The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  T - Represents time of target interception-detonation

  T -1:39:18 Baikonur launches

  T -1:21:59 Jiuquan launches

  T -1:15:07 Hainan launches

  T -0:58:22 Kennedy launches

  T -0:46:16 Guiana launches

  Calibrate all local launch countdowns to this PRECISE TIMETABLE in sync with MASTER GPS time code. Follow all pre-launch com protocols with CCLD-HOUSTON per previous HR DOC #LP0013C-7714095**021418

  CONFIRM RECEIPT

  END TRANSMISSION

  Courtesy NASA, Home Run

  Lisa McLane. . .

  Almost seven months after Charley and I stood together on that magical moonlit night when we realized and declared our abiding love, each for the other, only to learn about the horrible, life-stealing comet coming to claim us, we had once again retreated to our forested hideaway.

  We were lying amid a profusion of daisies, lavender, and other wildflowers beneath the broad leaves of the spreading sycamore tree. It was right beside the large pond that had been our swimming hole since childhood. Nicely situated in a wooded area of long-abandoned McAlistair farm near our small hometown of Ashton, Georgia. Many long years previous, when we were but children, this had become our “Special Place.” And now Avery’s fiery comet of death was invading it. Even now we could see it closing in. There were barely two weeks left before what would likely be the end of our precious, beauteous Earth and all of us residing upon it.

  I was staring up through the sycamore’s broad branches to the half-moon frowning down from the darkening, early evening sky. Though the comet was still far beyond the waning, glowing moon, it was much larger now than when it could first be seen by the naked eye.

  “It’s just not fair, Charley,” I murmured quietly with bitter tears overflowing my eyes. Charley saw, and touched my cheek tenderly.

  “Lisa . . . ?” He whispered lovingly.

  But I was so very aggrieved that I could barely speak. “I wanted us to marry, Charley. Have three kids . . . two girls and a boy . . . a little Charley, junior . . .” My throat tightened, my words became almost inaudible. “Not end like this.”

  “C’mon, Lise, it’s gonna be okay.” He put his strong, comforting arm around my shoulder. Charley was so endearing, so genuine, trying to be as manly as a seventeen-year-old could muster. “I really think it will be.” I leaned into the warmth of his loving embrace, his soothing counsel, wanting to believe. He didn’t know that I had glanced up at him and beheld his frown as he gazed up at the lowering sky and our impending destiny.

  I saw that he, too, was equally as worried, heartsick, and frightened as was I.

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  Looking out across the mountainous Puerto Rican jungle that was skimming past only a few hundred feet beneath our BLACK HAWK, I spotted the gigantic thousand-foot dish of the Arecibo radio telescope nestled into the distant greenery. Until 2016 when the Chinese created a similar sixteen-hundred-foot dish, Arecibo was the largest in the world. Neither of those scientific wonders, however, would be of any help to our current crisis. But I was on my way to something that might be.

  It was July 8, barely two days before intercept. I was appropriately red-eyed from my late-night flight from Boston to SJU, San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marin International. Less than ten hours earlier I’d fallen asleep in my office at MIT only to be awakened immediately by my cell. It was the chief administrator of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington, on a conference line with Alexandra Willis at Home Run, Houston. They had an offer for me to consider. Which I accepted in a nanosecond.

  Since I had been the first one who spotted Avery’s Comet en route to earthly disaster, they asked if I’d be interested in being among the last to see it up-close.

  The beefy BLACK HAWK suddenly pitched nose-up so sharply that I was instantly 120 pounds heavier as I pulled two Gs. Then I went weightless as the aircraft flattened out abruptly for a spot-on, ultrafast landing. Whoa. Thanks for the warning, guys. Nothing subtle about these combat-trained chopper jocks.

  We had barely touched down when the door slid open, and a thirtysomething Asian American air force captain stuck his head in, shouting loudly over the aircraft’s noise, “Dr. Cordaro?”

  “Connie,” I shouted back, smiling. I popped open my four-point seat belt as I glanced at his name tag, a touch bemused. “Captain O’Hara?”

  He smiled back. “I know. Doesn’t fit the profiling. First name helps: Manchu.” He extended his hand. “Welcome to Starfire.”

