Extreme Ancestral Tracing
How far back? The beginning of time?
Speculative Fiction
“Extreme Ancestral Tracing” promised way more than its competitors. The price was way more, too, but I cashed in some cryptocurrency and was feeling flush. A device that quickly scanned my body and a few quick swabs. Then wait a month.
EXANTRAC directed me to a rundown shopping center, a nondescript building next to a laundromat. I sat inside a square room with shiny walls. A small table had a paper titled Summary, five pages stapled together. I was browsing it when the front wall lighted to reveal an adjoining room. A woman with dark bangs, large glasses and a brusque business voice began without preamble.
Page 1
“Using the most compelling lineage: You sailed from the Iberian Peninsula for the New World in the mid-1600’s.”
I’m given to blurt things out when nervous. “Was I the captain or navigator or something?”
She shook her head in a wholly dismissive way. “Hardly. Your earlier you was a third-class passenger who swabbed bilge from the lower decks. Steerage. At best.”
A photo of a neatly-bearded gentlemen appeared on the wall. “If it makes you feel any better, this was one of your great-times-eight ancestors. Jonathan Keith Singleton. He took a strong stand against slavery.”
I asked, “Was he a congressman?”
“No, he was a landowner quoted in a Virginia newspaper.” She motioned to turn the page.
Page 2
“We traced your earlier selves through the Middle Ages and Dark Ages. Records from those days are scarce but we stitched it together with a high degree of confidence. Your ancestors were serfs, no nobility, no rarified pedigree.”
I said, “I thought people always found a king or a lord in their ancestral hierarchy?”
“That’s just marketing. The odds are against it.”
I persisted, “So that’s it? My ancestry is steerage and serfs? Never the spawn of Genghis Khan, Gilgamesh, King Solomon?”
She shook her head no. “But that’s not where we stopped.”
Page 3
“You have a slightly high percentage of Neanderthal DNA, about 3.5%, and a measurable trace of Denisovan dating to roughly 50,000 years ago. We kept going back. Homo erectus, Australopithecus — that’s roughly 4 million years ago. Before that your ancestors were Ardipithecus kadabba going back 6 million years.”
I wasn’t impressed. “Now you’re just going with the general evolution of primates.”
She said, “Not entirely. We have used our techniques and technologies to home in on your lineage, including identifying some of your earliest ancestors. You will be able to catch a glimpse of them with these.”
An assistant appeared and handed me a VR headset. I was instantly standing in mustard yellow grasses. A warm smell of rain filled a savannah that stretched into hazy morning light. Nearby, a cluster of darkly furry animals chewed at the base of a baobob tree. I seemed to have attracted their attention and they surged in my direction in an undulating wave. I yanked off the headset.
“That was a very realistic re-creation,” I said, catching my breath.
She looked at me a moment. ”That was not a re-creation. Now, please turn the page.”
Page 4
I wanted to follow up but she’d already resumed the narrative.
“We kept winding the clock back. Your ancestors, and all homo sapiens ancestors, were lemurs dating back some 60 million years. Before that, tree shrews from amphibians from fish. Suffice it to say it is difficult to continue the ancestral trace back through these ancient and primitve species.”
“I’d say it must be highly speculative.” I was still thinking of the furry rodents scurrying hungrily towards my feet.
“It is difficult but not speculative. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Always, faithfully.” She hesitated. “And we have other means.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I did remember that recapitulation theory had come under attack and I told her.
She shrugged it off. “Quibbling, sniping, intellectual jealousy. The basic scientific theory is irrefutable.”
Page 5
She moved to the last page. “We went all the way back to the beginning. The atoms in your body. What was their provenance? How old are they and where did they come from?”
An image of galactic clusters filled the wall on my right, glittering islands of stars.
“Most of the atoms in your body are roughly 14 billion years old. You are as old as the universe. Most of you.”
A starry constellation appeared on the left wall. Cygnus the swan. Gradually we zoomed in to individual stars and filaments of nebulosity, one bearing the name Veil Nebula.
“A few of your atoms hail from the Crab Nebula but a far greater number are from another supernova, the remnant of which is known as the Cygnus Loop. You, what comprises you, have gotten around a good deal.”
The stars disappeared. “That concludes the guided tour through your ancestral forest. By contract you are permitted one final question.”
“How did you obtain the imagery of the furry animals that purport to be my ancestors?”
“You are permitted that question, but I am not permitted to answer. Our technology is proprietary.” She opened her hands. “Feel free to use your imagination. Thank you, and good bye.”
I saw the assistant on the way out. “So, you guys have time travel?” I said.
He looked at me a moment. “Did she tell you that?”
I nodded, sort of.
“Of course, that’s just shorthand,” he said. “The process involves avatar-assisted remote-viewing-and-recording across multiple temporal membranes.” Then he stopped and seemed to reconsider. Giving me a smile, he winked and said, “If you buy into that kind of mumbo jumbo.”
But I did buy it, or at least part of me did. I was thinking about it that night when I took the cover off my telescope and searched for the Veil Nebula. Home — to part of me. A long time ago.
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