Tales of Three Worlds - 11. Fragment Eleven: Layers

“And who are you supposed to be?”

The red-haired man ran his fingers through his long hair and frowned. Every inquiry said that the Daedalus Foundation went out of business three centuries ago, having liquidated all their holdings and assets—and yet, one of their products had been used to create the body of Harman Halveg. It might just have been possible that some items kept in storage had been rediscovered, but the records said all such biological assets had been accounted for as being used up or destroyed. Now that the bio sample had arrived from Tycho Deep, Ernst-Karl could determine the facts for himself.

It had been Jakob’s idea to use another of Hartmann’s old machines to do the analysis, with a one-way hard link to the Mini-Colossus so it could read the original data files but not alter them in any way, or worse, delete them. By current standards these precautions slowed down the task, but that might also be due to the specs of the devices themselves. Both men had accepted this as a fait accompli to insure the integrity of Hartmann’s original research which had to contain the answers they sought. Being restricted to these ancient devices, a task that would take only a couple hours at any other time, would now take six or seven.

“Want to take a meal break…or a nap?” The pause before that last phrase told Ernst what Jakob’s real choice would be. Now that they’d been infused with the new ‘star-bots’ from Luna, they found themselves with more energy, and operating on less sleep than they had been used to. It came down to increased efficiency in their metabolism, along with some minor physical alterations, but it amounted to an athlete getting his ‘second wind’ at the crucial stage of a race.

Ernst grinned. “I think we should watch that old movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. If we’re going to have to wait so long for the results, it’s only fair that we should feel like an eternity has passed….”

Jakob chuckled. All the old data said that movie was a cinematic triumph and a standard for all future science-fiction films, but when they’d watched it at uni in Neu Bonn with Hartmann, it had taken a massive dose of sarcasm to keep all of them awake until it ended. They didn’t know how the average viewer had reacted when it came out, but for them it had given the term ‘stunning’ a different meaning than critics normally applied: it felt like they’d been hit over the head by a blunt object until they could barely remain conscious.

“No thanks! Maybe our old holo-vid friend Matthias could star in a remake…his tool would make a great Monolith….” He dodged quickly as Ernst aimed a punch to his left bicep. “Did you know he’s gone into production now rather than taking on starring roles?”

“Seriously? I had figured he was dead by now since he still lives in the Eurobloc,” Ernst scratched his head in mild shock. “What are his films about these days?”

Jakob smiled broadly. “I’m not sure of the latest ones, but for a while they were on Science and Technology…and Social History—and he’s not living there anymore; he’s settled somewhere on Luna.”

“What?” Ernst wasn’t sure which surprised him more, that Matthias was now living off-planet or that he’d gone into serious documentary production. “How do you know all this?”

“Well, when we were talking the other day, I looked at some of his vidsites, but those are just geared for his fans and publicity, so I did some data mining and turned up a few more concrete facts. It seems the Genetic Authority began to take an interest in his more recent works and tried to ‘influence’ his views...”

Ernst-Karl had to laugh at that point, and Jakob quickly joined him. Both men knew that their friend with the ‘Jupiter-sized ego’ didn’t take kindly to anyone interfering in his schemes no matter who they were or how powerful they might be. What did surprise him was that the GA had taken an interest in his films; the Authority’s main focus had always been preserving an unaltered form of humanity rather than meddle in social issues like sexuality…what had changed? Had they always held a hidden agenda?

It was almost like Jakob could read his thoughts. “I wonder if Matthias’ films were questioning the Authority’s propaganda for them to become a pain in his arse?”

“With them, who can say? I never expected them to take such a radical stand against even the simplest genetic alterations as they did…” Jakob grabbed his husband and hugged him hard. The loss of his spouse’s mother to a repairable medical problem still rankled even five centuries later.

“Sorry Jake,” he said with a long sigh. Ernst shook himself and let himself enjoy their moment of closeness. It didn’t take much nano enhancement for his mind to think of something else to do than watch a ridiculously boring ancient video. “Want to see what kind of odyssey we can make on our own for a few hours?”

As the two men once more celebrated their love with renewed passion, the antique computer analyzed the anomalous bio-sample of Harman Halveg’s DNA. By virtue of its one-way connection to the Mini-Colossus it had access to files unknown on the Triad’s mainframe in Tycho Deep, and the results were calculated both more quickly than expected and more accurately. With no outgoing connections it went on to finish the first two sections of the genetic profile, then went seamlessly on to the third which had given Luna’s system fits.

