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CHAPTER 15

Proxima b

“Yoko, we need to figure out if there’s a genetic factor causing this dormancy,” Polkingham said, transferring the captured sperm into a specialized container. “We’ve been at this for months and we’ve yet to find the culprit of the zero motility of female gene-carrying sperm.”

“Maybe today is our lucky day, Neil.” Dr. Yoko Pearl nodded. The Japanese scientist had come to Proxima b on the Samaritan as an expert in pathology and genetics. Since Mak had gone on the Emissary and Thomaskutty was killed by the Atlantean, she had also taken over as the main physician for the Samaritan and ground teams. When there was a break in the day-to-day doctoring of broken bones or sinus infections, she spent her time in the lab with Polkingham and the research effort. “Agreed. If we can pinpoint a mutation or anomaly in the DNA, it could give us a clearer understanding.”

“That is the hope,” Sentell agreed with them without looking up from his screens. He and his ever-present shadow, Grag, were in the lab as often, if not more often, than even Polkingham. Sentell sat in front of his computer interface displaying a complex, swirling model of DNA strands. Grag sat right behind him looking over his left shoulder, often pointing at the screens and asking questions. Polkingham made a mental note of how well the two worked together. Sentell had sort of taken on the role of mentor to the young Fintidierian scientist; perhaps that was the way to grow the trust between the two civilizations. He would discuss the idea of mentors with Jesus at some point in the near future.

“Agreed,” Polkingham said as he nodded.

“We’ve already prepared the sequencer. Once we break apart the sperm and extract its DNA, then we can compare it with the DNA of motile male sperm and pinpoint if there are any differences,” Sentell announced.

“The microscope is continuous, correct, Dr. Chris?” Grag asked. No matter how many times they had told the young Fintidierian to stop with the formal titles, he persisted.

“Well, we have two things going on here, Grag,” Sentell replied, until now focused on the multiple windows open on his screen along with several virtual ones open via his smart contacts. “We have a high-resolution optical microscope running at sixty frames per second. We can see a sperm with it, but you won’t see inside or anything much smaller than the sperm with that technology. At the same time, we have a high-speed scanning electron microscope capturing the same image. The SEM is running at ten frames per second, and believe me, it is an engineering marvel. SEMs are usually one-shot devices, or, at best, provide one image every few seconds. This one here is—or was when we left Earth—the fastest SEM on the planet. The optical image and the SEM images are blended inside the computer using special machine learning software. What we get as a result is what we see on the screen—a full three-dimensional representation of the tiny object being observed.”

“So, not continuous,” Grag responded, but it was clear from the tone of his voice he was unclear about it.

“You realize that the human eye has an integration time of a twenty-fifth of a second or so, right? In other words, anything faster than twenty-five hertz and the eye doesn’t see it,” Sentell explained.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.” Grag frowned. “But it makes sense.”

“Are you finished yet, Chris?” Dr. Pearl asked.

“Uh, almost…Now.” Sentell tapped in some instructions and waved his hands around in his virtual environment. “Look, there it is, Grag. Filip, you might want to see this too. The sperm has now ruptured and these strands here are the DNA.”

“Fascinating,” both Grag and Filip mouthed.

“That is actually the genetic code for a human?” Filip asked.

“Yep.”

“Amazing thing to behold.” Filip continued to watch the screen closely. Polkingham was certain that the Fintidierian senior scholar was truly mesmerized by the abilities of Terran technology.

“Okay, Yoko. I’ve collected both sets of samples and transferring the strands to you now,” Sentell said. There were sounds of motion and some whirring coming from the instruments on the lab bench and then Pearl made a happy sound.

“Hey, there you are,” she said to nobody in particular. Once isolated, Pearl began the sequencing. “Okay, I suggest everyone go get a cup of coffee. It will take fifteen minutes for the sequencing to take place.”

* * *

“But you should have seen the look on Dr. Chris’s face when that skiezel skipped from the water, trying to throw his lure,” Grag continued with the fishing story as the team sat in the break room waiting for the gene sequencing to be completed.

“Like largemouth bass back on Earth,” Sentell added.

Pearl sat and quietly listened to the conversation. She sipped her coffee slowly and peered around the breakroom thinking about how some things were universal. Had she not known she was on a planet in a star system light-years from Earth, she could have believed this was any old break room in any old science or university building.

