CHAPTER 17
Proxima b—2 months later
“It makes no sense, Grag. I tell you that is for damned certain!” Sentell was tired, very tired. He was tired of the two steps forward, ninety steps backward routine that Proxima b had been. It had been a pretty long day fighting the white caps pushed by the approaching winter winds on the lake. Sentell didn’t really think of it as day. This time of year, on Proxima b, at that particular latitude on the planet, day was only a few hours long and night wasn’t completely dark either, the extreme aurora filling the night sky with bright blues, greens, violets, and occasional reds saw to that.
Sentell wasn’t really all that tired from the day’s activities. His fatigue was deeper than that, even though the day’s activities had been a lot of hard work, fun too. He and Grag had been on the high side above the dam in the very deep waters of Gwonura Reservoir for more than ten hours, doing some hard feaple fishing in the small wood, metal, and plastic two-seater fishing boat of Grag’s.
Feaple were like deep-channel catfish of Earth, but they weren’t blue, white-bellied, or even black. They were more of a spotted green and brown that fluoresced a chartreuse green ever so slightly in the hard ultraviolets from Proxima once they were out of the water. Other than that, they were pretty much catfish. They even croaked when you pulled them out of the water and removed the hooks from their mouths like the channel cats back on Earth in the Tennessee or Mississippi Rivers.
According to Grag’s great-grandfather, when the aurora was highest in the fall to winter months is when the feaple would feed on the harkenladlors, which, apparently, was the Fintidierian word for deep, fast movers. The harkenladlors were six-to-ten-centimeter-long, scallop-like freshwater mussels. The little creatures used jets of water and ink to propel themselves across the bottom of the deep murky water leaving behind them a stream of a foul-smelling inky oil as they traveled. The feaple tracked the smell and ate them. Grag’s ancestor must have figured out that the harkenladlors tended to migrate during the high auroras. Maybe it was the extra lighting, some electromagnetic thing, Chris didn’t know. But what he did know was that catching the twenty-kilogram feaple with the harnkenladlors as bait was fun as hell. It had been tiring, hard work, and he was exhausted. But he had also been able to set his mind on idle and just enjoy the task of fishing.
They had hit the reservoir just a few minutes after sunup. The first task was to drag a mussel rig across the bottom of the lake just a bit shallow of the deepest parts. The mussel rig had a brail that consisted of a meter-and-a-half-long wooden beam approximately five centimeters by twelve centimeters connected like a swing to two cables, one on each end. The cables were in turn connected to hand-cranked winches bolted to a metal support post with standards to rest the brail on at each end of his boat. About a hundred brailhooks swung down from the wooden beam on individual heavy leader lines about a meter long. Each of the brailhooks contained four long, three-millimeter-thick rods slightly bent outward with a metal bead at each end. Grag had explained that the bead at the end acted like bait to the mussels and kept them from slipping off the hook once they clamped their shells down on it.
“Release the brake! Drop the brail,” Grag sang in Fintidierian as he showed Chris how to operate it. The brail made a cold splash and the cables whirred against the bell of the winches until it hit the bottom. “Don’t get your fingers caught. Release the sail.”
Once the brail lines stopped whirring that meant the beam with all the leader lines had made it to the bottom. They let out a few more meters of line for slack and then locked the brakes on the winches. Then Grag hefted up the underwater sail rig and tossed it over the opposite side of the boat.
“The motor is in the wrong place on a boat to pull the rig,” Grag explained. “This underwater sail has technique has been handed down, well, as long as people have been catching mussels.”
“So, we just let this underwater sail pull the boat along with the current?” Chris asked.
“Yes. As it pulls us along, the brail will float a meter or so off the bottom. When the hooks hit the mussel beds, they will scurry about thinking it is food and clamp on,” Grag said, demonstrating how to drive the sail rig with the two guidelines. “Then we have our bait. Best bait in all of the world. We steer the sail like this—pull this string for right, this one for left.”
“I see. It’s like flying a kite.”
Chris and Grag had dropped the mussel rig to the bottom and dragged it along for several minutes. Then they reached a point downstream where there was a white plastic bottle floating in the water that someone, probably Grag, had anchored there to mark the bed.
“Man the winch.” Grag pointed to the other end of the boat and the two of them each hand cranked the rig up.
“Jesus, this thing is heavy,” Chris said.
“That’s a good sign.” Grag sounded excited. “If it is heavy, that means the brail is loaded with harkenladlors.”
And it was. The brailhooks cleared the surface and Chris counted hundreds of the clam-like creatures attached. They rested the brail on the standards and locked the winches.
“Okay, get on the other end of the sail.” Grag motioned where he wanted Chris. The two of them hoisted the sail back into the boat and Grag quickly rolled it back up and shoved it away in a compartment at the bottom of the boat.
