The Genetic Imperative

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  “OK,” Arnold said, as if giving up on a riddle, “What is this thing?”

  Sergeant Skeates smiled and suppressed a chuckle. Sergeant Nichols studied Arnold carefully.

  “This,” said Lieutenant Conteh, “is not from here.”

  “Well, obviously, Lieutenant,” Arnold snapped, dropping some decorum in his frustration, “But who made this and how is it possible?”

  The three said nothing. Arnold waited.

  “Lieutenant Triska, shall I tell you what you already suspect, or would you like to venture an answer?” Lieutenant Conteh asked.

  “Why don’t you just say what you have to say,” Arnold replied with a clenched jaw.

  Lieutenant Conteh took a deep breath and began, “This object was supplied to the Unit by a race of extraterrestrials known to us as the Advocates. It is called a gravity crystal and it is from larger propulsion system. This particular crystal is no longer serviceable for that system and is used for demonstration purposes.”

  Arnold stood for a moment. He stared at Lieutenant Conteh. He waited for some sign of humor. Her face remained neutral.

  “OK,” Arnold said, “you’ve had your fun. You can end the hazing now, and we can all get to work.”

  The three soldiers standing in front of him looked very serious.

  “It is always very difficult to accept a first,” Lieutenant Conteh said, “but your eyes are already telling you what you struggle to believe.”

  “Good Lord, you are all serious,” Arnold said, backing away. “You all believe this.”

  “I’m afraid so, Lieutenant Triska,” replied Otema Conteh. “Because it is true.”

  “So, at the meeting, when you said ‘incursion’, you mean some kind of what—landing?”

  “Keep going,” Otema said.

  “And these ‘dignitaries’?” Arnold asked.

  “It’s important that you say it,” Lieutenant Conteh prompted gently.

  “Will not be human,” Arnold said.

  Lieutenant Conteh studied Arnold for a while, then said, “That is correct. Normally, the orientation takes months or weeks. Certain realities are revealed to personnel slowly, so that we can help them adjust. I’m sorry that you will have to assimilate all of this information in a single day. It will be difficult.”

  “It already is,” Arnold said, reaching up to wrap his hand around the object. He pulled on it hard, leaning back, letting it hold his weight.

  Good, Otema thought to herself, Arnold was beginning to accept the truth. She found physical objects very effective in introducing people to broader reality. Arnold let go of the crystal, stood up straight and actually scratched his head. Otema herself had to suppress laughter and Mike simply walked away. She knew Mike well enough to know that, if he didn’t leave, he would have burst into laughter and biting one-liners. That was his way of dealing with stress. It was Sergeant Nichols to took a sympathetic approach and sidled up to Arnold.

  “Lieutenant Triska, this is usually the point in orientation where questions are answered. Let’s go back inside and talk,” Nichols said.

  “I do have questions,” Arnold said, with a pointed look at his fellow Lieutenant.

  “Well that’s a good thing, because there is a lot more,” Otema replied.

  “Great,” Arnold said, with a healthy injection of irony. “That’s just peachy. Let’s get this over with.”

  Otema grabbed the crystal, deactivated it, then put it back in her hip pocket. Back in the kitchen, they all sat around the table where Sergeant Skeates had set out a fresh pitcher of iced tea and four glasses.

  “The tea is a big tradition around here,” Mike said, “There’s a story behind it, but nobody knows what it is. We just know there’s always tea in the house and somebody is always making a fresh pitcher.”

  At that moment, Arnold’s appreciation for Sergeant Skeates deepened. At first, Arnold tagged Mike as a hustler. He was, and this was evident, but there was no ill intent in the angles he played. Mike meant well. He was a simple, easy-going guy. He was a bit of a gamer, but the prizes he played for were honorable. He wasn’t trying to take advantage of anybody. Arnold could see that now.

  Mike poured them all a glass of tea. Otema took her cup and sipped, knowing the secret of the tea. The secret fell under the heading of comfort food at funerals and old songs on the radio that reminds one of happier times. The tea was the anchor of familiarity. They always made sure to have iced tea on hand because it kept them from drifting away from safe harbor. Their job was surreal. Its realities went far beyond the basic ideas of their existence taught to them from infancy until they day they grew up and were recruited into the Unit.

  “So you call these ‘entities’ Advocates, why is that?” Arnold asked.

  “This is a good question and it will require some explanation, so please bear with me. I’m afraid it involves a lecture.” Otema said.

  Arnold sat patiently.

  Otema took a deep breath, then began, “In the past fifty or sixty years, we—meaning humanity as a whole—has truly begun to explore space.

  That exploration has mostly been indirect—powerful telescopes, satellites, some small spacecraft that visit other planets, and one brief period when we walked on the moon.

  There is a recurring question in all this and that is; ‘are we alone.’ Cliché, yes, but clichés become so for a reason. It’s an important question that we want to know, so we keep asking. The question doesn't go away. It is the subtext of all our exploration whether we acknowledge it or not.

  Are you familiar with the Drake Equation?”