The room was a dull-gray-painted Fintidierian concrete block that the Terrans had retrofitted with instant hot and cold vending machines, a refrigerator, kitchen appliances, and several monitor screens mounted on the walls. The tables were a combination of pressed wood laminates and steel. The chairs were of similar construction. The monitors in the background were playing local broadcasts that were now updated to Terran broadcast resolution. That was a technology the Fintidierians would not have had for decades or more. On one monitor some local daytime talk show was playing. On another was a twenty-four-hour news channel, which hadn’t existed until the Earthlings began interacting with the Proximans.

“I think you are embellishing this story a bit, Grag.” Sentell laughed around a mouthful of pie that he quickly washed down with coffee. “I have caught bigger fish on Earth before…much bigger.”

“Ah, but never a skiezel on an alien world,” Professor Filipineaus Cromntinier laughed as he corrected him. “There is a different, my friend. We all recall the first time we landed a skiezel!”

“Touché,” Sentell agreed. The two Fintidierians looked confused. At that, Polkingham burst into laughter.

“Tew…shaaye?” Grag repeated.

“A competition sword-fighting term that means ‘I touched you with my sword.’ You stabbed me or poked me or got me with your joke or response,” Sentell explained. “Filip is correct. That was the first skiezel—hell, fish—I’d caught on an alien world. So, touché!”

“Have you been in a sword fight, Dr. Chris?” Grag asked. “Is that common on Earth?”

“Give up, Chris.” Polkingham continued to laugh. “The nuances of slang, quips, and evolved and mingled languages are beyond the best linguists in the galaxy.”

“Uh, no, Grag. I’ve never even touched a sword, I don’t think. I mean a real one,” Sentell explained, and Pearl watched the expression on his face change to a look as if he were recalling some old memory. “Well, when I was a kid, I had a toy sword.”

“I fenced in the Olympics when I was younger,” Pearl interjected. Talking of swords certainly stirred old memories within her.

“Really?” Polkingham asked. “The Olympics? Then you must be quite good.”

“I didn’t medal. But I made it to the medal rounds.” Pearl used her fork to move the pie around on her saucer. She hadn’t really wanted it and there was something about the local citrus fruits that didn’t agree with her.

“Olympics. Hmmm, yes, I’ve seen some of your videos on that.” Filip turned to look at her. “A global competition, correct?”

“Yes,” she said. “They are played every four years. Summer and winter events are staggered by two. I represented Japan—the country I am from on Earth.”

“You must be quite amazing to be able to represent your entire country! The range of expertise of you Terrans never ceases to amaze me.” Filip smiled at her. Pearl liked the elder scholar. She guessed that to the Fintidierians the man was like an Einstein or Feynman or Crick or Darwin, and that wasn’t lost on her.

“Yoko, the sequencer has completed its task.” Pearl’s AI assistant, Amico, alerted her sub-audibly so only she could hear it. “Would you like me to send you the results now?”

“Thank you, Professor.” She bowed her head slightly in respect. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think the genetic sequencing is complete. Let me check on it.”

“By all means!” Filip sounded excited.

“Absolutely.” Pearl stood to excuse herself. “Give me ten minutes or so to arrange the data in a more easily understood format. I’ll send Neil a call when I get that done.”

“We’ll be here. Call as soon as you’re ready.” Polkingham gave her a look of reassurance and nodded.

Pearl began looking through the results on the virtual screens in front of her as she walked down the hall toward the lab entrance. A DNA helix appeared in front of her with labels of A, T, C, and G spread about it. There were millions of base pairs connected along the model. Several graphs popped up beside the helix giving summaries of the various pertinent bits of data including a histogram of the base quality scores, the GC content, and from some of the graphs arrows pointed back toward specific locations on the DNA chain.

A second DNA chain then appeared with similar pop-out graphs and charts. The two chains each used half of the field of view of the virtual screen. The left side of the virtual screen was labeled as the “male” sperm motility sample and the right side was labeled as the “female” one. There were clear differences pointed out between them, but only the ones that would be expected from sequencing errors and variations. These sections were highlighted from red to green based on the level of confidence or severity of the error. As time progressed, the automated sequencing system continued gathering data and the errors decreased and confidence scores rose.

Pearl sat down at her station in the lab and tossed her virtual screens up onto the surrounding big screens on the walls. She leaned back in her chair and studied the data. She was looking for some smoking gun as to why the female sperm were not motile. There was nothing that jumped out specifically from a visual perspective. The difference might be very subtle.

“Amico,” she addressed her AI assistant, “show me the CATSPER genes.”

“Certainly, Yoko,” Amico replied. “The CATSPER sequences are located here and here.”

A section on each of the genetic strings lit up brighter than the others. Pearl looked closely, but soon realized that from that perspective it would have been like trying to read a street sign from orbit. This one section alone probably consisted of thousands of base pairs. There were what appeared to be random strings of GCAT—guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine combinations—in various orders.

