Genetica

by Tom Hart

  ‘There were seventeen of them, all dead. They look like us you know, just paler and with light blue eyes.’

  Robert put his glasses on and held the photo closer. ‘Where did you find them?’

  Henry hesitated.

  ‘If I tell you Robert will you promise to stay calm?’

  Robert shifted in his chair. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  ‘South Australia.’

  Robert exploded. ‘South Australia, in my own country and you didn't think to tell us!’

  ‘It was too important. It was the 1960s Robert. Your government was leaking to the Soviets like a sieve.’

  ‘So you found dead aliens in Australia and kept it secret for fifty years.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Henry. He looked sheepish.

  ‘Who the hell else knows about it?’

  ‘The British.’

  ‘Why do they know? We became independent from the British in 1901 Henry, didn't the CIA know that?’

  Henry ignored the jibe. ‘The British knew because they were the ones who first discovered the aliens. They needed our help to get to them.’

  ‘You are going to have to do better than that Henry. My country got invaded and our closest ally has wet their pants. If the best chance of beating these Chinese bastards is through aliens than I want to know everything about them!’

  ‘It was in the spring of 1961,’ Henry explained. ‘A British geotechnical survey was drilling north of Adelaide. They were looking for gold deposits. They didn't find any gold but they found something else. They survey team got some strange magnetic readings near a dry creek bed three-hundred miles north of Adelaide. The magnetic flux was off the charts indicating an enormous iron ore deposit. They tried to drill several sample cores but every drilling rig broke down. They pulled up the shafts and they were all completely ruined, bent and twisted beyond repair. They were using tungsten tip drilling heads so whatever they hit was a lot tougher than iron ore.

  A small amount of foreign metal shavings were recovered from the drill heads and sent back to the company labs in London. Two weeks later the survey team was sent home and the mining company pulled out of the area. Officially the company said the survey had found squat and was moving to Brazil where more promising sites had been identified. Unofficially British intelligence got involved.’

  ‘So what was the metal if it wasn't iron ore?’ Robert asked.

  ‘A spectral analysis determined it wasn't from Earth. The metal was enormously dense, at least a hundred times denser than depleted uranium. That got British intelligence excited. They came to us after their efforts to excavate failed. They didn't have rigs large enough to drill that deep. We did though. US companies were testing experimental drilling rigs in Alaska at the time so the CIA arranged to use those plus some classified prototype explosives to smash through some of the toughest bedrock ever known.

  It took three years to get down to six-hundred feet. Radar scans identified an eighty by eighty foot cube. When it was dragged to the surface the CIA found it was shaped more like a hexagon.

  The material was like polished glass but entirely black. There were markings on one side of the hexagon, long curved lines with interconnecting dots. A hole a metre square had broken the glass like surface on one side. Our experts tell us it was caused by an explosive decompression from inside the hexagon.’

  ‘What was inside?’

  ‘Very little, the interior was sparse. They found several low benches which we think are control panels of some kind. There was a section with tables and chairs made of a material similar to stainless steel. The biohazard teams also found traces of organic materials we think were fossilised remains of food.

  The bodies were all sealed in tubes recessed in a central spiral. We think they were cryogenic pods. The bodies were well preserved but we don't have a clue how old they are, the age of the rock on top of the hexagon was almost half a million years old.’

  Robert placed his whisky on the table. It was time to stop drinking.

  ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘Just like us. There were nine men, seven women and three children. Two boys and one girl. None looked older than forty by our standards. The children were no older than five or six. The children had the same hair colour and features of one of the women. We think she was their mother but we can't be sure. We did post-mortems on them all. They were all perfectly healthy, no illness, diseased organs or damage to the skin or bones we could detect. They were all heavily muscled and anatomically otherwise identical to us. Except for one thing. Their thumbs were equal in length to the index fingers. That is about fifty-percent longer than the average human thumb of today.’

  ‘And that's it. Everything else about them is the same?’ Robert asked sceptically.

  ‘Yes, height and weights were normal. They were all slightly above six feet, which is taller than the average man even today, and truly enormous compared to homo sapiens of the same era.’

  ‘Did the sphere belong to them?’

  ‘We do not know, the markings on the hexagon are different to those on the sphere. But the bodies were all slightly radioactive. It was the same type of radioactivity emitted by the sphere. But it was still higher than levels we could tolerate in our lifetimes so they are more resistant to radiation than us.’

  Robert looked directly at Henry. ‘Where are they now, are they still in Australia?’

  ‘No they were taken to a secure facility in Nevada in 1965.’

  ‘You're joking,’ Robert accused.

  ‘Henry waved his hand in annoyance.’ He knew what Robert was going to say. ‘Yes Groom Lake Nevada.’

  ‘Area 51’ said Robert.

  Henry rolled his eyes. ‘We don't call it that but yes the same location. The bodies are in storage, they have been carefully preserved. DNA sequencing was completed decades ago and the results show they are definitely human but they have more in common with the DNA of birds than we do. Our DNA is more closely related to primates such as chimpanzees. Theirs is slightly less so by about 0.02%. Their bone density is also lower than ours so we still can't work out how their muscle mass was so high. Usually if one is low so is the other. Our specialists think they came from a planet with slightly less gravity than earth. They still can't explain the muscle though.’

