Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  ‘And now, it gives me great pleasure . . .’

  ‘Coming to you, space station,’ said Damle.

  ‘. . . to declare this LunaSun resource fully operational.’

  As the President hit the button, Damle switched broadcast feed to a camera focused on the moon itself from the ERGIA space station, 290,000 kilometres closer to the Earth.

  One-point-six billion television viewers watched agog as the moon apparently burst into flame. Thousands of mirrors had turned and flexed in synchronization, reflecting the sun’s blazing light back down onto the Earth’s night-time surface.

  ‘Los Angeles,’ instructed Damle. ‘Insert time overlay.’

  From the top of the Disney Tower on Wilshire Avenue a camera revealed the dark streets of downtown LA with an overlay caption that read 11.36 p.m. Suddenly the whole scene was bathed in bright white light and there was a faint sound of cheering from the sidewalk down below.

  ‘Honolulu,’ said Damle. Then he switched in turn to cameras positioned in Sidney, Tokyo, Singapore and Calcutta.

  As ERGIA’s perception consultants had organized, hired crowds had gathered in each location to greet the new night sun with what seemed to be outbursts of spontaneous enthusiasm.

  *

  It was mid-morning over Morocco and the reaches of the eastern Atlantic as the moon flared into life and, for the first time in its four billion years of existence, became a sibling sun.

  But the local populations were not joining in the global celebrations. All along the north-west African littoral, from Casablanca to Dakar, coastal communities were being frantically evacuated. Geohazard Laboratories in Athens had issued a Level 4 tsunami warning – a wave up to three metres high was due to strike the coastline within the next twenty-four hours.

  Just under 300 miles out in the Atlantic, the volcano known as Cumbre Vieja, or ‘Old Mountain’, was beginning an eruption, its first since 1949. Situated on the western flank of Las Palma, the westernmost of the five main islands of the Canaries group, the volcano was likely to pose only a moderate threat to its immediate island neighbours and to the African continent. Any subsequent tsunami would be directed primarily outwards to the west and north, where only the vast expanses of the Atlantic Ocean waited to swallow the mighty wave.

  At 11.30 a.m. GMT, Cumbre Vieja erupted explosively, with a force that instantly increased the radius of its main top vent from 200 to 800 metres, ejecting mafic grey pumice at 1.5 million tonnes per second and creating a vertical column of fire that reached twenty-eight kilometres – twice the height of Mount Everest – into the bright morning sky.

  The entire western flank of Las Palma island, already weakened by millennia of volcanic activity, collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean, sliding 2,800 metres down the sheer slopes of its underwater mountain. The amount of rock so violently shifted and hurled into the sea was twice the volume of the Isle of Man, or about two-thirds the size of Long Island.

  Displaced by this vast landslide, a dome of water 900 metres high and twenty-six kilometres wide reared up and then collapsed, its falling bow creating the first wave in a mighty tsunami train. Travelling at over 500 miles per hour, the eleven-crested mega-tsunami radiated out westwards and northwards, on a never-slowing, non-stop, nine-hour journey to destinations including Cuba, Florida, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.

  *

  Dr Giorgio Zaoskoufis watched the eruption of Cumbre Vieja in real-time, switching between signals from three different Geohazard satellite cameras as Las Palma’s entire western flank collapsed.

  Data from sensors on the volcano slopes and the nearby seabed were streaming in by the petabyte to the Athens monitoring centre, all of it confirming what Giorgio already suspected. Twenty years earlier, he had written his doctoral thesis on mega-tsunamis and the threats that they posed to the world’s most densely populated urban communities. He had even modelled a landslide in the Canary Islands as part of his research project.

