The Andromeda Evolution Read online

  The unearthly groan rose in pitch as tons of dirt and rock and roots were violently shifted somewhere underground. Meanwhile, the surface of the anomaly was pulsing—as if it were vibrating at a rate too fast to see.

  “I think we are about to find out,” said Harold, pulling on Peng’s shoulder. She did not move, continuing to stare up at the anomaly with calculating eyes. Her machete trembled in her outstretched hand. Shrugging away from Odhiambo’s grasp, Peng stepped forward and pressed the tip of the machete blade against the trembling surface.

  “Peng!” called Odhiambo, backpedaling away from the heat. “Stop this!”

  For a moment nothing happened.

  Then the steel machete blade began to change color in a slow wave, from the tip moving back, darkening to a dull red and then brightening toward orange. The tip finally erupted into an incandescent yellow-white color. With a cry of pain, Peng dropped the blade to the jungle floor. It lay there steaming, bits of carbon in the superheated steel twinkling like stars against an apocalyptic sky.

  “Oxidation,” she said, backing away with a forearm across her face. “Over a thousand degrees Celsius, based on the color of that steel.”

  The ragged border of jungle canopy had begun to writhe, leaves chattering and branches creaking. Seed pods plummeted down from hundreds of feet above, thudding into the ground, followed by a dry snowfall of crisp leaves and lichen and bark.

  Shielding themselves from falling debris, the group stared in awe at the face of the anomaly from the safety of the forest. What they saw next was impossible to reconstruct in video, despite extensive attempts to utilize super-resolution techniques on recovered footage.

  The skin of the anomaly erupted in rotating hexagonal lines, a hypnotic chaos of overlapping patterns. Nidhi Vedala postulated directly afterward that the artifacts could have been a macro-level effect sprouting from the cellular structure of trillions of smaller Andromeda microparticles. These etched shapes revolved in a repeating pattern that optically froze in the way fan blades seem to stop spinning against a white ceiling.

  It was by all accounts a mesmerizing sight.

  Satellite footage showed that the surface of the anomaly throbbed once and then lurched, a trembling shudder that seemed to ripple through the structure. The seismic activity and pattern of rotating lines were disorienting, so much so that Peng Wu fell to the ground unconscious.

  A final, intense blast of heat swept off the wall and flowed through the wet rain forest. Among the trees, the team cowered together.

  “I know what this is,” said Vedala, shouting just to hear herself. “I know exactly what this is!”

  Finally, the entire anomaly flashed purple before expanding—erupting outward and upward, and growing by nearly a foot in all its dimensions. The illusory hexagonal shapes grew more defined before fading, rotating back into nothingness like the aperture of a camera lens collapsing to a pinprick.

  The jungle was still.

  “Impossible, impossible,” muttered Odhiambo, hoarse with fright.

  “It grew,” called Stone. “It’s even bigger now.”

  Stone helped Peng up from where she was sitting tangled among roots. During the event, none of the other scientists had realized she had fainted. Though muddied and nursing a lump on the back of her head, Peng did nothing to indicate she had been in distress.

  Vedala looked around at the field team as if noticing them for the first time. Her face was flushed. All of them had suffered minor sunburns. The group had witnessed something unexplainable, but as a materials specialist Vedala understood at least one thing—the anomaly represented an unimaginable leap forward in technology.

  Vedala spoke in a steady, quiet voice to the group.

  “What we have just witnessed is beyond any known human scientific capability. Once I get a sample of it under a microscope, I’ll confirm, but my bet is that we will find that this entire anomaly is made of an Andromeda-based nanomaterial. The structure just underwent a form of . . . mitosis is the best description. Like cell division. Each microparticle split and produced a copy of itself.”

  “That sounds familiar,” said Stone. “My father documented this behavior during the first Andromeda incident. Except that he and Dr. Leavitt only observed it happening on a microscopic scale. It flashed purple, and then it underwent something akin to cellular division.”

  “How?” asked Peng. “What could it use as fuel out here?”