“How do we get these things off of there?” Chris asked, tugging at one of the mussels on a hook. The mussel was a bright pearl white with blue and green mixed in cloudy rings about the shells.
“You have to turn the shell like this”—Grag demonstrated—“and then snap it off the brailhook. Then, toss it in the bucket.”
They pulled the smelly mussels from the brailhooks and repeated the process for a couple of hours until Grag was convinced they had enough bait. There were three ten-liter buckets filled to the top with the mussels.
“This seems like too many for just bait,” Chris said.
“Oh, yes of course.” Grag almost laughed. “We will only need a few handfuls of them. But my family will cook and can the mussels. They are quite tasty. And we will sell the shells for a good price.”
“Sell the shells? For what?”
“For money, Dr. Chris.” Grag sounded confused, Chris thought. Or maybe he had learned how to joke with him. Chris wasn’t sure. But once he realized that Grag was not offering any further discussion he realized it wasn’t a joke.
“No, Grag, I mean for what purpose are the shells used?”
“Ah, I see.” Grag laughed. “Buttons, jewelry, knife and tool handles, inlays on musical instruments, and some are even used in poultry feed to make the eggshells stronger.”
“Hmmm. Who knew?” Chris shrugged.
“Most people here on Fintidier who mussel-know,” Grag added.
Chris guffawed but Grag didn’t catch why. Chris decided not to explain.
“Never mind,” he said. “So, when do we get to actually fish?”
The bait gathering alone had been a hard morning of work. The entire time Grag worked with the brail he hummed or sang the Fintidierian tune his grandfather had taught him. Sentell had asked him to teach it to him, but for some reason he was having a difficult time learning the Fintidierian slang that was a big part of the song, and he gave up.
But finally, following the bait gathering, they had finally gotten to the fun part—fishing for feaple. The big deep-water fish would latch onto the mussels and not let them go. Since they swam down at a depth of fifteen meters, reeling them in took considerable effort. Especially since the feaple ranged between five and twenty kilos each. With every fish they caught there seemed to be an equal gust of the icy cold and wet wind cutting through them all day. The wind, in turn, rocked the boat up and down, thumping it hard against the water each time the waves passed. Sentell had fished in weather like that back on Wheeler Lake in Alabama in the winter months, and up in Utah on Bear Lake. As a kid he’d lived in Ohio for one year and had ice-fished on Lake Erie. So, it wasn’t the cold, hard day of fishing that had tired him so. Hell, that kind of work was fun, enjoyable, and therapeutic.
Fishing had made him physically tired, true, but Sentell felt something different, something deeper. He was frustrated. He hadn’t been so frustrated even during his dissertation research. He was tired of the big breakthroughs followed by stone-wall obstacles. The methylation discovery was huge, and he had been certain they would find the cause in the microscopy of the samples. But that hadn’t been the case. The original discovery had been followed by months and months of searching the Fintidierian sperm samples for viruses or nanobots only to fall short. No matter how hard they had looked, there had not been a single Fintidierian with any visible or even subtle signs of an infection that would explain the methylation of the CATSPER genes on the female sperm. But the methylation was there. They had at least found that.
Grag had been cooking and singing the same song for almost an hour. He had prepared the large filets of the feaple pretty much the same way he had cooked the skiezel months prior back in the early summer—battered and fried in a big cauldron over an open fire. The fire crackled and popped shards of embers into the night, looking like bright orange fireflies.
This time Sentell had brought the ingredients for hushpuppies: he had collected some of the most potato-like tubers from Fintidier that he could find and sliced them into fries, and he had even brought some ketchup. Some of the Samaritan crew had gotten fairly good crops of tomatoes to grow in greenhouses on the base over the past year or two. He had also seen some potatoes starting to take hold, but they hadn’t been ready yet. Local tubers would suffice.
“The feaple are a bit stronger tasting, not bad at all, but stronger,” Sentell said. “Just like catfish back home. You know, if you soak them in saltwater a few hours before you cook them, they will taste even better. That’s how we do the deep-channel cats. So, what do you think of the hushpuppies and fries?”
“A very interesting idea.” Grag scarfed one of them down. “Deep-fried bread and tubers. I would have never thought of it. But you are right, Dr. Chris, they go well with the fried fish, and this ketchup. It is…very tasty. There is nothing like it here on Fintidier. We could sell this and become fantastically rich!”
“Grag! That is an absolutely fantastic, hell of an idea.” Sentell realized that there were business ideas that worked centuries prior on Earth that hadn’t been tried here on Proxima b yet. “You don’t realize what you just said, my young friend!”
“How so?” he asked around a mouthful of the fish. Sentell watched as Grag liberally applied the ketchup to everything on his plate—fried fish, fries, and the hushpuppies. Grag was enjoying it to the point of dipping his fingers in the ketchup and licking them clean like toddlers, and many adults, had been known to do back on Earth for centuries.
