Throughout the remediation event the media had been averse to naming the supposed extra-terrestrials as being the perpetrators of the attack, since they had for so long denied their existence. But in light of the fact that nothing on Earth could possibly have been responsible for the strange phenomena, the media had little option but to concede that the Supreme Beings did indeed exist and were responsible. They were quick to stipulate that they had merely reflected global opinion at the time, and that they could not be held responsible for any of the repercussions that humanity had faced. This aggravated viewers who were looking for comfort, compassion and apology from news networks, rather than carefully worded jargon trying to exempt them from legal liability.
The world’s population now had to come to terms with the catastrophic event that had occurred. Every person had been affected in some way by the ordeal. Some religious leaders expressed that the events bore an eerie resemblance to the prophecy spoken of in the Bible’s Revelations chapter. Many people looked back on the summit that had consumed the world’s media just three years before. They slowly began to acknowledge that the so-called Principals had been truthful about their encounter. They also recognised that the remediation could have been avoided if they and their nations had taken due cognisance of the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty. The Principals’ incessant warnings had all been foolishly ignored, and humanity had now paid a substantial price for it.
It was now also becoming irrefutably clear that humankind was indeed fully accountable to this superior extra-terrestrial species that ruled over the galaxy. It was a difficult realisation to come to terms with, but one that could no longer be disputed.
People were quick to direct their anger towards their leaders, the media and governments whom they said had misled them and failed to keep them safe. People had trusted in them and followed them in good faith, but were now all suffering terribly for having done so. The small minority of people who had supported the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty from the very beginning hoped that everyone’s efforts in the future would be that much more sincere, especially since the world population had experienced remediation first-hand. Everyone now knew the cost of non-compliance,.
Humanity’s long awaited wake-up call had finally arrived … and in devastating fashion.
11. AFTERMATH
|EDT| 12:05 p.m. Observatory: Remediation Review
Empress Aeryssia and her Chancellors were now all seated in the Observatory’s Council Chamber waiting for the finalised Remediation Report. The data from each and every terrasphere had been uploaded into the Titan’s processing system, where it was currently undergoing collation and authentication.
Within five minutes of the remediation being concluded, the Titan released its final report. The overall remediation figures were immediately displayed in an array of charts and tables around the chamber wall, and also on a hologram of the planet. The Federal Alliance members then began their formal review of all the information. The ‘Remediation Summary Table’ was of specific interest to them:
They needed just 30 minutes to fully evaluate the information and confirm that everything had been carried out precisely in accordance with the Remediation Strategy. The figures showed that every remediation objective had been achieved, and that the majority of the planet’s environmentally threatening activities had been successfully neutralised. Although far reaching, the remediation had been just sufficient to counterbalance the accelerated environmental deterioration.
The Empress then cleared the Council Chamber of all the information. The remedial intervention effort on planet Earth would be regarded by the Galacian Senate and entire Galactic Federation as an unwanted but necessary success. She proceeded to forward the Remediation Report to the other 36 Senators for their reference.
Commander Trennor began with the necessary preparations to hyperglide the 12 Principals back on board the Observatory for their third encounter. The other four Chancellors used what time they had to attend to their most pressing galactic spiral-related affairs.
Empress Aeryssia stood and walked to the observation window where she saw the terraspheres returning to the spacecraft in the exact same formation in which they had left. The perimeter cargo doors opened and the terraspheres docked in the spacecraft’s hold.
She had had high expectations of the human species after their first encounter and had even gone so far as to contemplate the broader implications of inviting a human representative to join the Galacian Senate as its 43rd member. This notion had been quickly dismissed when faced with the pervasive level of non-compliance. This species was different from any other she had previously encountered and studied. The human civilisation was ruthless as a collective, and inexplicably content to live in perpetual denial while their own world crumbled around them.
The species would now be treated with extreme caution due to their refusal to accept the magnitude of the threat facing their planet. The action taken against humankind had been severe and she hoped that the remaining population would not only be able to come to terms with it, but would also start taking the environmental situation and the Ultimatum that much more seriously.
