World of Corpses (Book 1): World of Corpses

by Cook, Scott W.

  I liked the sound of the conviction in his voice. I hoped he was right. I hoped that my son would have the chance for some kind of a life… not just fighting to stay alive.

  Chapter 3

  The Theory of Panspermia

  For many years the question of how life started on Earth has been hotly debated and has produced a variety of theories. Excluding religious explanations, of course, there has until very recently not been anything substantial to go on.

  It’s widely accepted, however, that somewhere around four billion years ago, when our planet was still in its toddler stage, a soup of organic compounds existed in the early salty oceans and in smaller pools of slimy organic goo. These compounds combined to form amino acids which are the building blocks of all DNA, which in turn is the building block of all life.

  Yet two questions have puzzled scientists for decades. The first of these is what was the catalyst that caused these simple organic molecules to combine in the first place. The second question is where did the water that contained them come from to begin with?

  Water would not, really could not, have occurred naturally so early in Earth’s creation. At it’s very beginning, the earth was an ever growing clump of particles accreted from the stellar cloud that birthed the sun. As this lump grew, it condensed and grew hotter, with heavier metals sinking toward the core. It didn’t take long before what would one day become the Earth was a giant ball of liquid rock and metal. Until a thin crust formed and solidified, creating even greater sub-surface pressures. The face of this world was little more than barren rock coated in a thin sheet of toxic gases, made more toxic by never ending volcanic activity.

  The second question then, was fairly easy to answer. If water didn’t originate on Earth, it had to be delivered from space. Even today, our solar system is ripe with debris. In addition to our eight recognized planets, there’s an asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars as well as a huge outer belt of objects called the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper belt consists mainly of large fragments of ice, which when drawn toward the sun become comets. Comets are primarily composed of frozen gases as well as frozen di-hydrogen oxide… water.

  Astronomers speculate that during the first few hundred million years of Earth’s childhood, the newly formed Sun was drawing all sorts of matter toward it. In this cosmic shooting gallery, the Earth was a prime target for objects racing inward from the outer solar system. It’s widely accepted that the more than seventy-percent of the surface of our world that’s now covered by water came from the Kuiper belt and wayward comets.

  Studies done in the twenty-teens showed how when primitive organic molecules were suspended in a nutrient soup similar to the primordial oceans and then exposed to powerful electrical surges, a combination occurred that created basic amino acids which are the building material for RNA and DNA. Yet did the organic matter originate on Earth itself?

  Interestingly, the cosmic water delivery by comets also offers a great explanation for the first question. Scientists have long debated a theory, or series of theories, called panspermia. Panspermia is essentially an idea that says that organic compounds and even bacteria can travel protected in rock and ice through space for extended periods. Some fringe theorists even suggest an intentional seeding of life by extra-terrestrials.

  There’s no proof of any of this, yet it opens up an interesting debate. Meteorites from Mars have been found on Earth many times. These fragments are fresh, having fairly recently been tossed into space by some impact on the red planet.

  It’s possible that all life on Earth originated somewhere else in the solar system or perhaps even from the far reaches of our galaxy. After centuries, millennia and possibly even millions of years drifting through the cosmos, such comet-borne life may have crashed into the young Earth to seed the oceans with the building blocks of life.

  3,987,758,251 BCE (Before the Common Era):

  The object fell sunward. It tumbled slowly end over end, giving the impression, if there were anyone around to observe it, of almost plodding slowness. This impression would be false, of course, as the object was crossing more than fifteen miles of space every second. Wich in truth was quite sluggish on a cosmic scale.

  It was, for the most part, an unremarkable bit of solar debris. A cometary fragment a little over a mile in diameter. This amorphous chunk of rock and ice, about the size of a small town, hurtled toward a fiery death at the hands of the newly formed star whose inexorable gravity pulled ever more strongly on the bit of solar trash.

