by Jerry Ahern
Amanda’s lifelong passion—genealogy—coupled with the fact she was descended from one of the original Eden Project cadre and that her thesis was on theoretical astrophysics, had driven the research on her dissertation.
As part of the work, she had been examining the electronic logs of the original Eden Project 500-year voyage when she had discovered the “anomaly.” As impossible as it had seemed, the Project had remained in a geosynchronous orbit around something—she had no idea what—for nearly three terrestrial years; then, it resumed its journey as if nothing had happened. Her professor, Doctor Emil Culbertson, had cautioned her against going public with such a report; “You’ll end a promising career before it even gets started.”
However, after the attack on John and Emma Rourke and the capture—however short lived—of one of Captain Timothy Dodd’s clones during the “Fight in the Forest,” there was now incontrovertible proof the Eden Project personnel, while traveling in cryogenic sleep through the void of space, had not only been observed, but their ships had been waylaid and visited by intelligent beings from another solar system, creatures far in advance of humankind. After being studied, examined, and experimented on for three years, the Eden Project had been sent along on its way. Amanda had the only complete set of dossiers and original photos for each of the original Eden Project crew members.
Chapter Three
Tim Shaw, John Rourke’s father-in-law, was tired. Barefoot with a dirty t-shirt and old running shorts, he sat at the kitchen table looking more like a bum than a professional police detective; he didn’t smell very good either. He was in the last weeks of his career as a cop, and it was telling on him. He and his son Eddie were killing a bottle of Single Malt Scotch. “Won’t be long now, Son,” the elder Shaw said for about the fifteenth time in the last two hours.
“Dad,” Eddie reiterated for about the fifteenth time in the same hours, “you’ve got to snap outta this. You ought to be celebrating. You’ve made it almost all the way. You’ve had a great career, and you should be planning for retirement, not dreading it.”
“So you’ve said,” Tim came back. “But, here’s my problem; so much of who I am has been tied to what I do. I’ve been a cop most of my adult life. You and Emma are grown with your own families; your Mom has been dead for years. Hell, I have grandkids about ready to graduate. What have I got to show for it all, a bunch of citations and these two pistols?” He slid the stainless slab-sided Lancer reproduction of a Colt Model 1911 .45 on the coffee table, but his version held 13 rounds in a double stack magazine instead of 7 or 8.
Next to it, he laid Lancer’s version of a Smith and Wesson .38 Centennial snub nose revolver on the table between them. The five-shot revolver had been made by Smith & Wesson on the “J-Frame” but had a fully enclosed hammer that made it a double action only. Its swing-out cylinder was rated for .38 Special +P ammo. While mechanically perfect, years of use had imprinted both with character, battle scars, and holster wear.
This conversation had been going on, back and forth between them for the last six weeks. Each time it came up, Eddie saw the tension and anxiety from his father had moved to a new and higher level. He knew once a cop retired, if he didn’t have something to grasp on to, that cop would become more and more withdrawn and deeper and deeper into a bottle. Suicide after retirement often seemed like the only way to reestablish control, and too many times, far too many times, the retired cop would simply “eat his gun.”
An hour later, the Scotch was gone, and he threw a blanket over his dad who had passed out on the couch. When he climbed into his electric powered car, he called his sister Emma. “Sis, we need to talk; this thing with Dad is getting more serious. Can I swing over and talk to you and John for a few minutes?” Twenty minutes later, he pulled up at Rourke’s beachfront house.
Rourke opened the door and asked, “Ed, what’s going on?” He ushered his brother-in-law out on the patio.
“John, I’m really starting to get concerned about Dad,” Eddie said rubbing his face so Rourke wouldn’t notice the fact that tears had welled up in his eyes. “This retirement thing is really starting to settle on him. He’s depressed; he feels used up and that he has nothing to contribute any longer. Once he loses his badge, he feels he will lose his identity.”
Emma brought coffee out for them, and the three contemplated what might be done to avoid a tragedy, if anything. After an hour of discussion, Rourke excused himself and went inside to make a phone call. “I wished his relationship with Linda had panned out,” Emma said. “He was happy for those few months; when she was killed, it was like the bottom fell out of him.”
“I know,” Eddie said. “The bottom is out of him, and the walls are falling in on him. He has got to find something to commit to Sis, or he’s not going to come out of this.” Having said that, the conversation just died, and the two simply sipped at their coffee. Neither had an answer; they didn’t even have questions.
Rourke came back out, “Okay, try this on for size. I just spoke with Michael and told him our fears. He told me he was in the process of reworking the Secret Service protection coverage and duties. He asked if I thought your dad would be interested in that.”
“John, if Dad thinks this is a handout... If he thinks this is just a gesture from the family, he’ll turn it down. However,” Emma said, “if he sees this as an opportunity, a real opportunity and a challenge, I think he’ll jump on it. It will all be in the presentation.”
Eddie nodded, “We’ll have to carefully ‘arrange’ this, and he can’t know we were directly involved.”
