Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  The BBC producer turned to find Nicholas Negromonte at her side. She was almost as tall as him but she was surprised at how muscular he seemed close up; he seemed to radiate an aura of fitness. His dark, wavy hair almost glowed.

  ‘Most people call me Perdy,’ she told him smilingly. ‘And thanks for letting me tag along today. It’s been very informative.’

  ‘Would you like to visit the moon for yourself, Perdy?’ asked Negromonte, glancing back at the lunar surface. ‘I have to visit the LunaSun facilities again in a couple of weeks. So if the BBC would like to come along . . .’

  Before she could answer there was a sudden deafening roar. The lights in the viewing gallery flicked out and Perdy felt the floor under her feet begin to move. Like everybody else’s, her soles had been stuck to the suction carpet, but she suddenly found herself shaken loose and catapulted up towards the lofty ceiling.

  Her head struck metal and she instantly lost consciousness.

  Chapter Three

  Two days after visiting the hulk community, Michael Fairfax was 3,000 miles further north, thirty degrees of latitude closer to the equator, and in a considerably kinder climate.

  He had broken his journey home to stop over in the island republic of Independent Samoa, in the naturally balmy South Pacific.

  But he wasn’t visiting for rest and recreation; tourists no longer visited these islands. The rising oceans had spared few of the nation’s beaches, the formerly idyllic weather had become far too unpredictable, and the local crime rate was now notoriously high.

  As he turned his face away from the setting sun, Michael noticed some graffiti daubed in faded green paint across a large boulder embedded in the sand, just where the eroded beach finished and the treeline began.

  FUCK CLIMATE CONTROL

  He turned to Mautoatasi Otasi, his host, and pointed out the scrawled protest. ‘Do many of your people feel like that?’

  ‘Most of them,’ acknowledged the elderly prime minister sadly.

  Samoa had never been a rich nation but in the late twentieth century this group of islands had evolved into a vacation paradise, favoured by those who preferred natural beauty and unsophisticated living to high-rise hotels, crowded swimming pools and neon-lit casinos.

  However, over the last fifty years the terrible effects of global warming had swallowed nearly all of the beaches, and the rising seas had also contaminated most of the islands’ scant groundwater reserves. That had been the beginning of the end for the country’s short-lived tourist boom, and now this remote nation was almost wholly unvisited and its coastal inhabitants had been driven from their homelands.

  ‘Well, we’d better be getting back,’ said the prime minister, heaving a sigh. They had spent much of the afternoon inspecting the denuded coastline where those beautiful beaches had been, where the villages had once thrived. Throughout, Michael had been assiduously recording data and images to substantiate his forthcoming legal case against the world’s major energy corporations.

  Lost in their own thoughts, the two men threaded their way back through an abandoned village to where a ministerial assistant was waiting for them with the official car – and a well-armed security escort. Neither man seemed to notice that the surrounding woodland was unnaturally, claustrophobically mute, the air heavy as if the island was holding its breath.

  By the time they reached the narrow dirt road it was almost dark. On this cloud-free evening the full moon seemed enormous and, to eyes more used to northern latitudes, unbelievably close. The stars had started to create a jewelled canopy that Michael now knew from experience would develop quickly into a vast and startling sweep of stellar luminescence. He thought how much Matthew, his thirteen-year-old son and a keen amateur astronomer, would have enjoyed being here now.

  Then the hydrogen-powered limo and its small military escort was on its way back to the capital, returning the Samoan government’s important guest to Aggie Gray’s Hotel in Apia, the one fully functioning hostelry remaining on the island.

  Once in his room, Michael checked that his system had dealt correctly with all of the day’s texts, e-mails, voice calls and other forms of electronic communication. Then he spent fifteen minutes talking to his two sons back home in California. As he closed the connection he was suddenly overcome by a sense of profound loneliness.

  He sighed and shrugged off such feelings. In less than twenty-four hours he would be flying home to San Francisco, the city in which he had been born, the city that was still his home and was also home to his ex-wife and two children. He realized he was still missing Lucy.

