Odyssey Rising (7 page)

Defiant meant two things to Theo. First, it was the name of a shuttle that had gone rogue from the Furman Corporation fleet of seven deep space shuttles. Defiant was also the feeling Theo felt after he found out about his infection. This will stuck in Theo’s mind. He would not go to the Escape Pod like some animal, like some rabbit in a cage.

To ease his tension, Theo jumped on his virt-simulator. He programmed it for the eastern edge of Monkey Face in the center of Oregon. It was an otherworldly formation of rocks and it came at Theo in full color and spun with three dimensions around him. The latest in holographic exertainment was radical and virtually real.

As he started to virt-climb, he felt 100% healthy. He felt fit and athletic. The Yin-Yang Twins couldn’t be a threat. His father, of course, was a genius but still Theo thought he was over-reacting.

About an hour later, dripping with sweat from every pore and after repeated messages from his father and the chief security officer Larson Jensen, Theo heard a rumble outside his door. He had locked it earlier. He was sure of that.

But quickly his door swung open by force. Someone had overridden his lock.

Four men in yellow hazmat suits came to get him. It was Jensen, definitely Larson Jensen. He was part of the security team. The others looked to be Griffin, Havasuli and Rickards.

All four guys in yellow barreled in, overriding Theo’s lock. They looked like old-fashioned moon astronauts bathed in yellow plastic.

“Come with us,” Larson Jensen requested.

“Not today, Larson.”

“Captain’s orders.”

“I’m going back to the Ark with the rest of you,” Theo said.

“Not going to happen,” Larson Jensen said as he aimed a syringe into Theo’s side. “This is for our survival. It will calm you.”

“I am calm,” Theo said.

“You can be calmer. Trust me.”

Instinctively, Theo tried to swipe the syringe out of Larson’s gloved hand but it was a futile attempt since one of the other yellow suited guys chopped into Theo’s hand before he was able to make contact with Larson.

The shot wasn’t deadly, only for his safety and theirs. The syringe shot knifed through his skin and Theo felt a sharp prick.

Theo flailed. His arms swung into a wild windmill.

“You bastards.”

“For the greater good, Theo. For the greater good.”

Within a minute or so Theo’s body felt weak and his eyes were heavy. By his side there were two men in yellow hazmat suits and they pushed and guided him down a narrow gray hallway.

“Walk with us, Theo. This is for your survival,” one of the yellow men said.

“Liar,” Theo shouted.

“It’s going to be okay.”

The blood pounded in his head. His fingers were numb. His toes were lifeless. It was his whole body. With each forced step his eyes darted to either side. He took confused steps. The tranquilizer shot gained full control of his muscles and his reflexes. His eyes began to droop and his head began to spin and spin and spin.

They’ve shot me like some animal ready for slaughter, Theo thought briefly as he tried to regain his strength. It was already too late.

Theo’s long legs slogged to jelly and gave way for just a step. Beside him, the men in the yellow hazmat suits held his body up. The pinkish color was already draining from his cheeks and his breath became labored.

Theo’s father – his brilliant father – had forced him to come up here to the stars and now – now with two yellow men pulling his along like a little child, like an animal – he felt forced – to what? To die? To struggle? To kick and scream? For what? For progress? For the greater good? For exploration? All because of some tiny, alien parasite that no one could see?

At the end of the gray hallway a white door opened automatically.

“Get in the Escape Pod,” one of the yellow men said to Theo.

“No way!”

“You have to go,” the yellow man said.

“I have to go home,” Theo said. “I have to go to the Ark.”

“First, we have to make sure everything is okay,” the yellow men responded.

Before proceeding through the white door Theo’s arms flailed again in a windmill and he broke free from the yellow grip of the security team.

His consciousness felt apart from his physical body. Where was he? Why was he? How would this end? When would he get back to the Ark?

Theo ran back down the hallway. His head was light. His eyes were blurry and sleepy and the walls appeared to cave in around him. His head now was spinning and he kept running but at the end of the hallway there were two more people in yellow.

Theo had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

When he stumbled and tripped to the floor, eyes a blur and muscles weak, his hand reached out to the hallway wall and he slumped like a sleepy bear beginning hibernation for the winter. There was no justice, no meaning to these moments and like his anonymous text-messaging adversary had said:
Just remember, brainwashed lackey monkey butts, no one ever said life was fair.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]; [email protected]

Dear Theo and Ravi,

This is the hardest message I’ve ever had to write. Please read it all before you guys start hating me.