“Let me and Michael handle that,” Rourke said. “I have a couple of ideas.”
*****
Dr. Fred Williams, head of the Mid-Wake Research Institute, had agreed to meet with John Rourke and The Keeper in his office. Rourke had requested the meeting; he had an idea he wanted to get clarification on. “So Dr. Williams, The Keeper has said the war with the alien EBEs was over chlorophyll,” Rourke began. “Is my idea feasible?”
Williams shucked his suit coat and loosened his tie, pondering for a moment. “Theoretically, yes. It is possible to synthesize chlorophyll. The question becomes, is it possible to synthesize the amounts you’re talking about? I believe it was in 1967 that the last remaining stereo chemical elucidation was completed by Ian Fleming.”
“Ian Fleming,” Rourke said. “I only know of one Ian Fleming; I know he was a very accomplished guy, but I had no idea he was into chemistry also.”
Williams chuckled and turned to his bookshelf, scanned the collection before selecting one particular dusty and worn volume entitled Pericyclic Reactions part of the Oxford Chemistry Primers, and referred to it. “Wrong Ian Fleming, I suspect you’re thinking of the writer who created James Bond. That was Ian Lancaster Fleming. The chemist, Ian Fleming, was a twentieth century organic chemist. Both were English, but my Fleming was a professor emeritus of the University of Cambridge and an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.”
“Fleming, my Fleming, was the first to determine the full structure of chlorophyll. He made major contributions to the use of organosilicon compounds for stereospecific syntheses, reactions, which have found application in the synthesis of natural compounds. He also was a prolific author, writing a number of textbooks and influential review articles.”
“Your Fleming worked in British Naval Intelligence during World War II. He was involved in the planning stages of Operation Mincemeat and Operation Golden Eye. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail, and depth of the James Bond novels.”
“Dr. Williams,” The Keeper began with a smile. “Now that we have the Flemings sorted out, will Dr. Rourke’s plan work?”
Williams nodded, “Sir, I think it will.” Williams turned and pulled a book off the shelf; he flipped pages until he discovered what he was looking for, then he quoted, “The first step is the creation of porphyrins. These are a group of organic compounds, many naturally occurring. T
he porphyrins are heterocyclic ring structures that include four pyrrole rings joined together through methylene bridges.”
“The most abundant porphyrins in nature are found in hemoglobin and the chlorophylls. In the center of porphyrins, a metal atom binds to the nitrogen atoms of the pyrrole units. In heme, this atom is iron; in chlorophyll, the metal atom is magnesium. The main ‘application’ of porphyrins is their role in supporting aerobic life. Porphyrins have been evaluated in the context of photodynamic therapy since they strongly absorb light, which is then converted to energy and heat in the illuminated areas.”
He closed the book, flipped it on the desk, and continued, “It is more of an industrial concern at the level of produced material you want; the chemistry aspect is actually fairly simple and straightforward. However, to my knowledge, there is not a facility in the world capable of doing it at present.”
“Could one be built?” The Keeper asked. “You must understand it is our opinion the immediate goal of the aliens is to alter the Earth’s atmosphere, possibly radically increasing methane and thus depleting oxygen to the point where irreparable brain damage is incurred. Thus, they would have control of all but mindless slaves to mine and otherwise rape the planet, leaving the new base the aliens will establish secure against rebellion.”
“They would do this by displacing oxygen and lowering levels below 18%, getting close to 6%, below which would result in death. This could be accomplished by increasing microbial populations and releasing already existing methane into the atmosphere through global wildfires. Before, when the aliens all but wiped out the protohumans, they didn’t care about what they could take from the planet; they merely wanted to destroy a potential rival.”
“I think one of the reasons is also that the aliens cannot last for long periods in our atmosphere; that’s one of the reasons they need the clones. In the intervening millennia, the aliens have come to realize they need what can be plundered from Earth and all but mindless humans to provide it. We have to alter the equation in our favor, so, I ask you again. Can what John Rourke’s hypothesis describes be built?”
“Sir, with sufficient financial resources, manpower, and time, almost anything can be,” Dr. Williams said.
“That, sir, is the problem,” Rourke said. “I don’t know how much time we have.”
Chapter Four
“It is difficult for people to imagine geological time; people live on another scale of time entirely,” The Keeper said. “We cannot comprehend ‘infinity’ because we live in a ‘finite’ world, and within ‘finite’ time, people are unable to imagine the meaning of 80 million years. We knew that, geologically, Earth was locked in an inescapable series of events that were going to result in a shift of the magnetic poles, geological upheavals, and climatic changes that would last for eons. We had come to realize we had neither the power to destroy the planet nor to save it, but we reasoned we did have the power to save ourselves.”
Dr. Williams nodded gravely, “That had to be a sobering decision.”
