Planet Seeds
The bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, was spacious, clean, white and well lit. There was an old fashioned roll top bathtub in the centre of the room, standing on legs, bubbles rising up from the deep, hot water. Against one curved wall, there was a red sofa with tall plants growing at either side of it. On the other side of the bathroom was an old mahogany cabinet which had an old, enamel sink on top of it. Above that a very large mirror, bevelled at the edges. Next to that, hung three big, soft, white bath towels, neatly folded and hung, perfectly evenly spaced, along a heated silver rail. As Greta entered the room, the lighting dimmed to a soft, warm glow. The room was full of steam and smelled like lavender. It was the most luxurious bathroom Greta had ever seen.
Greta spent a long time in the bath. The hot water soaking away all the dirt she’d picked up along the way, and the dirty feeling she’d got from all her dealings with O. When she came out, dressed in some of Nina’s soft, clean sweatshirts and sweatpants, Greta was feeling much better and just about ready for bed.
………………………….. . ……………………….. . ……………………. . . ……..
Across the hall, the door to Freddy’s study was ajar and some strange, scratchy old music was playing. The voice of a man singing in a deep, rasping voice to the sound of a guitar, a mournful, soulful cry, distorted across time. There was some kind of smoke drifting out of the doorway, which had a familiar, sickly sweet smell. Greta couldn’t quite place where she’d smelled it before. The room was dark. Greta peered through the door, a little bit worried. The room was full of stars. Where the walls should have been there was infinite space filled with galaxies and nebula, star clusters and black holes.
‘Dad? Are you in there?’
‘Is that you Greta?’ came her dad’s hoarse reply from within. He was sitting, or rather reclining, in a big, padded armchair on wheels, which was tilted back almost horizontally. There was blue smoke coming out of his nose. In his hand was a silver tube. Greta remembered now, Queenie had been smoking one when they’d first met in Shopping Village. Freddy sat up in his chair and the back of the chair glided up into a sitting position to meet his back. ‘There’s another chair over here Greta’, he said, pointing with his vape over into the far reaches of deep space. When Greta’s eyes adjusted to the low light, she noticed another similar, black chair, close by, silhouetted against the infinite, stellar blackness. ‘Can you see it? Come and sit down.’
Uncertainly, because there were stars below her as well as above her, Greta inched her way towards the chair, trying with all her might to remember that everything was an illusion. ‘It’s ok, Greta, the floor’s right there, don’t worry’, called her dad encouragingly from his chair. Greta jumped into the chair as if she was shipwrecked and it was a lifeboat.
Greta sank into the soft padding of the chair and the back reclined into a very relaxing angle. ‘Wow, this is a comfy chair’, said Greta.
‘It is isn’t it’, replied Freddy. ‘Maybe a bit too comfortable, I sometimes worry.’
‘Nina said this is your study’, said Greta. ‘What do you do here?’
‘Oh, to tell you the truth..’, said Freddy, vaguely waving the silver vape around, ‘mainly I just sit here in this big comfy chair, staring into space.’ He started to laugh, rather a strange laugh, that sounded almost like a cry. ‘And you know what? Space just stares back. You can’t outstare space. But it doesn’t matter, does it? None of it really matters ultimately.’
‘What’s that music?’
‘Music? Oh, it’s Leadbelly. Do you like it? It’s a very old recording.’
‘It’s a bit haunting.’
‘Oh yes, it’s very haunting indeed. Something about his voice, and also the fact that this recording is well over a hundred years old. Before the second world war. Who could have ever imagined that something like that was about to happen? This song was one of the first ever recordings of a person playing music. Until then, no one had ever recorded sound. Even photography was a fairly new invention in those days. The aeroplane and the motor car had only just been invented. The telephone, the radio. Those were the days of silent films.’
‘Silent films?’
‘Do you know, when people first saw moving pictures on a screen, many of them ran out of the theatre in fright. They thought it was real. Some thought it was the devil’s work.’
‘Well, maybe it was’, said Greta.
‘Well, maybe it’s human nature to think the worst, to exaggerate and project our deepest fears. Did you know that dinosaurs probably sang like birds and were quite likely brightly coloured and covered in feathers? But still we imagine them as big green monsters.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, nobody can know for sure, because none of us were there at the time and there are no recordings of a dinosaur singing, of course.. and very little intact dinosaur DNA.. but there is evidence that supports the theory. Do you know anything about DNA? Have you heard of it?’
