“Jennifer.” Dr. Brando waved me into his office from the hallway. I stepped in and he closed the door behind me. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Understand? Anything.”
I looked at him. “You okay?”
“I have an idea. I know this is gonna sound crazy.”
“Is this what you were working on after the trip?”
“Yes. I got the idea there.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Good. Because this could consign me to the scientific looney bin if the wrong people hear I’m suggesting it.”
“Now you’ve got me dying to know,” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “The First Universal Common Ancestor. Crimsy. She might be the First Universal Common Ancestor. The fucking FUCA.”
“There’s no such thing,” I said.
“There might be now.”
I frowned, made a skeptical face, like it was indeed a crazy idea. The First Universal Common Ancestor, if it existed, would be like the Missing Link of Everything, that living thing from which all Earthen life originated and evolved. Biologists and evolutionary types have characterized more than one Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), heat-loving extremophiles, like Crimsy, that come and go each time someone discovers another, older LUCA. Think of FUCA as the oldest LUCA, the ancestor that started it all.
“How can you prove this?” I said.
“I need to know why she turned green,” Brando said. “She was not green on Mars; she was not green during the journey here; she was not green for the first three weeks on DSG. So what made her turn green?”
“She’s not that green.”
“She’s green enough. I can’t believe it’s just a trick of the spectrum.”
“Okay. How can I help?” The now-eternal question.
“I need to know what changed. Atmospheric variables, sunlight exposure, even cross contamination, however miniscule.”
“OpenGro is replicating conditions on Mars. If you need me to, I can comb its logs. Maybe find out if anything’s been altered. I can’t think of anything else we could do.”
OpenGro is an open source, artificial-intelligence transparent micro-climate box used to grow living things—plants, bacteria, even lab animals—in artificial but perfect conditions. Think of a smart greenhouse—genius smart. We adapted the technology to perfectly replicate conditions for Crimsy—conditions we could adjust, if necessary.
“Sounds like a good start,” Brando said. “Now, I’ve gotta figure out how to get this approved without looking like a kook.”
Our one approved project, Operation Lederberg, was proving a disappointment. None of the antibiotics affected Crimsy in any observable way. She did not die, stop replicating, or shape-shift. If she was susceptible to an antibiotic, it wasn’t one of the dozen or so aboard Deep Space Gateway.
“Now I’m worried,” Hightower said on a conference call. “What if I get infected?”
I looked across the table at Dr. Brando. He looked at me.
“I, uh, have an idea,” he said.
The room went quiet. “Okay,” Dr. Levitt said.
“Can we have Crimsy on the projector?” he asked. She appeared, the green hue noticeable but unchanged from our last viewing. “You’ve doubtless noticed this green color,” Brando said, using a laser pointer.
“The way light hits the agar,” Shonstein said. “I noticed it right after the rover returned.”
“I didn’t,” Brando said.
“What about it?” Levitt said.
“I’m wondering if it’s not chlorophyll, or some version of chlorophyll like bacteriochlorophyll,” Brando said.
“Like plants use in photosynthesis?” Marcum said.
“Not just plants,” Dr. Brando said. “Cyanobacteria, too.” Previously known as “blue-green algae,” he explained, cyanobacteria are the only germs on Earth that make food like plants, with sunlight, chlorophyll, and photosynthesis.
“Would a Martian bacteria even need chlorophyll?” Shonstein said. “What evolutionary pressures would give rise to that?”
“On Mars, it maybe didn’t,” Brando said. “But something may have changed since Crimsy left the planet to prompt its appearance. I’d like to find out what that something is.”
“It’s an interesting question,” Levitt said. “First, we’d have to establish if chlorophyll is indeed responsible for Crimsy’s new hue. But not seeing how that can happen until we have access.”
“Jennifer suggested something we can do,” Brando said. “Comb OpenGro’s atmospheric monitoring logs, looking for even the slightest changes that might have brought on this color. DSG—thoughts?”
“We’re running about ninety six percent carbon dioxide,” Captain Gillory said. “Argon, nitrogen, a little oxygen. As exact a replica of Mars atmosphere as OpenGro can make it.”