Had the two men been watching they would have been stunned when the genomic profile of Harman Halveg was completed. There was no ‘mechanical interference’ this time, and being separated from any other computing system by both centuries of design and millions of miles in distance, the results were beyond any question:

Hartmann Hallbach 51%
Pavel Svoboda 31%
9A-1/4-1-11 15%*
Ovum DF-57C 3%

* Addendum:
Composite Genomic Template Sample from
reconstructed archaeologic sources;
Neanderthalensis: 75%
Denisoviensis: 25%

Analysis Complete

* * * * * * * * * *

The man stared at the old artist’s rendering of a space-ship on the far side of his office. It dated all the way back to pre-Space days and had cost him a fair amount of money due to that fact alone. It was oil on paste-board depicting a needle-nosed silvery finned craft against a background of black, dotted with a smattering of stellar pinpoints and one clouded blue-green planet. Beneath the white whorls outlines of multi-colored continents could be glimpsed, though it was difficult to tell if they were alien or terrestrial in origin.

On the metal desk sat a model of a similar craft at an angle on a futuristically curved pedestal. Unlike the painting, this was a reproduction based on a ship from a movie called Destination: Moon. The other walls held various diagrams and photographs also from the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First centuries. An educated eye would see diagrams and spec sheets for a very large radio telescope and what appeared to be cut-away drawings for a tapered space-ship like the one in the model and what could have been a multi-storied building. Captions on the framed displays read ‘Far Side Deep Space Array’ and ‘Van Dalen Science Complex, Luna’. Sharp eyes would have noted the words ‘Projected View’ at the bottom of many images.

The walls of the room were gray sealed rock, and the floor was a smoothed version of the same material. The ceiling was similar with evenly spaced lighting panels glowing down in shadow-less off-white. Like other doors in the facility, a spoked wheel was centered on each side like those on an ancient ship…unlike those, it took only a touch for the door to open and close with a soft clunk and pneumatic hiss denoting an air-tight seal. Vents in the ceiling ensured fresh air circulated at all times, though each room could be sealed automatically if a pressure drop was registered signaling a loss of atmosphere.

This was the oldest part of the center and the twelve-foot ceiling heights and eight-foot wide corridors proved that to the man every day he came to work. The research labs and other areas were more spacious, but the living quarters remained much as he’d found them centuries before when he’d first visited. Recreation areas were large and filled with all sorts of plants that helped to generate the base’s oxygen. Food supplies were grown in sealed caverns that had been shaped both by natural forces and the tools of men—they even had living animals for needed proteins that pills alone couldn’t provide in a palatable fashion.

Settlements like Tycho Deep and Aristarchus Farben, though older by a few decades, had been greatly modified once the ‘thals had come to Luna. The small, scattered outposts that had been there before the ‘Exodus’ had mostly prospered and grown with the new arrivals, but some still had mainly human residents that preferred the older style of building or couldn’t afford to upgrade due to lack of public support. Others, like the one he now lived in, had actually failed due to obsolescence or sheer distance from the rest of its neighbors.

While many considered isolation a curse and an obstacle to advancement, the brooding blond man did not. Though he’d never broken any of Earth’s countless laws, he’d bent more than one and defied others until his actions drew notice from the Genetic Authority’s investigators. Some areas of Earth they ruled outright, others they held immense leverage over so that their wishes held a force akin to law. Their sway over biosciences was almost absolute, and seemed to be growing in others as time went on.

The destruction of the Hallbach-Sommers Combine in Finland a few years earlier had been reported as the result of a ‘tragic failure’ of a fusion power plant, but no one with any knowledge of those systems believed it…and the simultaneous extermination of others of that clan went blissfully unreported on the world’s newsfeeds. While not a member of that family, he’d been observing trends for long enough to see the writing on the wall and prepared as best he could for a less than rosy future for the sciences and those who upheld their truths...

He had to admit that Chance had played a part in some aspects of his life, but most of his current status had been the product of his own drive and determination…and skills. Genetics had given him the tools for success, education had given him the requisite knowledge to use them, but it had been Chance that gave him the final piece to his future. Through a tangle of bloodlines and business losses going back for a century, he’d found himself the sole heir and now owner of the last asset of one Sigurd Van Dalen—a derelict outpost on Luna’s Far-side. A small portion of his wealth had been used to upgrade, then staff the facility with the latest equipment and experts in the biosciences who could no longer find freedom on Earth. A slow start had led to a growing business that had attracted the attention of those who could no longer reproduce naturally and had been denied the medical processes by the GA which might give them progeny.

The power of coincidence can lead to strange events, and none could have been more so than that which brought one childless scientist and one long-lost but not forgotten friend together almost three centuries earlier. That rekindled friendship had begun several projects, one to give the radiation-damaged man a line of children, and the other to give aid to his second project when it should be asked for. More than one phase of these projects needed to be kept secret from Earth interference, so they’d planned a public image of pure research while hiding their deeper goals of scientific and social revolution. Since they needed a name for their venture, they chose the location of the Van Dalen Center—Daedalus Crater in the middle of Luna’s Far Side opposite Earth.

Who’d have imagined back at the university in Neu Bonn in 2100 that a theoretical physicist named Hartmann Hallbach and an ex-porn star named Matthias Joossens’ chance encounter could someday alter the destiny of three planets?

Certainly not Ernst-Karl or Jakob when they returned to view what should have been a simple genetic profile….