  Robert looked at the window distracted. ‘I appreciate you finding alien life on earth is a big deal but right now how do nineteen aliens and a hexagon help us defeat the Chinese?’

  ‘It doesn't but the markings on the side of the hexagon do. It took the CIA's best linguists nine years to work it out. It is an alphabet which only uses twelve letters. The language it is most closely related to is Mayan. The translation is not fully agreed, our linguists can't agree on the last passage but it basically reads, blessed be the children of the inferno may they find safe passage through the gates of the abyss. Our linguists can't agree on whether it is the word inferno or light, it's a fifty-fifty split.’

  ‘It sounds biblical to me. What do the linguists think it means?’ asked Robert.

  ‘There are many theories, a simple message of luck, a religious verse, song or poem. Possibly even a fable. We don't know enough about their culture to tell whether it is literal or has some other meeting. There was a clue in a set of numbers underneath the text. We worked out fairly quickly the numbers use the same positional matrices our astronomers use to map stars. They are like a set of co-ordinates for objects in space. We think the co-ordinates tell us where the hexagon was either built or is from. Much like a ship with its home port recorded underneath its name.’

  ‘So where is it?’

  ‘About twenty light years away.’

  ‘That doesn't sound close enough to catch a bus,’ Robert said deflated.

  ‘No, it would take over ten-thousand years to get there with our current technology.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you've tried to contact them at those co-ordinates?’

  ‘Oh we have, we've been sending them messages for
over thirty years.’

  ‘Did they pick up the phone?’ asked Robert. His temples were throbbing.

  ‘No, but someone else did. Six years ago we detected a signal from a star five light years away and close to the location we'd been directing our transmissions. We had been sending messages of greeting in all present and past earth languages plus our periodic table, alphabets and several mathematical theorems displayed visually. The signal we received back was short and to the point. It said, ‘cease transmission immediately, the Shadow Weavers will detect you. Go to location 5.1.2.4.7.3, Marcus.’

  Robert put his whisky down. ‘Shit, the aliens speak English?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Henry. ‘As you can imagine that got a lot of people excited. We tried to re-establish contact with this someone or something calling itself Marcus but we never heard from them again. The coordinates Marcus provided are even further away from Earth. Sixty light years away, just on the edge of the Horsehead nebula.’

  ‘Any idea who the Shadow Weavers are?’ asked Robert.

  ‘None.’

  Henry's secretary entered the room so quietly Robert didn't even notice until she was standing alongside him. ‘Sir, your embassy is calling. They say it's urgent.’

  ‘Of course, thank you,’ said Robert. ‘Don't you go anywhere Henry,’ he added with a tone that would have been considered rude in diplomatic circles.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  POLAND

  Robert was a deathly pale when he returned. ‘Robert, sit down, you look terrible. Get the doctor,’ Henry said to his secretary with concern.

  ‘It's okay Henry,’ Robert said waving his arm to the secretary. ‘The Chinese have executed the Environment and Transport Ministers.’

  ‘Good God,’ Henry said in dismay. ‘They said they would not harm civilians.’

  ‘Now you know what the word of the Chinese is worth.’

  Henry looked at the floor.

  ‘Now you tell me everything you know. Even what you aren't authorised too. We've been friends for decades Henry and now they are killing members of our Government. You owe me that.’

  Henry nodded. He'd intended telling his friend the whole story anyway despite the security classification.

  Robert wiped his forehead. He was sweating.

  ‘I can't tell my government the US won't help until they make further contact with an alien named Marcus.’

  ‘You won't have to,’ said Henry. ‘I should not be telling you this but we need to solve this together old friend.’

  Robert smiled a weary smile.

  Henry stood and walked to an ornate map on the wall. It was covered in Greek inspired illustrations depicting various Gods and demi-gods. ‘Ignore the illustrations for a moment, you get the idea though,’ Henry said pointing to a spot near the Philippines.

  ‘The CIA have been reviewing all available data on seismic activity going back 1890 when the American seismic office was first set up. The CIA reviewed data on seismic activity that did not occur near known fault lines and continental plate boundaries. They found five locations where repeated seismic activity has occurred were it really shouldn't. One of those sites was almost bang on where the Chinese discovered the sphere.’

  ‘Where are the others?’ Robert asked intrigued.

  ‘Western Pakistan, Easter Island, Poland and the Congo. The Chinese got to the sites in Pakistan and Congo first. All we found were large excavations, recent, no more than a year old. Other than higher than normal levels radioactivity in the excavated soil there was nothing else left.

  We did better in Poland. The site was only forty miles from a US Air Force Base. It was in a forest so we had a difficult time getting access. We had to get all manner of environmental permits from the Polish government. We told the Poles we had discovered an old World War II American munitions storage site and felt responsible for cleaning it up and rendering it safe. The Poles bought it.’

