Reconception: The Fall
Title Page
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
EPILOGUE
BOOK II
Reconception:
BOOK I
THE FALL
Deborah Greenspan
Llumina Press
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Reconception: Book I - The Fall
Published by Llumina Press
© 2014 Deborah Greenspan
ISBN: 978-1-62550-158-5
Smashwords Edition
CHAPTER 1
East USA Habitat: 2128
Garret Walker stopped in the middle of the quad, turning to Evelyn Chandler. “Is it really our only chance?” he said, his eyes dark with anger as he took hold of her shoulders.
She gripped his biceps, her frightened eyes on his. “Garret, we're the best there is; we've turned this inside out, and we're out of options. We can't stop him.”
Grabbing her hand, Garret pulled her forward, resuming their rush across the quad toward their lab, past their friends and colleagues lounging on the couches, using the computers, eating at the tables—all unaware of what was at stake. The time for questions had run out, and they both knew it. Time wasn’t their specialty, but it was now all they had. As New Scientists, they had desperately tried to turn back the clock on a venture that had reached a dead end, and now there was only one possibility left.
In the year 2128, science was holistic and creative rather than reductionist, and for the last eighty-three years it had had only one goal—the restoration of the earth. Science and technology had destroyed it; it was fitting that science and technology return it to its former beauty and diversity. As Garrett quickly unlocked their lab, Evie studied the strong lines of his face and body. She’d always depended on Garrett. How fortunate they’d been in having been born only two months apart.
Now, as she stepped into the lab after him, driven by the catastrophe that was about to be unleashed on the world, terrified by what was coming but gratified that there might be something they could do to stop it, Evie had to stop and breathe. It was all happening too fast.
“Garrett,” she said, leaning against one of the lab tables. Her hands were shaking, and her mind was going in seven directions at once. “Garrett, please.”
He turned from the large glass-fronted refrigeration unit containing experiments: plants, spores, genetic material—the products and results of years of work. Evie saw reflected in his eyes the same turmoil that was tearing her apart. “We don’t have much time,” he said.
A tear slipped down Evie’s cheek as she nodded her agreement. He was right about that. Time had run out. Pulling herself together, she went over to the gene gun and wheeled it toward the table that Garret was setting up. While the instruments were powering up, she squeezed his hand, and leaned into him, smelling him, feeling his strength and devotion, perhaps for the last time. His arms enfolded her, and he pressed his forehead to hers. “If he’s right,” Garrett said, “there will be no pain. None of this will have ever happened. We will have never happened.”
“I know,” she whispered into his neck. “But we were wonderful, weren’t we?”
His lips sought hers. “Yes,” he murmured, wanting to drown in her. “Yes.”
Fast friends nearly from birth, Evie was a brilliant little girl who would have astonished her parents and teachers from the day she was born had she not been bred to be exactly what she was. Her father—that is sperm donor—had been a world famous physicist before the Fall, and her mother was a writer of essays and scientific papers whose knowledge and talent were widely admired. She was, additionally, an unspoiled child with a sweet disposition and a beautiful face—the darling of East USA.
Intellectually, she and Garrett were equals. Their good-natured rivalry spurred each of them on to greater and greater achievements, and they secretly laughed that no one could ever best them. They were a team. They were the crème de la crème.
Garret and Evie had a secret. Once, in their eighth year, they'd been studying food production and had taken a walk over to the 4th quadrant where the food vats were located. Here, genetically altered microbes went about the business of producing amino acids, vitamins, carbohydrates, essential fatty acids and other nutrients out of petroleum and the waste products taken from the water and air. Once the microbes' task was done, the resulting green mush was processed into various foods and made to look and taste more palatable. It was called Petrofood, and it had once been the only hope in a starving world, which in its haste to do something, ignored the fact that Petrofood was a new source of CO2 and methane
As the children studied the workings of the food processors, they talked about the system and how it related to the main work of the city, for, as the wastes of the inhabitants were recycled in these vats, so had the earth once been able carry on the sequences of life.
They knew that the major area of study was the use of microbes to restore balance to the atmosphere and the water. They also knew that success was a long way off. It was one thing to recycle the wastes in a small city where anything that could not be restored to use could be vented to the outside or buried, and another thing altogether to recycle the wastes of a planet, so that everything was utilized and in balance.
Although the two children knew how the operation worked, they'd never been there before, and after a while, they began to explore the workings of the vats, interested in the machinery itself.
"Here's something!" Garret called out. They didn't have to worry about adults because everything was automated here, and people rarely wanted to look at or smell the slimy mess that would become their food. Behind one of the enormous vats Garret found a door. It was tucked into a nook in one of the stainless steel walls, barely noticeable. Not waiting for Evie to arrive, he turned the handle and pulled.
