Peregrinus Orior

by Robertson, John

  Alyssa enjoyed a warm climate, so the Santa Rosa area suited her well, with pleasant early morning bike-riding temperatures in the low fifties warming to the high eighties throughout the day in summer. In winter it rarely dropped below freezing. By managing clothing, it was possible to be comfortable outdoors all year round, and by managing ventilation, a house could be kept at a comfortable seventy to seventy-four degrees with a little supplementary heating or cooling provided by a high-efficiency bidirectional heat pump.

  She sent the report off. It was a good report and she was pleased with the performance of her little operation — a forty-megawatt geothermal power plant producing enough electricity to meet the needs of two thousand California homes. She thought of it as her operation since, as the onsite engineer, she was the only employee of the company within a hundred miles. Western Renewable Power Inc. was small, and it contracted out any maintenance to a local service company, keeping just Alyssa on site. So, it was her responsibility to monitor the central plant and the half dozen, two-mile-deep steam wells that supplied it with superheated steam, as well as the reinjection wells to return water back to subterranean steam reservoir.

  It was Alyssa’s responsibility to keep the system in tune, extracting the maximum amount of electric power from the available geothermal energy resource without overpressuring the turbine or exhausting too much water vapor. Every gallon of water released in the form of steam to moderate pressure fluctuations had to be replaced with makeup water, which was a scarce resource.

  Alyssa donned her headphones, safety glasses and hard hat as she stepped into the plant. Even through the sound-dampening ear protection, the wail of the turbine spinning at three thousand rpm sounded like a banshee screaming match. Alyssa knew very well that if the turbine ever came apart from a high-pressure spike, her personal protective equipment would provide very little protection from pieces of metal scattered by the equivalent of a small bomb. Even if the turbine’s steel casing contained the blast, the superheated steam released in such an event would cook anyone in the plant. It was her job to make sure the plant was operating within its design capacity with all pressure relief valves in good working order, and she was confident that she had all that under control. But you never know what Mother Nature has in store.

  As Alyssa checked the readings on her various pressure and temperature sensors one last time for the day, she reflected on the source of all the energy she was turning into electricity. As hot as it was inside the plant, it was like the North Pole compared to the huge lake — estimated to be nine miles in diameter — of white-hot molten magma about four miles beneath her feet. That magma was about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit and if it were ever forced upward and made its way into one of her steam wells and then to the surface, it would truly be hell on Earth.

  Alyssa didn’t think there was much risk she’d ever have to deal with magma, and she was better qualified than most to assess that risk. She’d gotten her engineering degree from Stanford with a concentration in geology and geophysics. Many of her classmates chose careers in research or government, but she preferred to put her knowledge to practical use. With California’s legislated renewable power standard set at 50 percent by 2030 there was a great need for technical people in the renewable power industry. It was a job in which she thought she could make a difference for the better. Little did she know the challenges that her expertise and courage would soon be put to.

  After completing her checks, Alyssa locked the plant building and climbed into her half-ton company truck to check each of her well sites. This involved a drive along a rough service road that snaked its way around and sometimes over the ridges of the Mayacamas Mountains, which rippled over the whole region of The Geysers in Sonoma and Lake Counties. This quiet, peaceful drive was a striking contrast to the atmosphere of the plant. She should see no one on the circuit today. There was no scheduled maintenance on any of the wells and no access to the service road other than by the locked gate at the plant entrance. If she got into any difficulty, she had radio contact with the maintenance company and emergency services. However, there were mountain lions in the hills, and so she carried a Browning 308 rifle in the truck, and knew how to use it. None of these precautions were needed today.

  By midafternoon Alyssa had completed the circuit without event. She changed out of her work clothes into a light jersey and riding shorts. Alyssa didn’t live at the plant, though she kept a cot and a small fridge in a corner of the office. Her home was a small house in Healdsburg, about sixteen miles back along Geysers Road, nearly all downhill on the way back. She wheeled her Garneau hybrid out of the gate, which she locked behind her. The Geysers Road was paved except for the occasional stretch of gravel, and with a 2,500-foot drop in altitude it would be an easy forty-five-minute ride. The return trip was quite another story, but that would be done in the cool of a six o’clock start the next morning.

  Alyssa loved biking and both her and her boyfriend, Brad, belonged to the Santa Rosa bike club. As she crossed the Little Sulphur Creek bridge, she thought about weekend plans for the two of them. They would probably join a club ride. The weather was supposed to be good as usual, if a little warm.

  The young woman felt that she was doing her part to meet the voluntary national energy conservation challenge, and she hoped the rest of America was too. She knew she could live with a few degrees warmer climate and still be very comfortable, but she also believed there would be serious consequences for many other people if global warming wasn’t brought to a halt.

