Authors: Jacob Whaler
Luca
8 LAST UNIVERSAL COMMON ANCESTOR
TITLES BY JACOB WHALER
STONES: HYPOTHESIS (STONES #2)
STONES: EXPERIMENT (STONES #3)
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Jacob Whaler
LUCA
A Novel
by
Jacob Whaler
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
— William James
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
1
FINGER OF GOD
Frank Mercer wants the world to end.
“How many
days
before the deep space Cloud swallows Earth?”
He’s waited years to say it aloud, and now that the words tumble from his lips, he relishes the sweet texture of each syllable.
Just inches away, a young woman draws in a sip of air. “Not long. Five days.”
Sitting in a dark room, Mercer slouches in a chair, legs outstretched, feet crossed at the ankles. With a jet-black suit, carbonite gloves and hair the color of obsidian, he’s invisible except for his pale face and the whites of his eyes.
Born in the emptiness of deep space and voyaging through perpetual dark, the Cloud reminds Mercer of himself. Utterly alone.
But not for long.
Soon the Cloud will rain down chaos on the world, giving Mercer what he craves. The chance to remake civilization, culture, life. Everything.
His hand dips into a bowl of lemon slices still bleeding fresh juice. Running moist fingertips over them, he selects one and lifts it to his mouth, biting and swallowing the pungent liquid, extracting the pulp in a practiced play between teeth and tongue. His hand twists, dropping the empty peel to the floor.
Lips on the narco-pipe, he breathes in until his lungs fill, juts out his lower lip, drops his head back and exhales a stream of fluorescent purple smoke that blooms into a billowing mass, turning inside out as it floats up to the ceiling like a rising jellyfish. Thousands of particles hang in the air and glow before burning out, melting into the blackness that consumes them.
Another deep drag, and he feels the cool stimulant pour into his blood and flood his brain. It’s a special blend of molecules fabricated in some back alley lab in the bowels of the Fringe, the sprawling slum just outside the City and an inexhaustible source of cheap labor and black-market pleasures. The muscles of his chest loosen and lift, as if filled with dark light. Only his feet keep him anchored to the floor.
Next to him, the young woman moves.
Even in darkness, he can see her neon white hair, a curtain of silk flowing down her back. Body rigid and tense, she tries to hide her fear of the dark.
Just the way he likes it.
She shifts in her seat.
He hears the lush friction of black leather pants moving on soft skin.
“After Earth pierces the outer layer of the Cloud, it will take a little over seventy-two hours, three full rotations, to pass completely through.” She drops her eyes to the slate in her hand. “Would you like to see the real-time image?”
“Of what? The Cloud or Earth?” Mercer smiles as the woman squirms. It’s pathetic how hard she’s trying to impress him with her subtle fragrance of roses and vanilla. As with all the women before, it does nothing to affect him. No attraction. No interest.
Only one woman has ever gotten any traction on his emotions. He met her once. Six months ago.
The truth is, the smell of roses reminds Mercer of his overmedicated, underachieving mother when she was still alive, and it’s making him ill. Without turning his head, he stares at the woman out of the corner of his peripheral vision and increases magnification to 10X. A tiny aperture opens wider inside his right pupil until he can see her pores.
And there it is. The telltale sign. A slight moistness on her forehead, just above the left eye. She’s nervous in his presence. He senses in her a dearth of self-confidence. Like all the others.
Good.
His optical nerve upgrades are working well today.
“Sorry, I meant Earth
and
the Cloud.” The woman leans forward, fingers trembling. “They’re close. We can finally look at both on the same scale. Here is the latest image from our array of solar probes.” She brushes her hand across the slate’s glass surface, and there’s a half-second of silence before a holographic image of a luminous pool of blue light fills the empty space at the center of the room. It’s lopsided and organic, a sea of microscopic points packed densely in the center and thinning at the edges. Tendrils radiate out in the shape of a free-floating algae. One long arm stretches down toward Earth like a shooting star, as if reaching to touch it.”
