Seventh Son by Aric Merchant
This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #7
It took me over an hour, but I finally found her. She had slipped away after the latest round of medical tests, and must have turned her InfoBand off. She crawled into a storage compartment on the fourth level and curled up in the corner. If I hadn’t noticed that the latch was broken on the compartment, I probably wouldn’t have checked it, and would have continued wandering the corridors for hours. There were lots of broken hatches and doorless compartments on the beaten up old scow, but Dr. Yoshida had been lucky to get us a ship at all. The Captain had not been willing to haggle on the price, so we were risking everything the Doctor had saved on this trip.
I squeezed into the space next to Roma. She did not say anything, but I understood her need to sequester herself. I knew how the medical tests reminded her of the multiple refugee centers we had been shuffled through as children. Our homeworld was on a disputed border, and the whole system had changed hands between factions several times in our childhood.
Gentle as she was, Dr. Yoshida could not conduct her tests without evoking Roma’s memories of being processed in each new center, being checked and double checked for the Data Plague.
The Plague had been the start of it all, we had always been told. A few short decades ago humanity had existed as only a handful of peacefully coexisting interstellar unions. Then, the Data Plague had emerged. It was like nothing humanity had ever encountered before. It was the perfect marriage of biological pathogen and computer virus. It spread through both the human population and their ubiquitous technology. Cities fell and whole planets were quarantined, but nothing stopped it. The Plague’s ability to transition between real-world infective agent and virtual malware made it seemingly impossible to combat or contain.
The cluster of interstellar unions splintered into hundreds of stellar fiefdoms. In the chaos, whole societies like ours had been displaced. Roma and I had grown up in this chaos.
I put my arm around my sister.
“Do you think they got the Plague too?” she said quietly. She had asked this before. She was referring to the dozens of planets which had been found to have evidence of ancient civilizations, but were now lifeless.
“I don’t know. Might’ve been something different for each.”
“They say they don’t know for sure. But, I think they do. They don’t want us to know that we’re doomed, that it happens to every civilization. They advance too far, then the Data Plague emerges from their tech and it consumes everything.”
“Maybe.” I said, reluctantly. “I don’t know. What good does giving up hope do us? Especially now that we’re this close to a possible answer.”
“You… believe her then? You think Yoshida is right?” She turned to me and our eyes met. I could never lie to my sister when we were looking each other in the eyes.
“I think it’s the most promising thing anyone has proposed so far. If it has any chance, it’s worth trying.”
Roma reached over and gently placed her hand on my forearm. Under her light touch was a large poorly-healed scar. It was a permanent reminder of a beating I had taken from a soldier who was relocating our community. It had been the first sign of the hardship to come under that regime.
Roma’s hand retracted and her eyes returned to the floor. We sat in silence, listening to the hum of the g-force generators under our feet. After a few minutes, my InfoBand buzzed. I tapped it to answer the call.
“Skyle?” Dr. Yoshida inquired.
“Here.”
“Have you found Roma?”
“Yes.” I told her, hoping Roma wouldn’t see that as a betrayal. “She’s with me.”
“Good, good. The Captain has ordered us to meet with him. He’s being very… insistent.”
#
“I need to know why you are on my ship.” The Captain said. His arms were crossed as if he wanted to look intimidating. He was, but then he commanded the crew and the ship’s systems. We were already at his mercy, so the show of toughness was rather unnecessary.
“As I told you when we arranged this transport, we are conducting an archeological survey on the third planet of the Delta Dromonus System.”
“If this is merely academic, then why have we received orders from four faction governments to immediately return to settled space?”
“Liability, I would assume. Ships that leave settled space are always told to return, lest they run into trouble far from human aid. They’re obligated to warn us that they won’t come gallivanting out to rescue us.”
“Time was, that was true,” the Captain said, “but in recent years, with the increased tensions and the spread of the Data Plague, the factions are not paying so much attention to small ships straying too far from home. But, four of them went out of the way to order our return. Why?”
Dr. Yoshida took a breath. “If I tell you everything, will you continue on to our intended destination?”
“If it incurs no risk to my ship or crew, sure. I don’t cancel contracts just because faction governments tell me to.”
“I can’t promise no risk, Captain.” Dr. Yoshida confessed. “But, if you carry us to our destination, I can assure you it will all be worth it.” She took another breath. “Those governments want us to return, because they want to control my discovery.
“It was hidden very well, you see. Over 98% of the human genome is what some call ‘junk DNA’. It doesn’t code for proteins. It does serve some biochemical and epigenetic functions, but it’s not coding, not what makes us… us. All organisms have this ‘junk’, but humans have more than most. It’s made up of old genes that have been replaced by new sequences, leftover fragments of DNA from viruses, and inactive copies of other genes.”
