by Steve Alten
The rest of us, however, were left to wallow in our existence. ‘Live for those who died,’ became our creed. And so we faked our joy, pretending the whole affair back on Earth was just a test of survival.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily… life is but a dream.
Was Bill Raby’s existence but a dream?
Was Michael Gabriel’s? Can one truly exist without love?
Yes, but it is a self-imposed hell.
It was your love that saved me, Jacob, but in your unselfish quest to release me, I fear you have condemned your soul to the same purgatory, the same ultimate destiny.
You cannot simply be Hunahpu, you must retain your humanity. Step into the real light. Allow yourself to love again, or you will find yourself on the same path as your cousin, Lilith.
Having said what I needed to say, I’ll return to my journey on Xibalba.
Each of the alien planet’s days was divided into three shifts consisting of labor for the collective, personal time, and more labor, for it was essential to our existence that our first crop yield a bountiful harvest.
During these first six months, I was assigned to a habitat shared by seventy-eight single men and women.
It was there that I met Jude.
Judith Fields was a fellow genetics expert whose specialty was in agriculture. Using the surviving portions of our gene bank, she and her colleagues had begun the process of cloning livestock for New Eden’s farms.
Jude was a country girl, originally from Idaho, with long brown hair, hazel eyes, and a great sense of humor. It was Jude who made me feel again, and over the months, our puppy love blossomed into a strong bond. I found myself, or was it Bill, thinking about her constantly. Whoever it was, our time together was one of great happiness that, at least for the moment, sweetened both our souls.
Jude introduced me to Tan Rashid, an astronomer, originally from England, who entertained us with his ‘theories’ regarding the location of our new home world. You see, despite his computers and star charts, despite his infinite knowledge of the heavens, Tan simply could not discern the location of our planet. Was the distant red supergiant Betelgeuse? If so, none of the other constellations were familiar. Seeking answers, he and his fellow astronomers set to work on building Xibalba ’s first telescope.
As for me, my alter ego-Bill Raby-was a marine geneticist. Since there was little we could do to contribute on an alien planet devoid of oceans, we were assigned to the geology department.
Drone scouts gave us the ability to map New Eden’s entire domed landscape, which spanned nearly 3 million square miles, making it roughly the equivalent of Australia. Engineers determined our floating continent had been built in sections over eons. With its temperate climate control systems and agricultural pods, which we still could not access, they estimated New Eden could house and feed more than 2 billion human beings.
Located twenty feet below the habitat’s rich layer of soil was an inaccessible subterranean chamber, its alien carbon fiber plating composed of the same composite materials used in the dwellings. Within this sealed level, we theorized, had to be the environmental systems that perpetually purified the cloud city’s air and water, fertilized the plant life, and controlled the dome’s shielding mechanism.
The first crop was a bountiful success, and the future of our colony and our species seemed secure.
Two weeks later, the plague struck.
The human body is an amazing and complex machine. There are over a hundred thousand different genes in the human genome, and one single gene may contain more than 2 million nucleotides. Our bony framework consists of 206 bones, most of which are in our hands and feet. Our heart and lungs are the power trains behind a circulatory system that supplies muscles and organs with blood, oxygen, and nutrients, all the while removing carbon dioxide and other waste products. Our nervous system and hormones control bodily functions. Our digestive and reproductive systems are marvels of engineering, our brains more complicated than any computer. In fact, the human body is akin to a combustion engine, producing the same amount of energy as a hundred-watt lightbulb.
Yet, for all its nanoscale complexity and metabolic sophistication, the human body is still composed of 70 percent water.
For eighteen months our colony had been consuming New Eden’s water. We were cooking with it, bathing in it, and consuming food supplies grown with it.
What we didn’t know was that it was affecting us… changing us, altering our genetic code.
As Bill Raby, I was among the plague’s first victims.
I remember it being an overcast day. Olive-gray storm clouds whipped above New Eden’s protective domes. Jude and I were on personal time, strolling along one of the artificial lakes, admiring the handiwork of our alien benefactors, when I was suddenly stricken with intense head pains, as if my brain was on fire. I crumpled in agony, screaming to Jude for help.
Mercifully, I blacked out.
I awoke three days later in a medical ward, quarantined with others like me.
The human brain floats in a self-contained sort of womb, surrounded by and filled with a watery substance called cerebrospinal fluid. Doctors informed me that pressure in this cavity had increased dangerously, causing a portion of my cerebrum actually to press against the inside of my skull. This alien form of hydrocephalus had stricken fifty-seven New Edeners besides me, and more cases were being reported every day.
Drugs were not working, and the pressure on my brain was increasing by the hour. Unless relieved, I would lose consciousness and die within three days.
In effect, it was a death sentence.
How does one take such a pronouncement? Jude fell apart. Bill Raby’s consciousness wept inside, while I… well, I just got angry. ‘Remove the tumor,’ I demanded.
‘It’s not a tumor,’ the resident surgeon said. ‘Your brain is swelling. Intracranial pressure has risen from 210 mm to 270, and it’s still climbing. There simply isn’t enough room in your skull to allow for any more growth.’
Within hours, I slipped into a coma.
