Well, that certainly seemed to make sense, thought Sarah. The ozone layer was already depleted dramatically in several regions around the globe and presumably with further weakening of the field it would be one of the first casualties under the bombardment of solar particles. Still, was Gabriel Aguda pushing a controversial theory that the rest of the scientific community wasn’t ready to accept, one based on an overly dramatic interpretation of meagre data? It was one thing to be speculating about an event that took place in the last ice age, quite another to suggest it might be happening again.
Gabriel must have sensed her scepticism because his demeanour changed, and he leaned forward again. ‘All the evidence we have points to it: the dramatic cosmic ray activity getting through the ionosphere and the resulting increased concentration of long-lived cosmogenic isotopes like beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 in the atmosphere, the sudden changing weather patterns. What we’ve got to hope for is a quick transition to the Flip so that the field can pick up strength again in a few months.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘In the meantime, we have to do what we can to minimize its impact. After all, we should surely be better placed to protect ourselves than those poor Neanderthals, right?’
Sarah wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t the continuous bombardment of cosmic rays from deep space that worried her as much as the sudden unpredictable bursts of activity from the Sun. The UN committee weren’t going to like what she would tell them about the potential impact of any future large coronal ejections. Of course, a lot depended on how much weaker the Earth’s field got. But there was something bugging her about all this and she suddenly realized what it was. ‘OK, tell me this. How can you be confident the transition will be over quickly so the field can recover its strength? I thought geologists only worked on timescales of millions of years. Surely, even the forty thousand years since the Laschamp excursion is just a blink of an eye for you.’
Aguda went quiet for a few seconds, as though gathering his thoughts. ‘Well, in a sense you’re right. But our computer simulations of the way the Earth’s magnetic field evolves are pretty sophisticated. A geomagnetic reversal isn’t like a planet-sized bar magnet swinging around a hundred and eighty degrees. Instead, you tend to get a brief, messy stage when it’s all over the place, as though there are multiple magnets inside the liquid centre of the planet all acting in different directions. These different fields should then coalesce into just one, in which the magnetic north pole ends up near the geographic south pole, in Antarctica.
‘In fact, the satellites currently mapping the magnetic field intensity have already picked up regions over the Pacific and South America where the field strength is actually increasing. All our computer simulations using these data predict that the transition will be over before the end of the year, by which time full recovery should be quick.’
The diner customers were beginning to thin out now and Aguda, noticing that Sarah had put down her knife and fork and wasn’t making any attempt to finish her pancakes, tapped his wristpad onto the interactive table display to pay the bill.
‘But things are going to get worse before then, right? The coming months are going to be tough.’ Sarah tried to fight back the strong sense of despair.
Aguda nodded. ‘That’s where you come in, Sarah. We need to know how bad things will get if the field intensity drops much further – maybe to just a few per cent of its full capacity. And if we get another direct hit from a coronal mass ejection.’
‘And if we get through this?’
‘Once the field has flipped, things should recover quickly, and everything will be business as usual. Of course, it’ll be a huge boon for compass manufacturers, since all compass needles would then be pointing the wrong way!’
Sarah made a half-hearted attempt to smile. Deep in thought, she stood up and reached for her coat hanging on the back of her chair. She looked around the diner at the preoccupied New Yorkers getting on with their lives despite the growing threat from space. We take so much for granted in our thin biosphere, she thought, that we forget just how fragile it – and we – really are.
12
Saturday, 9 February – New York
Sarah followed Aguda through the huge revolving glass doors with their built-in biometric scanners, into the vast hallway of the United Nations building. The time on her retinal display showed 08:45. The Nigerian geologist towered over her as they waited at the reception desk. Like many others, she had often wondered why the United Nations still carried its old name. It barely made sense now that many multinational companies had seats at the table. Yet everyone knew that the UN, however ineffective it had become, still endeavoured to present itself as a benign global organization. She looked up at one of the huge black granite walls. Above the United Nations symbol of a circular world map between two olive branches, were emblazoned the words:
Security Without Liberty is Oppression.
Liberty Without Security is Delusion.
The motto had been adopted soon after the signing of the Geneva Convention on Privacy eleven years ago, in 2030, which had been required to cope with the rise in cyberterrorism, cyber espionage and the weaponization of code. Sarah contemplated how the twentieth-century ‘cold war’ had turned into the twenty-first-century ‘code war’.
The desk bot directed them to a security gate on the far side of the hallway. There, she followed Gabriel through a sophisticated retinal scanner. Once through, she was asked by a disembodied voice to stand still with her arms outstretched. A robotic arm with an oval-shaped black pad extended itself and skimmed around her body. The process took seconds.
Once through, she turned to Aguda. ‘Is that it? Don’t we get issued with electronic passes?’
He grinned at her. ‘Oh, but we have been. The retinal scan you just had has other functions beyond mere identification. Your normal AR capability has been temporarily deactivated and replaced with an internal one that’ll allow you to identify committee members and access documentation. You’ve also been tagged with a retinal ID code that not only gives you access to those restricted areas you have clearance for, but tracks your movements all the time you’re in the building.’