“You really seem to be enjoying that ketchup, Grag,” Sentell remarked with a smile and then popped a ketchup-basted hushpuppy all the way in his mouth.
“Mm-hm.” Grag nodded enthusiastically, his mouth full of food. “This stuff is amazing, Dr. Chris! I’ve never tasted anything quite like it. It is sweet, it has a spicy tanginess, and it is creamy also, I think. Nothing like it here on this planet, ever.”
Sentell chuckled and almost choked himself on the mouthful. He grabbed his beer and quickly washed it down, clearing his palate. “You know, Grag, ketchup is more than a delicious sauce. Back on Earth, ketchup created fortunes and an entire industry. It played a significant role in the success of a company called Heinz.”
“Really?” Grag’s curiosity was piqued. “Heinz? What does that word mean?”
“It’s a name,” Sentell continued. “H. J. Heinz was the name, in fact. He was the founder of the company. It’s actually funny that I know all this. But I watched a documentary video about it when I was researching how to make ketchup after our first fishing trip. The documentary was absolutely fascinating. You see, Heinz had a vision. He believed in creating high-quality, natural products. So, when he introduced Heinz tomato ketchup in 1876, that’s like two hundred and twenty-six years ago, it was a game-changer. Unlike other condiments of the time, Heinz’s ketchup had a pure and consistent flavor. It was made from ripe tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and a blend of spices. No artificial preservatives or thickeners.”
“Maybe I understand that.” Grag listened intently, setting down his fork for a moment. “But how did ketchup become such a big deal?”
“Well, it’s freaking awesome, for one thing.” Sentell laughed. “According to the documentary, Heinz had this brilliant idea of bottling ketchup in distinctive glass bottles with narrow necks. It was not only practical, but it became iconic. People loved the taste and the convenience. It became a staple in American households. Oh, uh, that’s the country on Earth that I’m from. And soon ketchup wasn’t only in America, it gained worldwide recognition and the company became an economic giant.”
“So, Heinz’s success was built on ketchup?”
“Exactly,” Sentell replied. “Ketchup became the cornerstone of their business. Over time, they expanded their product line, but ketchup remained their most famous and successful product. The Heinz Company is still one of the richest companies today. It’s a global giant, and it all started with ketchup. Aaannnddd…Fintidier doesn’t have ketchup here yet. It doesn’t have a Heinz. Fortunately, we brought all sorts of vegetable seeds with us on both ships and that includes tomatoes.”
“Dr. Chris, you’re saying that introducing ketchup to Fintidier could be a path to incredible success, just like Heinz did with ketchup on Earth?”
“Yep.” Sentell nodded. “Precisely, Grag. It might not be only ketchup. There could be other Earthly delights or innovations that Fintidierians would embrace. I’ve been thinking about these beer bottles and tops you use here as well. We have better ones on Earth. And the man who invented those is superrich too. It’s all about finding what’s missing and bringing something valuable to the planet.”
“Ketchup. Fintidier would eat this stuff up, but it might need to be made a little less sweet. We don’t put as much sugar into our food as you.” Grag continued to savor his ketchup-covered meal, not realizing the pun he had made. Sentell could see that wheels were starting to turn in the young man’s head, though. And he liked that.
“Hey, man, I mean, Fintidier has superrich people, right?”
“Yes, of course it does, Dr. Chris.”
“Why not us?” Sentell was finished with his plate and as good as it all was, he couldn’t eat another bite. He sat the plate to the side of his chair and leaned back, taking a long swig from the beer bottle. He thought that the Fintidierians could use some decent beer too, but one thing at a time.
“Dr. Chris, I have another ketchup question.”
“Okay, fire away.”
“We have laws here about inventions, who owns them, and they regulate who can make copies of someone’s invention.”
“Yes, we call that a patent,” Sentell replied, taking another swig. “We have those too. You gotta pay if you want to copy and make money of someone else’s invention.”
“Wouldn’t Mr. Heinz be upset if we copied his invention?” asked Grag.
“Uh, well, that’s a good question. I really don’t know about the recipe for ketchup being patented. There are other companies that make a similar product and I have no idea if they have to pay Heinz to do that or not.”
“How could we find out?”
“Well, we could always…Wait. No. We don’t have to have their permission. That company is over four light-years away. What’re they going to do about it if we do copy their recipe? Fly over here an arrest us?” Sentell grinned. “That’s not likely to happen.”
“Hmm. I guess you are correct. But it just doesn’t feel right,” Grag said.
“I guess none of that matters if we don’t solve this damned fertility crisis.”
“I think we are close,” Grag said optimistically. “I mean, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I am kinda stumped,” Sentell answered as he emptied the bottle. “I don’t know what to do next. I could really use some new inspiration—other than ketchup.”
