The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  Before the two scientists could begin, the distinctive voice of the British Prime Minister rose above the din. “With all due respect, you do realize how totally incredible all of this sounds to us? Do you not, Madam Prime Minister?”

  “Let me review our situation,” he pressed on before Ms. Hudson could respond. “Some crazy super-scientist created an unstoppable planet-eating device. He and a colleague from his lab then disappear, never to be heard from again. Now, nobody knows what this thing is, how it works, or how to turn it off? And you’re asking us to trust his two mad super-scientist lab mates—who, by the way, may have murdered him for nefarious purposes of their own.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” he snickered, “but that sounds more like a superheroes comic book or a sci-fi movie plot. Maybe we should ask your Superman what to do!”

  World leaders and advisors laughed with him. Greg, Kathy, and the PM didn’t even crack a smile.

  “I didn’t say they were crazy,” the PM responded, “but other than that, yes, that’s pretty much it. I am convinced, personally and as leader of Pacifica, that the course they recommend is our best, if not only, hope for the future. I implore you to join me in supporting the project they will outline over the next few minutes.” With that, she stopped talking and motioned Greg and Kathy to begin their presentation.

  Greg cleared his throat. “Thank you…” he managed to croak. His free hand drifted upward and loosened his tie a touch. He took in the rows of expectant faces scrutinizing him. Don’t be such a putz—he said to himself—you’ve given plenty of talks before. This is just one more. Don’t let them intimidate you. Imagine them all sitting there in their underwear. Lime green thongs oughta do it.

  He smiled, and a number of heads bobbed reassuringly, assuming the smile had been offered as a shy apology for the false start. Most of them had been in the hot seat themselves at one time or another, presenting to a tough audience. He cleared his throat and began again.

  “Thank you, Madam Prime Minister. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll ask you to close your eyes and activate your lattices in Visual Mode. Your chairs are all equipped with lattice induction devices; no need to wear your headbands. You will not require audio, tactile, or other inSenses, and may remain in Full Consciousness throughout this presentation. Please feel free to stop me and ask questions at any time.”

  He reached out with his own lattice to connect directly to his audience. As with all G26 meetings, an IT team had arrived ahead of the guests and shielded the room from all outside internet connectivity.

  He activated his lattice communications, and was relieved to find the team had done a thorough job. Darian Leigh’s rogue latent memories were still out there somewhere in the web, searching for a way in, and actively trying to invade and reintegrate into his and Kathy’s brains every time they connected to the internet. Thanks to the efficient IT team, he could momentarily relax his constant vigilance.

  Greg waited for the leaders and advisers to lean back in their seats, close their eyes and ready themselves.

  The less lattice-experienced participants, generally the older set, moved through stiff, awkward checks and adjustments as they interfaced with the induction plates in the headrests.

  Greg overlaid a ghost image of the presentation across his own visual field. He activated a local feed and checked the readiness of everyone in the room. The security team kept their lattices isolated from the presentation. Greg could track their activity as they interfaced with hardwired surveillance devices outside the room and communicated with their colleagues posted around the building. If he wanted to, he could listen in on their supposedly secure conversations being broadcast within their segregated lattice net.

  He sensed the leaders activating their lattices for external visual input, as if they were watching inSense at home, minus the auditory, tactile and olfactory channels. A few had accidentally gone a bit too far and disconnected their voluntary musculature from conscious motor systems control.

  Deep inSense was the standard mode for most entertainments, certainly among the blockbuster full-experience movies raging through Hollywood, Bollywood, and Hong Kong. Greg reached into the lattices of those who had gone Deep, and gently corrected their settings to save them any possible embarrassment at being in such a defenseless state.

  One by one, he checked each attendee, preparing the group to properly experience the visuals that would explain the plan he and Kathy had developed over the past few months.

  I hope this works—he thought. Both he and Kathy were tempted to just implant what they wanted the group to believe and do.

  Kathy had grown particularly adept at mind viruses over the past few months. She discovered she could hack into the mind of anyone with a lattice, echoing their senses and perceptions in a carefully partitioned section of her own brain. With little effort, she could implant false perceptions and memories, new skills, and beliefs. This new ability at once excited and terrified her. She and Greg knew better than to tell anyone about it.

  They’d made a practice of mastering their lattice abilities and exploring their limits. They’d find a quiet path in the woods, well away from internet connections, and try to inject one another with harmless conceptual viruses as they walked along hand-in-hand. The goal was to find a way to recognize, block, isolate, and recover from any attempt at changing their core knowledge and beliefs. It was intensely serious play, crucial in their fight to stave off or integrate the flood of thoughts and memories from Darian.

  To people they met along the trail, they looked like a pair of leisurely strolling young lovers, entirely engrossed in one another’s presence. Internally, they were engaged in fierce battle, sending wave after wave of attack viruses against their opponent’s defenses.

  The practice helped them identify and understand their own minds. They became adept at identifying incompatible ideas and defending against integration with their existing cognitive structures.

