GENESIX: THE TRILOGY

by Greg Logan

  “That’s the plan,” Jeff said. “As soon as this is over.”

  Ashley gave a look off to the rocky hills behind the bungalow. “So, tell me something. This Rick guy – is he seeing anyone?”

  “Rick?” Chloe said. “Really?”

  Ashley shrugged. “He does have really nice eyes. If he holds still long enough for anyone to notice.”

  Chuck sat in a beach chair, looking out at the water and the women frolicking. He had a beer in his hand. April walked over to him and squatted on her heels.

  “Why so sad looking?” she said. “This place is like paradise.”

  “Three beautiful women in bikinis,” he said. “A dream come true. And yet, here I am. Alone.”

  “Well,” she gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Maybe if you weren’t such a letch.”

  “I’m not a letch.”

  “Sure you are. You go to bars and pick up women. But you want nothing more than a one-night-stand with them. Some women want more than that.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for anything more.”

  April shrugged again, and said nothing. She looked out at the water.

  He said, “I don’t know if I even understand anything more. I mean, I see what you and Scott have. And what seems to be developing out there with Jeff and Sara. And what Jake and Akila have. And I want it. But I guess I just don’t understand what it’s all about.”

  She looked at him. For the first time since she had met him, she found herself actually feeling sorry for him.

  They were taking a little well-earned R & R. Jake had suggested it. They had all been through a lot lately, and there might be more ahead. Best to grab some relaxation time while they could.

  Jake was in the bungalo. Actually, he was in a room beneath the bungalo. A multi-room facility Alexander and Cassandra had designed. The walls were concrete, and there were computers and such that had technology that was even beyond anything Scott had invented.

  Sammy stood by one console, looking at data as it played past him on a monitor. He had a tricorder in one hand, comparing data.

  It had not taken Alexander and Cassandra long to revive him. They simply beamed out the fried components and beamed in new ones. Since his processor was actually microscopic in size, it had been largely unharmed. Once the components were in place, Chloe activated him. He fully remembered being zapped by an ion gun, and then he remembered nothing until waking up here.

  Jake walked into a second room and found Alexander and Scott. Scott was sitting at a computer console and Alexander was standing behind him, watching over his shoulder.

  “Yes, I see it,” Scott said.

  Jake said, “What are you guys doing?”

  “Alexander is showing me why my plan is total folly. Why it couldn’t possibly work. And he’s showing me an alternate plan on possibly an even greater scale, but which will work.”

  After everyone had played in the water, they then reconvened on the deck outside the bungalo. April had tied a sarong about her hips and was in a pair of sunglasses. She was stretched out in a lounge. Jeff was once again in his battle suit and was sitting on a picnic table. Sara was in jeans and a tank top, sitting beside him.

  “Scott’s plan couldn’t possibly work,” Alexander said standing in front of them, “because if you push something forward in time, then you push future versions of it forward, also. Creating a sort of ripple effect.”

  Jeff gave a sighing nod. “Of course. I should have seen this.”

  Sara was looking at him questioningly. So was April. Chloe had a margarita in one hand, and had tied a sarong about her hips as well. Akila had pulled on a sports bra and shorts and was in another lounge, and Jake was standing beside her. Cassandra was still in her racing suit, looking like some sort of swimsuit model. All eyes were on Jeff.

  Jeff hopped down from the table and stepped off the deck and into the sand. With one foot, he began pushing aside some sand.

  He said, “See, as I’m moving the sand, it sort of bunches up more and more? The more I push it, the more it bunches up.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Well, the same thing happens with time. If you push something back, or you push it forward.” Jeff looked at Alexander. “Right?”

  Alexander nodded. “That’s about the sum of it. Very creatively explained, though.”

  Scott said, “That’s essentially what you explained to me, Alexander. Time is circular, and the bunching, if you will, will eventually come back around and essentially strike us here in our time. Where the displacement originally occurred. And it can happen explosively.”

  Alexander was nodding his head.

  Scott said, “The thing I don’t understand is when Jeff pushed my coffee cup two seconds into the future, there seemed to be no effect.”

  “That’s because when time got pushed ahead and bunched up like that sand and came back around at you, the cup was so small it probably didn’t create anything larger than a mild breeze. Maybe too mild to notice. But something the size of the Earth..,”

  Jake said, “I get the point.”

  “So,” Chuck said. He was standing off to one side, and had been quiet up until now. “What do we do?”

  “We don’t move the Earth forward in time,” Scott said, glancing to Alexander. “We transpose it.”

  He was quiet a moment, letting the words fall on everyone.

  April said, “We...what?”

  Jake said, “Do I have to power-up so I won’t get a headache?”

  “No,” Scott said. “It’s quite simple, according to Alexander, and he showed me this downstairs. He has quite a facility down there. He can actually monitor time. And alternate timelines, as well.”

  Jeff said, the realization dawning on him, “You want to switch Earths.”

  Alexander nodded. “Precisely.”

  Scott said, “There is another Earth, in the same space-time coordinates as ours, but on another plane.”