The Empress then looked at the blue planet in the near distance. She was apprehensive about meeting the Principals again for the post-remediation encounter. She was sympathetic of their plight and felt a deep sense of sorrow for them. Even though they had tried their utmost to avoid remediation by instituting the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty, she understood that they must be feeling some degree of responsibility for what had unfolded. They would have to accept that they were not responsible for it, and that it was the world’s population alone that had brought the remediation on itself. The Empress would do whatever she could to console and reassure them.
At the third encounter, the Empress and Chancellors would summarise the remediation extent, hand over a revised Ultimatum and advise the Principals that the Galactic Federation would be returning in another three years to carry out a second interim compliance review.
12:05 p.m. Earth: Merrinov War Coordination Room
A short while after the hemispheres had disappeared, another meeting was convened in the Merrinov War Coordination Room. President Rivensky and all but one of his senior officials took their places around the conference table. Defence Minister Kurosnovich began by giving a short briefing summarising the full extent of remediation across the Soviet Union. The final count of hemispheres identified on Soviet soil was 156, and as presumed, none of the infrastructure or people that had been contained within their interiors remained. The scale of loss was incomprehensible to the President.
Moments after the Defence Minister’s briefing had been concluded, General Drashenko entered the War Room with an important progress update. “Comrade President, you will be pleased to hear that we have managed to trace the trajectories of the weapons as they returned to their point of origin. I request that Merrinov’s resident expert astrophysicist be given permission to deliver a short presentation explaining his findings.”
The President waved his hand in consent to continue.
The General opened the door and a short man in a white lab coat walked in. He was introduced as Doctor Ivan Kasparov. He greeted the President and everyone else, then pressed a button next to the entrance wall which darkened the room’s observation glass and initiated a wall-to-wall interactive display screen. He entered some commands into his tablet and as he did so, a rotating geopolitical representation of the Earth appeared on the screen for everyone to see. Dotted all over the continents were thousands of circles of varying size.
Kasparov pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and commenced with his presentation.
“Gentlemen, this depiction shows us exactly where the thousands of identified hemispheres were located around the globe. As you are aware, these hemispheres receded and reassumed their original steel sphere forms, after which, they accelerated vertically upwards and out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Their trajectories were all tracked by our orbitin
g military surveillance satellites, and here you can see what I am referring to …”
He flicked his tablet and from each of the hemisphere locations on the Earth’s surface, silver strands could be seen rising vertically into the atmosphere.
Kasparov confirmed, “The strands represent the known trajectories of all the spheres.”
The President and his senior officials watched on in silence.
He continued, “You will notice that as the strands move beyond the Earth’s outer atmosphere, their vertical courses begin to deviate and converge on a common trajectory. This trajectory then led to a single destination point in the following orbit …”
An orbit around the Earth’s equator was highlighted in yellow, with a red cross-haired target showing the final destination point. It measured 20 350 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. Other orbits of existing geosynchronous and GPS satellites, were also displayed to give better perspective.
Kasparov elaborated, “This point closely matches our previously estimated orbital radius of the spheres’ origin. Considering the curved-arc trajectory of the strands and the speed they were travelling when we lost them, it is likely that they united with an object in an equatorial retrograde orbit around the Earth. If it was the extra-terrestrial spacecraft that launched and retrieved those weapons, then it is highly probable that it is in this orbit and is being concealed by some unknown means.”
The General spoke up, “Assuming these extra-terrestrial beings launched this attack, I am willing to bet a case of Russia’s finest vodka on this being the orbit of their spacecraft.”
Various clarification questions were asked by the senior officials and the President himself, all of which were suitably addressed by Kasparov. Further substantiation was provided where necessary to make sure that no doubts remained. At one point Kasparov confirmed that his team was on the verge of determining the spacecraft’s exact position within the orbit. Eventually everyone around the room had been duly convinced.
The President spoke, “Doctor Kasparov, you and your team have done well …” he then looked at the General, “… and I have no intention of losing a case of Russia’s finest!”
The Soviet President was savouring the fact that he had dedicated such a sizeable portion of his defence budget to the upgrade of his Sarmat inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet. During the upgrade, 10% of his nation’s 5 000 ICBMs, had been modified to include the capability of space manoeuvrability, which meant that they could be directed towards targets not only within the Earth’s atmosphere, but also outside of it. This capability was also built into each of the multiple independent targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), making the weapons even more versatile.