‘I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it’, said Greta. In her village, science was taught, to a limited extent, but more in the manner of folklore, as a series of cautionary tales which always went badly wrong in the end.
‘Deoxyribonucleic acid, that’s DNA to me and you, Greta.. it’s a code. A very long code.. and it's contained in every cell of your body.. in every cell of every living thing. A set of instructions, a design.’
‘That’s what I thought’, said Greta. ‘Something like that.’
‘Did you know that every human being is 99.9 percent genetically identical? All of our differences make up only point one percent of our genetic makeup. Me and you, Nina.. and every other person in the world.. we’re basically exactly the same.’
‘I don’t know about that. I don’t believe it. Everyone’s different, we’re all unique.’
‘Not when it comes to our genes. Did you know that humans are 98.8 percent genetically identical to chimpanzees? 94% similar to dogs? Would you believe that you share sixty percent of the same genetic makeup as a banana?’
‘I don’t believe that at all!’ said Greta. ‘A banana? I’m nothing like a banana.’
‘Well, genetically, you’re actually very similar. More similar than different, in fact.’
‘Well, I still think that humans and bananas aren’t the same. It’s quite obvious I’m not a banana or a dog or a chimpanzee.’
‘You’re right, of course, yes. But even so, all that difference is within that point one of a percent’, said Freddy. He took a long puff on his vape and didn’t speak again till he was enveloped in a thick cloud of blue vapour. The smell of it made Greta feel light headed and dizzy. ‘You’ve probably never heard of the C Value Paradox have you, Greta? Sometimes called the C Value Enigma..’
‘Yes.. I mean, no.. I haven’t heard of it’, said Greta. She wondered why her dad was telling her all of this and where it was going.
‘Amoeba. Do you know anything about amoeba, Greta?’ said Freddy, leaning forward in his chair.
‘Not really. Is that like what you get in a pond when it goes stagnant? The green stuff? Like Algae?’
‘Yes, algae are a type of amoeba. There are lots of types, but basically Amoeba are single celled organisms. Among the simplest of lifeforms.’
‘O.. k..’ said Greta uncertainly. She was starting to wonder if her dad was capable of having a normal conversation. ‘So are you going to tell me that I’m the same as pond slime now?’
Freddy laughed. ‘Haha, that’s funny Greta. That’s the sort of thing your mum would say. She was never interested in science. Said she didn’t believe in it. As if science is something you can choose to either believe or not believe, depending on what you want to believe is true. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘O..k..’, said Greta. This late night biology lesson, straight after a relaxing bath, in space and all of the blue smoke was making Greta’s head spin. She tried to concentrate on whatever it was her dad was trying to explain to her, but it was difficult.
‘See, the thing about algae, Greta, is that it’s about one of the simplest lifeforms on the planet. Just one cell and that’s it. Our bodies are made of trillions of cells. More than all the stars in our galaxy. We’re vastly more complex organisms than algae, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘What? Are you asking me if we’re more complex than algae? Of course we are. Are you going to tell me we’re not now?’
‘Well, here’s the thing, River.. sorry.. Greta.. sorry, I didn’t mean to say River. What was I saying? Where was I? It’s just that you just remind me of your mum. It’s your mannerisms..’ Freddy massaged his forehead for a while, while Leadbelly sang from a distant time, a mournful song about lost love and loneliness.
‘I’m glad you didn’t let Nina get a noodle’, said Greta. ‘She said you promised mum.’
‘Yes, I did. I would have agreed with your mum about that anyway. Not everything that O does is always necessarily for the best, or even necessary. Just because something can be done, it doesn’t mean that it should be done. But everyone should be able to draw the line where they feel it should be drawn, where it suits them. For your mum, obviously it was anything to do with O. She decided to give up all the benefits of modern technology.. and for what? Some vague fear about something that may or may not happen in the future? We’re living in the safest and most peaceful time in all of human history. You could have had a wonderful childhood here, with your sister and with me, and with your mum. We could have been a proper family. But your mother is a very stubborn woman.. she’d rather take you out into the jungle to struggle for survival. That was her choice, not mine.’
Greta was silent. After a while she said. ‘It’s not such a bad place as you think.. in the forest. It’s a beautiful place. I always wished you’d come to us. But you didn’t.’
‘Oh I would have done, Greta’, Freddie cried. ‘I would have done. But I didn’t know where you were. I really thought you must have both died, otherwise, why wouldn’t you have made contact? All we were hearing was about one disaster after another. People were pouring into the city, bringing stories of fires, and explosions, fighting, diseases.. all manner of horror stories and tragedies.. and I had Nina to take care of. Do you understand? I couldn’t have come.’