  It wouldn’t have been too hard to forcibly alter the politicians’ personal conceptual structures—their mental framework of knowledge and beliefs, what Kathy called their “concepta”—and get them simply to agree with the ideas she and Greg were presenting. But it would take time to map and alter each of the twenty-six conceptas around the main table, more time than they had in the presentation.

  Besides, what was the point of trying to save humanity if it wasn’t smart enough to help with its own salvation?

  The attendee-status check running in the background of his lattice sent Greg an alert.

  Whoa! What was that? A pushback surge intruded into his lattice, drawing his full attention. His security barriers snapped up. Kathy? Did you feel that? If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn she just took a concepta swipe at him.

  Greg examined the routine checking everyone’s inSense setup. The pushback had occurred at the same moment his algorithm attempted a preliminary intrusion into Reverend LaMontagne’s lattice to verify its readiness.

  The couple had been surprised to see the Reverend as a key representative of the New Confederacy at the G-26 panel. In preparing for today’s presentations, they had discussed at length whom the various nations might send. In considering the New Confederacy’s candidates, neither had imagined LaMontagne in the role.

  It was an odd choice. The New Confederacy was not so far away and not so politically unstable that they couldn’t have sent President Mitchell. The Japanese, Chinese, and Russians had all thought the meeting important enough to send their leaders. That the New Confederacy chose to send Secretary of State, Virgil Hartland, in Mitchell’s stead was noted by all present, though it wasn’t particularly unusual for the famously paranoid New Confederacy President. One could easily conclude the recent death of Secretary Totts and the ensuing financial crisis had required the President to stay home.

  However, the appointment of Reverend Alan LaMontagne as co-representative with Secretary Hartland—a man of God in such an important secular position—was unique among world po
wers. His role here rankled many of the participants.

  Greg focused briefly on the Reverend and sent another interrogatory pulse. It was rebuffed as casually as the first. He was about to make a more concerted third attempt when Kathy intervened—Wait!

  The Reverend’s eyes were peacefully closed in preparation for the lattice-fed presentation, but his lips had curled into the barest hint of a smile. It did not escape Greg’s notice.

  Kathy caught Greg’s eye. RSA encrypt using the time (HH.MM.SS) you picked me up for our first date—she sent. Greg immediately set up the algorithm.

  What was that about?—he asked.

  I think the Reverend may have a lattice like ours, one of the intelligence enhancing versions—Kathy said.

  His inSense security is stronger than the standard models. Maybe he just got some program upgrades—Greg replied.

  That was no upgrade—answered Kathy. I tried to piggyback a deeper query on your check-in routine. He swatted it away like nothing. No inSense system in the world can do that. No, he’s enhanced. I’m sure of it.

  But where could he have gotten one of Darian’s lattice viruses?

  Maybe he stole it. Maybe Darian gave away some copies.

  No, I can’t see him doing that. He would have mentioned it. There is one simple explanation. The only lattice virus capsule unaccounted for is Larry’s. Do you think Larry would’ve given LaMontagne his pill? She sent him a summary of her reasoning, complete with annotated evidence.

  What? No way!—Greg argued. Larry would never have given his pill to a religious fundamentalist. Not knowingly. I see why you might think he did, but the evidence is so flimsy, it makes our speculations about the Eater look rock solid. And we know how weak those are.

  I agree, it’s weak—Kathy acknowledged. And two-plus-two doesn’t usually add up to seven. But the Reverend brushed us both off like nothing. Even if it was clumsy and more forceful than required, it felt exactly the same as our lattice sparring. His lattice is enhanced like ours, Greg. Like Larry’s would have been. And the only access to that level of lattice technology was through Darian or Larry. There’s no way on Earth Darian would have shared that with the Reverend. You know how he felt about organized religion and its leaders. That only leaves Larry.

  Greg had to admit the Reverend’s unnecessarily strong rebuff of a simple preparatory exploration was much more forceful than a standard inSense lattice could have managed. Maybe Kathy was right, however outlandish it seemed.

  Okay—he sent back—just for the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re right. What do we do with that?

  Kathy considered. Well, now he knows we know, so let’s back off and see which side he comes down on—she suggested.

  Greg could see no harm in that. Their entire exchange had taken only milliseconds and went unnoticed by everyone except the two of them. And probably the Reverend—Greg surmised.

  The addition of a possible third enhanced intelligence, one of unknown and quite possibly hostile sympathies, increased the complexity of the upcoming negotiations considerably. Greg continued checking other participants’ lattice settings and began feeding the prepared presentation. All he could do, for now, was to stay hyper-alert and let the Reverend reveal his intentions to them.

  13

  Greg narrated the captivating visuals flowing within the lattice-fed perceptions of the G26 leaders, representatives, and advisors of the most powerful nations in the world.

  “This is a projection of the end of the world that will take place in a little over twenty-two years,” he began. “Within two days of the Eater reaching the walls of its enclosure, it will consume the entire university and the top of Mount Burnaby.

  “A few days later all of Earth’s atmosphere and most of the waters in the ocean will have flowed into the sphere. Except for anyone hiding out in pressurized bunkers, every person on Earth will be dead. Ten days after that, Earth will be consumed entirely, bunkers and all, leaving only a grayish planet-sized sphere behind. Nobody—nothing—will be safe from the sphere. Not anywhere.”

