Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (51 page)

“I have also heard a rumor of something being found there, but the rumor I heard was that some type of primitive life form had been identified in the ocean on the planet,” said Benjamin.  “If you start adding all these rumors up, then maybe the real story will start taking shape.  I have also heard from a NASA acquaintance that the planet is going to be very habitable by humans once all the ice melts, but all the fool scientists are dragging their feet about any plans for colonization.  They want to spend years studying any primitive life forms found there to make sure that we do not disrupt any ecology that may exist.  They should be building ships to take colonists there instead.  They should have already started terraforming the damn planet.  Things are still going to get very crowded here on this world when the glaciers start forming.”

“Benjamin, your impatience with humanity is why we still live in exile here in Bolivia.  Your political contacts were able to get your sons permission to go home and enter the Space Force Academy after your help in getting General Walden elected president, but only on the condition that you never try to come home yourself.  The world has never forgiven you, me, or the rest of our friends for forcing birth control on the third world countries that were breeding out of control.”

“Dammit Geoff, I am seventy eight years old.  I had hoped that I would have lived long enough to see humans set foot on Mars.  Unfortunately, the discovery of the Dwarf put a brake on that endeavor.  Mankind cannot wait to start terraforming this new planet.  Space Force is a nice dream, and better than nothing, but if a really big comet or asteroid gets thrown Earth’s way and they cannot stop it then civilization and possibly all of humanity is doomed.  We have all our eggs in one big basket.  One big rock and they all get broken.  Now, they want to wait and examine this new planet for primitive life when we should be trying to get a foot hold there to help prevent a calamity if Earth gets walloped by a dinosaur killer of an asteroid.  This is just another example of how small minded scientists can be sometimes. Primitive life is one thing, humanity is another.  We cannot sit around and do nothing.”

Geoff looked at his friend and shook his head.  “Just what do you propose doing?  Bribing all the politicians to push for a colonization expedition?  For one thing, the effort itself would be more than we could afford to finance, and that would be assuming that Space Force would allow us to do so.  I would also think that bribing that many politicians would be horribly expensive.”

Benjamin grinned and said, “You know I do not trust politicians.  I wonder what type of space program Bolivia has?”

“Are you kidding, Bolivia with a space program?  They have to buy their fireworks from China just to celebrate their independence day down here.”

“Well, maybe it is time that they had one,” said Benjamin.  I think that every third world region needs one, and besides, it would be good for the economy.  I think I will have a talk with the minister of science or whatever they call him in this country.  Hell, if they don’t have a science advisor I may even have to fatten the Presidente’s bank account a little bit and get him to let me recommend one for him to appoint.”

Geoff waved a finger in warning at Benjamin.  “I do not know what kind of scheme you are hatching, but it cannot be good.  All of us are already persona non gratia in just about every country in the world.  Don’t make it worse than it already is.  Let’s just live out our days drinking fine wine and talking about our adventures with beautiful women when we were young and strong.”

“I do not think that I am ready for a rocking chair and an old man’s diaper just yet, Geoff.  I think that humanity may need another nudge in the right direction, and I may be the only one willing to do it.  Are you interested in another adventure?”

Geoff laughed and shook his head.  “This is why you are my dearest friend
, Benjamin. Life is never boring around you.  What can possibly be worse than making half the female population on our planet sterile?”

Benjamin just grinned back at him.  “How about making an entirely new world
fertile?”

Chapter 57

April 8
th
, 2043

Macon, Georgia

Brett sat in the break room at the DNA Ark Project headquarters with several of the molecular biologists that were on his staff.  They were watching the news feed as they ate their lunch.  There was a big discussion going on in the news feeds.  It was calculated that the Brown Dwarf had now entered the solar system and it would only be weeks before the effects of its gravitation field would start to be felt here on Earth.

Mark Cummings, one of the biologists spoke up. “I hope they are all stocked up with sandbags down in Florida and along the coast.  Those are going to be some nasty tides when the Dwarf gets closer.”

Brett nodded. “Yes, thirty five foot tides are predicted all along the coasts and in some places like Nova Scotia they are predicting something like eighty foot tides or more.  I am glad I do not own beach front property.  I am not sure that the dikes that the government has built around Cape Canaveral and other places like New Orleans are going to hold.  I read somewhere that they had built to a height of fifty feet but even that is going to be too close for comfort.”

              Alison, the other biologist joined the conversation. “Why don’t they just abandon New Orleans?  They should have done that way back in the start of the century when they had that big hurricane down there that swamped the city.”

             
Probably because after the encounter when the big freeze starts that is going to be prime real estate,” replied Mark.  “They are projecting a sea level drop of almost thirty feet in the next hundred years as all the moisture that falls as ice and snow in the higher elevation and latitudes stays put.  That will put New Orleans twenty feet above sea level instead of thirteen feet below it.  There are a lot of other places like Denmark that are going to gain some beachfront also.  Of course that will not do the Danish people any good, as most of Northern Europe will be under the ice anyway.”

             
“I sure would not want to live behind one of those dikes,” laughed Brett. “Even if the water does not top them, all it would take is one little earthquake to cause a break and down they come.  I believe they are predicting more than just a few tremors in some places.  The last predictions I saw, the geologists were predicting most of the dormant volcanoes along the west coast would probably become active again.  Mount Rainier, Saint Helens, and the volcanoes in Alaska, all those will wake up.  The volcanoes in Hawaii are expected to blow big time.”

