CHAPTER 98
David looked around as if deciding what to say. Finally he opened his mouth to speak, but Kate held up her hand.
“I know it sounds crazy, ok, but just hear me out, let me talk through this. It’s not like we’re going anywhere for a while.” She motioned to the basket and the balloon above it.
“Fair enough, but I’m warning you, I’m out of my element here. I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
“Just tell me when it starts sounding too crazy.”
“Is that retro-active? Because what you just said—”
“Ok, actually, you just listen for a while, then call me out on any craziness. Here are the facts: around 70,000 years ago, the Mount Toba Supervolcano erupts. There’s a global volcanic winter that lasts 6-10 years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode. Ash blankets Southern Asia and Africa. The total human population plummets to 3,000-10,000, maybe even as low as 1,000 viable mating pairs.”
“Alright, that’s true, I can confirm its non-craziness.”
“Because I told you about the Toba Catastrophe in Jakarta.”
David held up his hands. “Hey, just trying to be helpful here.”
Kate remembered her own reaction and her words to David in the van days ago, what felt like a lifetime ago. “Very funny. Anyway, the reduction in population caused a genetic bottleneck around that time. We know that every human on the planet is descended from an extremely small population, between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago. Every human outside of Africa is descended from a small tribe that left around 50,000 years ago with as few as 100 people. In fact, every human alive today is directly descended from a man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.”
“Adam?”
“Actually we call him Y-chromosomal Adam, since we’re scientists. There’s an Eve too — Mitochondrial Eve, but she lived much earlier, we think about 190,000-200,000 years ago—”
“Time travelers? Am I still calling out the craz—”
“Not time travelers, thank you very much. They are just genetic designations of the people everyone on earth is directly descended from. It’s complicated, but the bottom line is that this Adam had a huge advantage — his offspring were far more advanced than any of their peers.”
“They had the Atlantis Gene.”
“For now, we’ll stick to the facts — they had some kind of advantage, whatever it was. By around 50,000 years ago, the human race is beginning to behave differently. There’s an explosion in complex behavior: language, tool making, wall art. It’s the greatest advancement in human history — what we call the Great Leap Forward. In looking at the fossils of humans before and after, there’s not a ton of difference. There’s also not much difference in their genomes. About all we know is that it was a subtle genetic change that caused a difference in the way we thought, possibly a change in our brain wiring.”
“The Atlantis Gene.”
“Whatever it was, this change in brain wiring, it was the greatest genetic jackpot in the history of time. The human race goes from the brink of extinction — less than 10,000 people, from hunting and gathering in the wilderness, to ruling the planet, with over seven billion people, in the span of 50,000 years. That’s the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. It’s an extraordinary comeback, almost hard to believe for a geneticist. I mean, 12% of all the humans who have ever lived are still alive today. We only evolved around 200,000 years ago. We’re still riding a mushroom cloud of the effects of the Great Leap Forward, and we have no idea how it happened or where it will lead.”
“Yeah, but why us, why did we get so lucky? There were other human species around, right? The Neanderthals, the— I can’t remember what you called them; what about them? If the Atlanteans came to our rescue, why not help the others?”
“I have a theory. We know there were at least four subspecies of humans 50,000 years ago — us, or Anatomically Modern Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis, or Hobbits. There were probably more that we haven’t found, but those are the four subspecies—”
“Subspecies?” David said.
“Yes. Technically they’re subspecies; they were all humans. We define a species as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, and all four of those human groups could interbreed, in fact, we have genetic evidence that they did interbreed. When we sequenced the Neanderthal genome a few years ago, we discovered that everyone outside of Africa has somewhere between 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. It was most pronounced in Europe — the Neanderthal homeland. We found the same thing when we sequenced the Denisovan genome. Some people in Melanesia, and especially Papua New Guinea, share up to 6% of their genome with the Denisovans.”
“Interesting. So we’re all hybrids?”
“Yes, technically.”
“So we absorbed the other subspecies into a combined human race?”
“No. Well, a small percentage maybe, but the archaeological evidence suggests the four groups survived as separate subspecies. I think the other subspecies didn’t receive the Atlantis Gene because they didn’t need it.”
