Now to spread the headset photos, spread the story. The guilty need to know: even in their locked compounds, in their beds asleep at night, the Children of Kali will descend on you and kill you. There is no hiding, there is no escape.
One down, several hundred to go. Although the list might get extended. Because Kali sees all. And the Children of Kali are not going away until all the guilty are gone. Be advised.
34
Notes for Badim again, on trip with B and Mary to India.
Fly into Delhi, met by Chandra, no longer in government, but asked by B to meet us and introduce us to new minister and staff. C takes us into government house and introduces us to her replacement and his staff. Meet and greet, then updates. Discussion of solar radiation management applied post–heat wave. They claim to have depressed temperatures in India two degrees and globally one degree, for three years, with decreasing effect, until six years later back to pre-operation levels. No discernible effect on monsoon during that time.
M questions this last assertion and C testy in response. Monsoon variability increasing for last thirty years, somewhat like California weather in that the average is seldom hit, most years much higher or lower than average, which is an artifact only. M objects, says thought monsoon was regular as rain in Ireland, crucial to crops and life generally, July through September daily rain, how variable could it be? Very variable, C replies. Not happy to be challenged on this. Daily rain a myth. Weeks can pass in August, etc. M looking skeptical, as is B.
B intervenes. What are graphs showing? Total rainfall year to year, monsoonwise. Why no graph?
Staff peck around a bit and bring up graph. Monsoon rain indeed fluctuating more through last two decades, and after their geoengineering maybe a bit more so. Second year after application particularly low, semi-drought, especially in the west. Another problem, C points out. Monsoon not the same east to west, always that way.
M asks what plan is going forward. Are they going to do it again? Because global average temperatures rising again. A few wet-bulb 34s in the previous few years, lots of deaths. Wet-bulb 35s very likely to happen again somewhere, and soon.
Exactly, C says. And wet-bulb 35 is deadly to all, but even wet-bulb 33 is also bad enough to kill lots of people.
Of course, M says. So does that mean you’re going to do it?
C defers to new minister, Vikram. V says, We are certainly ready to do it. It will be a more orderly procedure this time (not looking at C as he says this), involving democratic processes and expert consultation. But we are ready.
B asks, A double Pinatubo this time, I hear?
V: Probably yes. That is what first intervention was understood to be.
M and B not looking at each other. Finally M says, There are questions of sovereignty here, I know. But India signed the Paris Agreement along with all other nations, and the Agreement has protocols for this kind of thing that all signatories have agreed to adhere to.
We may break the treaty, V says. Again. That’s what we have to decide.
B points out penalties for this may be high. Won’t be like after heat wave.
V: We are aware of that. Part of the deliberative process. Is benefit worth cost?
C adds sharply, We won’t allow another heat wave just so we can be in compliance with a treaty written up by developed nations outside of tropics and their dangers.
Mary: Understood.
Meeting ends. No one looking happy.
Mary asks if she can be taken to see the site of the heat wave.
C says no. Nothing to see there. Not a tourist site.
Even less happiness.
B: Where to then? Anything you would like to show us?
V and C exchange look. Yes, V says. Must stay in Delhi himself, but C can take M and B out to see farms in Karnataka.
Farms?
New paradigm for farms. Come see.
Happy to, claim M and B unconvincingly. Not ag people really.
Next day in Karnataka after short flight. Green. Hills to east, also green. Terraces on slopes, but much land flat. Green of several shades, but also rectangles of yellow, orange, red, purple, dark brown, even pale blue. Flowers of spice crops apparently. Everything grows here, new local host says, name Indrapramit. Best soil and climate on Earth. Now banking 7 parts per thousand of carbon per year, immense drawdown. Also food for millions. Local tenure rights for local farmers, no absent landlords anymore except for India herself, the Indian people, as represented by Karnataka state, also the district and village. Stewards of land. Keep room for wild animals in the hedgerows and habitat corridors. Tigers back, dangerous but beautiful. Gods among us. And all organic. No pesticides at all. Sikkim model now applied to ag all over India. Kerala model for governance, the same.
