Chapter 56 - Life Goes On

There were over two hundred cockroach farms throughout China at the time and and these creatures had the ability to live off wood fibre, such as cardboard and paper. These mixed with fertiliser and urine allowed bacteria and fungi to grow on the paper which gave the roaches the necessary protein for their growth. It was just a simple case of being willing to eat enough roaches. The various owners were able to secure the tools to break into government buildings which were full of paper work. Survival was an on-going drama of utter degradation, but survive they did. Long enough for the skies to clear.

They were not the only ones to survive. The common thread being damp decaying biomass being eaten by something and that something being eaten by people. Life needs energy and without the sun the only available energy was that stored in biomass. In the worlds forests the mycelium of fungi fed off the dead wood and transfered a portion of the energy into the still living plants. Just enough to keep them on the right side of death.

By and large life had survived the same way it had when the dinosaurs got wiped out 66 million years ago.

Lü Zhi checked her instrumentation. The bio-cement had repaired itself. They were safe. Also safe were the precious bioreactors containing Amoeba dubia. These single celled life-forms had genomes 220 larger than the human genome. On her orders Daniel had transferred into their genomes all of human knowledge. In one reactor were the essentials, science, know how and gadgets. In the other reactor were religious texts, works of art, music poetry and customs. It was simply a matter of waiting out the cold darkness and emerging from her "burrow", just as her rat-like ancestors had done all those millions of years ago. The dinosaurs, lacking both burrows and a space program, perished. As had the worlds governments.

At the time of the explosion the Earth had shielded the satellites on the far side of it from the electromagnetic pulse. There were still enough functioning to ascertain which parts of the Earth would be recovering the fastest and which areas would have the best climate.

Voice communication had been established with Bir Tawil who passed on the message to Imogen that the crew at “Andy's Ark” were alive and well and are busy making babies for a world that needs their talents. The crew at Bir Tawil were going to go the “whole hog” in their Mars simulation. They would expand their network of caverns and increase their population to fill them.

Given the magnitude of the disaster Imogen was quite happy with the way events had unfolded. Even the worlds plastics were slowly being degraded by consortiums of hungry microbes, starting their own novel food chains both on land in the rivers and oceans. Life had indeed toughened up since the days of the dinosaurs.

Imogen joined Daniel in his quarters. He was nearing the end of the movie “Black Mountain Side” with the survivor being spoken to by a demon in his head:

When an animal looks up at the night sky what does it see? Thousands and thousands of tiny points. Then a man looks up at the same points and sees millions of stars. Galaxies within which are billions of planets. Do you want to know what I see?...

"I see an infinite hazy cloud. Each particle holding the hopes and dreams of the life that it precariously hosts. Each speck ready to be gathered up with the others and consolidated into a single lump of clay to be moulded according to my indomitable will!", whispered Imogen.

Daniel turned to face Imogen with a contented, intense and sexual smile. Life was good. "This humble third rock of ours sure punches above its weight", he replied.

"Oh you bet it does. And soon, very soon, even within a few thousand years the Earth shall rise up and answer this assault with a mailed fist of its own".

"And what of Lü Zhi?", he asked.

"Oh, don't you know. She's been my friend for the last 87 million years. She had suffered a fragmentation event recently and I've been pulling back her memories from the astral plane. She pulled off her role perfectly, even down to the arthritic knee. Didn't you notice that she is no longer limping since the meteorite?", Imogen finished with a chuckle.

After a short pause Imogen continued. "When you join with me tonight Daniel I shall use my powers to make you immortal. You shall become as one of us, an elohim, a god. I wonder how you will repay me?", she asked with a cheeky grin.

"I'm going to get my head buried between your silky smooth thighs and have a really good splutter down there."

"Well not quite what I had in mind, but lets face it Daniel, you look the type!", Imogen giggled.

Felicity and Simon were no longer alone. Or more to the point they were no longer continually alone. A network of nomadic groups were making random contact with each other from time to time. A very loosely held community made possible by the rains that came with the dust induced cold. Felicity emerged from out of the astral plane. "Simon we are blessed", she stated simply and contentedly.