On Earth, the human race has encountered countless microbes of differing levels of virulence and rates of adaptation. Many of them have been around for millions if not billions of years and our bodies have grown accustomed to their presence. Our immune system has had time to get acclimated to the effects of each of them. Human defenses need time to adjust and microbes need time to adapt. Co-dependency might take dozens of generations.

Unfortunately, it appears that we don’t have the luxury of time. We call them the Yin-Yang Twins.

The problem: we have witnessed the Yin-Yang Twins in your blood and in your bodies. Worst of all, your bodies have not produced an antibody. This is not a virus, nor a bacteria. The best I can detail, I’d call them microscopic bugs of parasitic intent. And sadly, they’re hungry little buggers. Once they’re inside you, we don’t know how they can be killed. They’re multiplying. Quickly. They like our nutrients. Our skin. Our organs. They eat our salt. Drink our water. Without us they die. With them we might. We die. They die. We live. They live. We don’t know how to kill them yet, without killing the host body. It’s always a catch-22 with a parasitic infection.

It appears that this Yin-Yang parasite is something like a cancer. Once its introduced, we may not be able to get rid of all of them. The most analogous microbiotic invader we have found in our database is the parasite trypanosome brucei. Nasty, nasty little buggers from the sub-Saharan region in Africa.

Unfortunately, this similarity is not going to help us. Traditional medicine cures such as antibiotics and chemotherapeutics have had no impact. Even low level radiation has not killed them or even slowed their growth. Nothing in biology is an accident. Nothing lacks purpose. All the evidence supports the proposition that the universe is especially designed whole – with life and humankind as its fundamental goal – its sole purpose. If this is not so, then now at last we have another living organism that will enrich our very understanding of life.

Many have often theorized that the laws of God are the laws of nature but now we have to wonder if the laws we know to be true are only half of the rulebook. We have determined that you can cut this organism out of the host, but if even one cell is leftover, it will re-grow into the entire parasite again. We have tested chemical therapeutics. Antibiotics. Kill all but one and you get complete re-growth into the complete complex organism that attacks our bodies.

Our immune system has been building up resistance to thousands if not millions of microorganism for millions of years. The introduction of a new microbe, whether it is virus or bacterial or something else, often takes months, years and sometimes even generations for acceptance and adaptation to resolve itself.

The rate of infection forecasts out to six to ten days. That’s what the forecast model calculates critical complications may arise.

By day three, we predict they’ll be multiplying at an incredible rate. And by day five, they’ll be eating your organs. By day eight, there will be blood in your urine.

By day nine you won’t be able to think straight. By day ten you’ll be so dehydrated that you’ll want to be dead and just might be. You wanted the mathematical forecast model, well, there it is. Six to ten days.

The parasite is like a thief donning a disguise. Every time the host’s immune cells get close to destroying the parasite, it escapes detection by rearranging into something else. The parasite’s survival strategy hinges upon its ability to change its surface coat into some other amino-methane acid. The immune system never gains the upper hand.

On Earth, great scientific minds, have studied a similar parasite, something found in sub-Saharan Africa. Death sometimes comes without warning, brought by wild animals, droughts, or wars. But often it’s more subtle, floating from person to person as an almost unstoppable parasite.

The parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, exists almost exclusively in Africa’s sub-Saharan region. It moves between humans by way of the tsetse fly’s bite, entering the host’s bloodstream, often causing confusion, tiredness, insomnia, blindness and eventually death.

The Yin-Yang Twins are similar but not exactly the closest of kindred microbiological spirits. They share an ability to hide from our bodies most important defenders, what we call our antibodies.

Our immune system hunts and kills invading parasites like T. brucei using B-lymphocytes, which detect pathogens and produce custom antibodies to attack them. B-cells determine what type of antibodies to fight an invader with based in part on the structure of the proteins on the surface of the invading cells. But since the T. brucei parasite responsible for African sleeping sickness has evolved to hide from antibodies by constantly rearranging its surface proteins. The immune system then has to produce new antibodies to attack the parasitic cells. And by the time these new antibodies are produced, the parasite has again changed its disguise. It’s a back-and-forth battle of one-upsmanship that the immune system never wins.

