Nebula (part II)
Nebula (Part II)
By Christine
Chapter 7
She moaned just a little in her deep sleep. He smelled her hair in his face and buried deeper. Her hair was soft like silk and he kissed the jungle of threads, his lips reaching the warm skin of her scalp. He eased up in her warmth. His hand slowly moved on her bare back, surrounding the soft curve of her shoulder, massaging the relaxed muscles and then lowered along her side to wrap her waist, fingers sliding on the soft velvety skin, circling her navel. Her ribs were rising and falling under the regular rhythm of her breathing and her skin was marvelously soft and warm. He kept his eyes closed, feeling her life nearby under his fingers and tightening his embrace, enveloping her with his own body. If only matter would allow his body to merge completely with hers to become one entity, to reunite again just like their souls. A slight difference in the property of electrons would allow this. But then again maybe no matter would be stable. She had laughed at this once, a bright clear laugh without sarcasm and had said with a wink "That is what making a baby is: the biological response to a physicist query". His lips tasted the thin translucent skin of her temple, brushed the closed quivering eye lids and searched for her mouth. He felt her warm breath on his parted lips. He loved her so much, her, present in this moment. Some cloudy thought rose like smoke in his mind. It was all wrong. He had kissed her and felt her surrender her life. Helena was dead. No! John suddenly jumped out of the bed, his entire body shaking, breathing heavily, sweat running along his back, his heart pounding. He was alone in his room. In the eerie blue light casted by the wall unit computer, John was looking at the now empty bed.
He stared at the sheets and then sat down again and took his head in his hands. Immediately a much less pleasant memory resurfaced like poison.
"I am not getting any younger, you know!" she had said in a restrained but firm tone across her office in the medical center.
"Helena, this is not life… This base is not real life. It is artificial, without trees or sky or sun. Do you want any children to grow up in this?" He was shouting. A nurse turned around in the other room separated by a windowed panel.
"John… it is what it is… it is all we have. It is our life and our home for better or for worse. We do not have a choice. We cannot wait for perfection, which might never happen… I cannot wait."
"How do you choose? Who do you allow to have children… on which criteria? Age? You and I know very well that it is a lousy way of doing things. If one woman has a child, then you have to allow all women. If we allow all women, we will not have enough resources to survive. It is too tight, Helena. We are barely surviving as it is. Also, any of us can get killed at any given time. Any children could grow up with one parent or both missing. This is not life, it is hell"
"Did you ever consider that we might be the only survivors of the human race?"
"We have no way of knowing that" he dismissed. "John, you have to entertain that possibility." She replied sharply.
"You are scared, Helena. You want a child and you are getting older. You are scared of dying without leaving anyone behind you. Lots of people feel that way, you know. I just cannot let selfish motives direct me. I have to think about what it would be for a child to grow up on a barren piece of rock, millions of kilometers away from his home planet!" As he spoke those words, he saw her face become very pale. He wanted to stop himself, but it was too late.
"Is that what you really think of me?" She asked, her head softly tilted to meet his gaze. Her face betrayed how hurt she was. "Do you really think my motives are selfish?"
When he did not answer, she got up quietly and left the room without another word.
John felt tears fill his eyes. Helena had not been afraid of death. She had narrated to him her confrontation with the alien race, who did not experience fear and regarded it as a primitive emotion. She had confessed to him how she got so scared of dying on that planet all alone. But mostly, she had not been able to bear seeing him die in his spacesuit in the vacuum of space. She had connected with him at a deeper level at this instant and known then that they were one and the same. She had taken his pain and had brought him back to her, just by the power of her love. She was maybe the only one who understood the lesson of these aliens completely and never forgot it. Death was no more a source of fear for her. Yes, he knew he had been very unfair to her.
He remembered how, after their disagreement, she had become quite cold and distant, as if something had broken. He had been stubborn. He now realized he was the one scared. He was scared of having the story of Jackie Crawford happen all over again. He was scared of what would happen if he had a child, of this increased responsibility which could and would impair his command. He was scared and he regretted, but it was too late. And then the nebula had appeared on their horizon. In the stressful hours after spotting the nebula, he did not see Helena, busy as they all were computing their chances of survival. But when the time for a mission came, she had volunteered to be on the reconnaissance team and he did not try to prevent her; he knew that she was determined to go. Helena had suddenly become unreachable emotionally, retreated in depths that he was just beginning to discover. She had closed the door, just like that, without any screams and tears, without any fight or break up. If she was upset by this, she never showed it publicly. She was totally in control of her emotions and aloof. Main mission had lost contact with the reconnaissance team for hours, probably due to particle storms and he waited, thinking of her, and worrying for her safety, his gaze lost out of his window. When the team had come back with grim news, Helena did not even make eye contact with him during her brief verbal report on the situation. She was an astute authority in science and nothing escaped her scrutiny. She made a clear and documented report, without fault, precise in each minute detail. The nebula was very far, but was inescapable and radiating particles that would annihilate any life quickly. She was professional, mastered her emotions and remained cold and composed. But the message was just the same. They would not make it. When her report was done, she excused herself, saying she was tired by the mission, and retreated to her quarters. Helena could become as cold as ice and sharp as a diamond blade.
"Helena?" he had rung her door bell a couple of hours later.
"Yes, John"
"Can I come in?" There was a few seconds of silence and he thought she would not let him in, but then the door slid open. Her hair was still wet from a shower and combed back. She was in her pajamas, sitting at her desk, finishing typing a report. She did not turn around, or move. She just continued typing, as if he was not present in the room. He spoke cautiously in a low tone, with barely hidden emotion.