  As she pedaled into her driveway Alyssa felt great, lucky to have such a good life, and excited to see Brad after a week apart. After a cautious start, in keeping with her personality, they had grown close both emotionally and physically, and now Alyssa saw nothing but good things in their future.

  Chapter 3

  Late July 2027

  Washington, DC

  It was dark as the president of the United States came awake to the soft beeping of his Timex. The longer days of summer were waning, and his day would begin, as usual, with twenty minutes in the third-floor exercise room and another twenty minutes of jogging around the grounds before his shower and a light breakfast at six thirty. Jim shut off the alarm and slipped into his workout gear and out the bedroom door quietly so as not to awaken his wife, Julia. He greeted the on-duty secret service agent in the main corridor and jogged to the end of the corridor and up the stairs to the exercise room.

  The TV was tuned to his usual news station so he could catch up on any new international or national developments before his formal briefing papers arrived at six thirty. Exercising and absorbing information at the same time was typical of Jim’s double-tasking style. This morning as he worked through several short upper body sets, there was nothing remarkably new being reported, and he found his thoughts wandering to the unexpected chain of events over the last three years that had landed him with a heavy responsibility.

  He was no stranger to executive responsibility and decision-making, but his background was not in politics. He was a business leader, most recently the CEO of Rockworth Construction Corporation where he had combined his cooperative problem-solving leadership style and his knack for identifying good people with a lot of hard work to build a highly respected and successful business, one of the largest in the country. Jim believed in people and their ability to rise to most challenges with the right support, though he would not hesitate to move an employee out of a role if they were struggling with it. He would never have sought it but was gratified to have been named Fortune magazine’s Businessman of the Year in 2023.

  Jim had been grooming his executive team for an eventual succession in the company’s leadership but had planned on another three or four years before stepping down from that demanding, high-stress role. It came as a great surprise three years ago when he received a personal call from Tim Mahally, the Democratic Party nominee for the 2024 presidential election. Would he consider joining senator Mahally on the Democratic ticket
as his vice president running mate? Several days of intense private discussions followed.

  Mahally was candid about his reasons for preferring to move outside of the usual political spectrum in his choice of running mate. Mahally believed, and had persuaded the Democratic Party leadership, that a left-wing political philosophy would not succeed in the 2024 election. He was looking for a centrist to command respect and even support from the centrist elements of both national parties, who would complement his own moderate but distinctly pro-environment image. However, the senator was also firm that he wanted someone who, while being reasonably philosophically aligned, would bring a different set of experiences and capabilities than his own to the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Mahally willingly committed that if the two of them were successful, then Jim would be an active participant in assisting and advising the president on policy and major decisions.

  Over the course of several days, the discussions between the political leader and the business leader ranged over many topics. In the end, the senator was satisfied that Jim, while politically inexperienced, was bright, articulate and fully deserving of his reputation as a consummate business leader. In turn, Jim developed considerable respect for Mahally’s political views and his plans to refurbish the Democratic Party’s image. Jim also became convinced that a revitalized centrist Democratic Party would be a better answer to America’s challenges and opportunities than the eccentric and divisive Republican leadership that had risen to power in 2016, or than a highly socialist Democratic government would, and that he could make a meaningful contribution to such a government.

  Mahally’s political calculus was correct. He and Jim won the election, and the Democrats gained a majority in the House of Representatives and a near majority in the Senate. Mahally was true to his word on Jim’s role, and the two of them collaborated on a variety of policy measures, balancing the president’s environmental priorities with practical business and economic realities. These measures had generally found prompt support in both Houses. The two of them, after two years having become both respected colleagues and friends, were just beginning to see the fruits of their efforts when Tim Mahally, President of the United States of America, died abruptly of a heart attack. James Rushton suddenly found himself truly out of the frying pan and into the fire in terms of responsibility and stress.

  Jim had no plans to run again in 2028 for either president or vice president, so intended to focus all his efforts on doing his best for the country during his unexpected interim presidency. After three months in his new role, he was still largely following the agenda that he and Tim had developed, while keeping an open eye for emerging developments that might call for a course correction. Although not yet apparent, such developments were in fact emerging.

  Chapter 4

  August 8, 2027

  White House, Washington, DC

  The president’s schedule had begun, as usual, that morning at quarter to eight in the president’s study beside the Oval Office with his daily intelligence briefing by the director of National Intelligence. The National Security advisor, the Homeland Security advisor and the White House chief of staff, Will Templeton, were sitting in. Jim preferred the more informal setting of the study adjacent to the Oval Office for his own private think time and for meetings with small groups of key staff. Will generally sat in on these meetings in case anything arising from the meeting required his rejigging the president’s schedule for the day. Today that hadn’t been the case and the briefing was done by eight fifteen, leaving the president a few minutes to go back over the written briefing and to prepare for his eight thirty meeting with his science advisor, Dr. Eli Wayman.