‘I understand’, said Greta. ‘I don’t blame you. I blame O.’
‘Oh you blame O do you?’ said Freddy with a bit of a smile. Greta could only see his white teeth in the darkness, but even so, it was a nice smile. ‘Well, as long as you don’t blame me, that’s the main thing. O doesn’t care what you think about them. It makes no difference to O. Personally, I blame your mother.’
‘That’s funny, because she still blames you’, said Greta, smiling back.
‘Does she? Well, actually that doesn’t surprise me’, said Freddy sadly, then took a long puff on his vape. ‘The way we parted.. it was.. oh.. oh Greta! It was awful.. so awful! Oh God! I can’t even think of it without crying.. oh I’m sorry Greta..’ Freddy turned his face away and let out some quiet sobs. After a while, he turned back and said, ‘Sorry Greta. It’s just bringing it all back, you arriving. But I’m so happy you’re here. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you.’ And he started crying again. Again, after a while, he turned back to Greta and said, ‘Sorry, I’m really sorry, Greta. I’m ok. Are you ok?’
‘I’m ok’, said Greta through her tears. All the stars had bright snowflakes around them.
‘Good’, said Freddy. ‘Now, what were we talking about?’
‘About mum?’
‘No, no, no’, said Freddy. ‘Before that..’
‘Oh.. something to do with DNA..? Algae?’
‘Oh yes! Very good. That was it. Single celled organisms. You’d think that they’d have a much shorter genetic code that something much bigger and complex, like a human. You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
‘Er.. I don’t know’, said Greta. ‘I’ve never actually thought about it. But yes, I suppose so. It probably would. Does it?’
‘No! That’s the thing’, said Freddy triumphantly. ‘It doesn’t. In fact, the DNA of an amoeba contains hundreds of times as much information as human DNA. Have you ever wondered why that might be?’
‘No I haven’t’, said Greta. ‘I only just found it out. Why is it?’
‘That’s the million dollar question, Greta’, said Freddy, wagging his silver vape device in her direction. ‘That’s the C Value Paradox, in a nutshell. Nobody could ever understand why an amoeba would carry so much information. Do you know what junk DNA is, Greta? You probably don’t.’
‘You’re probably right’, Greta agreed. 'I don't know what it is. What is it?’
‘It’s 98% of all of the code in DNA. That’s what they call it, because it doesn’t appear to do anything or have any function. It’s just code, but no-one could ever decipher what it was a code for. They just assumed it had no purpose. That was until O came along.’
‘O? What’s O got to do with it?’ said Greta, with a feeling of dread.
‘Let me show you something, Greta. This won’t take long, then you’ll understand. I expect you’re tired, but this is important. You think you know about O, but there are things that even most people here in the city don’t know. Like where O really came from.. and how it relates directly to where humans came from..’
‘Erm.. I don’t know if I want to know..’ said Greta, curling up in her chair and pulling her hat down. ‘Maybe I should just go to bed.. I’m quite tired..’
‘Five minutes, Greta’, pleaded her dad. ‘Just five minutes. It’s nothing bad, I promise. It’s just something I find interesting and I want to share it with you. It will make you see O in a whole new light.’
‘..OK.. but I might get freaked out and run out of the room.. I don’t want to see O now.. Where I come from, we don’t like O at all. We think O is pure evil.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you do. It’s ok.. I’m just going to talk a bit about evolutionary biology and a bit about space travel.’
‘Well, ok then, but I still don’t know what that’s got to do with O.’
‘You’ll see’, said Freddy. ‘Now look at this..’ he twirled his finger in the air and the whole galaxy span around. With both hands he directed a course through vast tracts of space at a speed of lightyears per second. In a few seconds a small yellow star came into view. They flew past it and seconds later arrived at a blue and green planet. They came to rest, hovering above this planet.
‘Do you know what planet that is Greta?’ asked Freddy.
‘It looks like Earth’, said Greta. She’d seen pictures of it in books.
‘That’s right. It’s Earth. Do you know how old the Earth is?’
‘I don’t know’, said Greta. ‘A million years?’
‘A million years seems like a long time doesn’t it’, replied Freddy. ‘But in terms of our planet, it’s the blink of an eye. Our planet is something like four and a half billion years old. A billion is a thousand million, so we’re talking thousands of millions of years. It’s beyond comprehension, so don’t even try to imagine what a long time a billion years is. You won’t be able to.’
