“Approximately ten thousand,” the AI answered.
“Start running them each through the microscope and capturing an image of each as rapidly as possible.” Sentell looked at Polkingham and Pearl, who were nodding in approval of his action. They both understood what he was doing. “Look for any exterior components other than sperm in the samples. That is to include bacterium, viruses, nanobots, or any other anomalies. Understood?”
“Yes, Chris,” Susan said.
“Uh, Susan, how long is that going to take?” he asked.
“That will take approximately six-point-nine days once the system is started.”
“Start it. And keep an eye out for anything odd. Alert me as soon as you find something. Okay?”
“Affirmative, Chris.”
“Okay, we have a lot to absorb and understand here,” Polkingham told them. “I say we all take a break, a day off maybe, and think on this while the automated systems are looking for our culprit.”
“Is it premature to speak with the secretary general?” Filip asked. “This is big news that you have found this methylation.”
“Can it wait a few days, Filip?” Polkingham asked. “We might have even more information.”
“I will wait then.” Filip hesitated. “Perhaps the few days will allow me to take a crash course on all of what we learned here today.”
“Good luck, Filip.” Sentell laughed. “I’m not sure I understood it all.”
“Did you not?” Grag looked confused at Sentell, not understanding the humor.
“Grag, my boy”—Sentell shook his head—“let’s go fishing and I’ll explain it then.”