  Picking up a remote control from the bedside table he flicked on the wall-mounted viewing panel.

  Instantly filling the screen was an image of what looked like a mangled child’s toy, and Michael frowned as he tried to work out what it was. Then a news caption appeared.

  ERGIA SPACE STATION EXPLOSION ECO-TERRORISTS SUSPECTED

  ‘US, European and Chinese rescue craft are now on their way to the ERGIA Space Station to aid survivors of a blast that occurred at seventeen-fifty-four GMT today, Wednesday,’ a newsreader’s voice announced over the image. ‘The explosion damaged the docking bay and outer hull, but so far there are no reports of fatalities. The ERGIA control centre has been blown out of orbital alignment, however, and the station’s delicate solar reflectors have been severely damaged.’

  Michael could clearly see the damage to the long extensions radiating from the hub of the space station; it now looked like a child’s plastic whirligig that had been scrunched up by a giant hand.

  ‘The FBI Space Crime Unit has been called in to investigate, while ERGIA has announced that, as an emergency measure, all climate management has temporarily been switched to the company’s back-up control centre in Los Angeles. Some disruption to scheduled weather patterns in North America is expected for the next several weeks. This morning, ERGIA stock has plunged to an annual low of three dollars and nine cents on the NASDAQ market.’

  Michael flicked off the screen thoughtfully. ERGIA was top of his hit list for legal action, but he had little doubt that the mighty corporation would be fully covered by its insurers. The question was, how could terrorists yet again have smuggled a bomb into a space station? It was the third such attack in as many years, and each time public outcry had been followed by security reviews and a tightening up of procedures.

  After pouring himself a Scotch and ice, he went into the bathroom for a leisurely soak and, with the taps running, undressed slowly. Then he eased his weary body gratefully into deep, warm water.

  He was about to embark on the largest, longest, most high-profile and most worthwhile case of his legal career. Following decades of environmental, social and economic abuse by corporations in all corners of the planet, the United Nations, the EU and, most surprisingly, the all-powerful United States had finally ratified a joint agreement to set up a new international judiciary to administer corporate justice. The world’s newspapers and business magazines had recently been rife with speculation about the various cases being planned against certain multinational corporations.

  After eight months of persuading enough world-class experts to testify in court that global warming had been caused by fossil fuel emissions – and that the major energy companies had fully known this, even as they went on peddling their toxic products – he would soon be announcing his first gigantic legal action. His claim for damages was likely to run into trillions of dollars.

  Michael’s body was suddenly jerked upwards, then he fell back and banged his head hard against the edge of the bath. A strange ripple travelled up the tub towards his head and the surface of the bath water broke up into little cross-hatched wavelets.

  As he sat forward quickly and reached for a towel, the room lights flickered and went off. Then the loud wail of an electronic siren filled the hotel. Outside the bathroom window there was a strange orange glow high in the sky.

  Leaping from the bath, Michael ran towards the sliding door and stepped o
ut onto the white-painted wooden balcony. The town seemed unusually dark.

  He heard an immense, improbably deep double boom and gazing to one side over the low rooftops of Apia he saw the mountain in the distance. Gouts of flame were now spouting from its distant summit and streams of glowing red were already tracking down the upper slopes. He felt the frame of the balcony flex alarmingly beneath his feet.

  Then Michael could only stand watching in awestruck horror as the ancient lava plug of Mount Māriota was blown high into the night sky, propelled upwards on a completely vertical column of fire.

  Wall Street Journal

  Thursday, 25 May 2055

  HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD AS SAMOAN VOLCANO ERUPTS

  geohazard’s shares tumble

  Shares in Geohazard Laboratories, Inc. (GEHAZ) crashed to an all-time low of $1.65 on NASDAQ last night following the company’s failure to warn that Mount Māriota, Independent Samoa’s long-dormant volcano, was imminently due to erupt.

