whack-job, but they went crazy over banana. Continued to reproduce down to minus one hundred degrees Celsius, and they don’t degrade until four hundred degrees Celsius. Getting complete clearance of them is going to be a job, let me tell you.”
“Internal cell structure?” Janea asked.
“Which one?” Stan asked. “The banana cells are less odd. They actually have mitochondria. There are some structures that might be equivalent to Golgi bodies but for the rest I’m stumped. They have DNA but not nuclear DNA. The star cells are semi-viral-that’s the best I can do. They don’t have mitochondria, and how they process oxygen without mitochondria is a good trick, they don’t have nuclear DNA, they don’t even have bacterial ring DNA, and they don’t seem to have any internal structure at all. They’re closest to a coronavirus but they’re not coronaviruses. I don’t know what they are. Alien is the best I can do, and that’s as good as you’re going to get.”
“That’s from the second attack?” Janea asked. “The stellate cells, that is?”
“Second sample, yes,” Randell said. “You know what he’s talking about?”
“Uh-huh,” Janea said, distantly. “That means it’s probably not a skru-gnon. Interesting.”
“What in the blue blazes is a shu-gnon?” Stan yelled. “What is this…” He paused as one of the machines started beeping urgently and walked over.
“Now that’s odd…” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “That’s… Okay, that’s impossible.”
“What?” Janea asked, walking over to the machine.
“The banana cell,” Stan said, gesturing at the readout. “It has human DNA.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t human DNA,” Randell said, walking over and looking at the readout.
“It’s not,” Stan snapped. “Anybody but a moron would know that! But it has some human DNA and that sounds really really stupid. Wait…this is impossible!”
“It’s a match,” Janea breathed.
“It’s not a match,” Stan shouted.
“Okay,” Janea said, her voice tight. “It’s a near match.”
“What?” Randell said. “Would either one of you make some sense?”
“None of this makes sense,” Stan shouted. “It can’t be…It’s…”
“Would you hit the link, please?” Janea asked, pointing at an icon. “Or do you want me to do it?”
“Fine,” Stan said, hitting the icon.
The image of a young black woman appeared, a mug-shot photograph. Thin and with a worn face, probably from heavy drug use.
“Lorna Ewing,” Randell said. “Street name, Fantasy. Missing person, Louisville, Kentucky, probable foul play. This thing’s…related to her?”
“Sibling or child,” Janea said. “Let me be clear. Child.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” Barb said, shaking her head. “I had hoped you were wrong.”
“Okay,” Stan said, calmly. “I am missing pieces of information. I do not like to be missing pieces of information. I cannot do my job if I’m missing pieces of information!”
“Are you going to shout about ‘impossible’ and ‘morons’?” Janea asked, sweetly.
“Not to mention, what was it? Christian whack-job?” Barbara said, tightly. “Because I do not enjoy being shouted at. But the Lord tells us to take people as they are instead of, oh, throwing them through a wall.”
“You and what army?” Stan said, angrily.
“Stan?” Janea said, still sweetly. “You really don’t want to ask that question. Because I’ve seen her when she gets mad. You don’t want to be the one she gets mad at.”
“I would never harm a human who was not intent on harming others,” Barbara said. “But can you please just calm the tone a bit? And if you would like the other information, we will give it to you. But your first instinct will be to shout ‘morons’ and ‘religious nuts’ and other similar insults. And then the only person you have to blame for not being able to do your job is you.”
Stan looked at Barbara, then looked at the screen. Very faintly he started quivering. He looked at Barbara, then looked at the screen. More quivering. It wasn’t fear, it was just his body trying to tell him to go away. From the thought of what they’d said as much as anything.
“The term you’re looking for here is ‘cognitive dissonance,’” Janea said, trying not to laugh. “I take it you’re an atheist.”
“No one can be a scientist and not be an atheist,” Stan said firmly.
“Feel free to hold as true to your beliefs as I hold to mine,” Barbara said, mildly. “But you’re also looking at something that is plainly impossible. And we have given you a rational-for values of rational-explanation. However, it is an explanation that is entirely at odds with your beliefs. Thus the cognitive dissonance. May I make a suggestion?”
“Please,” Stan said.
“You do not have to think of this as metaphysical,” Barbara said. “Think of it, instead, as a very advanced form of science. One for which we do not have the theory, yet. Feel free to work on theories for it in your back brain.”
“There’s a body of scientific literature on this, actually,” Janea interjected. “I’ve read some of the papers. Most demons that manifest have what is called transform DNA, which is basically DNA made up from scratch. Some don’t have any DNA at all, but those have no capacity for reproduction with humans. These appear to have something different, again. This is the first I’ve seen of this sort of approach. Makes sense since it’s Old Ones and not demons. They’re assumed to come from completely different backgrounds. This is sort of a proof of that hypothesis.”
“Demons have cellular structure?” Stan said, blinking.
“Manifested ones do,” Janea said. “Mammalian, primarily. Those with DNA appear to have no senescence coding, thus the ‘immortal’ aspect. And there appears to be no cellular turnover. How that works is being very quietly studied by a group of SC scientists.”
“Why don’t I know about this?” Stan asked angrily.
“Because if you don’t have to know about SC you don’t find out about SC,” Randell said. “And once you do find out about SC you wish you didn’t know.”
“Think of it this way,” Barb said. “You can now do the first and only paper on the biological structure of Old Ones. You’re the world expert.”
“But there’s only about five hundred people in the world who can read the paper,” Janea said. “And only about fifteen who will.”
“You being one of them?” Stan asked.
“I’m not a biologist,” Janea said. “I’ll read the abstract and the conclusion and skim the rest because I won’t understand half of it. But I’ll get the important bits that I need to know the next time I run into an Old One. The first and most important being, how do we kill these things?”
“Well…” Stan said, turning back to the screen with a huff. “The first sample was a…sku-gnon?”
“ Skru-gnon,” Janea corrected. “I’ll leave you the spelling.”
“Certain poison gases might work,” Stan said musingly. “The hyperproduction of cells explains the regeneration. Fire…would be mostly useless unless it’s very hot. Thermite or something like that. Cold? Impervious. You could hit this thing with liquid nitrogen and it wouldn’t blink. Might die if you immersed it in liquid helium, but good luck on that. I don’t know anything about the rest of its structure. I don’t suppose you could bring one back alive?”
“Not even going to try,” Barb said. “These are a crime against God.”
“And on the part that you don’t like to think about,” Janea said, as Stan started to get worked up again, “they have a psychological impact on the unprotected that is severe. You don’t want to be in the same room with a live one.”
“Just their cells are driving me crazy,” Stan said, grabbing his hair.
Barb looked at Janea, her eyes wide.
“Uhm, Stan,” Janea said, her face tight. “Just how crazy are you feeling?”
“What?” Stan asked.
“One of the aspects of the Old Ones is that they tend to induce panic and insanity,” Janea said. “Just how
