by Paul Anlee
President Mitchell: That would kill two birds with one stone, wouldn’t it?
President Olev: President Mitchell, your American English has so many… delightful…idiomatic expressions. [laughs]
Trillian pressed Stop and watched LaMontagne for a reaction.
“Their level of confidence in their conclusions, and their willingness to carry out this attack based on those conclusions, is remarkable,” the Reverend commented.
“Given how wrong they are.”
“Well, it would seem they’ve fingered the wrong people. I don’t know about stopping the Eater, though. Have you checked their analysis?”
“I’m not up on the physics but I can forward it to you,” Trillian offered.
“Yes, do that.” The Reverend stroked his chin while he thought. “Can we do anything about this attack?”
“Yes, I have a direct line to their nuclear arsenals at a variety of levels. I can make the missiles self-destruct, issue a Cancel order, or redirect them as you wish.”
“Good.” The core of a plan was beginning to form in LaMontagne’s lattice-enhanced brain. “Greg and Kathy have been working on this a lot longer and with a lot more neural horsepower than all the rest of the physicists in the world. I trust the two of them more than an army of unenhanced scientists.”
Trillian had to agree, especially now that he’d begun experiencing for himself what a difference dendy enhancements made in his own work. “If we needed to alter the narrative around this potential attack, I could arrange that.”
“That might be helpful,” agreed LaMontagne. “Could we present evidence to show that other leaders were jealous of Pacifica’s prominent role in the Vesta Project? Perhaps, envious of their scientific and engineering lead?”
“Yes, I can make that work,” replied Trillian. “I can select various intercepted communications and design a program to synthesize audio and video to make the leaders say almost anything we wish.”
“It would have to be completely plausible, and flawlessly assembled.”
Trillian smiled. “Then it’s a good thing you’ve given me the ability to do that.”
“How long would it take to put something like that together?”
“I can have it done before the missiles are launched.”
“Excellent. Perhaps we could also arrange some kind of indication of personal motivation for the attack.”
“Financial graft?”
“Could you do that?”
“How substantial would you like the motivation to be?”
“Say we showed a few tens of millions of dollars diverted from the Vesta Project into personal offshore accounts. Perhaps we could demonstrate how Greg and Kathy discovered these missing funds and ordered some potentially embarrassing audits.”
“I like the way you think, Reverend.”
“Thank you, John. Can you come back with a completed scenario in about an hour?”
“Of course. Would you like me to set Abort or Self-destruct codes on the missiles?”
“No. Let’s send them back to their launchers.” The Reverend stroked his chin, an action the boy copied across the room. “We can have Alum communicate his displeasure in the criminal actions of these politicians on all public and private channels. He can expose their envy, their greed, and their hubris. To think they’d bomb a city and kill all its citizens just because they aren’t benefiting enough! This will be a fine opportunity for the people to learn that Alum is looking out for their welfare.”
“Very good. I’ll be back within the hour.”
“Wait,” said the Reverend. “You know, this might be a good time to demonstrate Alum’s reach. It’d be nice if we could conquer this dissent once and for all.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I believe we have our enforcement assets in place in each of these countries. Let’s activate the batrachotoxin spiders and eliminate these problems for good. If we take out the most prominent conspirators, the others will be more reluctant to follow in their footsteps. People will learn that Alum is not to be trifled with. When he says something must be done, it will be done.”
Trillian smiled and gave a shallow bow, “As you wish, Reverend.”
* * *
September 9, 2041, GNA (Global News Alliance). Seattle, Washington, Pacifica.
The world was stunned today by the explosion of three nuclear bombs, only minutes apart. Two of the weapons detonated over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Pacifica. The third exploded in the wilderness of Idaho.
The explosions destroyed the respective launchers, which are believed to be a Russian bomber, a Chinese submarine, and a New Confederacy missile carrier, along with their respective crews.
According to video released by the mysterious Alum shortly after the explosions, all three missiles were targeted to strike Vancouver, British Columbia, Pacifica.
Alum also released video of a secret meeting last week, email correspondence, and records of bank transactions, showing how world leaders from China, Japan, Russia, and the New Confederacy conspired to shift the major economic benefits from the Vesta Project to their own countries. These records show the leaders conspired to profit by destroying Pacifica’s scientific and technological capabilities.
According to information released, the alleged perpetrators considered the lattice-enhanced team of Dr. Katherine Liang and Dr. Garugamesh Mahajani, protégés of famous scientific polymath, Dr. Darian Leigh, to be intolerable competition.
The conspiring leaders intended to justify their use of nuclear weapons by referring to an unspecified threat to global security from the government of Pacifica’s Prime Minister Francine Hudson and Project Vesta. Ms. Hudson was visiting the Vancouver Headquarters of Project Vesta at the time of the intended attack.
The leaders argued that the threat could only be stopped by a significant nuclear explosion. PM Hudson has categorically denied the existence of any such threat in the Vancouver area.
Drs. Liang and Mahajani had recently become aware of financial improprieties involving the conspirators and ordered audits of the project.