But remember: all things have an enemy close by, lying in wait. Biology is a constant battle. That is the answer. There has to be a cure down there, down on GidX7. The recommendation of the Medical Committee is a necessary, though acceptable risk. We must get you away from Odyssey, therefore we’re sending you down to GidX7 and we must do it now. It’s the only chance we have before this thing spreads any further. It is our only hope.

But my sons, you will not die like some rabbits. I will not let you. Human defenses are stronger than rabbits. There is no guarantee that you’ll get sick. I convinced the Executive Committee to give you the best chance to survive.

The possibility of life depends upon chemical elements and a source of energy. By their very existence on the bones, the Yin-Yang Twins have proven they can live down on Gidx7. The best place to find a virus that infects the Yin-Yang Twins is to find the place with the original host. That’s GidX7. Down there, you have a chance.

Once we find the original host, then we can find the cure. While we have no distinct and accurate image of what the original host looks like, we do know where to look for it.

As you know, if we find a creature that has lived in co-dependency with the Yin-Yang Twins then they would have built up a biological immunity that we can borrow, if biology is even a term that applies to life on GidX7. It’s a shot in the golden dustbowl darkness. But perhaps it’s the only shot we have.

I hope you understand. Think of those little buggers as a cancer or a vine that has grabbed hold of your blood and your organs. It’s eating you up cell by cell. What we need is something that eats them, but not you.

This is a weird biological puzzle. It’s time we went and got all the pieces. To stay up here has always been a huge leap of faith. That faith has been placed in the rigorous predictability of mathematics and the resolve and entrepreneurship of our kind. While not everything can be proven with certainty, know that we in the scientific and medical community will not rest until a cure has been produced.

You wanted the truth. There it is. Even though the situation is a confusing, sudden and deadly one, I have complete faith and confidence in your abilities to stay strong and to survive. While this is the truth, your fate and the fate of Ravi, Sam, Ellie and Harry Wolf is not a
fait accompli
. Together, we’re going to beat these little buggers. I know it with all of my heart and all of my soul.

God speed,

Dad

ENTRY COMPLETE.

Theo woke about an hour after being tranquilized. He was resting on the cool white floor of the Escape Pod. It was attached to Odyssey. A black sweater over his khaki jumpsuit kept him warm. In all of his seventeen and a half years, he had never imagined, nor ever been in this crazy situation.

The sound of the Escape Pod’s innards revolving, twisting and tumbling through space sent a rumble through Theo’s empty stomach. He was numb and confused and moving. His mind reeled with the memory of the fear he had heard in his father’s voice.

The Escape Pod was six sided and the walls were a shade of metallic gray. Along the two longest sides of the Escape Pod there were a total of eight folding seats built into the wall. All other real estate along the walls was filled with a series of control panels and computer screens. The Escape Pod had an upper loft with sound proof, private sleeping bunks for eight.

Theo’s eyes were blurry from sleep. They darted left and right and he did a quick count. There were four others with him in the Escape Pod.

The only other girl in the group was Ellie. She sat with her eyes closed, back against the wall and legs crossed. She was trying to meditate.

The other humans with Theo in the Escape Pod were Ravi and Sam Suzuki. The last citizen of the Escape Pod was not human rather he was the canine named Harry Wolf who sat proudly on his hind legs at attention in front of the closed Pod door.

As Theo stood up from his place on the white floor, he was groggy. He stretched out his body, making a deep back bend on his way up.

“Theo? Hey there,” Ravi said. “You okay?”

“What’s going on?” Theo asked.

“Quarantine,” Ellie said.

With a sudden jerk to Odyssey’s rotation, the group was thrown off balance. Theo’s knees were especially weak and a little wobbly. His head throbbed and spun. It wasn’t only his head that was spinning; it was the entire Pod.

Theo asked, “How long was I asleep?”

“About an hour,” Ravi answered as he went to the corner of the Escape Pod. He stammered as he paced, “This is bad. This is really, really bad. This is not good. Right? This is not good.”

“It’s okay. We’re not even sick,” Theo said.

“That’s not how they’re treating us,” Ellie said.

“This is all just a precaution, a very conservative, knee-jerk precaution,” Theo said.

“It’s the protocol,” Ellie added.

“I hate this protocol. It totally means we’re in a ridiculously bad situation,” Ravi said.

“It’ll be okay,” Theo said.

“You have no idea,” Ravi said.

“Hate to say this, but I agree with the little mutant,” Sam said.

