Solar System Crud

[Dependencies: Feb 3rd -> current entry]

“Contaminated. No other explanation,” Eugene Roberts said, not looking at Angela.

Though he was her manager at project Imperilov-Comb, as his chief scientist Angela felt strong enough to stand up to him. “Strict clean room procedures, Gene. Contaminated with what?” She had her palms facing up in desperation, shaking them as she spoke. “It’s not as if we have DNA from human-and-chimp ancestors laying around our offices, you know!”

Roberts gave her a glance, one of those I-wasn’t-talking-to-you glances. She stared back at him defiantly, aware of the other eighteen eyes in the room looking at her.

“Repeat the tests,” he commanded, a tone of anger barely disguised in his voice. “Look inside more dust samples.” He was now looking at her second-in-command, bypassing Angela.

The NASA conference room was long and narrow, the walls painted white, perhaps even freshly painted, judging from the strong disinfectant-like odor. Sitting at the end of the narrow conference table Angela felt uneasy, as if interviewed at an asylum—not as a caretaker, but as an inmate.

She was overwhelmed by the wild ramifications of her discovery: insider a comet she had found DNA belonging to a common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans. This would turn evolution theory on its head.

“The DNA must have left Earth about six million years ago,” she said. That was the simplest explanation. Occam’s Razor.

“Impossible!” Roberts jumped in. He stood up and begun pacing around, moving his arms uncontrollably as he talked. “Imperilov’s orbit does not intersect with Earth’s orbit.”

Angela knew Roberts was right. But the other alternative was even more wild: that evolution on Earth had been seeded with an intervention from the solar system. Not any intervention but one fully consistent with the life that had already developed on Earth. An impossible intervention made of solar system crud. Dust and water. Clay, she thought.