The Atlantis Plague (51 page)

David held his hand up. “Okay, you got me. I give. I have no idea what a quantum entity is.”

“Are you familiar with quantum entanglement?”

“Uh, no.”

“Very well. Let me just say that we discovered that all humans are linked through the quantum entity. Some members of our society with an especially strong connection can even use the link to communicate over distances.”

David’s mind flashed to the dreams he’d shared with Kate.

“You find this hard to believe, Mr. Vale?”

“No. Actually, I do believe it. Go on.”

“We call this quantum entity that links all humans the Origin Entity. Investigating its creation, our creation, is our great work. We call it ‘The Origin Mystery.’ We believe the Origin Entity exerts influence over the entire universe, that it is both the origin point and the final destination for human consciousness.”

Milo nodded. “This is the creation story you gave us.”

“Yes,” Janus said. “Your minds had advanced so far, so quickly. You craved answers, in particular about your existence. We gave you the only answers we had, though we modified them so that you might understand them. And we gave you our code—a moral blueprint: practices that we have found bring us closer to the Origin Entity, practices we have found enhance the link, tying humans closer to each other and the harmony the Origin Entity offers. We also emphasized that every human life is valuable; every human is connected to the Origin Entity and could reveal more about the mystery.” Janus paused. “Much of our message has been lost over the ages, however.”

“Some still believe,” Milo said.

“Yes, clearly. Ultimately, our mission here has failed, but it began with such promise. In all the years of our investigations of the Origin Mystery, we had never seen a species like yours. We monitor all the human worlds. As a historian, you will appreciate this, Mr. Vale. On this planet, a relatively minor geological event three and a half million years ago caused a cataclysm that directly led to the emergence of humanity. Three and a half million years ago, the collision of two tectonic plates elevated the seafloor of what is now the western Caribbean, forming the Isthmus of Panama. For the first time, the Atlantic and Pacific were separated, preventing the large-scale mixing of their waters. This set off a chain reaction that led to an ice age on this planet, which it’s still in. In West Africa, the jungles began to shrink. A number of species of higher-order primates lived in the trees there during this period. In the following years, savannas gradually replaced the lush jungles, driving those primates down from the trees and onto the grasslands. The sources of their vegetarian diet were largely gone. Many perished, but a small group took another path: they adapted. They ventured out onto the vast plains and began hunting new sources of food. For the first time, they ate meat, and it changed their brains. So did hunting. These primates, these prehistoric survivalists, grew smarter than any primates before them. They eventually made primitive stone tools and hunted in packs. This pattern—of climate disruption, of near-extinction in a rapidly changing environment, and then rebound, of adapting—would come to be the hallmark pattern that repeats itself over and over again during your species’ march to its current state. We came here to study you when you were still in your infancy, hoping a species with such a meteoric rise, evolutionarily speaking, could reveal something new about the Origin Mystery.

“We followed all of our usual precautions. We deployed a Beacon that followed the planet’s orbit.”

“A beacon?”

“A shroud—to keep anyone from seeing your development and to keep you from seeing any other human worlds. What you call the Fermi Paradox—the fact that human worlds must be abundant, yet you have found none—is actually a result of the Beacon. It filters the light you can see, and the light your world emits to anyone outside the shroud. We also followed all the other procedures. We buried our ship—”

“In Antarctica?” David asked.

“No. That’s a different ship. I’ll explain momentarily. We typically hide our deep-space vessel in a local asteroid belt or, in this case, a moon—for added security, just in case a probe gets by the Beacon. The universe is a dangerous place, and we have no desire to call attention to our subjects or ourselves. We deployed our lander to the surface and remained here. Our routine remained the same after that, just as it was on other planets: we collected samples, analyzed our results, and hibernated, awakening only at regular intervals to repeat our process. However, one hundred thousand years ago, we were awakened early by a distress call. Our home world was under attack. Another message followed shortly after. Our world had fallen in a day and a night to an enemy of unimaginable strength. We were instructed to remain on a shrouded world for our own safety. We believed that our enemy would hunt any remaining Atlanteans to the end of the universe. Our fear was that the Armageddon would extend to all humans, across all human worlds. The next event you know well. Seventy thousand years ago, a supervolcano in present-day Indonesia erupted, spewing ash into the sky and causing a volcanic winter that brought your species to the brink of extinction. The population alarms awoke my partner and me from hibernation. It was our greatest fear. We thought that we could be the last of our species: two scientists who could never go home. And we were watching what could be the extinction of some of the last humans our enemy had not yet found. So my partner made a fateful decision.”

