by Chris James
The beginning of the world is nigh…
A virgin landmass is ‘extruded’ into the Bay of Biscay by a solar-tidal magmatic pulse. Waiting to claim the emerging island are 80 people in a flotilla of trussed up barges with supplies to last a year.
Who are these accidental tourists?
How did they know the island would be surfacing?
And what do they plan to do with it if their claim to sovereignty is accepted by the world community?
Racy and thought-provoking, The O.D. paints a picture of how humanity’s rush to self-destruction could be halted, given the global will to take a colossal leap… backwards.
Copyright © 2014 Chris James
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the author.
Cover by TJ Miles.
The O.D.
C h r i s J a m e s
Chapters
PART ONE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
PART TWO
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
PART THREE
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
For my brother, Wyatt
The world is undergoing immense changes. Never before have the conditions of life changed so swiftly and enormously as they have changed for mankind in the last fifty years. We have been carried along - with no means of measuring the increasing swiftness in the succession of events. We are only now beginning to realize the force and strength of the storm of change that has come upon us.
− H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, 1928
PART ONE
I
May Day. Penwith, Cornwall. Black sky afternoon. A lone jackdaw battled the wind overhead, while a lanky figure on a bicycle did the same under Rosewall Hill.
Neither bike nor rider was well put together. The cycle jangled over the road’s rough surface like a tambourine in a tumble dryer. The long body of the rider was stooped at the spine and punctuated at the head by a prominent nose. With the wind hitting him from the side, it was all the cyclist could do to stay upright.
Lonnie Pilot, twenty-five years old and prematurely grey, had just spent three hours in the library reading The History of Human Migration. Every day, he would take to the hills to digest his morning’s intake and burn off nervous energy.
As Pilot pedalled south towards Nancledra, a grey 4 x 4 joined him at Cold Harbour and fell in behind. He moved to his left to allow the vehicle to pass, but as it came alongside, it slowed. Pilot looked over at the driver, then wobbled as his front wheel hit a stone. He dismounted. The car stopped and an electric window whirred down. “Lonnie Pilot.” The wind almost blew away the driver’s words. He held out a business card. Pilot squinted to read it.
IGP
Forrest Vaalon
Director
Institute for Geophysical Projections
“Your grandfather and I were friends and work colleagues and I need to talk to you. Please get in the car. It’s a job offer, Lonnie. Put your bike in the back and I’ll explain.”
Pilot peered in at the driver as he weighed the man’s words. It was the reference to his grandfather, not the employment bone he had been thrown, that caught his interest. He didn’t remember much about his paternal grandfather, only that he had been an oceanographer at the Hydrographic Office in Bath. Pilot had come across the IGP more than once in his studies, and the fact that his grandfather and the man in the car once worked together was good enough for him. He lifted his bike into the boot as invited, got in the car, and sized up his host. The way the man was folded into his seat with knees sticking up at an acute angle said tall. The parchment skin and snow-white hair said old. The accent said American. Forrest Vaalon put the car in gear and drove off at a speed Pilot thought inappropriate for Cornish back roads.
“Before he got sick,” Vaalon began, “during his last year at the Hydrographic Office, your grandfather helped us research a particular theory we were developing. In our downtime, we’d talk about our families. What he said about you stayed with me. But it wasn’t until eight years ago that something happened to bring you back into the frame. I’ve been keeping tabs on you ever since.”
Pilot wondered what had been so interesting to have required ongoing espionage. “You’ve been spying on me since I was seventeen?”
Vaalon reduced speed. “I never thought of it as spying,” he said. “More like monitoring− with a view to mentoring. I’ll explain when we stop.” Pilot watched the stone walls and Butcher’s Broom flying past his window, then glanced again at the driver, trying to make sense of the strange scenario in which he found himself.
“What can you tell me about solar tides?” Vaalon asked.
Pilot drew a blank. “Solar tides? I know solar winds and solar flares, but tides?” Pilot closed his eyes and sat in silence around two bends in the road, rifling through his stored memory before recovering the answer. “About two years ago Science magazine published an article by the IGP on solar magnetics.”
“And?”
Travelling in a strange person’s car was not conducive to easy recall for Lonnie Pilot. “The gist of their… your theory will come to me in a minute.”
Vaalon smiled, but gave no prompts. Soon, pieces of the article came out of the shadows into Pilot’s working memory. “The title of your thesis was Solar Tides and Magma Displacement,” he said.
“Solar Tides and Magmatic Attraction. Near enough.”
“You believe that the Sun has a heartbeat – a regular pulse of magnetism capable of moving the Earth’s magma.”
“Well retrieved, Lonnie. Sixteen years ago your grandfather researched the properties of the Earth’s crust as a sub-strand to our main premise. But it was another fourteen years before the final pieces came together and we were able to publish.” Pilot’s eyes widened at this piece of family history that had been unknown to him. “Next pub, we’ll stop.”