The Captain nodded, but I wasn’t sure if he was following. He was not unintelligent, but his expertise was space, not biology.
“I was examining this ‘junk DNA’ in great detail and I made a rather interesting discovery.” Dr. Yoshida continued. “I noticed that there were some biochemical functions that appeared to be subtly protecting certain ‘junk’ sequences from mutation. When I say subtle, I do mean subtle. For hundreds of years, humans have been studying these sequences, but I was the first to notice this. The biochemistry was being clever, you see. It might allow a mutation in one generation, but it would fix it a generation or two later. It was only happening in a few hundred sequences, though.
Dr. Yoshida looked into the distance, imagining the sequences in the air around her. Her passion. “It was remarkable. I am not being poetic when I say the biochemistry was acting clever. This ‘junk preserving’ system was too intricate to have evolved naturally. It was the fingerprint of a designer. The old Intelligent Design Proponents would have had a field day if anyone had seen what I found back then. Of course, what I found does not at all bring common descent into question.” She waved away the idea with her hand and continued.
“I found this occurring only in humans. And that’s when it got really interesting. We geneticists use ‘junk’ DNA to map out evolutionary relationships between species, you see. The ‘junk’ that was being protected did superficially appear to be like the DNA in species close to us, but when examined carefully there were subtle differences. Geneticists always assumed these differences were natural mutations, but my analysis suggests that they were intentional alterations.”
Dr. Yoshida realized she had been talking for longer than usual, taken with her interest, and quickly interrupted herself. “So, I had to conclude, that at some point in our evolutionary history someone had intentionally changed us. It had to occur between the point at which we diverged from our closest ape relatives, and the point when humans spread from the African continent to the rest of the Earth. Certainly, it was long before we expanded into space.”
The Captain said nothing. He simply regarded Dr. Yoshida impassively.
She continued, doing her best to keep her audience. “Naturally, I set about trying to determine what these gene sequences do. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why some great intelligent entity would want to alter our DNA in such a way as to not interfere in our evolution, and to hide the evidence of their tampering.”
She paused for a moment. “Tell me Captain, are you familiar with the old myth regarding the ‘seventh son of a seventh son’?”
He shook his head reluctantly, not wanting to admit ignorance.
“It used to be believed that the seventh son of a seventh son might be endowed with magic or mystical abilities. They were often believed to be healers. We have learned that birth order actually does play a role in epigenetics, determining what genes are or are not expressed. Well, in looking at these sequences that were intentionally placed in us I found something quite remarkable. I believe, the myth was right.”
#
Once he understood our mission, the Captain agreed to carry us the rest of the way to Delta Dromonus C. The planet had been cataloged and surveyed decades ago by a long-ranged scouting ship, searching for life. They had taken orbital pictures of the structures on the surface, and sent robots to collect samples. But with no evidence of extant life on the planet, they left it to be explored by others. Follow up missions surely would have been launched if not for the outbreak of the Data Plague.
Once we were in orbit, the Captain gave Dr. Yoshida access to one of the ship’s shuttles. We were warned that if we ran into trouble on the planet’s surface, no rescue party was to be expected. Dr. Yoshida ushered us into the small craft and we disembarked.
Delta Dromonus C was brownish-yellow, one big desert. From orbit, ridges could be seen that had once marked the boundary between continent and ocean. As we descended, the ruins became discernable. There were ancient cities scattered all over the surface, even on the dried sea floor. That was the doctor’s first clue that this civilization had not simply died out like all the others. This society had thrived even after their world had become inhospitable. Dr. Yoshida had managed to acquire a fossil specimen collected by the original scouting mission. From that, she pulled enough DNA to match with the “junk” DNA sequences she had been studying. This culture had either placed those sequences in our DNA, or they had been closely related to the race that did.
I looked around at the lifeless ruins. Where had they gone? If they had not been destroyed by their own Data Plague, or by their world’s shifting climate, what had become of these people? Did they migrate to another world or another dimension, detouring to Earth to inject mysterious gene sequences into a primate?
Our destination came into view. The stone structure loomed over the arid landscape. Even on this alien world, there was something very familiar about it.
“Wow,” I said. “They must have shown the ancient Egyptians and Mesoamericans how to build these.”
“Please Skyle, don’t be elitist.” Dr. Yoshida reprimanded. “Those populations had very good command over simple machines. They were more than capable of building those structures without extraterrestrial help. It’s a structurally sound shape. It’s no surprise pyramids were built by architects out here just as they were built independently all over the Earth.”