Communist organic farmers, B notes. He thinks it’s funny, M doesn’t think he should joke. Locals happy to agree to his characterization. Also these changes mean end of caste’s worst impacts, they claim. Dalits now involved, women always half of every panchayat, an old Indian law now applied for real. Now there are farm tenure rights, full ownership of one’s work, its surplus value. Women and all castes equal, Hindu and Muslim, Sikh and Jain and Christian, all together in New India. Communist organic farmers just the tip of the iceberg.
Riots we heard about? B asks. Again M annoyed with him.
But again hosts happy to explain. Indra: Some absentee landlords, on being eminent-domained, hired BJP thugs from city to come here and beat people up. It was one-on-one, so satyagraha not so effective. Can’t lie down in front of a thug to much effect. Better tactic against armies, ironically. So had to fight it out, defend selves. Swarmed the invaders, beat them pretty thoroughly. Reported as riot but actually repelling of invaders. Sort of like organic ag; you have to use integrated pest management.
B: Is one tool of integrated pest management targeted assassinations? Global community not happy with murders of private citizens. A terror tactic, he says, like thugees of yore, these Children of Kali.
M again staring at him as if thinking he is deliberately trying to be offensive.
C also not pleased. Says sharply, Murder rate never really a concern when poor people are being killed by terrorists hired by rich people. Turnabout may not be fair play, but not everything that happens is government sponsored, as distinguished visitors well know. Lots of forces unleashed now. Kali just one of the gods in action now, remember that. So, integrated pest management— yes.
M seizes on this to change topic. How does it work if you get a crop infestation? Insects you don’t want, no insecticides to use, what do you do?
Indra: There are insecticides, they just aren’t poisonous chemicals. Other bugs, mainly. Biological warfare.
Does that work?
Not always, no. But when crops are lost to infestations we can’t stop, we clear the fields and send all the waste plant material to the vats. They are part of our system too, and include bugs on our side you might call them, that will eat spoiled crops no problem, eating also the pests that spoiled them. All of that is food for the vats. Vat amoeba don’t care what they eat, being omnivores. And from them we get a kind of flour, also the ethanol that powers any machine that still needs to run on liquid fuels. Then for some kinds of infestations we burn the land, let it lie fallow a season or two, then back in business. Try something different each time. We keep learning things, it’s a work in progress.
So you have microbacterial Children of Kali, B jokes. Again M annoyed.
Everything under the sun cycles, Indra says.
This perhaps also acknowledges we are all getting cooked in midday sun. Mad dogs and Englishmen, and Irish women. Even B looks overheated.
Locals bear down on their enthusiasm by pointing up. So much sun! It’s power, right? We can use solar power to pull water right out of the air, hydrogen out of the water, grow the plants that provide for bioplastics and biofuels for whatever still needs liquid fuel, use hydrogen to power turbines. Sun also helps grow forests that draw down c
arbon, and fuel the biochar burners, and provide the wood for building. We are a fully recycling solar powerhouse. A green power. Other countries don’t have our advantages in sunlight, and minerals, and people, especially people. And ideas.
M and B nodding as politely as they can manage. Heard it before. Preaching to converted. Hotter than hell out here.
The New India: all agree. Our Indian hosts very pleased with how things are going here. But there’s an edge to them too. M and B definitely aware of that edge, emanating strongly from C, also from locals. Aggressive pride. Don’t tread on me. No outsider gets to tell India what to do, not anymore. Never again. Post-colonial anger? Post-geoengineering defensiveness? Tired of the Western world condescending to India? All of the above?
35
We came into Switzerland on a train from Austria. Austria was sending closed trains from Italy through to Switzerland, and in St. Gallen the Swiss stopped them and required passengers to get off and go through a registration process. That happened to us. Most of the people on our train were from Algeria or Tunisia, boat people who had landed in Italy hoping to get to France or Suisse Romande, where we would speak the language. Getting into Switzerland would be a big step on the way.
