Aeon Fourteen

by Aeon Authors

  Comparative bacteria biomass estimates for the Earth's ecosystem vary in degree from a low of around a third to a somewhat nebulous high estimate of “more than all other living things combined.” So plugging in some reasonable numbers, bacteria would be on the order of at least fifty-plus percent of global bioomass. (For reference human biomass is about .15%. That's point one five percent.) Bacteria inhabit so many different environments and display such a myriad of metabolisms, that there is nary a nook or cranny—read niche—they have not mastered.

  In addition to the ability to maintain life in dormancy, bacteria push the envelope in every n-direction. Ocean floor geothermal vent bacteria live cozily at three times the boiling point of water and 265 times the pressure at sea level. There are lithotrophic bacteria—rock-eaters—which patiently bore their way through heat and darkness deep inside the earth's crust living off the hydrogen their actions release from solid stone. And while we had a hand in this one, Streptococcus mitis survived on the surface of the Moon hidden away in Surveyor 3's camera. For 31 months the bugs lay for all intents and purposes exposed to the extreme temperature variances, unfettered influx of radiation, and the vacuum of the lunar surface until recovered by the Apollo 12 astronauts; a distant frontier in a niche centered around the warm, wet conditions of the human mouth. Bacteria don't just live where we live, but survive where we cannot.

  And thankful we should be for that microbial ability. According to at least one scenario the Earth's biosphere, the very one that nourishes all of us, may have been saved, thus keeping the Earth from a very long, very silent history without petunias, peccaries or people. In a runaway ice age during the Cryogenian period (What else would it be called!) from 850 to 630 million years ago, the surface of the Earth lay encrusted beneath a vast shield of ice. Extremophiles rescued the globe from the long terrible abiotic silence that might have resulted after plummeting temperatures and aeons of darkness beneath world-girding ice.

  Remnants of the dark biosphere are extant today. Spouting along the geologically active trenches marking spreading ocean floor, superheated and chemically rich black smokers nourish communities of organisms unassociated with our sun-powered ecosystem. Chemotrophic bacteria harness the energy in the superheated waters jetting from inside the earth much as plants use sunlight. Food webs of grazers and predators, dependent metazoan creatures, huddle in the obsidian depths around black smokers with attendant chemotrophic bacterial mats. Isolated from each other by distances of inactive or uncolonized sites, these refugia may represent not the origins of life on Earth, but the points from which a resurging biosphere came back to create this parading diversity over a long stretch of deep time.

  The diversity of bacterial organisms is interesting even if viewed only from an evolutionary perspective. The broad habitat ranges of bacteria ecologies, however seemingly harsh some may be, tell us not just how clever life can be on Earth but how ambitious it may be in outer space. Astrobiology depends on bacteria to point its earthbound eyes and high-flying robots in the direction of suitable habitats out there across distant acreages of alien real estate. We are finding places in growing numbers that are within the boundaries identified here at home.

  Europa and even more distant Enceladus seem to contain ice-covered bodies of water. Europa, with its young and active surface and unique radio signature, tantalizes us with the possibility of the Solar System's largest salt water ocean. Enormous Jovian tidal energies stretch and twist the Galilean moon, generating heat within its core and keeping the water liquid.

  Enceladus, in Saturn's family, spouts jets of warmed water laced with a surprising numbers of organic molecules. The composition of the material contains all the components we have long recognized as those necessary for life. These environments are mirrored on Earth by Antarctica's Lake Vostok and the aforementioned deep-sea geothermal vents. Lake Vostok is one of almost 150 pockets of liquid water under about 4 km of ice and so is a good analog for suspected Europan or Enceladian oceans. It has been cut off from the surface for 500,000 years or more and appears to enclose a unique ecosystem, which for that time has been genetically and energetically isolated from the surface world. So we can model the condition in the lake against conditions modeled on Jupiter's and Saturn's moons.