"Helena, I am sorry. I was very unfair to you, when I am really the one scared for our future" He was pacing in her room talking to her immobile back. She just paused her writing. He continued. "You are a lot braver than I. You do not shield as I do from reality". With her typing stopped, the room became strangely quiet, with the low humming of the air recycling system. She whispered almost as if she was talking to herself, after what seemed to him some very long seconds. "I let you down when we encountered Piri. When we encountered Atheria, I would have let you get killed by operation shockwave, if you did not return. I refused to listen to you and your story about Arra. I refused to believe you and betrayed you. On Ultima Thule, I disallowed you my support. Don't call me brave, please." She lowered her head staring, without reading, at the paper she was writing.
"It takes courage to admit mistakes. I let you down too on Terra Nova, Helena, and on Zeno. When I came back that night and I saw your face, I knew my place was with you here on Alpha" They had discussed Zeno before and he had told her what happened. He had told her everything. She had been hurt, but understood. She had shared with him how tough it was to make the final decision to turn off his life support. She had done it for his own sake, out of respect for the man he was. It was the hardest thing she had done in her life; her heart had been shattered with a pain too strong and too tight for even the tears to come. "You do not belong to anyone, not me, not her, John Koenig, but only to yourself." She added. "Besides, at the time, we did not have a relationship." He corrected her: "Not an intimate relationship, you mean, but we had this incredible faith in each other. And I should have known better. We are just people, Helena, not brave, no heroes, with faults, weaknesses and imperfections." He looked at her intensely and added: "But it was wrong of me to call you selfish."
Helena relaxed in her chair and sighed with a touch of bitterness in her tone. "Anyway, it does not matter anymore. Brave or not, we are facing forces way beyond our comprehension in this nebula. You were right. There will not be children, why create life and then let it be taken away. Besides, it is too late. Our universe is strange and big, enormously big, and life is uncommon. This universe bears all the properties to support life, but life is still the exception. It is vast and bare. We represent only a very negligible part of it. Only in certain very peculiar conditions, rare and tenuous, life does exist. Only in minute places, matter is concentrated enough to create molecules and bear life processes. The rest is mostly emptiness and blackness. It is very empty. But you know this already, don't you? We are going to this nebula, John, and nothing we do will prevent this. This is part of what should be. We should return to the stars, which created us. We've got to accept it. But, if I had a child, it would hurt a lot more to see this child die than die myself"
He put his hands on her shoulders in silence and stayed that way for a few minutes.
"No, I was not right, Helena. You were. Without hope and the life it bears, there would not be any meaning to our existence. But, I know one thing: I would like very much to be with you until the end."
She lifted her face to look at him. With the damp hair pushed back from her forehead, her eyes seemed bigger, greener and deeper. He looked at the beautiful peaceful face of the woman he loved. She stood up and embraced him tightly, her head resting on his chest. "Helena, how can you be so serene about this nebula?" She answered without moving in a whisper. "I don't know".
John stood up and started to pace his bedroom, as memories, kept on coming to him uncontrolled in his grieving mind.
"This is completely ridiculous. We are going to spend weeks moving the base downstairs. It is labor intensive. And for what? 15 minutes of respite?" Paul was furious. "Doctor Russell, tell them what the particles out there will do to us."
Helena lowered her voice. "Everyone here knows perfectly well what it will do to us"
"So what is the point?"
"The point, here, I believe, is hope" Victor answered quietly almost reassuring. "Nothing more. We can spend weeks waiting, our eyes riveted on the screens, or we can do something about it. Nobody can remain sane waiting for his or her death for weeks doing nothing. We have to occupy our personnel or the situation might become very quickly unmanageable." This had not been a light decision, but right after the reconnaissance team report had been made public, a couple of technicians, one in the nuclear section, the other in hydroponics, had committed suicide. The managing team had feared panic might seize the base with a wave of suicides or other irrational behavior. Tension was high among the personnel. So this security meeting had been set with a restricted number of senior officers, John, Helena, Victor, Paul, Alan and Kano.
"I do not like it. It is lying." Paul added "I always considered my personnel with respect and, in that sense, they deserve to know the truth"
"I am not sure it is a lie. We will get a brief relapse being underground. And then who knows what can happen? Remember the black sun, the shield was no better -no offense professor-. But still we made it. When you guys were going into the black sun, we on the eagle were redirected right through it and we found you again. What are the odds of this happening? No, we've got to put all the chances on our side" Alan was smiling at Paul. "Some ethics committee! Hey?" Paul shrugged.
"How about the computer systems? Kano?"
Kano was serious and more pessimistic.
"I do not know how we can transfer all the functionality to the downstairs systems without powering down the whole thing. But if we power down, then we will lose life support systems, atmospheric recycling and so on. We are going to have to do some serious thinking on this problem. What are you planning to do with hydroponics?"
Helena answered his question.
"Well, a lot of the crops are already growing on sub-lunar levels, but that is not enough and we will have to replant and move the hydroponic systems downstairs a little bit a time and let the plants adjust. This is actually where we will start, because, if we find out that plants do not tolerate the move, we might as well abort the whole thing."
"We can try to convince the plants that there is hope!" Paul replied with sarcasm. John slammed his hand on the table and then took a very deep breath, trying to calm himself.
"Paul, will you meet me in my office?"
When the door closed, John looked for a long time at Paul.
"None of this is easy, Paul. But our duty is to keep this base safe and operational under any circumstances. I can understand your feelings and I share some of them, but, with all its flaws, moving downstairs right now is the best plan we have."
"Then, we don't have much, do we?"
"No, that is right, we do not have much."
Paul left the office without rancor, while a gloomy John was staring at the nebula from his window.
