The Age of Discovery, Chapter 21: City in a Bottle

Day 16: 1230 hours

They are watching us!

Lyra, Gyro, and Barron have joined me topside, but nobody has yet found words to adequately express any emotion, let alone a vague analysis of the moment.  We, my  crew and I, stand side-by-side, silently transfixed on a scene that I can barely put into thought, let alone language.  Could this be how British explorer James Cook felt, after Europeans had been crisscrossing the Pacific for a century, when he then discovered a thriving society, hundreds of thousands strong, on an isolated archipelago in the middle of that ocean?

Not only watching, but evaluating us!

The nearest platform of this incongruous micro metropolis, one built at the same level as the captured sea, is approximately two centimeters away.  The waterfront is lined with the bipedal forms, each seemingly identical to the next, an observation that I attribute to the effect of distance. 

Below the glimmering surface of the miniature sea, ciliated organisms cruise the waters around us, bipedal beings astride paramecia, driving them like frontiersmen on horseback. 

Irrefutable, the visual evidence penetrates my mind, collides with my sluggish comprehension.  The wisdom of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle drifts like welcome salvation into my thoughts: It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

“Skipper, what should we do?” whispers Gyro, his voice tremulous.  I can hear disbelief fermenting into fear.  His almost-terror-stricken gaze shoots from the parapets above to the waters surrounding us.  “There are hundreds of them!  We should…”

“Arm ourselves is what we should do,” interjects Barron Wolfe.  “I have a harpoon gun that would serve as a…”

“Stay right where you are, mister,” I tell the engine master.  “All of you, in fact.  Nobody move.  They are watching, assessing us for whatever imperatives guide their behavior.  Let’s not give them a reason to act hastily or against us.” I pitch my voice to project confidence and control.  “We are explorers.  Our first task is to observe.  Any notions you may have about what this place is, or who these creatures are, are idle guesses.  Am I understood?”

All heads nod.  Good!

Lyra’s eyes widen.  She points across the water toward the city.  “Jonathan, someone is coming.”

The figure, a distant speck at first, grows in size and resolution with every step, and emerges slowly from the intervening mists that hover at various layers in this enclosed world.  Though I do not know how, the figure is oddly familiar.  Its stride, a steady gate upon the water’s surface, is incomprehensibly recognizable.

It is a man, his dark hair visible above a blue-gray uniform eerily similar to my own.  Half a centimeter from Cyclops he stops, then incongruously raises his left arm and waves in a decidedly friendly manner, as if greeting us on Pennsylvania Avenue on a summer Saturday evening en route to Ford’s Theater.  Even before I hear his shouted greeting, I know who it is.

“Jonathan Adler!  Are you ever a sight for sore eyes!”

It cannot be Rand Emerson, but that is exactly who it is, my executive officer, right-hand man, companion from my academy days  – alive?   In my mind, playing like a nickelodeon picture show, I recall the final moments before he evaporated into the ether of quantum space.  There we were, the original five of us, the crew of the MS Cyclops, standing on the reaction stage of the machine – before those incredible energies bore down upon us, before Rand had glitched.

As Rand resumes his approach – as his grinning face becomes identifiable, my mind is already racing to understand, to explain how this can be, and something more – a powerful desire to repair the damage of his disappearance.  I cannot wait to greet him, the medicine of seeing him whisked safely into the grateful arms of his crew mates.  I feel an intense need to heal the tragedy of losing my first officer even before the voyage had begun.   Then I remember my responsibility to the others, to the safety of the ship and her crew.

“Stand where you are, Sergeant!” I call to him.  The crew’s welcoming shouts fade to silence and all heads spin toward me with quizzical expressions.  On the water, Randall Emerson comes to a military halt, with chin up, heels together, and arms straight at his sides.  “Hello, Rand!  Sorry about the formality, but you might say that the situation is extraordinary – wouldn’t you agree?”

“I could not agree more, Captain Adler, sir,” he answers with diction crisp enough to cast a flint spark.  “Permission to come aboard, sir?”

“You can hold station right where you are, Mr. Emerson,” I tell him.  I have no doubt that this is the bona fide Randall Emerson, but I will persist with a line of query that will erase any suspicion that might otherwise linger in the minds of the crew.  “Just a couple of questions before I crack open my last bottle of Old Kentucky to welcome you back into the fold.”

“That sounds about, Captain.  You loath Old Kentucky,” interjects Rand with a cheerful cadence.  “And you always have.  You once remarked that it ‘tastes like skunk spray and leaves an aftertaste like a stagnant Potomac backwater in August,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Muted laughter erupts from the crew. 

The quote is accurate, and mimicked precisely, right down to my rural Chesapeake inflection.  The man is definitely Randall Emerson.  “Your recollection is accurate, nevertheless, that is the swill we have, therefore it will have to suffice,” I tell him.  With a friendly gesture, I beckon the would-be crew mate closer. 

Rand closes the remaining gap and stops three paces from the gunwale.  “The old girl looks like she’s seen her share of rough passage.  Gyro, she still yar and nimble as she was in her sea trials?”

Without turning, I stifle Gyro from responding with a raised finger.   “Yes, sea trials.  Quite a memorable day.  Remind me, Rand, how we ended up at McMurphy’s pub that last afternoon, after that final shakedown?”

Rand Emerson smiles a generous toothy grin.  “McMurphy’s hadn’t yet reopened from the fire that took out half the block.  We ended up at Old Toad’s, but only after that French steamer crew turned us away from Foggy Bay.   You had four Martinez cocktails and sang ‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Baily’ until the barkeeper cut you off and showed us the door.”

Lyra plants a hand on her hip and wags the other one at me.  “I knew you could sing,” she declares. 