  From the frigid cold of outer-world ocean moons, we drop sunward to the dry deserts under rosy-tinged Martian skies. Now to model what we cannot yet walk. Here back on Earth we have Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the most arid places on Earth. UV blasted and with high levels of oxidants in the soil, organic molecules have a short life here. Our robots wander the Atacama looking for sign of life not just to test against difficult conditions, but to see how life copes here, with the idea to know where better to look there.

  Questions about life existing in outer space seem self evident. Not “if” so much as “where.” If the Earth is any indication, life is a robust property of the universe, life abounds, and life abides. Strep germs hiding in abandoned moon cameras are not the only indicators that life can not only exist in space itself, but travel between worlds. High atmosphere collections of microbes have given some indication that they are incoming aliens, surviving intact across harsh conditions. Meteors recovered from Antarctic ice contain what might be fossils of Martian origin. Interpretations of these data drive the origin of life outward to space itself, spreading between worlds in a cosmic orgy of panspermia where Earth is but a way station.

  If bacteria have taught us anything—besides wash your hands—it's that life can arise or at least adapt to a myriad of exotic conditions. Conditions that extend the n-dimensional hypervolume to limits we are only just beginning to imagine. Walk in your backyard and turn over a stone; something is more than likely staring back at you. Drill into the side of an ice moon swinging through the polychromatic glow of a gas giant, and maybe something not quite alien will be wriggling there too. And if it is, you can be sure bacteria will not be far away.

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  Hard Rain at the Fortean Café

  by Lavie Tidhar

  "I've never been to America, which is why I rarely set stories there. It's a lapse in my itinerary, I know. I would dearly love to taste a Philly cheesesteak one day. I saw it on Wikipedia, which entirely justifies its existence. For obvious reasons, though, this story doesn't take place in America. Rather, it's set in a pop culture version of America—the one known to millions of people around the world who, like me, have never been to the place but know the streets are paved with gold there and people eat only super-sized meals. Oh, and there are numerous alien abductions. Of course. So this is that story. You might like to read it while listening to Kinky Friedman's ‘Sold American', but then again, you might not. There's nothing really very strange about a Jewish cowboy—and all alien abduction stories are true.

  This one is no exception."

  * * * *

  THE DINER STOOD off the highway outside a small town optimistically called Hope. Hope was being stuck in the middle of the Northwest and wishing you were someplace, anyplace else. And Hope was also the name on the tag pinned to the dead woman in waitress uniform that was currently lying against the wall inside the Barbie-Q Roadhouse. I had to stop myself from worrying at the connection: looking for patterns when sometimes there are none at all.

  I wasn't worried about Hope (the waitress, not the town). I didn't get called down here for a murder: shit, murder is an honest-to-God American pastime. Just look at the statistics. No, I got called in because of the Marilyn.

  The Marilyn was also dead. All in all, there were five dead people in the Barbie-Q: two waitresses; a balding man who—from his bag full of cheaply-printed catalogs—was some sort of a general salesman; the diner's manager; and Marilyn. They had been shot by a machine gun, probably an Uzi. Marilyn's head left a red smear against the glass of the booth she sat in. She was there alone.

  What the hell was a Marilyn doing out here?
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  It rained when I got out of the car. The diner was sheathed in rain, its artificial light glaring through the windows, only some of which were broken. Inside, Forensics had come and gone, and I had gone in more to get out of the rain than for any hope of discovering what had happened. Also, I wanted to take a look at Marilyn.

  The blonde hair was matted dark, and her eyes stared at the ceiling with a slightly surprised look. She was twenty-five, give or take, and dressed in a long winter coat that had two new holes in it.

  “Who the hell are you?” He was tall and bulky and looked unused to dead bodies. Local cop. I flashed him a smile and a badge. “Amelia Hart, FBI.”

  He looked at the badge closely, nodded reluctantly. “What do you want?”

  “I'm here about her,” I said, pointing at the Marilyn.

  He stared. “Her? What's so special about her?”

