A Voyage through the Micro-Verse to Save Life on Planet Earth

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 mi...

1115 hours... And then the faces recede from the light and vanish.   Only a solitary silhouette remains, standing at the center of where the multitude had been only moments before.   It is beyond slender, with unusually long limbs, and at the end of an extremely tall neck, an oblong head with enormous eyes.     Its right arm, for lack of a better vocabulary, lifts up from its side, extends ninety degrees from its body.   At the end of the limb membranous pseudopodia become finger-like appendages, coalescing into a pointing hand. “I think,” says Gyro softly, “is it trying to tell us where to go?” In an act so unhuman, yet so understandable, the shape thrust its fluid-like right arm further from its body, as if to emphasize its instruction to us. “No doubt about it,” I say.   “Gyro, turn us ninety degrees port rudder and follow the glass wall.    One quarter speed.” “Turning to two-seventy degrees,” adds Gyro. “Ans...

Day 16: 0800 hours... “It was your reflection in the porthole,” Barron Wolfe states with a dismissive certainty that I envy. “I wish that it had been,” I respond.   “Not only did it not look anything like me, it was clearly outside the ship.” “How can you be sure?” asks Lyra.   “I mean, maybe your reflection combined with the dim light in the cabin…” “Whatever, or whomever it was swatted a flagellating bacterium out of its way before it vanished back into the dark.   No, it was clearly outside.   But before it disappeared, it looked straight at me – into me.     And its eyes…”   I cannot find the words to finish my thought. “Some microorganism then,” theorizes Barron.   “But it couldn’t have been human – not without a helmet or suit.” “What about its eyes?” pressed Lyra. “They were piercing… penetrating…   curious and intelligent,” I tell her.   “But not…”   And again, words fail me.   “...

Day 9: 0530 hours… Dawn is breaking.  Last night we anchored the ship to a decaying aquatic weed stem, about two hundred twenty centimeters depth – all hands glad for the respite after our adventure on the surface.  I am pleased to report that the night passed uneventfully.  As I enjoy my mug of coffee on the observation level of the pilothouse the faceted dome reveals the first sunrays piercing the pond’s depths.  Through the heavy leaded glass warm watery light strikes green algal protists, which illuminate into iridescent emeralds.   And there are thousands upon thousands of them all around us, creating an ever-changing green waterscape that extends in all directions to the furthest visible distance.  This harmless multitude is to other single-celled pond organisms what grass is to the herding beasts of the African Serengeti – food in abundance.  I am admittedly curious about the organisms that rely ...