Of this chaotic time, all John remembered was very busy weeks, with everyone assigned to a particular task and his command delegated to project managers in the vital sections of the base. Preparations for the move went on for several days and everyone got very busy. As expected, the work kept everyone mind off the impending disaster. The hydroponics move took the most time and Helena remained for periods of days in the underground sections of the base supervising the implementation of the changes and the growth of the plants. He was missing her. John searched his memories of these past few weeks for evidence of a change in Helena, a change that would indicate she had discovered something. She had been more distant, grave and preoccupied, but the very nature of this move would have explained such a change. When living quarters had been made available, she had been the first one to move. She said that it was much easier that way as she needed to be present to supervise hydroponics and the move of the medical center. It had then seemed to John that she welcomed the solitude and silence of the underground base, which was still not completely operational and was sparsely populated, even if more and more staff kept moving downstairs to set up their working stations. Life continued as such for weeks until they were completely ready to move all the systems down. Helena and John saw each other only briefly during that time. It was only for meetings, a few meals taken together on the run discussing details of the implementation or a few minutes stolen walking downstairs to the underground levels. He had noticed how tired she looked, and wondered if she was even sleeping at all. But she had made remarkable progress with the hydroponics and the medical facilities were now completely operational, which represented a huge amount of work. This was not even taking in account the hours she had spent stitching wounds of technicians getting hurt while moving equipment.
He remembered with emotion the last day they spent together, before she was injured. She had left her quarters very early that day, even before the artificial lights signaled the morning, and made her way up to the surface corridors of the base a few hours ahead from the command meeting she was scheduled to attend. He almost did not see her, when he woke up, for she was sitting in dark shadows besides his bed. Dressed in her uniform, she seemed tense, her legs crossed under her, her arms folded on her chest and her back nested in the soft pillow of a corner chair. Her head was tilted looking at him. She was studying him with a serious and deep expression.
"Helena, what are you doing here?" He asked surprised.
"I just wanted to see you." She replied with a low and quiet voice, which chilled him in a way he could not explain. He could only whisper:
"What's wrong, Helena?"
"I wanted to watch you sleep."
"How long have you been here?"
"About an hour." She remained silent for minutes, then, she added:
"I am scared, John. I am scared of dying" Her voice was quivering. John got up, picked her up and held her in his arms as tight as he could without hurting her.
At the time he did not think much of what she said and he had accepted that she would feel that way as their fate was approaching. But indeed, it was quite out of character for Helena to admit this so openly to him, especially after their recent argument. She had been serene and calm about encountering the deadly zone surrounding the nebula. She had not appeared to be panicking about her fate, but, on the contrary, quite accepting of it and prepared to face it. That morning, after missing her so much in the previous weeks and facing such an uncertain fate, all he could feel was his desire for her and his need to hold her in his arms, to comfort her tenderly, and to love her as they so often had. She had been passionate and intense, with a sense of desperation, as if she could not get enough of his love, as if her body and her soul wanted to fuse with him forever like metals forge alloys. And before they parted, she picked up her discarded clothes, freshened up quickly in his bathroom and dressed up in silence solemnly. When she opened his door, he sighed in comfort, his eyes closed. "See you later in command center" he said as he started to get up, his back to her. He never noticed the tears in Helena's eyes, as she left his room silently without a reply. John met Helena and other members of the command team only a few minutes after in his office for the scheduled meeting and finalized the program of the day with the dismantlement of the surface main computer. She was then the perfectly controlled professional he knew and discussed the implementation without a trace of emotion. Later in the day, approaching their final countdown, they had met in his office and she had appeared completely in control of her fear, calmly talking with him and reassuring him as he was showing signs of distress. Victor came in with the latest report, Helena got ready to power down the computer in medical. When John started the countdown and prepared to leave the surface sections, they had exchanged a long last look full of emotion and she had left to the medical center in order to implement the migration of the medical files and shut down the medical sections. It was the last time he saw her before the explosion.
Once this realization hit, John was now completely awake and he quit his reverie.
"She knew she was going to die" he muttered to himself. "She knew and she wrote the letter, but why and how?" he banged his fist on the wall. "She was trying to tell me. She was saying goodbye. And I was completely oblivious to it." He was pacing back and forth "I got to know why." Then, he got dressed and stormed out to main mission.
David Kano was just starting his early morning shift. John and Kano always used to play chess together when their long night shifts coincided. They had developed a strong friendship over the weeks spent on duty.
"David, you have to give me access to Dr. Russell's files. You did not delete them, did you?"
"Commander? But why?" John looked at him, hesitant for a moment. "David, Helena knew she was going to die. I do not know how she knew that, but she did. She might have left something in her files. I've got to find out."
"Commander, everyone knows it was an accident."
"Was it? She left a letter, in her desk. A goodbye letter."
Kano looked aghast.
"John… was it a suicide note?"
John lowered his head. "I am not really sure, but I don't believe so. No, I can't believe that. But she knew and accepted the fact of her imminent death. Why?"
Kano shook his head, pensively.
"She asked to be allocated more memory space recently. She must have been working on something"
"How come you did not report this to me?"
"It is not unusual for anyone on this base to occasionally request an increase of memory. I knew she was restructuring the hydroponics on the lower sections; it did not seem to be unrealistic for her to need more computer power. I would have expected that."
"Thanks, Kano"
"Her access code will be emailed to you shortly." John ran back to his quarters and activated his computer terminal, waiting for Kano's email.
