Here Comes Earth: Emergence (21 page)

And
if it’s really bad news most people have to gear themselves up for the attempt.

This
is what I was watching Captain Silva go through. He was sitting on the edge of
his plush seat in the hub, elbows on his knees, hands steepled with forefingers
massaging the middle of his forehead. 

“Please
don’t kill the messenger,” I heard him mutter. And then he looked directly at a
number of us and in a much stronger voice said, “As you probably suspect Dr.
Schein they used a retrovirus because they wanted to affect your DNA. To this
point the Noridians had been careful not to bombard your planet with asteroids
or do anything else that could leave a long term signature pointing to their
interference. Even the evidence of multiple nuclear blasts disappears over time,
but a virus can mutate and potentially become deadly for all primates. The last
thing the Noridians needed was a time bomb of engineered viral destruction
waiting to attack the next dynasty that happened along.

“So
instead they chose to be much more subtle. Your planet already had a history of
evolutionary divergence and the Noridians were quite skilled in genetic
manipulation. They simply altered
the eukaryotic DNA replication enzymes so that Earth
life could no longer replicate the sequences present at the ends of the
chromosomes. To offset this, they added telomeres to the ends of those same
chromosomal strands as well as an enzyme called telomerase. So now when your
cells replicate, the DNA information lost at the end of the strands are only
telomeres and you have telomerase to replace it in critical cells.”

“Oh my God,” said Julie.

I
quickly looked around for Toni because this was her specialty and I wanted to
get a read on her reaction but when my eyes found her I realized that she was
staring at the ground.

“What
does that mean, in English?” I heard Major Reagan say rather sternly.

“It
means Major that the telomere/telomerase addition was only a Band-Aid, and by
definition Band-Aids are meant to be temporary. In plain English, it means that
the Noridians artificially and significantly shortened the lifespan of every
single life-form on planet Earth – including Homo sapiens.”

Major Mathew Reagan, US Army

It
just keeps getting better.

If
what Silva was saying is correct the Noridians attempted genocide and that means
war under any definition but why had their strategy changed? What were they up
to now?

Also,
why hadn’t their plan to shorten our lifespan worked? I didn’t understand half
of what was being discussed but I was pretty sure that this genetic thing was
supposed to have wiped us out. We were still here and how much older were we
supposed to be anyway?

The
Coridians seemed to be on our side; why? What did they want from us? And even
though it seemed almost trivial compared to everything else I wanted to know
how Captain Silva had infiltrated the Earth Team, let alone the US Army.

I
had always prided myself on being able to handle stress. I had both led and
lost men in battle. Those responsibilities will be with me forever but I will
not shirk from my duty; I hold no doubts that I would do it again with the
strong moral conviction that I was upholding my sworn oath to the Constitution
of the United States.

The
military puts you through a crucible; if you can’t handle the pressure they
cull you from command quickly. Learning how to handle that pressure had years
ago cost me my wife; one of the bigger errors in my life that I had learned to
take responsibility for. Fortunately, the military is also very good at eventually
teaching you how to handle that pressure by giving you rigorous training in
almost every possible scenario;
almost
every scenario. There was no way
to have anticipated or trained for what we were experiencing now.

I
think every head of household knows the weight of being responsible for others.
My father was a small business owner and the whole family looked up to him.
Cousins and in-laws would come to him to make everything right; to advise them
and save them from folly.

I
remember a period of a few years when my father lost his business. He started
and failed several times before he got another one up and running but he was
still there for everyone through the process. It wasn’t until years later that
I understood he had almost lost everything and what it had cost him personally.
Looking back I realize that this was when his hair went grey and his health
first started suffering, but he did his duty.

In
the end I think that’s the choice all of us make; we can do what we know is
right, or not. I had a responsibility to my team, to my country, and to my
planet. It would be easy to ‘tuck tail’ and run home to Earth; there would be
no shortage of politicians willing to take command and make all the decisions,
but I was on the front line and people were depending on me. It really was that
simple.