  Guiding me out beneath the spinning chopper blades, Manchu shouted, “Base camp’s down there.” He was pointing toward the encampment that was situated a hundred yards below our helipad. A dozen or so air force and civilian people were moving between support equipment, military jeeps, and trucks that surrounded multiple 18-wheeler-size trailers. Several had large dish antennae aimed skyward. The camp was on a jungle mountaintop almost a mile above sea level. Stretching beyond and below the camp was a beautiful vista of the lower mountains surrounding us. Ghostly mists were gliding slowly up one of the green jungle canyons from the blue Caribbean beyond. I also noticed a number of armed US Marine guards on alert around the compound. “And up there,” the captain said, pointing back across me and up to one side, “is our baby.”

  I glanced up and got my first look at the Starfire Optical Range. It had been hastily disassembled, moved from New Mexico, and rebuilt atop the rise above us at the highest point of Cerro de Punta on an area about half the size of a football field.

  Courtesy AFRL Directed Energy Directorate

  There were several other large trailers up on top with air force, marine, and civilian personnel moving in and out. A raised hundred-foot-square section about ten feet high was in the center. Atop that large platform was what looked for all the world like an upside-down cake pan. A fifteen-foot-tall, seventy-foot-wide inverted cake pan. Its polished aluminum surface was so shiny that the sun glinting off it made me squint. But I could see that poking through a thirty-foot hole in the top of it was the Starfire device. It reminded me of the cylindrical, open frame reflecting telescope at Palomar, but only about a third as tall. “My God, Manchu, how did you possibly move all this here so quickly?”

  “Because we had to?” His expression was grim and serious. He led me up closer to the giant cake pan. “Have you ever seen those collapsible cups people take camping?”

  “You mean cups with sides that nest down into each other so they flatten out for packing away?”

  “Yeah.” Manchu nodded and raised his eyebrows, indicating toward where we were heading.

  I immediately understood what he was talking about. This shiny, giant cake pan was only the outermost of several such giant cake pans nested one inside the next inside the next. So the building could be stretched up taller to the full height of the Starfire Optical Range (SOR). The design was meant to protect SOR from weather with the help of a sliding lid that could cover the central hole. As we entered into the huge cake pan, its walls were only raised up about a third of the way, allowing the top half of the SOR, its telescope and its laser array, to protrude through the opening. We approached its massive circular base. The entire snow-white mechanism loomed thirty feet above us and was framed against the bright blue sky above. The top half was the open frame telescope/laser (LIDAR) unit. It was cradled in a yoke that could pivot the array 180 degrees from one direction, say east, across the zenith directly overhead to the opposite, westerly direction. And that beefy yoke was situated on a turntable that could rotate the entire hefty mechanism 360 degrees on the flat axis. That X-Y axis combination allowed SOR to be aimed at any portion of the sky.

  I nodded, admiring the cleverness of the collapsing cake-pan walls around the device. “So to aim it lower in order see toward the horizon you just—”

  “Yep. Lower the walls.” Manchu responded. “That gives us the maximum capability of acquiring line of sight to the comet at the earliest possible moment, assuming the wea
ther gods keep it cloudless, otherwise . . .” We both knew that cloud cover could render Starfire useless.

  Except for its giant collapsing cake-pan housing, the basic design of the X-Y axis telescope was very standard for observational astronomy.

  “The main difference, of course,” the captain said, “is that the Starfire Optical Range wasn’t just built for observing.” With a faint grin he added, “I could tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you.” I understood. I had been briefed that aspects of the SOR were classified. But they were easy to surmise. With the help of its laser array, SOR could track the movement of any satellite and keep the telescope sharply focused on it. And if that laser array, that LIDAR, was as powerful as I suspected, it could also be used to destroy a satellite. But that was not the mission at hand. I knew the LIDAR itself, despite its unusual power, would not be effective at warding off the mountainous comet. Starfire’s job was to “paint” the comet with its laser beam and target Avery for the incoming nuclear missiles. The opportunity I’d been given was to be watching the incoming comet through Starfire’s telescope as the missiles intercepted, impacted, and detonated, hopefully deflecting or shattering it.

  Or not. Either way I would definitely be one of the last to see it close-up before collision.