When they parked up at The Engine Inn, Vaalon took a briefcase from the back seat and led Pilot into the pub. “Mine’s an orange juice,” he said, pressing a ten pound note into Pilot’s hand. “Have whatever you want, Lonnie.”
“What’s this job offer of yours, Mr. Vaalon?” Pilot asked, setting the drinks on the table a few minutes later.
“Call me Forrest. I’ll come to the job in a minute. Explain the Sun to me first.”
“Explain the Sun?”
“Yes. The way you’d explain it to one of your pupils.”
Pilot felt uncomfortable being put on the spot by a man with such lofty scientific credentials, but rose to the challenge. “Okay. It’s mostly hydrogen… some helium. Hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It radiates charged particles across the Solar System− solar wind. The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles and this causes the Sun’s magnetic field lines to twist together, creating magnetic field loops that erupt from the Sun’s surface. Solar flares and sunspots are caused by the Sun’s strong magnetic field, which−”
“Do you know what the Thompson spiral is?” Vaalon asked.
“The Thompson spiral? No. Is it like the Pa
rker spiral?”
“Similar. But this one occurs when the sun’s rotation twists the magnetic field of the heliospheric sheet into overlapping knots of nuclear ferment – the Thompson spiral, named after the man who discovered it. Edgar Thompson used to work for me. And towards the end of his life, his work led him from the heliosphere down into the very core of the Sun itself, and to his theory of Solar Tides.” Pilot sat frozen like a gundog. “Thompson hypothesized that this solar pulse, or heartbeat as you described it, occurs at regular intervals every 5,000 years or so. So powerful is each event, that the magnetic explosion it creates is capable of exerting a magnetic pull on the iron component of the Earth’s magma− similar to the way the Moon’s gravitational pull moves the oceans. He called this phenomenon the Solar Tide, or magmatic pulse. It was only a theory, of course, and Thompson died before we were able to prove it.”
“You’ve proved it? I don’t remember that in the article.”
Vaalon’s expression changed from conversational to conspiratorial. “I had my reasons for keeping the proof out and leaving it as just a theory,” he said. “Before the end of today, you’ll know why.”
The two men sipped their respective drinks, their eyes locked together like magnets. Vaalon picked up a beer mat in his left hand. “This is the Earth’s crust. And this,” he said, placing the knuckles of his right hand under the mat, “is the magma. Thompson propounded that, where the Earth’s crust is at its thinnest, under the sea, the pull of the solar tide on the magma is capable of lifting it in specific areas by hundreds of metres relative to mean sea level− like this…” He rotated his right hand until the knuckle of his middle finger caused the mat to rise.
“And the proof?”
“In the back of my car.”
Vaalon set his briefcase on the table and opened it. “The magmatic pulse has never been witnessed by current humanity,” he said, “but Thompson’s premise was that magmatic pulses have been occurring at regular intervals since the Earth was formed.” He shuffled through some files and extracted a photograph of a machine that looked like a dental X-ray gun, but twenty times larger, hanging from a gantry over a ship’s side. “Do you know what this does?”
Pilot studied the picture, then hazarded a guess. “It measures the thickness of the Earth’s crust.”
“Precisely. To develop it cost a small fortune, which I could spare. Excuse me a minute. Enlarged prostate.” Vaalon rose and headed off to the gents. While he was away, Pilot sat swirling his cider, wondering if he, and not the strange American with, it seemed, limitless wealth, were the lunatic. Five minutes later, Vaalon was back.
“So, what did your crust caliper divulge?” Pilot asked.
“During its 30,000 mile voyage, it identified twenty sites of interest – sections of continental shelves worldwide under which the Earth’s crust is thin or weak. To prove the magmatic pulse theory, we had to prove that those sections of continental shelf had been above water at the 5,000 year increments Thompson theorized.”
“How did you do that?”
“I’ll show you. Let’s go.”
Out at the car, Vaalon raised the rear hatch and pointed to something on the floor of the boot next to Pilot’s bike. It was a cylindrical, cement-like pole about four feet long and three inches in diameter, with tags attached at regular points along its length.
“Bore sample?” Pilot asked, running his finger along the surface.
“We bored eight of the twenty sites, but this one from the European continental shelf off Brest was always the most promising, due to its unique geological profile. This length represents the past 25,000 years only. I can show you photographs of deeper sections going back 200,000 years, but this one contains all you need to know. Read the tags.”
Pilot ran his hand down the rough surface of the sample to the first discoloured ring. It was tagged S.T. XXIX and showed two B.C.E. dates spanning around 400 years. Ten inches further along was another discoloured ring, tagged S.T. XXX, with more dates, then two more tags− S.T. XXXI and S.T. XXXII.