  In the inSense simulation, the panel watched the blue Earth, its oceans, and continents, being eclipsed by a dull, gray orb.

  “Although the Eater appears to be locked into a specific position relative to our planet, it has no measurable mass. We believe it will remain in stable planetary orbit around the sun. But, without Earth’s gravity, our moon will have to seek out its own solar orbit.”

  Slowly freed of the confines of the planetary gravity well, the Moon swung in a wider and wider orbit. It eventually broke away from the planet to which it had been bound for eons and spun outward seeking a new solar orbit.

  “Of course, nothing will remain of Earth or of human civilization by then, except for a little space debris which will eventually either be consumed by the Eater, or float off into the solar system.”

  Greg paused to let that sink in as his audience “watched” the bleak gray sphere take the place of the vibrant blue planet they now inhabited.

  “With nothing but empty space around it, the Eater’s growth rate will slow considerably. We project it will take millions or billions of years before it threatens another planet.

  “Once we became aware of the threat the Eater poses to the planet and accepted that we’re probably unable to stop it, Dr. Liang and I began working around the clock to come up with a plan to save as much of the planet’s population as possible.

  “For decades now, scientists—even the renowned Stephen Hawking—have been suggesting that the only route to ensure humanity’s existence in the long term is to colonize space. We agree.

  “There are a lot of challenges to be met, not the least of which is that we know of no other planets in our solar system that are amenable to human life.”

  The inSense presentation showed an old Apollo rocket blasting off. Views of Earth’s moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune floated by.

  “All of these places are poor candidates for supporting terrestrial life. They’re either too hot, too cold, have too much gravity, or they have no appreciable atmosphere or water.”

  The visuals zoomed in on a rocky planetoid, floating alone in black space.

  “Meet Vesta, the second largest planetoid within the asteroid belt found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

  “At a little over five hundred kilometers in diameter, Vesta is considered a protoplanet because it has a metallic iron-nickel core making up a little under half its total diameter, an overlying rocky mantle, and a surface crust.

  “It’s also a strong candidate for internal terraforming and colonization. We propose drilling six tunnels running the length of one axis of the asteroid, each about ten kilometers in diameter. The tunnels will be arranged like the bullet chambers in a six-gun revolver, spaced evenly around the core about seventy kilometers below the surface.”

  Greg read sentiments ranging from amused doubt to outright shock from the participants around the table. It didn’t take a lattice connection to interpret their skepticism.

  He plowed on with the presentation. The inSense animation displayed in broad strokes the ideas he and Kathy had developed.

  “We’ll flatten the floors of the tunnels—the section closest to the outside of the asteroid—plug the ends with fifty kilometers of rock, seal the chambers air-tight, pressurize them with an Earthlike atmosphere, add a solar-equivalent light tube the length of the tunnels, and spin the entire asteroid up to one revolution every sixteen minutes to provide artificial gravity equivalent to what we have on Earth.

  “Then we’ll add water we mine from comet-type bodies in the Kuiper belt and a complete biosphere. We’ll build high-density habitations and infrastructure to support the new inhabitants. We’ll construct smaller chambers under the main tunnels to support agriculture. This will provide more than ten thousand square kilometers of living space, about five times the area of Tokyo. At a similar population density to Tokyo, we would have enough room for sixty million people. At best, we can only hope to
move about ten million people—about 0.1% of the present population—in the time between the completion of the Vesta colony and the destruction of Earth.” The image faded to black, and pairs of eyes all over the room flew open.

  Greg knew what they were thinking; he’d thought it, himself. How can I get myself and my family in that ten million?

  “That’s the best you can do?” The Italian Prime Minister protested. “Only ten million people out of ten billion? How can we permit this?” She looked to the other Southern European Union leaders for support. The murmured discussions between the delegates grew rapidly in volume.

  “It is not a matter of permission,” Greg raised his voice over the background din before further objections could be raised. “The alternative is zero; everyone dead, and the planet destroyed.” The room went quiet.

  Greg continued in as reasonable a tone as he could muster. “Listen, ten million is the most we project could be saved with all available resources put to work. It’s also a number that will provide sufficient variation to guarantee the genetic health of the human species. It’s physically impossible to build and operate enough space ships to save more. And, if we don’t start work immediately, the number is going to be significantly less. If you have any better ideas, we’re all ears.”

  “We’ve talked about space programs for decades,” interjected President Franklin T. Carvin from the North American remnant still calling itself the United States of America. “Heck, we’ve barely managed to put people on the moon or keep that ramshackle space station loping along at all over the past few years. How can we possibly build a colony in a distant asteroid belt in twenty years?” His barely suppressed laugh at the end of his question was echoed around the room.

  “Actually, we’ll only have about twelve years to finish the first colony tunnel,” replied Greg. “That’s the latest we can start moving people out there.”

  “Hah!” was the general response from around the table. Many just shook their heads, and several leaders shared derisive comments with their immediate neighbors.