Oceanworlds Read online

  Further still there was something else. Sound waves. Increasing in volume until they became a cacophony. Radio waves fighting for supremacy. A song here, a speech there. Earthlings communicating, unabashedly defying the deafening silence of space.

  The Blue Marble was mostly vibrant blue, interrupted by streaks of land.

  As in previous times in James’ recurring nightmare, a frozen visitor that had traveled unimpeded for unending years crossed in front of his mind’s eye, traversing the thin atmosphere in seconds and igniting brightly before smashing into an ocean.

  A shock wave moved through the air, evaporating an area the size of Arizona.

  Water and seafloor intestines, a moment ago in the far recesses of the planet, now splashed the upper atmosphere.

  The wall of sound plummeted into silence.

  A wave rippling through water moved silently to every coast. Far from Ground Zero, a tsunami absurdly out of proportion approached a leafy Caribbean island with two prominent volcanic spires.

  James snapped out of his vision an instant before crashing. The left side of the ‘V’-shaped rock stood before him and salvation. His consciousness only managed to anticipate the splat, but his instinct twitched his right arm, which serving as a rudder veered the body sharply right, flying an arm’s length from certain death. The abrupt turn almost resulted in a collision with Becca.

  His parachute deployed seconds later, Becca’s shortly afterward.

  3 | Sophia Jong

  Four months later, September 2023

  JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA

  The grandmother of all Honda Accords screeched in the loose dirt road and before it had come to a full stop, Sophia Jong was already out running, striding, sidling, and finally crawling.

  “OH my, you are gorgeous! No, no, no, no. Mama only wants to see you up close. Shhhhhhhh. Shhhh. Shhhhhhhhhh.” The fury with Fat John, her boss, which had been brewing for the two-hour ride from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, suddenly vanished.

  A long, plump zebra-patterned desert iguana was immobile, squinting at the blinding headlights, only its neck rocking.

  When it realized eating dirt wasn’t the end of the encounter, it calmed down in Sophia’s arms. The first-rate petting probably helped.

  Sophia could see the bonfire ahead, but the moonless Friday night was just starting and she wasn’t going to get tipsy on cheap beer anyway. Especially with that ukulele dude trying to put his hands where they did not belong. It was an empirical fact that male engineers at JPL couldn’t resist pestering she-scientists.

  “… but I’m telling you, my dear!” she explained to the lizard. “You’re one of the survivors of the Big Stone. And it crashed kind of close, the Yucatán Peninsula in fact. All those condescending, threatening relatives of yours were promptly shown the exit door. Me? What do I do? I … I traded practicing as MD for working in astrobiology. Crazy, right? Umma wasn’t psyched. She still can’t fathom sacrificing top dollars for—oh, umma means mom in Korean—for alien microbes we haven’t seen and for all we know may not even exist … look, it’s my dad’s fault, all right? We used to do our annual family camping trips not far from here. Falling asleep in our sleeping bags under the stars while Dad showed us the Black Tortoise of the North—anyway, I don’t want to bore on. Besides, you have some hunting and I some dancing to do. Such a pleasure meeting you. And sorry for picking on you, but I guess that’s the price of beauty!”

  The loud music couldn’t mask the wails mixed with laughter from the two frontiersmen lost somewhere between Potato Head and Pee Wee rocks after venturing to irrigate the arid land. From the incoherent screams they seemed set on navigating back to camp via the North Star.

  Closer to the bonfire, a symmetrical castle of beer cans gave away the professional leanings of the crew. The burned smell of failed sausages competed with that of roasting marshmallows.

  The sparse Mojave Desert vegetation, the furry Joshua trees with their bayonet-shaped leaves, witnessed the nerdy debauchery in silence.