The Homo sapiens brain is an incredibly unique organ, its electrochemical design quite different from the rest of the body. It is shielded from direct contact with blood, and contains a hundred billion working cells called neurons, which make over a thousand trillion connections. The organ may be the most complex computer in the universe, yet, despite all our God-given intelligence, our species was still only capable of using roughly 10 percent of its brain, lacking the genetic programming to do otherwise.
The human brain also consists of several unique layers that reflect the gradual progression of our evolution. Rather than discard the antiquated layers, nature had simply built upon them, preserving our evolutionary history-and perhaps our tendency toward violence.
The oldest and deepest of these layers, dubbed the ‘neural chassis,’ consists of the midbrain, brain stem (medulla and pons) and the spinal cord, and controls our basic life functions, such as our heart beat, blood circulation, and respiration. Surrounding this layer is the R-complex, nicknamed the ‘reptilian brain,’ as it controls our aggressive behavior, social hierarchy, and territoriality. It consists of our globus pallidus, corpus striatum, and olfactostriatum.
Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system, a layer developed during our evolution as mammals. Comprising the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, pituitary, and hippocampus, it controls social behavior, emotions, and complex relations required for living in cohesive groups.
The outermost layer of the brain is a tablecloth-sized sheet folded like a parachute. It controls reason, spatial perception, and language. Known as the neocortex, it is divided by anatomists into the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. While the outer layers of other animal brains are smooth, ours is grooved, increasing the surface area of the cerebral cortex.
I bore you with these anatomical facts because, as I lay in bed in my coma, I dreamed that I was actually walking through this outer maze of gray matter, lost in th
e canyons of my neocortex. Reaching a precipice, I looked down, staring into the dark recesses of human existence.
And I saw everything.
The birth of our universe.
The formation of galaxies.
The evolution of life on ancient Earth.
From insectivores to primates. From early hominid to modern man.
And suddenly, as if a curtain had been lifted, I understood.
Futurists in my time had defined three categories of evolution for human civilization. Type-I civilizations were those that master all forms of our home world’s energy resources. This includes everything from mining the oceans to tapping into the planet’s core, to modifying the weather. A Type-I civilization is mature enough to rise above petty conflicts of politics, race, religion, and culture to develop a unified planetary economy. While still susceptible to certain environmental and cosmic catastrophes, Type-I civilizations have begun the process leading to the colonization of nearby planets.
The next step up the evolutionary ladder are Type-II civilizations, which harness energy solely by way of their suns. They have colonized other planets and have begun the exploration and possible colonization of nearby solar systems. Able to manipulate their environment, they will no longer be in danger of facing extinction by glaciation or asteroid impact, but will still be vulnerable to supernovas, whose eruptions could irradiate nearby planets.
Type-III civilizations are the pinnacle of advanced societies. They have exhausted the energy output of their suns and must reach out to other star systems throughout the galaxy. Their starships approach the speed of light, and perhaps, have even mastered ‘Planck energy,’ the energy necessary to violate the very fabric of space and time.
In other words, Jacob, they can manipulate wormholes.
When I left Earth in 2012, our species was still a struggling Type-0 civilization. Our people were hopelessly divided, enmeshed in petty conflicts of equality, religion, and politics. Our technologies focused on making war, and we very nearly destroyed ourselves in our quest of ego and self. Type-0 civilizations are always prone to disasters, whether self-induced, or, as our predecessors learned, through the fury of Mother Nature.
What scientists had left out of the equation was hominid evolution. Homo sapiens was not the last stop up the evolutionary ladder; it was merely the beginning… and love was our key to survival.
As this knowledge was imparted to me, I found myself staring at my own genome. The spiraling ladder of DNA was changing, continuing an incredible metamorphosis that had begun the moment the first drops of alien water had passed across my lips.
And though I was dreaming, I knew the vision was real, that I was actually changing, evolving into something more efficient-something superior. Another layer of brain tissue, a hypercortex, was growing over my neocortex.
I was becoming… Transhuman.
The transhumanist school first surfaced at the turn of the twentieth century when science fiction gave rise to serious futurism. The term ‘transhuman’ implies our species as being transitional, that Homo sapiens does not represent the end of our evolution but rather its true beginning. Through bioscience breakthroughs and technological advances in nanoscale engineering that enabled telomeric augmentation, proliferated nanoimplants, genomic editing, and mitochondrial genetic preservation, individual humans could prepare themselves as transhumans to reach our ultimate goal as a species: Posthumanism.
A posthuman was imagined to be an augmented super-brained person no longer merely human. It was believed that posthumans could end up as completely synthetic organisms, living far beyond the human body’s limitations-or as some imagined, as exobody consciousness, programmed within some futuristic biochemical computer.
As I watched my genome evolve, my hallucination instructed me. It showed me how my brain was growing. Taught me how to program my own neurological pathways simply by using streams of conscious thought. My dream guided me toward understanding how my biological processes worked and how they could be manipulated.
More than seven full months would pass before I emerged from my coma. When I awoke, I learned I had evolved into a different Homo sapiens subspecies.
