Chapter 21: Deny The Father
For two days he wandered the ducts. Once upon awaking, he opened his eyes slowly to see light in the direction of a raspy voice. He heard words echoing through the duct, "if you had to choose between your daughter- and defeating Death itself-"
He crawled slowly, inch over inch toward the grate and eventually peered over to see a white haired man wearing a long blue suit speaking into a microphone before a large computer screen.
"Is one girl's life- insignificant in the face of all human mortality?"
The face reflected by the screen was of a serious man with balding grey hair and drooping eyelids. In his hand was a glass of amber liquid.
"Can I really consider her my daughter? If there is no relation by blood? If this is the first time I've seen her- in eight years?" The old man made a sniffling sound, then a grunt. "A girl plucked from the branches of a tree. No- not my daughter." Then there was a loud crash as he pounded his desk with his fist. Then he reached into a drawer and withdrew something, scarfed it down and swallowed it with a gulp of the liquid from his small crystal tumbler.
"She's just another experiment. My most important experiment."
The man stood quickly and walked resolutely out of the office. Royce felt for the grate latch below him and eventually found it, then opened a vent cover and climbed down. He dropped into the room with a soft thud on the concrete floor.
His knees ached but he rebounded quickly to his feet. He climbed onto the chair where the old man had sat and peered into the computer screen. Beside the desk was a small brown backpack which he recognized as his own. The corner of a battered black book stuck out of it.
He turned back to the screen.
A number of video files were available. He opened one of them.
The old man's face appeared before him, speaking technical words in a cautious voice.
11-6-3727:"Subject Zorome was sacrificed at fifteen hundred hours, November first. The optogenetic therapy was administered bilaterally into the dorsal and cerebellar cortices after fixation of the head via stereotaxic station. After three days we saw evidence of expression by his nervous system and reporting signals were observed via the standard cranial transceiver. We still need data from intrinsic expression. It's the only way to know. *sound of ice clinking in a glass* We must retrieve Subject Lambda. Diana-"
Another.
6-4-3727: "Subject Zorome has demonstrated complete incorporation of the thermogenics into his bone marrow. He's beginning to produce uranyl-porphyrin variants which we call yellow blood cells. The patient complains of burning pain and we've administered sedatives to keep him comfortable. We suspect his yellow blood cells are generating excess heat at an uncontrolled rate and he is entering the early stages of lymphoma. In a last ditch effort, we will attempt to administer an experimental treatment which may allow his nervous system to interface with the yellow blood cells."
Another
3-35-3727: "Elder Hachi returned from the Cerasus excavation site today. He looked anxious, even frightened. He came, grabbed a parcel and left. All he said was something about how he was wrong. That it wasn't one plantation but half a dozen- centered around a massive crater. At the bottom of the crater he says he found something. Something- alive. That's all I got out of him. He's taking it on a direct flight to Ash Cloud. Whatever it is- it's got even the Council of Three spooked. Could he have found a living Klaxosaur? Or was it something- even more dangerous?"
Another.
1-8-3727: "Subject two oh four through six six five were non-viable. The modifications to the hemoglobin complex were too extensive and directed evolution failed to reach convergence on a viable sequence which satisfied the radiative forcing function. Radiation dosage was reduced and subjects six six seven through one oh two six were also non-viable. Subject six six six, which I will refer to as subject Zorome displayed promising results. We will retain for further study."
Another video.
1-1-3727: "Using ultra low frequency transmitters we believe we've cracked the code to directing the self-assembly of radiotrophic organisms, which we refer to as R.T's. We instructed a small sample of two kilograms of RT matter to form into a solid cube. The orange-hot microscopic organisms spontaneously re-oriented their magnetic fields in a way previously thought impossible. They magnetically form themselves into the desired structure along with a network of branching blood-vessel like coolant channels containing differentiated cellular units. We observed a transition to a blue copper-phthalocyanine complex which re-emitted with a blue fluorescence."
Another.
11-6-3726: "We've completed the analysis on the shell of the organisms obtained from ultra-deep borehole five. It appears to consist of a bio-gel nanostructure which insulates its core nucleus from the extreme pressure and heat. We were able to isolate and sequence the DNA and discovered the protein sequence for the porphyrin which sequesters uranium oxide from the molten magma and holds it inside the cells. Based on the similarity of the mantle organisms to extremophyles found on other oceanic vents we suspect that these creatures may be the common ancestor to both archea and bacteria. Their magnetic ordering is also remarkable. They can coalesce and change their field orientation as a group. It appears they could be the origin of Earth's magnetic field. If true, we may have uncovered the origin of both life and the magnetic field are one and the same- both hiding beneath our noses this entire time."
Another.
6-1-3720: "We've excavated a sample of intact ooze from deep core drilling site Omicron six near the Serilonan abyssal. Our submarine managed to sneak in under the buoys and we set up the rig.
"What we found defies explanation. Microscopic structures which resemble oceanic diatoms made from material phases we've never seen in nature. The same silicon carbide structures we saw in TDE-146. But unlike the dead husks, these organisms appear to be alive, and their heat flux defies current metabolic theory. We are left with only one conclusion.
