MC: Back once again with another lovely bedtime story. Happy Turkey Day everyone, believe me when I say I'm surprised that I actually have the next story ready for you in under a month.
DISCLAIMER: Link and Zelda are the sole intellectual propriety of Nintendo. No money has been made off of this story, and any/all Legend of Zelda characters mentioned herein rightfully belong to Nintendo. The hypothesis of "L.U.C.A." is a scientific principle of evolution and belongs to anyone who can understand it. Piper is a fictional character that has been lurking in the depths of my brain for some time and probably should never have left it. This author is making no money off of this story and is in vast debt due to school, so any attempts at prosecution due to use of characters will result in lots of frustration and no money.
Once Upon a Time
Chapter 2: L.U.C.A.
"Read me a story."
"No. I already let you stay up late watching The Nightmare Before Christmas," Link said. "It is time for bed."
"Please," Piper said. She produced a book and held it out to Link. It was a college level biology book that probably weighed more than Link. "Read from this."
Link took the book and flipped though a couple of chapters. It was filled with small print and colorful diagrams depicting evolution, respiration, organelles, and just about every other biological detail known to man. Piper had yet to learn how to read.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
"Skullkid gave it to me. He said I'd never be smart if I couldn't understand something as simple as this."
'Well, Skullkid is an idiot,' Link thought. After clearing his throat he said, "You aren't stupid, Piper."
"But I can't read it."
"You can't read anything, kiddo."
"That makes it even worse!" she started crying.
"You're not stupid," Link said again, wrapping his arms around his daughter. He was baffled as to why the current lack of a skill she would soon learn anyway made her so unhappy. "You're just young."
"But Mommy could read at my age."
"And I couldn't," Link said firmly. He grinned at Piper. "Between you and me, I think Mommy possesses a few superpowers she's never bother to mention. But if it will make you feel better, I'll read to you from the biology book."
"Biology?"
"Study of life, Pipes. Do you want me to start anywhere in particular?"
"The beginning? Then you read through to the end?"
"This book is over twelve hundred pages long and that doesn't include the appendices! It would take months for us to read it all."
"Oh," Piper said, visibly disheartened. "How am I going to prove I'm not stupid to Skullkid then?"
"We could pick one chapter and learn whatever concept it's trying to teach us."
"Let's do that, Daddy."
Link flipped to what he hoped was near the beginning of the book and found himself on chapter 20, Genomes and Their Evolution. With a grimace he turned back a few hundred pages until he recognized something from high school.
"The cell," he read, "is made of various compartments called organelles. We will discuss these in detail in chapter seven and concentrate on one specific organelle in chapter six. That organelle is the cellular membrane. The membrane is made of a phospholipid bilayer arranged with the hydrophilic heads pointing outward to protect the hydrophobic tails…"
"Go on," Piper urged when Link trailed off, "read more story."
'She has no idea what I just read,' Link thought. He shut the book on his finger and said, "I don't really like that story, let's read a different one, eh?"
Piper just shrugged, confirming Link's suspicions. She hated leaving a story mid-way through and always complained bitterly.
Link flipped through the book looking for something—anything—that he could actually explain to a child. Nothing seemed like it would be even mildly entertaining to a five-year-old. Most of it he wasn't certain he could understand without a couple hours of study.
"You know your mom is better at these sorts of things than I am," he after, after looking through another sixty pages. This book did not want to make biology easy.
"Is Mommy better at everything?"
"No, I make friends easier than she does."
"That's important."
"It is," Link said, smiling. He flipped another page.
""Dragon!" Piper squealed, jabbing the page with her finger. Link looked down at the page. It was a chart showing the evolutionary descent from the last universal common ancestor. Next to the elf representing mammals there was a dragon for reptiles. The chart also showed eukaryotes diverging from archeae and then archeae separating from bacteria. Link frowned a little; he didn't see any place on the chart for the undead, but then he realized that since they were undead they couldn't reproduce, hence no spot on the evolution diagram.
"Tell me about the dragon," Piper said eagerly. "What are the lines for?" She traced the lines up and down the picture until she reached the bacteria.