  On the main display screen, every seismic sensor in the eastern Atlantic lit up as the mountain’s collapse sent shock waves through the planet’s fragile crust. Zaoskoufis shook his head as the introduction to his Ph.D. dissertation came swimming vividly back into his mind: A tsunami does not behave like a normal wave. To the naked eye, a tsunami moving in deep water is indistinguishable from any other wave. But while normal waves have a length of 150 metres, tsunamis have wavelengths in excess of 100 kilometres. The duration of a normal wave is about ten seconds, while the period of a tsunami is about an hour. Normal waves usually only affect the ocean surface, and are relatively slow. Tsunamis influence the ocean down to its deepest sea floor and can travel at over 700 kilometres per hour – over 420 m.p.h. Unlike normal waves, tsunamis can travel very long distances with almost no diminution of energy.

  But he still found it hard to believe that the rare phenomenon he had once described as part of a dry, academic exercise was now actually happening in real life.

  Though seismic activity in the eastern Atlantic fell within the territory monitored by Geohazard Athens, the Caribbean and the east coast of America were the responsibility of the duty officer in Oakland, California. Zaoskoufis realized that every extra minute of warning they could provide to those populations living in the tsunami’s path could save thousands of lives.

  But he dared not recommend issuing a mega-tsunami warning to the entire eastern seaboard of the United States without being absolutely certain, without having hard data to back up his advice. He would also have to prove his case to his opposite number in Oakland and he – or she – would then have the responsibility for deciding on the timing and the nature of any warning originating from Geohazard.

  Leaving his two assistants in charge of the monitoring centre, Zaoskoufis hurried to the Simulation Theater next door, and patched through the data now pouring in from the eastern Atlantic seabed sensors and the 3-D satellite cameras.

  Twenty minutes later the geophysicist sat slumped in his holo-pit viewing chair. Frozen in front of him was an image of Manhattan that might have been created by the most maniacal director of disaster movies. The data overlay had predicted a death toll so large that he had paused the simulation and carefully recalculated the core data before running it again and yet again.

  There were now just over eight hours until the first crest of the tsunami would reach American soil. He had already alerted Carlos Robredo in California and the Mexican-born seismologist was now busy running a copy of the simulation for himself.

  Zaoskoufis opened the connection to Oakland. It was 4.30 a.m. in the Bay Area.

  ‘I woke Taylor Blane up an hour ago,’ Robredo informed him. Zaoskoufis understood fully why the local duty officer had felt the need to disturb Geohazard’s CEO. ‘Blane wanted to inform the President personally, but apparently he’s away on the moon, giving some speech. They got the Vice-President out of bed and he’s agreed that the White House itself will issue the official warning.’

  ‘What size evacuation zone are you recommending?’

  The Greek scientist heard the hesitation in Robredo’s voice. ‘Twenty miles at sea level. Knock off a mile for every ten yards as the land rises.’

  ‘What about little islands like the Azores, Bermuda or the Bahamas?’

  ‘We can only warn them,’ Robredo sighed. ‘I know there’s not much some of them will be able to do.’

  ‘May God be with them all,’ said Zaoskoufis, closing the connection.

  He pressed a button providing an intercom link with the main monitoring centre. ‘Contact all local Geohazard staff,’ he instructed Yoyo Kanii. ‘Scientific, support and admin. Inform them about what’s happened, tell them that I know it’s Sunday afternoon – but they’re all needed in here now.’

  When he had transmitted his own regional warnings across Europe and dealt with the inevitable follow-up calls of disbelief, Zaoskoufis sprinted back to the monitoring centre. The next twelve hours would be frantic as Geohazard staff all over the world worked together to
provide advice and guidance to all the regions affected.

  As he came through the door, Zaoskoufis glanced up at one of the overhead screens providing a satellite view of the entire Atlantic ocean. Swirls of white cloud covered its northern part, but a wide central expanse of the ocean was clear.

  He stood and stared at the image, reflecting how strange it was that such a vast menace could be travelling through the open sea at 500 miles per hour without leaving any visible trace of its passing.

  *

  President Underwood’s keynote speech had overrun badly and it was already causing scheduling chaos up in the TV gallery. But nobody had been prepared to cut off the President of the United States in mid-flow.

  ‘This is why I hate directing live television,’ groaned Narinda Damle as he received a revised set of timings.

