The general public had mostly decent food and streaming video until mid-century, which made climate collapse seem like alarmist, leftist propaganda. It was easy to ignore the looming doomsday until the oil reserves dried up, Amazon shuttered its warehouses, and New York began to truly sink. The ocean came in and didn’t recede. Buildings floated off foundations, wastewater plants failed and contaminated ground water systems; millions were displaced. FEMA was overwhelmed and unable to handle the numbers of those in need.
Industrialized nations wanted to agree that the doomsday thermometer should be set at two degrees, but at that temp, parts of Ethiopia, Maldives, Barbados, and Cambodia were already under water. The coral reefs were all dead by the time the thermometer hit one and a half degrees. The problem was scale. Just to slow things down, huge fundamental changes would have had to happen. Humanity couldn’t even agree that the planet was getting hotter. And if it was, some argued that it certainly wasn’t humanity’s fault. Given all of that noise, how could leaders possibly agree to make changes to slow the warming?
The military had been Jackson’s way out. Lucky for her, she had the skills and the disposition to make it work. Her father had pushed her to be tough. He’d probably guessed at the future long before lung cancer claimed him. She closed her eyes and sank onto the headrest.
Her father had been an iron worker, a welder. They’d lived in Southern California in a trailer city on the edge of the ever-expanding desert. She never really knew her mom. Her mother hadn’t been around by the time she was old enough to remember things. She’d left her father for another man and promises of a brighter future. At least that was the story she got from her father. Whatever her reason, she never looked back. She obviously didn’t have the sort of maternal instincts that might cause someone to worry about her kids.
Jackson’s older brother, Kenny, hadn’t been as lucky as she had. Maybe it was tougher for guys. He’d gotten sucked into hanging with a rough crowd. Eventually, that led to drugs. He finally got clean and was working on a protein farm in the central valley. That’s the word she got from her father. She and Kenny hadn’t spoken in a very long time.
Time marked all things, didn’t it?
Time disappeared quickly, as swiftly as the reflected city sliding past her window.
Since she’d begun the Slingshot missions, her perception of time had shifted. A day had taken on new meaning. The days sped by and once gone, could never be recaptured. Time was relentless. It ruthlessly bore down on her, on everyone.
Most people had become gifted at the art of forgetting. That was the easiest way to deal with the new reality, to forget how things had once been. But Jackson couldn’t forget Camille, and maybe on some level, she didn’t want to. She was stranded in her own life, with no hope of rescue.
Chapter Three
Elle stepped through the sliding glass door and approached the main entrance to the multi-level concrete facade of BIOME Industries. Every time she approached this building she couldn’t help thinking that it looked as if it belonged in some cold place like Siberia, rather than northern California. But looks weren’t everything. What mattered to Elle was the work she was allowed to do here, not the dreary gray concrete architecture of the building. She paused and looked skyward. The temperature was expected to climb by late afternoon.
Several security personnel were clustered around a row of three metal detectors when she entered the building. Elle was running behind, so there was no one in front of her as she approached the guard station. She’d gotten home late and couldn’t sleep. Jackson’s abrupt departure had looped through her head endlessly without any possible resolution.
“Good morning, Dr. Graham.” The security guard took her shoulder bag and waved her through the metal detector.
“Good morning.” Elle smiled and then closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose with her fingers while the guard searched her satchel. In addition to poor sleep, she was also feeling the morning-after effect of too many cocktails.
The guard handed Elle her bag and she took the elevator to the third floor. She deposited her things and went down the hall to get coffee. Ted was in his office as she headed back to her lab, intently studying his computer screen.
Ted Hoffman was her primary collaborator. Usually, he only wore a T-shirt under rumpled oxford shirts, but today he’d worn a tie for some reason. His shaggy brown hair was disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept well either. They weren’t close enough friends for her to ask how his night had been. Ted was serious, focused, and detached. He was the perfect research partner as far as Elle was concerned. She knew he was married and had a kid, a son, who’d had some very serious health issues, but that was pretty much all she knew. He was one of those emotionally remote guys who didn’t share personal details easily. Ted glanced up and smoothed his hair with his fingers when he noticed her.
“What’s with the tie?” He probably wouldn’t tell her, but she couldn’t help asking as she sipped the coffee.
“No reason.”
Ted’s desk was piled with documents and file folders. He seemed to have a general distrust of technology despite the fact that his work was utterly dependent on computers. He kept many of his most important notations on paper. It wasn’t a completely crazy notion to have hard copies. The power grid regularly flickered these days. But Elle had no idea how he ever found anything. His haphazard filing system was far too chaotic for her liking.
Numbers cycled across the screen. He slouched in his chair.
Ted was a paleoclimatolgist. His research required serious computing. He spent hours running simulations, then he’d comb through the data to interpret the output. Basically, Ted spent hours upon hours looking at numbers—thousands upon thousands of lines of code. Those numbers told a story and that was the part that informed Elle’s research.
“Have you compiled data yet on the new batch of sediment cores?” he asked.
“I need a few more hours.” She turned to leave. “I’ll have some results by tomorrow.”
