"Fiery Birds", Part XII

"Perhaps I should go and let you two visit," Selin said.

"No, you should stay," Kha said, almost bluntly.

"Father..." Zho started.

"Why did you make the journey?" Kha asked.

"I wanted to know. What was beyond the forests? What was beyond the sea? I would see the fiery birds climb into the sky, and wanted to see their nests..."

"And now you know?" Kha asked.

"I am still learning..."

"You should have stayed," Kha said, "did you not think of your mother?"

Zho looked confused, "but you made the journey. Why..."

"I had my reasons, like yours. There are no fiery birds. There are no treasures. Just different people and their village."

Selin had never seen a New Person behave like this. Zho looked very frightened, and his father's anger seemed to grow.

"We should leave now," she said.

"Yes. It is better," Kha said.

"I am sorry, Zho," she said. 

Zho simply stood there, stunned by the short exchange, and feeling an odd feeling deep within him. 

It was anger as well, and he didn't understand why.

-

It was late. Dr. Trant was still at her desk, going over page after page of information, reading intensely as they appeared on her screen. There was a pattern here, she was certain of it. But they needed more information about the post-humans. Just one complete skeleton so far, scant remains otherwise. All other indications of their civilization had been almost scrubbed from the face of the planet. All that remained were foundations, some roadways, bits and pieces. Nothing else.

They just vanished.

Did they even manage to take the Moon with them?

Her comset buzzed. She picked it up and pressed to project the call onto her wall.

"This is Trant," she said.

"Doctor, this is M'Coi. We think the team may have found something," he said, "they sent me some data, and it looks like there was some usable DNA in the skeleton. But there's more."

"Go on."

"We found the same odd bits in the genome. That skeleton they found? Apparently, another creation," M'Coi said.

"Unbelievable..."

"And there's more. We were using the wrong system trying to decode it. The computer thinks it's not base ten. It is trying different combinations starting with base six."

"I'm coming down," Alouisa said.

-

Zho should have felt sadness. His father, whom he hadn't seen since he was a child, was alive and well and lived in the same city with him, and apparently wanted nothing to do with him. He should be sad.

Instead, he was angry. 

And he was growing angrier.

In a fit, Zho picked up his table chair, and threw it through the sliding glass door to the balcony. The door simply bounced the chair, not even cracking. Zho ran to it, and started hitting the door over and over again with the chair. 

Down the hall, an alarm went off. 

Two guards ran towards Zho's room.

-

Dr. Trant and M'Coi stood near the computer screen on the wall and watched as one set of genomic bits were tried after another with different base lines.

Base six.

Base eight.

Base twelve.

It stopped on base twelve.

"I think we have a hit," M'Coi said.

"Base twelve. Why twelve?"

"That's a good question," M'Coi said.

"Your the computer expert here, M'Coi. Why twelve?"

"Encryption, maybe? Not sure. But base ten would be the logical because of the obvious."

"Ten fingers," Trant said.

The computer spoke.

"We have matches at base twelve. Four sets of numbers per genome. If you would like, I can display one."

"Please," Trant said.

"This is the set from sample Cantib, Zho."

The screen went white, and a series of numbers, separated by dashes, appeared. 

04-2296-45700-525.

"You know what that looks like?" M'Coi asked.

"A serial number," Trant said.

"Well," M'Coi said, "if they are products that would make sense."

The computer interjected. 

"There is a pattern here that you must see," it said, "this is the sample from Cantib, Kha."

04-2296-45700-524.

Trant raised an eyebrow.

"It's counting," she said.

M'Coi had a bewildered look on his face.

"Are you aware of the amount of engineering that it would require to produce a genome that could do that?" he said.

"I don't know, M'Coi, with the right enzyme set, it might be fairly easy. Computer, what are the odds that the last set is counting generations?"

"Very likely. If we assume that a typical New Person generation is twenty years, then a period of over five hundred generations would be logical based upon when we assume the planet was abandoned by the progenitors."

Trant shook her head.

"It was there the whole time. We just didn't have the right key," she said.

Her comset chimed.

"This is Trant," she said.

"Dr. Trant, this is Colmin. You need to come down. We've had an incident with the New Person Zho."