Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 16 / Chapter 18 –>

They gathered again in the evening, Brett and the others, slotted around the oval table in the admin conference room. They looked harried without exception. Djen’s face was drawn and pale, her hair flattened by the weight of the e-suit she’d worn all day in the bio lab special containment chamber. Ilam leaned heavily on his elbows over the table, using his hands to hold his head straight as though it was the only way he could simulate alertness. Liston was performing a stunning imitation of a corpse. The circles beneath his eyes had darkened from bruised to black. His cheeks had sagged and his shoulders slumped like the jowls of a decrepit beagle. Among them, only Micah retained any semblance of energy, of freshness. He was the only one who didn’t appear defeated.

Brett wondered if that was because the bio specialist was just excited over having been included in the administrative cabal, or if he was simply too stupid to understand the stakes for which they were playing.

He didn’t know how he looked to them. He strove to convey a sense of confidence and strength, but he seemed to have difficulty focusing his attention. He found himself distracted by the sheen of the simulated rosewood table. He curled his lips at the gaudy mauve and plum décor. He wished he had remembered to grab a cup or two of coffee on his way up. He’d called this meeting for a status report; he should have been better prepared.

Brett turned to Liston first. “You look like shit. When did you sleep last?”

Liston only grunted.

“Right after this meeting, that’s an order. Three hours minimum. Is that understood?” Liston nodded vaguely. “You get to go first.”

Liston started to rise, then sighed and dropped back into his chair. He opened a manila file folder that sat in front of him on the table and distributed a series of glossy photographic images. “Following the data you sent me this afternoon of Cassandra’s analyses, Commander, I reviewed the readings I’d taken of Ritter this morning. I can confirm the increased theta, decreased beta pattern. This isn’t conclusive, however. Ritter is comatose. It would be expected that he’d have decreased beta wave readings. Same with the others in medical. As far as Cassandra’s suggestion to MEG the entire staff. . .I’ll work on it. It’s a good idea, but I need to find the time.”

Brett nodded. “Understood. I’ll get some help to you if we can find someone who can run the machine.”

“That’s good, because I won’t have time to teach them. Though there is an on-line tutorial and user’s manual. Give me Vernon. He’s not especially bright, but he’s dogged as a tapeworm and has a knack for making machines do what he tells them.”

“Done.”

The possibility of help seemed to hearten Liston. “I’m going to give you a quick and dirty glimpse of what I’ve got so far. I don’t have the time, the energy or the expertise to give a symposium on the details of neurobiology. These pictures you’re looking at are fairly raw false color images of Siever’s brain topography.” The doctor stopped, looked at them one by one, then cleared his throat. “By the way, Sievers died at seventeen hundred hours this afternoon. Jervis will go sometime during the night, and I have grave reservations about Rian. She was never very resilient, so I expect her to slip quickly. Ritter is still battling, though.”

Liston offered a mute shrug of apology to Ilam, then continued, “This is a larger tissue segment than I discussed yesterday. A pre-dissection image of the temporal lobe, right hemisphere. You should recognize the glimmers of stardust, I think.”

Brett studied the picture. What he saw was a rolling, denuded topography that reminded him of sand hills. Cutting right to left along the curvature between reddish hills was a molten silver band like a sweetwater creek struck by moonlight.

Liston said, “What you’re seeing is the outside of the brain itself, just beneath the meninges, though I managed to leave the pia mater membrane intact for this image. The silver band is a cluster of the invading organisms at work on a neural node. What they are doing precisely is only a hypothesis, but I’ll get to that. Look at the second picture now.” Liston shuffled his own sheaf of papers. “This is the same segment at about twenty-two hundred times magnification. It’s a series of connected neuron networks. The neuron is a pyramidal cell structure in the brain consisting of a cell body, a long and slender axonal fiber and several shorter dendrites, at the end of which are synaptic terminals. Messages are communicated from one neuron to another via electrochemical impulses which proceed down the axon to the synaptic terminals. These terminals mesh with the dendrites of the surrounding neurons, which receive the message and transmit it on ad infinitum.

“You will notice the synaptic terminals in this picture. The bulbous protrusions around the slender synaptic terminals are closer views of our organism. Perhaps as many as several hundred will occupy the diameter of the axon of an infected neuron at any given time.”

Brett lifted his face to Liston. “What are they doing?”

“Eating, Commander,” Liston said. “They’re eating.”

