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The Cloud - 4. Chapter 4
“Site K”
Secret US Government Lab
Nevada Desert
Dr. Jerry Cassidy rubbed his eyes. He had been assigned to a team called the Biosciences Work Group and had been looking at the same data since he arrived at the lab called “Site K”.
There simply weren’t enough pieces of the puzzle to come up with even a wild guess at what the cloud was that was rapidly approaching Earth. He stood up and walked the short distance down the hall to the break room.
Dr. Hart of Tulane, a biochemist and Dr. Turner of Stanford, a botanist, were milling about the break room enjoying the coffee and pastries supplied by Navy stewards.
Hart said, “Jerry, join the party. Are you feeling as useless as the rest of us?”
Cassidy poured a cup of coffee and sat. “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be doing. I think they looked at the cloud, saw it was green and called for biologists just in case.”
Turner said, “We don’t have nearly enough data to call it a life form, but the idea of a species that can travel the stars is fascinating.”
Cassidy asked, “What is the latest?”
Turner the botanist, who had become the de facto team leader presumably because the object in question was green, said, “The object is slowing down. It will be visible to amateur astronomers on Wednesday, the naked eye on the following Friday and will be on top of us Monday. We are expecting the best pictures yet from the Hubble Space Telescope and a new round of spectroscopic observations shortly.”
Hart said, “I’m looking forward to some better images of the object. All we can see is a fuzzy green blob. The chemical analysis so far is nothing exceptional that hasn’t already been detected in space.”
Turner looked at the tablet computer sitting on the counter and said, “The new images from NASA are here. Let’s go have a look.” His office was closest and the Cassidy and Hart followed him. He sat down at his computer, extracted the image files and sent them to the big screen monitor on the wall.
The Hubbell Space Telescope image of the object was much sharper. The cloud was almost oval shape and its green color came from bright filaments. There was some sort of internal structures with clear rod-shapes and more subtle structures deeper inside.
Cassidy said, “If I didn’t know better…”
Dr. Hart started pointing at the structures and said, “Ribosomes, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, chloroplasts … I don’t see an obvious nucleus.”
Turner said, “It has characteristics of both a plant and an animal cell.”
“My God, … it looks like a common algae”, Cassidy muttered.
Turner picked up his phone. Before he dialed, he said, “I think we’ve answered the question they had for us. It’s alive.”
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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