by Robert Reed
Adrianne took her lunch home and called in sick.
By evening, with the help of two cocktails, she checked her blog. The comments went on and on, many in Chinese. And she had just under fourteen thousand followers, the number rising every time she refreshed.
Someone had fed her the information.
That was the first and still obvious explanation. She kept imagining the Chinese dissident, crafty and out of reach, and with that bit of false-knowledge in hand, Adrianne wrote her next blog—a careful piece using bits of new research. With words and tidy graphs, she reminded her readers that hydrocarbons were common, both in the world and across the universe. But being common didn’t matter. Most of the world’s oil was too expensive to lift out of the ground, and what could be lifted was often too expensive to refine, and the energy gained at the day’s end was approaching the grim fulcrum where the modern world couldn’t afford to pay its bills.
The topic was familiar. She had investigated peak oil many times. But she had more followers now, a lot of new heads to absorb her thinking, and that’s why she wrote the piece, expecting that a few of her readers would appreciate and maybe even welcome her calm logic.
Fifty-eight years of life gives a person experience with insults and curses. But what surprised Adrianne was the intimacy of the threats—violent words coupled with images from people who didn’t simply doubt her numbers and good sense, but who wanted to come her house just so they could cut off her head, to claim it as a trophy they would nail to their truck hoods or use in ways far worse than that.
She slept badly for a week. And while awake, every stranger deserved small anxieties.
Yet nothing evil ever came to her door, and everything that was good proved to be excellent. Adrianne’s staff rallied around her. Unfit men in their thirties and forties acted as unofficial bodyguards, and without fanfare, the youngest member of her staff—a girl in her mid-twenties—broke company rules by bringing both a Taser and pepper spray into the office.
That next Sunday, Adrianne published a brief, dense blog about magneto-inertial fusion engines—the best means for opening up the solar system. And inside the piece, she included schematics plucked from what looked like a NASA website.
Her followers had reached eighty thousand.
The rocket blog was followed by a long, complicated piece about increasing lifespans and why that was a damnable trend. Long-term environmental successes would never be possible if too many bodies were prepared to live comfortably in the increasingly overheated world.
By then, her followers’ comments had dropped by half, insults by one third, and she had the carefully plotted data to prove it.
By then, the Chinese civil war was underway, and feeling invested in that particular horror, Adrianne suggested a solution. Like an innoculate into a sick body, she proposed that one of the peripheral Chinese enclaves could supply a new paradigm. Taiwan was offered, then dismissed. Too much history. Hong Kong had its potentials, but it didn’t have the necessary freedom of motion. So instead she voted for the distant and very wealthy city-state of Singapore. Its authoritarian leaders and billionaires were Chinese by heritage. They could broker deals and supply guidance that wouldn’t end the strife today, but in another couple years, perhaps with only fifty million dead from war and famine, some new normalcy could be established.
Adrianne’s final Monday at work was pleasantly forgettable.
Actuarial adventures.
Lunch.
More adventures.
Plus one long meeting.
Then home and a light dinner, one drink and idle reading, and bed.
On Monday, Ghawar was the greatest oil field on the Earth. But early Tuesday, Adrianne’s time, a series of prolonged earthquakes rolled across northern Saudi Arabia. By Wednesday morning, virtually every oil well in the region had seized up and died. The spot market for crude was driving towards three hundred dollars. An initial explanation, full of panic and half-informed conjecture, blamed the greedy Saudis. An ocean of oil had been removed from the Ghawar field, and the strata must have been pushed too hard. Despite sound geologic evidence that this was impossible, an entire region had slumped, and the world was several million barrels short of oil today and tomorrow, and always.
By Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister of Singapore was opening public talks with three of the main combatants inside China.
Thursday morning saw a news conference from France. An upstart medical firm was going to sell expensive compounds that could only be described as elixirs, and lifespans would soon triple.
But the blogger at the heart of it remained surprisingly unnoticed. Only half a dozen news crews sat on the street outside Adrianne’s home. With her phone off and drapes closed, it was possible to believe that her life hadn’t changed. Then came Friday morning, and a team of MIT engineers announced that the design for a novel rocket propulsion system, posted on a small blog, was not from any governmental database. Or commercial database. Nor any other reasonable source. Yet A. Hammer’s documents contained quite a few interesting features, some invoking the newest ideas about energy in the universe, and it might be possible to build a prototype star-drive within the next five years.
By then, the world was plunging into its Grand Depression.
But those financial horrors were augmented by promises of endless life and easy commutes to the other worlds.
The raging chaos had a center—one quiet woman barely known a month ago.
Adrianne escaped her house through the back gate, taking a cab to work. Nobody in her office was pretending to work. They watched the news together, the door left mostly closed. A manager and two security people arrived before lunch, and Adrianne was ushered into the largest conference room. Every important person in the corporation had gathered to stare at her. Several of them remembered to thank her for her long service. Then the CFO offered her a worried smile and a substantial buyout.
Everybody adored her work, but she was too much of a distraction.