"What is it?" Evie asked as she came up alongside him.
"I don't know," he said, tugging at the massive door. She added her wiry strength to his, and they succeeded in pulling the heavy portal open. In awe, they studied the rock tunnel that was revealed. It was unlighted and darkened into impenetrable obscurity.
"Wow!" The exclamation came from both of them simultaneously.
"It must be an Exit," Evie said. "It must go to the surface."
"Didn't they tell us that all the exits have been closed off?"
"Yes, Susan told us that. She said that all the exits were sealed so that no one could get in."
Garret thought a moment. "Maybe this one is closed at the other end," he said.
"We need a flashlight."
"Let's go get one."
Quickly, they pulled the door closed, and turned the wheel to latch it. Then, giggling and excited, they ran back to First Quad to find an electric torch.
Evie's mother was not in their quarters, so she had no trouble getting the necessary equipment. Trying not to look like they were up to something, they walked nonchalantly through the public areas of the quad, smiled at the people they
were supposed to smile at, and greeted those they were expected to greet.
As quickly as they could, they got through the first quadrant and into the fourth. Here there were fewer people, and they began to run. Arriving back in the food processing plant, they paused to catch their breath and think through what they were planning.
"What if the air's bad in the tunnel?" Evie wondered, "And what if we get to the end, and it's not sealed? Then what? We know the air's bad outside."
Garret shrugged. "We know it's full of toxins, but they can only hurt us over time, not immediately. We could probably stay outside for hours without any ill effects. I'm more worried about the ultraviolet rays."
"I want to see Outside," Evie cried passionately. "Let's do it, Garret. Let's go!"
Once more opening the door, they shined their lights into the dimness and could make out a short tunnel, the end of which was lost in the shadows. Cautiously, they stepped into the murkiness, smelling the dampness of the rock walls and feeling, for the first time, the closeness of their surroundings.
Garret took a few short breaths, sniffing the air, trying to discern any difference other than the smell of dampness and mold. He looked at Evie questioningly, and this time, she shrugged. "Let's just do it," she said quietly.
Pulling the massive door closed completed their sense of isolation. The darkness surrounded them, and only their feeble lights separated them from the gloom. Their hearts beat fast, and perspiration coursed down their little bodies as they boldly stepped into the unknown.
At the end of the tunnel was another door, the same type as the first and, as before, they turned the wheel and struggled to get it open. As the first rays of light showed through the crack, Evie squinted her eyes. The brightness was overwhelming. In all their lives they'd never seen the sun, never imagined its brilliance or heat. With some effort, the door opened, and they stood Outside, their hands shading their eyes, and looked about themselves in awe.
It happened to be spring, and even though the Earth was dying (from the human standpoint) it was the most beautiful, wondrous moment they'd ever experienced. Life! Life was all around them. They could feel it. They could see it. They could taste it and smell it. They felt as if they'd been dead and had suddenly come alive.
Evie fell to her knees in the scrubby grass and her mouth dropped open as she took in the little blue flowers running down the hillside, the green of the stunted trees, the ridge of rust colored rock and the enormous blue distances. It was obvious that some plants were able to survive and flourish despite the excessive ultraviolet.
She was literally stunned by the beauty before her. It didn't have the rich, lush variety that it once had had, but it was still magnificent. The heat of the sun on her skin seemed to melt her very bones. Looking at Garret, she saw that he was similarly moved.
In fact, Garret had moved beyond his first emotions on encountering the dazzling scene. In one instant he'd felt his oneness with the planet and in the next he'd felt his loss. For Garret, his whole life was suddenly explained and completed. He knew what he had been missing all his short time on earth. He knew why he was angry, and he knew that, no matter what, he would find a way to reclaim the world, to be part of it once more. Evie was in ecstasy, but Garret was in despair.
She noticed the tears running down his face and understood their source. She knew in that instant exactly why she loved him. In fact, in that moment, at the tender age of eight, she knew that their destiny was tied together as completely as the earth was tied together. They would be great New Scientists, and together they would solve the puzzle and weave themselves back into the tapestry of life.
Six and a half billion people inhabited the world by the year 2000; by 2030 it was 10 billion; by 2045, it had risen to almost 15 billion starving souls. There was no way to feed them and no way to stop the wholesale death caused by global warming and the resulting famines, droughts, wars, plagues, floods, hurricanes, acid rain, heavy metal poisoning, polluted air, and excess radiation that was still to come. By 2100, fewer than a hundred million especially hardy people had survived the holocaust.
