by Steve Alten
Western Pacific … the Mariana Islands … it’s like a bad déjà vu.
Jonas gazed at the tremor in his right hand. Breathing slowly, he inflated his belly and slowly released the breath, repeating the mantra his therapist had taught him over the previous ten months.
I control me.…
I control me.…
The shaking stopped.
Stay calm and figure this out. What are the chances Johnny Hon built his modern cancer research facility on one of these godforsaken volcanic islands? As Mac would say, slim and none, and slim just got kicked in the balls by the unforgiving boot of reality.
Cancer research, my ass … Johnny Hon is building his own version of Dubai-Land in China. Did he convert an oil tanker to stow his catch of prehistoric fish like the crown prince? Or maybe he’s got a fleet of frigates linked together by deep-water nets. Either way, if he’s deploying the new Sting Rays, he means to capture these creatures either in the Mariana Trench, or worse, in the Panthalassa Sea, and I want nothing to do with it.
Jonas’s thoughts were interrupted by the copilot’s announcement over his headphones. “Good afternoon. I hope everyone had a nice flight. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened; we’ll be landing in the next five minutes.”
He turned to Terry. Her headphones were off, she and Dulce involved in a detailed conversation concerning wedding plans. Leaving his seat, he headed forward to the cockpit to get an idea of the kind of ship they’d be landing on.
The copilot motioned for Jonas to sit in the jump seat behind him, then handed him a set of binoculars. “We’re about two kilometers out.”
Jonas strapped in and gazed through the powerful magnifying glasses.
At first he couldn’t see it, its clear surface reflecting the sea and sky. But as the helicopter drew closer, he realized what he was looking at.
My God …
* * *
It wasn’t a ship, it was a massive complex of biospheres, the center object towering at least twenty stories above the surface and twenty below. A dark hoop-shaped framework encircled the object’s equator like the rings of Saturn, but appeared to be part of an enormous docking station rather than the biosphere itself. Six smaller spheres were situated around the perimeter of the large ring, each docked within its own oval-shaped berth. A clear tunnel linked these smaller objects to the large biosphere.
Two of the eight smaller docking berths were vacant.
The pilot brought the helicopter to hover over one of the station’s helipads. A 20-knot gust of wind rocked the airship as it set down. Within seconds a ground crew appeared, each worker wearing an orange jumpsuit. One crewman quickly secured the chopper’s landing gear to the pad while a second opened a metal plate from the helipad and removed a hose, connecting it to the chopper’s fuselage to refuel the airship for its return trip.
Jonas rejoined Dulce and Terry, who were being helped down from the cabin by another orange-clad worker while his associate unloaded their luggage.
A woman was waiting for them outside the airship, one hand pressing her iPad to her chest, the other holding her hair bun to her head to keep the helicopter’s rotor from unraveling it.
She shouted to be heard. “Mrs. Taylor … Molly Wilken. I’ll be escorting you and Professor Taylor to Dr. Hon.”
“What about me? Dulce Lunardon.”
Molly tapped her iPad. “You are scheduled for orientation, which begins in seventeen minutes. Let’s go inside so we can talk.” She motioned to the biosphere, then led them to an open watertight door.
The women entered the structure. Jonas hung back to inspect the curved hatch. The inside panel was constructed of steel, the outer shell composed of a clear sixteen-inch plastic that appeared seamless.
He caught up with the ladies, who were waiting for him inside an encapsulated interior passage that spanned the ten-foot gap between the biosphere’s outer shell and a completely different interior sphere.
Molly pointed above their heads, where the sun was reflecting off a labyrinth of plastic support struts that crisscrossed the gap, buttressing both spheres to one another. “As you can see, the exterior and interior shells are separated by three meters of space that the Chinese refer to as sheng chi, which translates into the ‘celestial’ or ‘dragon’s breath.’ This is where we take on and shed ballast in order to maneuver the sub.”
Dulce’s eyes widened. “This giant beach ball is a sub? How does it maneuver?”