  “Nitrogen. Carbon dioxide. Phosphorus. A rich variety of elements, all readily available in massive quantities,” replied Odhiambo. “A pure conversion system.”

  “You mean the dirt itself . . . the air,” said Stone.

  “Yes,” replied Vedala. “Our friend Tupa had it right from the start. The anomaly is eating the jungle itself.”

  Fail-Safe

  IT WAS NOW CLOSE TO THE END OF AN EXCEEDINGLY long day. Nidhi Vedala called for camp to be set up deep among the trees, but still in view of the anomaly. Among the remaining team members, only Peng Wu had any real training in jungle survival. She had completed her final basic training in the Xishuangbanna tropical rain forest in the Yunnan Province of southern China. Despite her academic qualifications, Peng’s skill set made her the best choice for establishing a safe campsite.

  This suited Vedala fine, as she felt that at the moment the former soldier needed something to focus on. Peng had seemed especially shaken by the disturbing growth event.

  Reclaiming her singed machete, Peng set about clearing a spot beyond the shriveled trees—a dozen yards or so from where the muddy river streamed out from under the anomaly. Beside the water, the team had discovered the hexagonal tunnel mouth described by Tupa. It was no longer breathing black smoke, but the dark passage remained foreboding nonetheless.

  The dull thumps of Peng’s machete echoed flatly. The early evening light felt murky and thick as it wafted down through burned leaves.

  The bizarre anomaly loomed in the dusk—both the bulk of the main structure and the dark column rising beyond—their metallic-looking surfaces absorbing the last of the daylight, glittering like the pebbled skin of a leviathan surfacing from impossible depths.

  Since the team had been dispatched three days ago, Vedala estimated the anomaly had grown nearly twice as large. The group instinctively felt safer among the trees, well beyond the barren strip of churned red earth that separated the structure’s face from the jungle.

  Alien and implacable, the anomaly seemed to exert an ill will.

  As Peng worked alone, the others set about their familiar routines of science. Abandoned by their guides and unable to contact NORTHCOM, the field team was now demonstrating why it had been selected. A sense of curiosity and wonder had settled over them, despite the recent traumatic events.

  The greatest mystery on earth was within arm’s reach.

  Vedala obsessively ran and reran the routines to establish a satellite uplink with command and control, walking the perimeter and looking for a tree break. She was a small, determined figure beside such an imposing mass, but the expanding structure had created a maze of wreckage that was nearly impenetrable. No matter where she wandered, the connection bars on her satellite phone stubbornly refused to budge.

  Meanwhile, James Stone and Tupa had become inseparable. At the tree line, Stone was shaking a canister of inhibitor spray. He aimed it at his own forearm as Tupa watched with curiosity. He pulled the tab, and a fine mist of protective sealant hissed from the canister mouth. Tupa dived back, feet scrabbling in the dirt, his fingers forming an unmistakable fanged sign.

  “Jahmays!” he said, in dismay.

  Laughing, Stone shook his head.

  “No, not a snake,” he said. “Armor. Strong.”

  A nearby canary whispered its translation. Tupa hesitantly put out his arms and allowed Stone to apply a coating. Squeezing his eyes closed and holding his breath at Stone’s direction, he looked like any child being daubed with sunscreen at the beach. When it was over, his eyes popped open and his fr
ont teeth flashed in a grin as he repeated the words back to James.

  “Armor,” he said. “Strong.”

  For his part, Harold Odhiambo was sitting on a shattered tree trunk, taking meticulous count of a number of complicated seismic sensors. It was tedious work, but he seemed to enjoy the slow, practiced motions, checking each sensor before slipping it into a mesh pocket on the exterior of his rucksack.

  Though the others naturally shied away from the incomprehensible structure, Harold Odhiambo found its bulk oddly comforting.

  The esteemed scientist had spent the last decade studying extraterrestrial geology—the inner workings of other worlds—and in this anomaly he did not see a deformity of something natural, but the beauty of truly nonhuman architecture.

