The Atlantis Gene

Vale ambushes an Immari security agent, rendering him unconscious with chloroform.

Warner is taken to an underground chamber deep below Immari headquarters. There, she sees a massive glass wall beyond which lies the Bay of Jakarta. Small robots excavate the bay floor, carrying recovered objects to the surface. Grey returns, asking her once again about the therapy she used on the kidnapped children. When Warner presses him to explain, he claims that her research is the key to protecting humanity from a weapon capable of destroying it. He turns her attention to the robots, excavating artifacts from sunken coastal cities, lost after melting glaciers caused sea levels to rise 400 feet. This cataclysmic event, he argues, is corroborated by the Biblical story of The Flood and countless other cross-cultural flood myths. The current incarnation of the human species, Homo Sapiens, survived by killing off its two main competitors, Neanderthals and another, smaller subspecies. This survival instinct, he claims, is hardwired into the human brain and is the cause of war, strife, racism, and all other social problems. Grey theorizes that brains belonging to people with autism may be the next step in human evolution, paving the way for a more advanced subspecies that might want to kill off the current incarnation, Homo Sapiens, to ensure its survival.