Ocean of Storms

by Christopher Mari

  Within two or three generations, by the dawn of the twenty-fourth century, the last original humans are extinct, Joshua’s thoughts inform him, killed off by disease, malnutrition, and fighting among their tribes for dominance. We Purebreds and clones hardly notice, as we are more interested in perfecting our utopia without disease, crime, or other ailments. We continue to spread across the solar system. And we are already looking toward the stars.

  Donovan and the others watch as technologies almost beyond their comprehension transform the solar system. Centuries pass in an instant. Mars is terraformed into an Earthlike environment; the seas under Europa’s ice begin to be exploited. Over the next two hundred years, the Purebreds and the clones alter the environments of all of the solar system’s planets and moons, creating entire worlds for them to populate. Then they turn their attention back to Earth.

  Having been abused by the original humans for so long, Earth, a slag heap of humanity’s imperfections, must also undergo a transformation. We Purebreds and clones terraform it, bringing it back to a more natural state. All remnants of original human civilization are eliminated, leaving only a few ultramodern cities of our own design and wonderful natural preserves. Before long, nothing remains of the original humans. Their cities, their monuments, their history, even their bones . . . all gone.

  Earth is now a Garden of Eden.

  Our garden.

  Donovan is standing on a hillside. Beneath him is a green-blue sea crashing against the rocks. Far into the distance, he can see more hills rising through dense forests. They burn pure gold in the light of early morning. White spires jut up from them, a city reflecting that same light in a brilliant array. The sight is so beautiful it fills him with anguish. We died so this world might live, he thinks.

  Suddenly, in the distance he sees a flash of blinding-white fire, then a muffled sound like a thunderclap. He knows this from somewhere. Another time and place. A moment later, something streaks into the sky, a plume of white smoke trailing behind. A rocket, he marvels, his mind childlike in the wake of all that he has seen. A rocket to the stars.

  The first faster-than-light ship on its way to Alpha Centauri, he realizes. He remembers, though the launch has not yet happened. Those who made the trip return home to a hero’s welcome. They tell of new worlds to exploit and prepare to spread out to the stars. What no one knows at the time, however, is that most will never live to make the journey.

  “A plague,” says Joshua, his voice tingling at the edge of Donovan’s mind, growing fainter. “It’s the only word for it. A mutant strain of disease from beyond the stars and for which we had no cure. We had no frame of reference for what it was. We did not even know why we were getting sick. There had been no record of disease on Earth for the better part of five hundred years. People continued to work, sleep, eat, and travel—around the world, around the solar system. Within six months every outpost was seeing plague outbreaks in record numbers. By the time we knew what it was we were fighting, it was too late. You see, in accelerating the human-cloning process, we had altered certain sequences in the DNA strand. Most notably, those involving the immune system. Before long, people were dying off so quickly we had neither the space nor the time to bury all of them. Bodies were unceremoniously cremated in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease.”

  Joshua appears before him, his face worn with horrors that had yet to come into being. The connection between their minds is broken, and Donovan’s consciousness is his own again. They stand on the hillside, looking over the tranquil green sea.

  “DNA can repair itself, copy itself. But for reasons we cannot ascertain, our DNA could not repair the damage done by this plague. We returned to the original map of the human genome made in the late twentieth century and attempted to repair the damage to our own DNA by using your people’s genome as a template. But having the map didn’t lead to a solution. We then tried to genetically engineer viruses and bacteria to fight the plague. Again we were thwarted. The plague continued to mutate as more and more of our people died. We were faced with extinction. And so we came up with a desperate plan. We needed to harvest samples of original human DNA. Hair follicles, blood and tissue samples, anything that we could find. It was our belief that, with these unmolested samples, we might have been able to synthesize a vaccine. Here our folly was revealed. The terraforming of Earth had removed all traces of original human DNA from the planet. All was lost, so it seemed. Until one scientist came forward with a radical idea. For decades he had studied wormholes and their movements. He and his team had devised a way to create wormholes . . . and send matter through them. Time travel. Imperfect, but the process worked, at least according to a few preliminary tests. We now saw that, if we could send representatives back from our era, we could stop this future from taking place. Work together to create a society where our kind and yours could live in harmony. A potentially flawless plan. But as you can see, we failed. Either the wormhole proved unstable or our calculations were incorrect—in any event, we were deposited here on the Moon about two and a half million years before our target date: Earth in the early twenty-first century. Now unable to contact your race and warn them, we developed an alternate plan. We would use the Moon’s vast supplies of helium-3 to maintain our ship, with the idea of blowing open a portion of the Moon in order to attract your attention sometime in the early twenty-first century.