Chapter 8
In the darkness of his office, John hesitated a moment before keying in the login and password of Helena. He did not feel comfortable reading her files, even if she was dead. She had hundreds of files, neatly organized. Most of them were professional, like patient records, drugs information sheets, MSDS data, textbooks, various medical literature articles, conference proceedings and research papers. He was looking for something personal, a diary, data log entries or notes. It did not take very long for him to find her data log files. He saw only that the last entry was dated before they had first spotted the nebula and it did not contain any critical information. He wondered where she was hiding her diary or any other entries. Surely she had to have documented what happened after the nebula was first spotted. As he was browsing her files, he finally found a folder named "private stuff". He smiled a little as he clicked the folder. A screen popped up. "Enter your Password". He typed the password Kano gave him, but it did not work. He tried her name, his name, anything he could relate to Helena. Simply nothing worked. He stood and dashed in frustration to main mission searching for David Kano.
As the moon drifted into the nebula, the temperature rose sharply, particles began to bombard the moon at a higher density. It was only a matter of time that the surface instrumentation started to fail. One by one all cameras died, all sensors fried and moon base Alpha was left blind and deaf.
"Professor, if the heat continues to rise, we will not make it" Sandra's statement was disguised question. She lowered her head and stared at her hands.
"Solid matter does not exist at the temperatures we will soon encounter, Sandra. Elements disintegrate and everything turns into a dense hot gas of elementary particles." Victor padded her shoulder as if it would be enough to comfort the young woman. She sighed. "Then what will happen with us?" she barely managed to say.
Victor looked at her with tenderness. She was so young and full of life. She wanted to live.
"Then we will return where we originally came from, to be part of the star dust and to be part of the universe"
Sandra looked at him with a sigh of despair. "I don't understand".
"Sandra, nothing ever dies. We are made of molecules, which are also made of elements. Each element is made of particles, electrons, protons, neutrons. And each one is made of smaller particles, named quarks. At the time we left earth, we even thought that these quarks were made of strings of energy. When everything falls apart, we will be dissociated, but the matter and energy that makes us will surely reassemble into something else"
John heard Victor's words and turned around swiftly.
"Victor, what are you talking about?"
"Well, we all have heard about string theory, haven't you John?"
"I certainly have, although I have to admit that my mathematical abilities are not quite up to the challenge. I have a physics degree, but I have left the theorical field for quite while after working on the microwave radiation left over by the big bang and focused on engineering. I am not much of a string theorist and I am just familiar with certain applications of quantum physics" John spread his arms.
"Of course not… there are maybe only one or two persons on earth that can make up the math. I do not think anyone really understands it… and of course none of this has been proven. Mathematically the solutions to these equations have not been found yet and the math tools which would be needed have not even been invented. We are quite primitive in what we understand from the universe"
John looked at Victor pensively.
"When Helena died, she said to me that she saw the nebula. She said something similar to what you just said to Sandra. But Helena was specific, she talked about strings of energy, creating matter and recycling it endlessly. She said the nebula was not death but life"
"A very bright scientist, such as Helena, would certainly reflect on such things when confronted to her own mortality." Victor explained in a logic way.
"This is what I thought at first. I thought she was scared and was trying to rationalize her fears. I was shaken to see her suffer that much. It was unbearable. I did not question what she said until I found her letter. Now I am trying to access her files and her last data log entries."
"John, which letter are you talking about?"
"Victor, come with me"
And John explained everything to Victor, how he found Helena's room with papers on philosophy, and reflections on the universe. He explained how he thought Helena was hiding something from him. He showed him the letter. Victor remained silent, his eyes filling with tears as he came to realize that Helena's death was not an accident. Both men stayed for a few minutes lost in their thoughts.
"I can't get into her private files. She put a password."
"Why don't you try her date of birth?" Said Victor without even lifting his head from Helena's letter he was reading and reading again. John started to type. "No, John… Enter the date the European way: day, month and year. It is the universal way." The screen cleared and John could see about a hundred files labeled with dates.
"How did you know?"
"Quite typical, I assure you. Nothing to it." Victor smiled. John was looking at the files.
"Where do we start?"
"From what you have said to me, it looks like Helena started to have isolated herself recently. You mentioned how she stayed downstairs for days when she was preparing and implementing the hydroponics move. It seems to me that it is when everything started."
Victor started to scroll the files up. "It looks like we have word processing files and video log files. We should start reading from there." Then, he looked at John. "Those are personal files, John. I should leave"
"No please stay. Victor, it does not matter to me. Helena is dead. I am not sure I am thinking very straight. I need your expertise to sort all of this out."
So both men started to read Helena's private notes first.
"Lunar Date 980 days AB, 18:00 LT
Technicians are building the hydroponic chambers and it seems we have constant problem with lightning. It is a constant source of frustration. No matter what we try, we do not seem to get enough light, which would allow the plants to grow at their maximum potential. The other problem, probably more damaging, is the heat. We could probably do with a little less light, but not with a high heat. I think it is because the underground chambers are tighter and we are simply not losing as much heat as when we were doing this right under the surface. Engineers are trying to improve our air recycling system with the idea that this is would help cooling the whole chambers down. I have taken the problem from another angle. Maybe we can select some crops, which will survive better in higher temperatures. There is not enough time to genetically modify the plants we have, but it is something to consider if everything else fails. For the time being, if we could just use crops that are heat resistant, we might be able to survive until we can figure out a better solution, either biological or technical.
What am I talking about? Surviving? Maybe I am getting caught up in this odd game of hope. If you lie to yourself often enough and convincingly, then you start believing in the lie. I really do not see how we will get out of that one. John and the others want to believe in a miracle. It is their drive and it works for most. We have been granted an extension of our survival already and many times. And I think we have done good things to the worlds we have encountered. And we have been true to ourselves and what we believe. But what has a beginning also has an end."
"Ok, so she was having problems with the hydroponics chambers, we know about the problems they faced down there" Victor commented and they went on to the next entry.