“Your skipper is a nightingale,” says Rand with mock sincerity. 

“All right, enough of that,” I admonish.  “Mr. Emerson, permission to come aboard is granted.  We have a lot to talk about and I have a lot of questions.”

Before we go below, Rand enjoys a moment of unfettered affection from his crew mates.  They embrace him as they would a long lost brother, and he, as demonstrative with emotion as I remember, returns the fondness.  I watch from nearby with a sense of gladness, that a misdirection of fate has been repaired.

1500 hours…

I now sit across a small table from Rand, having just heard his unbelievable story.  I shall, to the best of my ability, attempt to retell it as accurately and earnestly as he told it to me. 

The thought had never occurred to any of us that when Rand failed to appear with us at Dragonfly Sky-base, that he had actually been redirected to different arrival coordinates.  In the short history of transmicronization, nothing like that had ever happened.  Rand theorized that a micro fluctuation in the magnetic field, or a stray cosmic ray, skewed the quantum field lensing just as the machine transferred us from the subterranean chambers in Washington DC to the aquatic pond micro verse. 

“But however it happened, I awoke in this place, surrounded by the people.  Their word, idea really, for themselves defies pronouncing or even conceptualizing.  The closest word in English is Unity.  You can call them what I call them: the Microsia Aquatica.  These Microsians are single cellular organisms.  They are protozoa.  Each one is an individual eukaryotic cell with all the usual trimmings: nucleus, mitochondria, golgi structures, even cilia.  They seem to have characteristics of several classes of protista, including pseudopodia, like an Amoeba, and cilia, like Paramecium.  As you’ve seen, they use other microorganisms like we use beasts of burden.”

Visible through the porthole behind him, a Microsian rode swiftly by on paramecium-back. 

“So they are not confined to this bottle?” I asked.

“Wait… you mean to tell me… this is a bottle?”  Rand laughed.  “I wondered, but never knew.  Anyway….  They come and go all the time… well, not all the time – it isn’t always safe for them to go out there.  Microsians are the prey in more than a couple predator-and-prey ecological relationships.  But the bottle, funny that I couldn’t figure that out, makes an impregnable shelter at this scale.  As long as they are inside, nothing can touch them.  And even though they are thoroughly at home in the water, they are not confined to it.  The air pocket in here is the perfect micro habitat for their… colony, again they use a different word.  I finally came to understand that their word represents an idea for a cohesive formation built by the progenitors of the Unity for the protection and prosperity of the Unity and its descendants.”

“This is amazing,” I whispered, trying to comprehend the picture Rand was painting of this secret and hidden civilization.  “So there are baby Microsians.”

Rand shook his head.  “Descendants, Jon, but not children.  They are single-celled organisms.  They don’t do things… the way we do.”

My mind was reeling, yet relishing the information.  “Are you telling me that they reproduce asexually… that they divide?”

My old friend lifted his glass of mediocre sour mash.  “I see that Lyra has made a good start at turning you into a cell biologist.  Yes, they reproduce by fission.  I’ve seen it a few times.  It’s a fascinating process.”

“Maybe I will have that opportunity,” I said excitedly.  “But tell me more about them. What about culture?  What about their history?  Have you learned to speak Microsian?”

“Whoa there, Skip,” he chided me.  “They don’t speak exactly.  Microsian communication uses several of their organelles and structures, but none are auditory.  An idea is expressed partially through vibration of their cilia in concert with reverberations from excretory crystals, like a silent resonating symphony. It took me quite some time to work out a basic vocabulary, but now I have the hang of it.  But they can do something that you and I have never dreamed of… if they coordinate their reverberation, the Unity becomes a living computing machine.  I’ve only seen it happen once, but it was impressive.  That seems to be how they develop complex ideas and make major decisions.  The Unity is very much a unified society.”

“I would like to see that as well.  Can they understand you?”

“Easily… child’s play to them, if they had children – especially if there are two or more nearby.  They seem to perceive the sound waves frequencies of my voice, and then compute a translation into basic concepts, rearranging the parts into ideas they are more familiar with.  The more Microsians in the adjacent Unity, the faster they compute.”

“Rand, this discovery of yours…”

“Completely by accident.  I take no credit,” he said, tipping back his glass and exhaling.  “I’ve had smoother.”

“The luckiest accident in human history.  We have to get into that city and learn more about the Microsians.  Do you have their trust?  I mean, can you get us in there?”

“I doubt they have such concepts as trust or distrust,” said Rand.  “They are curious about you though.  They sent me out to greet you, and invite you into the colony.  They’ve been watching you for weeks.”

“That would explain a few things,” I tell him.  “What are they curious about?”

Rand paused, lost in quiet contemplation.  He was thinking hard, evidently trying to find the right words for microsian ideas.  When he spoke, it was carefully.  “They believe that our world is trying to destroy theirs, and they cannot understand why. “

1530 hours…

We stand on the observation deck of the Cyclops pilothouse, Captain and First Officer, side by side for the first time in the microscopic world.  Across a short stretch of glassy still water, the city of the Microsians fills our view. 

“Take us in, Mr. Emerson,” I tell Rand. He nods.

“Helm, turn to forty degrees left rudder, ahead one quarter,” says Randall Emerson. 

“Aye, sir,” responds Gyro. 

The engine order telegraph rings the one-quarter speed signal and the deck slips forward under my feet as MS Cyclops creeps toward her first port of call since leaving Duckweed Base. 

My crew is reunited!  My friend is alive!  I am struck by a feeling of wholeness and well-being.  “Look sharp everyone,” I tell them.  It no surprise that everyone is smiling.