Trappist-1, page 2
part #3 of Mark Noble Space Adventures Series
‘Anna hosted one? You didn’t tell us. It really killed her cancer?’ Neil asked.
‘It really did,’ I said. ‘Now think on this – because of your decision, all of the millions of cancer deaths in the world are now an unnecessary evil. More than ninety-five per cent could have been stopped. You have put a death sentence on ten million people who will die of cancer in the next year alone. You have caused millions to live with dementia which could have been prevented before it started and eased for existing cases. The common cold would have been eradicated, and flu and other viruses would vanish. There would never again be a plague like COVID-19. The entities would have been able to marshal the body’s defences to find and kill them all.’
He looked at me with sadness in his eyes.
‘And it doesn’t stop there,’ I continued. ‘The improvement in intellect would have seen us breaking free from, not only the Earth, but the solar system too. All lost. All sacrificed on the altar of an all-knowing government and its paranoid military.’
He said nothing.
‘Do you understand the seriousness and long-term implications of what you have done?’
He took a deep breath and sat more upright in his chair. ‘Yes. I do. But NASA’s hands were tied. We couldn’t stop it. I’m truly sorry.’
We stared at each other. Was the time right or should I save it for another occasion? My entity prodded me to take the opportunity.
‘Would you like to help to put it right?’ I asked.
‘If only, but how? Bob and I tried every type of reasoning with General Gilby. He just wouldn’t listen.’
‘Watch!’ I said and removed a ballpoint pen from my pocket.
I stood it on my finger and, with almost invisible adjustments, it stayed vertical. Neil looked at the pen with a puzzled gaze.
‘Try it,’ I said, reaching over the desk to give him the pen.
He placed it on his finger and within a second or two it had tumbled onto the inlaid leather. He tried again with worse results. ‘What’s the trick?’
‘Give it back,’ I said.
I took the pen, balanced it on my left index finger, tossed it to my right hand and then grabbed more from his desk tidy, which was full of pens and pencils. I put a second pen on my left hand, then more on both hands.
Neil laughed, ‘Come on, Mark. What’s the trick?’
‘Patience,’ I said, replacing my own pen in my jacket pocket and returning his to the desk tidy. I handed him a small notepad. ‘Write down two seven figure numbers under each other.’
Again he looked at me in a puzzled manner, scribbled some digits and passed it back to me.
I looked at the two numbers, 7,322,809 and 3,457,336 for a few seconds then wrote 25,317,411,176,824 beneath them and passed it back. ‘Check the multiplication,’ I challenged.
He carefully copied the numbers into his laptop, multiplied them and then expanded the e-number into digits which matched mine exactly.
He looked hard at me. ‘That is not possible,’ he stated.
‘Neil, it is possible. I just did it!’ I said.
‘How? Stop messing about, Mark. What’s going on?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ I said, sitting back in my chair.
I watched his face change from puzzlement to realisation. ‘You aren’t?’
‘Aren’t what?’
‘Infected.’
‘No, I’m not infected, I’m enhanced,’ I said.
He sat silently, staring at me. I guessed options were going through his mind, from calling for help, to running away.
More than two minutes passed. A long time to sit in silence looking at someone who might be a deadly enemy but had always been a colleague and friend.
‘How?’
‘We experimented on Moonbase. What I said about Anna’s cancer was true. We discovered that it was a pure symbiosis, not an infection. We knew we had to stop the military and took steps to enhance everyone including the military members of the crew. Tosh had discovered a way to protect the entities from the radiation used by the projectors and also that of the Van Allen belts. We were safe to return home.’
‘But you could infect me?’ he said, his voice trembling.
‘No, but I could enhance you.’
‘Are you really Mark? How do I know?’
‘Ask me anything.’
‘You really have one of these things inside you?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘I do.’
‘And there’s no compulsion to infect me?’
‘Not a compulsion, but I think you would appreciate one. Now that enhanced humans are increasing in number, no unenhanced person would be of any use to the future space programme. You can see what a difference it has made to my physical and intellectual capabilities,’ I said.
Again he sat in silence, considering what I’d said.
‘You have one with you?’ he asked.
I removed a small metal container from my side pocket and passed it to him. ‘This is the most wonderful gift you will ever receive. You said you’d like to put things right. Here is the opportunity. Prove it!’
He turned the box over in his hand. The top showed the stars and stripes. He read the side, ‘Singer Accessories! You want me to take up sewing?’ He smiled.
‘Just a convenient box which Linda had.’
‘What if I change my mind?’ he asked.
‘Ask him to leave you.’
‘You’re joking. All that trouble with you and Linda escaping Moonbase and all that was needed was for you to ask them to get out of your heads?’
I placed my hand on the walnut edge of his desk. My entity, almost clear and slightly glistening, emerged from the back of my hand and moved onto the desk. ‘That’s mine,’ I said. ‘When they first took over Roy and the others, they were in a battle for supremacy. They believed that if they had released free will back to any of the humans at the time, they’d have cried “invasion”. It meant there was never an attempt at symbiosis in those early days. It was always about outright control. Remember, that entire first event only lasted a few days. After Linda and I escaped, they were isolated at Moonbase and able to begin to really work together. Very quickly, they realised that symbiosis was the only way forward with such a powerful species as us. What began as absolute control, soon developed into symbiosis as both entity and host worked together.’