“There are pump-jet propulsor units mounted throughout the sheng chi. Now let me show you a technological marvel that is the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Great Wall of China.”
Molly continued through the passage to a second watertight door, its plastic layer twice as thick as the first. They entered another encapsulated passage, only this one was pitch-dark, save for specks of light appearing and disappearing outside the walls of the structure.
Terry gripped Jonas’s hand. “There’s something out there.”
“You are correct,” Molly said. “Touch any wall and see what happens.”
Dulce was the first to comply, running her index finger along the plastic, generating a neon-violet spark of light along the outside of the sensory-laden wall—
—which was immediately swarmed upon by a school of viperfish, the deep-sea denizens three to four feet long, their frightening jaws sprouting needle-sharp curved fangs that were too long to fit inside their mouths.
Jonas ran his palms along another section of wall, igniting a stream of static blue electricity. Before he could react, a six-foot goblin shark struck the glass with its extended snout, its open jowls revealing chaotic rows of razor-sharp teeth.
A chorus of dull thumps pummeled the exterior as species of anglerfish and snaggletooth charged the barrier, each contact generating more bioluminescent sparks, which only increased the ferocity of the attacks.
“Impressive,” Jonas said. “How large is this aquarium?”
“Not large. It’s roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler. It’s what we call a mood-setter.”
They continued down the passage. It ran another twenty feet before it curved around a bend to reveal the exit, which was framed by the open-fanged mouth of a fearsome yellow dragon, its ten-foot-high marble face animating as they approached, steam pouring from its nostrils, its red eyes blazing brightly.
Terry and Jonas passed through the open jaws—
—and stepped out into the atrium of a five-star hotel. Blue sky appeared overhead, illuminating twenty floors of guest suites set in an open square configuration. Eight bullet-shaped elevators rose and dropped along the interior angles of the infrastructure, guarded by the twisting, curling figure of an eighty-foot-tall Chinese dragon, the statue casting an amber glow over the grand entrance.
“A hotel?” Jonas turned to Molly Wilken. “I thought this was supposed to be a cancer research center?”
“The research center occupies the lower floors. All of your questions will be answered during your virtual tour. Come.”
She led them around the dragon centerpiece to what appeared to be the twenty-foot-high curved walls of a giant nautilus shell. Entering the structure, Jonas realized it was a small auditorium, the reclinable seats facing two hundred seventy degrees of blue screen.
“Sit anywhere you’d like. The orientation video is eleven minutes long; when it’s over you’ll be joining Dr. Hon for lunch. Dulce, if you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to your orientation session.”
Dulce waved good-bye, following Molly out of the circular theater—
—the screen animating as the overhead lights darkened.
A revolving series of images appeared, featuring scientists in white coats working in labs, physicians examining patients, and adults and children lying in hospital beds, their hairless scalps indicative of numerous sessions of chemotherapy.
Actor Morgan Freeman’s soothing voice-over accompanied the scenes. “Cancer. One in three people will be diagnosed with the disease; one in five
will die. According to the World Health Organization, cancer cases are expected to surge fifty-seven percent worldwide in the next twenty years, with cancer deaths predicted to rise to thirteen million a year. Smoking, alcohol, obesity, poor living habits, environmental pollutants, and an aging populace are all factors in this cancer epidemic—an epidemic that has given rise to a two-trillion-dollar-a-year industry.
“The search for a cure is often dictated by economics. While the molecular ingredients found in certain plants, vegetables, fruits, and animals produce almost no side effects and are far more readily assimilated by our organs, Big Pharma will not invest their research dollars in substances created by Mother Nature, simply because they cannot be patented. This has had a profound effect on research, limiting treatments to artificial medicines that our bodies have trouble assimilating, leading to harmful side effects.”
The scene shifted to a female scientist working in a private lab.
