“Are we talking about Sofía Navarro’s father?”
He heard some papers moving around and then:
“Yes, the same, how did you know?”
“I’m coming over. Get the interrogation room—um, the interview room—ready with a polygraph, immediately. And Doctor, find a way to get his daughter there to take the examinations, too, right now.”
Tzedek took a taxi from his office to the interview and exam building. As he was coming in, he heard a feminine voice say: “I’m Sofía Navarro, I’ve come to meet my father.”
He looked curiously in the direction of the voice and froze. It was Gea. He had been with her since she was born until she died in his arms. And even so, here she was. After a moment, he was able to overcome the impression and appreciate that it wasn’t Gea, but a younger version of her, like a preadolescent version of her. He noticed of course the difference in the clothing, but she had exactly the same features, the same hair, the exact same eye color. He remembered the experiment he had ordered with Raquel...but not even in his wildest dreams did he expect such success, especially considering that all the previous ones had failed. He had failed so many times that he hadn’t even bothered to follow this experiment more closely.
“Gea?” he called. However, the girl didn’t respond.
“Sofía Navarro?” he tried again, realizing his error. This time the girl turned around and looked him in the eyes. He stopped breathing. He remembered when her mother had him do an DNA analysis suspecting that she wasn’t her daughter. Now, looking at her close up and grown, it took his breath away. He tried to quickly pull himself together—he obviously didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, though even if he said something to her, she wouldn’t have any idea what he was talking about. In fact, it would probably frighten her.
“Yes?” asked Sofía, frowning. He realized he had frozen, and offered her his hand with a sincere smile.
“Glad to meet you, I’m the director of this institute. Did your father tell you what he’s doing here?”
“Yes. If you didn’t lie to him, he’s taking some tests to see if we can live and work in a new city.”
“Exactly, and right now he still has a few hours to go. Would you like to take your tests now, too? We’ll save some time that way and it would help your dad. They’re right here, you wouldn’t have to go someplace else.”
Sofía looked intrigued, then looked around here and approached the receptionist.
“Excuse me, do you know him?” she asked, pointing almost rudely at Tzedek.
The receptionist looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“If you know his name. Who he is.”
“Oh, of course, Mr. Tzedek, the owner of all this.”
Sofía shrugged, thanked her and looked at Tzedek again, agreeing: “Okay, why not?”
“That’s the spirit,” Tzedek smiled and spoke to the receptionist. “Please, have the young woman take the battery of physical and second level exams, highest priority. Give her directions. When she is finished, she will meet up with me and her father again.”
“Yes, sir.” The receptionist started to give Sofía directions and loading duties into the computer.
Tzedek kept looking at the youngster, while he thought “Gea...” Juan Carlos looked at his daughter through Tzedek’s eyes and feelings. Like all Atlanteans, he didn’t believe in gods, but he’d revered Gea almost like a deity. To see her like that, close up, alive again, when it wasn’t her, but it was her...it was almost like believing in reincarnation.
Rho, December 2, 2027. 6:20 a.m.
“Sofía,” shouted Juan Carlos, waking up. Completely confused, he started to stammer: “It isn’t Gea, you’re Sofía, but it’s Gea, how is it possible? Sofía, daughter, is it you?”
“Dad, calm down, you fell asleep and you had another dream,” explained Sofía, who had run to his side along with Althaea.
Looking around, Juan Carlos finally realized that they were in the Control Center.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Juan Carlos affirmed. “They’re experiences, some very clear ones from Tzedek. It’s horrible, I’m conscious of what I’m reliving, I see it and I do it. I live it, as if it were me, but I can’t do anything about it, I just see and do things as if I were a puppet, because it isn’t my dream, or my memory, it’s what happened in that moment. But I see, hear, do and feel everything Tzedek did, saw, heard, and felt. It’s like a virtual super-reality, but at the same time, it’s like a movie. I don’t have any control and I can’t do anything to change it.”
“What did you see? What were you babbling about Gea?” asked Althaea.
“I saw when Tzedek met Sofía, while I was taking the tests...he was convinced that you were a reincarnation of Gea or something like that.”
“We don’t believe in reincarnation,” explained Althaea, “but I don’t think that was far from it. I knew her in person and the similarity is notable, especially considering the age difference. But the similarity isn’t just in looks. Every day the integration of the nanites with Sofía go through a new change, her powers—to give them a name—are developing at an incredible speed and many of those she has already demonstrated, had never been heard of before—except in Gea.”
“Dad...” Sofía was worried, looking at Juan Carlos’ temple. “The area of white hair is bigger. No, nothing,” she stopped, so as to not worry him. At any rate, they had to wait until Raquel finished her analysis.
“How about we think about something else?”
“Like for example?” asked Juan Carlos.
“Let’s start organizing an end of the year celebration. Let’s meet in the conference room to see who wants to come.”
“That isn’t a bad idea,” admitted Juan Carlos.
“It’s a good idea, let’s do it,” Althaea said animatedly.
Juan Carlos’ phone rang just at that moment.
“Yes?” He listened for a minute. “I’m heading there now.”
He hung up and informed them:
“I’ll come in a few minutes, Raquel wants to talk to me.”