A few minutes later, Elle sat with her coffee, waiting for data to populate on her screen.
The low hum of a cooling fan whirred in the background. She set her coffee a safe distance from the container where the core samples were stored. Her research made use of so-called proxy methods as a way to infer information about the past condition and evolution of the world’s oceans.
As a paleobotanist, she studied the plant life of the geological past—the deep past. If the history of Earth was packed into a single twenty-four-hour day, then life emerged before sunrise. Photosynthesis evolved sometime around midmorning, and an oxygen-rich atmosphere happened right before lunch. Most of this imaginary day was pretty boring. It wasn’t until around nine o’clock in the evening that the first multi-celled beings showed up. This all happened half a billion years before now. She spent most of her time, along with Ted, reconstructing the how and when and at what temperature things happened beyond that point.
Paleobotany was part of the more comprehensive science of paleontology, although, in general practice the latter was concerned mainly with animal remains, and plants received only brief consideration. Perhaps that’s why Elle was interested in it. This particular slice of paleontology was less crowded, and as such, there was room to make discoveries.
In some ways, paleobotany was the study of rock formations in which the plants were preserved. Luckily, geology had been of almost equal interest to Elle in college and she could easily have taken that route. In the end though, botany was where her heart resided, plants fascinated her, plants and trees.
Sediment core samples were the focus of her current research. Elle was on a mission to save the seas, and her thesis was that the oceans’ savior would be found in the past. That sounded crazy when she voiced it out loud, but inside her head, and on paper, somehow it made sense.
The seas of the planet were in dire need of oxygen, and oxygen came from plants, namely microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton. Phyt
oplankton at one time had been the foundation of the aquatic food web, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Not only were they an integral part of the food chain, they were the rain forests of the ocean, creating more oxygen and absorbing more CO2 than any other organism cluster on the planet.
But exactly when, and where, to find a population that could save the ocean in this warmer climate? That was the question. And once located, was it possible to reconstruct the organisms from ancient DNA? Or was this entire idea simply science fiction? Someone at BIOME obviously believed in her thesis enough to keep funding her research, so she carried on. In search of a tiny savior of the ocean’s future from the past.
Elle’s team had extracted core samples from various points in the Pacific Ocean. The total thickness of sediments that had accumulated since the beginning of decipherable geologic time was several miles deep. Unfortunately, there was no single place on earth where the entire sequence was visible. Except, possibly, in the deepest parts of the ocean where deposition had been going on continuously without interruption.
Plant fossils were usually preserved in rocks composed of sediments deposited in water. That’s how it worked. Very seldom did a plant get preserved all in one piece with its tissue intact. Elle had to build a species by deciphering its parts.
Sediment cores were very useful in establishing ocean plant life from long ago. Her focus was on the reconstruction of past ecosystems and climates based on the study of microfossils from ocean floor sediments. Cross-referencing with Ted’s research, she had identified time periods in the geological past when there were similar rises in ocean temperature. But with far less CO2.
It was a big puzzle and she was searching for that final piece to complete the scene.
Elle reached for her coffee, now lukewarm. She rocked back in her chair as data compiled on her screen.
Over time, humans had injected massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. After years of climate change denial, pretty much no one now contested that humans had contributed to rapid warming of the atmosphere. People were slow to catch on. As a species they seemed to have a general distrust of the science behind climate change. Elle struggled to understand. Science wasn’t political or emotional, it was simply a conclusion based on study of the facts. She certainly wasn’t trying to push some underlying agenda. She was simply trying to make things better—for everyone.
A large portion of the additional CO2 dissolved in ocean waters, which had resulted in acidification. Adding extra nutrients to coastal oceans, as well as the warmer temps, ultimately lead to a reduction in the overall oxygen content of subsurface ocean water. The looming result—warming, acidification, and anoxia was killing the seas.
Current projections painted a grim picture. If drastic reversal couldn’t be achieved, the oceans would be dead in less than a decade. Ten years was a very small window and the clock was ticking.
As a result of decades of public inertia and denial, the Pacific, which she could glimpse from her third-floor lab window, was in the final stages of becoming a vast blue desert.
Her computer pinged. A small alert appeared above the data stream, and she squinted at the message. Elle groaned. The last thing she wanted to do was get called into a surprise meeting with the director. She’d not had nearly enough caffeine for that.
Elle shucked out of her lab coat and reached for the blazer she’d taken off when she first arrived. If she’d had any advance notice about a meeting she might have worn something different. A dress or a skirt perhaps. As it was, she’d worn casual navy blue slacks and a vintage plaid wool blazer over a scoop-necked T-shirt. Her usual attire for a day in the lab. At least it was a clean T-shirt, possibly a bit more form fitting than she would prefer for a meeting with her boss, but maybe that would work in her favor.
The receptionist, whose name escaped her, was seated at the desk in the entryway. She was on the phone and motioned for Elle to wait. After she hung up she glanced in Elle’s direction. “I’ll let Mr. Allaire know that you’re here. One moment please.”
