Life Seed, page 5
He spent a miserable ten minutes trying to get the thing open, poking and kicking it, hacking at it with the shovel. He tried not to think of what his father would do to him when he realized Elias had ruined the shovel beyond repair. The colony didn’t have the technology to make monomolecular blades anymore, so this was a permanent loss.
Whatever, he thought to himself, sweat streaming from his brow with the exertion. This is more important. Has to be.
He tried to ignore the faint but persistent doubt that the safe would be empty, or worse, that it would be full of something that had once held value but was now worthless, like gold or gems or money. It couldn’t be, though. Dr. Wright had been a brilliant scientist, of that Elias was sure. Anything important enough to be stored in a safe inside a safe room had to be proportionally meaningful. Something too valuable to leave out in the open.
He nearly cried out in relief when he finally managed to wedge the tip of the shovel into an opening on the safe’s door. He slammed the shovel a couple of times against the lock mechanism, hearing the telltale wrenches and groans of metal being twisted, scored, and hopefully broken. The shovel gave way after another forceful try, but by then the safe’s door was already partially open. Elias grabbed it, hoping there wasn’t anything breakable inside, and smashed the entire thing against the nearest wall with all his strength.
The safe broke open, spilling its contents on the floor. Panting, with trembling hands and barely concealed excitement, Elias knelt down on the dirt to examine the reward for his effort.
The safe had contained only one thing. At first he thought it was a tablet, broken beyond repair. He picked it up, and it was heavy in his hands. Its surface was dull, featureless, dark blue, and strangely rough to his fingertips. He turned it over, feeling around the side for an On button or something similar. The tablet opened up around the middle, though, making Elias yelp and drop it. He thought he had broken it, but then he realized he had opened it. There were words written on the inside.
That’s paper. This thing is a book!
Elias picked it up again, flipping pages experimentally. Yes, it was an actual book, a notebook, each page covered in packed, spidery handwriting. He quickly went to the first page and found the name he had been looking for.
This is the personal journal of Thomas Wright, PhD.
Chief Xenobiologist
Ionas Generation Ship
Elias gasped. A personal journal. Not a bunch of scientific reports, but an actual journal! He could scarcely believe his eyes. Just thinking about the wealth of information he would find there….
Then the doctor’s title caught his attention. Chief xenobiologist? That made no sense. Elias knew the original crew of the Ionas by heart, and Dr. Wright was never mentioned. If this was true, though, then he had been one of the most important scientists on board by far.
Strange.
Elias couldn’t suppress his curiosity any longer. He grabbed his blanket and the journal, dragged his chair close to the generator where it was a little warmer, and settled down to read.
Almost three hours later, Elias closed the notebook, stunned. He turned off the generator and climbed back out into the open. It was still light out, and there were no wurl around, so he made his way back to the colony very slowly, his eyes far away, thinking about the shocking revelations he had read.
He had to tell them. Everyone had to know.
They would think he was crazy, though. That he was making stuff up. Who would believe him, after all? He was already branded an antisocial freak who never helped the colony. If he spoke about what he had read, they would think it was a desperate ploy to draw attention to himself.
Elias shook his head, slowly at first, then more quickly.
It doesn’t matter. I have to tell them. If I don’t…. We all die.
Chapter 5—The Journal of Dr. Thomas Wright, Part 1
ELIAS RETURNED home with plenty of time left before the start of the nighttime Midwinter celebration. He went through the rooms as if dazed, only realizing there was nobody home when he found his mother’s note in the kitchen.
Took Oscar to get a haircut. Left you something to eat before the feast! – Mom
There was a plate with seasoned protein paste and carrots nearby. Elias put it in the microwave, waiting the required time while thoughts chased themselves around in circles in his mind. When the machine beeped, he took out the food and ate it right there without really tasting it. He had a drink of water. He went to the bathroom. Then he went to his room.
He sat down on the bed and placed the doctor’s journal on his nightstand. It looked oddly out of place there, a relic from the past that should not exist. It was hard to reconcile the words he had read with the reality of his situation. Elias had always suspected things were bad, but never anything like this. It was even harder to decide what to do, how to disclose the information.
After a moment of hesitation, he took the journal, leaned back against some pillows, and read it all again. If nothing else, he wanted every detail fresh in his memory when he revealed what he had discovered to everyone in Portree.
Journal of Doctor Thomas Wright
21 June, 3142. 21:00
FINALLY HAVE some time to myself. It’s been madness over here, as expected. Setting up a colony on a new planet has to be the most challenging logistics nightmare there can be. MacLeod kept on second-guessing the location where we should make planetfall, ignoring the recommendations of the continental surveyor and going by something he called “a gut feeling.” Thankfully, his final choice proved to be a good one. The valley he chose is well located, with easy access to water, timber from the nearby woods, and several subsurface deposits of metals and other elements which will make settling in much easier. In fact, after having been here for almost a month now, I doubt if there is any place on this planet, aside from the inhospitable polar regions, where we could have landed and not found paradise. New Skye is beautiful, rich beyond our wildest hopes. It’s one thing to get cold data readings from deep-space probes labeling a world fit for human habitation, but another one entirely to reach it and find biological diversity to rival Earth itself.
