AX50
Page 20
“Let’s get on with it then; those ships will be upon us soon. Would you like me to fire the shot, sir?”
“Thanks, but I must take full responsibility for this.”
With that, I fired the laser and watched as Max’s windows shattered and a burst of flame shot out. A few seconds later, a jet of pale grey glutinous liquid fountained out of the opening. I felt terrible killing the most intelligent living form that Earth had ever produced.
“Bullseye, sir! Now let’s get out of this place before all hell lets loose. I think it’ll be best if we stay away from Earth until this has all settled down. We have plenty of fuel since we never jettisoned any. If you’re ready, I’ll move to full thrust and have already set the ship on automatic to Ganymede.”
I couldn’t believe it. Why did Gregor want to get europa? Did he want to hold the world to ransom? My innards were doing somersaults and I felt horribly sick. How could I have made such a terrible mistake? I’d thought I could trust Gregor with my life, and yet now it would seem that he was the mastermind behind this whole shebang. I’d just killed Xanasa in error. The whole world and most importantly, Petra, would never forgive me. My judgement had been disastrous and I would never be able to live with this.
“Only joking, sir. What’s the plan now?”
Greatly relieved, I suggested, “Let’s get as far away from Earth as quickly as possible but stay clear of Ganymede.”
As the spacecraft exited the earth’s atmosphere, Zig didn’t know that he’d just killed Petra’s half-sister, and he never knew that his own father had been the other parent.
Ewan
writing in January AX50
I loosed my last arrow. I heard a barely audible sigh from my friend Tshering Yangchen. Yet again my arrow had landed in the dirt beside the small tomb-like target which was 145 metres away. I felt awful letting the team down. They didn’t seem at all upset, laughing at me as I winced and coughed after downing my traditional glass of Ara. We entered the imposing white walls of Trongsa Dzong, to be blessed by a monk swathed in maroon robes.
I left my friends at the dzong and climbed up the steep slope to my wooden house that our neighbours had built for us. We’d heard rumours of a momentous event affecting the outside world. In Bhutan, nothing changes and for this I’m eternally grateful.
Our brown mongrel must’ve heard me approach, as she came bounding down the path and was soon jumping around me, demanding to be stroked. She was closely followed by Miriam, blooming but very large; our baby is due in a couple of months.
Miriam had prepared our usual rice, chilli-cheese sauce and vegetables for our supper. We ate overlooking our vegetable patch and the terraced rice paddies beyond. I noticed some long curved tails moving between the purple sproutings in a line. Then one little black face with a magnificent gold headdress peered out from behind the large, floppy green leaves; her tiny white baby clinging to her chest. Our golden langurs had dropped in for their supper.
Petra
writing in late January AX50
I’ve always been prone to anxiety and became very low for months when I split up from Zig in that dark, dingy Mexican cave all those years ago. But that was nothing compared to the dark depths that I plumbed when Zig’s father (Ethan) told me that Mom had died of a heart attack and that someone on Zig’s ship had destroyed Xanasa and then disappeared to the outer reaches of the solar system. My brain shut down, unable to comprehend the full horror of it all. I took to my bed and lost all interest in food. What was the point in anything now that I’d no one left?
Ethan eventually sent for my mother’s psychiatrist, who prescribed Petratherapy. I refused as I couldn’t see the point in changing anything. I lost weight and developed a pressure sore. Ethan said that I must accept treatment or he would be forced to refer me to the Supreme Court. I bowed to his pressure and was amazed how quickly I recovered after the light source inside my head was switched on. I wasn’t that fussed about getting better, but I did feel proud that my invention was so successful. I was still sad that I’d lost Mom but felt strong enough to read her will.
I was shocked as I learnt that Xanasa had been my half-sister! She said that this was an absolute secret; it was essential that I kept it so. She also said that Xancled on the Moon was another half-sister. She continued, Should Xanasa die from any cause, you must create her replacement using the last embryo that is stored in liquid nitrogen locked in a safe in my bedroom.
Ethan came round that evening. He looked shattered; the responsibility of office was clearly taking its toll. I think he wanted to share some of his problems with someone he could trust who wasn’t on the Board. “We’re in a mess, Petra. Xancled, the AI brain based on the Moon, takes time to respond as she has to consult the data stored at CRC on Earth. We also have the energy time bomb hanging over us. Even when we have solar panels covering every desert, we still won’t have enough power, and it will be a couple of years before the new gas and nuclear plants come onstream! I can’t take this stress much longer. I’m planning that the Board gets elected by the Commissioners every four years and the chair is rotated every four months so that everyone takes a share of the responsibility. What do you think?”
“You’re right. I reckon Mom’s heart attack was caused by her taking on too much stress herself, so something has to change.”
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The next day, I set about fulfilling Mom’s will. I’d just finished extracting the appropriate stem cells from the last embryo when Ethan interrupted me via my Xan-link to say that Zig’s spaceship was passing Mars and should land at Guam the following day. I was momentarily elated at the thought of seeing Zig again. Then I crashed back to earth as I now knew that someone on that ship had killed my half-sister! The space engineers wouldn’t have taken control after Mom died. It would have either been Helmut or Zig. If it was Helmut, why hadn’t Zig stopped him? Was he too weak? I couldn’t bear to think about the only other alternatives; that Zig had been fully responsible, or was dead.