We landed, and the doctor opened the shuttle door. The air was cool, but breathable. We left the safety of the shuttle and approached the stone structure. The four visible surfaces came to a point at the very top like an Egyptian pyramid. However, each side had a set of stone steps leading up to the structures midpoint, more like the Mesoamerican variety. At the structure’s mid-section there was a ledge. The doctor pointed to it, indicating our destination, and Roma and I started up the steps. Yoshida stayed with the shuttle to continue running sensor sweeps.
As we climbed, I thought back to Dr. Yoshida’s explanation the day she had found us.
“The myths were right, but incomplete. You, Skyle, are the seventh son of a seventh son across seven generations. The myths say you should be a healer, but that’s not really true. You are the key. I can see it written into your Y-chromosome. When the conditions are right, you will be able to activate the real healer.” Then, she had turned to Roma. “And that’s you. You are the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter across seven generations. I see it in the DNA of your mitochondria. The right conditions will activate dormant genes in your brother… and then he will activate you. And then… you will save our civilization.”
The very moment we stepped onto the ledge I could feel something. Before I could even finish catching my breath from the climb, I started to feel a change. There was a tingling in my hands and I looked down to them. My palms appeared to glow from within. The doctor had been right after all. My dormant DNA sequences were awakening. But she was also right that I was not the most important one here. I was the key. I could feel the truth of that.
I turned to Roma. She was staring at me, wide-eyed. I moved instinctively, instincts emerging from ancient strands of alien DNA. I held out my arms, palms up, invitingly. Roma stretched her arms out towards me. Just before we made contact, I pulled back. I was being driven forward by instinct, but I could still override it consciously. Roma was not active yet. She could still choose not to do this. She could walk away. I would not force it on her. She never asked to be the savior of humanity.
Roma nodded to me, accepting the role that chance had dealt to her. I put my hands out again and she lowered hers onto mine. There was a feeling of static between our palms. A moment later, her skin began to glow as mine had. The sensations I had felt began to fade, as if she had absorbed them. The glow spread throughout her body, and her form began to change before my eyes.
My heart was racing. It occurred to me that we didn’t really know what we were unleashing. We only knew that some intelligence had interfered in our evolution. It may not have been for our sake. How did we know this was going to produce something good? The only evidence we had to go on was a piece of folklore.
Her arms, legs, and neck lengthened. I heard her bones creak and snap like dry wood. The process looked excruciating, but she did not cry out in pain. Her hair fell away as her skin developed a blue tint. Her eyes expanded into ovals as her nose and mouth diminished. Everything I knew about biology told me that a sudden metamorphosis like this should not be possible. As I watched her, I got the strange feeling that it was not so much a transformation as it was a release. It was like her body had spent twenty years holding human form and was now granted permission to relax and take its natural shape.
The changes ended, but her skin continued to glow. Her large eyes turned back to me. When our gazes met, I had a mixed feeling that it was still my sister, but something totally alien as well. She reached an arm out towards me. There was an impulse to recoil, but I didn’t. The arm moved fluidly, as if there were no longer bones inside of it. A three-fingered hand touched my forearm. There was another feeling of static electricity, then she withdrew.
Her eyes blinked slowly and there was the faintest of smiles on her lips. Then, her body suddenly appeared to collapse into a brightly glowing mass, and she launched upward at incredible speed. There was a rush of wind and a crack as air moved in to fill the void she left.
I stood there dumbfounded. Several minutes must have passed while I processed what I had just seen. Dr. Yoshida roused me by calling my InfoBand from the base of the pyramid. I wasn’t sure how much she could have seen from there.
“Quickly, Skyle. We must get back to the shuttle!” she said.
“What?” was all I could muster.
“The Captain says she just went flying past them at tremendous speed! Well, he said an unidentified object, but it must be her. Imagine it! A species capable of flying through space without the aid of a ship. We can only imagine what else she can do! Well done! Now get down here. We must return to the ship and see if we can catch up to her.”
A species, I thought. My sister was now a different species. But, could she be if it was in her DNA all along? If she was, then I was the first human being in history to have direct contact with a living alien. I would have been more thrilled no doubt if that alien hadn’t just replaced the sister that I loved.
And yet, during her metamorphosis, I felt a strange inevitability about it all. She was meant to come here and take this form. Now that she had changed, would she really be able to set things right? End the plague and unite humanity once again? We can only imagine what else she can do, Dr. Yoshida had said.
I turned towards the steps and, as I did, I caught sight of my arm, the spot where Roma had touched me. My scar was gone.