  During his two-and-a-quarter years as President Mahally’s right hand, Jim had learned what a large group of specialists of every type staffed the Executive Office of the President of the United States. This was a group with little or no political ambition, appointed by and holding office at the president’s pleasure, and existing only to assist and advise him with his responsibilities. One of the first messages he had sent through Will upon his appointment a little over three months ago was that he was fully satisfied with the existing senior leadership within the Executive Office and had no intentions of making any changes. That included Will, whose position was usually occupied by the president’s closest confidant.

  Jim was looking forward to his meeting with Eli, which he had been scheduling for an hour each month to keep up with any important scientific developments. It would be a one-on-one, one of few such meetings in his routine, and very relaxed — also a rarity. Jim liked and respected Eli, a sixty-five-year-old Nobel laureate with a reputation as one of the world’s most creative particle physicists and cosmologists.

  One of the science advisor’s key roles, in addition to overseeing the multidisciplinary staff of specialists within the Office of Science and Technology, is to ensure that the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology comprises the leading minds from all major branches of science. Although Eli was outspoken on a few controversial subjects, like Israel and gun control, he was well known and highly respected within the community, with a wide network of top-caliber colleagues. Although Eli’s area of personal expertise was extremely technical and complex, the scholar had both a knack and an interest in putting scientific matters into a context that the public could grasp.

  Jim had told Eli about a week ago that he wanted to discuss the subject of global warming. Jim wanted Eli’s condensed views; he didn’t want to include anyone else in the conversation — not staff or council specialists, the Secretary of the Environment or the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He knew Eli would be well prepared, so once the two were comfortably seated he got right down to it.

  “Eli, update me on the latest thinking on global warming. It is something our recent president was passionate about and I need to get my own views better defined and grounded. Let’s start at the beginning — how sure are we that mankind has been heating up the atmosphere, and then how successful are we being at getting it under control?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” began the science advisor, “let’s take your first question in two parts. First, is the Earth’s surface heating up? The answer is a pretty clear yes. In the period since 1880, when good records began to be kept consistently, the average temperature of the Earth’s surface has increased by between one and a half degrees and two degrees Fahrenheit. The increase has not been perfectly steady. In particular, the rate of increase has been greater in the latter half of this period, and there have been shorter periods of faster and slower rates of increase. From the late 1990s to the end of the first decade of this century, global warming slowed considerably and very nearly stopped, but temperatures continued to rise thereafter with 2015 being a record hot year since the data have been kept, and then new records in many years since. As late as the latter part of the last decade there were still a few responsible scientists who questioned the interpretation of the temperature data, but I think it is safe to say that in recent years increasing temperatures have become accepted as scientific fact.

  “The second part to your first question is whether we are confident that we understand why the Earth is heating up and whether it is a man-made or ‘anthropogenic’ cause rather than a natural phenomenon. It has always been a bigger challenge to explain physical phenomena than to measure them, and that is true with global warming as well. So, please stop me if I stray further afield than your time and interest can afford.”

  Jim, who had a notebook out and was jotting down key points, nodded encouragingly.

  “Let’s start with some atmospheric science facts. The air we breathe consists mostly of nitrogen, about 78 percent, and oxygen, about 21 percent. The remaining 1 percent is mostly argon, about 0.9 percent, leaving only one tenth of 1 percent yet to be accounted for. You may be wondering where carbon dioxide fits in. It is a part of that last 0.1 percent; in fact, it is currently at about 0.04 pe
rcent of the atmosphere, or four hundred parts per million as the unit of measure we use for very small concentrations. Carbon dioxide is what’s called a trace gas, but it is also the main greenhouse gas. Air also contains varying amounts of water vapor, which is suspended in it, on average about four thousand parts per million, about ten times as much as carbon dioxide.

  “Carbon dioxide, water vapor and certain other gases, even in trace amounts, contribute to the Earth’s greenhouse effect. The Earth receives energy from the Sun in the form of shortwave radiation — what we think of as visible light. Most of this short-wave radiation readily passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, including the molecules of the various greenhouse gases, and reaches the surface of the Earth, though some of that shortwave energy is reflected by the atmosphere and some is absorbed by it. Of the large portion that reaches the surface of the planet another part is reflected upward by the surface and passes unimpeded by the atmosphere back into space. The remainder is absorbed by the Earth, warming it and causing it to radiate energy in the form of heat, or long wavelength infrared radiation.

  “Here's the greenhouse part. The molecular nature of greenhouse gases is such that they don’t allow longwave radiation to pass through as readily as they do shortwave radiation. So, yes, a lot of the infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface does make it through our atmosphere and out into space, but some of it is absorbed by the greenhouse gases and then most of that is radiated back to the Earth, as depicted in this little diagram.”