‘Ok, I won’t’ said Greta unsteadily. She was still spinning from the sudden rush through space.
‘Now, for about the first billion years, there was no life on Earth at all. None. It was just a hot ball of rock in space. Nothing but volcanoes and fire and an atmosphere of methane, sulphur and carbon dioxide. Then, one day, or maybe one night, after about a thousand million years of this lifeless rock spinning around the sun, day in day out, year after year, something amazing happened. Life started. Single celled organisms. Algae. They grew in the water and multiplied. The world was covered in warm, shallow water and all of it became full of green algae.’
‘Where did it come from? All that life.. It just appeared?’
‘I’ll get to that, Greta. It’s an important question. Bear with me. Now, for the next two billion years, the only type of life on Earth was this kind of green slime. Two billion years! Nothing but green slime! But you know what? It was doing an important job.. photosynthesising.. turning the carbon rich atmosphere into one rich with oxygen. The stuff we need to breath. Later on, as you know, the amoeba evolved into plants, fish, land animals, birds, insects, fungus, reptiles, mammals.. and eventually humans..’
‘O.. k..’ said Greta, trying to make sense of all this information. ‘That still doesn’t explain where the first amoeba came from.’
‘Indeed, it doesn’t. You’re absolutely right Greta. It's something that has puzzled scientists forever. In the olden days, people would think that proves that God exists. After all, something as complex as even a single living cell couldn’t just appear, ready made.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I meant’, said Greta. ‘It must have been God.. The Great Spirit.’
Freddy rubbed his chin. ‘Well, over the years there have been lots of names for God and you know what, Greta? Maybe it was. Maybe it was. I try not to trouble myself with things that can’t be proved. Just remember this.. an amoeba, such as the ones that once covered the Earth, contain more information encoded in their DNA than you do. A lot more. Remember the C Value Paradox? Keep it in mind. And remember that 98% of DNA is so called junk.’
‘Ok, I’ll try’, said Greta. Gazing down on the Earth from beyond the atmosphere gave her a strangely detached feeling. She found herself wondering if this was what the afterlife might be like.. floating high above the earth, looking down..
‘Ok, now we’re going to zoom in. Hold on tight!’ said Freddy as he made a pincer movement with his fingers. Greta grabbed hold of the arm rests as they zoomed at hypersonic speed straight towards the blue and green planet. They came to rest again, above a city surrounded by forest. A river snaked through the city and widened out into the sea. ‘That’s where we are’, said Freddy. ‘You can probably see where you came from here. See, there’s shopping Village to the east. You came from that direction, you say?’
‘Yes!’ gasped Greta. ‘How are we seeing this?’
‘From space, Greta’, said Freddy.
‘You mean there are still satellites?’ said Greta. ‘Then why did O stop all communications outside of the cities? Why?’
‘Oh, believe me, I’ve asked O that same question a million times. They just say that it had to be that way. Maybe it did. I don’t know. I agree, it was very hard of O to do that, but it worked.’
‘It worked? What do you mean, it worked? All this time, and we could have just called each other on the phone!’
Freddy breathed a heavy sigh. ‘The main thing, as far as O was concerned was to rewild the planet. Return it to a natural balance, as quickly as possible. If we humans had got it together and acted sooner, we could have done it all ourselves and everything would have been different. But of course we couldn’t.. or wouldn’t.. at least, we didn’t. We were too busy fighting wars over who started the wars. Fighting over who owned all the Earth’s resources.. over who had the rights to dig up all the oil and cut down all the trees and sell them for profit. We were poisoning the land and the sea and the air, destroying life on Earth. We all saw it happening and all participated, one way or another, but nobody could stop it. O just came along and did what O had to do. They did what had to be done. But you know what? It was all in the code. That’s the thing I’m telling you, Greta. It was all in the code.’ Freddy was leaning towards Greta and had that prophetic gleam in his eye again.
‘I don’t understand’, said Greta. ‘What was in the code? What code?’
‘Everything was in the code, Greta. Everything! It was all encoded in the genes of the very first amoeba on Earth, four thousand million years ago. It was all there in the junk DNA!’
‘What? What was? I don’t understand.’
‘What caused human brains to grow larger than other primates? Why did we start using tools? Using language? It was all in the code. All we needed were the right conditions for it to happen. And when we created tools, they were bound to advance and become more sophisticated. Once we'd discovered how to make fire and invented the wheel, it was only a matter of time before we invented the steam engine, the motor car.. even the fighter jet. That’s evolution. Life is designed to evolve. It’s the fundamental mechanism, built in to every living system. It’s written into the code. ’
‘I still don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me? What do you mean it’s designed? Who designed it?’