  Immediately before the debate itself, Perdy’s documentary had aired. She had tried to take a balanced approach, explaining the obvious benefits of climate management whilst giving its opponents an opportunity to voice their objections. It was now, in this live debate, that the various protagonists could flesh out their arguments. There was still a huge worldwide audience tuned in.

  ‘Who’s up next?’ asked Damle, before instructing his camera operators to focus on audience applause at the end of Negromonte’s speech.

  ‘Fairfax – the lawyer,’ said Perdy. ‘But he’s furious that we’ve had to cut out the computer simulation that he had lined up.’

  ‘Too bad,’ snapped Damle, sounding delighted that others were suffering too.

  ‘Go to Fairfax in chair eight,’ he told camera four.

  For the sake of diplomatic protocol, Perdy had allowed the politicians to speak first but, following Underwood’s verbose overrun, each had been told to keep their contribution to a minimum. That had proved to be a contradiction too far; politicians and brevity had proved mutually incompatible.

  Now the schedule was running fourteen minutes late and Perdy doubted whether she could include either the spokesperson for the Friends of the Earth or the Archbishop of Boston, both of whom were waiting expectantly in their seats.

  ‘There are five main forces governing our universe,’ explained Michael as he began delivering his hastily cut-down speech. ‘The first is gravity, which holds our planet, our populations and our solar system together. The second and third are the strong and weak nuclear forces which hold the atomic constituents together. The fourth is the electromagnetic force which binds matter itself, and which counter-balances the fifth component: light and all other forms of radiation. These are the fundamental forces of nature, the fabric of our universe, and we tamper with them at our peril.’

  ‘Look at that, Perdy,’ said Narinda Damle, pointing to a gallery monitor.

  A presidential aide had climbed onto the stage and was scooting along behind the row of chairs in a half-crouch.

  ‘. . . But reflective climate management is now interfering with the magnetic forces that . . .’

  ‘Camera six, go closer in on that running man.’ Damle switched the global broadcast feed away from Michael Fairfax and onto the aide now whispering in the President’s ear. ‘Give me a close-up on the President’s face.’

  The world watched bemused as President James T. Underwood attempted to digest whatever news was being mouthed into his ear. He was struggling to keep his face impassive, but every viewer realized that whatever he had just been told couldn’t be good news. In fact, the President’s face wore a look of absolute horror.

  *

  By four p.m. Giorgio Zaoskoufis had applied the incoming data from the Atlantic seabed sensors to model and measure the volume of rock that had fallen into the Atlantic, the speed at which the displaced water was now moving westwards, and the overall span of the mega-tsunami. He displayed the results on his main screen.

  Current span: 1,861km

  Projected crest height at landfall: 50.2m

  Volume: 500km3

  Speed: 100 m/s-1

  Below, the geophysicist had listed the data he would provide to his own clients in London, Dublin, Lisbon and Paris, and to Geohazard in Oakland for distribution onwards to US and Caribbean government agencies. This included the tsunami’s estimated arrival times in the Azores, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the islands of the Greater Antilles, Cuba and the eleven states lining the eastern seaboard of the United States, from Florida up to Maine.

  Embedded in all this top-level data were regional timing variations, allowances for local sea conditions, estimates of the extent of coastal ingress, impact force, timings of secondary tsunami landfalls, volumes of water per square kilometre, and a hundred other parameters that would be needed by emergency planners in these projected disaster areas.

  ‘Aircraft leaving the Azores,’ announced Yoyo Kanii, switching the long-range satellite image up to the main wall-screen.

  A large military transport plane had just taken off, and they could see a score of other large planes taxiing into position on the airfield.

  ‘How many people live on those islands?’ asked Yoyo.

  ‘About a quarter of a million – as of last year,’ said Zaoskoufis. In the last hour he had refreshed his memory of all population figures in the zones to be affected.

  ‘They won’t be able to accommodate them all in those planes,’ gasped the Japanese trainee, her hand to her mouth.