  As a boy growing up in Kenya, Odhiambo had always been enamored of the gigantic termite mounds that dotted the landscape of the wild plains. Fully insulated against the elements, predators, and the occasional wildfires that raced over the dry grass, each self-contained mound was built from naturally occurring materials and housed over a billion small creatures capable of operating complex societies that could and did last for millennia.

  In a recurring game of make-believe, the young Odhiambo had imagined himself exploring the tiny hallways of such a megatropolis—the winding passages reflecting the utter nonhumanness of the design. As he grew into an adult and traveled the world to complete his studies, Odhiambo had watched human beings everywhere he visited continue to encroach on nature, destroying and remaking everything they touched, a wave of annihilation that impacted every possible habitat.

  The more Odhiambo had seen of humankind’s scientific triumphs, the more he appreciated those termites and the enduring megacities they built. Constructed from the mud of the plains, the alien-seeming mounds thrived in balance with the ecosystem. It was a feat he had not yet seen a human civilization accomplish, except for perhaps the humans who lived in and cultivated this rain forest.

  His rucksack fully loaded with sensors, Odhiambo seemed satisfied. He hopped down from the log and set out on a path along the anomaly. Surveying the ground, he stopped and crouched on surprisingly limber knees for a man of his age. He withdrew a fist-size seismic sensor from the mesh pocket and firmly pressed the barbed tip of the device into the ragged dirt. With a well-practiced motion, he twisted the top half sharply. A blue LED began to glow, and a charging sound ramped up.

  As Odhiambo stood, hunched under the weight of his rucksack, the corkscrew seismic device released a burst of pent-up energy, twisting its proboscis into the ground. By the time it had disappeared under the raw dirt, Odhiambo was already moving on.

  In this manner, he implanted sixteen sensors along the perimeter, focusing an extra few sensors on the “mouth” that led into darkness, near the yellowish river.

  Eyes on her satellite phone, Vedala continued to pace the anomaly. She walked right past James Stone, who was busy cleaning mud from the recharging docks on his specialized backpack. As Stone worked, he demonstrated the inner workings of the instrument to Tupa, who had proven to be an astute student. Surrounded by several loitering canaries, the closest of which would occasionally offer a translation, the two of them looked perfectly content.

  As Vedala passed by yet again, Stone stopped and cocked his head to listen.

  “That’s the sound of interference,” he said.

  “What?” asked Vedala.

  “Those satphones are digital. They don’t hiss like a radio. What you’re hearing is electromagnetic interference, like from a microwave oven.”

  “I’d agree with you, except what electrical source could be putting off that much interference?”

  Vedala knew the answer before she finished the question, of course. She craned her neck, looking up at the greenish-black structure. Walking slowly toward it, she held the satellite phone out like a dowsing rod. She listened as the hissing grew louder. The short antenna nearly grazed the surface, and the static hissed ferociously.

  “We weren’t advised of this,” said Vedala, her shoulders slumping.

  Stone stood up, putting his hands to the small of his back and stretching as he observed the anomaly. He squinted as the last rays of sunlight flitted across it in a wavering streak. “Well, it’s gotten bigger since we left. The interference may have only started recently.”

  “But why would it be transmitting electricity?” asked Vedala.

  A large rucksack hit the dirt nearby.

  “Of course it does,” said a voice.

  Stone and Vedala turned to see a sweat-soaked Odhiambo. The older man stood with his eyes closed for a moment. Deeper in the jungle, birds screeched from the lower canopy as Odhiambo took great long breaths in through his nose.

  “Electrical power,” he said. “Yes.”

  “What have you got, Harold?” asked Stone.

  Odhiambo opened his eyes, grinning.

  “I do not know how this thing came to be here. I do not know why. But I believe I can tell you what it is.”

  Peng Wu joined them, listening with curiosity.

  “My seismic sensors have been pulling data from the area,” said Odhiambo. “Mostly concentrated near the mouth of the river. They picked up a mechanical vibration under the flow of water. Combined with your observation, I believe I now have a complete hypothesis.”

  Odhiambo turned to gaze up at the great anomaly, continuing to speak as he regarded it with wonder.