  With a force equal to a fifteen-gigaton atomic explosion, the volcano erupted yesterday at 19.41 Western Pacific Time, blowing billions of tons of rocks and lava into the atmosphere. Early reports indicate that hundreds of Samoans living nearby died in the aftermath.

  Fires that broke out in the surrounding dense rainforests and across the capital city of Apia were still raging out of control this morning. Over 4,000 people have been made homeless and the entire island of Upolu is without power or running water.

  Mount Māriota is the world’s fourteenth major volcanic eruption so far this year.

  Chapter Four

  All was blackness. Then, deep down in the core, there was a red pinpoint of light, racing upwards towards the surface.

  The ground started to shake and a deep roar rose like the sound of the burning sun. Suddenly the fiery magma was halted, held back by some impenetrable barrier, filling the air with acrid, seething smoke.

  From her motorized viewing chair suspended high over the deep holo-projection pit, Dr Emilia Knight nodded to herself in satisfaction. Then she called to her assistant, seated at a nearby workstation.

  ‘That’s correct, the lava plug held for almost twelve hours – jump forward now.’

  Emilia projected a personal laser display and counted down the seconds. ‘Five, four, three, two—’

  With a deafening double explosion, a fountain of red-hot magma blasted up in front of their eyes, as if they were looking straight into the exhaust flames of an upended rocket engine.

  Emilia slammed her chair’s joystick to the right, and her seat raced on its rails around the perimeter of the deep holo-projection silo. She wanted to see down into the heart of the eruption, into the few seconds after the planet’s molten interior had punched a hole upwards through its thin crust.

  Now arrived on the other side of the virtual volcanic crater, she saw streams of giant rocks and liquefied metals shooting up past her eyes. As hydraulic rams shook the floor and walls of the Simulation Theater, she gazed deeply into the chimney of the volcano that had damaged both her personal scientific reputation and her company’s corporate image.

  It was the third time this morning that they had run the holo-simulation – even though it was only thirty-six hours since the actual real-life eruption had occurred on Samoa.

  Recordings had been collected from over 6,000 sensors located in the region. Using this data Emilia and her team of seismologists and lab assistants had recreated Mount Māriota’s devastating cataclysm in perfect detail, in order to examine the event over and over again to see why they had failed to detect the build-up of pressure, and why they had failed to give a warning enabling the local authorities to order an evacuation of the Samoan capital. Over 600 people were now believed to have died because of their failure.

  As Senior Risk Assessment Seismologist for the Pacific Region, Emilia Knight had personal responsibility for monitoring seismic activity around Samoa itself. She herself had been on duty, here at Geohazard’s US headquarters in Oakland, California, when the volcano had blown so unexpectedly. She was furious; it was the first major seismic event that she had failed to predict during her eight years with the company, and it was the company’s first public failure in fourteen years.

  Twisting the joystick again, she propelled her viewing chair around the perimeter rail for another 180 degrees; all of the data and the computer analyses were now displayed in a fast-running real-time overlay around the image of the eruption:

  Magma exit velocity: 1,440 km per hour (Mach 1)

  Plume height: 28 km

  Thermal energy: Eth = V · d · T · K

  (joules, volume, temp., heat)

  Energy released: 2 × 1018 joules

  Nuclear equivalent: 15 gigatons, approx.

  (100,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.)

  Emilia wanted to drink in every detail of this catastrophe, to create a mental model that would allow her to understand why Māriota had behaved so differently from all the other volcanoes that she had ever studied.

  Although the special effects of noise, sound, movement and smoke had been included in the Simulation Theater’s design mainly to help educate and entertain visiting schoolchildren and members of the public, Emilia found these accompaniments to visual computer simulations extremely helpful; they stimulated ideas and thoughts in the scientific mind about what might have happened deep within the earth’s mantle.

  The first phase of the main eruption had lasted over thirteen hours, but now Emilia touched a control on her personal laser screen to pause the computer-generated re-enactment. Immediately, the floor and walls of the theatre’s simulation area returned to their resting positions, and powerful extractor fans began to remove the non-toxic smoke that helped to make these simulations hyper-realistic. The background lighting returned to its normal level once more and the activity-status lights over the exit doors switched from red to green.