A shiver rattled through him. “Explain.”

“I’ve thoroughly reviewed both Tappen and Siever’s brain matter. The evidence I presented yesterday seems to hold. The organism prefers the right hemisphere, not the left. It chooses the temporal lobe, but not the frontal. The hippocampus and amygdala, but not the hypothalamus.”

“Which means?”

“Those portions of the brain which control autonomic functions, those which control basic body patterns and physical systems maintenance have been avoided. The portions which govern cognition, perception, emotion, memory are heavily infected. Eventually, the segments related to motor activity become infected. The organism is parasitic, Commander. Examine, if you will, the next photograph.”

Brett flipped to the next image. It was another false color shot. The object in the center was a stunning phosphorescent green. It prickled with spiked hairs from a roundish and lumpy carcass, but it was also translucent. Shadow forms of bent oblong and spiraled thread tumbled beneath the surface of its gelatinous hide. The creature seemed to squat on twig-thin legs, its hind quarter pitched upward at an obscene angle. From a smaller, circular protrusion, a green whipcord of unknown material hung like a tentacular arm down into a dark gap between two pinkish shelves of matter. It reminded him of a large herd animal, a fattened cow, stooping at a stream to drink.

“That filament extending from the forward orifice is wedged in the synaptic gap between two neurons,” Liston explained. “The organism accepts nutrient via that ‘tongue’, if you will, by intercepting the seventy millivolt electrochemical transaction that is supposed to occur between neurons for proper thought process.”

Djen looked up. “But what does it gain?”

“Energy? Potassium ions?” Liston shrugged. “I don’t know, yet. What I’ve found that’s curious is an interesting communal development. There are some portions of the pre-frontal cortex and temporal lobe which are more heavily invested, some that are less. The higher concentrations of activity seem to reflect the extant strength of the neural network. On one level, this makes sense. If you’re looking for nutrients, you move to the forest, not to the desert. However, there are smaller units of community that exist outside the main neural nodes. I thought at first that this was preliminary expansion, but these units don’t seem to occupy the synaptic terminals. They cluster near the dendrites, the receptors.”

“And what do they do?” Ilam said slowly.

“They discharge energy in the form of electrochemical ionic dispersal in the space between the terminals of an unrelated neuron and the dendrites of the neuron on which the community exists. This forms a bond which ties the two cells together and increases the rate at which the occupied neuron fires.”

No one spoke to question him, but Liston held up his hand as if he expected a rebuttal.

“It’s unacceptable, I know. There is no altruism on this order or life, but I believe that’s exactly what is occurring . While the community weakens and eventually severs the connection between one neuron and another by intercepting the ions flowing down the axon, scout units are sacrificing their own pseudo-compatible life energy to increase local connections with related neurons. They’re both reinforcing and creating connectivity between neural cells.”

Micah slapped his hand on the table. “Of course! Because it supplies more nutrient for the community. The stronger the connection, the more frequent the stimulus, the more excitatory neurotransmitters are produced within the soma, transmitted down the axon and into the synaptic gap for consumption.”

Liston did not disagree. He turned back to Brett. “It explains a good deal. The increased theta wave activity occurs because the organisms are excessively stimulating neurons related to memory, consciousness, sensory perception. It explains Ritter’s confusion and some of the similar incidents of semi-coherence contained in Cassandra’s report.

“The right hemisphere is more intimately connected to the primitive portions of the human brain. It communicates via images, which move quickly, which fire the neurons in rapid and repetitive sequence. It is much more active electrochemically in many of us during our periods of musing and general awareness than the left portion, which concerns itself with the logical, the regimented and the mechanistic behaviors. One or two infected neurons out of one hundred billion wouldn’t cause any appreciable effect, of course, but spread that excitation of neurons for a given memory or sensory event along a related neural node and continually stimulate it, strengthening the connections, and it would effect the perception of consciousness. It could alter the interpretation of other sensory input, even the content of thought itself.”

“Could,” Brett said. He needed to be clear on this point, to nail it down so it wouldn’t skitter away. “Are the organisms capable of generating spontaneous series of thoughts?”

“I would assume that as a possibility. The dispersion patterns I’ve observed are curious. The organisms tend to migrate to areas in which strong and active synaptic links already exist. They cull their harvest from frequently visited memories, from chains of thought association which are fresh and frequent, and they strengthen the already extant bonds.