“This is Dr. Sara Jernigan, one of the most respected molecular biologists in the world. Dr. Jernigan has spent the past twenty years exploring isolated habitats in order to find natural cures to diseases. Two years ago, she discovered a powerful enzyme produced by the liver of a marine organism that supercharged the human immune system and reactivated the cancer cell’s TP-53 gene.”
Dr. Jernigan took over, narrating a scene of a cancer cell appearing under an electron microscope. “The TP-53 gene is our cells’ anticancer defense system; it prevents the mutation of the genome by causing apoptosis, which is a cell’s self-destruct sequence. This is far different from chemo or radiation, which doesn’t discriminate and destroys everything, including the body’s immune system. When this liver enzyme was introduced to patients with stage-four cancers, it induced widespread apoptosis, killing a hundred percent of the cancer cells within forty-eight hours, without any harmful side effects.”
Morgan Freeman continued. “What is the marine organism responsible for producing this natural anticancer enzyme, and where can it be found? To appreciate the unique challenges Dr. Jernigan and her team faced in accessing the species’ natural habitat, we must journey back in time.…”
An image of ancient Earth appeared, the seven continents grouped together as one.
“Our planet is six billion years old. Life first appeared in our oceans three and a half billion years ago as a single-celled organism, and over the next three billion years or so nothing changed. And then, about five hundred and forty million years ago, something wondrous happened—life evolved.”
The scene changed, revealing a vast underwater world teeming with life.
“From multicellular organisms came trilobites and corals, jellyfish and mollusks, sea scorpions and squids. Over the next fifty million years the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ began making its own design changes. At some point, a new species appeared which possessed a backbone that separated its brain and nervous system from the rest of its organs, and the age of fish—the Devonian Period—had arrived.
“The first of these vertebrates were filter feeders. Because their internal skeletons were composed of cartilage, many species grew a thick, armor-like bony shield that covered their heads as a means of protection. Others developed senses that allowed them to see, taste, smell, hear, and feel within their watery environment. And then, eighty million years after the first fish appeared, a revolutionary new feature came into being—a set of biting jaws. It would be an innovation that would distinguish predator from prey, reshuffling the ocean’s food chain.
“For many species of fish, Earth’s ocean suddenly became a dangerous place to live.
“One hundred and seventy million years after the first vertebrate hatched in the sea, a lobe-finned fish crawled out of the water and onto land … and gasped a breath of air. Over the next twenty million years, these unique creatures—the amphibians—continued to evolve, their gills eventually replaced by lungs, which were ventilated by means of a throat-pump.
“Adapting to a terrestrial lifestyle forced many more anatomical changes, propelled by the need to survive. Sixty million years after the first species of lobe-finned fish crawled out of the sea, the first reptiles were born … leading to the age of the dinosaurs, and for hundreds of millions of years these monstrous creatures ruled the land, sea, and air.”
A map of ancient Earth appeared, the continents forming one giant landmass.
“The Earth looked a lot different back then, our planet’s history going through cycles where its landmasses would merge into supercontinents, only to eventually break apart. The last supercontinent to appear was Pangaea. The rest of this ancient world was covered by a vast prehistoric ocean—the Panthalassa.
“Our landmasses and oceans rest upon the lithosphere—a rigid outer layer of rock, sixty miles thick, that moves along a hot molten mantle. The lithosphere is divided into fifteen to twenty tectonic plates that move, on average, a few inches a year. Mid-ocean ridges are gaps between the plates where hot magma rises from the Earth’s mantle to form a new ocean crust—an action that causes the plates to push away from one another. This creates subduction zones—areas where one or more plates collide.
“One hundred and eighty million years ago, volcanic forces caused the tectonic plates to shift, resulting in the breaking apart of Pangaea, leaving two giant landmasses in its place. Laurasia would eventually divide and drift, forming North America, Europe, Asia, and Greenland, while Gondwanaland became Australia, Antarctica, India, and South America.
