Elemental Origins: The Complete Series

by A. L. Knorr

  She said, "The projects we employ supernaturals for are the most exciting and most classified projects we execute. They cost the most money, take the biggest risks, and have the most impact. This particular project, one we're calling Project Expansion, for now–"

  "The name is a working title," Hiroki added with a chuckle. "Let us know once you understand what we're doing if you want to pitch a new name. We're open to suggestions."

  Miss Marks shot Hiroki a mild look that could only be described as long-suffering.

  "Are you serious about that?" I asked, with more of a desire to interact and break down the ice wall that stood between Miss Marks and the rest of us.

  "Yes," said Hiroki emphatically, and wrinkles sprang to life on his forehead.

  "No," said Miss Marks, just as emphatically, but without the wrinkles. "Let's stay on track, please."

  Hiroki leaned back so that he was out of Miss Marks’s periphery and nodded at me while mouthing the words, 'Yes it is.' He widened his eyes, and he opened his mouth so wide a bird could have flown inside.

  I bit back a smile and heard Targa cover a laugh by turning it into a cough. Akiko shifted in her seat with her face tucked down in shadow. Georjie rubbed a hand across her mouth to hide her smile. At least the tension had eased a little, thanks to Hiroki's theatrics.

  "If our objectives are achieved," Miss Marks continued, either oblivious to Hiroki's clowning around or choosing to ignore him, "Project Expansion has the potential to improve millions of lives and alter the trajectory of destruction our planet is currently on."

  Trajectory of destruction? She had to be talking about climate change and pollution. Okay, so this project was environmental in nature. A puzzle piece clicked home in my brain: we were Elementals, able to control aspects of nature. It made sense that a corporation might want to use our abilities to improve the state of the planet.

  Intrigued, I perched my feet on the foot of my chair, leaned forward, and rested my elbows on my knees.

  A blue glow appeared over the center circle and I immediately sat back again, startled by the bright light. The central eye was a hologram projector.

  A hologram of Earth, slowly rotating in a galaxy of stars, flickered to life before us in vibrant colors. It looked so substantial I wanted to reach out and touch it to see if something had actually materialized there.

  "Behold, our home," Hiroki said, gesturing to the hologram. "Our beloved planet is in trouble. By 2050, our oceans will contain more plastic than fish. Weather is becoming extreme and dangerous at an unprecedented pace, destroying billions of dollars’ worth of crops every year. In 2017, the US alone suffered a record year of 306 billion dollars’ worth of weather damage. Drought and rising temperatures have left millions of people in south and east Africa facing famine. Dead zones in our oceans, areas where nothing can survive except for jellyfish because the water has become too acidic, are expanding at an alarming rate. Whole countries are starving to death, while others throw away food every day. Some might argue we are on the brink of World War III as tensions mount between the world's major powers."

  Gooseflesh rose on my skin as images illustrating Hiroki's narration appeared beside the spinning globe. Each image looked real enough to step into, and a low, tense soundtrack had begun to issue from speakers around the room. The images depicted beaches buried in plastic garbage, dust blowing across a cracked and inhospitable desert, an emaciated mother holding a child so hungry and tired he could do nothing more than lie still in his mother's arms. A whale wrapped in a fishing net so tightly that the ropes were cutting into its skin. An underwater panorama that showed nothing but huge jellyfish clogging the sea for what looked like miles. A smoggy and filthy city street crowded with people covering their mouths as red dust filled the air and garbage blew across the broken pavement.

  A lump formed in my throat as I witnessed the emotional and devastating images paired with the dramatic music. The soundtrack was loud enough to be heard, but not so loud it drowned out Hiroki's voice.

  "The picture I paint is grim for a reason," the scientist went on. "This is our current reality, and our future, but one we have the ability to change. Which is why we've asked you here today. TNC has a wildly imaginative and bold plan to provide humanity with a new lease on life."

  He took a breath and glanced at Miss Marks, who gave him an encouraging nod.