"982 AB, 22:00 LT
I would like to select a plant with effective heat shock systems, chaperones proteins, which would protect the cells from excessive heat or abrupt changes. I have spent the past two days going over the genomes of the species we have on the data base. I found some species, which look like they have a good heat protection system. Not surprisingly, they all are tropical or desert plants. The only problem is the fact they might not have a high productivity to sustain our needs. I will ask botanics to germinate the seeds and send them over for trials.
I have searched the data base for hours at a time.
I found this very odd thing when I was looking at the DNA code. We all have this load of DNA doing nothing and not coding for proteins. I never really paid attention to it, but it looks like some sequences are repeated endlessly. If this DNA indeed does nothing, why are sections of it repeated so frequently? I crossed referenced it with animal DNA and found the same sequences within this non-coding junk DNA, that even forms over 95 percent of human DNA. That is really odd. It certainly does not solve my current predicament about the plants to select. It is certainly something I am going to look into once I am done with the hydroponics, if I ever have the time. I wonder, though, if these sequences of DNA represent something significant. If I could only do a computer analysis on it and try to find out what it could be coding for. I suppose it would not hurt to try."
"983 AB, 21:30 LT
The computer could not find any reference for these uncommon DNA sequences, except that they are present in all living species known to earth. They are in very small numbers in bacteria and other unicellular organisms, and are repeated multiple times in other organisms. To have such sequences conserved and amplified so perfectly over evolution would mean that they are critical for life. I feel I am onto something. Maybe the idea is to look at the problem from a different angle. I got to think out of the box.
The hydroponic idea to use effective heat shock system plants will be working fine. The botanic crew has agreed to germinate seeds to that effect and we will begin to put them in the hydroponic systems soon. Other plants seem to do a little better with some adjustment of the recycling systems.
I cannot stop thinking about these DNA sequences. They look utterly different than anything I have ever encountered. They do not look like a DNA code, more like a computer code. Maybe they are a computer code, just made out of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs instead of the binary 0s and 1s. I wonder if the computer could convert this into a program and decode it. I have to work on this."
Victor nodded: "that is indeed quite unusual, a mathematical code within DNA… hum… a few years ago some scientist tried to make a DNA computer based on that principle. It did not go very far, but it was possible and did work for very simple calculations."
Both men looked at the video entries for the latest recordings. Helena generally recorded entries to document life on Alpha, any event of importance and her professional work. For the most part they were formal video recordings, destined to be viewed by anyone. They were not daily recordings, and their frequency depended on the events encountered in their lives. There were only three recent video recordings, two dated a few days before the accident and the last one was dated on the morning of her accident. "Maybe, I should stop calling this an accident." John muttered. He decided to view them in logical order, starting with the oldest.
He held his breath when the video loaded. Victor lowered his gaze.
Then the image appeared and her face filled the screen. John was not prepared for the shock to see her full of life, caught in the video. He covered his mouth as to prevent his emotion to surface, as Helena in the recording started to speak, poised and noble in her demeanor. Victor stared at the screen, emotion etched on his face.
"Dr. Helena Russell recording. 990 days after breakaway. It seems we have come to the end of our voyage. As we will soon enter the nebula, our future is precarious. Our chances of survival are in fact nil, if we take into account the temperatures and levels of radiation we are about to encounter. We are buying time by moving the whole base underground, with the hope that it will somehow delay our fate. All of this base, our past and our survival seem to be so trivial and insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. I have difficulty believing that all of what we represent as human beings, our culture, our arts and writings, our music, our passions, our primitive science will disappear in a flash because the moon had the bad idea to drift into a nebula. I have found a piece of code hidden very deep inside each living being, whether plant, bacterial, fungal or animal. It is universal. I think it is a signature, a little note left for us to discover in time, if we ever reach that level of evolution granting us intelligence. I even found it in the samples of plants we brought back from Arkadia to be examined and which were kept in a lab. This would be the biggest discovery of our time. A piece of code, universal to any living specie, even microscopic, hidden in our DNA, seems to be a mathematical formula relevant to the very nature of our universe. It took a little bit of studying and a lot of computer power, but I think I know what it means. There is only one way to be sure… in science, one can only verify something with the correct experiment… Too bad there is so little time. Time… we need an island of time, a safe place for all of us to live…" She paused and sighed. "This has a meaning beyond what we ever thought of our universe. We cannot die, not now, not when we are about to understand it all"
Helena closed her eyes for a moment. "I have programmed the computer to run this equation and solve it. I am not really sure what is going to come out of it, but I will let it run all night and day."
Helena looked in the camera for a few seconds and John felt her gaze reach him deeply. Then she closed the connection.
John and Victor looked for a few minutes at the dark screen, numb. If Helena was right, this would be indeed the biggest discovery of all times. John was silently thinking of the implications of what she just talked about. Why did not she say anything? What did the computer solve? Obviously something had happened and this had not been a trivial discovery. Helena would have communicated the results of this research even if they were too busy with the move. She knew it was important, even could be relevant with their survival. She would have contacted him and anyone familiar with cosmology, physics and mathematics. Why didn't she? What prevented her to talk to mathematicians, with Victor or himself? John knew there was more than what she said and it is with a trembling hand that he clicked on the next recording, dreading to see the answers to his questions.
"Dr. Helena Russell recording. 996 days after breakaway.
