The Sixth Extinction

by Bob Blink

  Epilogue

  Eighty-Three Years Later

  The redwoods had survived. So actually, had a surprising number of other plants. While the majority had perished, at least in the local area explored, some had been miraculously preserved by the deep ice and intense cold. Only time would tell just how many species had survived. All the animals had, of course, perished. These would have to be replenished from the stocks in the cavern, and cloning of those species preserved just for that purpose. The experts said that much of the sea life, and possibly some of the life in the deeper lakes may have survived under the ice. Once they reached the ocean, they should have access to another source of food. Rao wondered about the bugs. He wondered how many might yet show up. It had been pleasant not being bothered by them for so long, but he realized they served an important purpose, and hoped the right ones might have made it through somehow.

  This was the second summer they had been on the surface. Last year normal access had been approved when testing showed the air cleared of the toxins that had been as deadly as the cold, and test excursions made to sample the atmosphere and conditions. The intense cold had been retreating for more than a decade, but the tainted atmosphere had kept a return topside from occurring earlier. The snow at this level was all gone, but the surrounding mountains still were wrapped in white. Streams were plentiful as the snow melted in the still cool, but acceptable spring weather.

  What had once been a closed secure access to the outside world was now open and busily traveled. The main doors of all three locks were open, and both human and vehicular traffic traveled in and out of the Facility all day long. While the highway was damaged and cracked, a great many of the vehicles had been brought from the storage facility to aid in the construction.

  The houses in the planned community were starting to take shape. Humans and Cyborgs labored together. It took time to grow the cloned bodies, whereas the Cyborgs were available immediately, and didn't require food. Those who were Cyborg, would have bodies cloned during the winter, and would be transferred into them during that period, freeing up the Cyborgs for new occupants the following summer. The approach accelerated the growth of the workforce immensely. Ray Burke remained the head of Security, with Lee and Morrison his senior lieutenants. The rowdy nature of the rapidly expanding community called for a certain limited policing of the workers.

  The founders of the Facility had planned where the first community would be built. It was one of the factors that had driven the choice of location. A large flat area not too far from the caverns had buried power access that tapped the reactors of the underground Facility that were now uncovered and being linked into the grid that would supply the electrical needs until alternate sources could be constructed. By the end of the summer, more than half the population would be living above ground in the new community.

  For now the food supplies still relied on the fields below ground. A significantly increased herd of cattle was being cloned to meet the growing demands of the community. Once more important tasks had been completed, the fields in the lower valley would begin cultivation, perhaps the following year. The equipment needed to work them had been found in the storage caves as Raobot had promised so long ago. A surprisingly useful selection of material and machines had been set-aside for them. A new optimism had taken hold among the survivors of the long winter.

  Next week the first of the exploration drones would be released. They hoped to get a better perspective of how the world had fared through the long winter. Programmable, it would fly all the way to the coast, then from Los Angeles to San Francisco, before returning. The holos and data it captured would be transmitted back in real-time, but they hoped the vehicle would survive the trip to be used over and over exploring in other directions. They had two of the vehicles, so they would be a precious resource.

  The population of the caverns had increased by almost forty percent in the past year. All of the spare apartments were now occupied, and some of the empty warehouses in the storage zone had been converted as well. They would be emptying out as people relocated topside. While many familiar faces remained, new people who had never been a part of the cavern society were now moving through the crowds, bringing expertise needed to get civilization on a survival and growing footing once again. There were multiple sets of twins. The Rao brothers with their wives were just one such group. Those who had been active in the near revolution almost a century earlier had Facility and Sim based versions of themselves, and were now united in this new world.

  It would be decades before even a fraction of those preserved in the Sim would be extracted and brought into this new environment. Time would be required to get the basic preparations in place. Some wondered if the political leaders shouldn't be brought back early to oversee planning, while others were more than content to continue on without such interference. For now the matter had been tabled, but a vote was to be held at the end of the summer as to how the matter should be resolved.

  Unfortunately they had no way at present of visiting other areas of the country to see if there were pockets of humanity existing somewhere. Even with the horses that Sam and Sam2 had cloned, there was no food in the outside world to support an extended expedition. Greg and his wife Jessica had installed a radio tower on top of the mountain behind them, and monitored daily for any indication that others like them existed somewhere.

  There would be problems and difficulties, and certainly setbacks, but they knew the area, and had far more resources and preparation than when this land had been first settled. It would be decades before they had major cities once again, and probably a hundred years or more before most of those in the Sim were returned to the population base, but none had doubts that the day would come.

