Something Inbetween
[v.2 posted 1105pm PT 2/4/06]
Though the video feed was low-resolution, twenty-three year old Angela could see Shane Truman’s five o’clock shadow, at only eight-fifteen A.M. Unlike her, the NASA Astrobiology scientist didn’t seem to care about good looks. If he would unexpectedly run into an exobiological party, his heavy stubble would unlikely ruin the affair.
“Odd hitchhikers you picked up,” Truman said.
“Mom wouldn’t approve. But flying through the tail of a comet we were bound to pick up something,” Angela said, leaning back into her seat at NASA’s JPL. With hesitation she added, “Or someone. It is DNA isn’t it?”
“Tell you what, I hear the dominoes crumbling down,” Truman replied, shaking his head in disbelief yet with a smile. “Textbook printers are warming up.”
He seemed both pleased and taken aback by the development. Angela felt likewise.
“Still looking for a match,” Truman continued, pointing to the monitor behind him, which displayed a yellow progress bar moving forward and backward, while text rapidly displayed and disappeared underneath, text too small for her to read through the little window on her PC.
The two had talked only once before, when she sent him the suspicious sample. She expected potentially organic material in the samples from the comet. But when a structure much like a chromosome showed up on Angela’s microscope, after she dissected a speck of comet dust, she was in disbelief. Now she knew she was on to something profound.
“Terrestrial life is really extra-terrestrial,” she said.
“Or, vice versa,” Truman countered. “Depends on the match.” He went on describing how he isolated the DNA and how his computer was searching for matches in various genome databases.
But Angela stopped listening. The monitor behind him displayed something that froze her breathing. Truman must have had the speakers off, or he would have been interrupted by dozens of exuberant beeps.
The progress bar had stopped its erratic redraw. Multiple lines of text, numbers, percentages populated the right half of the monitor. She couldn’t read those but—her heart beating thunderously—she could see the three diagrams on the left half, one of a chimp, another of a human, and a third of something inbetween.
Though the video feed was low-resolution, twenty-three year old Angela could see Shane Truman’s five o’clock shadow, at only eight-fifteen A.M. Unlike her, the NASA Astrobiology scientist didn’t seem to care about good looks. If he would unexpectedly run into an exobiological party, his heavy stubble would unlikely ruin the affair.
“Odd hitchhikers you picked up,” Truman said.
“Mom wouldn’t approve. But flying through the tail of a comet we were bound to pick up something,” Angela said, leaning back into her seat at NASA’s JPL. With hesitation she added, “Or someone. It is DNA isn’t it?”
“Tell you what, I hear the dominoes crumbling down,” Truman replied, shaking his head in disbelief yet with a smile. “Textbook printers are warming up.”
He seemed both pleased and taken aback by the development. Angela felt likewise.
“Still looking for a match,” Truman continued, pointing to the monitor behind him, which displayed a yellow progress bar moving forward and backward, while text rapidly displayed and disappeared underneath, text too small for her to read through the little window on her PC.
The two had talked only once before, when she sent him the suspicious sample. She expected potentially organic material in the samples from the comet. But when a structure much like a chromosome showed up on Angela’s microscope, after she dissected a speck of comet dust, she was in disbelief. Now she knew she was on to something profound.
“Terrestrial life is really extra-terrestrial,” she said.
“Or, vice versa,” Truman countered. “Depends on the match.” He went on describing how he isolated the DNA and how his computer was searching for matches in various genome databases.
But Angela stopped listening. The monitor behind him displayed something that froze her breathing. Truman must have had the speakers off, or he would have been interrupted by dozens of exuberant beeps.
The progress bar had stopped its erratic redraw. Multiple lines of text, numbers, percentages populated the right half of the monitor. She couldn’t read those but—her heart beating thunderously—she could see the three diagrams on the left half, one of a chimp, another of a human, and a third of something inbetween.
posted by Astrapo | 10:00 AM
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