“That’s my point, though,” Brando said. “A—we don’t know the composition of Mars’ atmosphere exactly. And B—even slight variations might prompt Crimsy toward some sort of adaptation, like making chlorophyll.”
“Awfully fast evolution,” Marcum said.
“Not really,” Dr. Brando said. “Not if we assume she was already equipped with some dormant capability. Like dormant chloroplasts,” the cellular machines that make chlorophyll. “It might be a form of bet-hedging.”
“We’ve seen no indication of bet hedging,” Shonstein said.
“Bet hedging?” Marcum asked.
“It’s a way bacteria adapt to environmental changes,” Shonstein said. “They hedge their bets, dividing into one population with an adaptive trait that was always there, just not expressed, and the original population. Whoever survives wins the bet. It’s one way bugs develop antibiotic resistance so quickly.”
“How do we know she wasn’t bet hedging when we threw all those antibiotics at her?” Brando said. “Subtly slipping through our fingers?”
“We saw no changes in any of the colonies,” Shonstein said. “None. With bet hedging, some colonies should have died while others survived.”
“It’s a totally alien bug, Bex. How do we know what it was doing?”
“We don’t, exactly, I admit, but—”
“We could do something like the Pseudomonas experiments,” Brando said. Pseudomonas fluorescens, used to make yogurt, divides about once an hour, he explained. It’s found in soil and water here on Earth. A research team in Germany observed it bet hedging its way through “rapid and repeatable evolution.” They decided they were watching “among the earliest evolutionary solutions to life,” which sounded good to me.
“I agree with the general consensus that seems to be emerging. It’s an interesting question to explore that could lead to some exciting speculations,” Dr. Marcum said.
“Like?” Dr. Shonstein asked.
“Like cyanobacteria maybe evolving from Crimsococcus,” Brando said boldly. “Like Crimsococcus being the Universal Common Ancestor.”
“From Mars?” Shonstein said. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. If she can make chlorophyll after surviving a deep-space journey, what’s to say she didn’t land here three or four billion years ago, when Earth’s atmosphere was more like Mars?”
“So not just any Universal Common Ancestor, but the First Universal Common Ancestor,” Levitt said.
“Exactly,” Brando said. “FUCA.”
“At least one high school biology teacher thinks so,” Marcum said.
Shonstein glared at him. “I’ll agree, it’s a novel idea,” she said. “But I don’t want to see us drifting too far off course.”
“How is this drifting?” Brando said.
“It’s another big, major, history-altering idea,” she said. “We’re barely coping with the first one—finding Crimsy.”
“All I’m asking for is group consent to do some initial reviews of the OpenGro logs,” Brando said. “Would that inconvenience you guys?” he said to the space station crew.
“Not at all,” Gillory said.
“Dr. Hightower?”
“As long as I get a Scooby snack,” he said. “The food up here is god-awful.”
“We’ll be sure to send a bag with the next payload,” Dr. Levitt said.
“Rooby Rooby Roo!” Hightower said.
“Velma here. We’ll email you the log files and the password for the onboard monitoring system,” Gillory said. “You can follow it in real time.”
I raised my hand. “What if we want to vary some of the conditions?”
“I like that idea,” Brando said.
“Wouldn’t be hard,” Hightower said. “Set it up similar to Dr. Shonstein’s project.”
“Rebecca?” Levitt asked. “The decision rests with you.”
She opened her hands in acquiescence. Project Little Green Women (my name, unofficial, with props to Louisa May Alcott) was approved.
“I do have one concern,” Dr. Marcum said. “Will we have to change Crimsy’s name, to say, Greeny? Or Shamrock?”
“Never!” Dr. Levitt said.
As part of the Little Green Women kickoff, Dr. Cooper, back from Cambridge, Mass., gave a non-specialist’s presentation on the differences between Earth and Mars atmospheres to me and Dr. Brando.
“Forget about oxygen,” he said. “We know Mars basically has none, so let’s forget all the sci-fi what ifs and focus on the big deals, like carbon dioxide and nitrogen.”