  During the last minutes, the gawky engineer standing had been losing the favor of the crowd. “All I’m saying is that it took centuries after Copernicus downgraded Earth from the center of the Universe to neighbor in the hood before we began thinking about extraterrestrial life … I mean, science imitates fiction. In the 1890s, H. G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds and only then our curiosity is awakened. Decades later, we start the SETI program—”

  “There. Right there, that’s where you lost my respect. That is—pardon me, ladies—bullshit. Art imitates life. First, an Italian called Schiaparelli identifies canals on the surface of Mars. Others, looking through hazy telescopes, begin picturing irrigation channels made by Martians … then comes H.G. Wells with Martians invading Earth.”

  Sophia’s small frame stood up, which the other interpreted as a passing of the baton. She did a couple of goofy but talented tap dance moves, stopped with her back to the crowd, and jump-flipped with a flashlight clamped under her chin. There was wild applause and howls. She leisurely stared at each of the nine for effect.

  “It’s much more fundamental than who did it first. In fact, it has nothing to do with us. It’s about them … it’s … the Fermi Paradox,”—her strong personality overshadowed her soft voice—“because there’s an eerie feeling when you look up. Just our humble Milky Way has hundreds of billions of stars, with hundreds of billions of exoplanets, many of them habitable, which should have produced countless civilizations, with billions of years to expand … yet there’s no sign of anyone or anything out there.”

  “What about Michael? He sure don’t look local. Just check out that fender forehead for hell’s sake.” Michael’s airborne empty beer can landed on target.

  “The Great Silence,” she continued, shadows flickering over her alluring face, “where’s everybody? There seems to be a Great Filter … that should make us feel not great, for there are really only three possibilities. First: intelligent life is extraordinarily rare—this is to say we somehow made it through whereas the rest did not. Maybe the odds against life are so formidable that one occurrence of intelligent life per galaxy is the best that can be hoped for—the immense chasm with other galaxies makes them effectively unreachable even at speeds approaching light. Possibility one is conceivable, but sounds suspiciously like ‘we are the chosen ones.’”

  The firmament stared down at them, hiding nothing yet brimming with mysteries. Any glittering light could possess another Earth, in solitary wait or swarmed in unimaginable beings.

  “Second: we are the trailblazers. Maybe creation still glistens with morning dew and we really are the first ones. But the Universe is ancient, with our galaxy almost as old at 14 billion years. Our Solar System is a new kid on the block at fewer than 5 billion. And complex life on Earth is an infant at around a billion.”

  After a few seconds, the night critters restarted chirping choral music, including a drunk wrestling against imagined foes, having fallen short of his tent.

  “Third … the Great Filter lies ahead of us. Perhaps thinking beings have been common around the Milky Way, but civilizations acquire technology faster than wisdom and inevitably self-destruct. If so, many of the stars above us may be tattooed with ruins. Maybe the last one standing from a magnificent civilization left a trove, with a few priceless warnings and commandments, right before going extinct … this unfortunately resonates all around. This, I’m afraid, is where humanity currently stands. Right on the brink of apocalypse.”

  Someone in the shadows piped up, “Humankind therefore may be precious beyond comprehension. We blow ourselves up and the whole creation of the Universe may be rendered pointless.”

  Sophia saw another moth head straight into the flames, immolating itself in an ephemeral sizzle.

  “Then we really are screwed,” said another.

  “It’s imprinted in our future,” said someone else, “A Third World War. Terrorists genetically engineering the ultimate Black Plague. Fill
in the blank, pick your culprit.”

  A heartfelt burp stressed the gravity of the situation.

  “But it’s worse than that,” continued Sophia, “we don’t even need intention. Bad luck or simply time will do. And in this respect, we are as competently prepared as your average dinosaur. I was just speaking to a friend about this … imagine it’s 66 million years ago and this place looks not much different from what it does today. A flock of pterodactyls passes in front of the setting Sun. The sky flashes white for an instant as a rock enters the atmosphere and disappears south, sinking in the Yucatán Peninsula some 2,000 miles away. We see and hear no more but our fate has been sealed. An orange glow develops in the south that in minutes becomes brighter than the Sun. If we were in Japan, the outcome would be the same, just delayed. At Ground Zero, a massive fireball climbs into space, ejecting material as far as halfway to the Moon, which re-enters Earth’s atmosphere as a legion of fiery meteors.”