“Cassandra’s data says more or less the same thing. Increased theta wave activity marks periods of rapid eye movement sleep. What do we know about REM cycles? The body experiences a form of muscle paralysis, the autonomic systems fluctuate with artificial neuronal stimulus, because the mind is dreaming. It’s acting out synaptic patterns as though it was awake. Dreams are really a form of nocturnal hallucination. When an individual experiences active dreaming before the body is fully asleep, we expect them to sleepwalk, as you noted, Commander.

“Infection by this organism seems to produce hallucinations similar to dreaming, at least as the MEG data presents it. In some cases–Ritter is as good an example as any–the victim’s body has not been sedated rapidly enough. They continue to function, but they’re acting out the sequence of their dreamscape.”

Ilam cleared his throat to interrupt. “Then the organism can’t be parasitic in the classical sense. Parasites don’t intentionally kill their host, which we’ve seen is the end result.”

“I’d agree,” Liston said. “The inducement of the coma is probably unintentional. But these are bacterium. The feed, they grow, they reproduce geometrically. It doesn’t take them long to overrun a closed system with no adequate resistance. More than likely, the coma is a result of expansion. Systems are infected, rerouted, incorrectly wired by the organisms’ intervention. Eventually it begins to shut down. You could call them coding errors. My point is that those experiencing effects like Ritter and Larson are not quite awake, but also not quite asleep. They are living a hypnogogic reality until the body is so infected that it collapses. It is likely that most or all of the victims experienced prolonged periods of disconnection to reality. The neural networking imposed on them would have been in some cases more disruptive than in others. The more disruptive, the more noticeable the behavioral shift. It’s probably just as well that the coma seems to set in quickly. Whether these dreams and hallucinations continue into unconsciousness, I can’t yet say.”

Liston paused. The full weight of his fatigue seemed to settle over him and he slumped. “I could study this interaction for years without definitive answers. It’s extremely bad science to form such extensive chains of supposition on so little evidence, but it’s what I can offer.”

“I want more,” Brett said. “You’ve just told me these little bastards may have the capacity to use our own memories against us. Our own goddamned senses. We need to understand how that works.” He pulled himself back and grimaced at the harshness of his tone. “But only after you’ve gotten some sleep.”

“After I sleep, I may choose to pitch it all out the window as bad methodology. Midnight brilliance is inevitably dawn’s folly.” Liston smiled wearily. “Or something like that.”

“If you come up with something better as a result, I’ll listen to that as well.” Brett swiveled his chair away from the doctor and fixed on Micah and Djen. “You’re up. Make it good.”

The two of them exchanged a wary glance, then Micah smiled and winked at her. He didn’t pretend he would try to stand. He was tall and long, sleek as a tailfin and brash as a cardshark. Micah pressed his shoulders against the back of the seat. Brett thought he might kick his boots up onto the table.

“Medical considerations aside, Chili, I’ve got to tell you that this organism is some wicked shit. I mean that. If Liston could spend years on his aspect of study, I could make a goddamned career out of them.”

“Grace us with just the condensed version for now,” Brett said.

“Sure, sure.” Micah grinned. He drummed a staccato rhythm along his knee with his fingertips, as though searching for a place to begin. “What we’re looking at is an extremely aggressive, extremely developed, extremely communal species of bacteria. It’s a freaking phenomenon, but not outside the realm of extrapolation from what we’ve seen on Earth and from the fossil record on Mars. Basically, this species is what I’ll call an anaerobic polyphillic. I had to make that word up. In biology, when we talk about bacteria, we’ve got our psychrophillics–cold loving bacteria, our thermophillics–heat loving, and lots of groups in between. And it’s just one to a customer, folks. That’s all.

“At first, I was excited because I knew with what went down on Nine, we could be looking at a sub-psychrophillic. Impossible, man, I thought. I mean, when you’re talking extreme psychrophiles, that’s like freezing point of water, maybe a little chillier.

“These guys are off all the charts. The coring samples from high in the vent were taken at a low psychrophillic range. Good deal, I thought. If they can handle the normal outside temps to get into Nine like you say, keep them below zero celsius and we’ll get something. But the sample indicated a concentration sufficient to assume they can tolerate even higher temperatures with some comfort. So I moved on to the next one and the next one. Everywhere I look, I’ve got these pod-green hoppers.

