The Omega Project (24 page)

I worked my way along a ninety-foot branch that served as a bridge between two ground-rooted redwoods. It looked like lightning had split the bark down the middle. The exposed center brimmed with turquoise-green moss as soft as goose down. Entering the next canopy, I was greeted by a rotted stump from a reiterated redwood that had fallen long ago. The crater-size remains had filled with rainwater to become a wading pool six feet deep and forty feet across. To my surprise, the redwood pond was filled with islands of pads and toads the size of a catcher’s mitt whose heads turned crimson whenever their throats expanded. Incredibly, there were also fish in the stump—at least I thought they were fish until they suddenly flew out of the redwood pond and flitted about like birds, shaking water from their rigid tropically colored pectoral wings, their barracudalike mouths coveting tadpoles the size of my foot. After a few passes overhead, the creatures perched on their tail fins on the rim of the hollowed out stump like crows on a fence.

The caves began on a different level of the redwood crown, six stories higher than my entry point onto the second tree. They had no doubt been created by lightning strikes, the fires burning for weeks, perhaps months. A redwood is too big and too wet to burn down. It simply isolates the fire by rerouting its internal water supply through a network of microscopic vessels known as the xylem. If a Northern California redwood could generate two million pascals of negative pressure to suck water from its roots up its trunk over tens of miles of branches, I could not imagine the forces necessary to redirect water throughout these behemoth tree forests.

There were three caves. Two were located in the roots of a harvest of reiterated redwoods that had sprouted from a massive U-shaped branch as wide as a highway off-ramp; the third had been burnt into the side of a three-story buttress.

Moving to the edge of the limb, I looked down upon the clearing where I had stood nearly an hour ago. I quickly approximated the drop to be in excess of three hundred feet and, feeling dizzy, backed away.

I had found my way to the source of the distress call, now I needed to find the distressed.

The opening to the first fire cave resembled a ten-foot-high birth canal. Slipping inside, I was greeted by an off-putting blue-cheese smell. The interior walls were spongy and scorched black from the fire, the chamber as large as my family’s old living room. Brown salamanders tinged with golden specks scampered by my feet, the amphibians feeding off blind pink earthworms they had exposed in the cave soil.

No cephaloped.

Nor was there one in the second cave.

Then I heard it, and hurried to the third cave, a far larger hollow burnt into a buttress that could have been featured in a Grimm’s fairy tale.

“Oh, God…”

The trap, concealed within the spongy walls of the cave, had sprung the moment the cephaloped had entered. Clam-shaped, constructed of an aero gel polymer vented with quarter-size holes, the pod had slammed so quickly it had sliced off one of the cephaloped’s tentacles just above the fin.

My heart pounded with excitement. Someone …
something
had used a technology that rivaled my own to construct this trap.

Those thoughts were tempered as I regarded the caged squid. Terrified, it lay curled in a fetal position in a green pool of its own blood. Looking up at me, it appeared to panic.

“Don’t worry, Oscar. I’ll get you out of that thing.” I reached for its center seam—and suddenly my head burst in an explosion of purple lights as an electrical charge flung me outside the cave and nearly over the edge of the redwood’s main limb.

For several minutes I remained on my back, stunned. “What the hell was that?”

ELECTRICAL SHOCK. FIFTEEN THOUSAND VOLTS. RUNNING LEVEL THREE DIAGNOSTIC … RECALCULATING–

“ABE!”

CHRONOMETER … RECALCULATING. AMINO ACID LEVELS—OFF. BLOOD GLUCOSE LEVELS—OFF. SEROTONIN—

“Hold diagnostic.” Regaining my feet, I limped back to the cave. “ABE, analyze that specimen cage and determine how I can open it without harming the creature inside.”

CHRONOMETER … RECALCULATING.

“Enough! You sound like a bad GPS system. Focus on that plastic specimen cage.”

SPECIMEN CAGE IS ELECTRIFIED. LOCATE POWER SOURCE AND DISABLE.

“Power source? Makes sense.” I scanned the outside of the pod, finding nothing. Retrieving a large stick from outside, I wedged the branch beneath its curved bottom.

“Hold on, Oscar.” Using the stick as a fulcrum, I flipped the clear cage onto its side—exposing a toaster-size portable power pack housed within the base. Using the blunt end of the stick, I smashed the assembly until it sparked and short-circuited in a burst of smoke.

The pod cracked. Using both hands, I pried it open.

Too weak to move, the cephaloped remained curled in a ball.

Gently, I reached inside and scooped the invertebrate’s upper torso into my arms and against my chest, straining to lift the three hundred plus pound creature. With no recourse but to drag its tentacles behind me, I carried it to the redwood pond and released it into the water.

21

If the Earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the Earth and its inhabitants.