An idea slapped him so hard Link would have to be an utter fool not to use it.
"You know the dragon isn't the most interesting thing in the picture here," he said, turning the book so she could see better.
"Is it this?" Piper asked, touching a cilia covered cell.
"That's a protist, sweetie. This is," he said, touching the point where all the lines converged.
"But there's no picture there, just a few letters."
"Do you know what those letters are?"
"Of course, I know my ABCs, Daddy."
"L, U, C, and A. What does that mean?"
"L.U.C.A.," Link said, pronouncing it as if it were the name.
"What's so special about Luca?"
"What's so special about LUCA?" Link said, feigning surprise. "You don't know? Well then, I'll have to tell you. Once upon a time—"
"Is this a real story?"
"Of course it is."
"But you started it with 'Once upon a time,' and those are always fakes."
"Always? No, I don't think so. In this case, Piper, the story happened so long ago that we aren't certain of all the facts. That's why I said 'Once upon a time' instead of something else."
"Oh. Continue please."
"Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there existed a creature named LUCA. Now LUCA was a rather magical creature and had more abilities than anyone I have ever met."
"Even more than Mommy?"
"That's a close call, but yes, LUCA had so many incredible gifts that no mammal can match it. LUCA was also a bit magical, invisible to the naked eye and able to survive situations we couldn't imagine."
"What sort of situations?"
"Extreme heat, lack of oxygen, intense radiation from UV light, no food… the list goes on and on. But due to all these super heroic abilities LUCA begot lots of children."
"How many children?"
"Well… an average cell divides fifty or so times in its life, so I imagine LUCA had at least that many."
"That's way too many kids."
"Far too many for anyone in our species to properly care for, but the right amount for LUCA. All of those children received LUCA's talents because LUCA decided to make them all the best they could be. However, LUCA had just too many abilities for the children to handle and they couldn't take LUCA's standards. Some children have up the heat abilities, some lost the ability to make their own food, and others gave up chemotherapy."
"Why couldn't they keep all the abilities? Were LUCA's standards really too high?"
"I guess they were. Some kids just can't live up to their parents expectations."
"Do I live up to your expectations?"
"You're beyond my wildest expectations. Every day you amaze me with some surprising leap of ingenuity."
"Do I live up to Mommy's expectations?"
Link was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Now I'm not a mind reader and you know Mommy keeps her own counsel. I mean, she doesn't like to share her private thoughts with anyone."
"Not even you?"
"She lets me in more than most people, but I think she takes particular pleasure in keeping me in the dark." Link paused and shook his head. "The fact your mom likes to tease me isn't my point. My point was that despite the fact she never told me, I know she thinks you're the greatest thing on Earth. Even when Zelly's furious and ready to bite the head off anyone who even looks at her, you can just sally in and bring a smile to her face. A real smile, not her baring her teeth. You light up our lives, Pipes."
Piper fiddled with her blanket, feeling uncomfortable. "That's a lotta pressure, Daddy."
"I don't mean it to be," Link said, rubbing his daughter's head. "Just remember Mommy and I love you very much."
"I know that," Piper said laughing. "Can you tell me what happens next?"
"So I was saying that LUCA's children each chose a few traits and specified in those abilities. The children passed the abilities onto their children and their children's children, refining it more and more each generation. After many generations the children had differentiated themselves into two distinct groups. They were called Bacteria and the Archeae. The two groups had different ideals on what should be considered important and so they grew apart."
"What sort of ideas, Daddy?"
"Well… the Bacteria were simple folk. They wanted to stick to the basic principles of life; eat, grow, and reproduce many many times. Fancy new changes just didn't suit them and while they willingly gave up some of LUCA's magic, they didn't want to make any of their own."
"What about the Archeae?"
"They had some different ideas from the Bacteria. They loved to live a life of danger and mystery. Preferring to make their homes in the most extreme environments imaginable, like sulfur pits or volcanic vents on the bottom of the sea, the Archeae valued the privacy such homes afforded above all else. This allowed them to develop secrets never told to people outside of their exclusive membership. Even now we know very little about them, but we hope to learn more."