“They’ve demonstrated via the progressively warmer zone samples that they are adaptable to warm temps as well as nippy ones. And that’s crazy, plain and simple. I would have loved to have a core from the magma chamber. Ilam and Djen said they were way out of control in a two-ninety to three hundred Kelvin environment. That kicks my ass. Bacteria aren’t supposed to function in such a broad range.”

“But we know that they do,” Brett urged.

“Exactly,” Micah stabbed a thumbs-up signal at him. Brett found his happiness disturbing. Annoying. At this hour, he wanted to spring out of his chair, leap the table and jack slap him just for having so much energy. “That was my first question going into the lab. We know they fucked up a Sperling Engine, meaning they had to survive temps in the two hundred Kelvin range and we also know they can speed like dandelions on cocaine hormones inside the human body. That’s a demonstrated one hundred K plus temp deviation. How do they do that? I mean, that’s not just an extremophile, that’s a bat-fucking-nutsophile in my book. Resolving that question was the number one issue. After, of course, the bits and pieces Djen pulled out of the screens were confirmed against live samples from the vent cores. To make sure we caught the right snipes, you understand.”

Liston sighed audibly and Djen put her elbow into Micah’s ribs. “Get to the point.”

Micah only winked at her again. “This is pretty complicated territory, but I’ll break it down for you. For life to exist–any life, even bacterial life–you’ve got to have a combination of hospitable elements which will support growth and proliferation. These are water, nutrients, fuel and space. Most bacteria thrive in sedimentary rock because they can metabolize the carbon compounds. Rarer are those who can hack it in igneous rock, what we find on Archae Stoddard. The cores were all taken from a porous igneous rock not dissimilar to basalt. The problem with igneous rock is that it won’t support a carbon based bacterial life form very well. It just doesn’t have the juice. It doesn’t hold much moisture.

“But igneous based bacteria aren’t unheard of. In 2010 or so, we really began to study a class of bacteria which could function in a ‘subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystem’–SLIME. They blew the biologists of the time flat on their collective asses. Why? We know bacteria are typically a thrifty lot. We know they tend to diminish their rate of metabolism and their actual size based on the availability of nutrient supplies. But how do you manage to make it when there are no–I mean zip, zero, none–available nutrients?

“I’ll tell you how: you either get very clever, very industrious or very extinct in short order. Bacteria as we understand them have got to have a form of carbon to survive, something they can convert to ready energy. You see where I’m going.”

Brett looked blankly at Djen.

“What this lecherous little freak is trying to explain,” she said, “is that the organism as we’ve encountered it is not only somewhat human parasitic, it’s also symbiotic with a smaller autotrophic bacterial group. Autotrophs are organisms that synthesize proteins, fats and other biological molecules rich in carbon from inorganic sources. We’ve discovered concentrations of the organism on the surface of cores on the order of one hundred million units per gram of rock. We’ve found smaller concentrations toward the end of the sample, the portion of the rock that was embedded below the surface. It’s been accepted in biological circles for some time that in the normal evolution of planetary life, microbial forms ascended from deep in the crustal material toward the surface as conditions became more hospitable. Our samples would seem to confirm those findings.

“Archae Stoddard in its original state had two abundant gasses in its atmosphere, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, but it’s also very cold and very prone to fluctuations that should devastate most microorganisms. Our friends here elected not to subject themselves to the vagaries of the planetary atmosphere for most of their organic nutrient requirements. Instead, they adopted the autotrophs from safe niches deep inside the pores of the igneous rock deposits. These autotrophs can readily metabolize hydrogen gas for energy. Hydrogen is produced by the chemical reaction between the iron rich silicate rock and trace water deposits available in the original biosystem, so it was readily available in the rock. The autotrophs can also synthesize the raw carbon dioxide gas molecules. From this diet, they excrete organic compounds, mostly in the form of methane.”

Micah smacked his hand against the table. “Our orgazmos eat the shit of the autotrophs. Carbon rich organic material. That’s how they survived in the SLIME environment.”

Djen shrugged an apology at Brett.

“But here’s the kicker,” Micah continued. “You’re going to hate this. I mean, hate it. I’m guessing that the relatively small population of autotrophs and the limited fund of organic nutrient they produced kept the organism community relatively small for a long time. Millions of years. Then we showed up.” He sat back, chuckling. “First thing we did was start dumping carbon based gasses into the atmosphere. Then we started warming things up. Then we started whanging oxygen atoms around to bond with the hydrogen and increase the humidity. More water, more chemical reactions with the silicate rock. The autotrophs flourished and grew, and consequently so did the other organisms.