—T
HOMAS
B
ERRY
, Roman Catholic priest

The dying cephaloped sank to the bottom of the redwood pond, bubbles of air trailing from the breathing organ atop its skull.

Realizing too late that the land creature might be in shock and actually drowning, I went in after it. The cold water instantly soothed my own frayed nervous system.

Hoisting Oscar back to the surface required pinning the back of its head and upper torso against my chest—which meant running my arms beneath its tentacle sockets as a lifeguard might do to assist a drowning person.

Maybe that was its “sensitive area” because the moment I touched it, the inert animal suddenly reached out for me with those monstrous appendages and held me in its vise grip
underwater
!

The sensation of panic sent a memory flashing through my mind’s eye. When I was sixteen, I had enrolled in a life guard training seminar at summer camp. On our first day, the instructor—ten years older and seventy pound heavier than yours truly, volunteered me to swim out to the deep end of the pool and “rescue him.” He was calm on my approach, then, playing the role of the panicking victim, suddenly lunged for me and clasped my head to his chest, holding me underwater as I became his flotation device. The fucker kept me pinned underwater for the longest, scariest forty seconds of my life, teaching me a valuable lesson … and later a simple lifesaving piece of advice—a drowning person will only release you if you pull
them
underwater.

Reaching up through a sea of tentacles, I grabbed the cephaloped by one of its eye stalks and pulled its head underwater.

It released me instantly—its eye stalk, I imagined, being the cephaloped equivalent of my testicles. A minute later the two of us were out of the water, panting heavily as we leaned against the side of the rain-filled tree stump.

Slumped over, the land squid stared at me with its jaundiced eyes through droopy double lids as if trying to figure me out. After several minutes, it did something quite marvelous and, in retrospect something distinctly human—it slowly reached out to me with one of its appendages.

In turn, I reached toward it.

The touch of flesh to tentacle fin was startling, eliciting its own impulse wave that was shared by the two of us—a deep, almost hypnotic resonance that seeped through every cell in my body.

RECALCULATING … MASSIVE INFLUX OF SODIUM AND CALCIUM IONS DETECTED, ACCOMPANIED BY AN EFFLUX OF POTASSIUM IONS. POST-SYNAPTIC POTENTIAL CYCLES ARE BEING ALTERED—

My eyes rolled up in my head, my body tingling.
ABE, how is this happening?

ECHOLOCATION.

Before I could blink, ABE had downloaded a dozen pre-GDO studies on the effects of dolphin echolocation on humans—echolocation being the dolphin’s natural sonar system which functioned like an ultrasound, enabling the mammals to detect objects through the water over great distances. Results of experiments showed that when a dolphin echolocated a human, the sonic clicks caused dramatic changes in the subjects’ neurotransmitter production, affecting the entire endocrine system. This positive response was caused by the effects of cavitation, which induced sonophoresis—an increase in hormone transportation.

Dolphin echolocation took place in the water; my contact with the cephaloped was direct and prolonged … and it was a multidirectional healing. I could feel the squid growing stronger … the pulsation of its three hearts cascading within my own bloodstream, its terror dissipating.

WHY?

ABE whispered the one-word inquiry out of the ether and into my consciousness, breaking my train of thought.

My internal response:
Why what?

WHY?

I opened my eyes. “ABE, what are you asking me?” I was so annoyed at being disturbed that I failed to realize something important …

ABE IS PROGRAMMED TO RESPOND TO INQUIRIES, NOT TO GENERATE THEM.

“Then stop saying ‘Why?’”

THE INQUIRY IS NOT ORIGINATING FROM ABE.

“What?” I sat up, gazing into the alert yellow eyes staring back at me.
It’s coming from the cephaloped?

CORRECT. THE SUBJECT IS COMMUNICATING USING THOUGHT ENERGY. “WHY” IS THE SUBJECT’S EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION OF THOUGHT ENERGY APPROXIMATED INTO ENGLISH.

Can it understand me?

NOT DIRECTLY. ROBERT EISENBRAUN’S THOUGHT ENERGY IS BASED ON CONCEPTS DEFINED BY AN ESTABLISHED VERBAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE COMBINED WITH EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE. OSCAR’S THOUGHT ENERGY IS BASED ON A VOCABULARY OF EMOTIONS, DESIRES, NEEDS, CURIOSITY, EXPRESSED THROUGH THE LIMITATIONS OF ITS MEMORY FOUNDATION.

What is … wait—did you refer to it as Oscar?

CORRECT. IT HAS ACCEPTED YOUR DESIGNATION OF ITS PHYSICAL PRESENCE.

Just out of curiosity, is Oscar a male?