The Keeper responded, “It was. We realized we could not evacuate the entire planet with its myriad of life forms. It may seem rather calculating, but my people understand evolution is simply the result of life escaping all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands into new directions, painfully, tragically, and perhaps even dangerously, but life finds a way. Biological creatures are fluid; they only seem stable. They’re not based on the time frame they are being observed in. For those short segments of reality, change is not observable. Increase the time frames, and it becomes observable. The reality is that everything is in constant movement, constantly changing.”
“A biological generation is defined as ‘The linear transition from one parent to one offspring.’ In humans, the biological generation does not have a standard length of time, but there are limits. A dynamic generation is a concept used by anthropologists; it is similar to the biological generation but applied more broadly across a group of people. These methods of reckoning generations have to do more with the relationships between people than actual passage of time.”
“Since our departure, earth has seen between 1,600 and 2,000 generations of humans; we are only in our second. How long is a generation, you ask? This short answer is 25 years, but a generation ago it was 20 years. The long answer is that it depends on what you mean by generation. More broadly speaking, humans have identifiable, meaningful, generation-related terminology and cultural concepts in many but not all societies, and when it does occur, it is more common to find the concept in age-graded societies or societies in which marriage arrangements are fairly strictly enforced, or at least strongly hoped for by the ascending generation.”
“The way your society is structured, what you call science, developed very differently than ours. Science cannot help us decide what to do with this world or how to live in it. Your science made your ‘nuclear reactor,’ but it could not tell you not to build it. Your science could make pesticide but could not tell you not to use it; as a result, your world was polluted in fundamental ways—air, water, and land—because of ungovernable science. The ability to predict unfortunate outcomes is based on the ability to keep track of things. Observation and discovery are inevitable.”
“That’s the game in science,” Rourke said. “If you observe enough, discover enough, you could predict anything; that is one of the most cherished Newtonian scientific beliefs. The Chaos Theory, made up of non-linear equations coupled with strange attractors and seemingly disjointed connections, throws it right out the window. Life will find a way. With your people, what is the normal life range?”
“It is much longer than yours; my people can expect to live between 750 and 900 of your years,” The Keeper said. “While our journey was completed in 120 years of ship’s time, within the life spans of some of the members of the fleet, you and I both know that 40,000 years passed on Earth.”
Dr. Williams said, “Our ‘sciences’ are simple belief systems only a few hundred years old. As in medieval times, that science has started not to fit the world anymore; I fear we are approaching a not dissimilar situation to the one your people were dealt. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent once again. Largely through science, the few millions of us live in one much smaller world, sparsely populated and with struggle with intercommunications.”
“More than anything else, is it not also a question of how much ‘knowledge’ has been lost due to technology?” Rourke asked. “No human action is without consequence; as improvements are made, problems are discovered. An old Peace Corps volunteer once talked about the price of forgetting. He said, ‘Often left behind are people who are shadows of what they once were and shadows of what we in the developed world are.’”
“He reported that at one older Catholic mission, for instance, nurses and missionaries have encountered patients brought in with burns or perforations of the lower intestine. Investigation revealed those afflicted had been treated for a variety of ailments with traditional medicines delivered in suppository form. The problem was not the medicines but the dosages. As the old healers died off, people would try to administer traditional medicines themselves or turn to healers who had only a partial understanding of what their elders knew.”
The Keeper broke in, “John Thomas, the family of man has always consisted of many ‘tribes.’ The human family had many branches whose development was guided by environmental and ecological circumstances unique to different locations, but even with all of those circumstances, the creation of man was guided by our Creator. However, I cannot define how the Divine works.”
“I do not understand the process; it is not mine to understand—it was His plan, and we are simply witnesses trying to interpret that which we see. Often, the ‘evidence’ is obscured by time, world changes, and circumstances we don’t control. Why did my people develop the way we did? I don’t know. Why was my civilization the first great one? I don’t know that it was.”
“I know you
r knowledge of the past is, at best, spotty. I have learned that you know about what you call Homo floresiensis, the Flores Man; there was also what you call, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and over 10 other ‘false starts’ of what would eventually become Homo Sapiens who proceeded to colonize the continents, arriving in Eurasia 125,000 to 60,000 years ago, Australia around 40,000 years ago, and the Americas around 15,000 years ago.”
“My point is that if all you know of your own history is based on a few finds scattered across the surface of this entire planet; if you still have ground to sift and oceans to explore—would you accept there may be more yet to be found and learned from?” The Keeper paused for effect, “As a point in hand, let me say that, before you, stands an example of... Shall we call us the Homo Atlantisian? We are a branch of the family of mankind your ‘science’ knew nothing about until our arrival. As the stones, bricks, and mortar of our civilization deteriorated or were hidden by time—what other missing pieces does the family of mankind still have that man has not yet discovered?”
Chapter Five
Tim Shaw was on his third cup of coffee when the Honolulu Chief of Police, Bryan Devlin, walked into Shaw’s office, “Got a minute?” Devlin asked.
“Sure Chief, have a sit,” Shaw motioned to an arm chair, while he stacked the files and reports he had been working on.
Devlin asked, “Tim, mind if I close the door? This isn’t official.”