The Lucids of the Permafrost Society Read online

The Lucids of the Permafrost Society

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  If you believe everything you read on the internet, you might as well quit reading.

  That’s what my cousin Galton always says.

  At least, that’s what he used to say, before he went stark raving mad aboard the frozen yacht of doom.

  On our way to the north pole.

  Where the Lucids lived.

  And where I was changed forever.

  #

  You’d probably like Galton. A real whiz kid – got his doctorate at age twenty, then went on to work in Silicon Valley on some kind of top secret project he loved telling me nothing about.

  Meanwhile, I was spinning my wheels at the illustrious Community College of San Mateo – living in a chronically smelly studio apartment in Redwood City, while he was busy moving into a new luxury home in the lofty heights of Hillsborough.

  We grew up together, real tight, Galton and me.

  Until he started skipping grades.

  We remained pretty close, but we started moving in different circles - since I’m twenty-seven and still in school, and he’s working with Nobel laureates.

  Hard to believe we share some of the same genes – me the dreamer, and him the doer.

  As a Renaissance man, I saw no need to tie myself down to one single career path for the rest of my life. So, I explored the possibilities. For several years.

  One day last winter, I was exploring the possibilities with a swim-team sophomore named Cindy when Galton busted into my place without warning.

  “Dude!” I said, scrambling off the couch as Cindy smoothed her blond hair back into a pony tail, trying to look innocent.

  “Don’t dude me, Alex,” he said, plopping into the armchair opposite me and opening the cover on his iPad. “You need to see this.”

  “Sorry, Cindy,” I said, as she seemed to recognize she was invisible to Galton, and that Galton was now the official center of the room and the universe.

  She touched my face and said, “Call me later,” before walking out.

  “Thanks a lot, Galton,” I said after the door closed. “I was actually getting somewhere.”

  “Alex,” Galton said without looking up from his iPad, “admit it, you’re not getting anywhere.” He sniffed the air with a look of mild disgust. “Does it smell weird in here?”

  “Always. What do you want, Galt?”

  He flicked at the iPad screen a few times with his bony index finger then said, “Check this out.”

  I moved around behind him and looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “I was doing some research on my project -”

  “The one you won’t tell me anything about?”

  “That’s the one. But I’m about to tell you something now – and you need to listen very carefully, Alex. With an open mind.”

  I hated it whenever Galton told me to have an open mind. It always meant he was about to try to convince me of something utterly preposterous – like the time he told me that there was a battalion of human clones the army was training in a giant facility under the Appalachians, or when he tried to get me to believe that Stanford University had developed a rudimentary teleporter that could send objects around the world in an instant.

  “Okay, I’m listening. Oh,” I said, pretending to flick a switch on the side of my head, “and now my mind is open. Proceed.”

  Galton just rolled his eyes and said, “Have you ever heard of the HMS Alert? Of course you haven’t. She was a ship, back in the late eighteen hundreds. Ran some expeditions to the Arctic.”

  He showed me an image of the vessel – looked like any other old fashioned boat I’d seen pictures of. “Okay,” I said, waiting for him to get to the point.

  “I’ve been studying the journal of one of our ancestors – actually, he was your great-great-grandfather, on your mother’s side. Not really my ancestor, but we are related. Found it online at a genealogy website. Anyway, I have circumstantial evidence that suggests that this vessel was actually a supply ship used by a top secret colony of genetically modified humans.”

  “What? Okay, mind just snapped shut, man. No way they were splicing genes in the eighteen hundreds.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong – sort of. They may not have had the technology to effect major changes at the genetic level, but it was the era of the birth of eugenics – a time when people were starting to recognize that we could manipulate our heredity to improve the species. Darwin was all the rage, and folks like George Bernard Shaw were starting to form strong opinions about how to manage the human race.”

  “Okay, so why a secret base at the North Pole? And what exactly were they doing up there - creating super-humans?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “We are? How, exactly? Next you’ll tell me that Berkeley’s Science Department has a time machine in their basement.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Time travel is impossible. No – I have a practical idea – a plan.” He closed the cover of his iPad and looked me in the eye. “I’ve chartered a vessel. To take us there.”

  I leaned in toward him. “To the North Pole? Are you crazy?”

  “Come on. We’re leaving at six o’clock tonight. You’ll want to pack a toothbrush. Bring your laptop, some snacks. I’ve got all the cold weather clothing and other gear taken care of.” He stood up, while I just sat there dumbfounded. “Chop, chop, Cuz. We’ve got a boat to catch.”