  This unnamed comet… for there was no one in the star system to give it a name. If there were sentient beings elsewhere who might do so, they certainly wouldn’t take the time. Why bother with a random piece of stellar flotsam in a newly formed and still very violent star system? Yet the comet moved toward its eventual demise at a fraction over fifty thousand miles per hour. Even at a distance of nearly one hundred million miles from the stellar furnace that awaited it, the outer surfaces were already beginning to vaporize, alternately boiling and freezing as the object’s tumble brought every facet of the surface into Sol’s relentless glare.

  If the comet could ponder its own situation it might consider the irony of its own existence. For this nondescript bit of space junk was not part of the star system which had captured it. Indeed, the collection of heavy metals, rock and frozen water and gases that made up it’s nearly one hundred million ton mass had originated far away from the violence it now mindlessly witnessed. After a journey of more than a thousand light years that had lasted more than ten million years, the ancient relic of a long vanished planetoid was going to end its life as fuel for a hungry star.

  Of course the comet didn’t and couldn’t consider this. It simply existed. Even the organic compounds hidden and protected deep inside its core were incapable of any sort of thought. They too simply existed.

  The comet did not carry life, but only some of the building blocks necessary for life. Organic molecules such as carbon and oxygen, tiny fragments of RNA and other random bits. The comet had not originated from a thriving world of sentient beings. It had, interestingly enough, been blasted free of a world that was itself in the earliest stages of development. This long dead planet did contain oceans and organic material and even microbes, however.

  When another planetesimal had smashed into the comet’s home, the two bodies had pulverized each other. This cataclysm sent trillions of tons of matter hurtling into space. Some of this material had clumped together and soared free of the system’s small star and out into the vast and incomprehensible interstellar void.

  Certainly this wayward interstellar traveler would perhaps be fatalistic about its upcoming demise if it could. For the current bit of jetsam was a mere one-tenth its original size. Over the eons, the fragment had deposited some of its mass onto distant worlds as it meandered through more than a dozen star systems on its long journey across the galaxy. Long from one perspective and yet a journey that spanned less than one percent of the diameter of an already ancient stellar collective.

  Yet the comet was not destined for a fiery death in the heart of a thermo-nuclear furnace. Indeed, as the cosmic fates would have it, the cometary fragment’s erratic course was about to intersect with that of another solar body.

  A young world was following its established orbit around its parent star. This world, barely more than half a billion years old – an infant by stellar reckoning – was already showing signs of uniqueness. There were ribbons of sooty clouds hovering low in an atmosphere that was even now thickening. Through these clouds, should anyone be around to observe it, there could be seen an already large system of oceans that were beginning to carve land masses amongst themselves.

  This world even had its own infant child in the form of a globular association of rock and metals that was beginning to assume a spherical shape. This new moon was having a profound effect on the new planet, the third from its star, by slowing its rotation and steadying the top-like wobble down into something gentler that would one
day create seasons.

  It wouldn’t be long now. The comet would pass within a few hundred thousand miles of the still semi-solid moon and slam into the surface of the world at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Although much of the outer skin of the comet would vaporize as it met with the atmosphere, many thousands of tons would survive the friction of entry and embed themselves into the crust of the northern hemisphere.

  A huge cone of ejecta would soar into orbit, much of which would be lost to the vacuum of space and the friction of re-entry. However, some of the comet’s unique cargo would survive where it would eventually play a pivotal role in the young world’s own birth process – that of organic animal and plant life that would one day turn this barren and toxic environment into a lush gem among so many hunks of rock and iron.

  Would that there were intelligent beings nearby. Because only such beings could appreciate the irony. This humble hunk of rock and ice would help to spark life on the young world… and yet, billions of years later, it would also help to bring about the death of the world’s most complex lifeform.