  “Here, in this preliminary overview, I have given you a general understanding of how our society evolved from yours over the last seven hundred years.” Joshua takes a step toward them and gestures at the central consoles on the bridge. “In the memory banks of the Astraeus, you will find a more complete history of our mission to travel to your time. In addition, we have included information on how to cure many of the ailments that are still rife on your world. A gift, and perhaps a conciliatory offering. We will never know if we were successful. But know we died with the knowledge that our deaths would help to bring about a future more prosperous than the one we left behind. I can think of no greater honor. That is all I have to tell you. My mission is now yours. You must return to Earth and tell your governments what you have seen and learned here. Take back the mission logs from the ship and show them to your scientists. If you do not, then our mission will be in vain. Mark my words: the future of the world is in jeopardy. We have precious little time left. Good luck and farewell.”

  Donovan felt himself being lifted up, up, up into the sky, watching the ground recede beneath him before being unceremoniously dropped back into his body. He scanned the Astraeus’s bridge, then collapsed onto his knees. He looked up and saw Soong and Zell both prone on the deck, breathing heavily. Joshua’s tour of the future had wreaked havoc on their minds as well.

  They lay there in silence. After a moment, Zell spoke. “I think I would have preferred little green men.”

  “I saw it all,” Soong said, turning over to stare at the ceiling. “I saw it all through his eyes. I saw our world end; I felt it die.”

  “So did I,” Donovan said.

  “We all did,” Zell replied soberly. He was uncharacteristically quiet for a time. “It’s fitting, isn’t it? Nature, the very thing we’ve spent generations trying to buckle to our will, will ultimately prove to be our undoing.”

  “Well,” said Soong struggling to her feet, “let’s not waste time discussing it. Let’s get to work and figure out what we can do now.”

  “Soong’s right,” said Donovan. “There’ll be other chances to debate the philosophical implications here.” He stood up as well. The promise of action wiped away the remnants of Joshua’s mind connection. “We need to figure out how to contact the Copernicus, get Benny and Yeoh down here. We’ll need them to download as best they can everything this ship has got.”

  “Do you think they’ll be able to?” asked Zell. “Remember, this ship is seven hundred years ahead of us.”

  “True,” replied Donovan, “but their mission was supposed to succeed. They had planned to give us this inform
ation on Earth. There must be data ports somewhere on board that can adapt to our technology.”

  “While the two of you are working on that problem,” said Soong, “I’d like to perform an autopsy on Joshua. I’m certain his physiology will reveal as much as his message.” Soong cast a long look around the ship. “I’m afraid I’m not up on my Greek mythology. Who was Astraeus?”

  “One of the Titans,” said Zell, thinking of the terrible future Joshua had shown them. “The god of dusk and the coming of night.”

  Chapter 15

  The Chinese and American fleets were first seen converging off the coast of Taiwan on June 29. A local Taiwanese television station was the first to broadcast images of the seemingly endless array of ships, but American stations quickly picked up the story and shifted their focus from the Moon mission to the South China Sea. Each channel then related the events of the past few weeks in an endless loop, from the assassination of the Taiwanese separatist leader to the announcement of Taiwan’s declaration of independence. This was followed by a declaration from the President of the People’s Republic of China, announcing that the Chinese government would be sending its fleet to ensure that “no armed rebellion would occur in the Chinese province of Taiwan.” His statement was followed by one from the President of the United States, who said she would be sending the Pacific Fleet to “reaffirm Taiwan’s position in the ‘one-China, two-systems’ arrangement.”