  “I knew it,” Jake said. “You’re going to get all techno on us. Where’s the Tylenol?”

  Scott ignored him. “It has to be an Earth that has the exact same space-time coordinates. Some alternate Earths are slightly ahead or behind ours in orbit around the sun.”

  Akila said, “An alternate Earth. Like the one I’m from.”

  Scott nodded.

  April looked up at him. “How many alternate Earths are there?”

  “The number is infinite.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Jake said. “If we switch our Earth with the other one, the alien fleet will arrive and find the other one, and we’ll be safe over in the alternate reality. I get that. But what about the people on that Earth?”

  “That’s just it,” Scott said. “There are none.”

  Alexander chimed in. “There was a nuclear disaster on that Earth. How many of you remember Checkpoint Charlie, and the Crisis of Berlin?”

  “Uh..,” April looked at Scott questioningly.

  Ashley said, “None of us were born then.”

  “History,” Cassandra said. “Something so neglected in today’s world. If we don’t study it, how can we keep from making the same mistakes over and over again?”

  Alexander said, “Cassandra and I actually remember it. We watched the drama unfold on the nightly news. In a nutshell, tensions between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union escalated to the point that U.S. tanks and Soviet tanks were squaring off against each other in Berlin, right at the dividing line between East and West Berlin. The infamous Berlin wall was built on the spot.”

  Jeff nodded. “I remember something about that. We covered it in history class, a couple years ago.”

  “On the other Earth, however, as the tanks faced each other, a shot was fired. Then another. The city of Berlin became a war zone. And within hours, a nuclear strike was launched, and then a retaliatory strike. In a surprisingly short time, most of the life on that Earth was extinct. Even to this day, that Earth is a radiated desert. There is no life. And with no plant life, t
here is nothing to absorb the carbon gas emissions erupting from things like underwater volcanoes, and to expel oxygen. So even regardless of the radiation levels, the atmosphere is no longer breathable.”

  “And that is what the alien fleet will find,” Scott said, “when they arrive here.”

  “Not to get too technical, because I wouldn’t want to give Jake a headache,” Alexander tossed a grin at Jake, “what we have to do is build a tachyon field around each Earth, and a wormhole to connect them.”

  “That’s all,” Jake said, sounding a little sarcastic. The whole plan sounded too incredulous to him to even begin to imagine.

  “Much easier than it sounds.”

  “What about a power source?” Jeff said.

  Scott said, “We have that worked out, too. We’ll use the sun itself.”

  Jake looked at his friend like he thought his friend had gone squirrely. Not the first time Jake had ever looked at him that way. “The sun? Is that even possible?”

  Scott said, “It will be, since we have access to an energy field that can serve as a living conduit for solar energy.”

  He looked at April.

  Her brows rose with surprise and her sunglasses fell to the end of her nose. “Huh?”

  NINETEEN

  The job Jake and Jeff had was mainly to procure parts, which often meant traveling to various corners of the Earth. Some parts had to manufactured, and some could simply be taken from existing components and retooled. Satellites needed to be built that could be connected wirelessly to the central computer in the bungalo facility. They would have to be placed in orbit around our Earth, and around the war torn one.

  The facility downstairs was turned into a manufacturing plant. It was easy to do, because all of the computers and consoles and such were actually solid holographic projections.

  “As is the bungalo itself,” Alexander said. “The only thing real around here is the underground bunker Cassandra and I built. Everything else, even the entire bungalo topside, can simply be shut off if need be.”

  Cassandra, in gray coveralls, was working literally around the clock. So was Sammy. Androids needed no sleep. Scott and Alexander survived on limited sleep and loads of coffee.

  A chamber was designed, again holographically, so they could learn exactly how April’s power worked. She would step into the chamber and transform herself into living energy, and let the computer take readings on various multi-dimensional levels. Alexander and Scott stood in front of a monitor watching the results. It all played past them in binary, but both could read it fluently.

  Jake stood with them. He saw a chance to needle Scott, and thought such an opportunity should never be passed up. “All those ones and zeroes mean something to you, I suppose?”

  Scott nodded. Fortunately, he could talk while he read. “I’m learning so incredibly much about April. I’m supposed to be such an intellect, but I never conceived of a multi-dimensional scanner.”

  “You probably would have eventually,” Alexander said. “I had a head start on you, because this is really just a variation of a scanner already in use by my people.”

  “She actually generates a quantum energy field about her and within her, literally transforming herself into quantum energy. I never thought of quantum energy as being containable within a field, before. And the quantum energy is not unlike certain types of energy produced by the sun.”

  “So,” Jake said, “what you’re trying to say in your own dysfunctional way is she can transform herself into living solar energy.”

  “If she stood in front of us in quantum form long enough, she could give us a sunburn.”

  One part of the plan was to monitor the approach of the fleet, and to do that, they had to launch a telescopic satellite, which had been part of Scott’s original plan. Cassandra conducted the actual manufacture of the satellite, which took four days, and then Jake and Jeff flew it up and above the Earth’s atmosphere to a position she dictated.

  One aspect of the telescope was it not only could scan the star field like a conventional telescope, it was also could scan subspace.

