Chapter 2

“Well, I suppose some introductions are in order.”  John Gordon smiled and looked around the room.

It was a nicely furnished conference room. Three other people sat around a large wooden table. They glanced at each other.

“First, Dr. George Kossack. Dr. Kossack is a well know philosopher. He is responsible for our little find.” He pointed to a small man with graying hair, some brown still in it. His beard was grayer.

“And Dr. Ruth Smiley. I am sure Dr. Smiley wonders why she is here, but since I have contributed some significant cash to her SETI program I was able to prevail upon her.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back, tolerant, in fund raising mode. She wore a nice gray suit, but with socks and Birkenstocks. She was rather plain looking, but had an intensity about her, and radiated a sense of calm intelligence.

“Finally, this is Phil Stockman, from Morris Investigations. He has done some work for me in the past. Very good at finding people and what they are doing.” Phil nodded briefly.

“And as you know, I am John Gordon. My main job is President of Gordon Biotech, but I have a few side interests. This one, Gordon Associates, was actually prompted by Dr. Kossack’s find.”

“You can drop the Doctor. George is fine.”

“For me too. Just Ruth.”

“Good, good. Well then, George, would you mind telling us a little about your plant?”

After his initial run-in, George had kept a wary eye on the reddish plant. Gradually it had filled up most of the pond. There were also definitely some thick sections coming out of the ground and climbing up the phone poles. It must have a huge root system.

He mentioned it to Jim Ferris at the college, but initially he had not been that interested. Finally, George went down to the pond with rubber gloves and got a cutting and dropped it off.

The next morning Jim Ferris was at his door.

“Where’s the plant?” He seemed flushed and excited.

“Well, out back, down the hill a bit,” George said, a little bemused by the sudden interest.

“Let’s have a look,” Jim said impatiently.

They headed down the hill through the woods and then into the clearing where the pond was.

“What the hell!” George walked faster and looked around.

The plant was still there, but large parts of it were brown and crumbling, like it was slowly dissolving away.

Somehow Jim got a task force out there within a few hours. They were draining the pond and they had backhoes trying to quickly dig down to the root system without damaging too much. The plant continued to get browner over the next few hours. Jim was busily taking pictures and taking samples.

The next day when George went out, there were only a few brown vines and within a week all traces were gone. Still Jim came out and took more samples. The brown leavings still had a story to tell.

“Jim didn’t tell me much, said it was very odd. Eventually he hooked me up with John here. I am hoping to learn more today about why everyone is so excited.”

“You will. Thanks, George.”

Gordon paused for a few seconds, and looked around.

“You all agreed to sign nondisclosures. That was just for what I will tell you today. Despite what you hear in the media, I am not trying to patent nature. I agree that it is our common heritage, but I do want to protect the extensive research I have already funded on this plant. I started Gordon Associates to do some more research. So I am committing major resources to this. Before I continue, are you all still OK with the nondisclosures?”

“I still agree about your work, but nature is nature. If this is something truly new, it should be known,” George said.

“It will. It will. But to the letter of the agreement?” He looked around and each person nodded.

“OK, I have a little presentation to give.”

Gordon set up a laptop with a projector and dimmed the lights.

“Jim Ferris has received some research grants from Gordon Biotech, and when he saw the nature of the find, he knew he needed more resources. He contacted us.”

Gordon showed a picture of George’s pond after it had been drained.

“It was huge. At the bottom of the pond was an extensive root system. It went ten feet deep and spread over a 50 foot radius, well beyond the pond.”

Gordon clicked to a picture of one frond.

“The internal structure was like nothing we have seen. We are not sure it is really a plant. At least not totally a plant. When we examined these fronds, we found something very much like nerve cells. Like from an animal.”

George and Ruth leaned forward intently. Phil glanced off to the side and looked bored.

Gordon clicked to a picture of a browning trunk going up a phone poll.

“And these fronds penetrated the phone lines.” He paused. “Like a phone tap.”

George and Ruth looked at each other.

“Oh, there’s more.”

He showed a close up picture of a large mass about 2 feet across down in the bottom of the pond.

“This mass is almost entirely made up of those nerve cells. By the time Dr. Ferris took this picture, it was already decomposing rapidly, but he was able to preserve a few samples for us to do an analysis. Even those decomposed within a few weeks. We couldn’t preserve them. We don’t know why. Even freezing didn’t help.”

He then clicked to a picture of another mass down in the pond bottom.

“This structure is 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, oblong. We did extensive DNA analysis on the whole plant, but this was different. The structure itself had the same genetic structure as the rest of the organism. But there were traces here of other DNA. Human DNA.”

George snorted. “What are we talking about? Pod people? The return of the fifties sci-fi movie, come to my back yard?”