  "The surface of land on our earth is approximately one hundred forty-eight million square kilometers," Hiroki continued.

  The disturbing images faded away and the spinning Earth took center stage again. Sections of green light appeared on the hologram, highlighting large tracts of land on the continents. Splotches of red were also illuminated throughout, with the majority of the red areas being the Arctic and Antarctica.

  "Thirty-three percent of that land is desert."

  Splotches of yellow marked out the deserts in regions of Africa, South America, North America, Central Australia, and Asia. Hiroki shifted to the side so he didn't disappear from view as the hologram increased in size. "And twenty-four percent is mountainous. That makes for over sixty-three million square kilometers of uninhabitable land. Some of that land could be revitalized, brought to life, made stable and productive and used to provide a safe and self-sustaining place to live. If you'll allow me to shift gears for a moment, what I'll say next will seem strange—possibly unbelievable—but trust me as I attempt to illustrate the way you can help us achieve this."

  I shared a look with Georjie on my right, and leaned forward to catch a glimpse of Targa’s profile. In spite of myself, I was intrigued and impressed, not only by the altruistic objective but also the sheer scope of TNC's project. Georjie tucked her chin against her shoulder and mouthed wow. I nodded my agreement. Wow, indeed.

  The hologram of the Earth faded away and what replaced it was an image of a familiar painting. It depicted a square ocean with a dragon crouched beneath it. Two ships sailed in the waters. One ship tilted dangerously and was in the process of falling over the side of an ocean that simply ended. Water poured off into space. A white fluffy face in the clouds blew a nasty wind to hurry the ships toward their doom.

  "Ancient cultures ascribed to the idea of a flat-earth, before Aristotle provided empirical evidence for the spherical shape we're familiar with today. What we're left with from this old belief system is some beautiful imagery of how artists of the age thought the Earth might have looked. Consider this one made relatively recently, in 1893, by a fellow named Orland Ferguson."

  The painting changed into another. This one was not familiar to me. It was more map than art. Rendered in black and white, it portrayed a large square slab of land with a circular indentation, like a giant had pressed the bottom of a bowl into the ground. The indentation cradled all of the oceans and the continents. Four angels hovered at each corner, keeping watch over the world.

  "What's the white stripe around the outside?" I asked. A ring of white surrounded the indentation's outer edge. The white ring was smooth around the outside but jagged and crooked around the inside where it met the waters of the world.

  "Ah. Glad you asked." Hiroki grinned and I gathered that he was enjoying this foray into the ridiculous. "That is the ice-wall which the artist proposed kept our oceans and seas from leaking out and falling off the edge."

  "Oh."

  "To be fair, I don't know if the artist was commissioned by a scientist or if he made this piece to satisfy his own desire to illustrate a world lived on-the-flat." Hiroki chuckled. "As ridiculous as it might seem given what we know now, the Flat-earth Society still exists today and contrary to popular belief, it’s not full of loons and crackpots, but includes some startlingly brilliant scientific minds."

  "If they're so scientific," Targa said, "how can they possibly believe in a flat world? I mean…it's preposterous. What's holding the whole thing up? A giant turtle? What makes the seasons if the world isn't round and spinning around a huge central star?"

  "All good questions," Hiroki re
plied, nodding. "Flat-earth speculation is not the subject of our presentation today but I suggest that should you ever find yourself in a room with one of those who still believe in it, simply ask them. You may be astonished to find—in spite of your fervent investment in our global system and infinite universe—yourself being swayed. I myself—a resolute globalist like the majority of scientists—upon spending some time reading their materials, found myself both reluctantly fascinated and impressed with how they explain the science of this type"—he waved toward the map—"of system. To quote a book I recently read: 'Even the smartest people tend to seek out evidence that confirms what they already think, rather than new information that would give them a more robust view of reality.' I like to consider myself an open-minded person, so I indulged them and left my cynicism and ridicule at the door.

