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Previously: Lana is a little concerned about a message from Joanna, asking her and Aiden to come out to the greenhouse. The expedition crew make a chance meteorite discovery with the drone.
October 2056
It had been a few days since Lana had been in the greenhouse. As she removed her helmet, the earthy smell hit her and stirred a sudden yearning for home. Home - where when you went outside you could smell freshly cut grass or the sea air. Home - where there was a regular day-night cycle, which the human body had evolved with. She yearned for something other than this vast barren desert. If this is how I feel after a relatively short period of isolation, what is it going to be like when we do this for real and we are away for long periods? She gave herself a mental shake and put the thought aside.
Joanna was at the far end of the greenhouse and ignored their entrance. “Hey Jo, what’s up?” said Lana as they walked down the rows of plants towards her. The words came out with a slightly more concerned tone than intended.
Joanna continued tending the plants in front of her, softly rolling the leaves between her fingers and turning them over to inspect them.
“Have you ever been told something in confidence, only for that information to burn away at you inside until you have to let it out?” she said without looking up.
Lana looked at Aiden without answering. A slightly concerned look shot across his face.
“You ok Jo?”
“Have you ever figured something out and then been afraid to tell anyone?”
Lana softly placed her hand on Joanna’s back. “What’s up Jo? You’ve got to tell us. It’s not good for you to keep this bottled up, especially in this environment. Is it something about Brant?”
Lana looked at Aiden for encouragement.
“Why don’t we head back to the Hab? We can sit down and have a coffee and you can tell us whatever is bothering you,” said Aiden.
“No!” She finally turned to face them. “We can’t go back to the Hab.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lana, trying her best to keep the tone neutral and not betray the increasing concern she had.
“They will be listening. We can’t go back in there. If we are going to discuss this we have to stay here where there are no microphones.”
I’ve read about cabin fever thought Lana. It had come up briefly in training, but was this the real thing? Was Joanna getting paranoid delusions? How are we going to bring her back to her senses?
“Nobody is listening in to us Jo,” said Aiden.
“That’s what they want us to think.”
Lana pulled out a stool from under one of the plant beds and motioned for Joanna to sit down.
“You must know Aiden, you know the most about the Hab systems. Mission Control could listen in to us at any time if they wanted to?”
“I guess they could. But the system is only supposed to allow that to happen in an emergency, and we would be notified. We all know the effect of being monitored constantly, and how it affects our behaviour.”
“Of course, that’s what they want us to think. But they could easily override the safeguards without us knowing.”
“I guess,” said Aiden. “But it comes down to trust.”
“Exactly! And I’m not sure how much we can trust what we have been told up to now.”
“Well, there are no microphones in here Jo, so you don’t need to worry,” said Aiden. He stuffed his suit gloves, which he had been holding, into the knee pocket of his suit.
“That is why we’re here,” said Joanna purposefully.
Lana pulled out a stool and sat. She felt the rising tension and the need to disarm it. “So what is all of this about?” she asked as calmly as she could.
Joanna seemed to collect herself and no longer be on the verge of some paranoid outburst. She looked both of them squarely in the eyes for the first time since they had entered the greenhouse.
“What I’m about to tell you was told to me in confidence. I’m telling you because I trust you.”
The three exchanged a look of understanding.
“Before they went out on the expedition, Zawadi was in here with me looking at the plants. We were comparing some of the genetically engineered ones with the unmodified plants.”
Joanna paused, searching for the right words.
“And…” encouraged Aiden.
“Do you think there is anything special about us?”
“In what way?” asked Lana.
“Why are we part of this organisation? Why did they invest all of the time, money, and resources in us?”
“We were lucky enough to be selected when we were kids,” ventured Lana.
“Maybe we were. But what about your friend Jessica?”
Lana took on a pained look.
“Didn’t you lose a close friend because she did not pass the selection process for the Foundation? I never met her, but from what you have told me about her, she would have been a dead cert to get in?”
“I’m not sure what you are getting at Jo,” said Lana, irritated at having a painful memory disturbed.
“The answer is all around us here,” Joanna spread her arms out wide. “In the plants.”
A look of realisation slowly materialised on Aiden’s face.
“Come on, Lana. You are so smart. How can you be so blind?”
Lana looked at Aiden.