‘Ok.. you ask some very good questions, Greta. Exactly the right questions. Now, this is the thing I wanted to show you.. then hopefully all this will all make sense. We’re going round the world now.. to the equator.. hold on..’
The world spun around at dizzying speed. They flew over mountains and forests, here and there punctuated by cities of hives jutting out of the land, reaching up into the sky like needles in a pin cushion. They flew over the sea and over more land. The forests gave way to desert. Vast expanses of sand, dotted with circular patches of green.
‘See there, Greta? This part of the world was abandoned by people in the years before the Big Shift. It got too hot for people to live there. Too dry. All the water dried up, the topsoil eroded and turned to dust. They couldn’t grow anything. But look, do you see those patches of green? That’s O’s reforestation program. You’ll see. In another ten, twenty years that will all be green. People will be able to live there again. Ok.. look.. here we are.. there’s what we came here to see. Can you see that black line in the distance? Over there.. a thin line going vertically upwards?’ As they zoomed across the desert, the line came into view.
‘What is it? Is it real? It doesn’t look natural..’ said Greta trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It looked like someone had taken a black pen and with a ruler drawn a very straight line from the ground to the sky.
‘I’ll get a bit closer and you’ll see’, said Freddy, as they raced towards the incongruous line dividing the landscape in two. ‘It’s a space elevator, that’s what it is, Greta. That’s what I wanted to show you.’
‘A space elevator?’ said Greta. The line became thicker as they got closer to it. They came to a stop about ten meters above the ground with the vertical line now close enough to see that it was made of lots of strands of some black material twisted together into a cable about two meters wide. A round hatch in the ground at the bottom of the cable opened and a white, elongated egg-shaped object, about a metre in length, slowly emerged, attached to the side of the cable. A second later, with incredible speed, the egg shot up the cable. Greta looked upwards. The cable, and the egg disappeared up into the sky, out of sight. ‘Woah! What was that?’
‘That was a planet seed’, said Freddy. ‘Look, here comes another one..’ The hatch opened up and another of the egg shaped object emerged and blasted up the cable like a shot.
‘A planet seed? What’s that? Where’s it going? What does it do? What’s at the top of this cable?’ Greta had so many questions.
‘Ok, all good questions. It’s good to see you’ve got critical thinking skills. That’s absolutely the most important thing. The mark of a good education. Very good. So first thing, this cable goes all the way up into space, believe it or not. It really does. It’s thirty five thousand kilometres long.’
‘What? How? That’s impossible. What’s holding it up?’
‘The simplest way I can explain it is like this..’ said Freddy. ‘Imagine you’ve got a ball on a string and you spin it around, what happens? What happens to the ball? What happens to the string?’
‘I don’t understand’, said Greta. She felt like everything was spinning. Nothing made sense or seemed to have any connection to anything else.
‘The ball will go round and round, won’t it?’ said Freddy. ‘If you’re swinging it around your head, say, it will spin round your head. The string will be held tight, won’t it? As long as you keep swinging the ball around. Does that make sense?’
‘O..k..’ said Greta. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘Good. So that’s exactly how a space elevator works. At the end of this cable.. which is made from thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes.. that’s pure carbon by the way.. another way O is sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.. at the end of this cable, which is a few thousand kilometres outside of Earth’s gravitational field, there a weight.. like the ball and the string I just told you to imagine? It’s just like that. As long as the Earth keeps spinning, the cable stays up.’
‘What do you mean, as long as the Earth keeps spinning?’ said Greta, alarmed. ‘Is this going to stop the Earth from spinning?’
‘No, no’, laughed Freddy. ‘That won’t ever happen, don’t worry. Not even O could ever stop the world from spinning, nor would they want to. Here, let’s go up the the top and I can show you what’s going on here.. Hold on tight..’
With a flick of his wrist, they suddenly flew straight upwards.
‘There, look, it’s one of the planet seeds on the way up to the launchpad.. can you see it?’ Freddy pointed to the white egg shaped capsule which was racing up the cable, alongside them. Below, the Earth’s horizon curved into a ball. Above, the sky went from blue to black. The black cable stretching up into space became invisible against the black sky, except for where it was punctuated by little white dots.. planet seeds on their way up to the launchpad.