“They—”
“Weren’t on the brink of extinction,” Kate said. “We think Neanderthals existed in Europe as early as 600,000-350,000 years ago. All the other subspecies are also older than we are; they probably had larger populations. And — they were out of the blast radius of Toba — the Neanderthals were in Europe, the Denisovans were in present-day Russia, and the Hobbits were in Southeast Asia — farther away from Toba and downwind.”
“So they fared better than we did, and we almost die out. Then we hit the genetic jackpot, and they actually go extinct — at our hands.”
“Yes. And they died out quickly; we know Neanderthals were stronger than us, had bigger brains than us, and had lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years before we showed up. Then, within 10-20,000 years, they are extinct.”
“Maybe that’s part of the Immari grand plan,” David said. “Maybe Toba Protocol is about more than finding the Atlantis Gene. What if the Immari think these advanced humans, these Atlanteans, are hibernating, but if they do come back, they’ll eliminate any competing humans, anyone who might be a threat — just as we did in the last 50,000 years ago after we received this Atlantis Gene? You read Kane’s speech; they thought a war with the Atlanteans was imminent.”
Kate considered David’s theory, and her mind drifted to her conversation with Martin, his allegations that any advanced race would wipe out any threatening inferior humans. His theory that the human race was like a computer algorithm advancing to one eventuality: a homogeneous human race. That was the last piece of the puzzle. “You’re right. Toba is about more than finding the Atlantis Gene. It’s about creating Atlanteans, transforming the human race by advancing it. They’re trying to synchronize humanity with the Atlanteans — to create one race so that if the Atlanteans do return, they won’t see us as a threat. Martin said Toba Protocol was ‘a contingency.’ They think if the Atlanteans wake up and see seven billion savages, they will slaughter us. But if they emerge and find a small group of humans, very similar genetically to themselves, they will allow them to survive — they will see them as part of their own tribe or race.”
“Yes, but I think that’s only half the plan,” David said. “That’s the scientific basis, the genetic angle, the back-up plan. The Immari think they’re at war. They think like soldiers. I said before I thought they were creating an Army, and I still do. I think they were testing the subjects on the Bell for a specific reason.”
“So they could survive it.”
“Survive it yes, but more specifically — to be able to pass under it. In Gibraltar, they had to excavate around it and remove it. I think there could be a Bell at every Atlantis structure — a sort of sentry device that keeps anyone out, but it malfunctioned on us because we’re actually human-Atlantean hybrids. If the Immari found a way to activate the Atlantis Gene, they could send an army in and kill the Atlanteans. Toba Protocol would be the ultimate contingency — if they were unsuccessful, the Atlanteans wake up and all that’s left are members of their own race.”
Kate nodded. “They would be massacring the same people who saved us from extinction, maybe the only people that could help us reverse the plague from the Bell. But it’s all theory and speculation. We could be wrong.”
“Let’s stick to what we know. We know bodies were taken from China and that bodies from the Bell caused a pandemic before.”
“We alert health agencies?”
David shook his head. “You read the journal, they know how to hide outbreaks. They are probably a lot better at it now — they’ve been preparing for Toba Protocol for a very long time. We need to find out if your theories are correct, and we need some advantage — a way to contact the Atlanteans or stop the Immari.”
“Gibraltar.”
“It’s our best option — the chamber the tunnelmaker found.”
Kate glanced at the balloon. They were already losing altitude and they had only a few sandbags left to jettison. “I don’t think we’ll get that far.”
David smiled and looked around the basket, as if searching for something they could use. There was a bundle in the corner. “Did you bring this?”
Kate noticed it for the first time. “No.”
David slid over to it and unraveled it. Inside the layers of rough woven cloth he found Indian Rupees, a change of clothes for each of them, and a paper fold-out map of Northern India, which they were no doubt flying over now. David unfolded the map, and a small note fell out. He set the map aside, read the note, and handed it to Kate.
—————
Forgive us our inaction.
War is not in our nature.
~ Qian.
—————
Kate set the note down and studied the balloon. “I don’t think we have much longer up here.”
“Agree. I have an idea. It’s risky though.”