  ‘It must have been a spontaneous sub-eugeosyncline occurrence,’ Emilia pronounced to the room in general. ‘Not a chance in hell of us detecting it in advance.’

  Stefano Bardini, her assistant, turned away from his workstation to face her. ‘Bad luck, Em,’ he said sympathetically. ‘But there’s got to be a first time for everybody.’

  ‘Not on my watch,’ snapped Dr Knight. The petite seismologist was known for her own volcanic temper and she thrust herself angrily out of her chair. ‘Let’s go over the ambient data for three days prior to the event. There must be something we missed.’

  A door in the opposite wall of the Seismic Simulation Theater opened and a smartly attired woman entered, followed by a tall, gaunt man in a severe charcoal-grey suit.

  Emilia finished entering instructions on her laser screen, then turned to face the new arrivals. Steve Bardini rose and came to stand slightly behind her.

  The female visitor was Gloria Fernandez, Geohazard’s head of human resources.

  ‘This is Mr Taylor Blane, our new CEO,’ said the HR executive by way of introduction. ‘Mr Blane, this is Dr Emilia Knight.’

  Emilia shook the man’s large hand and lifted her head to meet his stern gaze. Then she turned to her assistant, intending to present him to their new boss.

  ‘So what the hell happened in Samoa?’ demanded Blane, interrupting her introduction in a deep Texan drawl. ‘With all these high-tech toys, how in Christ’s name did you guys fail to spot it coming?’

  Emilia eyed the lean man up and down; she wasn’t used to being spoken to in this way. She even considered ordering him out of her Simulation Theater, then thought better of it.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ she said coldly. ‘We’re running the data now.’

  ‘Have you seen what you’ve done to our goddam stock price?’ asked Blane. The CEO’s disapproving scowl shifted from Emilia Knight to her assistant and then back again. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘We just don’t have the budget to keep sufficient trained staff based out there,’ said Emilia at last, her voice icy calm. ‘We don’t eve
n employ local Samoan people as part-time monitors, not since the last round of cutbacks.’

  ‘There was absolutely no warning when Māriota blew,’ broke in Steve Bardini, stepping forward. ‘No one could have predicted it, except maybe God Himself.’

  ‘Thank you, Steve,’ said Emilia quietly, glancing from her assistant back to the CEO.

  She didn’t have much to add to her preliminary written report, an account that had been so lacking in hard facts – she had struggled to make it extend to two pages – that its brevity had clearly infuriated the new CEO and had led to this confrontation.

  ‘I’m sorry my initial report was so brief, sir,’ said Emilia. ‘But now that we’ve built and run a simulation, I’m convinced that the Mount Māriota eruption was a very rare event, a spontaneous sub-eugeosyncline occurrence that . . .’

  Her voice tailed off as she noted her CEO’s uncomprehending stare. Then she remembered he was an accountant, not a scientist.

  Trying an easier tack, she explained, ‘You see, we usually notice a pattern of earthquake swarms – little tremors – in advance. And we listen out for what we call groans. But very occasionally there occurs a large seismic explosion so far down in the earth’s crust, thirty kilometres or more, that it doesn’t provide us with any of the normal advance warnings. The magma just comes shooting right on up – that’s what happened on Samoa.’

  Taylor L. Blane regarded the two scientists in front of him with scepticism.

  ‘I’ll only accept that once I’ve seen an independent technical review,’ he told them. ‘I presume you’re going out there to visit the actual volcano rather than just remaining here and playing with all these fancy gadgets?’

  The two scientists exchanged glances. They had been discussing the same thing just before they’d starting running this morning’s simulations. The problem was that Emilia had only recently terminated their furtive office romance and neither of them really wanted to be forced back into close companionship during an arduous overseas trip. Or, at least, Emilia didn’t. Steve didn’t mind at all. He still thought he could get her to change her mind, and they could get back together again.