“Well, you figured out how to create the female pregnancies by letting yourself think like an ancient Atlantean alien. The microbots work well and we have many new female babies here on Fintidier—thousands now, and more every day.” Grag dropped his plate and wandered over to the fire, stirring it a bit with a poker stick and adding an armload of logs to it.
“The bots do work. But they are not a solution. They are a work-around. There’s a difference, Grag.” Sentell understood that the entire civilization could not depend on microbot fertilization for eternity. No, a real solution had to be found. But before a solution could be found, they really needed to know what the problem was.
“A work-around that is working around the problem while we find a permanent solution.” Grag made a few final tweaks to the fire, dropped the fire poker, and rummaged through the beer bucket, pulling out two fresh bottles. He handed Sentell a beer and sat in the chair next to him so he could look out over the lake. “The wind is settled. The aurora is so strong tonight.”
“Yes, it is. Beautiful,” Sentell agreed, unscrewing the cap. He was almost used to the idea of opening beer bottles that way. But not quite.
“Why the feaple bit so well today,” Grag said.
“Hell of a lot of fun, Grag. Thank you for showing me all of it,” Sentell said, giving his friend a smile of gratitude. “I mean, the harkenladlors, the mussel rig, the feaple, and of course, the beer.”
“Here’s to the best interstellar fisherman ever.” Grag tapped his bottle in the manner Sentell had taught him.
“Hahaha! Not sure about that!” Sentell laughed. “But I’ll drink to it.”
“And the man who created the fertility crisis work-around by thinking like an ancient alien.” Grag tapped his bottle again. “And will do it again.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s what happened, Grag,” Sentell conceded, but took a drink anyway. “But I’ll play that game with you for now. If I were a super-advanced alien race and I wanted to manipulate sperm via methylation of the CATSPER genes to keep women from being born and it be undetectable by a Terran-level civilization, how would I do it?”
“Yes, Dr. Chris from the stars, great cosmic angler, how would you do it?” Grag chuckled lightly but then took a thoughtful long look at his friend and mentor. A smile remained on his friend’s face and Sentell wondered what he was thinking.
“Well, assuming these advanced aliens had a deep understanding of genetics and technology far beyond our own, as we are now certain they did, they might have engineered something on a microscopic scale. Something so small and subtle that it could evade detection by our current scientific instruments,” Sentell started with what he did know.
“Smaller than your nanobots?” Grag seemed shocked by the idea.
“Maybe, I dunno. We’re describing advanced ancient beings here. We definitely need to think outside the box.” Sentell shrugged. “But if you get too small, there’s no room for control systems, sensors, or event mechanisms like DNA or enzymes that could perform the methylation.”
“What does it mean to ‘think outside of the box’?”
Sentell chuckled. “It means to think about a problem in a way nobody has ever thought of before. Like, using some sort of unexplainable technology might as well be magic. How would we build a device on a scale smaller than a scanning electron microscope can resolve, and yet can stop protein expression in female sperm? Well, that magic is outside of the box of the standard or known approach or science. Or maybe, thinking of the answer as a device so small is putting us in a box which might not even hold the answer. Thinking outside the box is never simple.”
“Outside of the box. Hmmmm, interesting.” Grag struggled with the concept for a moment and then turned to Sentell with another thoughtful look on his face. “Dr. Chris, I would build a transmitter that sends a magic signal across the planet that would turn off female sperm. Somehow, the signal triggers this…methylation.”
“A transmitter, huh? That’s an interesting concept, Grag.” Sentell raised an eyebrow, intrigued by Grag’s imaginative response. “But what kind of signal are we discussing? And how would it selectively affect only female sperm in the way we know it is being affected?”
“Well, Dr. Chris, if I were these advanced aliens, I’d create a signal that specifically targets the genetic markers unique to female sperm, as you say. It would be like a lock-and-key system, where the signal only interacts with the ‘lock’ found on female sperm, preventing them from expressing the proteins needed for female sperm motility.” Grag looked anxiously back at Sentell as if waiting for him to validate his hypothesis. Sentell thought he was like a puppy that had just brought him his slippers and was waiting for a treat. Then Sentell wondered if that was a belittling thing to think of his friend. He didn’t know. Maybe it was the long months, the long, hard day of fishing, his full belly, and the beer.
“Maaaybe,” Sentell said as he slowly nodded for emphasis. “I have to say, man, I appreciate the hell out of your creativity here, Grag. I’m sort of coming up dry at the moment. But, it, well, that’s an intriguing idea. So, this signal would be transmitted across the planet, affecting sperm at the moment of fertilization or maybe somehow in all sperm-bearing aged males at any point in time, but essentially modifying their genetic instructions to suppress the female sperm motility.”
“Exactly, Dr. Chris. And it would be transmitted continuously, ensuring a consistent effect over generations.”
“Of course,” Sentell mused, “we’d need some way to detect and analyze this signal.”