Whatever had gone on in that spaceship, I was determined that the world wasn’t going to be rid of the Spitzen dynasty anytime soon! I concentrated once more on the job in hand, and with the help of a microscopic robot, I carefully placed a single stem cell into the incubation medium.
Postscript, Earth, Late January AX50
Wildlife is thriving as vast areas of farmland have been returned to nature. All forests are protected and billions of new trees are being planted around the world. The air is pure as no fossil fuel is burnt. The only sounds are of birds singing; or in a town, you might hear music or children playing in a park. Occasionally, the gentle buzzing of an electric drone disturbs the silence. Pollution has been eliminated. The oceans and in particular the coral reefs are returning to their former glory. Many creatures that had been on the edge of extinction are now thriving. Indeed, some extinct animals are now alive once more. Mammoths have been successfully reintroduced after their DNA had been extracted from remains that had been kept frozen in the tundra. The resulting embryos were implanted into modern elephants who accepted their odd offspring as their own. Aurochs have been successfully ‘back-bred’.
Disease is now rare and mostly treatable. People tend to die of old age when they are well over a hundred. There’s enough food and accommodation for everyone, and there are plenty of jobs that only humans can do. Work-life balance is paramount, with people working about thirty hours a week. There’s almost no crime and the world has been peaceful for over fifty years.
Global warming has plateaued. The inhabitants of some atolls and the deltas of Bangladesh were forced to move to Africa because their lands had flooded too frequently. Otherwise, the predicted devastation of global warming hasn’t materialised. Paradoxically, Africa has become the most popular place to live, and restrictions on people moving to that continent are now being considered. Rainfall in the Sahara has increased, helped by the lake that now partially fills the Q
attara Depression. Dew forming on the solar panels in the Sahara during the cold nights, drips onto the ground; grasses and flowers are now consolidating the sand. The arboreal forest in the Arctic has seeded itself into the tundra, and the southern edge is being harvested sustainably for wood and paper. The world’s population is static at around seven billion people.
Underneath this apparently perfect façade, all is not rosy. Commander Spitzen is dead, but her didactic dictatorship has continued under Ethan Mcmanus.
Secret surveillance of the population has reached unprecedented proportions.
The Commissioners all know that the world faces a major energy crisis, but this information is being withheld from the masses.
I’ll explain how the Commissioners manage the world.
Governance
1.Ethan Mcmanus now chairs the Board, which consists of twelve hand-picked members.
2.Twelve Ambassadors report to each Board member.
3.Fifty Commissioners report to each Ambassador.
4.Eighteen Mayors sit on a committee in each city chaired by a Commissioner.
5.Twenty elected councillors are chaired by the Mayor in each town of 50,000 people.
Thus, only 7,000 Commissioners are responsible for governing the world, leaving over 200,000 Commissioners available for research, law and order, senior medics, surveillance and censorship.
Crime prevention
1.CCTV, which AI can convert to listen and record if something suspicious is seen or heard, is omnipresent in all public areas.
2.Everyone knows that if a serious crime is committed, suspects will be subjected to veritax and the ensuing ‘dreams’ will be revealed by a PET scanner interpreted by Xanasa. Because this gives unequivocal evidence of both commission and motivation, few serious crimes go unsolved.
3.Each citizen is fitted with an X-talk at the age of fourteen. All conversations are monitored by AI and if subversive words are detected, a clone arrives with astonishing speed. If the X-talk is more than two metres from an individual’s chip, an alarm sounds as this information appears on a screen at the nearest clone base. (Although Commissioners and clones wear X-talks, they are allowed to remove them whenever they wish.)
4.At the age of fourteen, all citizens are told that they are having a bone marrow sample taken, which will be frozen and stored for their lifetime. This is in fact true. Stem cells can be retrieved from this to grow new organs if required. They can also be used for bone marrow transplants after total body radiation or chemotherapy. However, the main aim of this operation is to secretly insert a chip around the femoral artery. This chip is detected by satellites so that the position of each individual is always known. This record is stored within the mountain at CRC forever.
5.All plants (including their seeds) from which drugs, including tobacco, could be manufactured have been destroyed. The drugs rush and xanacea are synthesised by the state on the artificial island off the coast of Costa Rica. These are sealed in locked containers at the factory, and every stage of their distribution (by licensed staff) is monitored by CCTV.
6.Alcohol is offered to anyone over eighteen (everyone’s age is stored in their X-talk), but with a maximum of four units an evening. Each unit is automatically added to the recipient’s X-talk. These rules can be relaxed with permission from Commissioners on special occasions.
7.Reward credits are offered for information leading to convictions of criminals. A false accusation leads to a de-credit.
8.If rape is reported, veritax is used. If proven, the perpetrator is gaoled, but equally, a false accusation leads to the gaoling of the accuser. If there’s doubt, the case is dropped. As a result, rape is now exceptionally rare.
