Progenitor

by Sherri Fulmer Moorer

  “I hope you do,” Kieran stared out the window at the stars glistening overhead in the clear, winter night. “I never thought I’d say this, but it almost makes me wish there were something out there.”

  Chapter 41

  “All right everybody, the clock is ticking,” Galen stood at the head of the table in Dr. Patel’s office in Maryland, just north of Washington D.C. “Our committee meeting for next Friday has been upgraded to a Congressional hearing to justify continued funding for the project. Unless we come up with something good, this one bites the dust, we humble doctors and scientists go back to our routine jobs, and the nation goes to war.”

  “It looks like we go to war no matter how you look at it, but he’s right about the survival of the project,” Annaliese said. “We’ve received a tremendous amount of data over the past week, both from the follow-up scans and from volunteers turning over records relevant to the study. Remember that our developing theory is an extraterrestrial presence. What do we have?” She looked around the table. “Let’s start with physics.”

  Mandy stood to join Galen at the head of the table, tapping her computer to bring up a graphic of space that covered the entire wall. “It’s definitely energy that’s not from this solar system. I did a time-lapse study to track this energy from the point of origin in the Alpha Centauri system.” She hit the small play button on the bottom of the screen, showing a trickle of energy that swelled to a massive burst that launched into the solar system, settled in the satellite systems, and dispersed back onto Earth. “We noticed the effects when that burst hit our satellite systems and started filtering back to Earth in August, which coincides with the ‘miracle healings’ and the effects on the witnesses to these events. In reality, this energy started coming into our solar system two years ago. It was so slow that our deep space instruments didn’t pick it up until the surge.” She pulled up another window with an image of a body scan. “I picked Kalea Kerner, our first ‘miracle cure’ witness, for this demonstration, although all the follow-up body scans showed the same things in every subject.” Mandy zoomed in to the cellular level. “The energy has bound to her RNA, creating what seems to be a hybrid biological-energy strand of DNA.” She zoomed back out slowly, where the glow from the scan illuminated the image of her body. “It’s spread through every cell of her body.”

  “You said that’s consistent with all five thousand plus subjects?” Annaliese asked.

  “It is,” Mandy turned to stare at the scan. “The energy is higher in her scan than in any of the others, but the overall findings are the same. Every subject has full cellular integration throughout every system in their bodies.”

  “What about the others that died?” Galen asked. “Did we get autopsy scans from the comatose ones?”

  Mandy opened another window to show a series of scans. “There were roughly five hundred people who went comatose after instigating attacks on others. That surprised me, because there was only media notice of ten. It turns out that most of these were smaller scale attacks; things like domestic disputes, barroom brawls, and random acts of violence committed without any witnesses but the one that took the rogues down. When we put out the call for their scans, they came pouring in, and they all showed the same thing. Again, I’ll use a sample. This is Dale Zeigler,” she pulled up the scan and zoomed in to the cellular level. “This is a scan done when he was first admitted. There was partial energy integration, but there were spots where it looks like the energy wasn’t able to bind fully with the amino acids,” she ran her hand along the strand of RNA and pointed at various spots of separation. Mandy pulled in another screen with an identical scan. “This was the postmortem scan the hospital did. Mr. Zeigler’s wife didn’t order an autopsy, but the hospital did one because his case was an oddity, so she donated her copy to the study. This is consistent with the progression my team found in the ones that did provide autopsy scans.” She ran her hand along the strand, where it ran parallel to the RNA but was no longer bound. “It’s fully detached. I wasn’t sure if that caused death, or if it happened after death, so I checked it against the two autopsy scans we have from ‘miracle cure’ patients that later died.”

  Mandy pulled another screen from the bottom bar, opening a scan that read ‘Carson Kerner,’ in bold letters in the bottom corner. She zoomed in to pull up the RNA. “It looks like the energy was separating from the amino acids, but it was happening at a faster rate than in the comatose patients.” She hit a button to show time-lapse imagery from the twenty minutes that the scan ran. “The energy strands are pulling away from the amino acids that make up the human RNA at an increasing rate during these twenty minutes.” She turned back to the table. “It would be helpful to have more time lapse data. I could tell you if it were possible for us to come up with something that could separate the energy from the RNA without danger to the subjects if I had more data. As it is, that’s all I’ve got.” She sat, tapping off the projector app on her computer and folding her hands on the table. “I’m not sure how the energy picked who to bind with, or why. It might have to do with the amino acids that compose their RNA. That’s a question for medical and psychology. My conclusion is that the failed binding led to termination of the deceased subjects.”

  “What about the living subjects?” Dr. Patel asked.

  Mandy spread her hands. “They had a successful binding between the extraterrestrial energy and RNA. Their energy levels are higher than the people without the binding, but I don’t know how the increased energy is affecting them.”