  BEGIN TRANSMISSION

  SUBJECT: WEAPON ARMING PROTOCOL—HR DOC #LP0279-876543-102344

  DATE: 07/9/20 18:17:20 ZULU

  FROM: NASA-HOUSTON-HR CCO [Chief of Combined Operations] Alexandra Willis

  TO: SLD [Site Launch Directors] Baikonur, Jiuquan, Hainan, Kennedy, Guiana

  CC: UNSG, POTUS, SECDOD, CSAF

  This is final reconfirmation of steps taken to INSURE PROPER EFFECTIVE DETONATION of all nuclear warheads targeting Comet Avery.

  It is our collective hope that all the missiles will reach the target at exactly the same moment. But regardless of whether or not they do, it has been agreed vital that all the nuclear devices MUST DETONATE AT THE SAME INSTANT. Any asymmetrical first detonation could disrupt or incinerate the other rockets and their nuclear payloads, thereby preventing the maximum explosive effect that must be achieved by their simultaneous detonation. If one missile is even milliseconds ahead of the others, whichever warhead detonates first, it must automatically trigger simultaneous detonation of all others.

  Therefore we are confirming that a PRECAUTIONARY EXECUTE COMMAND (PEC) has been inserted into each warhead’s programming. In the event that there is any mishap with a missile or a nuclear device during launch or flight, it has been determined that the PEC shall not become active until the missiles are flying on target and within 500 nautical miles of the target.

  CONFIRM RECEIPT

  END TRANSMISSION

  Courtesy NASA, Home Run

  Jimmy-Joe Hartman. . .

  My poppa, Joseph, and my always-do-the-right-thing sister, Claire, wuz at church a lot. They wuzn’t the only ones. TV showed theys like millions of others who wuz prayin’ away like crazy in their churches or temples or them mosques and monasteries and what all. They wuz like nonstop 24/7 services goin’ all over the damn world. Everybody wuz beggin’ whatever God they wuz into for some sorta dee-vine intervention to stop the damn comet.

  I still thought it wuz all a crock. But as the clock wuz tickin’ down, I seen some of the boys I hung with gettin’ spooked. I even seen my pal, scrawny ol’ Scooter, who wuz always chillest o’the chill, I actually seen Scooter duckin’ into a church! When I axed him ’bout it, he tried to laugh it off, but I seen his upper lip get kinda sweaty, so I knowed he wuz nervous. Then he got quiet and axed me what did I think it’d be like? How we wuz gonna die. He started talkin’ ’bout how’d it feel to die horrible-like. Wuz we just gonna be exploded and feel nothin’? That wudn’t be so bad, he said. But how ’bout if we got burned up in a flash of fire, or scorched to death slow, or drownded gaspin’ for air under some big-ass tidal wave? And even if we didn’t get killed outright, how’d it feel to have that acid rain comin’ down on us till our skin got seared off?

  “Whoa, whoa, man.” I held my hands up, forcin’ out a little chuckle. “You forgettin’ ’bout them eighteen rockets, man! They gonna blast that sucker to shit.”

  “Whatchu talkin’ eighteen rockets, Jimmy-Joe? Don’t you listen to the news? They down to just thirteen now.”

  That gimme a little chill. But I tried not to let on. “Yeah, yeah, ’course I know. But shit man, thirteen nukes’ll be plenty ’nuff to take care of—”

  “But what if they don’t all get there?” Scooter said, almost like a whiny little kid. “And even if they do, not all of em’s American made, you know? What if they don’t do the job?!”

  “Aw, man, I’m tellin’ ya, ain’t nothin’ to go on about. They gonna—”

  But I seen that Scooter wuz lookin’ at me like I ain’t never seen him. Scooter always had hisself some sneaky plan to come outta anything on top. But not this time. I seen his eyes had got watery. I seen he was really scared shitless. Deep down. Like we wuz all trapped in a nightmare with no way out. And if fuckin’ Scooter was scared—

  Thas when I started t’get worried.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Reports on CNN and elsewhere grew ever more grave. Across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, growing numbers of people chose not to wait for the possibly blistering horrific end, but instead took their own lives. As the last days wound down to hours, hope stretched thinner, and no miracle occurred.