The conference room was enormous. Althaea and Damaris spoke with several people from the city, and in passing, introduced them to Sofía. Juan Carlos was back in less than half an hour. They organized things to obtain tables, chairs, music, non-alcoholic beverages, sandwiches, lights, decorations and spreading the word to prepare things for the end of the year. In an hour, there was a crowd taking chairs out of the auditorium, putting things together and bringing everything. They were all excited at the prospect of having a party. The time flew by and in a couple of hours the room really looked like a party room. Everyone helped with the arrangements.
Sofía’s phone rang, and when she answered, it was Raquel.
“Sofía, can you come over? Bring Althaea.”
Sofía was surprised, but she saw that everyone was busy with things, so she said:
“I’m coming.” She left discreetly, taking Althaea with her.
INCOMPATIBLE TECHNOLOGIES
Rho, December 2, 2027. 9:30 a.m.
“Sofía, look at this,” Raquel pointed, showing her the screens. There were samples of nanites on both through a computerized image of an electronic microscope.
On the left, there were some nanites and a ton of blood cells. They moved constantly, approaching the cells, vibrating visibly, and then separated from them without doing anything. Every now and then, something entered a cell, disappeared for a while and then came out of it, but when it did, the cell disintegrated.
There was a similar sample on the screen on the right. These nanites were slightly smaller. They approached the cells, entered them, and left without hurting them.
“On the screen to the right, you see the nanites that we three were injected with. They are normal Atlantean ones, I’ve seen them many times to study them. The ones on the panel on the left, on the other hand, are another thing. Look at this.” Raquel manipulated the samples, now on the screen to the left, to look at anothe
r sample. Besides the blood cells, there were two kinds of nanites. These acted with the cells like the ones in the previous samples, but when they found each other, they wove together in a fight that invariably ended with the bigger ones destroying the small ones.
“Why did they behave like that? And where did the other ones come from?” questioned Sofía.
“I asked myself the same thing and I was talking with Juan Carlos. We reviewed all of his movements since Tzedek injected the nanites to save him from the bullet to his chest and we finally found what was to blame for the problem,” Raquel answered.
“And who was it? Where did those nanites come from?”
“From Tzedek. At one point, he extracted blood and gave it to Juan Carlos to transfer complete memories to him. He achieved that, but didn’t take into account that his nanites were different from the normal ones.”
“And why is that?” Althaea asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but one possibility is evolution. Nanites are adaptable and Tzedek’s are tens of thousands of years old. At some point in those tens of thousands of generations of nanites that inhabited him, there may have been a mutation that survived because it was more optimal for Tzedek’s organism and the new version replaced the previous one. This means that they were better adapted to his DNA. Unfortunately, that means that they don’t function well in others, especially one as different as a hybrid,” explained Raquel.
“So, on one hand, we have the new nanites that had barely adapted to Juan Carlos’ organism, and on the other hand, Tzedek’s nanites that didn’t know what to do with Juan Carlos’ cells, and at the same time mistakenly see the other nanites as a threat.”
“And we can’t deactivate Tzedek’s, even though his memories would be lost?” asked Sofía.
“The problem is that any therapy I try would affect both types of nanites the same. Right now, we don’t have a way to do anything that affects just one type and not the other. If I deactivate those from Tzedek, they’d all deactivate.”
“And we can’t do that?”
Raquel lifted her head slightly.
“If we deactivate all the nanites, Juan Carlos would immediately die.”
“Not even for a minute? We could kill all the nanites, and when we’re sure all of Tzedek’s were eliminated, inject him with a new dose of the originals,” Sofía ventured.
“It’s a good idea, but it wouldn’t work. Juan Carlos’ nanites are already integrated in his system, they’ve assumed and regulated many of his bodily functions. If they quit functioning, even for a moment, all of his organs would collapse. The new nanites would never have the chance to adapt and repair the damage in time,” explained Raquel.
“And we can’t get a pure sample of his nanites to inject them again, already adapted?” insisted Sofía.
“Good thought, but look at this,” replied Raquel, showing them the screen on the right again. “This is a sample of Juan Carlos’ nanites, after the best filters we could give them. They’re the ones you saw at the beginning, remember?”
The screen was full of the larger nanites.
“But what happened? Those are Tzedek’s.”
“There only needs to be one of Tzedek’s nanites for the others to be destroyed, eventually. It doesn’t matter how clean the sample is that we purify, so far I haven’t found a form to assure a perfectly filtered sample. Some always escape. In the end, we’re talking about something as small as a virus. They aren’t designed to be handled one at a time, just in a mass,” Raquel pointed out. “I have to destroy some in destroying the other, and everything I’ve tried up to now either affects both of them or neither. My resources have run out.”
“What does that mean? We have to do something.”
“If you have any more ideas, I’m all ears,” snapped Raquel.
“If anyone knows how to resolve this, it’s Tzedek,” commented Althaea, “but every time Juan Carlos accesses his memories, it makes the problem worse. It’s very risky to try it.”
“Riskier than not doing anything?” Sofía asked.