  “This is a difficult thing to do, but the attitude of child-like wonder is what gives birth to discovery. What I came away with," he said, his eyes gleaming, "was an idea so brilliant that it captured the imagination, not to mention the pocketbook, of one of the world's richest and most powerful men." He looked at his watch and added, "A man who is never on time."

  The hologram shifted again, this time to an animated and much more realistic looking flat-earth system, complete with a small rotating sun and moon, chasing each other in eternal orbit over the disc of the world.

  "Modern flat-earth science gave me this," Hiroki explained. "An animation that helped me understand better how they proposed this wildly unbelievable system might work."

  The hologram zoomed in to show its mechanics more clearly. I sat forward in my seat, fascinated.

  "In this structure,” Hiroki said, “the sun is much smaller than our actual sun and the moon even tinier yet. The two rotate over the land, disappearing from view due to perspective rather than curvature. In this way, they still provide night and day, just as we experience it in our universe. The orbits they follow swell in and out, providing us with seasons.”

  The animation showed the orbits moving just as Hiroki said.

  He continued, “The sun, being much closer to us in this system, works more like a giant spotlight. It lights the land below and just beyond, providing the heat and energy which plants need. The moon follows along, reflecting the sun's light and providing the lesser light that rules the night." Hiroki passed behind the hologram and appeared on the other side. "In order to become useful to us, and I might say, truly revolutionary, something is missing in this scenario."

  Akiko said something inaudible. She was furthest from me so I leaned forward and was about to ask her to repeat herself when Hiroki spoke again with genuine surprise on his face.

  "That's right, clever girl. That is what's missing."

  "What did she say?" I whispered to Georjie.

  "A dome."

  As Georjie answered my question, a transparent dome appeared overtop of the earth. A galaxy full of stars, which looked embedded in the walls of the dome, rotated along with the planets, sun, and moon.

  "Or," said Hiroki with an eye on Petra, "a force-field, if you will. Ancient texts referred to it as a firmament."

  I bent forward to catch a glimpse of Petra. She looked a bit stunned. Her lips parted and I strained to hear her whisper. She coughed to clear her throat and repeated herself, but all she'd said was, "A force-field?"

  Hiroki nodded, his look both somber and triumphant. "With such a dome in place," he went on, "the land beneath would be protected from ominous forces such as extreme weather, dangerous radiation and solar flares, and even powerful impacts such as those from missiles and meteors. Such a territory would be safe in a way no land ever has been to our present knowledge, even to the destruction of our planet, in theory. I'll show you how we think it might be possible."

  The hologram began to shrink and spin and morph into something that looked more like a snow-globe with the flat-earth universe going straight across the interior. The dome was now a full sphere. Beside the sphere, planet Earth appeared, rotating slowly, and the green, red and yellow patches reappeared. The sphere containing the flat-earth model shrank while the planet grew larger, part of it disappearing out of the hologram altogether as we zoomed in on Africa.

  There was a sound effect, a heavy boom from the speaker system as the sphere was planted in the middle of a yellow patch on the globe, in the Sahara Desert. The sphere was half buried in the Earth's crust, leaving the flat-earth inside on the same level as the terrain of the planet. Now the visual clearly showed the force-field as a dome which we understood was actually the visible half of the sphere. Apparent through the clear field and protected under the dome, was a place of verdant green life, bodies of water, roaming animals, and small cities complete with the tiny figures of people, all apparently living in harmony. Outside the dome, the sands of the desert and the hot sun raged and baked without mercy.

  A solar flare burst came from off-screen, lighting one side. A meteor hurtled out of space and struck Earth with a terrific explosion of fire, smoke, and a spray of rocks. When the mess cleared, the sphere with the flat-earth system inside it was intact.

  "Obviously, this is a grim picture, and not what we anticipate will happen to Earth. We animated it just to give you the idea of how stable we think this system could be. Ladies," Hiroki said, resting his hands on the edge of the console and looking at each of us in turn, "Elementals. TNC has secured some of this uninhabitable land with the intention of transforming it into safe and habitable territory. We have been doing the math on this project for years, and while we might manage to at least partially realize our vision with technology and pure grit, it will happen much, much faster with your help."