“To give us the Atlantis Gene.”

“Yes. She did it without my knowledge or consent. She claimed it was an experiment, to provide you with the survival gene, to see how you would fare. It was already done, and I went along.

“Approximately twenty thousand years after she administered the Atlantis Gene, another vessel from our world arrived. It landed in Antarctica, where it has remained under the ice since. The vessel contains the last of our people.”

“What is it?”

“A tomb—you were right about that. But it is much more. It is a resurrection ship. On our world, every person is allowed a life of a hundred years. There are exceptions, such as for deep-space explorers such as myself. We have mastered medical science, but accidents happen. In those events, our citizens resurrect in these vessels.”

“That’s what they are?” David asked. “Dead Atlanteans?”

“Yes. Massacred when our home world was attacked. All except for one. Occasionally, our people vote to have a citizen to be archived. Someone of great achievement. It is a cultural honor. The person archived in that vessel was General Ares. He is a relic of our past, something we have moved on from. He was saved as a reminder. He is our most famous soldier. During the attack, somehow he got the ship off our home world. He brought it here.”

“The others in the vessel in Antarctica… they can’t wake up? Exit the tubes?”

“They can. However, we are now a non-violent species. The attack on our world, the brutality, the carnage… the tubes can only heal physical wounds. The people in Antarctica can awaken, but they retain their memories, down to the last agonizing second they died. It would be too cruel to awaken them. Their minds are wired a bit differently from yours. Psychologically, the trauma they endured is too great. They cannot escape the memories of what happened to them. They exist in a constant state of purgatory, unable to die permanently, unable to rise again.”

David wouldn’t have believed it, but he had experienced it—death and resurrection in the tube. Dorian had shot and killed him; and he had awoken, in a new body, an exact replica. “That’s what happened to me, how I awoke in the tube after Dorian killed me. It was just like the people from your home world.”

“Yes.”

“How does it work? Resurrection?”

“The science is rather complex—”

“Dumb it down for me. I want to understand.” David glanced at the cube, which still wasn’t quite out of sight. “We have time.”

“Very well. The piece of genetic technology you call the Atlantis Gene actually performs several functions. The most relevant, in this instance, is organizing radiation from the body into a data stream. Every human body emits radiation. The Atlantis Gene turns those isotopes into a cellular blueprint, a download of your body, including the cells in your brain, which contain your memories, up to the second you died.”

“The second time Dorian killed me, I awoke in the Gibraltar ship. How?”

“That is where our stories intersect, Mr. Vale. When the resurrection ship arrived, forty thousand years ago, we had already given humans the Atlantis Gene. Ares was keenly interested. He saw in humans an opportunity, a chance to build a new army, to fight back against our enemy. He insisted that the Atlantis Gene put you in danger, made you a target for our adversary. He convinced my partner. She colluded with him behind my back, modifying the therapy, looking for a way to increase your survival abilities. I observed the changes and was suspicious. I knew your species was advancing far too rapidly, but of course we had never tampered with another species in this way. I didn’t know what to expect. And I never imagined she had betrayed me. But I know why she did it: guilt, for something she did on our home world, an act that led to our demise.”

“What—”

“That is a story for another time. Here on Earth, Ares had what he needed: the final gene therapy to create his army. He tried to destroy the lander, and us with it—that was what happened off the coast of Gibraltar. The ship was split into pieces. We assumed his next move would be to commandeer our space vessel. He needs it to transport his army. I locked it down, preventing anyone from either the lander or Antarctica from reaching it. I also set a series of alarms and countermeasures. But our lander off the coast of Gibraltar was coming apart quickly. My partner was knocked out. I picked her up and carried her to the only place I could go.”

“Antarctica.”