  He was too young. I guessed he didn"t watch too many old movies. That was good. “Nothing for you to worry about, bud,” I said. I was no longer smiling.

  He shrugged. “Whatever you say, lady. Happy to leave this mess to you Feds.” He went out, slammed the door on his way. He didn't seem at all happy. I couldn't care less.

  It continued to rain.

  * * * *

  America is the land of baseball, Coca-Cola, and gun crime; the land of the free and the brave and the exotically insane; of DiMaggio and Kinky Friedman and Elvis. It is the home of alien abductees, Bigfoot, and Charles Fort. Everything is bigger here. Things happen in America that are just not possible in the rest of the world. It takes a special mentality to see the hidden patterns in a rain of fish, or to seek out meaning in the work of serial killers. Fort saw it: that weird shit just kind of happens in America. It's a happening kind of place.

  I examined the Marilyn. She looked just like all the others I've seen, over the years: always hiding out in little towns on the edge of nowhere, hair veering wildly between mousy-brown and dyed-hardcore-blonde. Driver's licenses with variations on Norma Jeane.

  Hiding.

  There was someone out there who didn't like Marilyns.

  The first one washed up in Oregon over five years before. Since then I'd gone over half the states, Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Carolina.... If there was a pattern to it I couldn't see it. We were still trying to figure out where the Marylins came from in the first place. There was some sick asshole out there, serial-killing Marilyn Monroe.

  I listened to the rain for a while. It seemed almost peaceful. Then I heard another car, coming to a halt, breaking. A door opening. Low voices. Footsteps. The door swinging open.

  I smelled him before I saw him: expensive, understated aftershave. Soft footsteps: he wore expensive, understated trainers. I was glad to see they were now covered in mud.

  He was around thirty, long warm coat, a pleasant face that told me nothing.

  “Joe Johnson,” he said. “I got a call.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “What I don't know is what the hell you're doing here.”

  He smiled. “I grew up around here. Been visiting my dad. Then I got a call saying Marilyn Monroe was spotted in the local diner.”

  “Oh? Can I ask who called you?”

  His smile grew wider. “The same person who employs you, Ms. Earhart.”

  I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all. “My name's Hart,” I said. “Just Hart.”

  His smile said he knew I was lying. “Look,” he said. “We might as well try and get along if we're going to work together. The police and FBI's job is to figure out who killed all these people. I'm not police, and I'm not Bureau. And neither are you.”

  I didn't argue. There was no point. He said, “Your job is to figure who's killing the Marilyns, right? And mine is to make sure people only read about stuff like this is in the National Enquirer or alt.conspiracy. That's the way it is.” He put his hand forward for a shake. “Please.”

  I shook his hand. I didn't like it, but he was right. And I was outranked. His hand was warm and dry, though I noticed his nails were bitten. He followed my eyes and shrugged. “Old habit. Can I buy you a coffee?”

  I looked over the diner and he followed me there too—over the blood-soaked floor, the shot-up counter—and laughed. He had an easy laugh. Comfortable. “Not here, obviously. But there's an all-night place in Hope. We could compare notes.”

  I shrugged. A coffee was a coffee, regardless of the company. “Lead the way, Mr. Johnson.”

  We stepped out together into the rain.

  * * * *

  There was a Starbucks but it was closed, and we wound up at a truck stop on the edge of town. We were the only customers. The waitress had long red fingernails and a bleached hairdo left over from the 80s.

  “Hi, Joe,” she said.

  “Hey, Jude.” She smiled when he said her name; I got a sudden sense of some long-forgotten history between them. I don't know; maybe he took her to the prom once.

  We sat by the window that overlooked the highway and the rain. Could have been the Barbie-Q. Could have been anywhere.

  “So tell me,” I said. “What's your interest in all this? No bullshit.”

  He smiled. He was the kind of guy who smiled easy. “It's good to talk to someone who knows,” he said. “Do you know I read about you as a kid? 20 Hrs., 40 Min., The Fun of It, Last Flight...”