We were herded through rooms in a giant building, like immigration control buildings at airports, but older. We were interrogated in French, and then we were separated into men and women, which caused a lot of distress and anger. No one understood it until we were led into smaller examination rooms and given a cursory physical that included stripping to the waist and submitting to a chest X-ray. Apparently they were looking for signs of tuberculosis. That was offensive and disturbing enough that when we were dressed again and reunited with the women, and we found they had been forced to undergo the same process, which had been administered by women when it came to the X-rays, but run by men in the other parts of the process, we got mad. The whole thing was dehumanizing, and of course this was not the first time it had happened, refugees are by definition less than human, having lost their homes, but perhaps it was some kind of last straw. Something about being in Switzerland, which had a reputation as a clean orderly lawful place, and then being treated like animals, made us mad. Of course the irony was not lost on some of us that it was only because we were in Switzerland and expecting to be treated well that such behavior was offensive; in Egypt or Italy such demeaning treatment would have been expected and thus submitted to. Worse things had happened to us already. Howsoever that may be, we were mad, and when guards marched us back to the trains and we were led to the more southerly tracks, which seemed to be heading back into Austria, many cried out to object, and nothing the guards could say comforted us. We refused to get on trains set on those tracks, because it made no sense to us; we had seen other trains using the southern tracks to head east, and we were sure our train would head that direction too. And being herded onto trains has a very bad feel to it, of course.
Reinforcements appeared to help the guards herd us, and these had long rifles slung over their shoulders. We shouted at them too, and when they started to unsling their rifles and shift them into firing position, some of the young people charged them and the rest of us followed. It had been seven months since leaving Tunisia, and something had snapped in us.
None of the Swiss soldiers fired at us, but as we left the railroad sidings and rushed the buildings in a mass, many more soldiers appeared, and suddenly the air was filled with tear gas. Some of us fled, some charged the police line, and in front of the building the fighting got intense. It seemed clear the police had orders not to shoot us, so we went at them hard, and somehow a gang of young men got one policeman down and got his rifle from him, and one of them shot at the police and then everything changed. Then it was war, except our side had only that one rifle. We started going down left right and center, screaming. Then someone said They’re rubber bullets, they’re just rubber! And we charged again, and in all the confusion a group of us got inside the building. It was the safest place to be given what was happening outside. But by that time we had lost our minds, we had seen our people shot down, rubber bullets notwithstanding, so we thrashed everyone we caught in that building, and someone found something flammable and torched the big receiving room, and though it was a small blaze, by no means was the building on fire, still there was a lot of smoke, not as painful as the tear gas but probably worse for one’s health over the long haul. We didn’t know, we had no idea, we were just lashing out, trying to keep the police out of the building at the same time we were trying to set it on fire, even with us inside it. I suppose at that point we were on a kind of suicide mission. None of us cared at that point. I will never forget that feeling, of lashing out irregardless, of not caring whether I lived or died, of just wanting to maximize damage whatever way I could. If I got killed doing it that was fine, as long as there was damage. I wanted the world to suffer like we had.
Finally there was nothing to do but lie on the concrete floor and try to get under the smoke. That worked for most of us, but it meant they could come in and scoop us up and carry us off trussed like sheep for slaughter.
Later, after the inquiry, we were sent through to France. We were reunited with our families, and ultimately we found that only six people died in that riot, none of them Swiss. And damage to the facility was minimal. What remained was that feeling. Oh I will never forget it. When you lose all hope and all fear, then you become something not quite human. Whether better or worse than human I can’t say. But for an hour I was not a human being.