“Show me a statistical comparison of the two sections.”

“Certainly, Yoko.”

A graph appeared near each of the highlighted sections showing statistical distributions of the various bases. At first there was very little noticeable difference between the two other than ones expected between male and female sperm. There was really nothing specifically unusual about either. She frowned and squinted her eyes a bit, forcing herself to concentrate deeper into the dataset. What was in there that she was missing?

“I don’t see any major differences, do you?” Pearl asked her AI.

“The statistical variations in the CATSPER channel seem to be within a standard deviation of each other and nothing out of the ordinary,” Amico replied.

“Damn it.” Pearl rubbed the inside of her right hand with her left thumb unconsciously. “I thought for sure we’d find something there. Did we run a full-spectrum sequencing?”

“Yes.”

“Show me the list,” Pearl requested. Then a list scrolled in front of her of the types of sequencing that had been implemented to generate these results with the textbook descriptions that likely were pulled straight from the software’s help menu. It began with Sanger Sequencing and ended with Long-Read Sequencing.

Pearl read carefully through the assay of tests that had been run. She wasn’t certain exactly which sequencing techniques in particular might tell her something, but one of them must have uncovered something. She read and reread them slowly until she was distracted by the chatter of her colleagues coming down the hall. As of yet, she wasn’t sure there was anything to show them or discuss. There was a lot of data here and it needed much more scrutiny.

“Hmmm, Amico, give me a side-by-side comparison of the two samples, one sequencing technique at a time.”

“Very well,” Amico replied, and instantly new graphs and data scrolled on the screen.

“Run a pattern-recognition algorithm and cross-correlate each set. Highlight any major differences.”

“Understood.”

“…and he ate every one of the egg pouches too. He would have drunk the Firestarter fuel if I hadn’t stopped him because it was wood alcohol,” Grag was saying as Sentell held the door.

“The beer was plenty, Grag. You exaggerate.” Sentell laughed. “Besides, I could tell by the smell it was methanol.”

Polkingham looked at Pearl and she quickly did a very subtle negative head shake that he was likely to be the only one to notice. But then she saw Sentell raise an eyebrow slightly as he glanced back and forth between Polkingham and her. She could see his body language slump as if in defeat.

“Ah, Dr. Pearl.” Filip smiled softly as he approached. “I can see by the screens here that there is much data. I hope our young friend’s storytelling hasn’t interrupted you at an inopportune moment.”

“Storytelling…ah?” Pearl looked up, distracted.

“Don’t pay any attention to it, Yoko,” Sentell grunted cheerfully. “Grag thinks I don’t understand the difference between ethyl and methyl alcohols.”

Pearl nodded unconsciously in response. She wasn’t really paying attention to them. She was completely absorbed in the genetic sequencing of the sperm. What was all the prattle regarding methyl and ethyl alcohol?

“…methyl alcohol…” she muttered under her breath as if it had triggered something in her mind.

“What’s that?” Filip raised an eyebrow at her as she cocked her head sideways and looked in his general direction, focused at nowhere in particular, but her mind started to focus on something.

“Amico! Scroll the sequencing tests list on the screen.”

“Certainly, here it is,” the AI replied.

“Lucky number seven!” Pearl exclaimed.

“Yoko? You on to something?” Polkingham sat in the chair next to her and looked at the screen in front of her.

“Hold on.” She held a hand up, motioning him not to distract her chain of thought. “Amico. Give me the two sequences with test number seven only—the methyl sequencing.”

“Understood.”

The two strands appeared on the screen with a title above each stating that they were “Bisulfate Methyl Sequences” of each sample. The CATSPER regions were highlighted. Pearl reached up into the air in front of her, grabbed the regions of both, and expanded them.

“Amico, show me a comparison of the number of methylated CpG island base pairs,” she said excitedly. Pearl felt a flush in her body. Her heart rate increased a bit. She felt a rush of excitement almost as engulfing as the pre-match jitters she experienced before an Olympic qualifying duel against a world-class athlete.

Two histograms appeared on the screen. One showed the number of methylations for base pairs of the male sperm CATSPER region and the other for the female sperm CATSPER region. The histogram on the left showed that the male sperm had zero methylated base pairs with a confidence of eighty-seven percent. The one on the right showed that the female sperm had eighty-two percent of the base pairs attached to a methyl group with a confidence of ninety-one percent.

“Got you!” Pearl slammed both palms onto the table in excitement. “Holy shit!”



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