  Robert imagined Henry acting most sincerely in demonstrating his concern for the Polish environment. Henry was perhaps the most compelling actor of all the UN ambassadors. Even for Robert who had known Henry for over thirty years, Henry's CIA training made it almost impossible to tell if he was lying. Robert wasted little time wondering if Henry had concocted this tale to comfort him. It was too far-fetched to be anything but true.

  ‘What did you find in Poland?’

  ‘Very little, we found fragments of metal of the same type the hexagon is made of. All up there were enough fragments to fill a coffee cup. Other than that all we found was residual radioactivity. But our CIA geologists found evidence the soil had been excavated around two-hundred years ago. They are convinced someone got there first.’

  ‘So who else has an alien sphere if not the Chinese? Surely they would have used it by now too?’

  ‘Perhaps they never worked out how to turn it on. Binary is only a recent language.’

  Robert nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  Henry began to look almost cheerful. ‘The Easter Island site was more promising. The Chilean government gave us unfettered access after we donated a squadron of F-16 fighters. The site was covered by volcanic rock so our geologists told us there was a high chance whatever was underneath would still be intact.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Regrettably no. We found a sphere similar to the one the Chinese have. It was pretty banged up. It was scratched and covered in hairline fractures all over. It was radioactive but it was not transmitting anything in binary as the Chinese sphere had done. But its markings were in the same script. We managed to decipher most of it. It reads 'Hello I am Hydra'.

  ‘Did you try talking to it in binary like the Chinese?’

  ‘Yes we tried all known machine code languages, none worked.’

  ‘May I see?’ Robert asked.

  He'd studied computer science in his later years, and was a particularly accomplished programmer, much to the shock of his grand-children. To him all language was artistic, a thing of beauty to be appreciated, and code was no different.

  Robert saw the list was comprehensive and included a few languages he'd never heard of. He pointed to them. ‘NSA,’ said Henry. ‘Those are classified.’

  Robert flicked through the next few pages labelled 'Scans'. There were reports on infra-red, x-ray, MRI, electron microscopes and even an ultrasound. It appeared as if X-Rays could not penetrate the sphere’s surface and the infra-red showed the sphere’s temperature remained constant between 36.5 and 38 degrees Celsius.

  ‘Why are you keeping it so warm, afraid it might get frostbite?’ Robert joked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It's not human, you don't need to keep it at body temperature.’

  ‘We don't it's kept in a chilled environment so the diagnostic equipment works best.’

  ‘That's one hell of a co-incidence then,’ said Robert.

  Henry shrugged. ‘It emits beta radiation, that's why it’s warmer than its surroundings.’

  ‘You have a pet alien sphere whose temperature is basically the same as the human body.’

  Henry blinked. He’d never thought about it like that.

  ‘Margaret get James in here now.’

  A young man wearing an immaculately tailored suit appeared almost immediately. He had the look of CIA all over him.

  ‘This is James, he's with the agency,’ Henry said confirming Robert's suspicion.

  ‘Tell him what you told me,’ said Henry.

  James looked sceptical. ‘Our scientists have looked into this. The temperature is consistent with the radiation being emitted. It's a nuclear powered device.’

  ‘Check again,’ Henry said firmly. James nodded and left.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MERCURY

  Specialist Tim Ryan was bored stiff. He'd run the temperature reports through the super computer three times now and the results were the same. A variance of two degrees over a seventy-two hour period. No big deal. The sphere was cycling based on some internal clock, probably
that used on the planet it came from. He'd checked for planets with sidereal days of seventy-two hours. There were none. Well at least none known to NASA.

  The theory that the temperature variation somehow correlated with human body temperature was also wrong. The computer showed no correlation and it was drawing on data sets from experiments run by Harvard University on body temperature going back over seventy years. Tim reckoned the theory had come from overpaid CIA analysts with the same IQ as the vending machine in the corridor.

  ‘Hey Timmy, check this out,’ specialist Dave Morgan said, walking across with an iPod. ‘I've been introducing the sphere to my playlist, it likes Jimmy Hendrix.’

  Tim laughed. ‘You want the aliens to invade? That music is dreadful.’

  Dave feigned offence.

  ‘How else is it going to learn about our culture?’

  There was a knock on the door to the compartment and the men's commanding officer Lieutenant Ryan poked his head in. ‘Got your report ready yet?’

  ‘Yes sir, I emailed it to Langley.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ryan and left. He could have a longer than usual cigarette break now.

  Dave made a face to show what he really thought of Ryan.

  ‘Here I'll show you.’ Dave plugged his iPod into the console. A string of 0s and 1s began to scroll across Tim's screen. Hendrix in binary. Dave looked at the Sphere and frowned. ‘He isn't talking to me.’

  ‘He?’ Tim noted.

  ‘You spending a bit too much time underground Davo?’

  Dave shook his head. ‘His temperature goes up 0.1 degree when I play it to him, well most of the time anyway. It's how he tells me he likes the music.’

  Tim slapped his buddy on the back. ‘You really need a girlfriend Davo.’

  The console began to beep and the screen began to flash orange. The printer behind Tim began to splutter. Reams of paper lined with 0s and 1s began to fly into the tray.