  “I think so,” Arnold said. “Isn’t that some formula that tries to figure the odds of finding life in space?”

  “That’s about right. It’s a method for understanding the probability of life on other planets that we can detect. It has many variables, but our exploration of space in the last twenty years alone has filled in many of those variables. We have also greatly expanded the equation itself. Drake’s equation is just the starting point.

  The equation is built around what we understand to be the basic requirements of life on Earth; liquid water, the right temperature, exposure to the correct spectrum of sunlight in the right amount, things like that.

  All these factors make a place suitable for carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to form the self-replicating polymer that we call DNA. It was a pretty safe bet to assume that DNA is the most likely building block for life, given the natural affinity that those three elements seem to have for one another.

  When we look at it closely enough, the universe is set up perfectly for DNA to exist. It turns out that our formulas for estimating life in the Galaxy are very accurate. Life ‘out there’ happens a lot.

  DNA can take forms that we never thought were possible under a much broader range of conditions than we realized.

  In fact, it is now revealed to us that DNA itself is some form of expression. And by expression, I mean that it spontaneously arises in any and every case where the conditions on a planet are right for it to do so. It takes on forms of life that adapt to the specific conditions of a given planet.”

  “Just how life evolved on Earth,” Arnold interjected.

  “Yes. The difference is that life on Earth happens to be a very different expression.”

  “How is that?” Arnold asked, surprised by the statement.

  Lieutenant Conteh took another deep breath and thought carefully about how to answer that question.

  “It appears that life on Earth exists to supply the genetic material for the Advocates,” she said.

  Arnold stared. He didn’t think he heard correctly.

  “Say that again please, Lieutenant Conteh. I do not follow.”

  “This is the part that is hardest for most to grasp. It is also the hardest to accept.

  It appears that life on Earth was designed by some other entity, or presence, or some natural law, using only a very specific set of expressions. Life on Earth is very narrowly defined to produce
the Advocates.”

  Arnold sat there for a moment. His face burned. The muscles of his jaw twitched. This sounded like nonsense to him. It had to be nonsense.

  “Two questions. First, how can you be sure this is true, and second, when you say ‘design,’ for what purpose?” Arnold asked.

  “We can verify this is true through study of the genetic makeup of Advocates. We have blood samples.

  They have almost double the number of chromosomes, and the DNA sequence within each is more than twice as long.

  Advocate DNA consists of incredibly dense sequences from across the animal kingdoms of Earth, and quite a few more sequences that we cannot identify. Our scientists have confirmed that their DNA definitely comes from Earth. The contacts we’ve made with the Advocates, and several other extraterrestrial life forms confirms this.

  They all tell the same story. We have multiple, corroborating accounts of the same story.

  The answer to your second question is sometimes even harder to accept. It turns out that DNA is not the only self-replicating chemical structure that leads to life.

  There is a silicone-based life form. This life form is not sentient. It behaves like an infection, traveling through planets like a virus through cells. It replicates and destroys entire worlds as it does so.

  It appears that the Advocates were created, or somehow evolved, as a response to this life form. For one hundred thousand years, they have fought a war against the Silicoid life forms in order to preserve sentient life in the galaxy.”

  Arnold sat and thought. She was right. He was having a hard time accepting this. Why would she use the words “created” and “designed?” If that were true, who or what created life on Earth and who created the Advocates? He was having a hard time believing this was even sane.

  “When you say ‘created,’ what do you mean?” Arnold asked.

  “It is obvious even to the Advocates themselves that their race is artificial. It seems so at least. Nobody is sure.

  Their existence, as well as ours, is outside the pattern of observed evolution of life in the galaxy. It does appear that life on Earth was—I guess the word that fits is ‘staged.’ The Advocates simply exist. They emerged from life on Earth.

  They seem programmed at a very deep level to accept this, and to structure their entire society toward preserving sentient life. They are born for a purpose that seems somehow encoded in their very DNA. Their culture is built around this idea and every action their civilization takes is intended toward that end.”

  “Are we not sentient life?” Arnold asked with some distress.

  “We are, but life here is very different from life elsewhere.”

  “How so?”

  “From what we are told—and we have not been able to verify this beyond corroborating stories from other exos—is that life on other planets is far more harmonious than life on Earth.

  Life that arises spontaneously evolves mostly without the level of violent predation and general conflict that seems to exist among the species of Earth.”

  Arnold almost laughed at that. Didn’t he know that? He was a soldier after all.

  “‘Exos’?” Arnold repeated.

  “Yes,” Mike replied, “‘extraterrestrial’ is a mouthful so we call them ‘exo’, not to be confused with ‘X O’ for executive officer.”

  “Yeah,” Arnold replied with no small amount of irony, “I can see how that would be confusing.”

  Arnold sat shaking his head. He was thirsty. He understood a bit better why they kept iced tea around.

  “Are you OK, Lieutenant?” Nichols asked.

  “I’m not sure. Frankly,” Mike replied. “I’m not sure how much of this I believe. It sounds,” Arnold paused, “unreal.”

