Sophia picked up the thread of his explanation. “You only need to look at a newspaper to see it. We — humans — either consume with no regard for the future, or hide our heads in denial while the problems multiply.”
“We’re omnivores,” Jarrod said. “In the truest sense of the word. We devour everything. And we congratulate ourselves on our ability to adapt when we exhaust one resource, even though our miracle solution drives thousands of species to extinction.
“Did you know that in the 1960s the human population was poised to exceed carrying capacity? The planet could not produce enough food to feed everyone. The population was about three billion, and one third of them were just a drought away from starvation. But then we discovered new ways to extend the food supply. New strains of wheat and rice, fertilizers made from petrochemicals, new farming methods, intensive factory fishing. And what has happened? Ninety percent of the world’s forests have been cleared for agriculture. The seas have been emptied of fish and are poisoned by fertilizer run-off. Worst of all, instead of stabilizing the food supply to feed three billion, the so-called Green Revolution fueled a population explosion. It took thousands of years for the population to reach three billion. In the last forty years, it has more than doubled. And by the middle of this century, there will be ten billion people.”
In the back of her mind, Jenna could see the seconds ticking away, but she knew that Jarrod wasn’t stalling. His intention was to educate her. To help her overcome her moral reservations about what they were doing…what they were destined to do.
“No one even realizes what a disaster it was,” he continued. “Human society congratulates itself on their ability to squeeze the Earth’s limited resources even harder, ravaging the natural world, heating the planet with our waste until the oceans turn to acid and the land becomes a barren desert. Only when we have killed every other living thing will humans admit to folly, and then they will say ‘Why didn’t we do something about it?’ Well, we are doing something.”
“We aren’t destroying the world,” Sophia said. “Humanity is doing that. We’re saving it. Treating the infection before it kills everything.”
Jenna felt the truth of the words. Humanity’s fatal flaw was the ability to ignore dire generational problems while focusing on short term gratification. It was written into the human genome as surely as this moment had been written into her own. And she knew, without a shred of uncertainty, that it would never stop. There would be no great awakening. The human species was a runaway train that would destroy all life on Earth with its inevitable crash.
All I need to do is let this happen, she thought.
There would be survivors. As if awakening to another implanted memory, she realized that the others had already made preparations for it, and once the ashes of World War III cooled, they would step forth and begin building a better human society, one in which the rapacious appetites of Humanity 1.0 would be bred out.
“A lot of people are going to suffer and die,” she replied in a small voice that didn’t feel like her own.
“They’ll suffer and die if we don’t take action,” Sophia countered. “We cannot afford to cling to the illusion of false hope.”
A faint chime sounded.
It was done. The signal had been sent. Jenna had failed to keep her promise, yet somehow, it didn’t feel like failure.
Sudden nausea swept through her, bending her vision, moving through her body, head to toe, like a wave of energy. It staggered her, but passed in a second and left her feeling…invigorated. Renewed. Stronger. Sharper.
What the—
She glanced up at Sophia and Jarrod. Neither seemed to have suffered the same effect, but they were different. The chestnut-brown hair they all shared was now black. And their eyes, once dark brown like Jenna’s, were now fiery brown, almost orange. There was no place to see her reflection, but Jenna’s hair was long enough to pull around and see. She did it casually, as though nervously playing with her hair, confirming that the fine, straight strands were now as black as theirs. Given their lack of reaction to her eyes, they matched as well, still doubles, but not in Jenna’s memory.
They didn’t notice the change, Jenna realized. The fact that it took place a moment after the signal was sent wasn’t lost on her. The modified DNA…
The answer to one of her many questions resolved in her mind. She knew where the 1977 Wow! Signal had come from — the future. Her future. Her present. Jarrod sent the signal. Just moments ago. And he had sent the signal before. Each time, it contained a modification. A refinement.
But they were past that point. If further refinements had been sent, they had already been sent. They were beyond that point in time. She was now who she would always be, but she had no idea what that meant. Had no idea how that had changed things, or how many times this scene had played out, subtly changing with each transmission. How many different versions of herself had stood here before, watching the signal be sent? How many had failed to get this far? She’d barely survived the journey this time. Maybe this is the first time I made it…
If Sophia and Jarrod were any indication, she would be the only one who remembered who she had been before. I’m new, she thought, perhaps different enough from the others that the final change was not lost in a stream of new memories.
“Now what?” she asked, even more curious than before.
Jarrod’s smile broadened. “Now, we go on the offensive.” He set the computer down on the edge of the platform and opened an e-mail server.
I trust you.
Noah’s parting words echoed in her head. She made a promise. She asked him to trust her, and he had. “Who sent the message?”
Jarrod didn’t look up. “You still haven’t figured it out?”
“I understand that you — that we — just sent the Wow! Signal, but where did it come from? Who modified it?”
“Nobody modified it,” Jarrod said with a chuckle. “It is how it was meant to be. And we are where we were meant to be. It’s that simple.”
He doesn’t know. How could he? He doesn’t remember any other version of history than the current. There may have been a past where he knew the source, but the necessity to receive direct orders has been erased by the compulsion built into his DNA over unknown numbers of revisions.
Sophia took a step toward her, opening her arms as if offering an earnest embrace. “Jenna, it’s the Earth that gains, and all life on it, even humanity.”
Part of Jenna agreed wholeheartedly, but she knew those feelings had been programmed. They were powerful — stronger than before — but the knowledge of her past self buoyed her, gave her the desire to not be a slave to some mysterious coder of human DNA. Someone who had also figured out how to send a signal back in time.
Nurture is more powerful than nature. I raised you well.
For all his fatherly wisdom, Noah had never anticipated that she would be faced with a choice of this magnitude.
Jarrod finished composing his e-mail — a very short message — and was populating the address list. Jenna saw eleven recipients, eleven of her brothers and sisters. She wondered if there were still others out there like her, just awakening to the knowledge, or some who had perhaps refused to embrace the apocalyptic prophecy of their teacher — their creator.
She wondered how many had been wiped out by the Agency’s purge.