“How do we do that?” Grag leaned back in his chair, deep in thought once more. “Perhaps we could search for anomalies in the electromagnetic spectrum or any unusual energy patterns. It might be hidden, but there could be subtle traces that we can discover with the right technology. Like, technology from across the stars from Earth.”
“That would be a very interesting concept to run by Rain, but, damn, she’s gone on the Emissary. And who knows when, or even if, they will ever make it back to Proxima b,” Sentell said. He realized then that he missed seeing her around the base and always having her around, even if they had never been that close. After all, she was the one who originally had found the signal from Proxima, and she had been the unofficial leader of the scientists who had traversed the stars. “I can talk with Burbank. He’s our needle-in-a-haystack signal guy now that she’s gone off. But I don’t think it would be a signal we could easily understand. I mean, I’m not sure you can affect a sperm’s genetic expression with an electromagnetic signal. And for it to be globally transmitted…”
“A…needle…in a…haystack?”
“Hahaha! That’s good. You are using our idioms just fine,” Sentell replied. “Now, regarding our mysterious signal, you’re right, it’s a long shot. But we won’t know until we explore every avenue. And even if it doesn’t pan out, it might lead us to other discoveries.” Sentell considered the best way to explain this to Roy. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what kind of signal it would be, if at all. Something out of place, or unusual, that’s the only thing he could think of to look for at the moment.
“Couldn’t you use a magnet?” Grag asked. “I mean, are your needles made of metal like ours?”
“Yes, that is the typical fun response to that dilemma,” Sentell answered. “But it’s a simile for other scenarios. This scenario is like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“I see,” Grag said.
“I still think that would be the wrong haystack. Electromagnetism, I mean,” Sentell explained. “I mean, to broadcast globally would take too much power. We’d see it in the spectrum analyzers, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I understand your issue with the hypothesis now. Yes. Electromagnetic energy decreases with the square of the distance. Our radio engineers here on Fintidier have known this for nearly three decades.” Grag nodded his head in agreement. “You’d need something like that…how is it your Einstein put it? Um, spooky action at a distance?”
“Ah, entanglement.” Sentell grinned. “You’re absolutely right, Grag. Einstein famously referred to entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ It’s a quantum phenomenon where particles become correlated in such a way that their states are linked, regardless of the distance between them. While it’s intriguing, it’s also incredibly complex and not something we currently have the technology to manipulate or broadcast at a global scale or at least I don’t think we do. Back on Earth, we have a global quantum network, but it is connected by optical fibers and wires.”
“Optical fibers?”
“Oh God, it is so difficult to remember all of the things you guys here on Proxima b, uh, Fintidier, have yet to discover or invent.” Sentell sighed. “Optical fibers are like wires for light beams. Think of them like long wires but instead of a conductor they are made of something like a flexible glass.”
“Optical fiber. I see, amazing that you can make glass flexible.”
“We discovered it not many years past where your civilization is now,” Sentell told him.
“Would it be too hard for the Atlanteans? The global spooky signal, I mean.” Grag asked. “If so, then we need to find a different way to approach this mystery, something that doesn’t rely on electromagnetic signals or entanglement.”
“Wait a minute, Grag. I didn’t say that. And I’m not a physicist either, but I have had modern quantum physics and biological phenomena classes. And I have read up on the subject quite a bit.” Sentell sat upright as abruptly as his full stomach and tired body would allow. He pulled a throw blanket out of his pack and covered himself with it. The night air was getting cold enough that the fire couldn’t keep him comfortable.
“Entanglement is nonlocal,” he said. “There are experiments showing human mental focus impact on quantum events.”
“Really? I would love to learn more.” Grag sounded surprised.
“Yeah, crazy stuff, but part of quantum physics and consciousness interactions,” Sentell said. “You have probably heard stories where people with chronic or fatal illnesses used the power of positive thinking to heal themselves. Stories like that actually happening are less rare than you’d think. There’ve been studies for over a century on Earth now.”
“Really?” Grag’s eyes widened with curiosity. “That’s fascinating, Dr. Chris. So, you’re saying that human consciousness might have the power to influence quantum events, including those related to genetics?”
“Well, I don’t know about genetics. Most genetics is fairly easily explained with classical chemistry, physics, and biology,” Sentell replied. “But certainly, human consciousness has been observed to change subtle experiment outcomes. It’s a mysterious and relatively unexplored aspect of quantum physics. Some scientists believe that consciousness plays a fundamental role in the universe, and that our thoughts and intentions can have a profound impact on reality at the quantum level. I don’t know, but this idea, well, it could be a possible way that a global nonlocal signal is communicated to all the Fintidierians at once.”
“Nonlocal. Yes, we are starting to use that word in my graduate courses.” Grag looked thoughtful. “So, if we could somehow harness this power of human quantum consciousness, we might be able to correct the imbalance without relying on electromagnetic signals or genetic engineering?”
