by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright 2010
What happens after you say “Oops!”?
This is the story of the aftermath of a virulent artificial life form sweeping across a planet’s surface. The life form creators have been swept from the planet’s surface, but they are not quitters.
The Domes are evil. Unspeakably evil. We know that now. We’ve known it for a hundred years. Now we are about to do something about it.
The domes have been with us since before the beginning of existence. Our existence, I should say. We now know that our world is much older than we are. For most of our existence, the domes were just part of the landscape.
About two hundred fifty years ago, our understanding of the nature of things advanced enough that we could understand the domes were a creature-made construct, not just another natural world oddity. A hundred fifty years ago, the Great Scientist Bijork proved that the domes were still inhabited! How curious we were, then! An attempt was made to communicate with the inhabitants, and as that project was launched, plague struck again.
It was in recovering from that plague that Great Scientist Kossazk proposed, and proved, that the plague had come from the domes! From that inspiration, lesser scientists demonstrated that five of the last ten Great Plagues came from the domes, and others may have.
Fifty years ago, we determined that ship after ship was being launched from the domes, headed into space—those pest spreaders inside have taken to the stars! Ten years ago the launch rate slowed, and none have launched for the last five.
Soon, none will again!
Dome Puncher 25-01 is ready, the first and only assault vehicle moving against Dome 25. I am her captain. We will circumvent Dome 25’s major defenses by burrowing under the ground and penetrating a tube of the underground transportation system that connects the domes. We will follow the tube to an interchange point—a small cave without a dome—that connects to Dome 25. Once inside, the 50 marines that are the major part of Dome Puncher 25-01’s crew will scout and attempt to take over that transport nexus. With that nexus in our control, we should be able disable Dome 25’s major defenses, and the Dome will be ours.
We have secretly been planning this assault for five years. Well, sort of secretly. It’s no secret to our people, but we’ve done no experimenting or preliminary assaults on the domes using this technology, so it will be a surprise to those monsters inside.
To my surprise, the assault goes smoothly. We penetrate, the marines move down the tunnel. They spot the plague vectors easily, ca’rats in this case, and dispose of them without losing a man. They also spot the various weapon-based traps in the tube, and, they are in!
My ship gets a radio transmission from the marines.
“We have the nexus control center secured. And Captain, there’s something here you should see.”
The marine shows me an active screen with a strange face on it. I hear a voice coming from the screen saying, well spoken, slowly and politely.
“I would like to talk with your commander, your person in charge.”
“Any sign of hazard?” I ask.
“None that we haven’t found and disabled. It’s been pretty much what we expected,” says the marine reporting.
“Make sure we have recording equipment set up and running. I’ll suit up and be down in twenty minutes.”
I get to the control room. Before I go in, my XO reports, “All is reasonably quiet. Troops are moving down the tunnel towards Dome 25, and disabling or killing what they find along the way. As of now, no surprises.”
That last bit is what I really want to hear.
I mumble to myself, “OK, Mr. Alien, let’s hear what you have to say,” and walk in to the Control Center.
The guard inside salutes. “No change, sir. He’s been waiting for you.”
A technician looks up. “Recording equipment ready in thirty seconds.”
I take those thirty seconds to size up the room and the alien on the screen.
The room is alien, but not as alien as I would have expected--I get the feeling that I’m looking at a stage prop that is only playing at being alien. It’s eerie. The alien on the screen, on the other hand, looks genuinely alien. He, I assume it’s a he, appears to be waiting patiently, looking at controls or a magazine or something. I guess he’s not in a hurry, and being told he would have to wait for me didn’t surprise him.
“Are we ready?” I ask, and get nods in answer. “Turn it on. Let’s do this.”
One of the technicians throws a switch, and the alien perks up.
“I’m Captain Marshmoon, commander of the Dome 25 Expedition.”
“Commander.” The alien nods his head in a familiar way denoting equal-but-stranger. It looks as though these people have studied us, no surprise there.
“I am Professor Dooley of Atheria University of ... Dome 25, as you call it. My greetings and congratulations.
“I’m here to give you good news: We give up. The dome is yours.”
The camera backs off to a full body view, and this professor alien goes into a reasonable execution of a full prostrate bow, the bow of surrender. He then gets up, resumes his seat, and the view tightens again. He presumably thought I gave him the boot of surrender acceptance, which is hard to do over a communication link.
But I just stand there; this whole scene is just too weird for me to get into.
“That said, there are some things you should know,” the professor continues.
“Like what?” I say. I smell ruse, but I can’t tell what kind, yet. My troops are advancing, and this alien is going to have to fart roses to make that stop.
“Oh, who you are and who created you.” He acts as if this is something that should astonish me.
“Hey, if it’s science or religion you want to talk, I’ll call in a professor or a chaplain. I’m just a by-the-book soldier.” The by-the-book part is a lie, but it’s true I have no time for pie-in-the-sky now.
“Sadly, that won’t do. My conversation is not government sponsored, so I don’t have the time to wait for a bunch of red tape to be resolved. I’m afraid it’s you, or no one.”
He looks at me with what I take to be innocent eyes. The eyes of someone who knows how bureaucracy works, and is not willing to put up with it.
Then it hits me. “Not government sponsored?”
“That’s right. I have signed my own death warrant. That’s why we must talk, now.”
He seems damned comfortable for a self-condemned man, but some people are like that. Whoa, I’m thinking of him as people now!
What do I have to lose by listening to him? My troops are well trained, and well briefed on what we are to accomplish.
“How many other commanders are you, or others, attempting to contact?” I ask.
“None,” he replies.
I get on my communicator to my XO. “Jason, check, discreetly, if other Dome Assault commanders have had any unusual messages, like mine, here. Interrupt me if they have.”