I have run the mathematical equations found within the very code of our DNA in the computer system: it identified it as the unified theory, which unites all the forces of the universe in one equation, an equation derived apparently from string theory applied to the multiple dimensions. I am not sure I understand the math. It is way beyond what I know, but I trust that it is correct. According to what I read, the equations link a number of parameters, which describe our universe precisely. There are almost an infinite number of solutions, each with a slight different set of parameters. The computer estimated the number of solutions to this fantastic number: a one followed by five hundred zeros. It would mean that there would be that many different universes next to our own. The equation in our DNA specifies precisely the parameters of our universe. I am not sure why they have to be that way, but I do believe that matter as we know it would not exist otherwise. The computer ran the equation for several nights and days. I did not even imagine it would take that long. And I fell asleep while it was running it." She paused for an instant and lowered her eyes, thoughtful, almost hesitating. Then, she looked back in the camera and continued calmly to talk. "In the middle of the night, I got awaken by a noise in my room and I turned on the light to see this odd woman standing next to me. She obviously did not belong to Alpha. I did not get scared, because I immediately felt like I knew her. She was younger than John had described her and was wearing some silky black tunic over loose pants. Her hair was short and blond, she had penetrating blue eyes. She could have been in her 50's, if giving her an age meant anything, but no older than this and felt very mature and wise. I thought I could be dreaming, because the woman lacked the physical material presence of a real person, she felt more like a projection of an image. Yet, I knew I was not dreaming, when she started talking. So I turned on my video recording. I was not sure why I decided to record it, except maybe that I doubted what I was seeing, as if it was just an elaborate hallucination and wanted to document a real event happening just in front of me. I thought that keeping it on record would allow me to analyze later on. If you open the link below you will see the recording."
John paused for a moment. He looked at Victor and whispered "Arra." This was starting to become clearer to him and he was beginning to understand. He opened the file and now he was watching a poor quality picture, pixilated and granulated from the lack of light, with Helena sitting on her bed in her blue pajamas and across from her Arra. Arra was very recognizable, yet younger in appearance and her hair was much shorter and not as white. Her voice, however, was unmistakable.
"I have been watching you, Helena Russell, for quite some time. You are indeed an exceptional woman"
"Who are you?"
"You know about me. I am Arra." Helena was in shock, and all she could do was to nod at her. But in a sense, she was not completely surprised to see her there. Arra was standing tall next to Helena and was observing the woman with a piercing gaze.
"You have found the key, Dr. Russell. It is hidden inside each of us"
"In DNA" Helena confirmed what she said.
"In any self-replicating molecule bestowing life, DNA, RNA and others." Helena's mind was racing at her words, trying to catch the implications of this statement.
"Who wrote this code?" She asked her voice low and shaken.
"Nobody knows. It is in every living being in any universes and evolves with time. It helps generate life, where life is possible. It is embedded in the fabric of all universes"
"Universes? How many are there?"
"Trillions and trillions of universes, self-generating, dividing like cells in your body, growing and dying. Only a few are stable enough to allow life to develop. The very small and the very large are one and the same. This code is registering you to the universe you belong to, the one compatible with your life forms." Helena remained silent overwhelmed by her revelation. All of this made perfect sense to her.
"Arra? How did you get here?"
"We travel in time and space. John Koenig saved us by allowing your moon to project Atheria in another dimension of space and time. This code running in your computer sent a signal for me to come. This nebula might generate life, but it will destroy you. You are facing great danger; you have to leave this section of the universe."
"How?" Helena's voice was low, just a whisper.
"Helena Russell, I chose you to help us save your people. By nature, you are the caretaker of humanity. The code you decrypted is the key to open the door to another part of the universe for your moon to travel and escape destruction, but running it just through your computer will not generate the proper set of signals which are necessary. The original code needs to be read by a device, which will create a mathematical matrix necessary to open a gate for your moon to travel into. Once we have this matrix, we will generate a wormhole from our end. We will need enormous energy and this wormhole will be stabilized using negative energy at its center. This device will read the DNA directly." She handed Helena a very small sphere, it was glassy, but very black without any reflection and very dense. In her hand it weighted so heavy it seemed unnatural. It was also very cold, draining all of the heat from her skin and Helena handled the sphere very carefully.
"Inside this force field, lies a very small black hole." Helena almost dropped it in astonishment and continued to look at it with disbelief.
"It needs to read a very large amount of DNA."
John, despite the bad quality of the image, could read the emotions on Helena's face. He could tell she was in shock and a wave of sadness had engulfed her.
"Why not just feed it purified DNA sequence from the PCR machine?" It was more a statement than a question, as if the doctor already knew the answer.
"It needs living DNA with the configuration found in living systems to operate properly and needs to be in large quantities." Helena lowered her head.
"Is there any other way?" She said calmly, her voice low, swallowing her emotion.
"Unfortunately no. When you are ready, you will have to place the sphere in front of you, touching the skin of your body. Particles from the current nebula, as they gain in strength, will disable the force field and activate the black hole. It will start spinning very fast and create a microscopic wormhole, which will scan your DNA."
"Then I will die". Helena's voice was trembling.
Arra looked at Helena with an expression of gentle tenderness.
"In a sense, yes. Your living systems cannot bear the levels of radiation needed to scan your DNA" The reply was quiet. Helena was looking down and could only whisper.
"Arra, I want to live. I am needed here. I have…"
"Yes… dear… you have John Koenig." The older woman's reply was soft.