In 2030, the rich and powerful had decided that it was better to devote their energies to protecting themselves and their posterity in case of the total failure of earth’s resources than to continue to support a languishing ecosystem. Giant corporations and governments would provide for their top executives, scientists, and their families. To this end, they began the building of the underground habitats that were to become their permanent homes on June 17, 2045, the day the doors were sealed, never to be opened again, ever after known unofficially as “the Fall.”
After the initial celebrations were over and people had settled down to underground living, a spirit of discontent settled down with them. Guilt stalked even the most arrogant and self-important chairmen and politicians. They had destroyed a world. And even if they could not blame themselves personally, they could no longer deny their parts in that destruction. They had survived, yes, but at what cost?
With guilt, came remorse and the decision to do something to repair the damage.
For years, heady dreams of restoring the earth to her former glory were all that sustained them. There was no movie or computer simulation that could take the place of basking in the sun, no virtual reality to equal a starry night by the sea. Their claustrophobia spurred them on.
Evie and Garret returned often to that spot on the hillside. They never stayed Outside too long, but they managed to explore the area thoroughly. They took secret soil and water samples to study in the laboratory. They lay in the grass and contemplated the stars at night. They delighted in the spring, summer and fall. Winter, mild though it was, surprised and intimidated them. The first time they made love, it was under the sun.
They knew Outside was not safe. They took four times the regular dose of their vitamins and massive doses of vitamin C, knowing this would help protect them from carcinogens and ultraviolet rays pouring through the inadequate ozone layer. They reinvented sunscreens and sunglasses and covered themselves carefully before leaving the shelter of the habitat.
They studied tenaciously, ceaselessly. They studied every science and became expert in all of it: New Scientists. By the time they reached their twenties, they were given their own laboratory and free rein to pursue their interests.
They designed microbes that would eat particular hydrocarbons and excrete ozone into the upper atmosphere where it was needed. If they could rebuild the ozone layer, plant life would begin to prosper once more, and that would mean more oxygen and less CO2.
They worked on the design of a plant, which would feed on heavy metals that had been deposited at the bottoms of rivers and lakes. Using the most modern genetic techniques, they engineered a plant that could survive and even thrive despite excessive UVB radiation, turning CO2 into O2 more rapidly than any other plant.
It took a year, but it was terribly important. They named it Spring, and took loving care of it and its descendants, even planting it Outside and sowing its seeds on the wind. But they knew the task was monumental, and that even though thousands of experts were working on it, it would take such a very long time to make a difference.
Within the confines of their laboratory, they designed a miniature ecosystem that had some similarities to earth. But they realized it was simplistic and lacked the variety of genotypes that made up earth’s myriad life forms, or at least the ones remaining. One fifth of all species of plant and animal life had vanished utterly from the world by the year 2000, and almost half were gone by 2030, when, in preparation for their retirement to the underground, scientists had hastily collected genetic material from all over the world.
Most life forms that had become extinct had disappeared from the rainforests. So little study had been done before these fragile ecosystems had been so ruthlessly ripped apart that Evie and Garret couldn’t even guess what part these missing links had played in the system. There was no way to know, and the tragedy was that without the variety, i
t was possible that the system couldn’t work.
The natural cleansing, recycling and balancing mechanisms of the biosphere might not operate in their absence, just as the processes of a human body, lacking a single enzyme, could be hopelessly disrupted. Evie and Garret might personally be able to genetically engineer a plant a year, but estimates were that earth had supported over 4,000,000 species of plant and animal, most of which, by 2120 were dead, dying or mutated.
One night as they sat in the lab, Garret threw his pad across the room in despair, “It can’t be done this way!” he shouted, “Even with the capacity of the human brain to make trillions of connections, there just isn’t enough. It’s like trying to hold the ocean in a wineglass. We’d have to link twenty brains together to even begin to make a dent in the knowledge we need to do this job.”
Evie looked up from her microscope and studied him as his words penetrated. “Garret, that’s a good idea.”
“What, linking twenty brains together?”
“Yes.”
“Evelyn,” he said in exasperation, crossing the room to pick up his pad. “That would be as big a job as trying to untangle the connections of this ecosystem.”
“Maybe. But what if we just linked two brains together?”
Garrett stood there watching her. Her hair glowed in the light like a sheet of pale gold. “Hon, I hate to break this to you, but we don’t have the slightest idea how to do that either.”
“So? We’re not getting anywhere like this,” Evie said. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be able to venture outside on a permanent basis in about 10,000 years, always assuming Mother Earth wants to give humankind another chance.”
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