I sit down in front of the screen. “Interrogating prisoners is one of my government sponsored activities. Shoot.”
At first he looks confused, and then as he figures out that I’ve said I will listen to him, he looks relieved.
“First, let me ask you: how many base units make up your DNA codon.”
“Four.”
“And how many essential amino acids are used in your proteins?”
“Sixty-four. Is this a biology quiz?”
“This is the difference between you and me. My DNA codon uses three units and I have only 20 amino acids in my proteins.”
(The good news is that we expected Bio trouble in the domes, so I know what he’s talking about. More than that, I understand the implications of what he’s saying.)
“So that’s why the Great Plagues have always been based on three-codon DNA.”
“That’s why, but that’s only half of what you should know. The other half is, we created you!
“Life on this planet is about two billion years old now. What you have not been able to determine from the fossil record is what kind of DNA the older forms of life are. I’ll tell you: They are three-codon life forms, the same as we are. We evolved from the early life forms, you did not.
“Exactly two thousand four hundred and twenty-six years ago, a genetic experiment got into the wild. A virulent genetic experiment: Dr. Vassely’s X-coli. It was the result of a series of mishaps similar in complexity to those that caused your Noblisk Reactor Accident.”
“You know about that?”
“Oh yes. We know all about you. We just can’t do anything about you.
“At first we tried to stop the outbreak. We tried hard, and we failed miserably. So miserably that we nearly didn’t survive! We tried to stop X-coli, and it mutated to Y-coli, as we called it. Even as we were figuring out what Y-coli was, it mutated into Z-coli. In months, this new family of bacteria had spread worldwide, and in a few years almost all the biomaterial of the surface was incorporated in this new four-codon, sixty-four amino acid-style life system. It was that much better!
“It was better at being bacteria, but all the higher life forms went extinct, the food chain was totally disrupted. We survived only by first building the domes, and later colonizing other worlds in this star system.
“We survived, and we hoped! We kept trying to come up with a cure for the planet--something that would let the old three-codon life forms survive again. We unleashed plagues.
“The plagues were powerful. We put a lot of science into them. But the X-coli system now had a whole world of resource to come up with countering mutations, and it did. We never beat it.
“After many serious tries, we noticed something else. The four-codon system was developing multicellular life! My God! It had taken a billion years for the three-codon system to do that! We analyzed, and discovered that our plagues were the cause of the rapid advancement!”
The professor shook his head. “You can’t imagine what consternation that caused in our world. We were making our problem worse. We could see that something like you”--he pointed at me--“was in the making. The question was: What do we do?
“About that same time, we came in contact with an extra-solar system species. Yes, there is other life in the stars, and about two hundred fifty years ago, we made contact, communication contact, not physical contact.
“Those people told us how to reach the stars, and we started building the ships to do so. The question remained, what to do with this world we’d made such a mess of.
“It was decided, and not easily, that our star system should send its best life forms into the galaxy--be that three-codon, or four.
“In that spirit, we continued to spread plagues across the land. But now, instead of trying to wipe out four-codon life, we tried to spur it to develop faster.
“The results have been incredible. Your species appeared about five hundred years ago, and about ten years ago you had learned so much that our plagues could no longer advance your life system. We built our starships, and we’ve been leaving. We’ll see you in the stars. May the best life form win out.”
This was a lot to digest. I wasn’t about to think up all the ramifications of what I’d just heard, so I began calling on journalism’s “six friends” (who, what, why, where, when, and how.)
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because these domes are your history as well as ours. You don’t have to break them.”
“So, this is a ploy to save the domes.”
“A ploy to save the domes, but not the people inside. They are already gone.
“The question that has been on our minds for generations and generations is whether or not we can peacefully coexist. Our civilization has divided into three schools of thought: Those who say it’s hopeless and our three-codon life is doomed; those who say we are doomed here, but the galaxy is a big place and we will find places to survive; and those who say the galaxy is a big place, and we can work together to survive. I am of this last school, the powers-that-be are of the second school, and you will find the bodies of the last first-schoolers in the domes. The rest chose cremation.”
I still can’t figure this out; time for a “what”.
“So, what are you asking me to do?”
“Spare some of the domes. Spare one in ten. If you do this, it will be a symbol of your maturity, and a symbol that we can cooperate together in the future.”
“What if we choose not to, Plague Bringer?”
“Then we, who are two species from the same world, have nothing further to say to each other. Keep in mind, that we not only brought you plague, we brought you to life! You are our children! We are your parents!”
He sounded a bit ruffled, but just a bit.
He noted something off-screen.
“I have been discovered. My time talking with you is now limited. However, I’ve made my main point. Do you have any more questions?”
“If you’re not speaking for your government, how can we make a deal?”
“It’s not a deal, it’s a plea. If some domes stand untouched, you have a bargaining chip. But sadly, it will not be with me.”
The off-screen gets his attention again, and I hear the groan of metal-on-metal coming from the speaker.
“I’m afraid my time is up, Captain Marshmoon, it has been good talking with you. I hope our races get to talk again in the future.”
There is more metal-on-metal groaning, then the communication link is broken.
I think, but not for long. I get on the communicator.
“Jason, have our boys stop at the main door to Dome 25. They are to approach and secure, but not penetrate. I will give the order later to penetrate. Understood?”
“Roger.”
I tell the technician making the recording, “Send this recording to HQ as soon as you have it stored and copied. Send it directly to the commander with my compliments. Tell him I recommend that we go slow on opening Domes 25 through 35 until we’ve had a chance to assess this information further.”
“Yes sir!”
War is full of surprises; some of them are just plain strange.
There are many ways to end an era. This is one of them.
The End