by Mark Wandrey
“So the planet underwent an epoch of some sort, maybe from an asteroid collision like Earth is about to experience.”
“That’s a possibility, but how did it evolve life in a hundred thousand years?”
“What’s that?”
“Can a planet evolve life in a hundred thousand years?”
“Single cell organisms might have evolved in that length of time.”
Outside the palisade, Cupid struck, and a pair of the sloths roared as they mated. “How about evolving something like them? No, of course not. While I was down there I took samples in a dozen places around the base of the cliff. This mountain is seismic in nature, looks like it was pushed up during an event less than a hundred thousand years ago. The whole area appears to have been at the bottom of an extremely acidic ocean.
“Like in South Dakota and Wyoming?”
“No, those are extinct volcanoes. All that’s left is the core. But there are cliffs in Arizona and streambeds in the Montana Badlands that let you look back hundreds of millions of years. This face is not that old, we can only see about a million. But what’s significant is that in almost all the million years there is nothing, no biological record. I’ve checked with my portable spectrometer, visual light microscope and just now with that delicious little electron microscope I brought with me from NASA. Not a damn thing. Everything living on this planet arrived here less than a hundred thousand years ago.”
Amanda finally got to her feet and walked over to where Gibson was working. As she approached, he looked for a moment like he might stop her from seeing what he’d been working on, but at the last minute he stood aside. From pieces of hewn wood and other scrap he’d constructed a box about three feet on a side. He’d made a lid from some left over transparent plastic, like they had used for windows on the living quarters, and assembled it with some of their precious metal fittings and screws. She was about to complain about the wasting of such irreplaceable equipment when she saw there was more. A pair of digital cameras had been mounted to look down into the box and one of their tiny heating guns was affixed to the inside and wired to a palm computer. “What are you up to here?”
“Better just look inside.”
She looked at him and then leaned over to look through the top. Inside were four nearly round objects colored in a brown and green camouflage pattern. They looked like some kind of big seed and she said as much. “You’re not too far from the truth,” he said. She gasped when one of the four objects quivered with the unmistakable motion of something moving inside.
“They’re eggs!” she yelled. He smiled like a proud poppa. She looked at them, each bigger than a softball and wondered what they could belong to. It only took a second to reach the worst case scenario. “They’re eggs for a Komodo sloth, aren’t they?”
He smiled even bigger. “I found a nest late last night with my night vision goggles. You would be amazed at how complicated their nesting patterns are. They're not territorial at all, but nest communally in the shadow of this plateau. I found three nests all within five miles of each other. At least a dozen adults pool their eggs together into these huge mounds, like American alligators. Their method of temperature control is more unique though. As the sun falls behind the mountains, they fan out and bring rocks from a location and sit the rocks on the nest. Their stored heat keeps the nest warm through the night.”
“After a couple nights the nest must be surrounded with rocks.”
“You’d think so, but they don’t just take the rocks away in the morning, they take them back to where they found them so they can be heated up again.”
“That’s pretty intelligent behavior.”
“I thought so at first, but I think it’s an adaptation from wherever they came from.”
“So you really think all this animal life has been transplanted here?”
“And the plant life too, just like we’re going to be moved here.”
“If that's the case, someone went to a lot work to make this place habitable for us.”
“I don’t know. If I was going to make a planet for humans I wouldn’t populate it with giant carnivorous lizards. I found a small lake too. Didn’t have time to do any real investigation but I don’t think there are any fish on this world, just some amoebas and such. Looks like just the bare minimum for a functioning ecosystem.”
“Quite a breakthrough for your first week.”
He shrugged and watched one of the Komodo sloths eggs wiggle. “The sloth is an amazing animal. These eggs have four embryos each. Like a shark they feed on each other until hatching. I’m not sure, but I believe usually only one is born, occasionally two. The nests run year round, I think, with hundreds of eggs at a time. They’re sloth factories. The gravid females come in and lay a pile of about fifty eggs at the edge of the nest. A dozen adolescents tend the nest, move the eggs in and bury them. As the eggs mature, they are moved further inward as they require more heat. They hatch in groups of ten at a time, always when there are no adults around. Maybe the adults would eat them if they emerged when they were there?” He stopped talking and made some notes in a tablet computer.
“I wonder if we can learn anything from them to help stop the attacks,” Amanda thought out aloud.
“Just getting the grunts to stop pissing in the stream should be enough. Once all those out there lose interest and leave, you can get them to put another small palisade blocking the trail, and then no more can get up here.”
“But we need some way to get rid of that army that followed you-” she stopped suddenly and cursed. “Damn it, Gibson, you fucking moron!”
“What’s your problem?”
“Why do you think they chased you? They have the olfactory capacity of a bloodhound and you stole four eggs from their nest. Half the damn pack chased you up here because they know you took their eggs!”
“I considered that when I took them.”
“Did you consider that in less than a week a hundred people are going to come out of that Portal? We planned to have twice as much space inside the palisade and about twenty acres cleared to begin agricultural trials.”