“She’s right. It’s like…like I have always known but…”
Joanna waited for Lana’s response, but it didn’t come. “We are genetically engineered, Lana. Just like the plants. We were part of the Foundation before we were even born.”
“We can’t be,” whispered Lana.
“But what’s—” began Aiden. Joanna held up her hand, stopping him.
“What’s different about us? That is what I have been trying to figure out since Zawadi first mentioned this to me the other day. None of us seems to have superhuman powers or abilities, do we? I mean, compared to the general population, we are all pretty smart, reasonably fit. But that is nurture, not nature.”
“So you are telling us this now because you have figured out how we are modified?” asked Aiden.
“Yes. I can’t believe it took me so long, but I’m almost certain now.”
“And…” said Aiden, motioning with his hand. Lana sat impassively.
“We haven’t used our abilities yet. So I guess that’s partially why we haven’t figured it out. After Zawadi told me about this, I happened to be looking at some plans for the Lunar base. There are a few changes I was going to suggest to the greenhouse, based on what we have been doing here. But something that has always perturbed me slightly is how little radiation shielding there is throughout the entire base.”
“The first stages don’t have much because they are not intended to be inhabited for long periods,” replied Aiden.
“Sure, but if you look at it compared to any of the other Lunar research stations, it’s still pretty light. You need preferably a couple of metres of regolith to provide adequate protection for humans. We have that and more in the shelter but not really throughout the rest of the base.”
Joanna paused to let the realisation sink in.
“So are you saying you think we have been genetically modified to withstand more radiation than normal humans?” asked Lana.
“Now you are thinking clearly! Maybe you think I’m crazy, but a lot of things make sense if you look at it like this.”
Lana looked at her hand, turning it over as if it were some unknown object she had just picked up.
“You can’t see anything. The only way anyone could tell would be to sequence a sample of your DNA.”
“Or subject you to a large dose of radiation and see what happens?” said Aiden.
“Or that. But think about it. When you were at school, did you ever have any of the normal public health screening done? No. All that stuff was done when we were at FASS, wasn’t it?”
“It’s just…” Lana began flatly.
“A lot to take in. I know, and it’s all pretty circumstantial, but there is one other thing. Have you ever heard of Isaac Underwood?”
“Should we have?” asked Lana blankly.
“No, probably not, but come and look at this.” Joanna got up and strode down the rows of plants back to the lab end of the greenhouse, leaving Lana and Aiden in her wake.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of Kevin Valenti?” Joanna said over her shoulder.
“Yes…Jo, I’m not sure I like where this is going,” replied Lana, quickening her pace.
“No, you won’t.”
Joanna stopped at one of the lab benches and snatched a tablet up from where it was sitting on the corner, then abruptly turned and marched straight back between Lana and Aiden out into the middle of the greenhouse.
“I’ve found this is where I get the best signal.”
“Is that—”
“One of the spare tablets from the stores? Sorry, Aiden, I know we are supposed to check this stuff out with you.” She swiped and entered a pin to unlock it. “You’re not going to like this either. I wiped it and put Vanilla Debian on it. Out here is where I can get the best satellite signal, without going outside of course.”
“And we thought you had just been out here moping because you were missing Brant,” said Aiden.
Joanna tapped away on the tablet. “It’s a little slower than if we were going through the Hab’s network.”
A few seconds later she was rewarded.
“Look at this,” she said, turning the tablet towards Lana and Aiden. She pointed. “That person there you will recognise as a much younger Kevin Valenti. The guy next to him is called Damian Osborne.”
She pointed to a man who looked around twenty years older than Kevin. He looked slightly uncomfortable. Kevin had his arm around him, grinning wildly. They looked to be at some sort of party, although it was hard to tell as they filled most of the frame.
Lana felt her insides begin to turn.
“So we know who Kevin Valenti is. I already didn’t like the guy, but if what you have told us about being genetically modified is true, then that makes him…I don’t know.”
“Like Hitler to the Jews,” said Joanna. “Ok, so I came across this picture by accident when I was doing some research on the genetic engineering of humans. It wasn’t surprising to come across a picture of Kevin Valenti, but for some reason I remembered the name of the other guy. He doesn’t come up anywhere else. Except…”
Joanna began tapping away again.
“Except I came across this paper published way back in 2019. It’s a research paper talking about the possibility of using DNA from a tardigrade to improve the radiation resistance of other species. Written by some students at Newcastle University in England.”