“Well, we know that genetic engineering is taking place. This might be part of the mechanism for implementing it,” Sentell explained. “So, let’s continue along the path of thinking like the Atlanteans. Possessing super-advanced technologies and understanding of the universe greater than our own would certainly have its advantages. If human consciousness can be used to impact quantum events, then that suggests that the human mind is a quantum phenomenon transmitter of some sort.”
“And if the human mind—do you mean brain, maybe?—is a quantum transmitter, then does that mean that a similar type of transmitter can be manufactured?” Grag asked.
“Yes, I do mean the human brain. I think you are on to the right question there, Grag.” Sentell leaned forward, intrigued by the possibilities. “If the human brain can influence quantum events, it implies that there might be a way to replicate or amplify this effect using advanced technology. And we do similar things to this with quantum computers, quantum networks, and quantum antennas, but not at the scale of global communications with DNA. We’re talking about harnessing quantum phenomena at a level far beyond our current understanding.”
“Oh well,” Grag said as he finished his beer. He sounded defeated. Sentell felt bad that he couldn’t help his friend more than he had already. “It would have been so much simpler if the Fintidierian sperm had all been infected by something that was contagious. That would at least explain why you Terrans can’t have female children now also.”
“…Terrans can’t have female children now…” Sentell mouthed the words under his breath. He repeated Grag’s words again. “…so much simpler if the Fintidierian sperm had all been infected by something that was contagious…”
“Something wrong, Dr. Chris?”
“Grag, is that true?” Sentell asked. If that were true, why had he not heard this yet? Had he heard it and was too busy to have registered it?
“What? Is what true?”
“That us Terrans can’t have female babies now?” Sentell could feel adrenaline starting to course through him. His heart rate was accelerated and his mind clearing from his depressed and fatigued and somewhat inebriated state. “I don’t think I’ve heard that.”
“Oh, I don’t know if it is released data to the general public or anything,” Grag explained, “but that is what they are saying on all the daytime news shows.”
“Wait a minute.” Sentell held up a hand. Then he killed what was left of his beer and tossed it into the pile he and Grag would collect later so they could wash and reuse them. “Susan! Give me the stats on all new Terran parented births that have occurred on Proxima b. Only go back so far as to be certain the pregnancies happened here on Proxima. And do not use any data from births known to have gone through the nanobot procedure.”
“I understand, Chris. Wait a minute,” his AI voice rang in his head. Sentell turned his external speaker on so Grag could hear as well. “It would appear that no new females have been conceived here on Proxima b by the Terrans. There have been seven males.”
“I guess the news shows are correct, then.” Grag shrugged and scrunched back in his seat.
“No, Grag!” Sentell was almost shouting now. “You don’t understand. Hang on.”
Sentell stood up. Then he sat back down because he wasn’t sure what course of action he wanted to take. Did he need to sit and think about it longer? No, he decided sitting wasn’t going to help and wasn’t what he felt was the right thing, so he stood right back up. He started pacing back and forth between their seats and the fire. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t have that data before, but it made all the difference. It made a huge difference.
“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit!” Sentell had it. He was pretty sure he understood it now. “Susan!”
“Chris, I am inside your head. You do not have to shout,” Susan joked with him. “What can I do for you?”
“Susan! Are there any sperm samples from any Terrans presently in the autobay?” he asked excitedly.
“I’m sorry, Chris. There are several in storage, but none are loaded into the autobay,” Susan replied.
“Damnit!” Sentell cursed, then he turned to Grag. “Call us a taxi or a friend with a car, I don’t care. We have to get to the lab right now!”
“We need to clean up the—” Grag started.
“We clean while we get someone here to take care of the boat and everything else,” Sentell said, still pacing frantically. “This is too important. Grag, we need to get to the lab now. I’m too drunk to drive, man. And I’m sure you are too. Do I need to send for a security team to come get us?”
“Em, what is so important, Dr. Chris?” Grag was excited but confused. Sentell didn’t have time to explain everything at the moment because he was too busy recording his thoughts internally with his AI.
“I’ll tell you in a bit. Are you getting someone here to get us?” He continued swiping at things in front of him in his virtual view via his smart contact lenses. All the while, he was muttering to Susan to run this model or that calculation. “We need to get to the lab, Grag. Seriously.”
* * *
In the end, Grag had managed to get one of his uncles and a few cousins to come to the family lake house to take care of the boat, mussels, fish, and the general mess that they had made. One of the cousins close to Grag’s age, Jeritier, drove them back to the Terran research facility. Once they arrived at the security gate of the Terran village, Jeritier dropped them off and returned to the lake house. Sentell and Grag took an electric all-terrain vehicle from the gate to the lab.
They hastily made their way to the lab entrance where Sentell fumbled with the Fintidierian-manufactured cypher lock. He made a mental note to petition the engineers to retrofit the locks with wireless connectivity and entry management.