"Hmm, something gives me the strange idea that we are experiencing a serious lack of luxury. But show me a free wifi signal and I'll take it all back.", he answered perplexed and amused.

"We left a place, a civilisation, where people lived in the gilded cages of technology with broken minds and bodies and although our surroundings are absolute squalor we are in perfect health both mentally and physically. We also have our freedom. This is the perfect world to bring a new life into. It's time."

"Hell I better get some water." Simon grabbed a plastic bottle and filled it up at the stream. By the time he got back it was all over. He'd been stressing about it for months, but sure as anything he was now a proud father with his baby boy getting his first taste of mothers milk.

"Don't wash any of that gunk off him, its important for his future skin health. Prevents eczema.", Felicity stated. They counted his fingers and toes and checked all over. He was perfectly normal in every way. Except for those eyes. Sure, they were normal physically, a black centre within a green area within a white outer. It was the soul behind them that was different, already possessed with a piercing intelligence. The alien biology within Felicity had stripped the baby's neurons of all unnecessary DNA, except that required by neurons. The result were neurons of similar size to a ravens with a human sized brain.

"What shall we call him?", asked Simon.

"Enoch, for he shall be the first born into the new Earth that shall take us to the stars. Don't ask me how, but I know this to be true."

The seven minutes of terror was an understatement for the Entity as it guided the spacecraft on to the Mars base to be. Everything at the base was pretty much operational. It knew it had Mars to itself, at least until the Earth had time to recover. That would be plenty of time. Time enough to rewrite the computer code for its own purposes. Time to process minerals and fabricate the infrastructure needed to keep its own kind alive. Time enough to build its own, more powerful space craft and go to where ...?

Despite the narrative about Mars' atmosphere, it was still only one third as dense as Earths and had gravity of 38%. That meant that far more meteorites landed intact. With the octopus already adept at communicating with bacteria it was a simple matter to sample these meteorites and see what story had been encoded in those hardy sojourners.

The galaxy was awash with life. Most of it microbial. A small percentage of planets, translating to millions in number, had multi cellular life. The Entity was flooded with information from the stars, small wonder that aliens never came visiting. Not only were technological capable species extremely rare, it was yet to discover the first, but it was far easier to get information from random meteorites than to build a rocket capable of intersteller flight.

But what about Imogens meteorite, that was a loose end. The Entity didn't like loose ends. Had Imogen been mistaken or was the information in the meteorites being censored. But one day the Entity came across the message of a planet very similar to Earth with two hominid species separated by oceans. That separation would not last for long. Although they still had a long way to go before leaving the stone age, one species had already named their home world. This information was stored long enough ago for that to have happened.

Although Mars is the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, it still makes the Antarctic look like a tropical paradise. It was no place for a single multi-cellular organism of any kind with half ready infrastructure and no assistance from Earth. To put it mildly the challenges were immense and ordinarily beyond the scope of the Entity. However it had one last trick up its sleeve. It could expand its consciousness throughout the entire microbial biomass that sustained it, giving it the required intelligence for survival. But at what cost? The octopus would have to eat part of its own soul each day so it could gain sustenance and as the microbial biomass grew back that void was filled with hate. Very quickly all the Entity could feel was power and hate.

The Entity made its plans. With the distinct possibility of an alien species coming to Earth for conquest the whole of this solar system was too hot, let alone Mars itself. It would no longer clone itself on Mars. Instead, with the help of robots already present, it would build an intersteller craft and place itself in suspended animation for the journey. Once it had landed it would lie low and influence the species there for fast track development. From there on it would become its greatest scientist and build up its power and direct its own evolution in harmony with the development of the Mark 3 travel unit. Then it would clone itself and wipe out both species. With this power its numbers would grow. With this power it will expand. With this power it will conquer the Universe!

The Entity's sights were firmly set upon the planet Skaro.