Mana from the Skies

“A man has only one death. That death may be as weighty as Mount T’ai or it may be as light as goose feather. It all depends upon the way he uses it. It is the nature of every man to love life and hate death, to think of his relatives and look after his wife and children. Only when a man is moved by higher principles is this not so. Then there are things which he must do. The brave man does not always die for honor, while even the coward may fulfill his duty. Each takes a different way to exert himself. Though I might be weak and cowardly and seek shamefully to prolong my life, yet I know full well the difference between what ought to be followed and what rejected. How could I bring myself to sink into the shame of ropes and bonds? If even the lowest slave and scullery maid can bear to commit suicide, why should not one like myself be able to do what has to be done? But the reason I have not refused to bear these ills and have continued to live, dwelling among this filth, is that I grieve that I have things in my heart that I have not been able to express fully, and I am shamed to think that after I am gone my writings will not be known to posterity.”- Sima Qian

Chapter 1

Summer 2025

The air was cold and still. It appeared at first glance like any other day that had passed for millions of years on the planet Earth. A lone scientist looked up at the sky, and took a deep breath. He was one of a team assigned to Antarctica, sent to measure the waxing and waning of the glacier shelf, now in an ever descending downward spiral of life cycle. This particular scientist was named Bartolome Mallon. He was a biologist and was attempting to find ancient life frozen in the now receding layers of ice found at this pole of the world. It was the summer season there and the night was not going to come for another 3 months. His sleep cycles were a mess, and on top of that he was becoming a fatalist about his work.

“Just what we need: someone to discover an ancient plague while the polar ice caps are melting.” He thought this to himself more and more as he searched for microscopic life in this barren desert. But it was his role, he had to keep reminding himself that if there was preserved life hidden somewhere out there, that studying it and understanding it would be important for any new disease that might spring up in the world.

The weather was a shockingly warm 15 degrees celsius out this summer day, and it was time for him and his companion to go out and take samples. It was then that his wife and companion came down the stairs. Her name was Mary de las Casas. She was bundled in a sweater and with the top of her snow suit unzipped and wrapped around her waist. She brought with her two mugs of coffee and offered one to Bartolome. He grunted his approval and sipped on the hot drink as they both looked across the horizon. They had been here a month now, running tests, gathering data, and documenting their findings. So far it was nothing groundbreaking. Just the tedious tasks that make up the bulk of science.

Bartolome’s mind began to wander to how they had ended up here of all places. Both he and Mary had been recruited by the Nile corporation to come and study. The Nile corporation was one of many hulking monstrosities that sprung into existence in the 1990s, now with fingers in everything from transportation to medicine. Nile corporation was hoping to score a large international contract in the development of new antibiotics. Bartolome was the microbiologist, and Mary was an expert in both plant and animal life found in the antarctic. Together they were tasked to find anything that might help the world fight the ever growing resistant strains of bacteria.

The think tanks from Nile corporation thought it might be best to search the most extreme environments, believing that if there was a strain of bacteria with unique resistances it would be found here in the now thawing frozen desert at the end of the Earth. Changes to the environment led to events that were prime for selecting for or against specific traits, to them they believed that if there was ever a place where evolution might be occurring, it would here. They also had teams in every major city across the world, studying the interaction of bacteria with the ever growing human population. Bartolome saw their reasoning, and had hoped he and Mary could’ve been sent to one of the cities, Dubai in particular. But that was not meant to be.

Mary broke the silence.

“Estamos tan lejos de nuestro hogar, mi amor”. She said this with a sigh.

“El hogar es donde tu estas” Bartolome responded right before he took a sip. She smiled and drank deep from her mug. They were both from Spain and had met in college studying their different fields of biology. Fate had brought them here, so far from their known world. It was precisely at this moment of shared comfortable silence that a loud thunderous boom came from the sky. They both looked up and saw a meteor crashing towards the surface. The couple crouched and covered their ears out of instinct, and watched as the alien stone shot above them and passed over the horizon just beyond their line of sight. They heard a loud crash, and felt a reverberation in the rock that they were standing on. Both of them stood in disbelief at what they had just witnessed.

Bartolome was the first to speak, anger and frustration raging from every word he said,

“Those imbeciles! You’d think someone would have warned us about a pinche meteor coming towards us!”

Mary scowled and nodded in agreement, that was too close and should have been seen for weeks if not months before entering the atmosphere. But suddenly her husband sprung into action. Bartolome grabbed his backpack with gear, and threw it on his shoulders, the momentary shock now dissipating as he was filled with a sudden realization. They needed to get there first.

“Vamanos Mary! Seamos los primeros en llegar a esta chingada piedra!”

Mary snapped out of her shock and ran to get her camera and notebooks as well as her day bag with food and survival gear. This could be a discovery of a lifetime for both of them. No one gets an opportunity like this in the scientific field, to be the first responders to such an event.

“Ya voy!” She raced as quickly as she could grabbing anything else that they might need to collect samples, Bartolome was doing the same. Within minutes they had gathered up most of their necessary gear and began a quick paced hike towards the impact site. They had to keep themselves from running, caught up in excitement at the prospects of discovery and this sudden change in their day to day routine. Bartolome had the brief vision of him finding a new single celled organism or at the very least the remains of something alien. Mary herself was excited about the break from her studies of the native penguins and mosses that crept up. The overall silence was filled with a shared intensity of purpose as the couple cut across the frozen world towards a smoking horizon.