OSCAR POSSESSES AN ENLARGED HECTOCOTYLUS ARM DESIGNED FOR INSERTION INTO A FEMALE OR MALE MANTLE AND DEPOSITING A SPERMATOPHORE, THEREFORE THE SUBJECT IS A MALE.

Female or male? Are octopi bisexual? Wait … I’m not holding its hectocotylus arm, am I?

REPRODUCTIVE DATA REFLECTS AQUATIC SPECIES OF OCTOPUS; DATA ON EVOLVED TERRESTRIAL SPECIES IS STILL BEING FORMULATED. PRE-GDO STUDIES ON AQUATIC OCTOPUS SEXUALITY INDICATED SUBJECTS, WHEN PAIRED WITH OTHERS, FAILED TO RECOGNIZE WHETHER ANOTHER SUBJECT WAS MALE OR FEMALE UNTIL AFTER THEY BEGAN THE ACT OF COPULATION. MALE-TO-MALE COPULATIONS LASTED LESS THAN THIRTY SECONDS AND DID NOT CULMINATE IN SPERMATOPHORE RELEASE. MALE-TO-FEMALE COPULATIONS LASTED TWO AND A HALF HOURS AND RESULTED IN THE RELEASE OF ONE TO FOUR SPERMATOPHORES. OSCAR RECOGNIZES THAT ROBERT EISENBRAUN IS MALE. IT WAS THIS RECOGNITION THAT LED TO OSCAR RESCUING EISENBRAUN FROM DROWNING.

Now I’m completely confused. Oscar rescued me because it recognized that I’m a male?

CURIOSITY APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE MOTIVATING FACTOR.

Has Oscar ever even seen a male human before?

OSCAR HAS NEVER SEEN A MALE HUMAN. OSCAR DESIRES AGAIN TO UNDERSTAND WHY ROBERT EISENBRAUN RESCUED OSCAR.

Why? Because Oscar …
Exhausted from the internal dialogue with my biological chip, I squeezed the creature’s fin, looking directly into its stalk eyes. “You rescued me from the ocean, you saved me from the ants. Humans … my species—we too believe in treating others with acts of kindness.”

To my surprise, the creature became agitated. Withdrawing its tentacle, it stretched its reach overhead, snagged the nearest branch of the redwood and disappeared into the canopy.

“What’d I say? Is he coming back?”

UNKNOWN.

Unknown? You were reading its damn thought energy! Can’t you … Ah, never mind. ABE, based on our shared observations, summarize Oscar.

OSCAR REPRESENTS A SPECIES OF CEPHALOPOD THAT HAS EVOLVED FROM AN AQUATIC ANIMAL INTO A SEMI-AMPHIBIOUS AIR-BREATHING LAND ANIMAL. OSCAR DEMONSTRATES GENEALOGICAL TRAITS LINKED WITH HIGHER FORMS OF INTELLIGENCE. OSCAR RESCUED ROBERT EISENBRAUN BECAUSE IT WAS CURIOUS ABOUT ROBERT EISENBRAUN. OSCAR’S THOUGHT ENERGY RELATIVE TO ROBERT EISENBRAUN’S PRESENCE SUGGESTS CONFLICTING CONCERNS THAT EQUATE TO EMOTIONS OF FEAR, TOLERANCE, CURIOSITY, EMPATHY, DISTRUST, AND FRIENDSHIP. OSCAR REPRESENTS A SPECIES THAT IS BEING HUNTED BY A SUPERIOR PREDATOR DISPLAYING AN ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE OF REMOTE SENSING, PLASTICS, AND RELATED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGIES.

“Stop. Formulate best response: Why is Oscar’s species being hunted?”

IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE, BASED ON LIMITED DATA. POSSIBLE RESPONSES INCLUDE FOOD, HARVESTING OF BODY PARTS, POPULATION CONTROL, EXTERMINATION, SPORT, OR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. BASED ON THE SIZE OF THE TRAP, OSCAR’S SPECIES IS INTENDED TO BE CAPTURED ALIVE.

“Then the hunters will be back to claim their prize.” I stared up into the canopy, its treetops swaying two hundred feet overhead.
ABE, design a means to rig the fire cave’s perimeter with a trap of our own.

“The hunter is about to become the hunted.”

*   *   *

ABE must have accessed every wilderness article ever written, but in the end I knew the trap’s chances of success had more to do with whether the element of surprise outweighed the technology of the unknown hunter we were facing. Or hunters. There was simply no telling how many
its
would show up, or for that matter when they would return.

The trap was rigged to the bottom of the pod—any attempt to remove the device would trigger the release of a log that was teetering on the edge of the redwood’s limb. Vines attached to the log ended in snares positioned in and around the cave floor. The vines were green and thin, but possessed the tensile strength of steel wire. Most important, they were easily concealed within the spongy walls and floor of the fire cave.