  “That’s a question for me,” Annaliese stood and took her place at the head of the table. She tapped her projector app on her computer and brought up several scans. “Most of these are the same things that Mandy just showed you. I’m going to zoom in on the electrical activity in the brain,” she said, pushing in the scan to show light pulsating through neural pathways. “This is a baseline scan of a normal subject that hasn’t been affected by the alien energy. I had several of my staffers scanned so I could use them as control subjects for a basis of comparison. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get an idea of what a normal human brain looks like without the energy interference. As you can see, a high level of electrical activity is normal in any brain. It’s how we think and function.” She pulled it beside the baseline scan, zooming in to show the neural pathways and starting the time-lapse. “This study subject shows a significant increase in the energy speed and levels moving through the neural pathways. My team’s initial calculations show that the energy in the affected brain is moving at a rate of approximately fifty to eighty percent higher than standard.”

  Dr. Patel whistled. “That’s a lot. I’m surprised they’re conscious.”

  “Despite popular belief, the human body can handle a lot of energy. It’s the introduction of the energy that matters. If you get hit by lightning, it can kill you. If the rate increases gradually over a period of, say, five months, then it integrates into your systems.” Annaliese waved a hand toward Mandy. “Unless, as you saw in the scans she presented, there’s a failure to properly integrate. I believe her theory that the failure of the energy to integrate with the amino acids composing the human RNA caused the death of our failed subjects.” She zoomed in closer on the subject scan. “If I go deeper, you can see strands in the energy patterns. Dr. Patel said before that they look like proteins.” She zoomed in deeper, then zoomed in to the baseline subject to the same level. “If you look at both of these, you’ll see that they are, in fact, proteins. But here’s the difference,” Annaliese said. She pointed to the left screen. “That’s a human, biological protein in the baseline subject.” She pointed to the right screen. “That’s a biological protein embedded in the energy field.”

  Mandy gasped. “It’s biological? From what?”

  “I can answer that,” Galen stood. He pulled a screen from the bottom bar. “I don’t know if any of you remember this, but we had a comet come through our system two years ago. The Space Exploration Society upgraded an old
probe from the NASA days and reconfigured it to ‘capture’ material from this comet. We analyzed it at the North American Space Station to prevent contamination from Earth.” He tapped the scan, zooming in on ice and black rock until it digitized to a scan. “Most of what we found was rock and debris, but we did pick up something else. In fact, our researchers were still pondering this until I told them about the data Annaliese found in her scans.” He zoomed in on the image until it became the brain wave, then the energy RNA, then the protein. “My team resumed research on this comet fragment last week, and they confirm that it’s identical to what we’ve found in the patients affected by this energy.”

  “Has anything happened with that fragment?” Mandy asked. “It’s not causing gravity shifts or anything on the station, is it?”

  Galen laughed. “If that were happening, we wouldn’t have scaled back the research in the first place.”

  “Her question is relevant, because it is causing things in the human patients,” Annaliese said, switching the zoom on her scan. “The increases in energy are boosting activity throughout the entire brain. I think that’s why we see the increase in abilities.”

  “And it enhances their expertise,” Dr. Patel said. “That’s something I noted in my patients. For example, one of my patients is a psychiatrist, and she demonstrated an ability to modify neurological patterns. One of her clients had depression, and was able to go off medication after being in contact with the doctor for an hour long session.”

  “That’s impressive,” Mandy said. “Can they all do that?”

  “Like I said before, their increase in abilities seems to be tied to their expertise; areas where they have education and experience,” Annaliese said. “My cousin is an electrical engineer, and she’s conducted and manipulated electricity on several occasions. Another patient was a medical assistant, and she could see inside peoples’ bodies, like an X-ray or a scan. In fact, she’s starting to show signs of healing abilities. She touched my head during the study while a migraine was coming on, and it went away within five minutes.”

  “So it isn’t giving them new abilities,” Galen said, “it’s enhancing what they already have, and giving them the capacity to work with it at a higher level.”

  “That’s right,” Annaliese said. She tapped off the projector app on her computer and resumed her seat. “That’s all I have. It confirms much of what I’ve already presented. There’s no doubt that this energy is affecting the people it’s bound to. It seems to be giving them a boost to make them superhuman.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “My theory is that this energy is alien biological material that has bound with a certain population of humanity. Remember the common factors in all of our subjects. They’re all in the prime of their life, all above average intelligence, and were all relatively healthy at the time of infection, or whatever you want to call it, save for minor illnesses, injuries, or health issues that were cured at the time of contact.”

  “So the ‘miracle cures’ were the integration of this alien material?” Mandy asked.

  “Yes,” Annaliese said, “and they all died, so it was a failed integration. But they also healed a witness to their ‘resurrection’, and most of those people are still alive and fully integrated with this energy now, save those that went comatose and died.”

  “All of those had mental instability or the starting stages of a terminal illness,” Dr. Patel said. “Of the five hundred that died after committing random acts of violence and going comatose, nearly eighty percent of them had a mental illness or mood disorder, and the other twenty percent had starting stages of cancer or another terminal illness that had been undiagnosed until they snapped.”

  “What about the other healings in the ‘miracle witness’ cures? What was up with that?” Mandy asked.