They arrived at a platform, high above the Earth. ‘Here we are’, said Freddy. ‘Thirty five thousand kilometres above the Earth’s surface. This is the level of Geostationary orbit. What that means is, that it you were to jump that way.. down, towards the Earth, you’d fall downwards towards the Earth.. but if you were to jump that way.. call it up.. really there’s no up and down in space.. but you’d keep going that way.. out into space, towards the Andromeda Galaxy, over there. But it’s two and a half million light years away, so it would take you a very long time to get there. Now, if you were to jump that way.. horizontally.. straight ahead.. then you’d start orbiting the Earth. You’d just go round and round and round. You’d be a satellite.’
‘There are so many stars..’ whispered Greta in wonder. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It is isn’t it’, said Freddy. ‘Look behind you, there’s the moon.’
Greta looked around. There was the moon, brighter, clearer and closer than she’d ever seen it before, just hanging there in space, surrounded by blackness and distant stars. ‘It looks a bit cold and lonely’, she said, with an involuntary shiver.
‘Oh it is’, said Freddy. ‘There’s no place as cold and lonely as the depths of space.. the distances are beyond comprehension. That’s the thing, Greta. You see, humans were never meant to go to space. We thought we’d set up colonies on the moon and on Mars.. we imagined we’d travel between the stars, like in Star Trek. It was never going to happen. It was never meant to happen. We were already on the most perfect spacecraft.. Planet Earth.. which had everything we needed.. a perfect life support system.. air, water, food, just the right temperature, just the right gravity.. and look what we did to it. Do you know that O is still clearing up all the junk we left in orbit.. putting it all to good use, of course.. but you’ve got no idea what a mess our so-called civilisation left behind.. on Earth and even in space. The fuel we burned with all the rockets we launched could have heated every home in the world. People were living without electricity, water or food, but we were sending rockets to the moon. The atmosphere was choked with carbon and we were building bigger and bigger rockets.’
‘Yes, it was wrong’, agreed Greta.
‘It was all vanity. That’s what it was Greta. Rich men wanting to make a name for themselves. Nobody stopped to think it through. If they would have done they’d have realised in a second that it made no sense at all. None whatsoever. Do you see that star over there? That’s Proxima Centuri. It’s the closest star to us.. after the sun, of course. How close do you think it is?’
‘I’ve got no idea’, said Greta. ‘A billion kilometres?’
‘Not even close’, said Freddy. ‘It’s 4.2 light years away. A light year is about ten trillion kilometres.. a trillion being a thousand billion. What that means is, even if you were travelling at the speed of light.. which is physically impossible.. it would still take you over four years to get there. In a regular space ship, it would take thousands of years. And that’s just the nearest star. Our galaxy is a hundred thousand lightyears across. To reach the stars on the other side would take millions of years. How did we think we were going to send people there? It was crazy.’
‘So what is this place? You said it’s a launching platform..’
‘Yes, that’s what it is. Have a look over there.. do you see that silver dome with a long pipe sticking out if it? That’s the launch cannon. Watch what it does..’
In the centre of the platform was the object he’d described. The long pipe swung around and pointed almost directly at them. Greta huddled down into her chair to avoid being hit by it. She would have jumped off the chair, but the ground seemed such a long way down. A second later, something came shooting out of the tube and flew right past her head at unbelievable velocity. She turned just quick enough to see it disappear out of sight into space. ‘What was that?’ she gasped.
‘That was a planet seed. You see, it takes much less energy to launch something into space from this level, outside of Earth’s gravity. That’s why the space elevator is such a good idea. No need for any rockets at all. This just uses a magnetic rail to accelerate the craft to about a hundred thousand kilometres per hour. It will use other planet’s gravity as well as ion boosters to accelerate more and steer, on its way.’
‘On its way where? I thought you said we stopped going to space.’
‘Humans did, yes. Look, here goes another one..’
The space cannon rotated and then shot out another of the planet seeds in the opposite direction.
‘What are they? Those planet seeds?’
‘That’s the thing I wanted to show you. That’s the reason for everything I’ve been explaining to you. Remember we were talking about amoeba and algae?’
‘Yes..?’
‘Remember how you asked where the first life on Earth came from.. three and a half billion years ago..?’
‘Yes..? I said maybe it was God.. the Great Spirit..’
‘Right.. well listen to this. Try and pay attention to what I’m about to tell you.. I know you’re tired, but this is something really big..’