  “The fleet is traveling in subspace,” Alexander explained.

  “Essentially, warp speed,” Scott said. “Using Star Trek jargon.”

  Alexander nodded. “I’m aware of the show. And the technobabble they used is not far off from reality, in some cases. If they were traveling at space normal speeds, it would take them over four thousand years to get from their nearest star base to this planet. However, at the speeds they’re traveling, they’re covering it at little more than two hundred years.”

  Once the monitor was set up, Sammy took a look at the read-out. On the screen, columns of various symbols scrolled downward, looking to Jake like something out of The Matrix.

  “You can read that?” Jake said.

  Sammy nodded. “Cassandra and Alexander have been teaching me their language. According to this, the armada is currently three point eight two seven light years away, and coming fast.”

  Akila commanded a team that devoted itself to rounding up squids. It was easier said than done. With the help of Rick and Chloe and Snake and some of the others from the Boston community, they went to work. Henry joined them, as he could work all day without tiring.

  They were all armed with ion pistols. While Cassandra had been manufacturing the satellite, Sammy was assembling ion pistols for Akila’s team to use.

  The weeks passed. The satellites were assembled one at a time and placed into orbit at strategic points by Jake and Jeff. Hasani and Jeff brought satellites over to the alternate reality, and then Jeff and his father planted those satellites into place.

  “We’re not going to take the moon with us after all,” Alexander said to Jake.

  Alexander had come topside at Cassandra’s request to grab a little rest. He found he was too tired to sleep, so he stretched out on the deck on a lounge with a glass of red wine.

  Jake had a beer going. He was going to power-up soon to head for the atmosphere because Cassandra wanted to run a calibration test on the satellites and Jake had to be there in case any adjustments had to be made. He was no scientist, but she would be able to talk him through it. Once he powered-up any effects of the beer would be gone, but he was going to enjoy it for the moment.

  “Taking the moon was the original plan,” Jake said.

  Alexander nodded. “Turns out, though, we need to build a control center there so we can run the whole procedure from there. Turns out we can’t run it from here, after all. Scott and I found that out in a couple computer simulations we ran.”

  “I see a problem with that. When the fleet arrives, what’s to keep them from discovering your lunar command center?”

  “Not a thing. That’s why we’re going to use the alternate moon.”

  Shouldn’t have asked, Jake thought. He took a sip of his beer.

  Alexander glanced quickly about. Chloe and Ashley were at the beach. Scott was snoring loudly from inside the bungalow – he had been awake for twenty-eight straight hours. April was at the kitchen, brewing up more coffee.

  Alexander said, “Where’s Jeff?”

  “I gave him a little time off. Today’s his birthday. He wanted to take Sara someplace to celebrate. Paris, I think.”

  Alexander nodded thoughtfully. “A significant day among humans of most races and cultures.”

  “Squids don’t celebrate birthdays?”

  “Squids don’t celebrate much of anything. To celebrate something requires the concepts of sentimentality and happiness. Totally alien to the squids.”

  “All right. I have a question.”

  Alexander took a sip of wine. “Go ahead.”

  “You’re not fully integrated, like Sara and Ashley.”

  He shook his head. “I’m a squid and fully consider myself one. I took this shape originally because it’s easier to move around on this planet in human form. Your gravity field is just too strong for us in our natural state.”

  “So, Sara and
Ashley have human feelings, because essentially, right down to their DNA, they are human.”

  Alexander nodded. “It would take a process called de-integration to allow them to return to squid form. I can do it here, and offered it to both of them, but they refused. Being human is all they know.”

  “All right. So, because the squids transformed them fully into humans, they feel love.”

  “Right.”

  “Then, tell me. How is it you feel such love for Cassandra, when it shouldn’t be possible?”

  “Because I went on a quest for it. I arrived on this world in the year eighteen oh-one, by your human calendar. A number of us did. I was to go undercover, which I did. You see, members of my species don’t have much respect for humans. Most of us see you as some sort of sub-species. Maybe like how you might look at a monkey. But as I was here, observing human behavior, I became more and more fascinated by human emotions. Especially the thing you call love. And not just the love of a man for a woman, but the love of parent to child. And even friend to friend. Such as the bond you have with Scott. True, you annoy each other endlessly, but he is like a brother to you.”

  “Being fascinated by emotion, even studying it, isn’t enough to make you feel it if you don’t have the capacity in the first place.”

  Alexander took a sip of wine. “There was a growing movement among us, even back then. A belief that the direction we were going in was wrong. You see, we had known emotion once. It was intentionally evolved out of our race a couple thousand of your years ago. Our DNA was manipulated by the powers-that-be. The State, if you will. It made us easier to command, to control, if we didn’t have emotional attachments. This information was hidden, but not totally lost.

  “There is a procedure. Not legal, and not even known among the majority of my species. It’s called partial integration. It allows us to assume enough human form so that we can feel like a human feels. It doesn’t lock us as deeply into human shape as full integration, like what was done to Sara and Ashley. I underwent the procedure, as did a number of us, because I wanted to be able to feel love.