I wonder what my father would have said had he lived to see this day. Or my grandfather, for that matter. I don’t think those of us who have reached this new world can ever thank them or honor them enough for the sacrifices they willingly undertook. They lived their entire lives aboard the Ionas, knowing full well that they would never set foot on solid ground or look up at the sky with warm, natural sunlight on their face. And yet, they embraced their duty, making sure that the future generations would have a chance at something better. It’s sad and beautiful, and I think it’s part of what makes us human. As a race, I don’t think we’ve ever given up hope.
Or maybe I’m just getting sentimental. I seem to be coming down with the flu, and I always get melancholic when I feel ill.
11 August, 3142. 08:00
NEARLY THE entire colony of the recently named Portree has come down with a virus native to this world. The advance probes we sent came back to the Ionas with a good portion of the local microorganisms, but they evidently missed some, because now we are all getting sick. Hino is working around the clock trying to come up with a cure, and I sincerely hope she succeeds. Even though the sickness isn’t particularly severe, it is debilitating and annoying. It’s hard to work in these conditions, particularly now that we are erecting the first buildings where we expect to live.
The weather of this world has truly been a blessing. Its summer temperatures are balmy and comfortable, and the land around Portree buzzes and hums with life. Rodriguez and his scouts have already identified several native fruits that scanned positive for compatibility with our recently upgraded gut flora. I ate several large purple berries, which people here are imaginatively calling purpleberries, and I must admit they were delicious. They were also the first thing I have ever eaten that was not grown on board the carefully monitored environment of the ship’s hydroponics bay. It was truly a moment to remember.
As for myself, the construction of my genetics lab is well underway. I oversee the details whenever I don’t have a fever, and I think the process is coming along nicely. I wish we didn’t have to cannibalize the Ionas for parts at every turn, but I suppose it can’t be helped. The ship did its job in bringing us here. I like to think it would be glad to be dismantled and relieved of its burden for good.
35 January, 1 AP 21:00
MACLEOD HAS been very insistent in getting everyone to think of this as a new beginning, and I think it’s starting to stick. I’m going to label the years the way he wants me to, since I suppose it makes sense. It will be decades or even hundreds of years before we hear anything from the people living in the Core Systems, so why not keep time starting with our arrival here? So AP it is. After Planetfall.
Even though Trost from Psychology keeps telling me that a journal is a useful exercise in introspection, I think this is my first entry in months. So much has happened: good, mostly. Thank goodness for that. After Hino figured out how to change our genetic makeup just enough so the viruses of this world wouldn’t kill us, the Great Sickness was over in a heartbeat. I had honestly forgotten what it was like to wake up and feel energized, healthy. I have not wasted a single day since.
First on my list of priorities was bringing the laboratory online, which is now mostly done. As soon as we had the splicer machines working, I set my team to the task of analyzing the local flora and looking for something we could cultivate from whatever grows natively here. I tasked a second team to begin trial-and-error cultures of the plants we brought with us in the native soil. Even though we still have plenty of supplies on board the wreck of the Ionas, we have dismantled most of its hydroponics sector for use in other areas of the colony. It’s a necessary risk, I’m afraid. As MacLeod would put it, we need to cut the cord binding us to the ship and start fending for ourselves now, or else we will never do it. I suppose it makes sense.
When time permits, I am eager to go on field expeditions. It’s wintertime now, and the world is transformed from the way it was during summer. Not much is growing, but the land has a serene sort of beauty I find enthralling. The sparser vegetation is also quite conducive to sightings of the local animals. Most of the creatures we’ve encountered are small invertebrates, but there have been two verified encounters with a kind of animal unlike anything I had ever seen. It appears to be a species of large reptile with thick black plating, six legs, and three eyes. That last characteristic keeps me up at night with the myriad possibilities it suggests. All vertebrates discovered so far in the Core Systems exhibit an even number of eyes or their equivalent organs. It appears to be the most profitable and economical evolutionary line, but what if it’s not the only one?
I wish I knew more about the creatures. Unfortunately for us, they are quite shy, running away in a most curious fashion, more like rolling if the accounts from the scouts are to be believed. Next month, when the results of our crop testing are in, I plan on heading out into the wilderness myself.
17 February, 1 AP 23:00
FAILURE. CATASTROPHIC, utter failure. Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but not by much. Every single crop strain we have planted on this alien world has died, every carefully constructed iteration of the most basic plants humans need for survival. It is beyond disappointing to think that the generations of xenobiologists who came before me, who spent their entire lives on the Ionas crafting each of these genetic variations, worked in vain. There’s something fundamentally inimical to Terran life on New Skye, at least where plants are concerned. Fortunately, we still have many months of supplies available, but the prospects for the future worry me. What if we don’t find a solution? I have nearly ninety people working day and night, trying to find an answer to the problem of our long-term survival. All of them are brilliant minds, quite capable in their respective specialization fields. Basic probability dictates that we are bound to find a way out of this. I hope.