“Yes. And Ares was waiting on me. He shot and killed her. Of course he had disabled resurrection for both of us in Antarctica. That was his plan. He shot me too, in the chest, but I stumbled back through the portal. I emerged in a different part of the lander in Gibraltar.”

David’s mind raced. Yes. In the room where he had resurrected the second time, there was a damaged suit. “The suit on the floor.”

Janus nodded. “It was mine. When I escaped to that section, my first move was to seal the lander off from Antarctica, to protect myself. Then I managed to reach the tube—one of the ones you resurrected in. After I was healed, I took stock. My situation was dire. The shard of the ship I found myself in was now deep underwater and far away from the coast. If I exited, I would drown long before I reached the surface, and I had no way to replicate anything with an oxygen tank.” He glanced at David. “The Immari colonel’s uniform I replicated for you was much more simple.”

“How did you—”

“I will come to it,” Janus said, holding his hand up. “I was trapped. And alone. My partner was dead, and to my surprise, my thoughts went first to her. Resurrection is a closely regulated technology. A death sequence, sent via the radiation from the Atlantis Gene, is impossible to fake, as it must be: imagine the implications of waking to find you have a double. I tried at first to force her resurrection, to trick the system into thinking she had died. The true death sequence had been sent to the ship in Antarctica, and Ares had deleted it. My entire strategy was to fake her death to the computer in my section and have her resurrect in the part of the ship closest to the shore—so that she could escape and, hopefully, stop Ares. I tried everything. I failed. However, thirteen thousand years later, I succeeded, in a way. In 1918, Patrick Pierce placed his dying wife in the tube, and Kate inside her. The computer must have executed the resurrection sequence then; but the child did not mature as a normal resurrection fetus would—it was confined by the mother’s body. Yet once removed from the mother, the child, Kate, began to grow—and, it seems that now, her memories have returned. Those memories from my partner have lain dormant in Kate’s mind all this time. Remarkable.”

“But how does Dorian have Ares’s memories?”

Janus shook his head. “As I said, I was desperate. I tried everything. I must have authorized
any
resurrection. Ares had joined our expedition and we had his radiation signature and memories. But… the memories would have ended thousands of—”

“Dorian also died twice in Antarctica, if the reports are true. Ares could have filled in the blanks.”

“Yes… that is possible. Ares could have easily added additional memories, even shown them to Dorian during his resurrection there. As for Kate, the memories, in the recesses of her mind, they would have exerted some influence, steered her decisions, like subconscious cues.” He paced away from David. “She became a geneticist, intent on studying abnormalities in brain wiring. Subconsciously, she was grasping for a way to stabilize the Atlantis Gene and complete her work. It is quite a story.” Janus was deep in thought, seemingly somewhere else.

“So… what happened to you?” David asked, for lack of anything else to say.

“Nothing. For thirteen thousand years, nothing happened to me. I thought my attempts at escape and resurrecting my dead companion had failed. My last option was to kill myself in my section and program my own resurrection in the other compartment. But I was unable to do it. I had seen what had become of those from my home world who had died a violent death, the people in the tubes in Antarctica, those trapped in perpetual purgatory. So I went into the tube, and I remained there for thirteen thousand years, waiting, hoping something would change.”

David knew instantly what “the change” was. In Antarctica, David had held off Dorian and his men, allowing Kate and her father to escape. Her father had exploded two nuclear devices in Gibraltar, shattering the piece of the lander he had unearthed. “The nuclear blasts.”

“Yes. They moved the section I was in closer to northern Africa. Morocco and Ceuta specifically. I immediately activated my link to the ship. I saw what had happened in Gibraltar, then I connected to Antarctica and watched the footage there. I knew you had sacrificed your life to save a man, a woman, and two boys. The other man, who I did not know was Dorian at the time, had been far less gallant. You observed the Human Code, our morality. You had a respect for human life. I knew Ares, and I knew what would happen next. You and Dorian were enemies. He would have you fight to the death and take the winner. I decided to download your data feed. I had to reveal my avatar, momentarily, to capture your radiation signature. The rest you know. Upon your death, you awakened in the part of the ship I had been confined to. I programmed the tubes to self-destruct—to ensure you went forward, venturing out.”