  “I can answer that question,” Dr. Patel stood and took his place at the head of the table. He tapped on the projector on his computer and brought up several scans of various body parts, mostly arms, legs, and shoulders. “I got records from our subjects showing the injuries they had at the time of their healing and followed up with scans by my team. The thing they had in common was that the illnesses and injuries they had were minor and not threatening their well-being, or they were things that would have healed on their in time: infections, viruses, sprains, breaks, strains of tendons and ligaments, things of that nature. There were also several with chronic conditions that were healed, mainly asthma patients, high blood pressure, or breaking up minor blockages in arteries. I’m talking about things that were non-lethal. They were issues that were painful, aggravating, and had the potential to lead to bigger problems if not properly managed, but they weren’t putting the patient in immediate danger of death.” He swept his hand across the scans. “These samples show that their injuries were in the process of healing. Most of them were low-grade chronic conditions, or an illness or injury sustained in the two to four weeks prior to the ‘miracle healing’ event and were healing on their own.”

  Dr. Patel swept up another window. “I picked a sample of people that followed up with doctors on their ailments. Most of them were completely healed within two days. Some claimed they were healed immediately, but we don’t have any scans from a twenty-four hour time frame.” He pulled up Sidney Sinclair’s scan. “Here’s a good example. This patient had minor asthma, until her father-in-law grabbed her throat at the bronchial tubes prone to constriction.” This scan obtained from her ENT a year ago show this construction. Look at these scans taken a week after her father-in-law grabbed her.”

  The room gasped as they saw the after scans of perfectly open, healthy pathways. Dr. Patel smiled. “She went in for the radiation burns on her neck. She hadn’t noticed that her asthma attacks had stopped, even on hot, smoggy days in August in the Southeast.”

  “Which isn’t unusual,” Annaliese added, “it’s understandable that they wouldn’t wonder about their own minor ailments when you consider that they were in shock from witnessing somebody coming back from close to death.” She looked down. “My cousin didn’t notice that her broken foot quit hurting, or that she ran through the hospital hallway without her orthopedic splint. Mom found it packed with Dad’s things when he was discharged from the hospital a couple of days later.”

  “That’s what most of my patients said in their initial interviews,” Dr. Patel said. “I wish I had time-lapse imagery so we could see the healing in progress, but we don’t. All I have are follow-up scans on the areas,” he swept in more images. “At one to two weeks, a scar appeared with heightened radiation and energy readings. Not lethal, but noticeable. The radiation disappeared over the following three weeks, but the energy spread from the site of the healing.” He pointed to several scans that showed the energy clusters in the healed areas thinning out and spreading, first through the immediate area and then further into the body until it was integrated. “My theory agrees with Annaliese. I believe this is alien energy that entered the body at the site where they were healed and has inhabited human bodies and enhanced their abilities.”

  “So there’s no doubt about it,” Galen said. “We know for sure that this energy has alien biology in it, and that it’s integrated with humans.” He tapped his computer on the table. “Are we sure it’s not energy or radiation from Alpha Centauri? That system is generating a tremendous amount of energy.”

  Mandy shook her head. “While it’s consistent with the kind of energy they have in that system, it’s not from any of those stars. You triangulated it, Galen. It’s coming from a point orbiting the system, not either of the stars.”

  Galen sank into his chair. “So this is for real? We’re planning to tell Congress that there are aliens inhabiting our own people?”

  Dr. Patel nodded. “That’s all it can be, but we can’t say who they are or why they did it.”

  “Which are the next questions these politicians will have,” Mandy said.

  Annaliese sighed. “And what all the data in the world can’t tell us.”

&
nbsp; Chapter 42

  “You don’t have to worry about how to tell me,” Kalea said from the couch, where she was reading on her computer. “I got my subpoena for the Congressional hearing this morning.”

  Annaliese studied the back of Kalea’s head, noticing that her hair seemed longer, darker, and shinier than usual. She walked around the couch and sat. “How did you know I was back there?”

  Kalea put down her computer. “I heard you, and I saw your reflection in the television.”

  “Okay.”

  Kalea smiled. “Did you think I used some alien power to sense your presence?”

  Annaliese tiled her head, studying Kalea. “How are you really feeling?”

  “I’m fine. Why do you keep asking?”

  “Your body is filled with alien energy. I find it hard to believe that you feel exactly the same as always.”

  “Why is that hard to believe?”

  “Because you aren’t the same,” Annaliese said. She leaned back against the arm of the couch. “I don’t know how to describe it. Something about you is different. You don’t talk as much. You definitely don’t sleep as much. I hear you wandering around the house late at night and early in the morning. You don’t smile and laugh like you used to. You’re more serious, more somber. You aren’t as animated as you used to be. On the surface you seem perfectly normal, but since all of this happened with Dad, you’re different. I thought it was grief, but now I suspect that it’s whatever’s inside of you since he grabbed you.”

  Kalea nodded. “I do feel different, but it’s hard to put into words, so I don’t talk about it. How are you supposed to say what you don’t understand?”