  “This structure is not built of any material known to man. Its construction techniques are a mystery. But its purpose is as clear as day,” he said. “Our anomaly is a simple dam. And a dam exists for one reason. To generate hydroelectric power.”

  “Power for what?” asked Vedala.

  “We will only find that out, my friends,” said Odhiambo, pointing to the mouth of the tunnel, “when we go inside.”

  As the significance of that statement began to sink in, the satellite phone squawked. Holding her arm perfectly still, Vedala turned to the device with a surprised smile of relief. It was an expression that turned quickly to confusion and disappointment.

  “Something is wrong,” she said. “It’s not connected to the Iridium satellite constellation. It’s connected to something else . . .”

  Vedala was interrupted by a burst of static.

  “Wildfire field team,” hissed the satphone. “This is Kline. Do you read me?”

  Peering upward into the only slice of blue sky visible from the jungle floor, Vedala’s eyes widened in wonder. Several hundred miles above, the International Space Station was circling the globe. Vedala began to mentally calculate how long this transmission would last. It was probably a maximum of five minutes before the ISS would zip over the horizon and out of range.

  “This is Wildfire. We read you. Repeat, we are alive.”

  “Roger that,” replied Sophie Kline. “What’s the situation down there?”

  “Not good, but the mission is still viable. We’ve had no contact with Northcom and missed our rendezvous. Can you patch us through?”

  “We only have a few minutes. I’ll relay your message as soon as I’m over the horizon. Do you have any new data to share?”

  “Stand by for a data transfer.”

  Stone was already hustling over to Vedala with his portable computer. Plugging the data port into the satphone, he initiated the data transfer.

  On board the ISS, the monitors around Kline illuminated with data—the swollen trunk of a rubber tree, its latex sap bleeding into unnatural six-sided shapes. On another screen gruesome images of Machado casualties appeared, faces spattered with blood from gunshot wounds, skin flecked with metallic-looking chunks.

  “I see you made contact. It looks like Brink took care of it,” said Kline.

  “Yes, he did,” said Vedala.

  “These men were infected. Do you know how?” asked Kline.

  “We think they made contact with the anomaly.”

  Tapping Vedala on the shoulder, Stone whispered, “The rest of the d
ata will have to wait until her next pass.”

  Kline saw an image of an indigenous boy—he was clearly alive, his face alert and cautious under a thin sheen of glistening red urucum. She expelled a sharp breath. The machinery of her mind had been processing, searching for clues that tied together the input she was seeing. Now she had seen a connection.

  Gray ash. The boy had none of it on him.

  “This boy lived, but the others didn’t,” she radioed. “Did he tell you anything? Did he say anything about an explosion?”

  “He described a roaring in the jungle,” said Vedala. “Two minutes.”

  “Of course,” mused Kline, partially off-mike.

  “Say again?”

  “The AS-3 substance is harmless unless it’s absorbed into the bloodstream. The men have ash around their nostrils. The boy doesn’t.”

  Peng Wu was already calculating the meaning. “He wasn’t allowed to get close to the anomaly. And he described the others as coughing. If an explosion aerosolized the Andromeda substance, it would have lingered as dust or smoke. The portal of entry would have been the respiratory tract, and the hosts were infected when the microparticle transmitted across the blood-air barrier in the upper lung.”

  “So if it’s been blasted into smoke, you can breathe it. Otherwise, it only transmits through blood exposure, same as the first Andromeda Strain,” warned Stone, remembering the ax wound in Brink’s shoulder.

  “What about the hexagonal scale patterns?” asked Vedala.

  “Self-replication,” answered Kline.

  Vedala stared at the satphone with a look of confusion. She had one minute left of communication with the ISS.

  “How do you know that?” asked Vedala. “Have you seen this before? Is there new data?”

  “Retreat to the quarantine perimeter immediately,” replied Kline in a clipped tone.

  “Negative,” replied Vedala, stubbornly. “On what basis?”

  “I’m warning you,” Kline continued, stumbling over the words in her haste. “Your safety gear is inadequate. Retreat to the perimeter.”