  “There are two types of civilizations. Those that can protect themselves from an asteroid impact and those that can’t,” said somebody.

  “You … you … need my potty … amen,” the conversation was crowned by an otherwise leading light at JPL.

  “I think what Gab was trying to convey with his potty analogy is that we must do all we can to improve our chances of surviving. And that forcefully means becoming a multi-planetary civilization,” said Sophia.

  The crackling fire filled the night until a newfound Jim Morrison, equipped with a ukulele, started delivering, “This is the end, beautiful friend …” while glancing at Sophia in veneration. She did not reciprocate.

  4 | Derya Terzi

  A month later, October 2023

  ATACAMA DESERT, CHILE

  A flat-nose semi-truck went past the motorcycle, but not before smacking Derya Terzi with an insulting mix of hot air and dust for the twenty-seventh time. Bastard, hope you topple over. For the twenty-seventh time he attempted blaming his friend, but the Polack was bulletproof. ‘A four-hour drive’ and ‘air-conditioned car’ had been decoded as weakness; ‘sunscreen against the ruthless Sun’ inapplicable to his unblemished Turkish complexion. Instead, he saw himself crossing the iconic Martian-looking landscapes à la Easy Rider. The too-long-awaited Glory Ride.

  Things soured in flight with a transatlantic middle seat and a neighbor that kept falling asleep on his jittery right shoulder. Then this real-life version of the rented Harley-looking Yamaha from pictures, which could easily blend in on any Southeast Asia street. He rejected the helmet, as his wild, shoulder-length, jet-black hair looked stolen from a Vogue cover—“Allah curses men who imitate women,” his father used to yell. By the fourth truck he began suspecting an error of judgment.

  His face already felt like a pulsating, overstretched balloon and the novelty of the otherworldly, utterly lifeless scenery was no more. Yet each new affront from the vindictive destiny made him more convinced that tonight would end the decade-long race to the bottom.

  Heavy breathing and a balmy breeze were the only sounds as he walked the overheated motorcycle over the last road coil around the mountain. Rainless erosion, volcanic ash, and the weight of time had blunted the reddish coastal range into an endless succession of rolling hills masking their exceptional height. The powdery plains below were peppered with misplaced boulders, abandoned checkerboards from forgotten titans. Far east, the Andes were marked by snow-capped cones, the tallest volcanoes on Earth. Just ten miles west, the shiny domes of the Paranal Observatory were silhouetted against a sea of clouds below extending past the horizon, burying the Pacific Ocean. The Sun had sunk almost half an hour ago; the sky was a starless palette of light grays to dark violets, a grand drape before the show.

  After a final curve, he was above it all. The wide mountaintop had been flattened to house the massive futuristic structure. It looked deserted except for a seemingly scale model pickup truck by its base.

  “Three decades in the making. Welcome to the just completed Extremely Large Telescope,” shouted a dot named Janusz coming from the giant dome. “What—” began to ask the astronomer friend, pointing to the two-wheeler as they hugged.

  “Pizza delivery,” said Derya.

  “You didn’t have enough being airborne for twenty-two hours? You really must have descended from nomadic Huns.”

  “Possibly.” Closer in bloodline I descend from Father, who emigrated to Germany to shovel shit for us Deutschen under the ‘plumber’ euphemism. “Quite a location, huh? I keep getting the impression that the highest life form, perhaps subtracting you, are lichens.”

  “You would be surprised. There are chinchillas, for example.”

  “Really? What do they eat?”

  “What do I know? Lichens maybe?”

  “Didn’t see any.”

  “Chinchillas are night creatures. We all are around here.”

  Under the clearest night1 you’ve never seen, below the twenty-six-story telescope, the two friends relieved a vodka bottle of its contents. The sky was filled with celestial majesty. It made the Sistine Chapel ceiling look like stick figures drawn by toddlers.

  “Belvedere? No wonder it tastes like ginger ale. You proud Pole. Where’s the bottle I brought?”

