Genome (The Extinction Files, #2)

by A.G. Riddle

The only natural light came from the aurora borealis, which made the place feel even more alien.

Quaternary extinction event.”

that’s the extinction of mostly large animals around the time the last ice age ended. It’s perhaps one of the greatest scientific mysteries—well, at least for an evolutionary biologist like myself.” Nigel held his hands out. “Imagine the world roughly 12,000 years ago—it was a land of giants. Mastodons. Saber-toothed cats. Giant condors. Ground sloths. Saber-toothed salmon. At the same time humans were founding the city of Jericho, massive beasts walked the Earth, dotted the skies, and swam in the oceans. Some had been around a lot longer than us—tens of millions of years. Then, in the blink of an eye—in evolutionary timescales—they were gone.”

“What was Kraus researching?” “Human origins. A second theory of evolution.” “That’s why the Citium recruited him.” Lin nodded. “They thought his research would reveal the true purpose of the human race—our future, what they called our ultimate destiny. Kraus spent his life looking for human ancestors—hominid species that went extinct before us. He believed they were the key to finding the code hidden in the human genome.”

Yuri nodded toward the crowd. “Do you know the difference between us and them?” The car came to a stop. The pitter-patter of rain grew louder by the second, making Yuri’s soft voice seem almost far away. “We are awake. We sense the truth: that something is deeply wrong with the world.”

At that time, it would have been the most advanced invention in history; they would have been on the cutting edge. It would have been like a country landing on the moon in the 1700s—while the rest of the world was exploring in wooden boats.” Desmond studied the map. “So what’s the mystery?” “The mystery,” Yuri said, “is what happened to them.” Desmond waited. “Forty-five thousand years ago, they were on the leading edge of the human species. Light years ahead. Yet when the Dutch arrived in Australia in 1606, their descendants were primitives, hunter-gatherers. They hadn’t even invented agriculture, or writing. “Your first question, Desmond, is: What happened to them?”

Peyton stared at the faces in the crowd, the looks of hopelessness and fear. They were expressions she knew well—had seen countless times during outbreaks around the world, in huts and ramshackle tenements and field hospitals.

Pandemics pit humanity against the forces of nature—every person was in it together, fighting to survive—and

The first meeting of the Order of Citium took place in 268 bc on the Greek island of Kition, also known by its Latin name, Citium. The conclave was moderated by the order’s founder, Zeno, a leading philosopher at the time. The roll call read like a who’s who of the ancient world. Even Archimedes was there, though he was only nineteen at the time.

Aristarchus has written a book in which he says that the universe is many times bigger than we thought. He says that the stars and the sun don’t move, that the Earth revolves about the sun, and that the path of the orbit is circular.

“Evolution. Survival of the fittest. Fittest is a thoroughly misunderstood concept in the theory. Fitness is determined by the environment. It’s not about being the biggest or the baddest. It’s about being fit—the best adapted to the world you find yourself in.”

“Forgiveness is what makes families work.”

The rover crept through the home, revealing it in the green glow of night vision. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Clothes were strewn across the bed. The alarm wasn’t set. All were indications of someone leaving in a hurry—or of someone who had wanted it to look that way.

Do fidem me nullum librum vel instrumentum aliamve quam rem ad bibliothecam pertinentem…

It’s an oath I took. For almost a thousand years, it was a covenant agreed to by some of the greatest humans who ever lived. And by those who had the potential to join them. “The people who have spoken or signed this oath have won fifty-eight Nobel prizes. In every category.

“What kind of oath?” Nigel asked. “One to protect knowledge.” “How?” “By not burning books.”

A professor at the university. He first originated the term ‘Looking Glass.’ The Citium took inspiration from him in their great project. He wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll to protect his true identity. I believe his book is what we’re looking for: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

“The other human species—Neanderthals, Denisovans, floresiensis—were competitors for calories. The primates in the jungle, not so much. The apes consume far fewer calories than we do. Chimpanzees and bonobos need about 400 calories a day, gorillas about 635, and orangutans 820. That’s despite them being far larger than us. The reason is our brains.

A pound of brain tissue uses twenty times the amount of energy a pound of muscle does.

This global die-off is called the Quaternary extinction event. And they proved,” he pointed to the book, “definitively, that our ancestors caused it. A global holocaust, not just of other humans, but of every large mammal on Earth, with only a few exceptions. Even today, we humans account for 350 million tons of biomass on this planet. That’s three times the biomass of all the sheep, chickens, whales, and elephants—combined. This planet has become an ecology almost completely dedicated to fueling our massive calorie-hogging brains.”