Perhaps I worry too much. My therapist, Trost, insists a change of environment would help my perspective, and for once I’m inclined to agree. I believe it’s time I started my programmed field trips.
42 August, 1 AP 17:00
THIS PLANET is a xenobiologist’s dream. Every biome, every nook and cranny, is full of biological treasure. It is high summer now, the apex of a slow but steady climb into exorbitant biodiversity, the likes of which I have never seen in the records of any other world. When I compare New Skye in winter, with its muted tones, dry grass, and lifeless fields, to the same world in summer, it’s like another planet. It would seem I cannot take a step without stumbling across a new plant, a beautiful blooming flower, or a chirping arthropod nobody else has ever seen before. It is humbling, breathtaking, and exhilarating.
My records back at the lab must now have grown to several gigabytes’ worth of raw information, and I am only just getting started. I have sent out exploration teams to every corner of this continent, the largest of two significant landmasses on New Skye. Every time a team comes back to base, simply listing our new discoveries takes hours. Classifying, sequencing, and understanding all of these new lifeforms would take several lifetimes. When I think that there is another whole continent to the east, completely unexplored, my mind boggles. I can’t hope to study everything this world has to offer; there is simply no time. Instead, I believe I will focus my attention on its most remarkable creatures.
I think I will start with the wurl.
Sadly, I was not the one to christen them, but by now the name has stuck. I must admit, it is rather descriptive of the way they roll through the landscape like spine-covered wheels with a mechanism as of yet unknown. It would appear that they are able to flatten their spines against their bodies when they tumble downhill, presumably using them like springs to absorb and redirect the kinetic energy of their controlled fall in order to preserve the momentum of the rolling motion, but all I have is conjecture at this point. I have now seen several of them firsthand, and they are truly magnificent creatures. They are beautiful to look at, particularly now. They appear to exhibit seasonal changes, very subtle but unmistakable nevertheless. Whereas their scales are perfectly black in winter, in summer they acquire a translucent sheen that hints at deep violet hues, which reflect the sunlight at certain times of day. They are breathtaking when this happens, even more so because those gentle giants are apparently unaware of their own great strength. They are quite curious, investigating our campsites when we are not there, but they always flee when we get close. I would love to capture a live specimen for study and eventual dissection, but MacLeod has expressly forbidden it for the time being. Peaceful though they are, there are reports of wurl using their spines to impale prey with shocking force from several meters away. Such is their accuracy that they can shoot birds out of the sky when hunting. Until we find a way to pacify them safely, I agree with MacLeod. It is best to observe.
They appear to be fiercely territorial, with each individual commanding an area of approximately ninety square kilometers. I have seen no sexual dimorphism yet, and indeed I am not sure whether all the creatures we have seen so far are male or female. Further study is needed.
3 December, 1 AP 03:00
THE MORE I learn about this world, the more fascinated I am by it. I have been out in the field for months, exploring the far reaches of the continent, and the sheer variety of landscapes and the creatures that inhabit them is still breathtaking.
Through some fluke of evolution, it appears most vertebrates here possess appendages and sensory organs in multiples of three. I have discovered no mammals or analogs so far, but there is a wide variety of reptiles and closely related birds to make up for this lack. I must admit, the first time I saw a bird with three wings flying, I was struck speechless. They glide through the air in a corkscrew motion, each wing beating in the same direction, one after the other with no gap, ascending and descending in graceful spirals. Evolution will never cease to amaze me.
My exploration and cataloging endeavors are well underway, with success unparalleled by even my wildest hopes before coming to New Skye. I am truly fortunate to be offered a chance to discover so many different forms of life, a chance for which I am sure many biologists in the Core Systems would cut off their right arms to be able to have. Planned for the near future is a thorough examination of the mountain range which rises not far from Portree. I have left this region for last because the terrain is quite unforgiving and our vehicles will not manage it. I am thinking of leading a small expedition on foot to see what can be seen. I can barely sleep imagining the creatures that must inhabit those fertile mountainsides.
Unfortunately, our success in discovery is not mirrored by our endeavors in producing sustainable crop strains. Every attempt is a failure, and after two long New Skye years of ceaseless trying, it is starting to make some people uneasy. We lost our endless supply of renewable Terran produce when we dismantled the Ionas, and although this world offers bountiful fruits during the summer, it is simply not enough to sustain a growing colony of nearly three hundred individuals.
It is no different for the animals, I’m afraid. Those native to this planet are incompatible with our digestive system, due to the same genetic quirk that makes them so unique. The embryos of Terran farm animals we brought with us on the ship have all been used, but none of them survived more than a few days after leaving the lab. The situation is worrisome but not impossible. We have not yet exhausted the options available to us.