  ‘There’s plenty of high ground on all the Azores islands,’ Zaoskoufis reassured her. ‘They’ve had over an hour now to get away from the low-lying areas.’ He pulled the Azores data back onto the screen as an overlay.

  ‘Fifteen minutes to landfall,’ he announced. ‘Let’s see if any of the news channels are broadcasting live from there.’ He flicked up CNN, but Michael Fairfax’s earnest face still filled the screen.

  Chapter Twenty

  On direct orders from the White House, at 8.13 a.m. EST the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a mandatory evacuation order for the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. Time was of the essence. The first crest of the mega-tsunami was expected ashore in less than eight hours.

  In years gone by, the residents of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas had been well used to fleeing from Caribbean hurricanes and tropical storms, but climate-management services had been successfully steering such disasters away from American coasts for over twenty years. As a result, few residents in the southern littoral states were prepared for this sudden migration.

  But civic evacuation plans were still in place and by nine a.m. highways had been turned into one-way arteries heading westwards and twenty-two million people were now on the move. Thirty miles inland, the army was starting to convert schools, town halls, leisure facilities and shopping malls into temporary reception centres.

  In the northern states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, as well as in the Canadian territory of Nova Scotia, coastal residents were also able to head inland in long streams of orderly one-way traffic. Helicopters circled overhead on the lookout for breakdowns while police motorcyclists on the ground were ready to deal with any incidents of panic or road rage. Army trucks, Civil Defense units and the National Guard went to hospitals and retirement homes to evacuate those who were unable to move themselves to safety.

  The main problems, everyone realized, were going to occur on Long Island and in New York City itself Over three and a half million people lived on Long Island, but of the seven bridges serving the island’s western tip, only three, in the north, connected directly with the mainland. Another three spanned the East River to Manhattan while one crossed Lower New York Bay to Staten Island.

  Six car-ferry services – together operating twenty-two vessels – ran between the island’s northern shore and the Connecticut coast, but each one-way journey would take over an hour. Long Island was surrounded by marinas, however, and boat owners on the northern side of the island started to weigh up whether they stood a better chance of getting to safety by sea or by road.

  Thirty minutes after the evacuation or
der was first broadcast, Long Island’s six main east-west highways were blocked for a distance of over twenty miles – backed up through Kings County, Queens and Nassau. Police hurried traffic across the bridges to the mainland, but many other fleeing residents were forced to take the tunnel and bridges that led directly into Manhattan.

  John F. Kennedy International Airport, low-lying and right on the southern coastline of Long Island, was besieged by people hoping to find a seat out on any available plane. Heavily armed police formed cordons around the departure terminals, allowing only ticket-holders through. But the air-traffic control computer systems could not cope with the vastly increased workload as they diverted planes already on final approach, gave clearance to scheduled flights attempting to depart, and tried to cope with the hundreds of business, cargo and private pilots who had scrambled to their planes and were now demanding immediate clearance for take-off.

  By default, the computers prioritized runway time and immediate-vicinity air space according to the published schedules. As a result, the departure waiting list grew so long that many of the private pilots sitting waiting with family and friends in warmed-up aircraft were allotted take-off slots falling minutes or even hours after the tsunami was due to strike.

  Ten miles to the north, LaGuardia Airport suffered a similar inundation by would-be evacuees hoping to get off the island. But the far larger number of private aircraft parked or hangared at this domestic airport produced chaos on the apron as many pilots chose to ignore the frantically issued orders from the control tower and began unauthorized take-offs over the grass. At one point, private planes were making take-off runs at six abreast, like successive waves of Second World War fighter squadrons. Their erratic dispersal into the surrounding skies brought all scheduled departures to a halt.

  Initially, things in Manhattan itself were slightly more orderly. Unlike some other coastal regions of the United States, New York City had well-developed plans for civic escape and evacuation. As the world’s most tempting urban target for terrorist attack, successive mayoral administrations had developed multiple contingency plans to deal with aircraft crashes, biohazard contamination, radiological attacks, dirty bombs, and even the explosion of portable nuclear weapons within the confines of the island city.