"Is that like the Sheikah?" Piper asked, referring to the secret tribe that had acted as body guards and unseen protectors of the royal family since the founding of Hyrule.
"Yes, just a bit," Link said in agreement, liking the parallel his daughter had drawn. "After all these generations that formed the two groups, the Bacteria and the Archeae no longer associated with each other."
"So they were fighting?"
"More of a cold war."
"Adam and Steve should have come and negotiated a treaty between the Bacteria and the Archeae."
"Adam and Steve won't be born for another two billion years or so. They couldn't possibly help out the situation. Besides, we wouldn't want them to make up, otherwise we wouldn't be here."
"How does that work?"
"I'm getting to that, so be patient," Link said. "A few more generations pass—probably around a few thousand—and something else happens in the Archeae family. There was a great schism, a divide, between two groups in the Archeae family. One group wanted to follow the traditional ideals, while the other wanted to move in a new direction.
"What was that direction?"
"Completely different from the one before."
"But how was it different?"
"They dreamed big. They wanted to grow; grow big, grow huge, far larger than the miniscule size of their insignificant forefathers. They wanted to live new life unlike that of any previous generation and learn new skills, both those long forgotten and those never imagined before. They wanted the Earth to divulge her wonders and secrets to them through work and exploration. Unlike those before, these people did not want their children to be exactly like them and their mothers before them, but rather to experience new joys and sorrows unique to their very own existence."
"That sounds difficult."
"It was. And yet, they succeeded. They were called the Eukaryotes and all the old groups were hence known as the Prokaryotes."
"Why do they all have long weird names?"
"Some dead old white male humans, probably from the 1800s, named them. As you know, dead old white male humans like giving everything long complicated names that are in Latin and Latin is a dead human language."
"But why do they do that?"
"Because they think it's cool."
"That's silly."
"It is. All humans are silly, but elves are too, so it's okay. Anyway, so these Eukaryotes now had all these big dreams and plans. So they grew and changed over the generations until they had turned into as many creatures as there are stars in the sky. The first of these creatures to really form a defined group were probably the plants, in fact I'm certain plants were the first to really come into their own, and fungi. Then later came animals, amphibians, then reptiles—"
"Dragons! "
"Including dragons," Link said in agreement. "Birds came next, and then mammals. Another sixty five million years or so and we get hominids."
"Hominids? Like Aunt Tetra and Aunt Aryll?"
"I think you're thinking of homosexuals, but yes, they're hominids and we are too. Humans are also hominids and Neanderthals were hominids."
"Does this mean we descended from dragons?" Piper asked excitedly. Her eyes were shining. "I could grow a tail? And wings?"
"No it doesn't," Link said, mind reeling. Somewhere he had gone wrong in his explanation. Zelda would kill him if he left her misinformed and she tried to do something stupid, like trying to fly off the castle roof.
"Why not?" Piper asked.
"We relate to dragons in that somewhere along the way a member of the Eukaryote tribesmen of the Animal clan had two children that were, as most Eukaryote children, different from each other. One child found the skills and traits more useful to us to be their favorite and over millions of generations grew into us. The other found the skills that would eventually, over many generations, turn them into dragons."
"So we aren't really dragons."
"No Pipes, I'm sorry. Our ancestry split off from the dragons," Link said. "It's like you, me, and Aunt Aryll. She's my sister and so we are very similar. You, my dear daughter, are just as similar to me as Aryll is, but you and Aunt Aryll are not that similar to each other. If Aunt Aryll had kids, you would be even less similar to your cousins than you are to your Aunt, but you're still similar, just less so."
"Are you and Mommy similar?"
"Thankfully, no," Link said, smiling.
"Why do you say that?"
"Socially, it's a bad idea to marry your family members," Link said. "Although it happened in Mommy's family a lot, I think it's icky. Families where members commonly marry each other develop genetic diseases. Like hemophilia, a problem where when you start bleeding, you keep bleeding and can't stop easily."
"That sounds scary!"
"Luckily we've developed magic and medicine to control hemophilia," Link said. He paused for a few minutes, thinking. "Hominids, we were on hominids. Now hominid means the group of creatures most related, most similar, to us. This includes extinct—"
"That means they're all dead, doesn't it?" Piper asked.