“Come on, guys, everything is going to be okay,” Theo said.

“You haven’t seen the latest with the rabbits,” Ravi added.

“What about them?”

“While you were sleeping,” Ravi said, “they went kind of went crazy.”

“Mutant, that is the under-statement of the century,“ Sam added.

On the Communication Device, Sam scrolled through some messages and then he brought up a video stream.

On the tiny screen there was a video of the two rabbits. They were brown and gray, cute and cuddly. They were in the same silver cage. The grayer of the rabbits was the female one. The other one had a browner coat of fur and he was not well. He foamed at the mouth. Each rabbit’s eyes were bloodshot. Twitches rippled through their small, soft bodies. While the brown one ran around in a tight circle trying to bite its white snowball of a tail, the gray one scratched at his own body as if he wanted his fur and his skin to come off his body. His claws were like weapons. With foam spewing out the brown rabbit’s mouth, he threw himself into the bars of the silver cage repeatedly pummeling his body six, seven, eight times before the little rabbit fell in an exhausted heap and a thin line, just a trickle of blood seeped out of a burst vein in one of the rabbit’s ears and then the image went black.

“This is not good,” Ravi stated. “Right? It’s really not good. We’re going to be like the rabbits, sick, deranged, violent, bloody running down our faces.”

“We’re not rabbits,” Theo said, “we’re able to overcome something like this.”

“Like this? Are you kidding?” Sam asked with a mixture of anger and fear. “We don’t know what’s really inside us!”

“It’s actually not at all surprising,” Ravi said. “Invisible microbes of the Earth can be just as much a threat to humankind’s well being as the largest and most ferocious of predators.”

“Don’t give us some doomsday scenario from wikipedia,” Theo said.

“Then I’ll give you facts,” Ravi said. “The human race has almost been decimated by the Great Influenza of 1918. The Black Death. Lepers. AIDS. Swine flu. Flesh eating SSR. Yellow Fever. Malaria. Should I go on?”

“No,” Theo said firmly.

“But in space, especially in places like the Ark and on Odyssey, such doomsday scenarios are of an even higher concern,” Ravi added. “Adaptation to a new virus or microbe can take decades. It’s called natural selection and sometimes the smallest of invaders can fell the largest of foes.”

“Come on, everyone, we are much stronger than these microbiotic invaders,” Theo said. “We have to be.”

“Are we? Really? Are you so sure?” Ravi asked.

“We don’t even know if they are a virus or something else,” Ellie added.

“Maybe, but even an average student of history knows that when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World after Columbus, it wasn’t their advanced weaponry or technological brilliance which destroyed the native people.”

“Oh really, then what was it?”

“It was the unseen pestilence and disease from the Old World. We don’t want the same to happen with Odyssey or the Ark or even us, do we?”

“Don’t try to freak us out,” Theo said. “It’s all under control. We’re already in a quarantine.”

Sam went to the viewing window, looked out and said, “We’re just fools for thinking we can tame the beast.”

Outside, in the infinite void, there was a blackness that went on forever. Sam looked at the closest asteroid belt, which was only about three hundred thousand light years away and had a green glow to it. It looked like a much longer, wider and brighter Orion’s belt and the chief astronomer back at the Ark, a pudgy and balding old man named Mr. Arthur nicknamed the belt “Shrek.”

There was another wrenching rumble beneath the floor of the Escape Pod and a shake and shimmer that sent them all off balance once again. They were now united in grief and anger and disbelief and then they all heard another rumble and then a very loud pop.

“What’s that sound?” Sam asked.

“We’re separating from the shuttle,” Ravi answered.

“But why?” Sam asked.

“That appears to be part of the plan,” Ravi said. “Is it? Is that the plan? Is that the protocol?”

Sam snapped back, “There’s no plan.”

“Yes, there is,” Ravi said with a look to Theo. “There has to be a plan, right?”

“We were all dragged in here, totally knocked out like we’re some pieces of meat. There isn’t a plan,” Sam said.

“There is a plan,” Theo finally answered.

“What?”

“Containment. Separation. Exploration,” Theo said.

“And then?”

“We’re going to find a cure,” Theo said.

“Where?”

“GidX7,” Theo answered.

Ravi said, “I can’t believe this is happening. They’re really doing this. We’ve separated.”