  “Well Lieutenant,” Mike said, “that is what made me come around to believing it was true. When you see more, you will understand.”

  “I’m afraid it may get more difficult for you tonight,” Otema said, “You will have the chance to meet an exo directly. Wherever possible, we expose Unit members to exos. This furthers understanding. Seeing is believing. And also, we sometimes work very closely with non-humans.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Arnold said, scolding himself for not grasping the obvious, “This thing in New Mexico, with the satellite …

  “An incursion,” Sergeant Nichols responded before anyone else had the chance to react. “We call them incursions and they happen regularly.

  This one was an emergency, it was outside the normal pattern of visits, so it was labeled ‘unscheduled’ and this one sort of got out of hand.”

  “That’s right,” Mike said, expanding on the explanation. “Part of the work of the Unit is to manage contact between exos and human institutions.

  Sometimes these incursions are witnessed by the public and we use psychological and signals countermeasures to obscure and confound public information.

  Elements of the Unit are embedded and highly compartmentalized within the intelligence community as well as the military and some branches of government. We even have some Unit members in civilian institutions.

  Disclosure to the public is not authorized.”

  “And why is that?” Arnold asked, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “Well,” Lieutenant Conteh said, “pretty much every rumor you’ve heard, or crazy story you’ve seen about UFOs flying around and people spotting strange-looking creatures with big heads and giant eyes—they all have a grain of truth to them.”

  “Holy shit…” Arnold said, goosebumps prickling his skin. A chill washed over him.

  Otema continued, “In the late nineteen forties and early fifties, there were several waves of UFO sightings around the world. There is a lot more to the story, and we will give you the details later because well—there are a lot. The short story is that the Advocates and another exo race became very interested in human activity. Their curiosity and studies of Earth became increasingly disruptive.

  It got so bad that United States Congress commissioned a serious study of the issue in nineteen fifty-four. The sightings were hard to deny, and that was the extent of their knowledge. Too many credible witnesses observed some things in the sky they could not explain. Hard evidence of exo incursion began to mount. The public wanted answers.

  The implication of the first reports were so disruptive that elements in the government had it immediately suppressed. The original committee had to be subverted and otherwise co-opted into re-issuing the study two years later.

  The second document they produced was a whitewash. It basically cast the entire question into the realm it lives in now. The second study basically says that exo visitation is highly unlikely and that all the events witnessed could be easily explained by normal, everyday occurrences. It essentially sets the stage so that questions of exo contact become the stuff of ridicule. That was the beginning of the program and the suppression of the truth.”

  “What did the first report say?” Arnold asked.

  “The first report was essentially our mandate and marching orders.

  The first report was made with the input of social scientists, economists, physicists, psychologists, military strategists and a host of other experts from many disciplines. Congress was not messing around. They wanted serious answers.

  The conclusions were, that the events witnessed in the skies of Earth were very likely caused by intelligent life forms from beyond Earth. Hard evidence supported this, from radar returns, to multiple corroborating reports from hundreds credible trained observers. There was even physical evidence.

  For the extraterrestrial hypothesis to be true, it would mean that such beings, by necessity, would have to be hundreds, if not thousands of years more advanced on an evolutionary scale. It went on to say that if this were true, and the beings made positive contact with the societies of Earth, that life as we know it would end. Basically, they were right.

  As their comparison, they used cases where modern humans made contact with previously unknown tribes living in
remote areas of the world. In every case where a less-advanced society met an advanced culture, the less-advanced society was completely changed—destroyed forever by the knowledge.

  With exo contact, they predicted that economies and belief systems would collapse overnight, governments and institutions would dissolve, and that the death toll would be massive on a global pandemic scale.

  The Program was started in the wake of that first report. The Units were created soon after, with the direction and direct participation of the Advocates themselves.”

  “Direction from …” Arnold said, trailing off. He hesitated as another revelation made his mind reel again, “You mean Advocates are active in this Unit.”

  “That is exactly what Advocate participation means,” Conteh said.

  “Are you …” Arnold began.

  Conteh did laugh then. She couldn’t help it.

  “No no,” She said, “I am not, but Colonel Balanik is.”

  Arnold sat there not knowing what to say. He looked at his watch. It was not even noon yet and he was already involved in what was possibly the most significant global conspiracy in human history. He had also discovered that Earth was essentially a giant sperm bank for some kind of alien killing machines. He sipped some iced tea and had the strange sensation of floating above his chair for a moment. As he set the glass back on the table, he noticed a slight tremor in his hand.

  “Well,” he said, “Sergeant Skeates, I think I’ll go on that grocery run with you. I could use the ride. Frankly, I want to get away from here for a while.”

  “I don’t blame you, Lieutenant Triska,” Lieutenant Conteh said. “The idea of orientation is to offer support. You have a lot to process.

  Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”

  Arnold just nodded in assent. He was a bit numb. Lieutenant Conteh thought he was holding up pretty well. It was a good sign that he wanted to spend time with Mike. He seemed to have good coping skills and the ability to act in a positive way on his needs. Let him get out a bit, she thought. He would need it.