9.Theft of large items is impossible because of CCTV. Small items such as jewellery are nano-tagged with GPS trackers.
10.It has been discovered that for a person to develop paedophilia, they need to share the same multiple gene configuration that’s found in our nearest relative, the bonobo monkey. (They share the same percentage of their DNA with us as chimpanzees.) This gene configuration does not lead automatically to paedophilia, but without it, the problem never develops. Researchers have found that you only need to delete two of these genes to eliminate the risk. This deletion is performed in all embryos that are artificially incubated.
Religion
Outside of the ‘enclaves’, religion is officially discouraged. But paradoxically, religious ceremonies are encouraged to maintain traditions around the world. For instance, male circumcision ceremonies are allowed in Africa. In cathedrals, people work as priests, dressed in traditional robes. Services are sung by well-rehearsed adult choirs and the congregation sings hymns. There are no prayers, readings or sermons. People are allowed to believe whatever they like, but if proselytisation is heard via X-talks, it’s reported to a Commissioner, and clones quickly escort the perpetrator to an enclave.
Health
Vaccination became mandatory world-wide after the conference of 2062, and many diseases such as malaria and influenza died out.
Annual blood tests to check on organ function and to detect early cancer are taken from all governed humans. If caught early enough, all cancer is now curable by immunotherapy or if necessary by full body radio-or chemotherapy, followed by bone marrow transplants.
By AX 20, all food and other essential supplies were provided by robots. In order to rid the world of viruses that only live in humans, the Board decreed that no one should leave their homes for three weeks. Only a few people tried to break this curfew and were immediately returned to their houses by clones. This simple command led to the greatest health advance in human history. Colds, measles, rubella and many other viruses were consigned to history.
Vitamins (including vitamin D, which was vital after skin colour was altered, and vitamin B12 which is essential for vegans) are added to staple foods, and fluoride is added to water supplies.
The new diet, low in carbohydrate with sweetner extracted from stevia and no added salt, which was adopted by most of the world, greatly reduced the risk of dementia. Rarer hereditary forms of this disease were weeded out when only embryos with good genetics were chosen. For the few cases that still arise, a vaccine is given, causing the immune system to attack amyloid and Tau proteins, which prevents the disease from progressing further.
Allergic and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis were almost eliminated by giving newly born babies a concoction of beneficial gut and vaginal bacteria mixed with eggs of symbiotic worms via a syringe into the back of their mouths.
Where genetic modification was allowed, all embryos were given genes that made it difficult for them to put on too much weight. This, combined with the low carbohydrate diet, has eliminated obesity in much of the world.
Schizophrenia. It had been discovered that a whole orchestra of genes affected the likelihood of someone developing this devastating illness. It was now clear that there were many different manifestations of the condition due in part to the particular combination of genes that an individual was born with. A similar combination could also give rise to a very talented person with no risk of the disease, which is now thought to explain how the genes had perpetuated themselves. Where the genetic health of potential embryos was being tested, these genetic combinations were avoided and schizophrenia no longer existed. In places like Africa and the religious enclaves, schizophrenia still affected one per cent of the population. Fortunately, it responded well to Petratherapy, unless this treatment was refused. Petratherapy was also used to cure most mental health problems.
With all these measures, most people live to be fit and well until they are over one hundred years old, when they tend to fade from old age.
Prolonged life: Petra had discovered a drug that stopped telomeres being lost from the ends of genes, and another that stops methylation, thus preventing epigenetic changes. Mice given these drugs still aged
but at about one tenth of the normal rate. It was thought that they still aged because of radiation from the sun and ground sources which damaged their DNA. These drugs were fed to Xanasa and as she was surrounded by lead, it was believed that she might have been eternal had Zig not killed her. These drugs are now taken by Commissioners but not the general population.
Tourism
This is the biggest source of employment. By 2062, people living in popular tourist venues were sick to death of their towns being overrun. It was decided that these places would be given over entirely to tourists. The people looking after the tourists would live in comfortable, modern towns near these popular venues.
In places of historical interest, the houses, furniture and art works have been returned to the historical period of the town. For instance, in Stratford-upon-Avon, all the modern houses have been demolished and original 16th century houses and appropriate furniture for the period were sourced and moved there. The tourist workers now dress in period costume. Food and drink typical of the late 16th century is served.
In Rome, different areas were restored, representing different eras. The Coliseum was faithfully rebuilt as it had been in the first century AD. Chariot races and gladiatorial bouts are staged. Another area was reinstated as if the Visigoths had just sacked Rome in 410 AD. The Vatican was restored to how it had been in 1500 AD with Alexander IV (one of the Borgia Popes) holding a banquet in the Papal palace, poisoning one of his cardinals.
These faithfully reconstructed places and towns are frequently used by film producers.
Tourists visiting beaches, game parks, ski resorts, lakes and mountains all have architect-designed hotels with gyms and wellness retreats, while the workers live in modern towns nearby. Nuclear-powered cruise ships ply the oceans and also cross between continents. This obviously takes a long time and so many credits are needed for such trips.