There
was a lot more we needed to know; whether we were going to like hearing it or
not.

Echoing
my thoughts perfectly Iron Jaw spoke up, “Well something obviously went wrong;
we’re still here. How much shorter were our lives supposed to be?”

Letting
out a deep breath Captain Silva said, “The retrovirus worked as designed. We
believe it probably took several generations for all organisms to adapt but
Earth DNA has been changed and the RNA from the retrovirus is no longer present
as a ‘smoking gun’.

“The
Noridians thought that if Homo sapiens lived short lives they wouldn’t have
time to be creative and advance technologically. You need to understand that
galaxy-wide, things move very slowly; civilizations develop slowly. If you drastically
cut everyone’s lifespan then you theoretically cut everyone’s ability to
progress. The Noridians fully expected mankind to stagnate and die off.”

“But
that didn’t happen,” I said.

“No
sir,” replied Silva. “Instead, you Earthers have become more dynamic, almost
frantic in your rush to achieve things during your lifespan. It is totally the
opposite of what anyone would have expected and that is why we became so
fascinated with you when we came here almost three hundred years ago.”

“The
Law of Unintended Consequences,” I heard Dr. Spencer mutter.

“Captain,”
I said. “Are you telling us that we’re the only people in the galaxy that don’t
live as long as Coridians or Noridians?”

“Yes
sir; that is what I’m saying.”

“Captain,
just how long do you live?”

“Theoretically
we’re not really sure. People die, quite often in fact, just not from what you
call ‘old age’. Typically a person in this galaxy can expect to live for
thousands of years.”

Someone
whispered, “How old are you?”

“In
Earth years I am one-thousand two hundred seventy-nine years of age,” He
responded. “Pretty young.”

∆∆∆

We
eventually took another break, and while Captain Silva was giving a small team
I had assembled a tour of the belowdecks portion of the ship that we’d never
seen Iron Jaw, Julie, Dr. Spencer, Dr. Decker, and Dr. Spelini were gathered in
my quarters.

I
started with my usual ritual, “Comments?”

“I
don’t know about the rest of you,” Dr. Decker immediately said. “But I’m pissed
off. Apparently humanity has been manipulated and screwed with over and over by
these Noridians and they’re trying to do it again.”

“Just
to be clear,” I said. “Exactly what is it that we feel the Noridians are
currently trying to pull over on us?”

I
felt pretty clear on that issue myself but I wanted to not only make sure we
were on the same page, I knew that if we didn’t perfectly pin down the Noridian
motives we didn’t have any hope of understanding the Coridian motives.

“They
want to own us,” Dr. Spencer said.

“It’s
just ownership on a different level than what we’re used to thinking of. Maybe
a better way of saying it is that they want to own our intellectual rights. If
we’re under the Noridian flag then every invention, every innovation, every
idea we have they will get credit for.”

“But
what ideas are we realistically going to have that can benefit a society that
is hundreds of thousands of years old?” said Julie.

“More
like millions,” Dr. Spencer responded. “And I think that’s what’s been
bothering me. Any society that old can’t be evolving much or it would tear
itself apart. You heard what Silva said, Earthers are ‘dynamic’ – well, what’s
the opposite of dynamic? It’s stagnant and I think that’s what we’re basically
facing. They said that things happen slowly but from our perspective that means
the galaxy is made up of stable, stagnant societies – at least on the Dynasty
level. We really don’t know anything about the Houses of The Accord.”

“It
still seems like it would take a long time for us to catch up with them even if
they give us a push here and there,” Dr. Decker reflected.

“We’re
forgetting what we just learned,” Dr. Spencer said. “Their lifetimes span
thousands of years – what can Earth accomplish in just two of their
generations? You heard Silva; our knowledge is growing exponentially, the total
sum of Earther’s knowledge is doubling every few years - where might we be
eight thousand years from now?”