“The OpenGro box keeps Crimsy in ninety six percent carbon dioxide, plus or minus a fraction of a percent, and one point nine to two point zero percent nitrogen,” I said.
“Right. Duplicating Mars. But how does Earth compare?”
“Eighty percent nitrogen, less than point-one percent carbon dioxide.”
“Roughly,” Dr. Cooper said. “But you’ve got the idea. Nitrogen is huge on Earth. Carbon dioxide is huge on Mars. Everybody just thinks in terms of oxygen. If you have it, you can have life. But that ain’t necessarily so.”
“I figure we’re looking for some kind of spark,” Dr. Brando said. “Something that might be making Crimsy think she is on Earth circa three billion years ago.”
“The late Archean Eon,” Cooper said. “About the time cyanobacteria started making oxygen. Earth had maybe eight to ten percent max carbon dioxide back then, so if Crimsy somehow traveled from Mars to Earth, maybe the reduction in carbon dioxide was the evolutionary spark.”
We tossed around ideas for some test protocols and after we wrapped, I caught Cooper in the hallway.
“I’ve been meaning to catch up a little,” I said.
“I know, right? Seems like I can’t stay in one place long enough.”
“So—scuttle is Hale might be thinking retirement?” I said.
“Maybe. We’re catching up to you guys,” Cooper said. “He wants to go out on a high note.”
“Last I looked, you were a distant third,” I said.
“Close second, girl. And numero uno in astroclimatology, thanks to you-know-who.”
“Hale?” I joked.
“Naaahh. So how you been? How’s ma? Bros?”
“Good,” I said. “Everyone’s good.” I could tell he didn’t believe me, so I fessed. “Brian died.”
“Ah, man.” He smoothed his hand along my arm. “I’m so sorry, Jen. I remember—”
“It wasn’t unexpected,” I said. “How ‘bout you? Mom, dad, sis?”
“Baby sister is acing Johns Hopkins Med.”
“She got in? She got in. That’s great. I remember when she stayed with you that summer.”
“Did she talk about anything else?” he said. “Top of her class. My old man can’t decide who he’s more proud of.”
“How’s he doin’?” I asked.
“Well...Not so good.”
I looked at Alonzo intently. “Why not?”
“Stroke.”
“Shit! Really?”
“It wasn’t debilitating. But he’s scared to death he’s gonna be a burden to mom. Us.”
“Did he need rehab? How bad was it?”
“Weakness on one side. Some vision stuff. Mom took him to the E.R. They knew what was wrong immediately. He’s hatin’ life. They gave him a diet. No salt, no beer, no game day gorging.”
“I’m glad he’s okay. Hate it you all have to go through this.”
“Life, man.” He paused. “So how did...Brian..?”
“How do you think?” I said.
“I am so sorry, Jen,” Cooper said. “I know how close you guys were.”
“Is the other scuttle true?” I asked. “You might be taking over..?”
“Taking over what?”
“You know.”
“The Hale Lab? If I do, will you come with me?”
“We’re number one,” I said.
“Not for long,” he said.
I walked back to the post-doc office and jumped when a young woman stepped out of the doorway, landing squarely in front of me.
“Hi.” she said. “Maybe you can help me. I’m a little lost.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Crimsy.”
“What?” Shit.
“Isn’t that...Well, here.” She showed me her ghost card, which I stored in my microchip. Molly something, Freelance Journalist. “I’m on assignment for Cosmic American.”
“There’s no Crimsy here.” Technically, I wasn’t lying.
“Your PIO said this was where she—it—was.”
“PIO?” The PIO assigned to our team knew nothing about Crimsy, let alone her in-house nickname.
“Yes. Campus press office.”
“What are you wanting, exactly?” I asked.
“I’m writing a story. Is there an embargo on this?”
“Embargo on what?”
“That’s what I mean. I think I’m lost,” she said. “You don’t seem to be the right department.”
“I’m not a department,” I said. “I’m Jennifer.” I stuck out my hand and we shook.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “I just meant, I was looking around, read the department directories downstairs, and took the elevator to this floor. But it doesn’t look like astronomy. I don’t see any telescopes.”
