Holocene Past
The Caribbean, September 17th, 2047
"I still don't understand, sir. If agent Bridgewater got abducted in Paris, why are we flying to the Bahamas right now? More importantly, if it is really this huge proposedly extraterrestrial tree that is causing the weather anomalies up north, why spent any precious resources on chasing leads on that spaceship? Why and how could there be any leads on Agent Bridgewater in Nassau anyway? Agent Bridgewater is probably dead, the alien spaceship is on the moon, outside of our reach, believe me, I am happy we are flying to the Bahamas and not up north to Paris with all the weather weirdness going on up there, but I really would like to understand."
Xavier rolled his eyes and shook his head as he whispered inaudibly: "ta gueule". It would be rude to ask the young agent Patrick Reed to stop rambling, but Xavier found it hard to think with young agent Reed going on and on. There had been no time to properly brief agent Reed, so his queries were quite justified, it was just that Xavier realized now that answering his questions would provoke another flood of rambling objections and questions from his young companion. Xavier really wasn't in the mood for that. He just wanted Patrick to shut his hole and keep it shut until .., well until forever actually. There was something about this talkative youngster that really got on Xavier's nerves.
"Listen, Patrick. I can debrief you now on the situation, on our mission. You need to know, but you also need to listen without interrupting me, son, is that understood?" After Xavier spoke these words, he realized how patronizing he had just sounded. "I mean, hear me out first, Patrick. Hear me out before asking questions, or we'll be talking all the way to the Dutch Randstad conurbation."
At Xavier's last words young agent Reid's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a bit.
"The Dutch Randstad conurbation? Jesus! Are we going up North? Oh, dear sir, are we?" agent Read asked nervously. But then at the menacing look that Xavier gave him, Patrick added: "Sorry sir Xavier. Sorry for being startled. Yes, I will listen to all you have to say without interruption."
Xavier's size and posture always had this effect on people. While most of the time Xavier found it hard to cope with the unintended fear and fearful respect that his unintended facial expressions could install in people, in the case of young agent Reid, this effect was actually quite welcome.
"Listen up Patrick, and seriously, refrain from any more such interruptions or I'll ….." Xavier left an intentional silence to allow young agent Reid's imagination to fill out the blanks as he just looked intensely into his companion's eyes. If this was what it would take to get some quiet thinking time from agent Reid, so be it.
We don't know where the tree came from. We don't know if or how the tree is related to the spaceship that abducted my partner agent Bridgewater. We don't know how the old man using the portal tech that took my leg and transported me thousands of kilometers in mere seconds is related to either the spaceship or the tree. There apparently is a history between the old man and PUPR and given him questioning me as he did, the old man doesn't know much if anything about the spaceship. Our mission, Patrick, is to follow up on the only two leads we have right now with respect to the young man agent Bridgewater and me were tracking down when all of this happened. Somehow this Robert Gottschalk kid is tied up in all of this, and the generals suspect a New Babylon link. We have very little to go on right now, but you have the privilege to come with me on two of our best leads.
Both our best leads are in the Dutch Randstad Conurbation. You and I are off to the Randstad conurbation to have a chat with agent Bridgewater's cousin who happens to be Robert Gottschalk's teacher. And we are going to have a nice little chatter with Robert Gottschalk's big brother Peter as well who picked up a weird space object from the debrisphere that came into orbit from a wanderer-like path but then mysteriously decelerated.
The puzzled look on Patrick's face had turned into a look of complete disbelieve now. His mouth wide open and his eyes looking as if they were about to pop from their sockets. Xavier realized how strange everything must have sounded for young agent Reid. Hell, he could hardly believe much of it himself, even though he had lived most of it. It must all have sounded like the stuff from pre-war science fiction movies. But then, young agent Reid was so young that he might never actually have seen any such movie in his life.
"Should I pause for a bit, Patrick? We are not currently on auto-pilot, and I would feel a bit more comfortable knowing you are still able to actively fly this plane."