The four, even the dog, were all eager from a pure technical wonder of it all to see the separation occur. It was the first time the Escape Pod had ever separated from Odyssey. From this point of view, the group saw just how beautiful Odyssey really was, such an elegant intersection of modules and solar panels. Self sufficient and free, a silver and white and silver cross against a black backdrop of zero gravity.

Theo received a voice-to-voice message on his handheld computer device.

“Put me on speaker,” Doctor Starling requested. “Are you guys okay?”

“Sure, I love getting drugged and thrown into the Escape Pod against my will,” Theo answered.

“I realize this is all happening so quickly,” Doctor Starling said, “We’re not operating on our timetable.”

“Then whose?”

“What we call the Yin-Yang Twins,” Doctor Starling added.

“You mean the alien microbes?” Theo asked.

“Yes,” Doctor Starling answered.

“Are we going to end up like the rabbits?” Ravi asked.

“I don’t know,” Doctor Starling answered.

“But the forecast model,” Ravi said.

“Models are just a forecast prediction,” Doctor Starling said.

“So, it might be wrong?”

“Yes, there’s always a margin of error,” Doctor Starling said. “But everything in biology has a geometry and a reason. A cause. An effect. Everything can be understood. If we search and examine and ask the right questions, then we can find a rational explanation for everything. Observe. Ask. Answer.”

“You can’t just abandon us,” Ravi said with a plea to his voice.

“I’m not,” Doctor Starling said.

“You are,” Ravi shot back.

“No, Ravi, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in nine days or less.”

“You promise?” Ravi asked holding back a tear.

“Yes,” Doctor Starling quickly answered, “I promise. You are all prepared for this. Do you know that?”

“Prepared for what?”

“We’re giving you the best chance to find the cure, the best chance to survive. They had to think about saving the majority. You hear me? We’re giving you every chance to survive, so please don’t be angry.”

Theo was more than angry. He was alive, frenzied and ready to cause a riot but unfortunately he was trapped like an animal.

“And we’re just supposed to wait?”

“If you need to kill a microbe, even an alien one, then you go find a lot of them in their natural habitat. Where do they thrive? Where do they exist? They exist down on that planet, on bones of a formerly alive creature. Microbes, especially this nasty little bugger, is almost like getting cancer. It is near impossible to get rid of. But don’t worry. All living things – at least on Earth – have an enemy close by, lying in wait. Biology is a constant battle.”

“Like between yin and yang,” Theo said.

“Exactly. We just have to find this little buggers enemy,” Doctor Starling said.

“Sounds easy,” Ravi said somewhat hopefully.

“Oh sure,” Sam said with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “I bet it’s like finding a grain of sand dropped into Death Valley.”

“Have faith in me. Do you hear? Have faith in yourselves,” Doctor Starling pleaded. “I am sorry that we must fight a war we do not want to fight. But we must. I’ll stay in constant contact.”

“And what do we do until then?”

“You’re going down to GidX7 where the first imperative is to explore the

Discovery Site.”

“And then what?”

“Life is a complex set of relationships with water. Listen to me,” Doctor Starling pleaded.

“You want us to find more bones and water?”

“Yes, I will send instructions once you get down there,” Doctor Starling said.

“And if we happen to find some living creature?”

“Even better,” Doctor Starling said matter of factly. “But now we don’t have much time. Flight protocols have been programmed. The main shuttle is heading back to the Ark for re-fueling. We’re not leaving you down there. I’ll be in constant contact and I will help you in any possible way. By the grace of God, you have the privilege to go down to GidX7, a place where no person has walked before. Use caution down there, but realize your journey to the surface is truly the chance of a lifetime. God speed. Now it’s time to take your seats and harness in. Your flight plan is ready to begin. God speed to you all, god speed and I will be in touch after you land. I love you boys so very much.”

Before Theo or Ravi had a chance to respond, there was a cold and mechanical voice that interrupted their father. It was the flight command protocol barking, “Buckle in to a seat. Please. The countdown will begin starting now…”

“We don’t have anymore time. I’m sorry,” Doctor Starling said.

“But Dad,” Ravi pleaded, “are we going to be okay?”

“Yes, I know you are. I love you guys. You hear? I love you so much,” Doctor Starling said as his voice cracked in anguish. He was so close to crying. “Now god speed, god speed boys.”

“…ten…nine…”

The countdown had begun and it was already too late to stop the wheels of fate that spun with each passing number.