The Doomsday Strand

Chapter Eight

Kidman sighed and lit another cigarette. She took a deep breath and exhaled it in Jack's face. Jack gave an annoyed cough, but didn't take his eyes off her.

"So?" Jack asked. "What is the Doomsday Strand?"

Kidman turned towards the monitor showing the DNA sequence she had collected from Lillian, then back towards Jack. There was a look of pain in her face.

"You look like you were a dinosaur kid growing up. I know my boy was." Kidman said. She chuckled at some funny memory, then returned to her worried expression. "Do you know how they were wiped out?"

"Big asteroid."

"Yes. But it wasn't just some random asteroid flying through the unieverse that happened to hit Earth. No. It was sent here on purpose, by the Nephilim."

"Giants?"

"Hm. You know your stuff. They're not the same giants as the ones mentioned in the bible though. The Nephilim were an ancient race of advanced beings that used to rule the universe. Our observable universe, anyway. They watched over Earth for millions of years, making sure no species would be capable of rising up against them in the future. The Nephilim saw a threat in the dinosaurs. They predicted those big, dumb lizards would eventually turn into smaller, smarter lizards. So they wiped the dinosaurs out with a giant rock."

"What about human kind? Aren't we a threat to them?"

"The Nephilim saw something in us, a potential to become an intelligent, peaceful race and one day join them in interstellar expansion. So in ancient times, the Nephilim came to Earth and instructed us. The pyramids, complex tools, and all those ancient tales of people descending from the heavens to help mankind, all that came from our interaction with the Nephilim."

"So the ancient astronaut theory is real..."

"Crazy, right? All that bullshit you see on TV about aliens in our past. It's all true. Aliens came to help us, but that didn't mean they trusted us completely. Far from it. The more time the Nephilim spent on Earth, the more they worried about mankind's future. They saw how violent we were, killing ourseleves and starting wars over nothing, so they decided to do something about it. This time, they wanted something more sutble than a giant rock, so over the course of a few hundred years, the Nephilim mingled with our DNA to include a gene capable of shutting us down. A self destruct gene, if you will."

"That didn't work. I mean, we're still here, aren't we?" Jack pointed out.

"Yes, we are."

Kidman put out her cigarette and walked towards the operating table. She lay a hand on Lillian's forehead, and feeling that it was too warm, injected more medicine into her arm. 

"Agent Black." Kidman called. "Mind telling our friend the rest of the story?"

"Erm, okay." Hunter said awkwardly. "Well, let's see. You know what evolution is, right?"

"Yeah..." Jack anwered, doubting Hunter's intelligence for a moment.

"Well, then you know how things can evolve over time. Giraffes grew long necks to eat leaves from trees. Chameleons developed the ability to change colors to hide from predators."

"You are grossly oversimplifying the concept of evolution." Kidman said with a chuckle. "But that's not important right now. Go on."

Hunter blushed. He hated it when people mocked his knowledge.

"Just like animals, people evolve too." Hunter continued. "Some people are starting to be born without wisdom teeth, because we don't use them anymore. Same thing with our appendix. Some people are starting be born without them."