No telescopes? I figured she was being facetious, but still. I was tempted to go on a rant about infrared and radio telescopes and Hubble and the observatories that sit atop peaks and populate our campus. Instead, I walked Molly over to Dr. Levitt’s open door and pointed at the small telescope pointed out the window at Portage Bay.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll find my way out.”
She was at the elevator when I realized I might blow another covert ops opportunity.
“Molly,” I called to her, reading from the card. I walked up to her. “So who’s Crimsy?”
“An astronaut who came back from Mars, maybe?” she said.
“Astronauts came back from Mars?.”
“Pure, uninformed speculation,” she said. “There’s a total press blackout.”
“How did you find out?”
“Clogosphere. I pitched it to an editor and he bought it.”
“So—who’s Crimsy?”
“A last name?”
“Like Jane Crimsy?”
“You know her?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ve heard the name.”
She stepped into the elevator and smiled at me as the door closed.
“Good luck,” I said.
I hurried to Dr. Levitt’s office, almost slipping and breaking my head on our newly-shined floor. I skidded to a stop when I overheard raised voices. Her door was ajar.
“That’s not fair.” Dr. Levitt.
“It’s perfectly fair.” Sounded like Parada. “How else would you put it?”
I leaned against the wall. I was torn between bursting in and eavesdropping.
“Not like that. No one here feels like that.”
“How do you know? Have you asked?”
“Asked what? ‘Do you look down on my future wife because she didn’t graduate from’—where, Para—Princeton? Harvard?”
“I didn’t say I thought anyone looked down on me.”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
“You spend a lot of time with these people, Mar. Most of your time, in fact. Marry me, marry my family. And they’re your family, basically.”
“I can’t believe you’d give up on us over something this trivial.”
“I’m not—”
I boldly knocked.
“Come,” Dr. Levitt said. “Jennifer.”
“Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting?”
“No, no. You remember Parada.”
“Of course.” Believe me, you don’t forget Parada, even if you walked by her one time on the street.
“Jennifer. Nice to see you again.”
“You, too.” I felt like I was in the presence of a demigoddess. We shook hands. She was shaking.
“I, well—I thought this was urgent,” I said. “A reporter just showed up here looking for Crimsy—by name.”
“What?” Dr. Levitt said. “A reporter from where?”
“She gave me her card,” which I produced from my microchip.
“How in the world did she know about Crimsy?”
“She didn’t, exactly. Heard the name somewhere. Thought it was the name of an astronaut who’d come back from Mars.”
They both smiled. “That is funny,” Parada said.
“In the words of a former professor, it would seem our firewall is rather porous,” Dr. Levitt said.
“Perhaps you have a leaker,” Parada said.
I looked at Dr. Levitt and knew what—or rather whom—she was considering.
Lexi looked at her school-issue pad. I was in her dad’s office studying atmospheric readings from Crimsy’s containment pod.
“What’s another name for the Krebs Cycle?” she asked.
“You should know that,” Dr. Brando said brusquely as he walked into the office. He went over to his book wall and took down a volume.
“How was the meeting?” I asked.
“Consider yourself fortunate not to be faculty.”
“Why?”
“I don’t need anyone else,” he lowered his voice, “scolding me.”
“Who scolded you?”
“Marcia. She was outta line, and I told her so.”
“What did she do?”
“As much as accused one of us of leaking the Crimsococcus discovery. One of us with an emphasis on Marcum.”
“I feel terrible.”
“You did the right thing. It’s not your fault.”
“I told her one of our PIOs sent that reporter,” I said. “That’s what the reporter told me. She wasn’t here on a tip.”
“But who tipped off the press office? That was today’s big question. Marcia suggested Marcum made good on his threat to go to the media. He was not happy. Then she got all worried I might want to jump the PR gun about FUCA.”
“It could have come from somewhere else,” I said.
“Not Crimsy. How this woman got the name Crimsy—I have to admit, I had my doubts. Still do. But Marcia’s behavior has made me basically,” he lowered his voice way low this time, “not give a shit.”