“And as the temperatures rose, the bacteria migrated toward the surface of the rocks where they could. A nice geothermal vent is better than a fecal culture for growing bacteria. I know what you’re thinking. . .there was no apparent moisture in the magma chamber. But you’re totally on the wrong scale of perception, Chili. There was water there, miniscule but there. There are traces of it in the samples you brought back. And when you’ve been almost desiccated for millions of years, increasing the humidity by twenty some percent is like issuing orders to build a fucking ark to the microbial community. If Liston had cranked up the magnification on his images, you’d see these guys are practically strapped out in galoshes and slickers and goddamned bumbershoots.”

Brett frowned. “We brought them to the surface. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“We created a more hospitable ecosystem,” Djen explained, “and the microbial life of the planet has responded by migrating into positions in which they can more fully synthesize the available organic nutrient reservoir. It’s been gradual, of course. It’s taken them five years to reach the point they have.”

“That doesn’t explain how they can exist in two polar extreme environments. From the vent to Ritter, that makes sense.”

“Compatible thermophillic conditions,” Micah said. “Right fucking on.”

” What it doesn’t tell me is what happened to Nine.”

Djen pressed her fingers against her temples. “We have some suppositions. Nothing concrete.”

“Then suppose me.”

“You remember, back in the vent, we talked about what nutrient value the organism could obtain from silicon. We made an assumption that they metabolize it in some way.”

“I did,” Brett said. “You didn’t.”

“I was right.”

“Now you say, ‘Ouch’,” Micah said, chuckling.

“Micah explained how the organism has survived on and in silicate based igneous rock. We know the organism feeds on organic nutrients. That’s what they’re doing to those of us who are sick. We’ve resolved what we thought was a conflict. They don’t metabolize the silicon, but they do use it.”

Brett leaned forward. “How?”

“Bacterium lead a liminal existence. They’re killed off by temperature variants, resource shortages, minor fluctuations. Exceptions are classed as extremophiles which are hardier and can endure harsher climates. Rare among those are a select group of polyextremophiles. The first discovered was Deinococcus radiodurans. It was the first bacterium which demonstrated a surprising resiliency to more than one climatic variable. Extreme oxidization, desiccation, even exposure to significant radiation did not kill it. The reason turned out to be the ingenious evolution of an internal repair system. D. radiodurans contained multiple strands of duplicate DNA material which featured adaptive, alternate copies of genome sequences. If one strand was damaged by, say, high radiation, the bacterium failsafed its DNA replication to a different template with a genome sequence more apt to resist radiation contamination.

“Our organism is an adaptive polyextremophile as well. It has the capacity to select replication templates ranging from the sub-psychrophillic to the thermophillic. But even that fact doesn’t explain how they can endure the open atmosphere and remain operable enough to disable a Sperling Engine.”

“And that’s when we began thinking about silicon, per your conversation with Djen,” Micah said. “One of the celebrated discoveries in biosemiconduction, in fact the primary discovery which led to the implementation of the bacterial-semiconductor crystal transistor, was the existence of a mischievous little bugger who insisted on inhabiting the surface of the old silicon wafer chips. They tried to kill them with UV, toxic oxidants, you name it. Nothing worked worth a damn. See, the problem was related to the dopant materials. Some of them, like germanium oxide, were water soluble, whereas the silicon was only soluble in hydrofluoric acid. Each time they’d set about to clean the chips with highly purified agua, the germanium oxide or its cognate dopant would crystallize around the infested bacteria. The little bastards lived it up inside their clamshell castles. Ta-da, the birth of biocrystal transistors. Also a big revelatory tha-wack for the biological community.

“Djen and I noticed under intensive microscopy that the ends of the reticulated fibers which surround the organism were tipped with a semi-solid silicate coating. Not odd, we assumed at first, given the fact that they rumble around on silicate rock. But this was fused silicate material. Freaking ceramic tap shoes. Confused the fuck out of us until we found this.”

Micah sprang out of his seat and dealt a hand of screen print images around the table. He winked at Liston this time. “You’re not the only one who can add some multimedia spice, doc.”

Brett flattened the curling edges of the papers with his palm. “Get on with it, Micah.”