“It was around this time that the largest tectonic plate on the planet—the Pacific Plate—began subducting beneath the far smaller Philippine Sea Plate, creating the deepest and longest gully on the planet: the Mariana Trench. The resulting volcanic activity led to the formation of the Mariana Island chain and a recently discovered geological anomaly—an isolated sea located between the Philippine Sea Plate and the subducting Pacific Plate, its inhabitants dating back to the Panthalassa Ocean.”
A time-lapse animation of the subduction zone appeared, the titanic Pacific Plate wedging itself beneath the Philippine Plate, unleashing billowing clouds of boiling magma. The molten rock rose along the sheer vertical walls of the Mariana Trench, curling out several miles above the seafloor before hardening into a rapidly expanding horizontal ceiling that quickly spanned the entire Mariana Trough.
“For tens of millions of years, magma plumes continued rising out of this massive subduction zone. As the molten rock reached frigid water temperatures several miles above the seafloor, it cooled, hardening into a permanent shelf. Hydrothermal vents and nutrient-filled currents ensured a perpetual food chain that attracted a wide variety of prehistoric life to this warm-water, isolated habitat.
“Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth, causing an Ice Age that wiped out the dinosaurs and led to the age of mammals. As ocean temperatures plummeted, ancient marine life died off—the exception being those creatures inhabiting the warm-water abyss nine miles below the surface of the Western Pacific. Over the last twenty million years, magma gradually sealed up the remaining access points, isolating this tropical habitat.
“Seven years ago, a marine biologist named Michael Maren discovered an entrance into this purgatory of prehistoric life and named it the ‘Panthalassa Sea.’ The Panthalassa spans five thousand square miles and resides one thousand, two hundred fifty feet beneath the seafloor. Its inhabitants date as far back as three hundred fifty million years ago to the Devonian Era, and as recently as the Miocene Period, fifteen million years ago.”
A twelve-second looped video of a school of fish appeared, the footage repeated several times.
“This is Leedsichthys, or Leeds’ fish, the largest bony fish ever to have inhabited the planet. Adults range from ninety to a hundred fifteen feet in length, weighing in excess of a hundred tons. Like their modern-day mammalian rival, the blue whale, these gentle giants possess gill rakers instead of teeth, which they use to feed on krill and plankton. In his journal, the late Dr. Maren referred to these creat
ures as the buffalo of the Panthalassa Sea, noting that when a school of Leeds’ fish moved across the abyssal plain, their current often dragged other species off the seafloor, trapping them in their wake.
“It was the liver enzymes of Leedsichthys that produced the cure for cancer.
“Journeying over nine miles below the surface of the ocean to access this medical bounty comes with many challenges. Water pressure in the Panthalassa exceeds nineteen thousand pounds per square inch. And while the Leeds’ fish are plentiful, the selected donor must be isolated from the herd, the creature’s liver excised from its body while it is still alive, then transferred within vacuum-sealed containers for processing. Finally, there are the wolves of the Panthalassa Sea to contend with, including some of the nastiest predators of all time, to whom the giant fish’s liver is a delicacy.”
The scene switched to Global Group, showing Chinese scientists working with vats of clear molten plastic, others testing volleyball-size plastic spheres in pressurized water chambers.
“To combat the problem of water pressure, engineers at Global Group International Holdings turned to aerogel, the lightest, lowest-density solid material ever produced. Aerogels are made by removing all of the liquid from silica gel while leaving its molecular density intact.”
A scientist in a lab coat placed a slide of aerogel under an electron microscope.
“Examining aerogel under a microscope reveals trillions of nanometer-size particles of silicondioxide interconnected in a porous labyrinth made up mostly of air. The material is incredibly dense. If you flattened this slide out, it would span an entire football field.”
The scene shifted to a massive facility where the large biosphere was under construction. A Chinese word appeared:
黄飞龙
(Yellow Dragon)
“This is Yellow Dragon, the main hub of an amphibious, billion-dollar scientific and medical research platform undertaken by the Chinese government and Global Group International Holdings.”