She stood in the center of the stark room until the receptionist returned. The woman wore a dark skirt with a white blouse. Her hair was pulled tightly into a bun and her expression was humorless. But who could blame her. The seas were dying and taking the planet down with them. These were serious times.
“Mr. Allaire will see you now.” She held the office door open for Elle.
Liam Allaire stood as she entered.
“Hello, Dr. Graham.” He extended a hand in her direction. “Please, take a seat.”
Elle sat down facing the enormous sleek desk. Elle wondered what sort of person was able to run a huge facility and keep his desk so completely uncluttered. Not that she was messy or unorganized, but every surface in her workspace was covered with orderly stacks of something in-progress.
Elle crossed her legs as she waited for Liam to explain why she was here. Liam was handsome, square-jawed, with salt-and-pepper hair cut neatly close. He wore a suit that looked as if it had been custom tailored.
Dr. Liam Allaire had an enviable résumé. Fairly early in his career, he’d been the head of the department of atmospheric science at NASA and after eventually leaving the agency was briefly the director of NOAA. When any science that mattered became privatized, he’d left NOAA and taken over as managing director for BIOME, a for-profit company focused on solving the Earth’s current environmental problems. And there were many of them. Any scientist who was serious about getting their research funded wanted to work with BIOME. Elle had been recruited by company headhunters right out of grad school and finished her doctorate while working in the BIOME lab. She felt lucky. This was applied science at its best.
Elle had been seated for less than a minute when the door opened behind her and a man in a military uniform entered.
“I asked Major Riley, head of Space Operations, to join us.” Liam motioned for the major to take one of the leather chairs along the wall.
Major Riley was wearing a blue dress uniform with a colorful array of ribbons on his chest. Elle didn’t know exactly what they all meant, but she knew they meant he was important. The fact that he was from Space Operations was highly curious. Space Operations, really?
“Major Riley, this is Dr. Eliza Graham, a paleobotanist and the head of our paleoceanography research department.”
Major Riley wore his gray hair in a crew cut, his posture was stiff, his shoulders so square they appeared to have sharp edges. He sized Elle up as he took his seat. He had the look of a man whose time was valuable and only doled out in very small, precise servings. The crisp khaki slacks he wore unexpectedly conjured a mental image of Jackson. Elle’s mouth was suddenly dry. She cleared her throat and blinked to dislodge the image.
She wasn’t sure what the focus of this meeting might be. She’d presented her preliminary findings to the board. That had been two weeks ago and she’d heard nothing since. Maybe today she would learn something, or receive input as to where the team should be directing their research moving forward. She was confused about why a high-ranking military officer was present. Sure, the military sometimes provided security for trips into the field to obtain core samples, but they were still doing tests on the last round of sediment samples and hadn’t requested an escort in weeks.
The presentation two weeks earlier to the board had been somber. How do you tell a room full of people that the oceans were going to be dead before the end of the decade? That dead seas meant the Earth was on life support. There’d been no response, everyone simply stared at her. Elle understood how they were feeling. The conclusions she and Ted had presented were too big to grasp. Which is why she’d sampled and resampled sediment from layers of ancient rock and oceanic core samples. She’d checked them against Ted’s figures for ocean surface temps and rechecked and checked again.
Climate scientists had been sounding alarms forever, so why was everyone so surprised? Did the policy makers simply assume they could
keep doing the same things to the environment and climate systems would reset? The Earth’s climate was resilient and long-suffering, but even the planet had limits.
“Are we sure about the date?” The major looked at Elle and then at Liam.
No one spoke. She wasn’t even sure to whom he’d directed the question.
“I’m sorry, what date are you referring to?” Elle uncrossed her legs and adjusted her position in the uncomfortable chair. When the major didn’t respond she turned to Liam.
“The date from the core samples. You identified a window around one hundred and twenty thousand years ago.” Liam casually leaned at the edge of his desk.
“Oh, yes, the last interglacial period took place between one hundred and sixteen thousand and one hundred and twenty-nine thousand years ago.” But why would a military officer care about that information? She’d simply been trying to predict what a warmer planet might have been like. And what about the environment might change, and ultimately how that would affect human populations and food supplies if the conditions were duplicated on present-day Earth.
Major Riley stared at her as if she were an errant schoolgirl. She shifted in her chair again in an attempt to improve her posture. He probably had that effect on everyone.
“That’s a big window, Dr. Graham.” The major rested his palms on his thighs. If it were possible for someone to seem at attention while seated, he gave that impression.
“Please, call me Elle.” She paused, glancing from one man to the other. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’ve missed the first half of a conversation here.” Elle hoped the question didn’t sound impertinent, but she really hated being in the dark.
“Why is this particular window important?” The major ignored Elle and looked at Liam.
“Earth has gone through periods of cooling and warming for millions of years. We often look for clues hidden in layers of ancient rock and ice to determine what conditions were during different climate periods.” Liam was also a scientist so he easily rattled off this information. “The window of time we’re talking about is the last time in recent Earth history when global temperatures were as warm as they are currently.”
The Sea Within Page 3