The biologist held up his copy. “Meet Bacterium persiarum, also known as BP, also known as Bacterium motherfuckacoccus. Quasi-ovoid on the outside, soft and squishy genetic goo on the inside. As I was saying, if you look closely at the propulsionary fibers ringed along the outside, you can see the faint ridges of metallic glint. Looks like he’s wearing a set of thimbles on his feet.”

“What’s the significance?” Brett prodded.

“Flip to the next photo.”

The image appeared to be a bead of smoked amber glass, still golden and glinting from the burst of the electron gun.

“I’m looking at it.”

Brett found himself the beneficiary of a wink. “Same resolution as the one you just saw. Different bug. The organism has the capability of hermetically sealing itself within a defensive silicate crystal.”

“You just lost me,” Brett said.

Djen took up the challenge hesitantly. “We haven’t actually seen the process, but we can hypothesize it. Silicon is only soluble in certain forms of acid. The organism must have the capability of secreting trace amounts of an acidic agent which separates the bonds between the oxygen and silicon atoms in the surrounding silicate rock. The liberated silicon atoms are clustered, then re-form into an encasing crystalline structure. When the organism no longer needs protection from the elements, from threats, from whatever, it secretes the acid again and dissolves the crystal.”

“It’s brilliant,” Micah assured them. “Absolutely stunning.”

“If it’s true,” Djen said.

“Evolutionary brilliance or not,” Brett said, “how long could they live like that?”

“We don’t know.”

“Guess.”

Djen chewed her lip. “I suppose long enough to get inside Nine. Inside the Engine, there’s a relatively hospitable climate. With enough nutrient resources, one organism could have holed up and begun to replicate.”

He nodded in acquiescence, but continued to watch her. “That tells me how. Now tell me why.”

“It was accidental. The organism was sucked into the system and found a place the thrive.”

“Then why attack the screens?”

“A search for nutrients.”

“Except that we’ve established that silicon would have been the only nutrient on the micromesh, and the organism doesn’t metabolize silicon.”

“It was dissolving the silicon to form another protective crystal. The Engine proved inhospitable, so it was moving on.”

“Then it wouldn’t have had time or resources to reproduce on a level consistent with the damage to the screens. That would have taken millions of the organisms.”

“Perhaps the community outgrew its ecosystem.”

Brett hardened his tone. “This all implies cognition. Analysis. Sentience.”

Djen nodded, though her eyes shifted away from his. “The condition of the screens imply the same thing. There’s no other explanation for the incident other than a concerted and hostile effort.”

“I won’t accept that. There has to be another answer.”

Brett straightened and shot the pictures back across the table to Micah.

Ilam cleared his throat. “Semiconductive capability.”

Silence followed. No one knew what to make of Ilam’s suggestion.

“Explain that,” Brett demanded.

“It’s the element all the reports have in common. The organism has infected the electrochemical synaptic contacts inside the brains of its victims. The screen cables were split at the location of the primary electron node. This organism migrates to the zone of strongest electrical impulse. The most active neurons, the top of the micromesh strands, where the current begins its trickle down the screen.”

Ilam swiveled to face Djen. “The organism doesn’t dissolve the silicates with a biological acid, it severs the covalent bonds between the silicon and oxygen atoms by the excretion of a small electrical charge, thereby depolarizing the molecular unit so that the oxygen and silicon atoms repel one another–or more likely, it adjusts a whole series of potential silicon and oxygen and other available atoms to form unique crystal structures of varying strength. The task would seem to be in the careful manufacture and dexterous attachment of atom to atom. It also requires a considerable storage capacity–a microbial battery.

“Liston told us the organism follows the same procedure with neural connections. It creates or strengthens synaptic bonds by discharging electrical current into the dendrites. At the other end of the neuron, another set accepts the stream of ions generated by the action potential. The suggestion which arises from the similarity of these procedures should be obvious.”

Djen’s face glowed with sudden comprehension, a blossoming excitement. “The organic chemistry of the brain is a replacement nutrient source for what was supplied by the autotrophic symbiotes. But it isn’t just the carbon detritus they want, it’s the energy produced in the electrochemical reaction.”