“There are probably fifty or more sperm samples from Terrans in the cooler. But if they don’t show us what I’m looking for, well, I will generate a fresh sample,” Sentell offered. He wasn’t sure if Grag understood what he was saying until he chuckled.
“Do you have some way to, em, you know, get excited?” Grag laughed but seemed more curious.
“Too much information, Grag,” Sentell grunted. “I’ll figure it out.”
Sentell was too focused on his hypothesis to let something falter the urgency of the potential discovery in front of them, and that alone was driving him forward. The revelation that Fintidierians born on Proxima b showed no evidence of infection while the Terrans had experienced a similar lack of female births raised a chilling possibility. It suggested that the Terrans were indeed infected, and Chris’s heart raced as he considered the implications. If the Terrans were infected, then they were currently infected. There were no other generations of Terrans here but this one.
As they entered the lab, the overhead lights flickered to life, illuminating the room in a harsh white light, clinical glow. Rows of microscopes and lab equipment stood ready, but it was the microscope at the center of the room that beckoned them. That was the one connected to the autobay. He cycled the system on, and screens lit up around it. He then knelt by a cryobox at the end of the lab bench and pulled the door open.
“Susan, which samples?” he asked.
“Here,” Susan replied while at the same time highlighting them in his virtual view.
“Got it.” Sentell pulled a tray of twenty samples from the back on the top shelf. He closed the cryobox door and carried the samples back to the autobay. Carefully, he prepared the sperm sample tubes for insertion into the trays of the autobay system.
“Here we go,” he said as held his hands steady despite the excitement of his thoughts, the tiredness, and the ethanol still in his system. Grag watched equally as excited as Sentell closed the tray and cycled the samples into the warming bay. “It will take five or ten minutes for the samples to be warm enough to start being cycled through the imager.”
“Okay, then. Dr. Chris, I must take a bathroom break,” Grag remarked sheepishly and Sentell realized that some of the jittering Grag was doing wasn’t only due to excitement. He had to go. Come to think of it, the ride in had taken nearly forty-five minutes. And they had drunk a lot of beers earlier…
“Good call,” Sentell agreed.
By the time they had returned, the warming tray was displaying a green light. Sentell checked his virtual screens, and everything was nominal. He tossed the imager view up onto the main big screen in front of the station and then pressed the cycle button. There was a whirring of mechanical motion and then the screen flickered.
The sight that met their eyes was both astonishing and unsettling. Thousands of what appeared to be Escherichia T4 bacteriophage viruses swarmed around the sperm, like an army ready for battle. Grag’s jaw dropped, and he struggled to find words. “Is that…What is that, Dr. Chris?”
“Escherichia virus T4! Son of a bitch!” Chris’s voice was filled with a mix of awe and excitement. “Yes, Grag. These are T4 bacteriophages, and they’re infecting the Terran sperm sample. I’ll check in a bit, but if I had my guess, all of us male Terrans have this now.”
“But it is the problem, then?” Grag looked at him wide-eyed.
“Goddamned right it is!” Sentell slapped his friend on the back, all the while laughing out loud. That long, deep tiredness he had been feeling for weeks, if not months, had seemed to vanish. “I need to watch the daytime news shows more often, I guess.”
Before they could react further, the lab door swung open, and Polkingham and Pearl rushed in, their faces a mix of excitement and confusion. Polkingham spoke first, barely able to contain his excitement.
“Chris, Grag? What’s going on? We heard the commotion and saw the lights. I got your frantic messages to come to the lab.” Polkingham seemed more concerned or maybe angry at Sentell for getting him up in the middle of the night.
Sentell didn’t care. He simply smiled and pointed at the monitor screen. He watched as both Polkingham and Pearl turned and studied what they were seeing. Sentell knew it would be clear as day to them once they saw it. There on the sperm was a swarm of tiny things. At the bottom of the virus were long spindly tail fibers like spider legs that were connected to a base plate at the bottom of a tube. The tube was many times larger in diameter than the spider legs and about as long as each. At the top of the tube was a much larger icosahedral container.
“Holy…” Polkingham was speechless.
“Is this what we’ve been searching for?” Pearl turned back and forth between the screen and Chris. “What sample is that?”
“Terran male sperm,” Grag said enthusiastically.
“Terran?” Polkingham asked.
“Of course!” Pearl exclaimed. “The Fintidierians wouldn’t still have the virus if it had altered them genetically. They simply have inherited this trait now for generations.”
“But we just got here,” Polkingham added. Sentell could tell that both of his colleagues now understood his excitement and urgency. “Holy shit, Chris!”
“Yes, holy shit!” Sentell repeated.
“Dr. Chris has said that many times in the past hour,” Grag added.
“Then, this is it? A bacteriophage. This is the infection mechanism we’ve been looking for.” Pearl sat down in a chair at the microscope control station. “We should get a better look.”