‘And that body scanner?’
‘Ah, that’s a recent addition. It’s a full-body B-Mouse scanner – sorry, a Blümich portable MRI scanner combined with an ultrasound transducer. Basically, nothing can be hidden from it.’
Aguda must have seen the blank look on her face and smiled. ‘Been standard issue here for a few months now. I’m surprised you haven’t come across one before.’
She shrugged. ‘I guess I’ve never been this close to real political power and such high-level security.’
‘Well, the UN now has a detailed 3D scan of your anatomy that even your doctor would envy. And if you happened to be carrying on, or in, your person any form of electronic or chemical device, right down to the nanoscale, they’d know about it.’ Sarah wondered how long it would take for someone with the know-how and determination to beat this technology.
They were joined by a smartly dressed man in his mid-twenties, who escorted them across a large, bland hallway to the elevators and up to the fifteenth floor. When they emerged, she noted that the corridors here were brighter and the whole place buzzed with activity. They reached a frosted-glass door with a sign saying HCR1. ‘Here it is, sir, madam: Holographic Chamber Room One,’ said their young guide. ‘The senator and the rest of the committee are waiting for you.’ Sarah guessed that sensors throughout the building would have been tracking their progress from the moment they passed security, constantly reconfirming their identity, because the sturdy aluminium oxynitride door swished open as they approached it. She noted the one-way mirrored windows of the room: opaque from the outside, but transparent when viewed from inside, so the occupants of the room had already witnessed their arrival.
The room was smaller than she had anticipated and dominated by a large white oval table covered by interactive display glass, with seating space for
about twenty people around it. Only half that number were present. Apart from two empty chairs for the new arrivals, the remainder of the places were taken up with sleek black holotubes instead of chairs, each about two metres high. The cylinders’ entire outer surfaces were covered with thousands of nano-devices, each of which in turn contained a tiny solid-state laser. When activated, these would beam out light in all directions to create a high-resolution holographic real-time image of any remote committee member not able to be physically present at the meeting. The result, always impressive, was an illusion so realistic it was easy to forget that the person wasn’t actually in the room. For now, the eight tubes sat dormant.
A man with cropped light brown hair and an expensive-looking suit stood up as they came in. He was tall and athletic-looking, though still dwarfed by the Nigerian geologist. ‘Ah, Gabriel. And Dr Maitlin. Good morning to you both.’ He approached, hand outstretched.
‘Sarah,’ said Aguda, ‘this is Senator Hogan, our committee chair.’ The man’s grip was firmer than it needed to be and his dark eyes pierced hers as though he were probing her soul more thoroughly than any retinal scanning device. It was unsettling. ‘Pleased to meet you, Senator.’ She managed to keep her voice steady and hold his gaze.
‘We’re all very pleased to have you on board.’ His smile had all the warmth of a great white shark. Sarah knew very little about the senator from Indiana other than what she had read online: that he was a highly skilled and ambitious politician and one of the youngest on Capitol Hill. Aguda had briefed her during their cab ride, filling in some of the gaps about Hogan, as well as a few of the other committee members.
She saw her name glowing on a prism-shaped LED display on the table, adjacent to an empty seat, and walked over to it. Aguda’s seat was to her left. To her right was a younger man she recognized as the president of AramcoSol, the world’s largest company. His name was Jassim Othman, and he was a renowned playboy. It was widely known that his company, built by his father, had risen phoenix-like from the smouldering ashes of the dramatic collapse of the once wealthy Gulf States, whose economies had been destroyed by the twin catastrophes of climate change and the abandonment of fossil fuels as a resource. AramcoSol had seen this coming and had invested heavily in perovskite-crystal technology for solar power as soon as it became clear that this was the material of choice for cheap, efficient photovoltaic cells. At the same time, it had shaken off its historical allegiances to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Jassim Othman saw that Sarah had recognized him and gave her what she presumed was his most alluring smile.
She suddenly became aware of a low hum from the holotubes around the table. Within a few seconds their black solidity faded and was replaced by full-sized holograms of the remaining committee members. Once they had all materialized there followed a brief buzz of conversation as the remote members exchanged pleasantries with those physically present and with each other. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, Sarah noted, and some exchanges were warmer than others. She looked round the table at each person in turn, scanning the rudimentary information provided on her AR feed. Several of them were not politicians but CEOs of multinational companies. She reflected on how world politics had been transformed during her lifetime. Even before the mass migrations forced by rising sea levels in the early thirties, physical country borders had been getting increasingly blurred. The world was now more noticeably split along economic rather than geographical boundaries and was defined as much by online firewalls set up by multinational companies operating in the Cloud and the movement of cryptocurrencies between them as it was by the old national borders.
The hubbub of conversation was cut short by Hogan, who called the meeting to order. ‘Welcome, everybody,’ he said, looking around the table. ‘We will dispense with personal introductions; most of you know everyone already. But of course I want to extend a special welcome to our new member, Dr Sarah Maitlin, a scientist whose expertise is, I am sure, going to be invaluable to us.’ A few looked at her and nodded. ‘In any case,’ continued Hogan, ‘you all have AR info about each other. I’m sorry it’s so sparse, but it seems some of you still don’t trust the security measures here and are being somewhat reticent.’ He looked across and smiled thinly at one of the holos. Sarah’s AR informed her that this was Xu Furong, the Chinese ambassador to the US, and that he was speaking from his office in Washington.