“Just kill them all; it’s what Wilson enjoys doing anyway.”
“We’re almost out of ammo again, and the resupply didn’t show up this morning. Maybe we can keep this quiet for a while. Wilson doesn’t have to know about them.”
“What don’t I have to know about?” asked their commander from the door. Amanda turned around and sighed.
“
Our good scientist brought back a little surprise,” she explained. Wilson took it better than she thought he would. He didn’t shoot the scientist. He did think about it, though.
May 17
The Arab Israeli War came to a bloody end. As the sun rose on the seventeenth, the combined Arab armies finally drove the remaining Israeli forces back behind the Tel-Aviv defensive perimeter. Sensing a final end to their bitter enemies, even those Arab states that had remained neutral joined in the final assault.
The Israeli forces put up little resistance, falling back steadily. The several million people who survived the destruction of the other cities and settlements crowded into bunkers, basements and parking garages and awaited the end. Rabbis finished their prayers and there was nothing left to do but wait. The leaders didn’t bother trying to surrender; they knew it would not be accepted. Two American carrier groups arrived in the Gulf and were standing by, waiting for the word from the Israelis to swoop in with a devastating counter attack.
In their command bunker, the Prime Minister, his staff, the generals and the senate all agreed it would be too little too late. They knew that thanks to the secret operation in Egypt, their people would live. Regardless of what would happen that day, they saw no reason to allow thousands of their longtime supporters, the Americans, die in a war not of their own creation. One man, an old General, spoke the word many had been thinking for days. “Masada!” he yelled loud and clear. The room became deathly silent as all eyes turned to face the
grizzled general. “Masada!” he yelled again.
The word became a cheer and was picked up by one person after another until it reverberated from the wall. “Masada, Masada, Masada!” A tear ran down the Prime Ministers face as he, too, took up the cheer as well.
The preparations took only a few hours to complete. The Americans were confused because suddenly the Israeli intelligence stopped relaying information and the Arab attackers were equally confused because the city’s defenders ceased fighting and fell back. The raging attackers feared the Jews would try to escape on the American ships so the armies charged toward the city’s center. There they encountered the remaining Israeli tank divisions, but no shots were fired. The crews lay sprawled on their silent tanks staring at the sky, all dead.
The enemy forces flowed into the city to celebrate their victory. Arab soldiers danced in the streets, burned Israeli flags, and shot or burned the dead soldiers and civilians again and again. Everywhere they looked, they only found corpses. Some bunkers were packed with thousands of bodies. Just like in the ancient mountain fortress of Masada, the Jewish defenders had deprived the Arabs of their final victory by taking their own lives.
Not all of the Jews had killed themselves though. A few lacked the courage or commitment to do the deed. Thousands surrendered to the invading armies, pleading on their knees for mercy. The men were shot at first, and later had their skulls crushed with rifle butts as ammo ran low. Many of the women suffered similar fates. Others were not as lucky. It takes a long time to be raped to death. The Arabs, drunk with victory over their ancient enemy, reserved that fate for the young and innocent. Had not Allah promised them virgins in Heaven? Why not on Earth as well?
There were a few military survivors left. They watched from strategic locations as their capital was sacked. There were nine of them, each with a secure radio transmitter and a remote control. Once the majority of the Arab armies were within the city proper, they coordinated their actions and activated their remote controls together.
The modern city of Tel-Aviv glowed brilliantly as nine stars flashed into life, the nuclear weapons detonating simultaneously. The once great city disappeared in nuclear fire, taking with it their tormentors.
Mindy had been working in the Portal Dome since just after breakfast and her brain felt like mush. The complex symbols and designs on the side of the Portal flowed through her mind like molten lava, leaving devastation in its path. She could think of nothing else, and finally she couldn’t think at all.
“You keep this up, you’ll turn you brain to Jell-O,” Leo said from the doorway. She chuckled and shook her head.
“Morning Leo, how’s tricks?”
“Hipstitch is threatening to make a batch of nachos from my nuts if we can’t lick this.”
“With or without hot peppers?”
“Oh, you’re a real comedian,” he sneered. Several of the technicians working with her laughed despite themselves. “We need results and we need them now.”
“I know, and I’m working as fast as I can.”
“I’m trying to get some help, whether he wants us to or not.”
“How so?”
“I want Professor Presley at MIT, but I’m having trouble getting in touch with him. He’s probably left for the bunkers.”
“How many are outside the bunkers?”
“Millions probably. I was watching the morning news reports but not much is getting through. Not even about the Israeli counterstroke.”
“Do you think the Jews did it to themselves or did the Arabs nuke them?”
“Can’t be the Arabs, if they'd owned nuclear weapons they would have used them a long time ago, just like they did with those bioweapons.”
Mindy nodded her head and watched a computer screen scroll alien symbols. “You know we’re never going to solve this, right?”
“I won’t give up that easily, I just won’t. I know that some of us have gotten off Earth both here and in other countries, but I fear the efforts have been largely uncoordinated. Without enough people, you won’t have a viable gene pool. We’ll die out as scattered tribes on the new world, reduced to inbred monsters digging for grubs and killing each other.”