  Chapter 4

  Southern Egyptian Nile valley

  Dahshur desert, early 46 BCE

  The royal barge glided slowly across the silvery waters of the Nile, the many oar blades throwing up shimmering droplets in the late afternoon sun. The slave master called out the cadence in a monotonous steady rhythm as his mate, a dark skinned Egyptian woman beat the rhythm on the head of a tall and tapering drum made of carved and painted sandstone and skinned with dried red leather.

  The cadence was more relaxed now as the great vessel neared the landing place at the center of the riverside village. While the steersman had to set a course a little upstream from the dock so that the heavy barge wouldn’t be pushed downstream, the sun browned slaves who tugged wearily at their oars received a bit of a respite from having to row directly into the slow but steady current.

  “It never ceases to amaze me,” The tall and strongly built passenger said from his place on a couch along the aft railing of the poop deck, “This lush land before us, with trees and vast fields of grain is only a handful of miles from the starkness of the arid and lifeless desert.”

  His companion, a young and vibrantly beautiful woman dressed in the ornaments of royalty smiled at the speaker. Her long black hair was held back by a golden tiara and around her wrists and neck hung golden bracelets and necklaces that glittered in the setting sun.

  “It’s what raised Egypt to greatness so many millennia ago,” she said, not without reverence, “This mighty river flowing north through a barren wilderness carved out a place for the ancients. It is intriguing, isn’t it?”

  The man beside her grinned. He was older than she, easily old enough to be her father or even grandfather in a time where women regularly got married and bore children in their middle teens. Yet he wasn’t old and he certainly wasn’t feeble.

  Even in his early fifties, the man’s hair was still mostly black and quite full in spite of the rumors perpetuated by his enemies that he was going bald. He was tall for a man of his origins, only two or three inches under six feet. He had broad shoulders and a muscular build honed through decades of constant battle. Unlike many privileged men of his time, this man lived as the soldiers he commanded lived. He led from the front, ate what they ate and slept as they slept… and he was loved for it.

  He was a Roman… perhaps even the Roman, after all and even now he was worshipped by many as a living God as was his young companion.

  He looked into her dark eyes. There was love in them, and respect as well, “You’ve shown me many wonders, my queen.”

  She chuckled, “I intend to show you more, mighty Caesar. Wonders you can’t imagine.”

  Gaius Julius Caesar was fifty-two years old. He’d traveled the length and breadth of the ancient world. From the haunted British Isles to the exotic deserts of the Middle East, he’d seen a greater diversity of people, places and things than most men at his age could even dream about. He’d fought great wars, faced overwhelming odds and yet he’d never lost.

  With all of that and more, he marveled that this ancient land of the Pharaohs contained a wellspring of knowledge and wonder that never seemed to run dry. He’d seen the Pharos, the gigantic lighthouse that heralded the entrance to Alexandria’s harbor. He’d walked the Great Library and marveled at its stored knowledge… and he’d grieved at what was lost when a part of the structure was burned to the ground in his and Cleopatra’s struggle against her brother, Ptolemy.

  She’d taken him up the Nile and shown him the vast fields of crops that sustained the country. There was so much abundance that these same fields provided sustenance for most of the still expanding Roman Empire as well. She’d shown him some of the great Pyramids of the Pharaohs like Khufu, Djoser, Khafra and Akhenaton. And now she had promised to show him another and something so astonishing that he wouldn’t believe it.

  “This land,” Cleopatra said, waving her arm in a sweeping gesture to indicate all that lay before them, “Is a land of life. It’s also a haunted land, a land of death. Ancient Egyptians and their leaders spent a great deal of time pondering their deaths and what came after.”

  Caesar nodded, “Indeed. These great burial monuments are a testament to that.”

  “It’s more than that, my love,” She said, “Death is viewed here as a continuation of life. The Pharaohs are preserved and cared for so that their journey into the next life is pleasant. They’re buried with food, water, clothing, jewelry and even their most valued servants in some cases.”