"You will be united again. Your spirit and his are one by nature. In our world, we believe that true lovers are one spirit split into two bodies. And they spend their whole lives trying to form whole again." Arra saw the tears in Helena's eyes. She added:
"All of us want a long life, happiness and safety. You can provide this for your people with your own life, Helena. There is no life without death, but new life bears on the old one. Your matter will change its form. Nothing remains forever. We, beings made of matter, are children of impermanence. We live, we die and we change form. Nothing remains forever, except the information of your own matter and the love you have shared. Only you can make that choice. Through the wormhole, you will see the shape of eternity." The projection faded and the woman disappeared, leaving only behind her the small sphere, the size of a small pea in Helena's hand. John saw Helena slowly close her hand on the sphere and then bring both hands over her lowered head. She sat unmoving for a few minutes on her bed, her body shaken by sobs, then seemed to remember the recording, turned to look at the camera and with a touch of her comlock turned it off. Before the screen went dark, John saw a glimpse of her face, painted by tears, with the expression of sadness and despair she never expressed directly to him. He sat back on his chair, his gaze unfocused, thinking. John could easily imagine the rest. Helena had sacrificed herself for all of them to survive. For a few days, she bore alone the burden of knowing what had to be done. She did not share that knowledge. She finished her work with the hydroponics and made sure that everything was set up in medical. She organized all supplies and set up the center such that Dr. Mathias would be able to take over easily. At the time the moon entered the nebula and they were about to evacuate and close down the surface sections, she must have known that it was the time for her to let the sphere get exposed to the nebula radiations. She waited to that last day, and visited John very early that morning. She probably had not planned on telling him anything, but her visit had the bittersweet taste of a farewell. She had needed the courage and the reassurance of his arms. She had needed his love. After closing down the medical center, she must have made her way close to the windows, and placed the little sphere on the skin of her stomach. He imagined the sphere dissolving and the black hole spinning sending waves of energy along the corridor, space changing shape as a small wormhole opened and Helena's body thrown like a puppet by the sudden discharge of energy jolting through her flesh. John knew now that he had to open the last of the video files, the one Helena had recorded early that morning before going to her death. He avoided Victor's gaze. This was a moment between him and her.
"Helena Russell recording. 1007 days after breakaway, 05:00 hours.
Arra visited me and offered me the opportunity to save Alpha. I have read a lot on physics recently and while I do not understand all of the mathematics involved, I know Arra is right. There are multiple universes, so many we cannot imagine them. And only a few have the properties necessary for life to develop. We are little beings of flesh within an immense universe and there are many other universes much different than ours. It is kind of humbling. The parameters of our universe are coded in many places, it seems, in molecules, in subatomic particles, within the strings that make matter and within living beings, in our DNA. Its redundancy allowed us to see it. I do not know what made me think of the DNA as a computer code. Biologists see DNA as the blueprint for proteins, a simple arrangement of four base pairs, which assembled in triplets are making the code for amino acids. Those are the genes, we always hear about. But most of the DNA in our bodies (and in humans that is about 95 percent of our DNA), does nothing, it just sits there as 'junk'. Mathematicians and biologists had, however, identified that this so-called junk is really constituted on repeated sequences, which seemed to have some organization. In fact it is a different code, not binary as computers use, but quaternary. And this non-coding DNA has really a meaning. This solves the long standing c-value enigma in science, where the complexity of an organism does not correlate with its amount of active genetic material. It has a meaning and by entering the sequence in the computer as a quaternary code, it translated it into mathematical formulas. That was the first surprise: mathematical formulas hidden in the depth of our DNA, which the computer matched to a multiple dimensions expression of unified string theory. That was a shock. Why would this be in our DNA? It seemed very hard to believe that it was just a coincidence. Using the original formulas directly from the DNA code, I asked the computer to solve the equations. The computer worked for several days and nights, such the problem seemed to be complex and inextricable. It never gave me a solution. One night I got the visit of Arra. She explained that each one of use bore the signature of the universe we belong to. I am not sure I understood all she said, but I know that they can open a gate for us to escape. This little black hole will scan the mathematical code embedded in my DNA and this will allow Arra and her people to compute a matrix to open a wormhole for our escape. I do not know how and it seems they do have a technology way ahead of us." Helena's voice became emotional. "The energy needed to scan my DNA will kill me. That is the sacrifice I need to make for all of my friends to live. I would like to tell John and Victor, but I know without doubt what would happen. They would go on and on, and discuss it and come to the same conclusions I did alone. Arra said there is no other way and I trust her. Her technology is much more advanced than ours; I do believe she would know. I also do believe she would not let me die in vain. I know that John would not let me go. He would want to go himself and spare me. I do not want to have that fight with him about who has to die first, about who should be the one sacrificed. I would just want to bury myself in his arms and enjoy the last few minutes of my life with him. But I know that forever from now on, I will be separated from him by the lie I am about to make, by what I have to conceal. I do not think he would understand why I have to deceive him, but life has to continue and the survivors of Alpha have to carry along what is left of humanity. The beginning of my death is this little lie I will make, but that is only the beginning of a new future for all of my friends and the ones I love. I cannot let my selfish desire run my fate. I have to let go and help them. I know my life will let them live and find a world to settle. I wish I would have seen it. Goodbye Alpha." Helena had tears in her eyes, but her tone was resolved and brave, and her expression determined.
John thought it was the end of the recording as she looked as if she was going to switch off. But she seemed to change her mind and looked at the camera again. This time she looked more fragile and vulnerable. When she spoke it was in a low whisper, grave, with emotion.
"John, this is for you… You will be watching this later… and I will be gone. I am the only one who can activate the sphere. I can't tell you about this. Forgive me, please. You would insist on going, but you need to stay here, everyone needs you. John, you are the glue that keeps this base together. If it works it might save us. If it doesn't, I will die a just few days earlier. Think, what would you have done if you had made the biggest discovery of all times, the one discovery which might save all of us? But the only way to make it happen and save all of us was to sacrifice a human life. You know the answer already. You would have done the same. I have made my choice. I have to go. It was not an easy one, please, believe that… I love you, John… Goodbye." She looked into the camera for a few long seconds, tears running on her cheeks. John could feel her gaze reach his soul directly like an arrow. Then she switched off the recording.