"You're as smart as your mom, which means you're right," Link said. "Some of the extinct groups are Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and most forms of Homo. A couple of forms of Homo, like Homo sapiens, are still alive. We are part of that group."
"What does Homo mean?" Piper asked.
"Homo means 'man' in Latin," Link said. "Humans are Homo sapiens or wise man."
"Do we have a Latin name?"
"Yes. It's Homo magus or magical man."
"The names are sorta similar."
"They are similar and that is because we are closely related. We're in the same genus, but are different species. That means our group of people, elves, are basically cousins to humans. We're actually close enough that we can marry and have children together. I think the same was true of Neanderthals."
"That's really crazy… wait a minute, does that mean I'm related to LUCA?"
"Yup. Everyone and everything is related to LUCA. That's because LUCA stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor."
"So LUCA's my grandmother?"
"More like great grandmother to the billionth 'great' degree."
"Wow," Piper said, completely stunned.
"Wow is right," Link said, "and that is the story of LUCA." He kissed his daughter on the forehead and left her to her thoughts.
The next morning Piper raced into the kitchen so quickly that she startled Zelda into spilling her orange juice all over the morning paper. Link looked up from the bagel he was smearing strawberry cream cheese over. Piper looked so excited that she could barely contain herself.
"Mommy Mommy guess what?" She said, hopping as she held onto the table.
"What Piper?" Zelda said, too busy trying to clean up the juice to pay attention.
"Did you know I have a great great great grandma named LUCA? And she's really amazing and magical?"
"Grandma Luca?" Zelda asked.
"And she's related to all living organisms in the world! I can't wait to tell Skullkid all about this! There's no way he can call me stupid now."
The grandfather clock in the next room tolled out the hour. Piper gasped after hearing the bong ring.
"I'm going to be late for school! Bye Mommy! Bye Daddy! I love you both!" Then she ran off.
Zelda turned to look at Link. Her paper was a soggy orange mess now. "What was that all about?" she asked, "And whose Grandma LUCA, Link?"
"Technically, I don't know if LUCA was male or female, but female seems more likely since LUCA is the mother of all known life," Link said thoughtfully. At Zelda's look he added, "LUCA as in Last Universal Common Ancestor."
"Ah," Zelda said in understanding. She drank some coffee. "So I take it you told her about LUCA last night?"
"Yup."
"You know she's probably going to get it wrong and it will turn into some massive game of telephone at the end of which everyone in her preschool thinks they're second cousins with a giant tentacled cell named Luca for a grandmother."
"Have a little faith in our girl."
"I am not holding a press conference to say that my great great great grandmother was an elf and not an amoeba. Your mess, your press conference, prince consort."
"I think this will be a lovely learning experience for the kids. And besides," Link added, grinning wickedly, "We could always say the amoeba was my grandmother."
Zelda had the dignified response of throwing half a banana at him. Link dodged it.
"In two weeks you are going to publicly address the nation and give a lecture on evolution and explain what LUCA is in laymen terms," she said. "You'd better study up."
"Is that an order?"
"If it has to be."
"Fine," Link said, "but I think you're being a little paranoid. And you'll be publicly outed for being married to a geek."
"Better to have a geek for a husband than the grandson of an amoeba."
Link stared. Zelda smirked. Then they both burst out laughing.
Two weeks later Link gave his much-anticipated lecture. He carefully explained evolution and the concept of LUCA without making any mistakes or using any five syllable words. He also definitively answered that while yes, elves were distantly related to LUCA and the same was true for all other life on the planet, no one in the royal family was directly related to an amoeba.
As usual, Zelda was right about everything.
That was chapter two, or "L.U.C.A." as I tend to think of it. I hope I properly explained the theory of L.U.C.A., it's not that hard of a concept, but I still could have botched the job. If you still have questions concerning the subject, you can ask me in a review or you can search the web.
Please leave a review, they only take a minute or so to fill out, but they mean the world to me. It's the only way I get feedback. That's also the best way to let me know if there are any stories you're hoping to see. I can't promise I'll write them, but I can take that info under advisement. Thanks for reading!