“S.T…. Solar Tide?” Pilot asked. “And the two dates… the period of time the shelf spent out of the water?”
“An approximation, yes. We have readings going back to 187,462 B.C.E.. The first date on each tag is the important one – when the shelf came up, not when it went down again.” Pilot did some quick mental calculations, subtracting the second date from the first, the third from the second and the fourth from the third. The answer to all three was 5,857 years.
“What do you think, Lonnie?”
“What do I think? It’s incredible. Has anybody else seen this outside of the IGP?”
A faint smile appeared at the corners of Vaalon’s mouth. “Not yet. We will publish when we’re ready.”
Pilot stared at the tags and numbers for a few seconds before it hit him. “S.T. 33 is happening this year.”
“This August,” Vaalon said. “Stay with that supposition, Lonnie. I’ll expand over dinner.”
Small talk wasn’t one of Pilot’s gifts, but on the drive back to Penzance he made an effort. “Where are you from, Forrest?”
Vaalon slowed the car to a conversational speed. “I was born in New Mexico. My father had dropped out there in the twenties while waiting to inherit – a pre-hippy by forty years. When I was eight, his father died and we moved to New York. I have a house there and homes in London, Geneva and Dubrovnik. I’m building a retirement ranch in New Mexico. That landscape from my formative years is in my blood.”
“When do you plan to retire?”
“Never.”
“Are you married, Forrest?”
“Fifty-two years. To Ruth.” Pilot noticed a grimace pass over the man’s face. “Due to a severe trauma when she was young, Ruth was never able to have children, so we threw ourselves into other things. My child was earth sciences and Ruth’s was Scholasticorps, the educational charity.”
“That’s hers?” Pilot was impressed.
“She founded it in 1962 when she learned she’d never have children of her own. Her other interest was matchmaking, which she turned into a science.” Vaalon chuckled. “Part of her Jewish heritage. I’ll tell you about that another time. This next bit is important. In addition to our separate pursuits, we had one common one. An intense and passionate desire to save the world. To most people that sounds trite.”
“No. I’m with you there.”
“I know. That’s why I’m with you here.” Vaalon concentrated on some tricky manoeuvring for the next three minutes, his over-wide vehicle brushing both hedgerows in some places. “Getting back to the Vaalon Plan,” he said when the road had straightened and widened, “the physical health of the planet was my area and Ruth concentrated on its social maladies. I set up the Institute for Geophysical Projections the same year Ruth founded Scholasticorps. Since then, we’ve also funded over a hundred think tanks, social action projects, scientific research programmes and environmental groups.” There had been a gradual change in Pilot’s affect, which Vaalon must have noticed. “What is it, Lonnie?” he asked.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but… the job offer? Is it in research?”
“No, not research. More along the lines of head of state. That’s the only way I can describe it at the moment.”
“Head of state…” Pilot peered at Vaalon’s profile, trying to read between the lines of his face.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Lonnie?”
“Not a clue.” Pilot was consternated. “Can I ask you a question, Forrest? Why is someone like you talking to someone like me in the backwaters of Cornwall? I can’t figure out why you’re here.”
“Your isolation at the toe-end of Britain actually works in your, our, favour. You’re isolated in the physical sense, yet you’ve been to all the important places− vicariously.” Vaalon’s expression softened. “I’ve spent the last eight years trying to get inside your head. Through my observers I know every book or journal you’ve read or looked at, inclu
ding our article in Science. And when you’d log off the library computer, we’d check your browsing history, too.”
Pilot gulped, trying to remember all the questionable websites he’d visited growing up. Vaalon responded to his protégé’s obvious embarrassment with a shrug. “Don’t sweat it, Lonnie. Curiosity is a highly rated human trait. It was the breadth and depth of your studies that impressed me most. People are formed by what they experience and what they read and are taught. Your reading history over the years gave us a snapshot of what’s up there.” Vaalon pointed to Pilot’s head. “For example, the fifty-plus biographies of world leaders you took out – provided you actually read them− will have imparted some insight as to what makes a good leader and what makes a bad one. Through osmosis, you can’t help but have picked up an understanding of the leader’s mindset.”
“I read them.”
“I’m relieved. The variety and depth of your other readings are a model of self-education. There’s something else I can tell you, Lonnie, about Ruth’s penchant for matchmaking. The children of three of our best friends are still enjoying near perfect marriages arranged by Ruth over thirty years ago. I decided to set her another matchmaking project− to apply the same process to finding a partner for our island-to-be. We worked hard defining our prerequisites. Independence; intelligence; that rare mix of humble self-confidence; passion; charisma; incorruptibility. The candidate had to have an understanding of politics, but no direct participation in it− an uncut diamond with the potential to be a consummate leader. They had to work well with others, be excellent orators and have an element of ruthlessness about them.”
“Ruthlessness?” Pilot had never considered himself to be a ruthless person.
