—I can’t do this. I’m not good enough.
—Eva, it’s OK. You couldn’t expect to get this right the first time. We’ll try again tomorrow if you want.
—This is stupid.
—It’s up to you Eva. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.
—You don’t understand. They all died for nothing if I can’t do it!
FILE NO. 1617
INTERVIEW WITH DR. ALYSSA PAPANTONIOU
Location: Shadow Government Bunker, Lenexa, KS
—Good morning Doct … Dr. Franklin. I thought we were done with the gu … guards.
—We’re not done with the guards. They’ll be with you everywhere you go. You can go from here to your room, to here. That’s all. I don’t want you anywhere near Eva, or Vincent, ever again. What possessed you to go talk to that child?
—She has a right to know.
—You had no right to tell her. She’s been through enough.
—I had no right? I mmm … I made her! I have every right to tell her. When were you gonna do it?
—When the time was right.
—Wh … when?! When things sss … settle down? When everything is OK again? We don’t have that kind of time. She has a right to know what she is.
—She’s a child! That’s what she is!
—She’s our best hope of saving the world! You w … wouldn’t have that without me.
—You told her you were her mother!
—I told her I cr … created her. I never said I was her mother. She can ca … call me that if she wants to.
—You’re insane! You’re a psychopath, Alyssa!
—Insulting me doesn’t make me wr … wrong.
—I don’t wanna hear what you think is right, Alyssa. I just care about the science. If I had my way, you’d be locked up in some jail cell, somewhere hot and humid.
—That doesn’t sound like you at all. You should leave the empty threats to him.
—Well, he’s not here anymore, and I’m a fast learner. Believe me, when I make threats, there will be nothing empty about them.
—He’s the one who brought me here. You should t … trust his judgment.
—He didn’t trust you! He thought you could help, but he never trusted you. I don’t either. I’ll turn you over to the government the minute this is over.
—Then why keep me here? What mmmm … what makes you think I’ll help if I know you’ll have me locked up afff … terwards?
—Because I trust your sick, twisted ego to always have the better of you. I know that you wanna be the one to solve this. You wanna be the one who saves the world, not because you care, but so you can feel justified, vindicated. I don’t think it matters to you at all whether you spend the rest of your life rotting in a cell.
—That is still him talking.
—I told you I’m a quick study. What do you say we stop wasting each other’s time and you tell me what you’ve been up to these past few days?
—He had me com … pare DNA from the London survivors to genetic material from the alien b … bodies.
—Did you?
—Yes and no. Their ge … genetics is so different, none of my tests will w … work on them. I can’t know how it would recombine with ours, if … it would recombine at all. I’d need live sss … specimens to go any fffurther. It doesn’t matter, I know I won’t find what he was looking for. He thought the survivors— —He thought they were descendants of aliens who lived here three thousand years ago.
—He thought wrong.
—Are you sure?
—Yes.
—You’re absolutely sure, Alyssa? Why?
—It makes no sense. It’s t … too long ago. Everyone was your ancestor three thou … sand years ago.
—What do you mean?
—People look at fff … family trees the wrong way. They think you start with someone, then you branch down to their ch … children, then their grandchildren, and the tree gets bigger going down. It d … d … doesn’t. It grows upwards.
—How does that have anything to do with the survivors?
—Think of it like this. You have two p … parents. You have four grandparents. You have eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents. That’s about one hundred years ago. Twenty-five years, thirty years p … per generation on average. Two hundred years ago, you’re looking at about two thousand ancestors. Ffffive hundred years ago, that’s … fifty … million.
—How many going back three thousand years?
—Just keep d … doubling every thirty years. You get to a billion very fast. By t … twelve hundred years, you reach a trillion. Three thou … three thousand years ago … It doesn’t matter what the number is. It’s t … too big.
—That makes no sense. There weren’t a trillion people on Earth twelve hundred years ago. There aren’t close to a trillion now!
—That’s because the same p … people appear mmm … many times on your family tree. Your twenty-fifth great-grandfather is also your distant cousin. Mmm … most people will appear hundreds, thousands of times in your ge … genealogy. The farther back in time you go, the fewer people there are on Earth, and the more branches there are in your family tree. Soon, you need … all of them, to fill the b … br … branches.