Ambassador Xu responded sombrely – Sarah’s universal translator implant converting his Cantonese into English while at the same time mimicking the deep, gravelly tone of his voice. ‘That remains to be seen. Let us hope that the young English scientist can give us some encouraging news.’
The illusion that the man was physically in the room was made complete as he appeared to look straight at Sarah as he spoke.
‘Indeed,’ said Hogan. ‘Well, you’ll all be aware that our business for today centres around what Dr Maitlin can tell us about the recent solar activity.’ Hogan turned to Sarah.
‘So, “young English scientist” –’ He said it in a tone obviously intended to be light-hearted, but which came across to Sarah as patronizing. She let the comment pass but decided she most certainly did not like Hogan. ‘– let me give you a brief summary of why our committee exists. You may recognize one or two of the people around this table, but others you will not. We come from a wide mix of backgrounds. As I’m sure you’re aware, geopolitics has been on the rise again in recent years. And even though the movement of displaced populations has blurred state borders further, it has also led to a rise in the powers of governments as the world has experienced renewed competition for space and resources. And yet many multinationals –’ He glanced over and smiled at Jassim Othman, who nodded curtly back. ‘– remain larger and more powerful than all but the richest countries.
‘This, um, welcome desire for international cooperation means that there is still a need for an umbrella organization like the United Nations that can provide a forum for global decision-making. Now, you might argue that the UN is a beast that has long since lost its teeth, but it is once again being called upon to act as arbiter and overseer of humankind’s affairs. And that’s why you see seated around you representatives from several large multinational companies, which of course have as much right to have their say as any nation state.’
Sarah tried to give the impression that she was grateful for this tutorial. Did Hogan think she’d just woken up from a decade-long suspended animation? Thankfully, it sounded like he was finally getting round to business.
‘And you will know that the reason you have been invited onto our committee is because of your unrivalled knowledge of these solar events and how to model and predict them. We’re informed that the most recent model you’ve been working on in your institute in Brazil is the most advanced yet.’
‘We believe it is, yes,’ replied Sarah without trying to hide her sense of pride in the work, even though, if she were honest, it was mostly done by a powerful AI. The computer simulations of the Sun no longer existed as thousands of lines of code written by human programmers. Like almost everything in the modern world that required the analysis and processing of huge amounts of data, pattern recognition and predicting how those patterns would evolve in time, it was really the job of deep neural networks rather than humans.
She suddenly realized that Hogan and the other committee members were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something more. Hogan broke the brief silence. ‘Well … we need to know what it tells us about the predictability and impact of any future events like the one that caused the recent geomagnetic storm that brought that plane down and, more importantly in my view, fried a quarter of the commsats over the Indian Ocean. We also need to know what effect they may have on our weather systems and if we should expect more extreme events like Hurricane Jerome.’
It surprised Sarah that Hogan would be more concerned with damage to global communication systems than the loss of human life, and she wondered what political causes this commi
ttee had been set up to serve. She decided that full disclosure as soon as possible was the safest course of action and butted in. ‘Can I make clear that, as a solar physicist, my expertise doesn’t extend to geomagnetic storms and their effects on the climate.’
Hogan shot her a quick glance, suggesting he was not used to being interrupted. But his features softened almost immediately as though a switch controlling them had been flicked. ‘I perfectly understand. So rather than detain our distinguished members, or indeed you, any longer than necessary, maybe you can give us an update on your work; in lay terms, of course.’ He laughed and looked around the table. Several others laughed too.
What a bunch of patronizing fools, thought Sarah. While she couldn’t assume that they knew much about her research, she wasn’t naive enough to think that they wouldn’t all have been thoroughly briefed by their science advisors.
‘Thank you, Senator,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course, I’ll try to keep this, ah, simple.’ She placed her left hand on the table and tapped her wristpad, transferring the holographic presentation she’d prepared the day before to the room’s system. Then, taking a deep breath, she began. ‘I’m relieved to hear that you don’t want me to comment on whether cosmic rays were linked to Hurricane Jerome – not until we’ve made further analyses. But hard though this might be for you to accept, I believe we have an even bigger problem to worry about.’ She had rehearsed this part of her speech several times in her head and felt her confidence return.
‘As most of you will probably know already, coronal ejections – giant bubbles of electrified gas thrown out from the surface of the Sun – take place on average several times a day. And since they can be ejected at any angle in three dimensions, the chance of one heading directly towards Earth is low, typically once every fortnight.’ As she spoke she activated the presentation. A holographic animation of the Solar System appeared hovering above the centre of the conference table at head height. The Sun was a football-sized, glowing and dynamic orange sphere, exquisite in its detail, with Earth and the inner planets orbiting slowly around it. Every now and then it spat out a tiny diffuse ball of fire that travelled radially outwards, spreading and fading slowly as it did so.
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