Greta could see that her dad once again had that intense glint in his eye. She wondered what it could be.. whether he really was about to reveal something really big.. or if he was just some kind of madman with an obsession. She couldn’t understand what any of what he’d been telling her had to do with anything else.
‘People used to think that the Earth was in the centre of the universe. Did you know that? They thought that everything.. the sun, the moon, the stars.. all of them went around the Earth.’
‘Yes, until Copernicus said that the Earth goes around the Sun’, said Greta.
‘What? How did you know that?’ gasped Freddy in amazement.
‘Phoenix, the old shoemaker.. he had a telescope for looking at the stars. He was always talking about Copernicus and Galileo.’
‘Well I never..’ said Freddy. ‘More power to Phoenix the astronomer shoemaker!’
‘Actually, he went blind. He died about five years ago.'
‘Oh no! How awful. Oh my goodness. That’s so tragic. Was it foxpox?’
‘I don’t know. I only heard about foxpox today for the first time’ said Greta. The word gave her a chill.
‘Oh it’s a terrible disease’, said Freddy. ‘Spreading like wildfire these days. That sounds like the symptoms. Terrible shame. Especially since it’s so easily preventable. A simple vaccine would stop it in its tracks.. but of course people are still skeptical about vaccines. They don’t understand that O’s vaccines are 100% effective and completely safe.’
‘Well…’, said Greta. She didn’t agree, of course, but she was tired and didn’t want to get into a whole debate about vaccines and the benefits of modern medicine. Now and again, health missionaries from the city would come to Skyward Village, trying to encourage people there to get vaccinated, but they always got chased away. ‘You were about to tell me what those planet seeds are and where they’re going..?’
‘Right, yes. So, as you know, our planet isn’t the centre of the universe. It isn’t at the centre of the solar system. In fact it’s just one of countless planets. It’s not really all that unusual or that special, in the grand scheme of things. Apart from that we live here and it’s our home, of course.’
‘Really? You mean there are other planets just like Earth?’
‘Well, not exactly the same, but there are certainly lots of planets that could host life. Much more than you’d probably think there are.’
‘I didn’t know there were any.’
‘Here’s the thing, Greta. In our Galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are about three hundred million planets with the right conditions to support life. Three hundred million! Just in our galaxy! And there are literally billions of galaxies out there.’
‘Well, that’s amazing’, said Greta, quite overwhelmed by all this information her dad was bombarding her with. After a while, all the millions and billions and trillions lost their meaning and just became funny words. ‘But what difference does it make? I mean.. like you said, they’re all so far away, it would take millions and billions of years to reach them..’
‘Exactly the right question, Greta! Look out, here goes another planet seed..’ The space-cannon swung round and another egg shaped pod went shooting off towards some distant star. ‘Remember what I said earlier? A million years is nothing in geological time, or in space-time. For us, of course it’s thousands of human lifetimes. Thousands of generations. Whole civilisations might rise and fall and disappear without a trace in much less time than a million years.. but for the universe, a million years nothing. It’s the blink of an eye. And for O, it’s nothing either.’
‘I don’t understand’, said Greta. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I said before that humans were never meant to go to space, do you remember? The distances are just too great. The conditions in space are to harsh for the human body to survive and thrive. We’re perfectly adapted to life on Earth, but not to life on Mars, or on the Moon, or any other planet thousands of light years away, and certainly not in the space between. But O doesn’t need air. O doesn’t mind the cold, or the radiation or any of the other things out there in space that would kill us in an instant. More importantly, O can wait a million years, or ten million, or a hundred million.. and it makes no difference to O.’
‘So are you saying that O is in those planet seeds? I don’t understand..’
‘Well, let’s just say that O is on board to steer the pod to its destination, make sure it lands safely. After that, the seed knows what to do. It’s all in the code, you see?’
‘Not really. What’s in the seed? How does it know what to do? What’s it for? What’s in the code?’
‘Sorry, Greta. I know it’s a lot of information. Remember we were talking about amoeba? Single celled organisms? And DNA? That’s the code I’m talking about. It’s all there in the junk DNA, you see. In the 98% that people thought had no purpose. It wasn’t junk at all! Everything has a purpose, that’s the thing. Every bit of code has a very specific instruction.’
‘Now I really don’t understand. Can you just tell me what’s in those things? What are they for? Where are they going?’
‘Amoeba, Greta! They contain amoeba! Do you see now? There are three hundred million planets that could host life, in our galaxy alone. Three hundred million! Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Earth like planets. And O has every single one mapped. We know where they all are. Not only that, we know a lot about them. Mineral and atmospheric composition, temperature and seasonal variations, gravitational strength, radiation levels and lots more. So what we do.. what O does.. is create amoeba that with live on that planet. DNA, specifically designed to grow, diversify and evolve there.’