"Men once suspected that the heat of lava came from the Earth's burning core. In the pre-Plantation era, we suspected that the heat came from radioisotopes decaying in the mantle. In the Plantation era, we know of only the myths and legends of great shape-shifting beasts that came from below the crust. But now we can explain it all. An entirely new class of organism exists in the magma, a vast ecosystem living in the molten rock. As rich and diverse as in our own oceans.
"We suspect that these organisms generate their energy- not from light or chemical reactions but from nuclear decay.
"It is still unknown what allows these miraculous organisms to survive such conditions. The radiation, heat and pressure should be deadly to all organic life. But perhaps we can learn something from these creatures. Their resistance to radiation is unbelievable. If we could somehow incorporate this property- I'm getting ahead of myself now. We must go deeper."
Another.
5-21-3720: "The specimen TDE-146 is unlike anything we've seen before. Our benefactor hinted at its importance, but the mysteries of this microscopic organism go far deeper than anything we could have imagined. A microscopic network of silicon carbide cylinders which resembles ordinary diatoms. Hard to believe something like this came from the newly excavated ruins of a Plantation, code named Cerasus. They said it was the archeological find of the century but this is- unbelievable. Could this be part of one of the beasts the legends tell of? A real Klaxosaur tissue sample? Perhaps there is some credence to these legends, and if so, there's only one direction to look for more answers."
Another.
8-12-3717: "The Khanian military Air Research division finally gave us a lab to investigate data from a Plantation-era machine. We've been working hard at analyzing and interfacing with it. It appears to be a sort of transceiver but it doesn't respond to any known frequency of electromagnetic energy. That is, until we hooked it up to an EEG.
"I volunteered to do it myself. I- The things it told me were- beyond explanation. It told me how to achieve immortality and limitless energy. How to build living machines the size of skyscrapers. How to interface myself with these machines. What the plantations looked like. How the people lived. How the children fought. The monsters from below. I can't- I mustn't. It could just be a work of ancient fiction. Like the Plantation-era version of a soap opera. But the possibilities are - extraordinary.
"Elder Hachi has assigned me to oversee Experiment Lambda. The discovery of trace fragments of human DNA retrieved from inside the Nimbus Tree. As for how remnants of human DNA wound up inside a tree- that's another matter entirely. To think that we now have the technology to extract this sample and clone whatever originated it- I'm surprised Hachi approved the experiment. There are still so many questions about the sequence. Many things that defy explanation.
"My wife is the ideal surrogate. I trust her loyalty to Khania. She's been an invaluable asset, helping me acquire the tree samples and helping us set up a covert research lab with her father's shell company inside the Serilona city-state-
"We must find out more about these Plantations. I will submit a proposal for their excavation. We must go deeper. The answers are buried there, somewhere, I know it."
Royce reached the last file. He understood few of the words but he gathered from old man's tone an undercurrent of importance as he watched the man's face age in reverse over the last ten years of recordings.
He heard a light click from the door a man wearing a black trench coat stood in the doorway. Behind him was a black metal hallway with cables running along the ground. He pulled out a pistol.
"What are you doing in here. Get on your knees!" the man shouted.
"Wait, no! I was just."
"Shut up!" The man shouted. Royce did as he was told. He felt his heart beating, pounding in his ears now as the man approached his head with the weapon. "You little bastard! I don't care how much the chief scientist wants you alive, you know too much."
He saw the man squeeze the trigger and reacted instinctively, slapping the gun with his hand.
A dull silence followed. He then noticed a high pitched ringing in his ears. The man missed. A bullet hole smoked in the back of the sparking computer monitor.
He pushed the soldier and he stumbled.
Before the man could reorient, he was already out the door.
Down the delirious black hallway, not knowing which way to go or where he was. A number of doorways stood open, oozing orange light.
He peered inside one of them and saw a room bathed in orange light. An empty cylindrical tank just large enough for a person, glowed orange as tubes converged on it like an octopus' tentacles to its prey.
He scurried down the hall, peering into each room, each with the same eerie orange glow. Some tanks contained what looked like mushrooms the size of humans. Others: miniature tree-like creatures, boar-like animals with red-streaked eyes, blobs of fleshy-colored ooze with blue veins pulsing. Until one tank he noticed a girl floating inside.
A girl that looked like Diana.
He noticed the girl had no breathing mask. Her eyes were closed and her long hair floated around the tank obscuring her face and body features. A spider's web coated the bough-like black tubes inside the primordial tank. The dark reticulated hoses pulsated as fluid was pumped through them.
He's not your friend, he's just a stupid boy, he doesn't understand anything. He remembered the words of the girl's mother. A conversation that felt like the distant past now.
He closed the door gently behind him and walked closer to the tank, carefully stepping over large root-like cables and pipes that covered the ground and oozed fluid between them like some kind of artificial swamp. He touched the tank and saw the girl open her eyes.
He instantly developed a headache and clutched his temples, but the pain subsided almost as quickly as it came. He peered up at her. There was a pained expression on her face. The glass was foggy but he recognized her.
Little rings of condensation formed around his fingers on the cold tank and he saw the girl place her hand on the outline of his own from the other side.
An expression of panic formed on her face as she realized her situation. She began to pound on the tank with both hands. Her movements were slow and labored, like she was caught in a time-warp.
"Just hang on! I'll get you out of there!"