Twenty million followers were just the beginning. Adrianne was going to have advertising revenues flowing from her blog, and she had her buyout package, plus savings and numerous offers of cash for appearances on news networks and talk shows. With those prospects and a numbed resolve, she began the long walk back to her office and the cubicle, ready to wish her people the best before heading off into this unforeseen life.
But stepping through the door, an idea took hold.
Seven others watched the old lady make coffee for everyone. The Folgers was brewing, and she sat with her back to her desk, in a pose they had never seen before. She didn’t look regal or even particularly confident. No, nothing was special in her appearance, save for the weariness of great events, and they felt sorry for the lady, even while wondering which of them would end up in charge. She looked at each face. Then she gave the carpet a long stare. Somebody thought to pour coffee into eight mugs and everyone had their share and there was sitting and more silence, except out in the hallway where someone had slipped indoors. A supporter or an enemy: The invader’s goals were never known. Security noticed the interloper and tackled her, and when the screaming was finished, Adrianne looked up at the ceiling. Quietly, soberly, she said, “There’s no reasonable set of factors that can make this possible. What’s happening. To me and to the world. I don’t know why, but I seem to have a pipeline to things I don’t understand.”
Nobody could disagree with that assessment.
Then she surprised them, saying, “If somebody has to wield this kind of influence, why not me?”
It was the first inkling that their boss saw the potential.
“But I need a staff,” she said. “A well-paid, familiar group of people who know me well enough not to take offense when I’m lost in work.”
The girl with the Taser said, “Oh. You want to hire us.”
“And later, others,” Adrianne admitted. “But you’re my nucleus.”
Every head nodded.
There. It
was agreed. They would leave work together, after tendering their resignations.
“Nothing about this is reasonable,” Adrianne continued. “But this world is built on unreasonable coincidences. Until we understand what’s happening, I’m going to be the Empress of Everything. And for as long as I have the job, I should at least try to do my best.”
Her house was abandoned. There was no choice in the matter. Adrianne lived for three days on the Taser girl’s sofa, writing a sharp blog delineating recent history and her apparent, surprising hold on some form of cosmic power or blunt magic. Whatever this was. Her hostess suggested adding a little personal noise to the piece. “So people think they know you.” But it was Adrianne who gave the post its signature moment. Mentioning the horrors of liver cancer, she added a quick request for people to send a few dollars to one of several appropriate agencies. And by the time she slipped out of the girl’s apartment, nearly a hundred million dollars had appeared in the welcoming coffers. With a flood of unexpected gifts choking the blogger’s PayPal account too.
That next week was spent in anonymous hotel rooms, talking strategy, giving possibilities flesh and shadow. Her people did their best to keep the media at bay, scaring off senators and business leaders as well. And they also found a recently constructed, never occupied warehouse complex, far from the city but close to highways and a high-grade optical cable that could be secured.
Only the president was given access to the world’s boss. There were three long, very exhausting conversations. The last talk was a face-to-face session. Adrianne was touring the warehouse, preparing to sign a long-term lease on the facility and a power commitment from an adjacent windmill farm. A security firm still needed to be hired, and her team was interviewing remodelers. Apartments would be installed in back, and because nobody knew where this madness would lead, plans were being drawn up for a school and playground for children, a swimming pool for everyone, and a bar for the ruling class.
In those two phone conversation, the president tried charm. But charm had proved useless. Ready to unleash stronger tactics, his helicopters landed on the empty parking lot. Flanked by high-ranking civilians and officers in dress uniforms, he met the empress in the front office. With a careful blending of rage and authority, he defined his level of scorn. Adrianne listened silently. Then he invited his aides to talk about various legal actions that might be appropriate. She interrupted with a raised hand, which amusingly was enough to stop every voice. Everyone stared at her. “Which laws have I broken? I would very much like to know,” she said. Then the ranking general outlined what his people would do if faced with a dangerous power trying to usurp the nation’s security. “Except that sounds like war,” was her response. “And I don’t approve of war. If I can find the words, I intend to make every army in the world obsolete.”
That brought a chill, and more rage.
Sensing failure, the president returned to charm.
“You’re a registered Republican,” he pointed out. “I’m assuming you voted for me.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve never voted for national candidates.”
“But you do vote, correct?”
“Only for local candidates. Bond issues. I have a tiny but real chance of making an impact. But I can’t pretend to have a role in presidential races.”
The man needed had to pause, giving himself a chance to recalculate.
“Come over here, sir. If you would.”
He joined her beside a laptop.
“I’ve been working on a new blog. In fact, I intend to publish in the next few minutes.”
Some prior briefing came to mind. “It’s Saturday. I was told that you put these things out on Sundays.”
“Except I don’t have a normal job anymore. And with the change of fates, I think I need to embrace a more ambitious schedule. Which makes this is a good day to begin.”
Keys were pressed. The unpublished text appeared.
Stepping back, she said, “Read the piece, if you wish. Sir.”