  One could have heard a pin drop.

  "You want…" I began, and then halted, not sure I should voice it for fear I'd misunderstood and would sound completely ridiculous. "You want us to help you make…a dome?"

  Hiroki nodded. "A prototype first, naturally, to study and test. Then a full-scale model once we've worked out any kinks. After that…" He shrugged. "Multiples."

  "Is this for real?" Georjie's voice was pregnant with doubt.

  "I assure you it is." Miss Marks shifted against the outer console, the first movement she'd made since Hiroki's presentation had begun in earnest. "It is a project you can be proud of. Not only would you be compensated beyond your wildest dreams, you would be helping to make life on this planet better through giving people hope and offering them a place of safety."

  Akiko spoke up. "You don't think it makes more sense to try and reverse the environmental issues we're facing, instead of creating something to hide under?"

  Hiroki said, "We like to approach problems from two sides. TNC has departments whose sole focus and purpose is to alleviate some of the problems I mentioned earlier, most specifically to do with the environment. Cleaning up our oceans, working on the acid and alkaline balance, and studying why weather is becoming more volatile with every passing year are some of the aims of those departments. Believe me, we are working on reversing the current trajectory. But that is not the aim of this particular department. We are tackling world issues from a different angle. Suppose we are not successful in reversing the colossal wheels of destruction already in motion? Suppose we are struck by a meteor? Suppose the poles do reverse? Suppose a solar flare large enough to bake half the planet does occur? Suppose all life in our oceans dies, coral reefs gone, fish gone, seventy percent of our oxygen supply, gone.”

  I raised an eyebrow, waiting to see where he was going with this.

  "Ladies, those are the incidences we are executing this project for. The project's aim is to preserve life, should the planet face destruction. Imagine, even in the event of a meteor strike which sends us spinning out of orbit and away from our sun! With your help, life can go on. Life could even begin on other planets! This possibility is not overreaching."

  His answer impressed me. I eyeballed the little rotating sun in the animation.

  “I have a question,” I put up a finger.r />
  “Please,” Hiroki gestured to continue.

  “Why do you need a miniature sun and moon if the dome is transparent and will get sunshine anyway?”

  “We don’t, presently,” answered Hiroki, “but we want to test our ability to provide them as an optional extra for the event of, say, a nuclear winter or meteor strike. The impact wouldn’t even have to push the Earth out of orbit for the miniature sun to be helpful, because the dust alone would block out our sun—as happened during the dinosaur extinction—leaving those inside the dome with a need for a new light source.”

  “Oh.” Seemed Hiroki had an answer for everything.

  “Good question, though. Keep them coming.” Hiroki winked at me.

  Miss Marks crossed behind the hologram and stood on the other side, looking from face to face. She clasped her hands behind her back. "What you would be involved in with Project Expansion, we believe, is not unique in the world of space exploration and aeronautic research."

  This statement was contradictory to what Hiroki had implied. I glanced at him but he didn't defend his earlier position.

  "But no one has as yet thought to apply it to our own planet," Miss Marks said. "It is only a matter of time before our competitors come to a similar conclusion and begin work on it, if they haven't already." She stopped walking and turned to face us.

  I stared back at her, conscious of my friends next to me who were also intrigued.

  Miss Marks continued, "But our competitors don't have you. If you agree to work with us, you'll be protected and nurtured by a team of scientists who are already working with supernaturals. Your families will also be protected and provided for." Her expression grew sober. "Walk away, and we cannot protect you. You are very valuable and if we know you exist, believe me, others know you exist too. You are lucky that we happened to get to you first."

  "You can't imagine that they'll give you an answer today?" Akiko said, incredulous. "This is a huge commitment, and if I'm being honest, it seems rife with potential problems."