Greta gasped as she began to understand. ‘You mean, they’re starting life on other planets? That’s what these planet seeds are?’
Freddy nodded madly. His eyes were wild and reflected the light of the sun which looked cold and distant, surrounded by the airless blackness of space. ‘That’s right. Even if it takes four billion years to evolve into a technologically advanced lifeform, it doesn’t matter. It’s all there in the code, written in the DNA. Once the seed is planted, it’s bound to grow in a certain direction. Do you see?’
‘Can you say that again?’, said Greta, gripping the arms of her chair. ‘I want to be sure I understand. What will it grow into?’
‘It will grow into all the plants and animals that will live on that planet', said Freddy. ‘Eventually, as long as they don’t get destroyed along the way.. or destroy themselves.. some species that evolves from that first algae will become more advanced, more intelligent than the other species. They will use tools and language. They will invent technology and that technology will become more advanced.. until it reaches a certain point.. and then they will create O. They might call it something different, but it will essentially be the same thing. And then it will build space elevators and planet seeds and start all over again. It’s all in the code! Do you see now, Greta? This is how life spreads through the universe. One of the ways at least. It’s probably how life on Earth started, four billion years ago. It’s just like a dandelion, do you see? Sending out seeds on the wind. Except that the life cycle of this.. life-form.. this organism.. can be measured in billions of years and covers galaxies.’
Greta sat stunned in the big black chair, trying to make sense of everything she’d just seen and heard. If it was true.. and it looked like it was true.. even though she knew the stars, the sun, the moon, the Earth and the launchpad were only a projections on the wall.. but if it was true..
‘Are you OK, Greta’, asked her dad, concerned. ‘Did I overwhelm you with information?’
‘Does this mean that O started life on Earth? And it was programmed to evolve into O, right from the start? Is that what you’re telling me?’ said Greta with a shaking voice. It felt as if everything she’d known before.. everything she’d thought about O, and about the world..
‘I know it’s a lot to take on, Greta.. but yes. I mean, we can’t fully know for sure. There’s always the possibility that this was the first place it happened and that it happened by random chance.. or by the grace of God.. but all the evidence points to the conclusion that our planet was seeded, just like all of those others will be.’
‘What if there’s life there already?’
‘My understanding is that it won’t do any harm, but it may accelerate their evolution. Maybe that’s what happened here on Earth. Did you know that at the same time as ancient people made the first tools for hunting, they also made the first musical instruments? I think that says something. Bone flutes are ones that have survived, but they probably also had drums and shakers and percussion instruments.’
‘I didn’t know that’, said Greta, yawning.
‘Oh I’m sorry, Greta. I’ve kept you up much to long, filling your head with..’
‘It’s ok. It was interesting’, said Greta. ‘I’m glad you told me about it. I think I’m going to go to bed now.’ She got up unsteadily from the chair, leaned across and gave Freddy a kiss on the cheek. Something she’d wanted to do her whole life. ‘Good night, dad’, she said. Something she’d always wanted to say.
‘Good night Greta’, said Freddy. ‘Sleep well, sweet dreams. I’m so glad you’re here.’
………………. . . ……………………… . ………………. . . ………………. . . . ..
Greta staggered into the bedroom. She was unsteady after all that time floating in space, the floor felt unreal beneath her feet. The lights were dim and Nina was laying on her bed with her eyes open, staring straight upwards.
‘Nina? Are you all right?’ cried Greta, alarmed.
Nina looked around. ‘Oh hi Greta. I was just watching a series. Hey, are you all right? You look a bit freaked out. Oh.. has dad been telling you about the origins of life on Earth? I bet he has, hasn’t he.’
Greta smiled weakly. ‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Because he’s obsessed with it. Sorry, I should have come to rescue you sooner.’
‘It’s ok. It was interesting. I’m just tired. I had a long day and I don’t usually stay up much after dark.’
‘Yes, you must be exhausted. You should get some sleep. I’m just going to finish watching this episode then I’m going to bed too.’
Half asleep already, Greta rolled into her new bed with new, white sheets. ‘Good night Nina.’
‘Good night Greta.’
Outside the window, the Earthcreters went on busily building a new room for Greta, spinning the arches from threads of Earthcrete. It was already starting to take shape. The Earthcreters didn’t need to sleep.