The blog spoke about the dangers inherent in the aging nuclear fleets. Adrianne was arguing that the only wise course was to put the weapons to bed, today if possible. But she was afraid that people wouldn’t change their natures until they received a good clear warning. So at the end of the piece, she had written, “I want to see one of their swords pull itself out of its scabbard.”
The president hadn’t finished reading the piece.
“Lady, what are you talking about?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her heart pounding, she clicked the publish button and stepped back. “I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” she said, quietly but not quietly. “I can make guesses. I doubt if anyone can decipher what’s true, not in the short-term. But there are clues. If you look hard. With the Three Gorges and the stardrive, I was fed information of something already happening. Which is one phenomena. But I wrote about oil. On my own. And whatever this power is, it needed time to make preparations before the quake struck, before we started this overdue collapse into economic ruin.
“Sir, I have a sense,” she said. “My very strong intuition is that simple directions are more likely to lead to immediate effects.
“Consider this blog a test.
“Both of us need to know. What marvels do I have in this hand?”
Moments later, an alarm sounded.
An Air Force general turned away, muttering into a sat-phone.
Voices spoke of “the football.”
“It’s ours and it’s launched,” someone cried out.
The president looked ill, looked simple, his face drained of blood and most of its life. He glared at Adrianne. He stared numbly at his own hands. And then someone said, “No, the missile broke apart after launching. It’s down. It over.”
Adrianne turned to her people.
Winked.
Then looking at the visitors, she said, “I have six blogs written. They’re waiting on servers around the world. If anything unseemingly happens to me or to any of my people, those pieces get published automatically. And you don’t want those ideas getting loose on the world. Believe me.”
They believed, at least enough to retreat.
Then the Taser girl asked, “Is that right? Six blogs waiting to kill the world?”
The Empress didn’t seem to hear the questions. She seemed intrigued by the details in the her own tiny hand. Then to the hand, in that calm dry voice, she said, “By tomorrow, there will be. Now let’s get to work.”
Eventually she would be known as Adrianne the First. But in those early years, she was the Hammer, a respected and feared and often scorned entity sitting in a warehouse in the bleakest bowels of Ohio. She appeared on television when she wanted, which was rare. Her speeches and occasional interviews proved nothing except that she was no public speaker. And where the lowliest princess—some creature born with a good name and small inheritance—would have carried her head high, Adrianne became more and more like she had always been. Chilled. Collected. Long of thought, careful with words. Not the smartest person in a room, but the entity most likely to see exactly what was happening and what the next step needed to be.
During her brief, busy reign, she oversaw a thousand projects. Not every initiative was a success. Some were close to disasters, in fact. Urging Egypt and Jordan to annex the Palestine enclaves proved horrific, and her plan for paying the Jewish populations to emigrate to Canada was only a little more productive. But approaching her mid-sixties, Adrianne saw lifespans expanding and the first eight flights of the infamous Hammer Drive. Words carrying her name triggered changes in tax codes worldwide. Small, tidy rebellions began and ended with her words, various authoritarian regimes swept away, and she was better than anyone else when it came to picking the most deserving winners. And more importantly, she was very quick to admit errors and change paths.
No, the lady wasn’t loved, but that didn’t stop people from building temples in her honor.
Her rational mind was the
largest force among many, but the public talked about her magic for saving lives that she had never noticed.
Her stoic personality never failed. Early on, she told her core group that she was an agent in a very mysterious game. Aliens, machines, or demons from some unmapped dimension: Explanations were numerous and useless and why bother? But she accepted that she was too old to benefit from the new elixirs, and even if she lived a million years, she was still human. In other words, she was going to run out of good advice.
“Ten or twelve years from now,” she guessed.
She was wrong by a factor of two.
A very good guess, in other words.
On an ordinary Wednesday, she published a small blog about the desperate need for rain in northern Mexico. It was one of the little gifts that she gave to single places, and she didn’t expect instantaneous results. But that same day, in Capetown, a half Zulu and half Boer fellow published plans for a machine that would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—a simple and quick device powered by sunlight and the earth’s heat.
His machine was authentic.
Her rain never fell.
She retired, but not without some difficulties. Within a week, this woman who cared nothing for pomp and spectacle had little to fill her time, and perhaps that’s why she ended up in a serious depression. Returning to her old house, she drank. She slept too much. And then she didn’t sleep at all, weeping for no reason.
The tumor was discovered three months after she became an ordinary citizen.
Surgery was a possibility, but with the likelihood of significant brain damage. She refused. Radiation and various forms of chemo would be stopgaps, prolonging life by weeks at most. She considered and decided otherwise. On their own initiative, three of her original team flew to Capetown, attempting to meet with the new emperor. Their plan was to argue for a special blog, perhaps a call for a new cancer-fighting agent. The right words written in the proper order, not unlike a magical chant, might lead researchers to find a miracle hiding inside some little tropical plant. But the emperor refused to see them, much less consider their request. And hearing about the trip and the verdict, Adrianne sighed, saying, “Wisdom and kindness. They’re not the same word spelled with different letters.”