Lana looked at Aiden, whose normally calm expression had taken on a tortured look.
“Look at who the authors are. Isaac Underwood and Damian Osborne.”
Lana felt her legs begging to go weak.
“There is one other thing. I tried to find out more about Isaac Underwood. There are photos from when he was in the local newspaper for stuff as a kid, high school photo, the usual when you try to stalk someone online. Up to this paper. Then there are a whole lot of news articles about how he seems to have disappeared mysteriously and fled the country with another student. Not Osborne. A Chinese student who was studying at Newcastle called Ling Xue. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find anything about her.”
“Fled the country to where?” Lana’s subconscious mind had joined all the dots, but her conscious mind did not want to believe it.
“It doesn’t really say, details are a bit sketchy. But one thing is for sure. They seem to have been helped by a mysterious wealthy individual.”
“Christian,” whispered Lana.
“That would seem a logical conclusion,” said Joanna. She seemed relieved, no longer carrying the burden of her discovery alone.
“Who else knows about this?” asked Aiden.
“Well, Zawadi was the one who sent me off down this rabbit hole, and Brant was there when we were talking about it. We swore him to secrecy, so I don’t think he would have talked to Pieter about it.”
“But you only just figured out all this stuff with the research paper and linking it to Osbourne and Larsson?”
“Yes. That, only yesterday, and I haven’t mentioned anything to Brant and Zawadi, in case our comms out to the rover can be monitored.”
“But if you have figured this out…” began Lana. She knew they both must be thinking the same thing. “Others must also have. And if this Osbourne guy is part of True Genesis, then they have known this all along.”
“The battery heater,” said Aiden. “If True Genesis have known this all along, they could have been inside the FASS computer networks for years, just waiting for the right time to strike.”
It was as if a thin, imperceptible veil had been lifted and Lana could see things with a clarity that she didn’t know she lacked.
“That was all bullshit then. The reasons why they pulled us from college early and accelerated the program. They must have known True Genesis was onto the Foundation. They probably knew way before. My dad sometimes seemed to have a weird paranoia when we were travelling places. We used to make fun of him and tell him he watched too many spy movies!”
“If Larsson really did take in these scientists, Underwood and Ling, he must have known others were involved in the research,” said Aiden.
“I have to talk to Christian,” said Lana, already turning to walk away. She put on her gloves as she strode back to the airlock. Joanna and Aiden followed.
“What about the expedition? We need to warn them,” called Joanna.
“We need to figure out just what is going on first. Let’s move quickly but not too hastily. We don’t know if it is True Genesis and if they are in our networks. If we warn them, it might prompt a further attack.”
“I agree Lana. Let me get one of the standby SATCOM units. We can use that to talk to Larsson while we are outside. Right now, from what we know, I think that gives us the best chance of not being monitored.”
“Ok good. Let’s go,” said Lana, pulling her helmet on and snapping the neck ring into place.
If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.
Share Explorations by A M Turnbull
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Orphans of Apollo, a bit of a longer one this time. It probably didn’t come as much of a surprise last season when Zawadi told Joanna and Brant her theory that they were genetically engineered. Perhaps it wasn’t so obvious what the purpose of this modification would be.
Genetic engineering is a central theme of this book, but it was never meant to be. I have always preferred hard science fiction. The technologies have to be grounded in real-world physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. So when I sat down and started to brainstorm ideas for a space exploration novel, one problem I kept coming up with was the radiation environment out beyond the protection of the earth’s magnetic field.
Andy Weir’s books are well known for their scientific rigour, and I remember listening to an interview with him when his book Project Hail Mary was coming out. He said he allowed himself one thing that was not entirely grounded in known science. For Project Hail Mary, this was that the Astrophage micro-organism had a quantum level mechanism that allowed it to convert mass directly into energy and store it. For The Martian, it was that the dust storm in the thin Martian atmosphere could create enough force to tip over the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle).
I thought, if this approach is good enough for Andy Weir, then why don’t I try that. So, I decided my “hand-wave” would be using the DNA from the Tardigrade to modify human DNA, giving it resistance to damage from radiation and so became the basis of Orphans of Apollo. This book is really just about that foundation so the characters can go off and do cool stuff in space!
Have a great week.
Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.
Alex
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