Bartolome and Mary were not the only scientists here. There were two other teams, one team consisted of their colleagues Doctor Macdonald, the geologist, and Doctor Anderson, the paleontologist. They were furthest from the impact site, they had ventured north towards the shoreline, but the impact site was due south. The other teams were out on the ocean, Doctors Abish and Doctors Flynn, were both tracking the salinity of the ocean near the melting glaciers. Bartolome smiled to himself as he and Mary hopped up a short embankment.

“This is our impact site,” he thought to himself.

The realization rushed through him, excitement, greed, pride and determination all spurred him forward. Mary kept up with him every step of the way. They cut across the landscape with tenacity, picking a path through rock and ice with ease. The wind rushed towards them, and cut through their layers and supercooled the sweat now accumulating on their bodies. The sudden cold made both of them gasp for air, their lungs already burning with exertion. They crested a hill and looked down into the small valley in front of them. At the opposite end beyond another crest they could see smoke billowing upwards into the blue sky. Bartolome pulled a drink from his bottled water, and passed it to his wife. They took a minute to rest and then pushed forward.

Bartolome could hear his wife's breathing steady and level out, he looked at her and he admired the fixed gaze she had on the objective in front of them. She eventually turned and met his gaze, and they both nodded in silent agreement understanding the importance of arriving first. They moved quickly to cut across the valley, making sure to not do anything that might cause injury and delay their arrival to the impact site. As they finally reached the opposite side of the valley, and began the last climb to crest the hill. As they did they began to smell smoke from the burning soil, and felt the heat from the other side of the hill reach them as they slowly crested the ridge. Once on top Bartolome stopped and put both hands on his knees and began breathing deep to catch his breath, Mary was there leaning on him for support. Blood pounded through Bartolome’s ears as he stared down at the ground and noted the stark contrast that was on the ground before him. Black soot and charred earth pressed against white snow. As Bartolome looked up slowly his eyes ventured down into the crater, there in the center was a smoldering hunk of rock, and the whole valley was black against everything else that was white. His mind ran to one of his favorite snacks as a child and suddenly blurted out in laughter and elation,

“This crater shall forever be known as Oreo crater!” He laughed and Mary shook her head and laughed along with him. They were the first ones there, and this was their discovery. Mary bent down, made a snowball and threw it at her husband.

"You didn't even consult your partner on what we should name it?!" She was gasping for air and laughing at the same time. "We are not naming it something so ridiculous. Our names sound better anyways 'Mallon-Casas' impact site." Bartolome rolled his eyes and nodded in agreement, they were scientists after all and the rock itself would have some naming scheme already prepared by the astronomers and astrophysicists.

Though the impact was fresh the cold had already extinguished the active flames, leaving a rock with smoke trailing off it. Across the valley a large black 'V' tattooed itself into the Earth with a large rock at the pinnacle. Bartolome and Mary took a few minutes then walked around the ridge to avoid stepping on the scorched soil and snow. Once they arrived near the point of the 'V', they carefully climbed down to begin their observations, and collecting samples. The fires quickly extinguished themselves in the cold climate allowing the scientist to get closer to the asteroid. The pair of scientists set up a perimeter and were meticulous about collecting samples and attempting to not contaminate their new pet project. In the long initial hours of work the other teams of scientists began to trickle in and contribute to the work. No quarrels were made, no claims to the find, a silent vow between professionals attempting to increase human understanding for the greater good.

Most of their work was done to attempt to keep out any other foreign contaminants; old tarps, canvas tents, ropes, and stakes were erected in an eclectic gathering of materials to span the newly formed crater. Their efforts were more reminiscent of the fields of paleontology or archaeology rather than biology, chemistry, and geology. They all agreed that they were making due with what they had.

Over the next days of painstaking slow progress phone calls were made to their benefactors and sponsors for more supplies and a better containment field for the area of interest. To their pleasant surprise they were met with no resistance and even felt as though Nile Corporation had things en route to them before they had even asked. No questions were asked as more scientists and equipment seemed to materialize faster than they could request it... at least no questions were made out loud. Every scientist made silent mental notes of the unusual positive response they had received, each one of them being familiar with the efficiency of bureaucracy.

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Several weeks passed and Bartolome was now tasked with searching for microscopic life from within fragments of the asteroid. From within a filtered containment glove box, he used every bit of his education to follow sterile technique and sample gathering. It was on this occasion that a stone embedded within an inner layer of the asteroid drew his attention- for this stone was a perfect sphere. Slowly he worked at this orb within the space rock, making sure to attempt to keep its perfection intact. His meticulousness paid off as he was able to pry it free perfectly intact. Upon observing more closely, a thin line could be visualized on one side which now secreted a single drop of liquid. Quickly Bartolome gathered the liquid and put it on various prepared petri dishes. His heart raced for instead of finding some ancient bacteria or virus deep in the ice, he instead might be the discoverer of an alien life form. He knew that Nile Corp was watching everything he did, and it was too late to cover up his excitement or even his discovery, but perhaps he could delay the inevitable. After naming and marking the dishes appropriately, he began stacking the dishes at the bottom of the work pile. The only one he was most curious about was the blood agar petri dish, this dish he left on top of the pile with the associated markings and labeling. Calling it a night Bartolome carefully left his workstation to go tell his wife what he had found, believing full well that all of his work would be gone in the morning. Corporations have a tendency to make significant discoveries disappear.

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Slowly and quietly a long slumbering organism began to once again ignite its metabolic pathways now immersed in its first food source in years. This interstellar organism was not feasting like a mindless beast, nor spreading rapidly in a greedy rush to overextend itself. Instead methodically or daresay reverently initiating its faculties. This being had time, and now was not the time to be wasteful or hasty.