             
“Those are babies compared to the likes of Mount Fiji, Vesuvius, and some of the other big ones around the world,” said Alison.  We may have the likes of Pompeii in a lot of places if people don’t get the heck away from them.  I am glad they forced the mandatory evacuation of Hawaii.  The news the other day said there were still people hiding out and refusing to leave in some of the cities and up in the forests on the slopes of the volcanoes.  What a bunch of crazies.”

             
Brett stood up to leave.  “It’s time to get back to those simulations.  We still have a job to do.  Now that we have all of this DNA recorded, we need to figure out a way to bring it back to life.  Jessica is chomping at the bit to try the new technique she has been working on.  I don’t think she has found the Holy Grail we have been searching for, but it might be a step in the right direction.  I need to check my messages before I see you guys back in the lab.”

             
Mark and Alison also stood and disposed of their trash in the recycling machine.  Mark hit the re-cycle button and the machine whined as it ground up their food waste and biodegradable paper plates into a fine paste that would later be collected and used as compost by the waste recycling company. “We’ll see you back in the lab, Brett” Alison said as they turned to walk down the hallway.

             
Brett walked into the office he shared with Jessica and found her peering closely at her computer monitor.  He pulled her hair away from her neck and nibbled her below her jaw.  She smiled and stroked his hand as she watched the computer screen.  “Are you running another simulation with your new technique?” he asked.

             
Jessica nodded her head.  “I think that we are very close Brett.  By manipulating the vesicles and the phospholipid layers of a similar type cell, I believe that we can do a cross species DNA transfer.  We may have been going too far out on a limb trying to re-create an artificial cell when all we really need to do is coach the cell of a similar organism to obey the DNA implanted from a different one.  Look here.  These are the ovum of a cow and a mouse right after formation by meiosis in the female.  Except for the nucleus and DNA, there is very little difference in size or makeup of the micro organelles of each of them.  There is a slight difference in the phospholipid bilayer and the vesicles, but just a tiny difference.  Watch this simulation.  I have removed the genetic material from a mouse egg cell and replaced it with a complete DNA structure of an Angus cow.  If I inject just a tiny bit of a late phase D-type cyclin into the cell during the DNA transfer, it triggers the anaphase promoting complex and DNA replication begins.  This also will start the cycle for producing more micro cell components consistent with the host DNA organism and the next generation of cells will develop normally.  Now, watch the whole process in fast motion.”

             
Brett watched the sequence from the DNA replacement until the resultant fully nucleated egg cell had reproduced to the point of being a blastocyte.  “This looks very promising Jess, but you know that what we see on computer simulations is not what we always get in results in the lab and real world testing.”

             
Jessica stood and took Brett’s hand. “Come with me mister skeptic.”  She led him down the hallway to the reproduction lab.  Brianna, their daughter was there looking through a microscope and making notes on a computer pad.  She looked up as they came into the lab and winked at her mother. 

             
“Are you bringing another disciple to educate them in the Brianna school of cross species fertilization and development?” Brianna asked with a grin.

             
Jessica laughed.  “I did that when I married an ape and conceived you, you silly thing.”

             
Brett looked confused.  “Your mother is trying to show me a new technique she is working on for transferring DNA between donor species egg cells.  What is this Brianna school stuff you are talking about?”

             
“Actually,” said Jessica “The idea of the D-Cyclines was originally Brianna’s.  She had been studying the different trigger enzymes for the anaphase promoting complex, or APC, and thought we should be able to do what a newly fertilized cell does when it produces the cyclines by itself.  The idea was hers; I just worked out the technique.”

             
Brett shook his head. “It works on paper and in a computer simulation.  I do not want to shoot you gals down, but how many times have we been disappointed when we could not get these ideas to work in the lab?  We will need to set up some experiments and do some in vitro fertilization to see how the cells reproduce.  There may be some cumulative defect that would abort the embryo some time down the process at some point.”

             
Brianna walked over to a shelf and picked up a plastic box and brought it back over to the desk.  She took the vented top off and pushed it over to her dad.  Inside was a female hamster huddled over a brood of naked baby hamsters that appeared to be a day or two old. “These were born yesterday,” she said with a grin.

             
“They look like baby hamsters,” said Brett.

             
“They are dad, but they are a little different.  You see their DNA is that of a hamster, but the original egg cells were harvested from a Rhesus monkey. Don’t you know what this means?”

             
Brett just stared at the little naked things wiggling under the mother hamster who was trying to shield them from view.  “You mean that momma hamster is going to have to feed a bunch of baby monkeys?”

             
Jessica rolled her eyes at him.  “Brett, her idea works.  Those are baby hamsters, but when hamster DNA was put into monkey egg cells and the eggs implanted, they developed normally.  The female hamster did not reject and abort the blastocytes because at that point they had a hamster phospholipid membrane that identified itself as hamster, not monkey.  Don’t you see, we can use this process now?  We can bring back the Mammoths or Mastodons if we want to.  We are going to have all those new icy glaciers up north; we could bring back the animals that went extinct after the last ice age if we have copies of their DNA available.  By identifying and manipulating the phospholipids membrane we can also stop the rejection caused by a autoimmune response of the surrogate mother.  A dog can now have kittens, or a cow could carry a colt fetus, or a human could carry a Neanderthal fetus.  Think of the possibilities this opens up.”