Xenome: A Science Fiction Thriller (Standalone Book), page 1
XENOME
XENOME Copyright © 2023 by Vivek Pravat
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously in order to provide a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, establishments, companies, government or judicial entities, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, posting, uploading, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by copyright law.
www.vivekpravat.com
Also by Vivek Pravat
Zeroglyph
To Grandpa, who sacrificed so much
Contents
Prologue
Part 1: Charlie
1. Murmuration
2. Preparations
3. Alotau
4. Adrian
5. Flight
6. Barreleye
7. Dip
8. Control Station
Part 2: Alice
9. Amazon
10. Lars
11. The Village
12. Chrysalis
13. Leviathan
14. Chromosome One
15. Myra
16. Invasion
17. Pursuit
18. David
Part 3: Bob
19. Shaw
20. Rendezvous
21. First Kill
22. Eupepsia
23. Tree Huggers
24. Star Farers
25. The Node
26. Rat
27. Jammer
28. NASLX3D
29. Specific Response
30. Medea
31. Exit Plan
32. Queen Bee
33. Bull
34. Isolation
Afterword
About the Author
Prologue
Athunderstorm had just passed, leaving a sultry, dripping stillness in the lower reaches of the rainforest. Soon, the temporary calm would be a thing of the past as the myriad occupants of the jungle returned to their activities, but for now the silence lay heavy, pierced only by the sounds of someone crashing through the thick undergrowth. Quick gasps of labored breathing accompanied the noise of twigs snapping and shrubs being pushed aside.
A man ran through the vegetation. His step was nimble, suggesting expertise in navigating the difficult terrain, but there was no hiding the sheer exhaustion he felt in every fiber of his pumping muscles. It was evident he had been running for a while. Maybe all day—he had no way of telling. Time had become a dimensionless abstraction, with only the white mark on his hand where his watch used to be reminding him that there were things such as hours and minutes and that, for some reason, they were in dwindling supply.
All that mattered was that he get out of the jungle at any cost.
“It’s Ricky,” he gasped for the umpteenth time, holding on to the syllables like a drowning man a lifeline. “My name is Ricky.” Ricky… something. That fall in the stream earlier had been a godsend, with the cold water bringing him back from his fugue state, but much of his mind remained frustratingly blank.
It’s a start. Give it time.
Not everything was shrouded in a fog; glimpses from what he assumed was a recent altercation flashed in his memory as he ran. A battle. He wasn’t alone; there were others. All dead now, he felt strangely confident. He was the sole survivor.
But for how long?
Fatigue finally took its toll, making him stop and slump against a tree, his legs shaking under him. As he waited for his breath to recover, he gave himself a once-over out of long-inculcated habit. He was mostly in one piece: there were cuts and bruises aplenty, but none that hampered function. He wasn’t all that hungry, no more than the last time he’d been lucid. Just terribly thirsty. So much so that it hurt when he swallowed. And yet, the thought of water seemed to stoke some nameless fear in him—a fear that for now lay deeply buried.
Fear of something out there? If only his rifle were still with him. He distinctively recalled having it the previous night: he had pressed it tight against his body as he sat curled up in a hollow somewhere, scared and alone and muttering to himself while the jungle sang to him.
He blinked. Yes, the jungle had sung to him with the sound of flutes.
You’re tripping. Imagining things. Jungles don’t sing.
Before he could examine the absurdity of it any further, his attention was captured by a most unexpected sight: golden-yellow beams of sunlight winking at him through gaps in the tree trunks ahead to his right. On its heels blew in a salty tang he recognized beyond doubt—the sea. He had reached the end of the jungle.
Not bad, Ricky Dunn, not bad at all.
A big grin crossed his face at the double fortune. Then, as some crucial synapse made a connection and fired off dormant parts of his brain, it slowly started coming back. His last name was Dunn. Middle name Walter. Born in Des Moines, Iowa. He still lived there, with his wife Gail, and his son, two-year-old Jeremy. There was a baby girl on the way—they hadn’t decided on the name yet. And he was an army veteran: the Rangers, 3rd Battalion. Now he worked in the private sector. As to his present whereabouts, he was on an island, somewhere in its northern half.
Doing what?
No matter. It will come in time.
He breathed in greedily, filling his lungs with the wholesome sea breeze. But as he did so, he became aware of a new smell—a sharp, coppery scent that didn’t quite belong among the dank notes of the forest. The odor wasn’t being carried by the breeze either; its source was somewhere near.
Very near.
Dunn went rigid, instinctively crouching to present a smaller target. Enemy combatant? No, this felt like something else. Something far worse.