“She’s pretty stressed,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, but I wouldn’t be too hard on her.”
“We’re all stressed. It’s no excuse.”
“I overheard her arguing with Parada,” I said. “It didn’t sound good.”
“Lover’s quarrel?” Brando said.
“I don’t know. I was in the hall.”
“That loud.”
“Kinda.”
He sighed. I looked over at Lexi.
“Figure it out?”
“Nope,” she said. “I could look it up, but that would be cheating.”
I slid my chair next to her. “Actually, there are two other names for the Krebs Cycle,” I said. “One starts with a ‘c’.”
“Citric Acid Cycle,” she said.
“And?”
“Gimme another hint,” she said.
“Try,” I said.
“I am trying,” she said.
“That’s the hint,” I said. “Try, try, again. Try me a river.”
She screwed up her face and looked at me. “I’m trying. See me trying. Citric Acid Cycle and—”
“Keep trying,” I said.
“Any news on your end?” Brando asked me. “Like good news?”
“I just started the download. The readings are second by second,” I said.
“Are you kidding?”
“I thought they would be hourly.”
“I didn’t think about it,” Brando said. “That’s a lotta data.”
As in second-by-second atmospheric condition readings in the OpenGro box housing Crimsy. Thirty six hundred times more temperature, pressure, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen percentages than I had planned to review. Yikes!
“Tricarboxylic acid cycle,” Lexi blurted out.
“You looked that up,” I said.
“Did not.” She looked at me. “You give great clues,” she said.
I turned to the sound of soft knocking.
“Oh my god!” I said. “Mom!”
She smiled and walked in. She looked good. I stood up and hugged her and kissed her. We hadn’t seen each other in the months since Brian’s funeral.
“I was supposed to pick you up at Sea-Tac,” our airport, I said.
“I hate the anti-climax of baggage claim,” she said. She looked at Lexi and Dr. Brando. “I haven’t seen this young lady or her father since the day you all landed on Mars,” she said.
“Hi!” Lexi said.
Mom shook Brando’s hand and gave Lexi a cheek-to-cheek snuzzle.
“Jennifer’s been bursting with excitement ever since you planned to visit,” Brando said. “She’s even twisted our arms to give her some time off.”
“I appreciate that,” mom said. “You know, I have never visited her for any more than a couple days since she left home.”
“And you’ve never visited here,” I said.
“Never been to Seattle?” Lexi said.
“No my dear,” mom said. “Have you ever visited Kenosha?”
“No,” Lexi said. “But I have been to Madison.”
“Then you’ve saved the best of Wisconsin for last,” mom said. “When you come to visit me.”
“I am totally cool with you taking off for the day,” Brando said. “Any dinner plans?”
“Thinking about Le Mer,” I said.
“Woo—tasty and classy! Have a fun night and great weekend.”
“I’d love to spend some time with this young lady,” mom said, looking at Lexi.
“That can be arranged,” Dr. Brando said. “Right?”
His daughter nodded and smiled.
“What is this?” I asked my mother, looking at her rental car in our visitor parking. I left my e-bike in the building.
“What they gave me,” she said.
Toyida Flyby, I read on the trunk. I touched the body, pressed it in. It felt like the rubber they use in those CPR mannequins. “Weird.”
“It’s dent-proof,” she said. “Hit it.”
“Hit it? Why?”
She kicked the driver side door. The rubber absorbed the blow and the door moved in, like it was inhaling, to cushion it even more.
“I declined collision damage waiver,” she said.
“Where to? We can grab something light, if you’re hungry.”
“I’d love to freshen up,” she said.
The car’s interior was a trip in itself, the first I’d seen with no steering wheel to manually correct auto-drive. It was voice and motion controlled. Lean left or say “turn left” and it turned left. It also read sign language and was at one with the Cloud. We viewed restaurant choices, menus, even meals in three dimensions on the way to my place.
The car parked and I went around to the trunk. “Open,” I said, and it did—to nothing.
“Um, mom.” I looked at her. “Where’s your luggage?”