  Caesar nodded thoughtfully, “The Egyptian view of death is that the dead continue on in this plane of existence. That they too need to sustain themselves with physical material as they’re still very much physical beings, rather than spirits.”

  “Exactly,” She said, stroking his muscled forearm, “Perhaps in these modern times it seems a bit silly. The idea of a dead Pharaoh wandering around amongst the living.”

  Caesar laughed, “I’ve heard the stories. Tales meant to frighten children about the mummies who wandered the wilderness in search of the flesh of the unjust.”

  She smiled, “Many believe those tales and not just as a means to entertain.”

  He eyed her with a raised eyebrow, “Do you?”

  She shrugged, “It’s hard to say. My people and I believe that I’m the daughter of Isis. Many Romans now see you as a living God… is it so hard to believe that the ancient pharaohs, Gods in living form, would have the power to walk the world after death?”

  Caesar frowned, “As for you being the daughter of Isis… that I can believe. As for me being a deity… I think its fanciful nonsense. I play along, on occasion but I find it difficult to take myself that seriously.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. For such a man, a man who was larger than life, he had a healthy dose of humility. As powerful as he was, essentially the ruler of the known world, he had an unerring capacity for kindness and mercy. He was intelligent, thoughtful and slow to anger. A truly extraordinary man and she couldn’t help but love him as much as admire and even worship him.

  If there was ever a man who deserved to be thought of as a living God, it was Julius Caesar.

  “Don’t you believe that you’re descended from Venus?” She asked.

  He shrugged this time, “I’ve been told that all my life. I see that it’s possible… such views do serve me, for the time being.”

  “The people need heroes,” She observed, “Mortals who seem to embody the abilities and powers of the Gods. We all love stories of these super human men. Men such as Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hercules and Inés. And think of all the greats who live and have lived in modern times? Sirus the great… Pompeii the great… Harrod the great…”

  “And Alexander, your forbearer,” Caesar pointed out, “For my part, I dearly hope that no one ever Ataches that title to my name. Being called the Divine Julius is bad enough, and I don’t know if it’s truly been earned.”

&nb
sp; “Time will tell,” Cleopatra said, looking forward as her crew prepared to secure the barge to the stone pier, “I have no doubt.”

  Caesar grunted, “I think the Sibyl at Cumae would agree with you.”

  She glanced at him, “Have you consulted the sibylline prophecies?”

  He shook his head, “No… but that hasn’t stopped others. Some vague words, nothing more.”

  She didn’t press the issue. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.

  The barge was eased along the pier and a group of hands secured it fore and aft to huge bollards. A wide gang plank was then thrown onto the upper deck. A small group of robed and bejeweled men and women waited on the dock.

  Cleopatra led Caesar forward and down the broad brow to the waiting deputation. The two men and one woman knelt and bowed their heads and in nearly perfect unison said, “Oh most glorious Queen, daughter of Isis, ruler of upper and lower Egypt, we welcome you to Dahshuranek.”

  “You honor me,” Cleopatra said, “Please rise.”

  The two men were of about the same late middle age. Their dark brown features were lined and leathery. The woman was younger, perhaps a few years older than her queen. She had a deep dark coloring with classic Egyptian features and beautiful brown eyes.

  “I am Imnapek,” The one on the left said, “Lord of this village. This is my aid, Ata and the high priestess of Sneferu, Anoxona.”

  It was clear to Caesar that the Greek influence of the Ptolemaic Kings hadn’t reached this distant realm. Unlike the European coloring and features of Cleopatra, these three and others he could see nearby had the dark skin and African features of the ancients.

  Cleopatra smiled, “Pleased to meet you. This is my friend, Julius Caesar of Rome.”

  The three eyed Caesar with undisguised awe. Imnapek bowed again, “Oh, mighty Caesar! Even this far up the Nile, your deeds are well known. As is your defeat of Ptolemy and the preservation of our beloved Queen. You are welcome here in our humble village. All that is ours is yours.”