Mercer stares, lips open, breath still. “Behold, the finger of God—”
The woman leans forward. “I have superimposed the blue color so we can see it. In reality, the Cloud is—”
“Colorless.” Mercer takes another pull on the narco-pipe and blows a column of smoke into the holo image as his optic input automatically adjusts for brightness. For a moment, bits of blue and purple mix together. “Yes, I know. Invisible. Almost impossible to detect. Deadly. Exquisite. More beautiful than I could have imagined. When did NASA’s sensors first find it?” A chuckle tumbles from his lips. He already knows the answer and enjoys the predictable effect his laughter has on the woman. She tenses into her chair. The moisture under her left eye congeals into a tear.
“Three days ago.” She forces a smile. “All hell is breaking loose. Fourteen government agencies are in a race to be the first to figure out the composition of the Cloud, how it might affect the Earth. Whether we’re all going to die. And that’s just here in the City. Other countries are going crazy, too.”
“But they still have no clue what’s coming, do they?” Mercer squints his eyes and squeezes everything out of his vision except for the purple Cloud. “We must spare no effort to keep it confidential. That is your prime directive. No leaks will be tolerated.”
“Based on our surveillance, our information is completely secure.”
He works hard to suppress a grin. “I’m surprised the government has managed to keep the presence of the Cloud from the public this long.”
“Haven’t you seen the latest reports on the Mesh?” The woman’s eyebrows rise, pulling up the corners of her mouth.
“You know me better than that. I don’t have time for the Mesh. Such a colossal waste of time. I access it only when necessary. My
people
that do that for me.” He’s lying, of course. It would be a mistake to let his
people
know the full extent of his awareness.
“You better have a look.”
“Really?” Mercer sits up and begins another long drag on the narco-pipe. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been a leak of the news. From government sources.”
Mercer stops mid-inhale. Green smoke curls out of his nostrils. “What do you mean?” He waits for the news he’s already seen.
“It’s all over the Mesh.
Mysterious Floating Nebula Approaches Earth from Outer Space. US Government Fears Mass Hysteria and Launches Cover-up.
It's caused a small uprising in the last few hours. Riots here in the City at the center of Times Square. The China block claims it’s another US experiment in space gone awry, evidence of our continuing incompetence and declining relevance. The White House has been forced to call a press conference to make an announcement. It begins in thirty seconds.” The woman slides closer to Mercer so her shoulder just brushes his. “That’s why I came to your office. I thought it best if we viewed it together.”
“Any idea what the president’s going to say?” Mercer is getting nauseous at the stench of the woman’s perfume. Perhaps it’s time to dial down his olfactory implants.
She brushes her finger against the slate, and the holo of the blue Cloud with its long arm reaching out for Earth slowly dissolves from the center of the room. “The usual lies.
Don’t panic. We have everything under control.
It’s nothing serious.
That sort of thing. All they know at this point is there might be a connection between the Cloud and the unusual uptick in electrical storm activity over the last couple of days.” Her gaze moves into the darkness at the center of the room. “Here we go.”
“I think I’m going to enjoy this.” Mercer relaxes back into his chair with a sudden hunger for popcorn.
The image of an older woman, mid-sixties, dressed in a crisp white blouse, appears on the holo. She might be sitting down or standing. The golden glow of her recent thyloxl treatments can’t hide the tightness in her face, epitomized by two thin lips. She’s trying hard to form a relaxed, bland expression, and it’s not working. A poor actor whose job is to quell panic. The Great Seal of the President of the New United States floats on a bluescreen below her.
Mercer grins. “Gonzales never was any good in front of the cameras.”
“My fellow New Americans.” The president suppresses an almost imperceptible tremble along her jawline by pressing her teeth together and then relaxing. “We have all been unsettled by the wild rumors making their way through the Mesh. I’d like to reassure you now that there is absolutely nothing of concern. We have everything under control.”
2
VOICE
Darkness.
From the stained futon on the floor, the girl stares up at the ceiling, squinting her eyes just enough to allow the four walls of the cell to fade from view.
She imagines she’s floating in space.
As the world opens to her, she listens, eyes drifting shut, lips relaxing into a smile.
Emerging from a sea of sound in her mind, a single Voice calls out far above her, farther than her thoughts have ever stretched before. Farther than the forest engulfing the Institution, the only home she’s known since her mother left her here years ago. Farther even than the endless water beyond the forest.