“Yes, in fact. If we don’t do anything, the nanites are at a low level of activation, and there isn’t any rapid advance of Tzedek’s. It could be several days before it gets really serious. But if we force him to use them, activating them causes them to eat the others and they multiply exponentially. It could provoke a collapse within hours or even minutes. The biggest problem is that we don’t know,” Raquel explained.
“So, the alternative is to search blindly for days, or know what we have to do but we only have a few hours to do it?” asked Althaea.
“Not necessarily. Perhaps Tzedek’s memories don’t have anything useful to resolve it, and accessing them wouldn’t do any good,” Raquel speculated. “And in that case, we’ll have cut the time from days to hours, for no reason.”
They were all quiet.
“I think that Juan Carlos should give his opinion about this,” commented Althaea. No one objected. They went to look for him in the lounge, but he’d already gone.
They all agreed to go to his room.
Juan Carlos was dozing, but he woke up as soon as he saw them. Raquel explained the situation to him and Althaea explained the alternatives.
“You want me to think whether I want to risk inquiring into the memories for help and maybe die right away, or wait until Raquel does more tests without any guarantee that there’s a solution?” summarized Juan Carlos.
“Basically, yes,” Althaea replied.
“Supposing I access the memories, considering the growth rate of the nanites in action, how much time would you say I have before a collapse? Worst case scenario,” he asked, looking at Raquel.
Raquel thought for a minute.
“In case of maximum use, with minimal resistance from the regular nanites, it’d be a question of about six hours. But you’d fall unconscious much sooner. I’d dare to say that at the most, you’d have about four useful hours.”
“Dad, you shouldn’t risk it. At least, not yet. Let Raquel investigate other options, before trying anything.”
“Do you have options to investigate?” Juan Carlos asked Raquel.
“The truth is yes, but each one is less likely to work than the previous one, though I still have several to try with some probability of success.”
“In that case, I’ll wait...for now. I feel a little better, do you think it would be bad for me to participate in the celebration?”
“No, on the contrary, a distraction would probably help you avoid using the nanites,” Raquel assured him, looking closely at the hair on Juan Carlos’ temple. “That or sleep.”
“I don’t think that sleeping is such a sure thing...I was sleeping when I had the first episode,” commented Juan Carlos, looking at Raquel’s face, that was right in front of his. And suddenly, he kissed her on the mouth.
Raquel jumped back. Juan Carlos looked hurt. Althaea gave a start.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” he said sadly. He’d thought that maybe it would have done something with respect to her amnesia.
“That’s true, you shouldn’t have, and don’t try it again,” grunted Raquel, putting her hand out as if to stop him.
Sofía also had a pained look on her face. Althaea slowly approached Juan Carlos, crossing her arms, offended.
“I’ll work on this as fast as I can,” Raquel assured them.
“Thank you, Mom,” answered Sofía, and this time it was Raquel who got a pained look on her face. She turned around and quickly left the room.
EXPERIMENTS
Rho, December 2, 2027. 10:30 a.m.
Something had been bothering Juan Carlos for a while. A thought, something he’d remembered from Tzedek’s memories.
He supposed he shouldn’t be thinking about that, but he couldn’t help it. Something that he remembered bothered him deeply, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
Suddenly, Tzedek’s thought that had bothered him so much came to mind. When he was looking at Sofía
already grown for the first time...’the experiment he’d ordered with Raquel...’
Experiment? What experiment?
Suddenly, he felt nauseated. He was in Tzedek’s head again. Or Tzedek was in his head, depending on your point of view.
Buenos Aires, February 5, 2012. 9:00 a.m.
Tzedek was looking at a graphic on the computer. The graphic was a gigantic genealogy tree that stretched over all three screens. The sea of names and lines didn’t seem to have an end in any direction, except towards the bottom. He concentrated, sending his vision in all directions, observing lines in different colors that represented lineages. The computer encoded the colors according to lineage or the combinations thereof that reached to each person. He marked certain people at the top of the scheme and then followed the development to the base. Many lines disappeared, others were cut off a few generations after beginning, some slowly diluted, while others reached the base.
What he was seeing was the inheritance of genetic experiments done over the centuries.
Every twenty or thirty years he intervened in the numerous experiments that were being carried out. He’d acted tens of thousands of times over the course of thousands of years, but only a few hundred had had relative success. There were at least a hundred genes that needed to be introduced in the human genome to achieve a subject compatible with what he was looking for. It was impossible to modify the DNA that way, all at once. He’d had no choice but to introduce the changes in the ovaries of the female candidates, of one or two at a time, and then study the progeny, seeing the success of each operation. In the old times, when the subjects became aware of the interventions, they were attributed to seduction by angels or succubae. In the twentieth century, it was attributed to extraterrestrials and created a whole cult around UFOs. Finally, they were able to do it more discreetly in medical consults that didn’t arouse suspicion.
He filtered the enormous database, selecting only the candidates who had the largest number of genes inherited from previous experiments. He observed the results and obtained sixty candidates—forty females and twenty males. The women in general already had more than sixty of the desired genes, while the males, more susceptible to losing them, averaged fifty or less. Suddenly he saw something that caught his eye. A pair of candidates. That was indeed fortunate.
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