  Inevitably, inexorably, the day of impact had arrived.

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  We’d run a final full system check of Starfire’s LIDAR just before dawn on July 10. The weather gods had kept the sky clear. The thin aluminum walls surrounding SOR were dropped and nested down to their lowest point.

  I had of course seen many laser beams in my life, but the widest had been only pencil thin. Consequentially I was quite startled and amazed to see that the powerful beam emanating from LIDAR had a width of one full meter. The bright orange beam spiked up through the stratosphere so brightly that I had to squint to look at it. It stretched up into the stratosphere over Puerto Rico and on into the darkness of space.

  Courtesy AFRL Directed Energy Directorate

  Once the test was completed, the weighty Starfire laser and telescopic array rotated smoothly on its turntable while tilting down on its yoke until it was aiming toward the eastern horizon. I leaned against the massive, white, circular steel base beneath SOR and gazed off in the direction it was pointing, into the coming dawn. I knew that more than just the sun would soon be rising over the horizon.

  Katie McLane, 14, Lisa’s younger sister. . .

  My mom, Eileen, had been pretty frazzled ever since Dad left a couple years earlier to live with his girlfriend, Tina, in Atlanta. But that morning Mom was really coming unglued. Particularly ’cause Lisa’d gone out before dawn and hadn’t come home like she’d promised. I told Mom not to worry. I figured Lisa and Charley had gone out to their “Special Place” on the old McAlistair farm. But Mom kept getting more upset about crazy stuff, like why I hadn’t washed my hair that morning. She was always on my case ’cause I had long ringlets that got tangled if I didn’t wash ’em.

  But Mom, Today? Really!? I finally got her to come with me up toward Ashton’s town square.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  At dawn that morning I looked out from our apartment’s balcony over Atlanta, normally bustling with street traffic and noise, but today strangely quiet. The sky overhead was equally silent. All aircraft were grounded, worldwide. I felt it must feel essentially the same in every city and village in every country on every continent. Everything had begun to slow: autos, buses, trucks, trains, horse carts, rickshaws, everything everywhere was gradually edging to a standstill. Everyone was pausing, perhaps for the last time, to look up.

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  One of the big, expanded double-wide trailers adjacent to SOR was Starfire’s Master Control Room (MCR). There were numerous armed US
Marine guards stationed around it. A tough-as-nails marine sergeant with his automatic rifle slung on his shoulder checked the ID badges hanging around my neck, even radioing inside to double-check. Then the sergeant nodded to two other marines on either side of the entrance. One punched in part of a code on the keypad, which the other door guard completed, and the heavy securing bolts snapped loudly. They opened the door. I was turning to enter when the sergeant said, “Ma’am?”

  I turned back to look and saw the sergeant’s intense brown eyes staring into mine. Then he raised his iron fist into a solid thumbs-up. Holding his gaze, I drew a long breath, nodded an appreciative, silent thanks, and went inside.

  There were two armed marines, one female, stationed just inside the door. A narrow pathway ran down the center of the room between equipment and monitoring consoles on both sides. In front of each console sat mostly US Air Force personnel, each wearing a headset and carefully monitoring their individual responsibilities. At the far end were five large video monitors, two each on either side of the much larger main screen. Three air force officers were seated facing them; in the center chair was Captain Manchu O’Hara. I edged to one side, knowing that I was merely a very privileged observer. But when Manchu saw me, he nodded to an empty chair just over his shoulder. There was a strip of tape on it with the handwritten words, “For Dr. Cordaro.” I was touched.

  On one of the side screens was an image of the SOR unit with coordinate data, angles of incidence, time codes, and so on, all pulsing or scrolling to one side. The second screen was displaying radar. The third screen showed a view of the blue sky and the eastern horizon line through SOR’s 1.5-meter telescope. The larger screen in the middle had the same 1.5-meter view. The fourth screen showed a view through the 3.5-meter scope of only blue sky. I heard two airmen reconfirming the coordinates of right ascension and declination where they expected the comet to rise above the horizon as the earth rotated toward it. Manchu passed me a wireless headset so I could listen in to the ongoing communications between us and Home Run Mission Control in Houston as well as all five launch facilities. The transmission was remarkably clear.