He began sprinting again. So close now. Expending the last ounces of his strength, he charged through the final stretch of trees into the open. And there he halted because there was nowhere else to go. About fifty yards ahead, the land dropped off into the vista of a wide, empty ocean. The jungle had terminated in a cliff.
To his right, the ledge narrowed into a sharp promontory. The setting sun hung low over it, indicating he’d spent all day trudging through the forest. But it was not true about there being nowhere to go. As his dark-accustomed eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that the slope on his left was navigable. It led to a muddy beach about two klicks southwest.
Dunn nodded gratefully at the welcome sight. He probably had an hour before it got completely dark. He could spend the night at the beach and, in the morning, hike and swim along the coast down south.
There was a settlement down south.
The idea, however, instead of giving him hope, filled him with that same vague dread. His mind kept returning to his rifle. He needed it—somehow, everything depended on it.
But wait. Wasn’t he forgetting something?
As if compelled by its own volition, his right hand traveled to his chest, where it felt something hard nestled beneath the shirt.
My pistol! I didn’t lose it after all!
Feeling giddy with a renewed sense of purpose, he reached under the shirt and unclipped the holstered weapon. A Smith & Wesson M&P. The weight on his practiced hand said it was loaded.
Just in time, he thought, as the jungle behind him rustled. He spun around, the metallic smell assailing his nostrils once again. He didn’t have to search very hard to locate the source—it was standing in plain sight next to a bush, watching him watch it. The alien.
Colored beads of light moved inside its skull like fireflies doing a mating dance.
Dunn was surprised at his lack of surprise. It was as if he’d expected the creature to be there, standing on all fours and bobbing that nightmare-inducing head in discontinuous little jerks like so. The alien. Not, Jesus, what the hell is that thing? Simply, the alien.
He stared. Yup. It was this abomination that had been stalking him all night; how could he forget those crazy lights flipping on and off as it darted about in the pitch dark?
Well, you’re not gonna stalk me anymore. Time to die, freak.
He racked the gun and aimed.
But his fingers didn’t follow through. Maybe it was the sight of the bizarre creature that did it, but right then all his repressed memories came flooding into the forefront with the semblance of a dam bursting. A moan escaped his lips as he dropped his gun and, clutching his head, staggered back a step. He remembered every single horrible detail: his mission, that bloodbath near the camp, people losing their shit…
Most importantly, he remembered the real reason for his seeking the edge of the jungle.
All strength seemed to leave his body as he fell to his knees in the grass and laughed—peals of loud, bitter laughter that rang hollowly among the trees like a gong about to shatter. It had all been for nothing. All day he’d been running for nothing. He’d been tricked into coming here—and by his subconscious no less. Reeled in like a blind fish on a hook.
The creature slunk back into the bushes, startled by his cackling.
Not for nothing. Do what you came here to do.
Dunn wiped his eyes and picked up the gun. Right. The endgame. He backed away, taking care not to trip on the stony ground. To his relief, the creature remained where it was. He then turned and hurried to the cliff's edge; there was no telling how long this latest spell of clarity would last.
A brisk wind climbed the precipice and ruffled his sweat-matted hair as he found a seat among the rocks and looked west. Toward home. The dying sun had infused the towering cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon with every possible shade of red and violet, lending them a desolate beauty that seemed apt. Dunn allowed himself a forlorn smile. Not bad as far as last sights go.
There was no escaping the island—he saw that now. But breathing your last while lying face down in the muck of the jungle floor, and then having your body gnawed at by those… ball things was no way for a soldier to die. This way was clean. Dignified. The real reason his autopilot had brought him here.
Some sixth sense warned that the alien had stepped out from the jungle behind him. He pictured it approaching like a cat on the prowl.
Let it. I don’t care. Dunn took a final look at the ocean, closed his eyes, and stuck the pistol’s muzzle inside his mouth. He willed his last thoughts to be of his wife and kid, and the baby he would never see.
However, to his infinite frustration, what occupied his brain in the final milliseconds before the bullet tore through it was a solitary, nagging worry.
He was wrong about the island. He’d been wrong from the very beginning.
And now, no one would ever know.
Part 1: Charlie
1. Murmuration
Acold wind blew across the Sacramento River.
Holly Truong lowered her binoculars and pulled on the drawstrings of her hoodie, wondering why she hadn’t put on an extra layer underneath. She’d been in such a big rush to have everything loaded into the car and drive to the test site. And David had been of no help at all—he’d started making last-minute changes to his code the moment the trail cameras pinged confirmation on the birds.
He was still working, furiously tapping away at his laptop inside their Honda CR-V.
The biologist in her said she shouldn’t be complaining; the weather was perfect for finding large flocks of starlings. There was a group of about five thousand right there on the wooded islet not far from her spot. Another six or seven thousand congregated on the far bank, on the big transmission tower amidst the freshly harvested cornfields. Twelve thousand in all, give or take. A good number—bigger than last time, but not so big as to overwhelm the drones she was preparing to launch.