  News commentators and pundits filled the airwaves on every twenty-four-hour news station. Many compared the situation with that of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. While few believed that a nuclear war was imminent, most ominously predicted that a conventional war between the United States and China could be under way in a matter of hours.

  “Whatever they tell you now, sir, is frankly bullshit,” Benny groused as he sat in his dusty space suit inside the Copernicus. “There’s no way that ascent engine’s gonna get fixed. It’s crumpled up like a tin can.”

  Wilson glanced again at the computer screen image before him of the ascent engine’s mangled nozzle and nodded stiffly. He had come to the same conclusion hours ago. He popped another Advil for his knee, still forgoing anything stronger in the interest of keeping his mind sharp. The way he saw it, they would likely have to rebuild the entire engine from scratch. And even if they had the spare parts for the work, they wouldn’t be able to complete the job before their air scrubbers were finally overloaded by carbon dioxide. Something about the tone of Mission Control’s progress reports over the last eighteen hours had been the clincher, each more assuring as the hours progressed. They were working on repair scenarios for the ascent engine—just be patient, they said. But Wilson knew in his gut that they were just biding time. Maybe they wanted to hold out hope until the last minute. Or maybe they were just trying to find the courage to tell them that the Copernicus would never leave the Moon.

  “So,” Wilson said, looking up from his computer screen, “is that also your assessment, Dr. Yeoh?”

  “Truthfully, Colonel,” Yeoh said with a sigh, “I had pretty much thought that the first time I got a good look at the engine. The rest of the ship is running A-OK, considering. I’ve been running diagnostics on the remote power-up procedure for the Tai-Ping. But . . . from where I’m sitting, the Copernicus cannot fly.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We build the thing from scratch if we have to, Benevisto. And we get Houston to help us out on a repair scenario the two of you devise.”

  “But sir, the oxygen—”

  “I’m not giving up, Benevisto. You shouldn’t either.”

  “Colonel Wilson,” Yeoh began, “have you heard any more news about the Taiwan situation?”

  “Nothing. They haven’t moved.”

  Benny patted Yeoh on the back. “Don’t worry, Bruce. These guys are all a lotta hot air. They’re just making a big show like we did with the Russians back in ’62. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  Yeoh nodded, eyes on the floor. “You’re probably right.”

  “Sir,” Benny said, trying to divert attention, “what about the archeology team? Any word?”

  “Not since they descended into the fissure.”

  “Probably interference from the cave,” Yeoh mumbled. “They can’t get a signal out.”

  “Regardless of our archeology team’s status, it doesn’t change our job,” Wilson said. “We’ve got to fix that engine even if we have to cannibalize the rest of the ship. We’re getting off this rock if I have to get out and push.”

  Donovan rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh. In the time that had passed since they had received Joshua’s download—as they were now calling it—they had been sifting through the memory banks of the Astraeus. What they had found was no more heartening than the future they had witnessed. A civilization thriving, bursting with pride at the magnitude of its own technological accomplishments. Then undone by its own conceit.

  How very much like our own, he thought, grimly realizing the bitter truth of that sentiment.

  Soong had found a stretcher to take Joshua’s body down to the medlab to conduct an autopsy. Zell, meanwhile, had been busying himself trying to further probe the ship’s technology. While they had found that the Astraeus was powered by some sort of engine located deep within its core, they had been unable to determine how the vessel itself was controlled. Finally, Zell discovered, much to his shock, that by simply using a voice command, the ship could generate consoles and controls using the same holographic technology it had used to play Joshua’s message. The readouts were fully interactive and real to the touch. As Zell ran his hands over one of the panels, he could imagine the rivets holding the console together and the circuit boards humming underneath. When he took his hand away, the screen suddenly resolidified and reassumed its inert purple hue.