  The End

  See author note regarding the cloud on the following pages

  About That Cloud

  I admit it. I cheated a bit. The conditions that led to the creation of the Facility and the simulation described in the story are somewhat difficult to imagine coming about in real life. When my wife made a statement that triggered the idea for the story, I thought that it would be easy to support the creation of such a catastrophe. At first I envisioned a world that had frozen over, probably due to some anomaly with the sun. Some interaction, black hole, dark matter, I hadn't really worked that out yet, that caused the nuclear process in the core to suddenly halt for a time. That should cool things down.

  Of course one of my physicist friends hinted that a mass as large as the sun would have a tremendous heat capacity and with radiant cooling things wouldn't progress on a schedule to meet the needs of my story. I didn't want to do the math, besides I figured the assumptions we were considering would only be an approximation to what had to be going on in the sun. So I checked with my long time college friend and professional astronomer, Dr. William Luebke.

  Did you know that if the sun were to shut down this instant, calculations suggest that it would be ten thousand years before we got the first indications that the event had occurred? Ten thousand years! And that doesn't mean the cooling would start. That would be just the absence of some of the high-energy photons that would pique an astrophysicist's interest. The real losses would take many times that period of time. I wouldn't have guessed that! As a physicist with a passing interest in astronomy you'd have thought that little fact might have come up somewhere along the line. Obviously he had to be mistaken, but a little research [which I should have done initially] revealed he was dead on. So much for a solar switch.

  So, if we can't turn the sun off and expect cooperation, we can at least block the sunlight with a bit of dust, right? Well, Bill points out there are problems with that as well. To begin with, any dust cloud of the normal size would have been detected sneaking our way about the time the first astronomers started paying attention to such things. Also, while a normal dust cloud can block starlight, it usually has a vast distance in which to work. Putting a normal cloud between the Earth and the Sun doesn't give much room for
the cloud to do its thing. Astronomy likes really big numbers! There'd be some solar losses, but not what I was looking for.

  So, what about a small, abnormally dense cloud, that isn't so large to have been detected, and is thick enough to do the job? I learn that clouds with that kind of density have typically elected to become stars, and are in the process of consolidating their mass, and unfortunately for my purposes, are already quite warm in their cores, producing a lot of heat. Again, not quite what I was hoping for.

  I was rapidly running out of potential causes for my natural disaster, and Earthly based ones don't operate on the time scales that fit the story. But all is not lost. The universe is a large and odd place, and there is room for anomalous behavior. The clouds are typically packed full of odd stuff. There are compounds and radicals that simply couldn't exist at Earthly temperatures and conditions. Some of these are expected to have very odd behaviors. Since we have not been able to study clouds up close, it's impossible to say exactly what might be found there. Aha! An opening! So while I can't prove the kinds of compounds and radicals I want are there, no one can say with absolute certainty they couldn't be there. So, stuff that might react as the cloud leaves deep space and nears a sun in a way that it steals a reasonable percentage of the sunlight could exist in the cloud. Also, stuff that might be drawn into our atmosphere which is deadly poison to the plants and animals of our world, could also be present. This stuff could be of a nature that in time, exposure to sunlight and oxygen and the like might render it harmless. Even if not expected in a typical cloud, there is the possibility that a small cloud with this kind of composition might exist out there somewhere.

  I have chosen for the purposes of this story to conclude that we encountered such a cloud.

  Bob Blink

  May 2017

  Books by the Author:

  Timelines

  Split Creek

  EndRun

  Dirty Money

  Crossover

  Battle for Earth

  The Mind Writers

  Deadly Wilderness

  The Second Compound

  Reversal

  Wizard's Blood Series

  Wizard's Blood [Part One]

  Wizard's Blood [Part Two]

  Ancient Magic Saga

  Ancient Magic

  Into The Ruins

  The Baldari

  KalaBhoot [Limited Release]

  Jake Waters Series

  Corrector

  Back-Tracker

  Double-Back

  The Protector Saga

  The Barbarian/The Protector

  The Sor'ee

  Dedication

  This book is for my wife Evelina, who made the comment that set it all in motion, and my for my daughter Nicole, who wonders why she isn't in it.

  Acknowledgements

  As always, I owe a significant debt of gratitude to those who have aided in the creation of this book. The help they offered includes background information, story suggestions, plot review, checking for correctness and inconsistencies, as well as the tiresome effort of chasing down grammar and typographical errors. Those who performed these tasks include Evelina Blink, Doug Burr, Connie Goshgarian, Monika Gutridge, Dianna Hunter, Jim Spiva and John Taylor.

  This time around I also owe a great deal of thanks to Dr. William Luebke, a long-time friend and professional astronomer, who spent quite some time correcting some of my misconceptions about the physics of the sun's operation as well as interstellar gas clouds. See the author's note at the end of the story for more on this topic.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 by Robert Blink

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Proof Release:June 2017

  First Edition Release:July 2017