Project Vesta is the brainchild of the Pacifica scientists, who aim to colonize the asteroid belt, and provide new economic benefits and growth to countries around the globe.
Pacifica’s pivotal role in releasing important new technologies for the benefit of all mankind has upset many established global oligarchies. Some have been unhappy with the distribution of those benefits according to population instead of by level of economic wealth.
Developed nations, especially those involved in the conspiracy, have resisted the flow of contracts to emerging economies with larger populations. Leaders of the developed nations have struggled over the past months to maintain so-called strategic industries in the technology and energy sectors.
A number of political analysts have voiced surprise so many nations agreed to the original project proposals presented by Drs. Liang and Mahajani. Today’s actions clearly demonstrate how superficial those agreements were.
In a public broadcast overriding scheduled programming around the world, Alum officially condemned the actions of the conspirators, saying, “God supports the plan to move human civilization and His Holy Word into space.”
He later added that, “This conspiracy has demonstrated the evil that still rules the hearts and minds of many world leaders. This small, but powerful group put their own national and personal interests ahead of the common human good. More importantly, they put their own desires ahead of God’s Plan for His People. The Lord has shown His Will, His Power, and His Vengeance today.”
The comment is thought to be a reference to the discovery that every one of the leaders participating in this conspiracy died within minutes of the explosions, all of mysterious causes.
Pacifica Prime Minister Francine Hudson denied involvement in any retaliatory actions, adding that she was, “as mystified and in awe of God’s Power as anyone.”
Today’s events have only served to de
epen the mystery around the man known as Alum. Some call him a prophet. Others suggest he is not so much a holy man as a very human spokesman for an Anonymous-like group that has recently broken out of its internet-based activities to take a more active global role.
The question on everyone’s minds is whether today’s events are the act of an omniscient, omnipotent God or of a vigilante global organization with an advanced level of technical and scientific capabilities.
23
In the decade following the final acceptance of the Vesta Project, ship after ship delivered millions of Cybrids to the asteroid belt. Most went directly to Vesta. Hundreds of thousands were assigned to explore the rest of the belt.
The Cybrids worked around the clock, constructing enormous tunneling machines, the largest and fastest ever devised. In less than ten years, they completed four of the six primary tunnels, with smaller service tunnels below each. In space, there were no environmental concerns to slow them down. Their methods were effective but not at all delicate.
Where possible, they refined metals from the debris removed from the planetoid. The rest they melted as slag and deposited into rocky structural reinforcement bands on the outer surface.
The first on-site hiccough came early in the project, as data began pouring in from the explorer Cybrids. Initial analyses were disappointing but not entirely unexpected. Vesta and the other asteroids in the region were critically low in nitrogen-containing molecules, and until they found a supply, they’d be unable to establish sustainable life on Vesta.
The Cybrids wasted no time. They kicked into problem-solving mode, came up with a simple solution—to extract all the nitrogen they needed from the atmosphere of Titan—and were awaiting final approval before the human project managers had finished reading the initial analysis.
One team of Cybrids went to mine nitrogen, while others rounded up the enormous chunks of ice from among the asteroids and placed them inside the Vesta tunnels. They used some of the icy bodies to fill lakes and streams inside the colony tunnels. Next, they electrolyzed some of the water to produce oxygen for the atmosphere and mixed it with the nitrogen.
When you had no shortage of energy for propulsion or construction, you could work miracles. Kathy’s Cybrids had done exactly that: worked miracles.
Even Kathy was impressed with the performance of her Cybrids. Around the globe, excitement and hope for a brighter future was growing. Investors were buzzing about great new businesses that would be opening as the mining and refining operations extracted the resources out there. It was a heady, invigorating time for science and engineering.
Sometimes Kathy and Greg forgot how it was all going to come to a spectacularly disastrous end.
As Kathy had feared, a number of high-profile individuals—all oblivious of Project Vesta’s true purpose—banded together and publicly called for the project to redirect some of the most valuable metal-rich planetoids to an accessible near-Earth orbit.
To placate them and to reduce the likelihood of project-halting riots, the team shipped a few token packets of commercially valuable minerals Earthward.
It took some artful finagling by Kathy and the team’s best spin talent to explain the negligible, slow return on global efforts and investment to date, and to hide the fact that the bulk of the extracted resources were being kept out past the Mars orbit.
Kathy became adept at public relations, spinning politics, economics, and statistics on the fly. The scent of new growth and new resources to exploit was tantalizing to the money hounds, who were only going to get more restless as the project wore on. For the moment, the worst of them were being held at bay.
The Cybrids stationed on Vesta focused on constructing, sealing, and pressurizing the colony tunnels. Once that was done, they moved into the habitats to construct buildings, and to plant the first fields and forests.
One rocket from Earth contained nothing but bacteria, algae, protozoa, and other microorganisms necessary for a healthy ecology. Another took a cargo of invertebrates. Worms, insects, spiders and a host of “creepy crawlies” were critical to any place that could autonomously and indefinitely support human life.
Along the way, Kathy and Greg learned more environmental biology than they’d ever had interest in acquiring. In the end, the team felt it better to err on the side of caution and shipped everything they could think of. It would be easier to sort out imbalances later than to suffer the need of an organism that no longer existed.
