Everywhere Chapter 4: Alien Autopsy

“Reviewing the remains, this creature was definitely terrestrial in origin but doesn’t correspond with any known species,” Forest told Sheila and Rory.

The creature sat on one of the tables in the Dragonstone’s medbay.

Rory’s encounter with the creature in Corridor Seventeen caused a commotion. If the sudden appearance of some kind of disassociated warp in the middle of the hab weren’t enough, Rory’s mag-dump into it would have been more than ample to trip several safety alarms. Artificial habitats were sensitive about the discharge of firearms inside them. Random bullets have a tendency to cause depressurization accidents. Rory was using SmartRounds which were designed for use in pressurized environments, sensors on the round caused them to disintegrate on hitting anything other than organic matter, reducing the chance of accidental depressurization but the local authorities were still quite unhappy. Add to the fact that the thing she shot looked like a creature from a bad 2D film and Forest had his work cut out for him keeping things under cover. Several new people were now covered by the Secrets Act and the crew of the Dragonstone and their new passengers got underway as soon as possible.

Now safely in warp, the ship and her crew were headed to Nova Portus and the naval facility there to complete fitting out.

“It’s obvious that our location here has been compromised.” Forest said as they met after the incident. “There’s little doubt that this was an attempt to snatch Captain Phillips. Happily they underestimated her ability to defend herself. I’m sure they won’t next time. We need to move and plan our next actions. I dislike being reactive but sometimes you need to react. Until we have a way to prevent these incursions we may be better off remaining on the move as opposed to spending too much time in any one place.”

“Will we be able to do that? Analyze the data I mean?” Rory asked.

“We have quite the data dump from the hab’s sensors, more than we’ve been able to get before,” Sheila said. “Coupled with what the Dragonstone’s sensors recorded from the spider incident we may have enough to at least begin to understand the phenomenon which will help us detect, possibly disrupt and ultimately copy it.”

The team got the ship loaded and provisioned as quickly as possible and underway. Forest had the body loaded on the Dragonstone and all files on it wiped from the hab’s files.

He used the ship’s medbay to analyze the remains.

“Reviewing the remains, this creature was definitely terrestrial in origin but doesn’t correspond with any known species,” Forest told Sheila and Rory.

“How so?” Rory asked. “How can it be both?”

“The creature has terrestrial DNA. It shares DNA with other terrestrial species but it doesn’t match any know species. All Terran life forms share a considerable amount of DNA. No extra-terrestrial life has ever had even a tiny bit of overlap with terrestrial organisms. Many don’t even use the same molecules – which is why extra-terrestrial organisms can’t be ingested by humans. The chemistry doesn’t match. If you wanted to, you could eat our friend here,” he gestured to the body, “with no adverse effect. I can’t promise what it would taste like but it wouldn’t poison you. That means terrestrial origin.”

“So we’re looking at another world-line, one that differs substantially from our own,” Sheila said, “as opposed to alien species.”

“Correct,” Forest said. “Our ventilated friend here shares a substantial amount of DNA with terrestrial birds. Not a lot, but more with birds than anything else.”

“Dinosaur,” Sheila said.

“Likely,” Forest agreed.

“Clue in the blonde please,” Rory said, irritated.

“Sorry love,” Sheila said. “We’ve talked about branching universes. How some are very like our own and how some are very, very different. We say some are ‘close’ to ours meaning that they’re similar and others distant. Of course ‘distance’ is a misnomer but it’s helps explain. Anyway, this is likely from one of those distant ones. It’s hard to make any kind of accurate prediction from just our friend here, but picture a world where Mammalia didn’t become the dominant class of creature on earth.”

“So you’re saying we’re dealing with intelligent dinosaurs,” Rory said skeptically.

“No more so than if you described humans as ‘intelligent lemurs’,” she replied. “But, it likely came from a universe where evolution went down a very different pathway than our own.”

“OK, if you say so,” Rory said. “One thing though. I’ve got access to Rory B’s memories. She was captured by what she calls The Others. They look a bit like T Rex here, but not the same. And how do the spiders fit in?”