She continued to watch the screen and shook her head. “Hundreds of base symbols, hundreds of variations on those symbols, and no way to tell where to start. None of the hieroglyphic style pictures have any associated text so we can’t even use them as a primer.” She looked away to stop the grinding in her brain. “I don’t know where to go with this, Leo; I really don’t know where to start.”
Later that day, Mindy was at a desk in the corner of the Portal Dome talking to Harold on a secure line. “So that’s what happened. We’re all dressed up and no place to go.”
“Sorry to hear that; everyone is on edge here too. No one knows about the problem with the Portal, but they’re all starting to get paranoid. Trisha dropped out of our group. She won’t blab, but she can’t give us the effort she said we deserve. I went to speak to her at lunch and she was gone. No one knows where she went, and when I ask the Gestapo they tell me to mind my own fuckin’ business.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“I hope she was just taken off duty to a quiet room to recover her wits. I’m afraid someone took her out back and put a bullet through her brain.”
“Oh my God, has it gone that far?”
“Farther, baby; it’s out of control. They’re still sending us work even though we all know it’s done. We all compared notes and came to the conclusion that whoever is in charge has finished picking everyone.”
“How’s it look?”
“Political hacks, industrial tycoons and military stooges.”
“Oh no. And the equipment?”
“Mostly food and guns. There’s some water purification equipment, a couple Humvees, all broken down, and a few hundred gallons of fuel. Oh, and a hydrogen fuel cell generator for god knows why since they don’t have equipment to actually make hydrogen!”
“Most of that shit we tried to cancel a dozen times.”
“They're keeping us here to neutralize us.”
“I have to agree. So, what do we do about it?”
“I think we need to put our own plan into action.”
“Jesus, Harold, do you know what you’re suggesting? This is treason!” Mindy caught herself looking up from the computer and around the dome to be sure no one was listening in.
“Without a doubt. Do you want those kinds of people to be the only ones to survive in America? Those are the very same people that are perpetrating the greatest lie in American history, besides the moon landing of course. Did you see any of those pictures? They’re using the Jews nuking themselves as a distraction, but they can’t hide it forever. Millions of people are jammed in around those fake bunkers, lapping up the stories about how in just another couple days they’ll be finished. Many of them only brought the clothes on their backs, just as instructed. Man, when they finally get tired of waiting and break in, it’s going to be like something out of the Bible!”
“When that moment comes, the end will be upon us,” Mindy agreed. “They’ve been adding additional defenses here. More concrete barricades, more soldiers, more agents, and tons of guns. They know that sooner or later the shit is going to hit the fan and it’s going to take some serious power to hold off the wolves. Hipstitch only gave us seventy-two hours to lick this bitch, and time’s up tomorrow night.”
“Someone needs to drop a big ACME anvil on his head,” Harold said quietly.
“Careful, Harold, this is a secure line but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a bug in your office.”
“No chance, I sweep it myself every day.”
“So you think we can get some orders issued by making it look like the big boys have signed off on it?”
“I don’t see why not. We’ve seen all the digital signatures and rubber stamps; it’s nothing we can’t duplicate.”
“Then maybe you better get to it. See
if you can get all the stuff we’ve personally chosen moved into one of these warehouses so it’s quickly accessible. We didn’t pick anything larger than a refrigerator and nothing that will need to be broken down so it’s much easier to move than their shit.”
“We made sure of that.”
“Right, so how long before you can have some orders that will pass muster?”
“A couple days ago. I started having stuff moved the day before your wedding.”
“Sneaky bastard, party of one!”
“Oh, my table is ready!” Harold laughed. “All the people we want are right here in this building so we don’t have to call for them from across the country, which just leaves you getting the Portal fixed.”
“Oh, is that all? Well, I’m going to get back to it. Keep your head down, Harold. We don’t want a fuck up at this late stage of the game.”
“Hey, it’s me you’re talking to.”
“That’s what scares the crap out of me,” she said and hung up the phone.
Harold put his phone down and turned to his computer. He accessed an encrypted file using his own special code key, one that NASA couldn’t break in a week, and looked over the information. Just as he’d told Mindy, all the items from their lists were gathered into one warehouse. Since they hadn’t blocked any of the ridiculous items no one had noticed all the extra junk. Harold smirked as he thought how unlikely it was anyone even realized how much over budget they were.
With nothing better to do for the moment, he dug out his personal laptop computer he’d brought from Seattle. The program he’d been using was still operating. He smiled when he saw it was the decryption program they were using to translate the alien transmission. What he saw next stunned him. “Code Base Pair Established” announced the program.
“Holy shit,” he said and tapped a few keys to bring up the entire fragment of the signal they recorded all those years ago. The computer did the dirty work in a split second, and there was the translation. “Wow,” Harold said and picked up the phone. “Give me Mindy Patoy, no, I mean Mindy Harper. I know, she was just there. Can you get a hold of her? Damn it!” he slammed the phone down. He closed the screen down on the computer and headed for the door.