Freshwater and saline environments were both provided, though the new marine “oceans” were tiny compared to Earth’s. They were able to save the dolphins, but larger marine organisms like whales would perish with the planet that first gave birth to them. They froze a few symbolic samples of embryos, eggs, and sperm but it was unlikely any of them would be viable before a habitable ocean could be found or constructed.
The geneticists ran several intense sequencing projects to preserve the information of species that were not going to be rescued. They didn’t bother to keep the genetic libraries secret; everyone agreed such activities would be viewed positively by most people.
Had it not been for the looming imminent destruction, the present era might have been the start of a new Golden Age on Earth.
As always, there were a few voices crying about the massive increases in global debt among participating countries. With so much new money going into circulation, Central Banks were forced to raise interest rates in an attempt to keep a lid on runaway inflation. In response, Reverend LaMontagne proposed creative fiscal laws that were soon passed around the world to keep the interest rates from penalizing government borrowing too heavily.
Kathie and Greg appreciated and admired the Reverend’s genius for coming up with such ideas and for garnering support. They were amazed at how he convinced even the most stodgy national legislatures to pass bold new laws and ideas.
To the two socially-awkward scientists, Reverend LaMontagne had a nearly magical way about him. Too bad, and a little scary—they thought—that such a powerful gift of persuasion is wielded by a fervent convert to Alum’s message.
LaMontagne made no effort to conceal his fervor. He openly referred to Alum as, “The Prophet for the Age.” It was seen as a natural progression when the Reverend changed the name of his Church to “Yeshua’s True Guard Church of the Prophet Alum.”
Within days, the loving nickname coined by his Latino followers took hold: The Alumita. A small number of vocal, bigoted followers balked that the name Alum sounded too close to Allah, but their quibbling was drowned out by a thunderous global plea for the mysterious man, the self-proclaimed “Sword of Yeshua,” to assume the position of World President.
In his private moments, The Reverend, his young protégé, and Mr. John Trillian celebrated their good fortunes. They couldn’t have planned a better public relations move than the thwarting of a nuclear bombing.
24
The Project Vesta gala ball celebrating the launch of the first colony ship was the social event of the year. Kathy paused halfway down the stairs to the Ballroom Foyer of the Vancouver Convention Centre and took in all the well-dressed people.
I can’t believe it’s been twelve years! She felt proud of her accomplishments and in meeting this particular deadline. She, Greg, and Reverend LaMontagne could start breathing a little easier now. Humanity would survive. It might take decades or centuries before it thrived again, but it would survive.
Vancouver was the obvious choice for Project Vesta headquarters. Besides being home to the ever-growing Eater, the Chief Engineer, and the Chief Scientist, the nearby farmland south of the old Canada-United States border offered potential launching sites.
Tonight was a well-earned celebration. They were on the verge of transplanting humanity along with a commendably broad spectrum of all life on Earth to a viable new home they’d created from practically nothing among the asteroids.
Kathy’s alter ego, DAR143147, was to thank for much of the success.
Too
bad “DAR” couldn’t be here—Kathy thought. Cybrids were not invited to shindigs like this, no matter what their contribution. Someday, we’ll change that—she promised herself.
DAR had been her voice in space, flawlessly supervising the habitat construction. To Kathy, DAR was the sister she’d never had. A twin sister, who knew her every thought and anticipated her every decision. Kathy enjoyed their weekly consultations, even with the twenty-minute delay in communications to Vesta.
Greg, on the other hand, hated talking to his Cybrid alter-ego. “It’s like talking to a slow, stupid me,” he said. “How do you stand it?” Kathy hadn’t told him about her Cybrid’s secretly-enhanced brain. After a few tries, he stopped communicating with his counterpart except when absolutely necessary. Their formal, stilted conversations related strictly to business.
Kathy’s heart went out to both the biological and Cybrid versions of Greg. She regretted not making an enhanced lattice for his Cybrid, too, before it had been deployed. She wished she could call it back to Earth and do a retrofit but it was too late. Now that it was fully commissioned, it wouldn’t be permitted to return except as scrap. Even unenhanced, Greg’s Cybrid was too valuable to the Vesta Project to be given leave.
Kathy spotted Greg, completely out of character and laughably uncomfortable in his tux, over near the bar. She lifted the hem of her gown and resumed her graceful descent down the stairs. At least, that’s how she imagined it to be. She felt more at home in flats, a jumper, and a hardhat on the factory floor than in heels and formal wear, trying to make small talk with politicians and the press.
“Ah, Dr. Liang. It’s quite a sight, isn’t it? So much pretention in one place.” Loren Andrews, the reporter assigned by the Washington Post to cover tonight’s send-off, had caught up with her.
Kathy hated reporters more than politicians. With politicians, you knew they were always looking out for their own self-interests. With reporters, sometimes even they didn’t know where their interests lay. Until they got the sense of their best story they couldn’t be relied on to be supportive or combative. You just hoped you could figure out how they were going to come at you before they did. She put on her most neutral smile and greeted him.