“It’s not there?” She walked around, looked in. “Well, shit.”
“You really don’t like the anti-climax of baggage claim,” I said.
“I must have left it at the airport.”
“It’s okay. Let’s get you settled and I’ll go back and get it.”
“Probably still on the conveyor.”
I doubted that. Mom doesn’t fly much, and so may have missed the signs and rules. “Bags left unclaimed for more than ten minutes will be searched and stored,” warns every baggage claim. “Bags left stored for more than 48 hours will be disposed of,” by bomb squad, I imagined.
“A brown suitcase and a blue one—the one your dad got us for the cruise,” she told me.
“I’ll need your ID and boarding code,” I said.
She put her wrist out.
“You got chipped?” I asked.
“Finally. They were balking about renewing my driver’s license.”
I scanned her microchip with my phone. In protest of the new chip mandates, Wisconsin and some other states passed ten-year driver’s license renewal periods, hoping to stave off the Feds and make political points with angry constituents. I had my old license for eleven years, driving a year after it expired, resisting as long as I could. Mom pretty much did same. But in the end, resistance was futile. It always is, isn’t it? And of course, the State loves the chip. Try to drive on an expired or revoked license, at least in Wisconsin, and your chip will prevent the car from starting (unless you have an old jalopy you have conveniently failed to retrofit, like I do).
The Flyby drove me to the airport in the devil-may-care style you might expect of a dent-proof car. We cut in and out of freeway traffic, exceeded the speed limit, then slowed to just under it when the car detected highway patrol drones, displayed as flying avatars on its traffic monitor. The car dropped me at the Sea-Tac Departures entrance, then drove around and parked itself at the Arrivals exit, where I had about twenty minutes before TSSEA agents would order it towed. I hurried to baggage claim and searched the conveyor islands.
Not a bag nor suitcase in sight.
I looked for locked doors with hard-to-read signs that might point me to the baggage claim office. I found a cart piled with unclaimed luggage next to one of these doors. I knocked.
“Come in.”
“I’m looking for my mom’s bags,” I told the attendant.
“She here?” he said.
“No.”
“Gotta scan her chip,” he said. “Can’t release bags without the claim code.”
“Got all that in my phone,” I said. I pulled the information up and tried to show him.
“Unfortunately, we can’t accept that,” he said. “Gotta scan the chip itself.”
“Really?” I said.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s all here. I can even call her if you want.”
“Regs,” he said. “Only the chip holder may claim the bag. Turnstiles won’t even let you out of baggage claim.”
“I never noticed,” I said.
“Chips are read automatically.”
“Can you at least confirm you have the bags?”
“Only to the chip holder, ma’am.”
I walked out of the office. I felt like screaming, but instead sat on a bench and took a deep breath. Go back, get mom, bring back to airport, not even knowing if her bags made it. I put my head in my hands and stared. I glanced over at the cart with the luggage. Idea. I walked over for a closer look on my way to get a drink from the fountain outside the restrooms. The door was open to the baggage claim office but I couldn’t see the attendant. I reconnoitered around the cart. My heart started racing. Dad’s blue bag from the cruise and its brown companion were one atop the other about halfway along the cart, with one layer of smaller bags atop them. I passed a couple more times, checking the baggage tags and sizing up my strike. I looked around for turnstiles or security guards or other impediments to my escape. But it was quiet down here post-flight. I looked at the time. Had a few more minutes before mom’s rental car was towed. I hurried toward the luggage cart, stopped, looked around, then ran up and grabbed both bags with two hard jerks. I raced across the shiny floors, keeping my face down as much as possible, away from the gauntlet of cameras watching my every move. They couldn’t read microchips from their perches, or I’d have been arrested. I looked back once, dashed into a cubby, took each bag by its handles, and calmly walked out.
“That was fast,” mom said when I got back. “I thought for sure there’d be some hassle.”
We ate Italian delivery by candlelight, virtual fireplace (with real heat), and small-talk that tapered as mom relaxed.
“Honey,” she said. “Your place is adorable. I love it.”
I did, too, but now a little more.