“There’s
another reason the Noridians would want to own or control us,” Dr. Anzio
Spelini threw in. “Presumably if we are an official part of Noridia then we
cannot complain about the genetic atrocities perpetrated on us in the past.
Absorbing us could give the Noridian Dynasty a free pass on that account.”

Major
Mike ‘Iron Jaw’ Reynolds had obviously been looking for a place to jump in and
he now said, “I still don’t understand why they would remove our space platform
if they really wanted our goodwill.”

“Uh
major,” Julie said. “I think I’ve got that part figured out now. For some
reason they want the Coridian Dynasty to look bad but more importantly they
can’t afford for us to be a spacefaring society. A lot of the proscriptions
laid down by The Accord seem to distinguish between civilizations with and
without spaceflight. I’d be willing to bet that Noridia can’t claim Earth the
way they want to if we’ve already got a space presence.”

“Julie,
confirm that with Captain Silva the first chance you get but let him explain it
to you; I don’t want him just agreeing to our speculation,” I said without even
realizing I’d called her by her first name.

“Dr.
Spencer,” I continued. “I want you and I to take the lead on tonight’s questioning.
I think it’s imperative that we have an understanding of the Coridian Dynasty’s
motives with us before we reach this planet of theirs. I want to know why the Coridians
care what the Noridians do with Earth.

“Mike,
I want you to concentrate on figuring out a way to control this ship if we need
to. I don’t have any reason to believe it will be necessary but I’m tired of
being at the mercy of old folks that look like grandkids.”

“Aye
aye,” Major Reynolds said.

“Julie,
are you still feeling good about Captain Silva’s sincerity; all this ‘living
thousands of years’ stuff – can it possibly be true?”

“It’s
incredibly hard to believe but I don’t get any body language that would cause
me to doubt him. For what it’s worth I’ve been checking on my smartpad and The
Bible lists Noah as almost 600 years old at the time of the flood. The Jewish
Torah and the Islamic
Qur'an also
have stories of people like
Methuselah,
Shem, Ham and Japheth that lived up to a
thousand years.

“What’s interesting though,” she continued. “Is
that I found an article from a group that claims to debunk The Bible. They
document that The Bible shows lifetimes getting shorter each generation after
Noah. They say that’s an inconsistency that sheds doubt on its validity but it
goes along perfectly with what Captain Silva is saying. If it took several
generations for the human organism to adapt to its new genetic predisposition
then we could expect declining lifespans over the transition period.”

I understand that the DNA modifications can
affect our cell’s ability to reproduce,” I said. “But can that really affect
our lifespan?”

“Definitely,” said Julie. “It is generally
accepted in the scientific community that
senescence, or biological aging, and the length
of telomeres on chromosomal strands are closely related because it does exactly
that; affects the replicating ability of all the cells in your body.

“As an MD and a scientist I find these ancient
stories really hard to believe,” Julie picked back up. “And I don’t have the
background in genetics to know if all of Silva’s claims are feasible but I
can’t point to a single factual reason not to believe him.”

Julie was obviously still thinking so I let her
thoughts catch up without interruption.

“You asked me to trust my instincts major,” she
continued. “And I realize that I do believe him. As crazy as it might sound, I
think he’s telling the truth.”

“Ok,
noted Dr. Schein. By the way,” I continued. “Has anyone seen Dr. Andretti? I
would have thought she would have joined us?”

Nobody
responded.

“Julie,
that’s on you too. Find her and make sure all this genetic
gobbledygook
is feasible.
I don’t really have a lot of doubts at this point but I want to cross that off
my list.”

“I’m
on it Major,” replied Julie.

“Ok,
and Dr. Spelini is he tripping himself up? Has he been consistent?”

“I
think yes for the most part,” said Anzio. “There are questionable points that
become clear with more explanation but so far everything is consistent. If I
could though major, please suggest that since he has compatriots back on Earth
might we not be able to establish communication with our governments?”

“Yes
Dr. Spelini that is a great idea. Mark, let’s make it a priority to discuss
this with Silva.