“The quintessential human trait: imagination, fiction, simulation. Powered by energy our brain could use.” “Yes. It’s what makes us completely different from any species before us on this planet. It has been the singular key to all of our progress. And it’s part of a pattern. It points to the path of our species.”

A reality radically different from the human’s own. This human could render possible futures, imagine what life would be like if something existed. That was the transcendental mutation.”

The human brain consumes twenty percent of the calories we ingest, but it accounts for only two percent of our weight. No species in the history of the planet has ever dedicated so much of the calories they consume to their brains.

This dual system is the most powerful construct to date: capitalism to manage risk and share rewards; science to expand efficiency and resources.”

Look at the Forbes list of the richest people. The individuals listed are very different, but they all share one trait: vision. The ability to imagine a future that doesn’t exist—to imagine what the world would be like if something changed, if a product or service existed. And these people’s fortunes were made because their visions were accurate—they correctly predicted that something that didn’t already exist both could be created and would be valuable to a specific group of people.

The first event: brains that operated like simulation machines. Then agriculture and cities to power them. Cities to network them together. Ships to trade goods and ideas, then railroads, the electric telegraph, telephone lines, fax machines, dial-up modems, fiber-optic lines. Faster and broader networks, facilitating access to calories and the exchange of information. He saw it all, and for the first time, he saw where it was going. He glimpsed the Looking Glass, and he was in awe.

“A world where only one thing matters: the strength of your mind. Where it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what you look like. A world where all wounds can be healed, even the ones in our minds. Where a person can start over.”

When the book was written, in 1865, there were roughly 1.3 billion people in the world. Since then, the population has grown by 6.2 billion. The largest increase in history, perhaps, for any large species.”

“Wish you’d be a little more cryptic.” “I recently learned that true knowledge must be earned, not given.

“We can sequence genetic samples faster than any company in the world. In outbreak responses, we could analyze patient samples, sequence viruses and identify mutations, possibly even help with contact tracing—on a genetic level.”

“I’m going to need your full name for the restraining order.”

Lmao!!! What a great line!!!

“Love what you’ve done with the place.” “Maid’s late this morning. I usually entertain board members in the evening.”

As a board member, he found that most employees spoke to him in carefully measured, mentally rehearsed words.

on December seventh, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, they invaded Hong Kong.

“Jesus. It’s like Martha Stewart renovated an abandoned insane asylum.” He howled with laughter, not a polite reaction, but a genuine heartfelt laugh. “Her fees were exorbitant.” “You must have hired her before prison.”

If you want to get technical, we’re still in an ice age, one that has lasted millions of years—we’re just in an interglacial period at the moment. Anyway, at the time of the Quaternary extinction, the warming of the planet and retreating glaciers put many species at risk. Large animals that had evolved for cold weather died out, and those that survived fell prey to humans invading their environment. It’s hard to imagine the scale of this climate change. The ice sheets that covered much of Asia, Europe, and North America stopped advancing and started retreating.

Most of evolution occurs though vertical gene transfer—DNA being passed from parent to child. Horizontal transfer is when DNA is acquired from another living organism.”

if you drive any faster, we’re going to travel back in time!”

The Chevy Suburban drove through the night, headlights off, the streets lit only by moonlight. The roads were eerily quiet, deserted, like a world after people.

“Well, it’s quite simple. We believe that in the past, this fundamental quantum force—the force of the Invisible Sun—exerted very little influence on our DNA. But as we evolved, developing more complex brains and increasing our calorie intake to power them, the quantum changes accelerated, like a feedback mechanism, changing our DNA at an increasing rate. There’s only one known force that could affect changes at a subatomic level over great distance: quantum entanglement. The phenomenon Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’.”

It lies in the bend, where blood turned to water and darkness turned to light.

Sex changes everything, Ward thought. It was a variable counterintelligence agencies and computer algorithms would never be able to factor in. Almost like a viral infection that rewires a brain, changes emotions, even alters the lens through which a person sees the world.

Since the internet had gone down and martial law had been declared, the unease gripping the nation had grown by the day. Food rationing had added to the fear, and there were now riots across the nation, protests, even bands of paramilitary groups organizing, gearing up to fight. Those who had survived the X1 pandemic were afraid the next disaster was already starting—and that they might not survive this one.

“If we’re standing in a room—him and me, hands raised, you on the other end of a Sig Sauer, who do you shoot?” Avery exhaled into the phone’s receiver. “I’d shoot him in the shoulder and kick you in the nuts.”

“Hunkered down at home, in the shelters, some dead. Everybody’s waiting.” “For what?” “Whatever comes next. Some sign that the world is safe again. Or what the next crisis is.”