36
The Arctic Ocean’s ice cover melted entirely away in the late summer of 2032, and the winter sea ice that formed in the following winter was less than a meter thick, and broken up by winds and currents into jumbled islands of pancake ice, separated by skim ice or brash ice or even open leads and internal ice-bordered seas many kilometers wide, so that when spring came and the sun hit, that winter’s skimpy ice quickly melted and the constant summer sunlight penetrated deep into the Arctic waters, which it warmed quite a bit, which thus thinned the next winter’s ice even more.
This was a feedback loop with teeth. The Arctic ice cap, which at its first measurement in the 1950s was more than ten meters thick, had been a big part of the Earth’s albedo; during northern summers it had reflected as much as two or three percent of the sun’s incoming insolation back into space. Now that light was instead spearing into the ocean and heating it up. And for reasons not fully understood, the Arctic and the Antarctic were already the most rapidly warming places on Earth. This meant also that the permafrost ringing the Arctic in Siberia and Alaska and Canada and Greenland and Scandinavia was melting faster and faster; which meant the release of a great deal of permafrost carbon, and also methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times stronger than CO2 in its ability to capture heat in the atmosphere. Arctic permafrost contained as much stored methane as all the Earth’s cattle would create and emit over six centuries, and this giant burp, if released, would almost certainly push Earth over an irreversible tipping point into jungle planet mode, completely ice-free; at which point sea level would be 110 meters higher than at present, with global average temperatures at least 5 or 6 degrees Celsius higher and probably more, rendering great stretches of the Earth uninhabitable by humans. At that point civilization would be over. Some remainder of humanity might adapt to the new biosphere, but they would be a post-traumatic remnant, in a post-mass-extinction world.
That being the case, efforts were being made to thicken the Arctic sea ice in winter, which would allow it to hold on longer through the summers.
These efforts were awkward at best. Arctic winters were still sunless and cold, and a skim of ice covered most of the sea. And there was no good and obvious method to thicken that ice. So to begin with, a number of methods were tried and evaluated. One involved running autonomous amphibious craft over the outer edge of the winter sea ice as soon as it formed, each craft pumping up seawater from the still liquid ocean nearby, then spraying it into the
air in a fine spray that would freeze before it came down, this flocking making thicker the outermost border of the sea ice, and hopefully thus slowing its breakup when the sun arrived in spring.
This worked, in a limited way, but it would take thousands of such vehicles to adequately thicken the sea ice, and each vehicle could only be created at the expense of a certain amount of carbon burned into the atmosphere. Nevertheless it was felt worth doing, despite the expense in money, materials, and carbon burn associated with construction of the amphibians. Now that the cost of losing the sea ice was clearly seen to be hugely more important than the financial cost of preventing the loss, the financial cost was no longer a stopper to this plan proceeding.
Then, as airship factories were proliferating all around the world, it was possible to make some that would fly over the Arctic sea ice every winter, powered by batteries, pumping up water from holes punched in the thinnest sea ice, to fill tanks and then spray that water onto the surface ice below, where it also froze and fell as flocking, and thus thickened the ice. As in the Antarctic pumping efforts, it felt at first like sucking the ocean through a drinking straw: miniscule efforts! Teensy effects! A sick little joke! But every good work has to begin somewhere. And really, if these projects didn’t succeed, what would follow was so dire to contemplate that the efforts were judged worth making, miniscule or not.
The third method was to drop on the winter ice clouds of small plastic machines, each of which had a solar panel and a drill and a pump and a little sprayer, so that the machine could puncture the ice, draw up some water, and cast it into the air to freeze. Eventually these machines would get buried in snow by way of their own efforts, and then they would shut off and wait for spring and summer to come, when they would float to the surface, if enough snow melted, and wait to be refrozen into the top of the ice the following fall, where they could start all over again. Thousands and then even millions of these could be distributed. If their work went well enough, they would eventually stay trapped in the thickening sea ice for centuries to come— they were even small bits of carbon sequestration, as some pointed out in little attempts at a joke.
The Ministry for the Future Page 14