Sheila smiled proudly at the question and Forest nodded.

“Excellent observation,” he said. “I don’t have an answer but I do have a theory based on evidence. We don’t have a spider body but we do have Tieniente Everly’s body. We’ve analyzed the venom the spiders, you know they’re not really arachnids, correct?”

Rory waved the question away.

“Right,” Forest went on. “It’s a neuro toxin. Incredibly potent and persistent. That suggests it was manufactured.”

“Why?” Rory asked. “Cobras and Coral Snakes on earth have a neurotoxin venom and they’re evolved.”

“Again, excellent observation,” Forest nodded. “You’re correct but the level of toxicity is much lower and it’s less persistent. Cobras can use their venom to kill their prey and then eat it. If one of our spiders were to eat something it had stung, it would die. Poisoned by it’s own venom. It’s highly unlikely that’s the result of natural evolution. It’s more likely manufactured – either by selective breeding or genetic engineering. I can’t tell without an actual sample from the spiders, however, I do have our friend here.”

“T Rex,” Rory said.

“It’s not really…” he looked at Rory. “Er, right. As I was saying, ‘T Rex’ shows some signs of genetic engineering. It’s not a manufactured creature. There’s more than sufficient evidence that it evolved, but there’s also evidence of, let’s call it ‘tampering’.”

“How so?” She asked.

“You may have noticed I refer to it as ‘it’.”

“I did, “ Rory said. “I assumed you were just depersonalizing it.”

“No. I was deliberate in my choice of pronoun as it’s neither male nor female but has the potential to be either.”

“Really?” Sheila said, surprised.

“Yes,” Most terrestrial species develop into male or female entities during gestation. In the early stages of development, the proto-gonads develop into male or female sexual organs depending on the genetic makeup of the individual. Rarely you have species that can change sex spontaneously after adulthood but by birth all terrestrial species have some indication of male or female.”

“What about bees?” Rory asked.

“Worker bees are biologically female but are infertile. They share characteristics with so-called queen bees and are distinct from males which are known as drones. ‘T Rex’ as you call it, is neither and both at the same time.”

“How so?”

“It’s been modified so that it’s never developed one way or the other. It’s sexual organs are frozen at an early fetal stage of development. Given my examination I SUSPECT this individual might be or have the potential to be male as it has what may be the equivalent of the ZW chromosomes that male birds possess but it’s different enough that I would not want to dispositively say without more samples. In any event, given that it’s development is fully mature in all other respects, it suggests the developmental delay is deliberate. This suggest a degree of biological engineering that surpasses what we can do. Assuming this is the primary species of our antagonists, it also suggests they have little ethical concern with experimenting on members of their own species. We can extrapolate that the beings that captured your alternate, B as you call her, may be more extensive modifications of this species.”

“Much of this speculation comes from my contact with my own alternate, Leela,” Sheila added. “They’ve been dealing with these Others for quite some time. We suspect their universe may be, well I’ve been calling it a ‘pocket universe,’ may be artificially created. Possibly as a result of early experiments by T Rex’s species. It seems to connect to several different world-lines. We’ve established that Leela comes from an entirely different line than does B and we’re still trying to parse the role of the draco in all of this.”

“The parallels with Forrest and myself and Rock and your AI have been noted,” Forest agreed.

“We suspect that the Others, and I include T Rex in that category even though we’ve not confirmed they’re all working together…”

“Forest, we can use it as a working hypothesis,” Sheila said, annoyed.

“Assumptions are dangerous but fine, we can ASSUME they’re all part of the same entity,” he went on, put out, “We also believe, from what we’ve learned of their actions here and in the Pocket Universe, that they’re doing genetic experimentation on humans. For what purpose, we don’t know.”

“We need more of them. Preferably alive, so we can find out,” Sheila said. “Your corpse here is the first sample we’ve been able to obtain.”

“So you want a prisoner snatch,” Rory said.

“Yes. We’re pretty certain that’s what they were trying to do to you in Nueva Madrid,” Forest said.

“If we can’t go to them yet, how do we pull that off?” Rory asked.

They looked at her.

“Great. You want me to be bait.”