It began with my appearance, which was bizarre, bordering on the grotesque. My skull had completely deformed, elongating to accommodate the increased mass of my brain. My body had enlarged as well, to better nourish the brain. My muscles were stronger, not only able to lift heavier weights, but they could fire faster, as if Bill Raby’s neural connections had doubled in speed.
There was a new clarity to my thought process. My mind could suddenly recall obscure documents I had read years earlier-word for word. My brain possessed an eidetic memory, but with highly expanded associativity, cataloging key concepts, drawing upon oceans of information in a millisecond of preconscious thought.
The entire colony was undergoing an identical metamorphosis.
As Jude was still in her coma, I decided to leave the ward, my new intellect determined to reveal New Eden’s secrets. My first destination was a massive structure, standing seventy-eight stories tall, encompassing a thousand acres. What drew me to this alien facility was its exterior lead gray surface, adorned in ever-changing patterns of lines and glyphs, which radiated the colors of the spectrum.
An imposing thirty-foot arch delineated the grand entry. Approaching the sealed hatch, I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts inward, imagining the doors unsealing to allow me entry.
Immediately, a strange buzzing sensation overcame me, as if my brain was expelling volts of electricity. I fell to my knees, overcome by vertigo.
When the buzzing stopped, I opened my eyes.
The portal had unsealed.
25
NOVEMBER 22, 2033: MANALAPAN, FLORIDA
7:35 a.m.
Ken Becker enters destination coordinates into the four-passenger jet-copter’s autopilot as his boss straps herself in one of the rear seats.
‘Don’t wake me until we get to Washington,’ Lilith orders. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she slips the virtual-reality helmet over her head and closes her eyes.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Becker activates the airship’s three-blade helicopter rotor, guiding the vessel into a hover maneuver. At thirteen-hundred feet, he shifts to jet mode. Wings, retracted beneath the airship, spread out horizontally, as the jet engines fire and the helicopter’s rotors and tailfin fold and retract.
The jet-copter leaps forward, heading north to the nation’s capital.
Believing Jacob Gabriel dead, Lilith Eve Robinson knew it was time for her, too, to move on and find her own higher calling. Guided by her new mentor, Don Rafelo, a product of her own schizophrenia, the fifteen-year-old left the United States in the fall of 2028, using Quenton’s inheritance to travel to the land of her ancestors: Mesoamerica, home of the Aztec and Maya.
There are no surface rivers in the Yucatan Peninsula, the population’s freshwater supplies coming from a vast system of underground caves and sinkholes, known as cenotes (dzonot to the Maya). Four thousand cenotes and hundreds of miles of caves are believed to lie within the Yucatan Peninsula, all originating from the wreckage of the celestial impact, 65 million years ago when an object similar to an asteroid plunged through Earth’s atmosphere and struck the seabed of the still-forming Gulf of Mexico.
As the Yucatan Peninsula rose from the sea over tens of millions of years and rainwater and streams ate through the cracks in the fractured limestone, it absorbed carbon dioxide and formed carbonic acid. This acid, in turn, eroded the rock, carving out vast subterranean labyrinths that became underground rivers and caverns which stretched beneath the entire peninsula and throughout Mesoamerica.
During the last ice age, water levels dropped, draining the caves. That allowed extensive stalactites, stalagmites, and other calcium carbonate formations to form within the karst geology. Eventually the ice melted and the sea rose, reflooding subterranean dwellings.
*
The Caves of the Hidden Woman, or
Grutas de Xtacumbilxunaan, are located just outside Bolonchen, Mexico. A night after she had arrived in the village, Lilith Robinson, armed with lanterns, rope, a map, and spelunking supplies, followed her imaginary uncle down a rarely tracked path through the Mesoamerican jungle until she came to a rocky mountainside. Hidden among the foliage was an entrance to a cave.
‘What’s inside?’ Lilith asked Don Rafelo.
‘Your destiny.’
With the lantern clenched between her teeth, Lilith got down on all fours and crawled through the opening.
The glow from her light revealed a claustrophobic limestone tunnel, its diameter no larger than a manhole cover. For half an hour the teen continued on her hands and knees, forcing her way into the humid darkness until the tunnel opened to a cavern the size of an elementary-school gymnasium.
The walls of the subterranean room glowed fleshy pink in her light. Dripping sounds echoed eerily in the chilly air. Stalactites and stalagmites leaked calcium-laden water.
She turned as Don Rafelo appeared behind her.
‘Where are we, Uncle?’
‘ Xibalba Be, the road to the Underworld. We must descend five levels to reach Lucifer’s chamber, this is only the first.’
Lilith aimed the beam of her flashlight down a winding embankment leading straight into the bowels of the earth. ‘Down there?’
‘It is where he awaits.’
Tying off one end of a nylon rope to a stalagmite, she made her way backward down the slope, the limestone beneath her boots slippery, the cavern walls to her left glowing shades of violet and crimson in the lantern’s light.
She continued descending backward into the bowels of the mountainside, her exit disappearing above her light’s reach in suffocating darkness.
At 108 feet, the steep slope leveled out.
A heavy darkness crept in, surrounding her. Dime-sized drops of moisture splattered on her head, shoulders, and into the pitch. Soft rustling sounds appeared overhead.