Gordon didn’t even smile. “No. But you will want to hear this, George. It was human DNA, and it was your DNA.”

“What!” George jumped up, ready to walk out. This was too much.

“It had been modified somewhat, but you are the source.”

George sat back down.

Lunch had been brought in. Gordon had left the room to take some calls. Phil also left after quickly eating. Ruth and George were left in the room by themselves.

“Strange, huh?” Ruth ventured.

“It’s a ridiculous joke. I don’t know what Gordon is trying to pull.”

“Are you staying?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, maybe more will get sorted out this afternoon.”

There were a few more minutes of silence while they both worked on some very good cheesecake.

“You know, I am familiar with some of your work,” Ruth said.

“Really? What?”

“I studied exobiology as well as astronomy. And your book, Alternative Ontologies, was a favorite among the exobiologist grad students.”

George laughed. “Well, that explains the ten copies that were sold besides the ones to my own graduate students.”

“In exobiology and in SETI we do try to imagine how ET might think. The categories might be very different from ours.”

“So, is that what we have here, ET?”

“You don’t seem to credit the idea much.”

“Do you? There is the small matter of the speed of light and all that space. And despite the dreams of sci-fi writers, I don’t think there are any magic wormholes”

“Probably not. And if there were, how could an organism survive them? And without them, how could the organism survive the prolonged exposure to radiation? And what civilization could afford to send a multigenerational ship? And could they really put organisms asleep for a hundred or a thousand year trip? It does all seem pretty unlikely. But I am convinced there is a good chance for signals from some distant civilization. Thus, SETI.”

“I have been following SETI. Something may come of it. But what are we talking about here?”

“I think Gordon thinks it’s some competition. That’s why he has his industrial espionage talent here.”

“But, why us?”

Gordon stepped back into the room. “Because it may not be just my competition. I don’t know what is going on. Gordon Biotech is still looking at the more mundane explanations. I started Gordon Associates to explore the more distant possibilities, on the quiet. I don’t want to look like a UFO nut. Because I agree with you both that the idea of ET in a space ship seems pretty unlikely. But there could be something very odd here. And there was something in that gestation structure. Something grew there.”

“Cloning?” Ruth asked.

“Some kind of genetic engineering. And I want that technology.”

The industrial espionage talent came back into the room.

“Good, Phil, you’re back. Now we can continue. Go ahead and tell Ruth and George what you found out.”

Phil sat down and got some papers from a case and looked briefly at them.

“Mr. Gordon defined the problem as follows. An adult male is set down, naked, with no money, contacts, or transportation by the pond behind Dr. Kossack’s house. Where did he go and how?”

He said this in an even, neutral tone, without a trace of irony. He may have thought Gordon was cracked, but he knew who was paying the bills.

“First, I checked if any naked men, or at least any strange men, had been spotted in the area in the last year or so. Nothing. Then I checked for burglaries, car thefts, etc. It is a rural area and doesn’t report much crime, but strangely, on one night …” He checked his notes. “ … November 23^rd, there were three break-ins within 5 miles of the pond. Two of the houses were occupied at the time, but no one saw or heard anyone. Some cloths, a backpack, and $950 total was missing, also some food, portable stuff. That was it.

“No cars were reported stolen. It could be that the burglar was not our man, but assuming he was, where did he go from there? The towns around there are small. They were canvassed and no strangers were seen. We canvassed gas stations, asking patrons if they had seen hitch hikers. None for that night or the week after. He could have hiked out over land and caught another highway or got to the closest big town.”

“That’s all so far. Of course, this was all some months back.”

Phil leaned back, and there were a few minutes of silence. Gordon looked around at each person.

“OK, let me lay it out. I am assuming to begin with that a human male was gestated in that pond. I want to meet him. I want to find out how it was done. I want to find another example of a plant with animal nerve cells in it. So the lines of investigation are first to find the man. Let’s call him Sam. So first, find Sam. Second, find other plants. That’s the project. I want you three to do it …”

“What? Us?” George was incredulous.

“You would be a good team. He is a close cousin to you, George, genetically speaking. And we don’t know how he will think. We need some creative extrapolation, and I have read your alternative ontologies work, too.

“Ruth, you have the exobiology, astronomy, and SETI technology background. You both are trained researchers. And Phil here is very good at what he does.”

Gordon pulled out three pieces of paper from a folder on the table. He handed one to each of them.

“Read this over, and just think about it for a few minutes.”

George looked at his sheet of paper. It was a job offer for a researcher, working for Gordon Associates. When he saw the salary, he looked over to Ruth. They both raised their eyebrows.

Phil was smiling. He was imagining throwing his job into Joe Morris’ smug face. He looked at Gordon and nodded.

George and Ruth were still sitting there with stunned looks on their faces, but Gordon knew they were hooked.