Today was going to be different. She could feel it in her bones. No crashed drones like last time. No snags, no freaky CPU lags, no code bugs. Just pure, glorious success. All they had to do was gather the birds, hold formation for a couple of minutes, and take them to the drop-off point a quarter of a mile south. Easy.
At least, that’s what she told herself. Herding mice with cats, David called their endeavor, and when feeling less optimistic, she’d have wholeheartedly agreed.
Brushing aside a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail, she shot the blond man inside the car an impatient look. Of half-Vietnamese and half-Irish-American descent, Holly had a naturally ambiguous face that was hard to read. Her jet-black hair framed an oval face with a rounded chin and a button nose, making it appear softer than she usually felt, while her slim, wide lips with their droopy corners made her look preoccupied even when she was in the best of moods. Dreamy eyelashes fluttered over a pair of probing green eyes, further muddying the waters. People who went around telling other people they should smile more were usually thrown off their game with her.
“Sun’s getting low,” she urged.
“Nearly there. I’m prepping the config file. How many drones are we deploying?”
“Eight. Start with two, then scale in increments of two.”
This did make him look up. Rising from his seat, he craned his neck to peer at the islet. “You reckon there are so many?”
“I see three more clusters: two on the far bank and one on this side. We take the group on the islet and sweep northwest to the pylon. Then cross over to this side, gathering what we can in a west-to-east arc.”
“Ambitious today, are we, hon?”
She winced. The dreaded h-word, always at the wrong time. David wasn’t just her research partner: he also happened to be her boyfriend. The problem was, she liked to keep the worlds separate, and he rarely did. Right now, she was an ethologist and a postdoc scholar from Sacramento’s UC Davis; David, an Assistant Professor of Engineering who specialized in swarm robotics. They were collaborating on an interdisciplinary project part-sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture. If they could demonstrate proof of concept with today’s numbers, they’d be assured funding for another six months, not to mention finding themselves one step closer to solving a problem that had bugged environmentalists and farmers for decades. A lot was at stake. “Hon” made it seem like they’d just finished drawing up the shopping list for the weekend.
“Should I program a flock shape?” he asked, his stylus poised on the touchpad next to him.
Holly scratched her chin. “No. Nothing fancy tonight. Set the drones to free-react. We need longevity, and we need cohesion.”
“You got it.”
She hurried to the Honda’s trunk and took out two of the sixteen drones nestled inside. Quadcopters with lightweight 180mm carbon-fiber frames, each had an onboard 64-bit computer for packaging sensor data and making tactical inflight decisions. More unusually, mounted on each drone was a custom-built plastic casing made to look like a peregrine falcon—the starling’s mortal enemy.
“Config’s ready. Uploading it to the drones now,” David said, easing some of the tension that had set in her shoulders. She released the first two drones and watched as they flew toward the islet.
The starlings gave each other cries of alarm and noisily took to the sky. The two drones were the push—the proverbial stone that set the avalanche in motion. The others would draw the flock in, shape it, and keep it confined to a preprogrammed aerial path.
Her hands moved fast, reaching into the trunk for the next pair, waiting for the blinking LEDs to go green, then releasing them in the air. Meanwhile, the birds flew to the opposite bank, where a smaller group of starlings joined them from the fields. The new drones raced west to prevent the flock from prematurely turning toward the river.
The common or European starling, first introduced to North America in the late nineteenth century, had grown in the intervening decades to become one of the top agricultural pests of the continent. Annually, starlings were estimated to cause over a billion dollars of crop damage in the United States alone. There was great interest in curbing their numbers humanely, or, barring that, in directing them away from cultivated areas.
The two researchers aimed to achieve the latter, by exploiting a key characteristic of the starlings’ flocking behavior.
Apart from being a nuisance, starlings were famous for flying in beautiful, otherworldly formations called murmurations that could range in size from a few hundred birds to colossal swarms numbering in the millions. Fast, extremely agile, and capable of behaving as one entity, murmurations had evolved to confuse predators such as the peregrine falcon—the fastest living thing on the planet.
Behind the seeming complexity of a murmuration was actually a very simple rule. All each starling had to do to maintain formation was keep a fixed distance between itself and its seven nearest neighbors. This simple behavior turned a leaderless swarm into a seeming hive mind. And it was this behavior that Holly’s mathematical model—then turned into a neural net algorithm by David—exploited to predict and contain the swarm’s movements in 3D space.
As the drones closed in, the murmuration responded, temporarily stretching into a corkscrew pattern. Then the rear ranks caught up with the middle and turned the whole thing into a ball shape again.