I turned my hand sideways and my entity returned home.
‘I’m not sure I’d like one of these things forever talking to me in my head. I like my life and my thoughts to be mine.’
‘Neil, I would not offer you something which would harm you. I promise,’ I said. ‘Normally, they sit in the background helping you to understand things more clearly, improving your ability to explain things and operate things. He doesn’t sit in my head saying, “do that this way”, “it would be better if you said it this way”, or telling me off for doing things in a different way to what it thinks is best.’
He opened the box and looked inside.
‘Your intellect is improved, your thinking sharper and more specific, your dexterity, like that pen trick, is not him controlling my hands, but him having given me the ability to control my motor systems far more effectively,’ I said.
His gaze returned to the contents of the box. ‘There’s two of them,’ he said.
‘One for Miriam.’
‘What do I do?’
‘Sit back in your chair and offer the back of your hand. You will feel odd for a while and he will probably explore some of your memories. If you want him to stop, just think the instruction. I’m here to help you, but you’ll soon find that you’ll get all the help you need from the entity.’
He was still hesitant. We sat quietly. There was no point in trying to force the issue. Eventually he overcame his natural reluctance, relaxed, and offered his hand.
2 Resistance
During the early weeks after my return from the moon, more of the expeditionary force also returned to their homes in the USA, China, Europe, Britain, India and Russia. The enhancement of humankind was now unstoppable.
The enhanced humans’ policy was to first enhance people who were close to us as friends or relations. This stopped the bulk of resistance, but not all and there were always those who saw it as an infringement to their liberties, even if it was saving and extending their lives.
Lockheed were one of the main manufacturing and component suppliers for the Orion spacecraft after the original Artemis programme. One of their senior managers, Susan Holby, did cause a problem. After being enhanced, she decided to blow the whistle, and having extensive media contacts her outcry went worldwide.
We knew it was all way too late to stop the spread of the entities, so we didn’t react at all, but it did cause some trouble.
All of a sudden, there were news and current affairs programmes asking the question. Did the Lunar Regolith Parasites (LRPs) manage to get to Earth? Are they taking us over by stealth? Did they survive the lunar eradication?
All entities knew that force should never be used with humans after the first few hours while they were learning the benefits of enhancement. Susan’s entity was shocked by her severe adverse reaction and had trouble knowing how to deal with the situation. She went to great lengths to show Susan how lives were being saved, chronic diseases being conquered, life extended and so on. Her entity even found an early cancer in Susan which she insisted be checked via an MRI scan to prove it was real. It still didn’t convince Susan that the enhancement was beneficial, even after showing her that the cancer had later disappeared. She continued to make as much noise as possible about being taken over by an LRP.
The general public became bored with her tirades, but it enthralled unenhanced journalists who were not convinced about the truth of Susan’s story at first, but gradually became more suspicious. Their natural reaction was to approach the Moonstruck expeditionary members for comment. Naturally, I was a prime target as the leader of the expedition and continuing to work with NASA.
When the inevitable interview was requested, I restricted it to seven journalists, and we all sat in a small lounge area at the Johnson Space Center.
‘Dr Noble, you’ll know of the claim that parasites were brought back from the moon and are gradually taking over the general public,’ said the New York Times leader writer.
‘And your question is?’ I asked.
‘Well, did you bring the parasites back? Are you part of the invasion.’
‘You need to understand the context of what happened on the moon from January through to the end of April,’ I said.
‘Did you bring parasites back?’ prompted another journalist. They were determined not to be fobbed off.
‘In order for me to answer that, you need to allow me to set the context. If you will not allow that then this interview is over,’ I said, then sat silently.
After a few tens of seconds of uncomfortable silence, the NYT journalist said, ‘Okay. What do you want to say?’
‘I just want to set the context,’ I said, sipping my water, my entity informing me of the mood of my audience and helping me keep calm and measured in the telling. ‘The first encounter was sheer chance. One of the entities which had become our hippocampi millions of years ago, had never made it to Earth. It was stuck in deep moon dust until the buggy used by Dr Williams and myself fell into a dust pit near the crater designated as Timocharis Delta.’
‘We know all of that,’ said another journalist.
I lifted my arms in exasperation. ‘If there is somewhere you need to be that is more important than this, please go,’ I said and sat in silence pointedly.
When he realised I was not going to say anything further, he apologised and I was able to continue. My entity was actually helping me control the audience. ‘The prime objective of these creatures is to join with a living being. They were symbiotes needing to be inside an animal in order to help that animal be more successful. Initially we believed them to be harmful parasites, intent on control, but later found that it wasn’t the case.