Ilam nodded. “The current produced by the screens is also electrochemical in nature. The nanomech units accept their instructions in the form of sodium/potassium ion binary switches. The mech power supply is a sodium/potassium ion battery which is recharged regularly at the nodes by the addition of fresh sodium and potassium ion packets. The entire Engine nanotechnology component is based on the neuro-biological model. That which the organism found hospitable about the human brain would have been immensely more attractive given the capacities of the Sperling Engine. Except, of course, for the fact that the Engine is not nearly as adaptive and resilient as the brain.”

“All right,” Brett said. He held up his hand to quiet them. “Bottom line it for me.”

“It’s your baby, Ilam,” Djen said.

“The organism utilizes electrochemical energy in the form of ionic transfer between its receptors and those of the host or autotrophic support mechanism. This is partly evident from its bioluminescence. That the silicon or silicate crystal is a defensive device from the elements or some other threat may be a correct hypothesis, and quite to the point. The energy required to generate and separate molecular bonds would be relatively enormous. The organism must have a source of energy and nutrient capable of sustaining such a demanding task, because its survival in the interim is threatened. It does not believe that the autotrophs currently in use have that ability.

“The organism desires to migrate to the surface as the hospitality variables increase. In order to maximize the potential for migration, it requires access to a more diverse and more potent source of readily available energy. Even the relatively dim seventy millivolt current of the human neuron must seem like a bonanza. Thus, it requires us. We are a ripe and easy source of both organic and electrochemical resources.”

Ilam rubbed his forehead, then said, “It’s logical, it’s feasible, it’s even natural, but there’s one major strike against it.”

Brett tensed. “And that is?”

“It doesn’t explain how in such a minimal time frame a billion year old organism could have evolved the instincts and capability to infect us and the Sperling Engine. We’ve been parasitically harvested. Maybe over a period of two weeks, maybe over five years. These bacterium could be thousands of years old. Not the group, Chili, but the individual examples. Bacteria have been shown to live for immense stretches of time. How do we, a blip on their collective radar, come to figure so prominently in the food chain?”

Brett sensed what he was trying to say and backed away from it. “Don’t go there, Ilam.”

“It’s a question you and I and everyone else is going to have to confront.” Ilam became stern. “You’ve been dodging it for days. Your glib little ‘fuck them’ speech yesterday doesn’t begin to cover the necessary material. If it’s mere biological life, fine. But it might not be. It might be sentient life. Sentient on an order that is dramatically, almost infinitely inferior to ours, but sentient nonetheless.”

Djen made a noise in her throat, a sound like a growl. “It’s easy for you to urge caution when you’re the only one of us currently beyond the risk of infection.”

“I don’t intend to throw stones. I just want the commander to be clear in his mind before settling upon a course of action.”

“We have a course of action,” Brett said. “And I don’t give a goddamn about microbial sentience. Teach them to write poetry and I’ll still say fuck them. We have one goal here, and that’s sufficient analysis of this organism to determine the feasibility and safest course of a nanomechanical medical intervention.”

Brett rose from his chair and planted his knuckles on the table. He leaned toward them, scowling.

“I’d like another day,” Liston said. “And I’d like to see Ilam’s detailed protocol for programming and insertion. But the truth is, of course, that insertion of nanomechs is inevitable. The antibiotics don’t cross the blood-brain barrier. And they apparently don’t work on the organism before it accesses the brain, anyway.”

Djen nodded her agreement. “At some point we’re going to have to develop an intensive crew diagnostic to see who needs treatment.”

“Everybody gets treatment, sick or not,” Brett said.

“It’s unethical,” Liston responded.

“It’s preventative, and that’s final.” No one challenged him, and Brett allowed himself to relent. “Ilam, work with the good doctor tomorrow. Give him everything he needs to develop a treatment regimen.”

“Right. I’ll be in the medical bay by six.”

Brett continued, “I want the rest of you there as well. The collective expertise of the station on this issue is in this room. We’re all tired. We’re running ourselves into the ground because there are a decreasing number of qualified technicians available. I can’t afford for any one of us to pull an unscheduled psychotic episode, not with the brunt of the work still to be done. We all get MEG’d and we all run those readings through Cassandra first thing.”

Djen watched him with frightened, dark eyes. “And if she tags us as infected?”

“Then you or anyone else will be confined to quarters so that a lapse in cognitive ability doesn’t skew the data that might be gathered.” Brett spoke with a blunt savagery that rose up from the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t help himself. “And you’d have effectively volunteered to test the nanomech insertion protocol as soon as it’s available.”

<– Chapter 16 / Chapter 18 –>