  “Night’s young …” Janusz seemed hesitant. “Derya, you understand this is it, right? Tonight. The Japanese team arrives tomorrow morning.”

  “I love saké.”

  “NO. No no no. Look at me! My ass is on the line here. Do you know how many endorsements are needed to file an application to even aspire coming here? And if you win the lottery, it’s still a nineteen-month wait. Which you are skipping altogether. This is highly illegal.”

  “Hey, what are friends for?”

  “I’m dead serious here. You know how much’s an hour? This is hallowed ground, man. That mirror is the—”

  “—most powerful ever assembled.”

  “The mirror is 130 feet across. That’s four tennis courts. It’s sixteen times more powerful than Hubble—”

  “If I didn’t know the specs, I wouldn’t have hauled my sorry ass from Munich.”

  “I’m trying to help … all that controversy with the Nature magazine article …” Derya’s cross-breed face, somewhere between a Western and a Middle Eastern Jesus, was suddenly looking tired. “My friend, I just want to help. We have six hours. A very rare luxury.”2

  “You lied to me! You lied to me again! You fucking lied!”

  “Keep going and you may turn it into a jingle,” said Derya.

  “I am risking being fired here! My reputation … and you come with … with …”

  “This bullshit. Vodka always made you a sentimental.”

  “You … you promised so much. We all saw … yet you’ve spent, what, a decade in a pointless, delusional, pathetic search for a damn Holy Grail—”

  “A white dwarf. A white dwarf that could go supernova. If it’s there, it’s close enough to our Solar System to be an existential threat to our planet. Yet we don’t even know if it exists …”

  A supernova is one of the most powerful events known in the Universe. It releases in seconds more energy than our Sun has produced in its 4.6-billion-year history. For a brief period, the supernova outshines the galaxy in which it’s in.

  “Around Arcturus, Derya. Arcturus! The fourth brightest star in the sky. That appears twice in the Bible. Which has been studied since Ptolemy. And has never, ever been considered a binary star candidate—”

  “That’s not true. In 1993, the Hipparcos satellite suggested that Arcturus could be a binary—”

  “Which was promptly discarded. Couldn’t you pick something more arcane? You have become the laughing stock of the entire astronomical community. You have been digging your own grave in academia for years.”

  “If it’s important enough—”

  “Derya, listen for a second. Please. What’s the probability that you are right? I will be generous—1 percent?”

  “It better be 100 percent.” If this doesn�
��t work … no goal in life. No reputation. Few friends. That’s when bullets find their way into—“Everyone, including Karl before we broke up, has wanted me to acknowledge it’s a cul-de-sac … but tonight’s different. Tonight’s the night.”

  Janusz shook his head dishearteningly. “You said the same in South Africa two years ago.”

  “This time it’s different.”

  “HOW!?”

  “Unless I publish something meaningful soon, I’m losing my tenure.”

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  A cartoon in a 2015’s Scientific American magazine showed a kid barely reaching the lectern microphone in front of a large audience. Above him was written ‘225th American Astronomical Society Meeting.’ The kid lectured: “It is time for you to come to terms with my Three Commandments. 1. Immediate adoption of my stupendous late-stage star evolution model; 2. I’m awfully disappointed nobody found it for millennia, but Arcturus has a white dwarf companion; 3. Sorry to burst Earth’s bubble, but said white dwarf will explode (refer to Commandment 1).”

  Those were the good times.

  Derya finished undergrad by 21 and completed his PhD by 24, both at Cambridge University’s Trinity College—Isaac Newton’s alma mater and where he spent the three most productive decades of his life. Derya’s PhD thesis was spellbinding, but its deductions too unconventional for the mainstream scientific community. It didn’t help that supernovas are fortunately very rare events. The last observable by the unaided eye was documented by the great Johannes Kepler in 1604. For a few months it outshone every other star and was visible in daylight. And it was about 20,000 light-years away. Arcturus? Around thirty-seven light-years from us.3