Young agent Reid looked quickly at his instrument panel, and then looked back to Xavier with an uneasy smile on his face. "Yes, sir…, sorry, I mean, yes, Xavier. I am sorry but I was a bit startled for a moment. I just needed a moment to process. Please continue sir."
Patrick's response pleasantly surprised Xavier. For a moment Xavier had thought he would have to fly the small plain for the rest of the way. Xavier looked out of the side window for a second. They were just passing Great Inagua Island on their right and the desolate look of the old abandoned cruise ships in what used to be the proud Matthew Town harbor reminded Xavier for a second of how the toll of the war on the economy of the smaller islands that even today remained in disarray. New Zion was the only remaining power of substantial size in this post-war era. In a war without victors, New Zion had come out on top. But still, even from this altitude being on top didn't mean all that much if you happened to be living on any of the islands that used to thrive on tourism before the war.
"Ok, for the reason we are flying to Nassau now. If you look up, what do you see?" Xavier asked in a friendly tone.
"Uhm,... the blue sky over there? The end of the dark clouds?" Patrick responded with a tone of voice that was betraying that he knew Xavier was about to say something shocking about his perception of reality.
"Those dark clouds, my young friend, aren't. They aren't clouds, that is. It's the tree. The canopy of the tree that we are about to come under out from in about ten or fifteen minutes. The reason we are flying to Nassau in this little plain is that it has the closest airport that isn't closed to aircrafts big enough to get us to Europe. There is no larger air trafic currently possible because of the tree.
The tree now has a canopy that spans over 600 kilometers. It seems to finally have stopped growing now, but most of the island, all of the French-speaking and most of the Spanish speaking regions are fully covered by its humongous canopy. "
Xavier looked at Patrick's stunned face.
"Patrick?"
Patrick exhaled and put his right hand on his forehead.
"Yes, I'm still with you, continue." Patrick said in a voice as if out of breath.
Xavier looked at young agent Reid with a look of concern in his eyes.
"Ok, but brace yourself, because this will be the most mind-boggling part of all of this. I was debriefed this morning and still can hardly get my head around this myself."
Patrick closed his eyes for a second, sighed opened his eyes again while biting his lip, started at Xavier and then nodded.
" The tree is turning greenhouse gasses into oxygen at a massive rate. The generals believe that the weather anomalies in the north are caused by this. The working hypothesis is that somehow this is a New Babylon attack on the world's climate. Mars-One could be attacking the world's climate with this tree. Without greenhouse gasses, without global warming, some of the generals believe New Babylon is trying to turn the world into one giant popsicle. It is winter right now in Europe, even though it's the end of summer. There is talk about a new ice age. The end of the Holocene they say, whatever that means."
"Do they really believe Mars-One could have developed an artificial tree up there? " Patrick interrupted. "New Babylon is both smart and devious, but prematurely ending the inter-glacial with untested biotech seems beyond even them?"
Agent Reid apparently was smarter or better educated than Xavier had taken him to be. To be fair, Xavier had no idea what a Holocene or an Interglacial was other than that it had something to do with the earth going into an ice-age, but apparently Patrick did know.
"No, they don't. The generals are split on that part. Some believe they might have recruited former PUPR scientists to do the bioengineering for them. Most, however, don't believe PUPR could even have pulled this off before they were disbanded. The alternative hypothesis, however, might be much and much worse."
"What!" Patrick shouted out in fearful anticipating, completely discarding the fact that he was addressing a superior and a guy that would have been intimidating even if he wasn't as huge as a Grizzly.
"The alternative theory is that the tree is of extraterrestrial origin. That New Babylon has made contact and has used its brainwashing nano-tech to align these alien forces to their twisted evil cause."
"Jesus fucking Christ, do they really believe that could be true?" Patrick exclaimed.
"Some do. Our job now to gather more intel and find out what we can. And yes, I absolutement share the sentiment."
If you enjoyed this chapter, you can find the rest of this story so far through this index. If you would like to win some SBD, I am running a Beta Reading Lottery each month to help me improve my work and to help you win one of the prices ranging from $ 1.5 SBD to $10,- SBD. You can find this month's beta reading lottery/contest here.
Cover art by Keith Draws