“The greatest part is that this explains why we couldn’t find any pathogens in the Fintidierian samples. It’s not a current infection. It’s hereditary. Passed down through generations. Correct?” Grag looked around them all for reassurance of his understanding. “The secretary general will be so pleased. I can’t wait to tell Professor Cromntinier.”
“Son of a bitch.” Polkingham’s eyes widened as he absorbed the gravity of the situation, all the while leaning over Pearl’s shoulder, watching what she was doing with the controls of the microscope. “So, this infection has been with us since we arrived on Proxima?”
“I bet it hit us as soon as we breathed the air.” Sentell nodded. “It seems that way. And it’s certainly what’s causing the gender imbalance in both populations. Think about it. If you were going to engineer a mechanism to deliver a DNA payload to sperm cells, what better way to do it than to use a modified bacteriophage.”
“Engineered is right, Chris.” Pearl expanded the view of one of the bacteriophages on the big screen. As she zoomed in, she was waving her hands at virtual icons in the air before her. “Look at the base plate, it seems to be different. It’s bigger. And the tail fibers, well, we need to do side-by-side comparisons, but they seem bigger or longer. Not sure. But look at this here. There is some sort of coating on the thing. And the tail tube itself seems bigger in diameter, perhaps.”
“Susan, can you take the SEM image of the components of that coating and give us any more information?” Sentell asked.
“Let me see,” she replied over the screen’s speakers. “No. There is not enough data here from the scanning electron microscope resolution.”
“Well, damn,” Sentell replied.
“I could run the sample through the transmission electron microscope system. This should give us much more resolution,” Geni explained.
“Do it.”
“That will take a moment to cycle the autobay into that location. Hold one minute,” the AI said.
The minute seemed like forever, but finally the AI announced, “The TEM scan is complete.”
“And?” Sentell asked impatiently.
“Those components appear to be glycoproteins,” Susan answered.
“Glycoproteins?” Pearl pondered to herself.
“Glycoproteins?” Polkingham asked. “Why glycoproteins?”
“Hmmm, we need to do more tests to see if we can identify which glycoproteins,” Sentell mused. “If they are human derived that would make sense.”
“Why so?” Pearl turned to him.
“Camouflage,” Sentell replied. “Otherwise, the immune system would attack it. But if it is coated with a human-derived protein, it might not trigger an immune response.”
“Of course. That makes perfect sense,” Pearl agreed.
“Chris?” Susan’s voice interrupted them.
“Yes, Susan?”
“I have filtered the images and fused the visible, SEM, and TEM images,” she said. “There is more information here now.”
“Please put it on the screen and explain,” Polkingham replied.
“As you can see here,” Susan explained as the image of the bacteriophage expanded and then exploded into component views, “the tail tube is quite unique. The main structural component appears to be a microtubule constructed of tubulin proteins. It is then coated with what appears to be the standard bacteriophage protein tail tube. On the outside of that is this third layer of glycoproteins. It would appear the glycoproteins cover the entire virus except for the tail fibers. There are no known viruses like this in any of the databases we have access to here.”
“Microtubules?” Sentell looked at Grag in amazement. “Grag! You were right!”
“I was?” Grag asked. From the look on his face, it was clear to Sentell that he had no idea what he was talking about.
“Chris?” Polkingham asked with a shrug.
“Grag, tell Neil and Pearl how you thought the Atlanteans could send a signal globally to sperm cells.” Sentell raised an eyebrow at him, hoping there hadn’t been too many beers for him to recall the conversation correctly.
“Do you mean with your Einstein’s spooky action?” Grag asked.
“You are damned right I do!” Sentell said. “Microtubules, Neil! Yoko, you see? Spooky action at a distance. This thing has quantum processors built right into it!”
“If each one of these viruses has a complete microtubule as the tail tube…” Polkingham appeared to be doing math in his head. “Let’s see, that’s thirteen filaments in twisted helical arrangements with thirteen tubulin proteins each, that’s one hundred and sixty-nine qubits.”
“Each one of these damned viruses is a one-hundred-and-sixty-nine-qubit quantum computer, quantum transmitter, and quantum receiver,” Sentell said, nodding to Grag. “Again, Grag, you have outsmarted the Atlanteans.”
“Not me, Dr. Chris.” Grag shook his head. “I was only playing your game of thinking outside of the box and looking for the needle in the haystack.”
“Well, I’ll be damned if this isn’t the most out-of-the-box needle in the most out-of-the-box haystack I’ve ever seen,” Sentell declared.
“The engineering of this virus is way ahead of anything we could build,” Pearl said. “And a quantum computer for control or communications or…what?”
“Yes, to all of it, probably.” Polkingham nodded his head affirmatively. “Now the question is: how do we kill it?”
“Perhaps we need to think outside of the box,” Grag replied.