John remained in his seat, numbed, shaken by what he just had seen and heard, tears in his eyes. Victor was looking at the floor. Silence was surrounding them. The screen was black and John still could not stop staring at it while his mind was running. Obviously the sphere she was talking about did not work, because she did not get killed as she expected, but got serious injuries, which claimed her life almost three days later. Also, she was hoping it would save them, but what ever should have happened did not. They were still there entering this nebula and getting slowly exposed to increasing levels of radiation and no wormhole had formed. And Arra must have been wrong. Maybe she missed something or miscalculated. Helena had died and they were still in the very same situation. He needed to know the details of the code she was talking about and the mathematical formula it encoded. Helena was a scientist. Scientists document their experiments. He was sure that she had left somewhere some notes on this.
Victor cleared his throat and spoke in the heavy emotional atmosphere surrounding them. "John, we need to access the code she input in the computer. Something must have happened. This is our only chance." As John remained silent, Victor continued: "John?"
"Yes Victor… You know she was right… I would never have let her go to her death. I would have gone instead. We need to know what happened to her when she turned on the sphere." He took his comlock and called up: "Dr. Mathias, Alan, Sandra, Paul and David, command conference in my office in ten minutes"
"What are you going to do?"
"Tell them what happened. We all need to work together. Helena was alone in this. I will not be."
The officers sitting in the commander's office were particularly emotional and gloomy. All of them had been very close to Helena and hearing from John and Victor that she had sacrificed her life in the hope to save Alpha came as a shock. He showed them the first part of her last video recording but turned of the recording before Helena started to address him privately.
"We need to know what happened up there." He started. "Dr. Mathias, did you autopsy Dr. Russell's body?" No matter how professional he was trying to be, John's emotion was barely contained.
"Yes, it is routine practice when an accident occurs." Bob Mathias answered.
"Can you tell us about what you found?"
Dr. Mathias looked at his commander with astonishment. "But commander, you were there… you know… how she died"
"No I was not there when she got injured. We need to know what happened exactly." John lowered his gaze, waiting for his answer. It was without doubt a difficult moment for him.
"Dr. Russell got several patches of third degree burns on her abdomen, arms, shoulders and the side of her head. She seemed to have been exposed to severe heat and lethal radiations. Her skin cells had been killed and that is the reason why she started to discard the top layers of epidermis. She had a ten inches long tear in the abdominal wall, which appeared to have been caused by a strong energy source, and multiple internal lesions. Burn tissue extended to the internal organs as well and there was extensive bleeding. She also had broken leg and arm consistent with an impact. This is consistent with a powerful explosion. I am surprised she survived that long. She died of cardiac arrest three days after the accident"
John gathered his strength, taking a couple of deep breaths before starting. "Could these injuries be consistent with the manipulations of a strong force field and a black hole?"
"Commander, I do not know what caused this, but I can assure you it was a very powerful energy source."
Alan commented: "It is very clear that a very powerful source of energy was unleashed in that corridor, there were numerous scorched marks on the walls and definitely some kind of shock wave. It seemed it originated from inside the corridor, since no seal was broken. At the time I was very puzzled and did not understand the origin of this explosion. But we hardly had the time to investigate when we rescued Helena. It was a race against time to save her and minimize the exposure to radiations. This is, however, very consistent with what Helena said in the video."
Bob added: "Her burns, though, and the radiation damage was a lot stronger than what she would have been exposed to from the nebula only".
Victor started to pace in the office, thinking aloud.
"It seems that Helena activated that sphere, like she was told to. The force field collapsed and let the black hole out. From the damage to the structure of the corridor and the stress on the walls that Alan described, it seems that indeed a small wormhole might have opened, causing a shift in the three dimensional frame of space. It could have created enough force to project a shock wave which would have propelled her body. But why didn't it work the way Arra said?"
From the corner of the office the timid voice of Sandra, shaken by emotion, was heard. They all turned to her. "She was supposed to bring the sphere to her body and she probably placed it on the skin of her stomach by lifting her tunic" She mimicked the gesture by bringing her hands right above her waist. To lift her tunic she had to pull the fabric from under her belt. "Doing this movement would have brought the sphere along her laser. It is possible that the laser could have been triggered by the proximity of such a big gravitational disturbance created by the black hole, since those things are powerful enough to attract anything. If the wormhole had started to open against her skin, the laser's energy discharge might have caused her injury instead and with the pain she could have dropped the sphere. I might be wrong, but I do not think this was supposed to be painful for her or injure her that way, and certainly according to what you told me, it should have been an immediate death. Then in this case, the scan of her DNA would have been incomplete and she would have remained alive, but injured. The explosion of her laser with the combined energy of the sphere would have created the burn marks in the corridor as well. This is probably why it did not work." Sandra grabbed Paul's hand, as sadness was overwhelming her. Everyone remained a few moments in silence, lost in their thoughts.
John broke the silence, his voice strong. "She should have died instantly." He swallowed hard, closing his eyes for a brief moment. "But she did not. Instead, she got burned severely and died slowly and in pain from her injuries." He turned around suddenly angry and called out the empty space. "Arra… how could you let this happen? How could you let her die in pain?"
Victor put a comforting hand on his back. "Now John…Helena gave her life willingly to save all of us. It would be quite a shame, if her life was wasted in vain. It seems we now have a pretty good idea of what went wrong. The question is: what do we do now? We need to have this wormhole reactivated and the gate Arra talked about opened."
"Do you suggest sacrificing another life? Who do you chose now?" Paul asked and added: "Dr. Russell's death did not allow this to gate to open. We do not know if this will work at all. I do not think we can afford to even try again!"
John considered his comment at length and he addressed of his friends.
"Paul is right… There has been enough death as it is. We do not even know if we could try to open that gate again. We need to find another way. And we need to find it fast… we do not have a lot of time."
To be continued….