  “That’s impossible,” he breathed, awestruck. “These screens are some kind of matter-energy conversion ports. But it can’t be. The amount of energy needed for such a device would be—”

  “Likely created by a civilization capable of moving a ship of this size through time,” Donovan said.

  “That is . . . quite impressive,” Zell said. “Somehow seeing these screens go through their permutations makes me believe in time travel all the more.”

  “Wait. Are you saying that you actually doubted what you experienced in Joshua’s download?”

  “No,” Zell answered. “Not really. But this,” he said, tapping the screen lightly with the tips of his fingers, “is more in keeping with our life experiences—having controls, looking at screens to procure information. It somehow seems more real as a technology than having an overview of future history downloaded directly into our heads.”

  “Strange as it is to say, but I believe all of this, Elias. The time travel, the clones, all of it. These people really came from the future to change the past.”

  Zell smiled in agreement as he studied the screen. “But to the specific matter at hand. Let’s think about this. If there are no apparent controls for the ship—”

  “Then the crew just simply generated whatever controls or tools they needed. It’s like a souped-up 3-D printer, capable of creating anything in an instant.” Donovan clapped his hands. “Let’s try something. Computer, could you activate the, um, bridge’s navigation controls at this station?”

  “Why the hell do you want navigation controls?” Zell wondered.

  “I’m curious.”

  A second later the purple screen before them winked out of existence and was replaced by a series of buttons, not dissimilar to the buttons displayed on a tablet’s touch screen. The top half of the screen seemed to be devoted to a real-time image coming from an exterior monitor or camera, but at present displayed nothing more than moon rocks.

  Zell rubbed his chin. “Miraculous.”

  The crackle of their communicators broke up Donovan and Zell’s reverie. They picked up their headsets as Soong’s voice rang in their ears.

  “Gentlemen,” she
said, “I think you might want to come down to the medlab.”

  “What have you found?” asked Donovan.

  “I’m not entirely sure.”

  After a long hike belowdecks, the two men arrived outside the medlab. The space was set up in a makeshift manner, with Soong using whatever tools she was able to carry with her into the crater. With power up and running, the area was now flooded in light. Joshua’s body lay on the slab in the center of the room. He had been opened up with a traditional Y-incision, running from the shoulders to midchest, then down to the pubic region. His entire chest cavity was on display. Although both Donovan and Zell had uncovered numerous bodies in their careers, there was something so real, so immediate about what they were seeing that both men raised a cautionary fist to their mouths.

  “There’s very little blood,” Zell observed.

  Soong walked about the table, snapping off her latex gloves. “A corpse has no blood pressure, Doctor. The only blood we ever see is that which is produced by gravity. And in an environment like this, in gravity one-sixth that of Earth’s, that’s apt to be very little.”

  She walked over to her instrument tray, pulling out a set of pincers. She drew on another pair of gloves and walked back over to the body. “Let me show you what I’ve found.” She sat down and leaned in close to the open cavity, poking around. After a moment, she turned her head over her shoulder. Donovan and Zell were still rooted to their spot.

  “Would you please come here?” she said. “I am certain he won’t bite.”

  The men cautiously padded over.

  Soong shook her head. “Donovan and Zell. The fearless adventurers.” She resumed her explanation. “Now here we have Joshua’s chest cavity. Notice anything strange?”

  Donovan and Zell peered in, looking in earnest, then picked their heads up and shook them almost in unison.

  “Nothing?” Soong said. “Nothing at all?”

  She was met with the same blank stares. Soong stood up, eyeing them both with a mix of surprise and the kind of exasperation a teacher might have for a slow student. She fixed them with a chiding glare. “Put your hands over your hearts.”