‘On our return to Moonbase on that first day, Dr Williams was apparently attacked by the alien entity, which disabled him. It needed to learn about its host and could not do that while a struggle was taking place between itself and its host. It took over Dr Williams’ central nervous system so effectively, that he appeared dead, even to the Moonbase medical doctor, Dr MacIntosh.
‘The battle between the first entity and Dr Williams became existential and the entity came to believe that it needed to conquer Moonbase before it could travel to Earth. All the time, it was learning about us, realising we were intelligent thinking creatures. It believed that only total control of us would suffice. It didn’t dare release its hold on its victim until everyone was infected.
‘Within a day or so, it had reproduced and began controlling Dr MacIntosh. The rest of the crew were unaware of this at the time.
‘The entities could only reproduce every two days, but by day five, they had already occupied six of the Moonbase crew. Only myself and my wife, Linda, were free.’
‘We know all of this,’ said the man from Reuters.
‘You might know some of the facts,’ I said, ‘but you don’t understand the context. Am I going to be allowed to finish the explanation?’
There were several answers in the affirmative.
‘We are now at the point where six of the Moonbase crew were what we called, “infected”. Linda and I believed we were in mortal peril and escaped, accidentally killing Blake Smith, the Moonbase commander, as he tried to stop us boarding our Dragonstar.
‘One of the entities, as you know, “infected” me as we were re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. We were so alarmed by this that Linda tried to destroy the spacecraft, but was too late to do so.
‘You need to understand that, at this point in the story, we all felt that we’d encountered a creature which was intent on world domination. There had never been such an existential threat to mankind. It was obvious that we needed to return to the moon and destroy them. They were too dangerous to be allowed to survive. There was serious discussion of abandoning the moon completely in case there were more entities hiding in the regolith. The military seriously suggested resolving the Moonbase problem with a nuclear bomb!’
I leaned forward, picked up my glass of water and took another deep draught before continuing. It gave the idea of the nuke time to sink in.
‘The bomb idea was kept in the background. When we returned to the moon, some of us soon discovered that the “infected” astronauts had come to believe that it wasn’t a harmful parasitic infection, but a beneficial symbiosis. We learned that the entities could exit their hosts and even while still within them, they could refrain from taking any control of the hosts.
‘Meetings followed with the people hosting the entities and we found out that there was absolutely nothing sinister or damaging about the creatures. In fact, the opposite was the case. They could enhance our intellect, cure our diseases and illnesses and extend our longevity.
‘To understand their power and their interaction with humans, you need to think about it, not as one having power over the other, but them and us working together to achieve more than we would as individuals. The entities learned, too, that total control, using pain as the instrument to control humans, was never going to produce the desired cooperation and only offered the prospect of eternal conflict.
‘Does that make sense?’ I asked and saw most of the heads nod.
‘By this time, some might say understandably, the paranoid military generals here on Earth had taken over the NASA mission and secret plans were being formulated to wipe the aliens out.
‘Despite being the leader of the expeditionary force, I was kept in the dark. This is probably because I was not military. My civilian military adviser, Bill Wright, plus my deputy, Anna Stanbury, were also kept out of the official loop, but, together, we’d independently agreed that we needed to find out exactly what hosting entailed. We considered it worth the risk to our own health.
‘The result of our experiment was that, very quickly indeed, we became certain that it was not a parasitic invasion, but was a healthy, wonderful symbiosis. The next day the military attacked the entities’ habitat at the Asimov Rille, and had orders to capture them all and bring them to Moonbase to be irradiated and have the dead parasites removed.
‘Fortunately, no one was aware that Bill, Anna and I were already hosts and we had also enhanced the Moonbase medical team. When the “infected” astronauts from the rille arrived, the military irradiated them, thinking they were killing the entities. What they didn’t know was that Dr MacIntosh had developed a protection for the entities. The radiation had almost no effect, but the infected humans all collapsed as if it had. They were stretchered to the surgery, where we plotted together to enhance the military personnel at Moonbase.
‘Within twenty-four hours, everyone was enhanced. The military’s genocidal action had been foiled and we planned our return to Earth which involved pretending that the entities had all been eradicated.’
‘So, you’re admitting it?’ asked the NYT leader writer with a shocked expression.
‘Yes. Watch,’ I said and asked my entity to climb out of my hand. ‘I am not imprisoned by it. I can be free of it any time I wish.’ I noticed that one of the journalists, Rosemary Phelps from CNN, actually stood up and retreated towards the door.
I rotated my hand and my entity was back inside me. I picked up the pen and did the usual pen trick then asked the journalists to give me complex maths tests, which I passed with perfect results.
‘Would you like to try one out? As I’ve shown, they’ll leave you if you ask them to,’ I said.
They all looked at me sceptically.
‘Look. Let me show you,’ I said and emptied a box of entities onto a table on my left, a good distance from the journalists. They milled around shining slightly in the light, giving the appearance of slivers of gelatine. Nevertheless, I saw several of the journalists become tense, entering “fight or flight” mode. Rosemary, the retreating woman, took hold of the door handle ready to vamoose.