  “That was published after...” I said, then stopped. I shook my head and drank the coffee. Noticed Jude put on a fresh pot, especially for us. Or for Joe.

  “After you disappeared. I know. Amelia, I know.”

  “Shit.” There didn't seem much more to say. I never got on very well with other abductees. And this one was coming over a fan. “Joe fucking Johnson,” I said. “Grays Special Liaison. What are you doing here?”

  He turned his head away, watched the rain for a little while. Headlights along the road looked like the lights of UFOs. “This is where they took me,” he said at last, and he wasn't smiling. “Grew up here. My dad still finds his cattle mutilated every winter. I tried to stop it, but it's like dealing with children...” he sighed. “They like the small towns. The farmlands. This is their patch. Do you understand?”

  Realization came like static on the radio. “They think it's a warning.”

  “Marilyn Monroe's been dead for a long, long time,” Joe said, and it made him sound old. “She shouldn't be turning up anywhere, and definitely not here.”

  “She's been turning up all over the place,” I said. He grimaced.

  “So you think someone's trying to draw attention...”

  “Yes.”

  “And that's why you're getting involved.”

  He nodded. Finished his coffee. Stared into the rain. He had that look, of the long-distance pilot. Alone in the storm, the Pacific below you ... you see strange lights, start looking out for them.

  It doesn't lead to anything good. I should know.

  I thought about what he said. Maybe the person killing the Marilyns didn't even care. If it was a way of drawing attention to the little gray guys in the skies.... I had to admit it was kind of effective. So far no one in the Fortean press has latched on to anything, but it was only a matter of time. And these days, they could run DNA tests. If it matched—and it would—the story would go into syndication.

  “You have any idea who's doing this? Or where the Marilyns came from?”

  I shook my head. “The only ones we found were already dead, and they weren't talking.” I sighed, repeating long worn-out data over coffee steam. “The first one was twenty years old, the last one twenty-five. I figure someone in the early Eighties got hold of some Gray tech, a DNA sample ... you can get this stuff from specialist dealers, you know. Celebrity hair. These days, you could get it on eBay.”

  He suddenly smiled. “I know. I think that's why everyone keeps seeing Elvis.”

  I shrugged. “Well,” I said, “Elvis is still alive. It's Marilyn Monroe I'm worried about.”

&n
bsp; “Right.”

  The rain beat against the glass.

  * * * *

  At the local station I went over Marilyn's possessions. She didn't have many. No purse. I had to admit the diner looked like a clean-cut armed robbery. She had car keys in her pocket and the techs had already gone over the car. Found a driver's license and an expired credit card, both under the name Jane Norman. A makeup bag. A pair of dark sunglasses. The car was a sensible blue-gray Toyota. No house keys. No cell phone. Not even a personal photo anywhere, of a lover or a puppy, or something.

  Well, not quite.

  “You won't believe this.” The guy who came through was thin and sounded like he had a cold. “We found a digital camera in the boot of the car. I've just had the photos printed. Here.”

  His hand shook when he passed the prints over. Could have been excitement. I had a bad feeling in my stomach, and it intensified when I saw the photos. Beside me Joe groaned.

  “Who else saw this?” He demanded.

  “Just me, so far. And you two. It's strange, isn't it? She looks almost like...”

  “A lot of girls do.”

  The tech smiled. “No,” he said. “A lot of girls try to, Joe.”

  “Give me the camera,” Joe said. There was an intensity in his voice that wasn't there before. “I want you to delete the files from your computer.”

  “I didn't copy them...”

  “Now, Mark. I don't want this circulating. Do you understand?”

  The tech nodded. He didn't look happy. “Yes, Joe.”

  I stared at the photos. Norma Jeane, body circa 1948. The lighting was harsh. This was not photography for the sake of art.

  At the bottom of each photo was a red time-stamp, and the file name.