Rumours of the modification programme had surfaced in the United States and caused an uproar, especially since it was in contravention of the Outer Space Treaty. The Soviet Government, however, denied the allegations and responded by showing foreign inspectors thousands of non-modified missiles. This appeared to calm immediate tensions but scepticism lingered.
The missiles had been modified primarily for use against marauding objects in space, similar to the large, 325 metre across, 40 million ton, asteroid named ‘99942 Apophis’ that had sailed perilously close to the Earth in April 2029 at a distance of just 31 300 kilometres away from the Earth’s surface. But they also had a very useful second purpose and that was to claim weapons superiority in space itself. Should any other nation ever decide to use weapons in space, or show hostility from beyond Earth’s atmosphere, then the Soviet Union would be capable of destroying them there.
The programme had cost his nation almost a trillion Soviet roubles and had been developed at great financial sacrifice to the people of the Soviet Union. But here his nation now stood, capable of launching modified ICBMs out of the Earth’s atmosphere into space to destroy anything that threatened either Earth’s safety or his nation’s safety. The modified ICBMs had been renamed Space Target Interception Missiles (STIMs). Not even the United States had weapons with this capability. The Soviets were on the brink of becoming the world’s saviour, and would finally gain the respect from world leaders that they had long deserved.
The President thanked Kasparov who then excused himself from the War Room.
The conversation then moved into its next phase, which was to discuss what retaliatory action should to be taken. The Defence Minister Kurosnovich suggested launching a full-scale nuclear assault on the spacecraft, and this appeared to be well received by the other senior officials. The President noticed apprehension on the face of his General and asked him to speak his mind. Drashenko proceeded to raise his concern regarding a possible counter-response by the Supreme Beings. He asserted that a nuclear assault could result in the Soviet Union being comprehensively annihilated.
An intense debate followed for the next half-hour, after which the President stopped everyone and spoke, “I have made my final decision … we will proceed with the nuclear assault on the spacecraft. There is no better reason for us to use our new weapons than now – against this unprecedented adversary.
“General, make the necessary preparations to launch a full-scale nuclear strike on our new enemy, and inform us when we are ready to proceed. Our planet’s environment will be the very last of these Supreme Beings’ worries, once they have incurred our formidable wrath.”
“Yes, Comrade President,” said the General, stunned by the thought of actually using weapons that the military had been working on for so long.
12:20 p.m. Earth: England – Oxford
Edward Payton and his wife had watched the terrifying remediation from beginning to end in their English country home just outside of Oxford. From the moment he had seen the television footage of the vapour trails, he knew that the Supreme Beings’ remediation was underway. They had had to switch channels when both BBC and Sky News had simultaneously turned to static while broadcasting footage of a hemisphere enveloping London. The only news channels that they could access after that were CNN, RT and CCTV-5.
Neither of them had slept throughout the 24-hour period of remediation. They had both been deeply relieved when they saw the hemispheres finally receding, but were completely astounded by what had happened to their interiors. Payton was struck by the miraculous capability of these objects to transform once completely developed areas into natural landscapes. Where humankind left behind a wake of destruction, these Supreme Beings left behind a wake of creation.
The transformations were remarkable in another unexpected respect. There were no scenes of widespread ruin and human casualties that were to be expected in the aftermath of such a disastrous event. It contradicted people’s natural instinct to feel anger and hatred towards the Supreme Beings for carrying out the remediation.
Both Payton and his wife were spellbound by the stunning natural vistas that had usurped vast areas of urban and agricultural sprawl. It was certainly an easier prospect to deal with than the alternative, which would have been witnessing hideous scenes of mass destruction and death.
The fact that indigenous wilderness areas had replaced cities, towns and industrial infrastructure made the whole remediation slightly easier to bear, especially from an environmental point of view. It had been the return to nature that Payton and so many other environmentally inclined people across the world had always wanted to see. But not like this … not with the extensive human tragedy attached. Payton was overcome with feelings of grief and desperation for all those people who had lost loved ones. He was also extremely concerned about everyone he knew who lived in the nine cities that had been transformed across the United Kingdom, Scotland and Ireland.
Payton was experiencing various conflicting emotions, ranging from spiteful vindication to genuine sympathy; and from environmental celebration to human mourning. His wife was devastated by the human impact and wondered how life could go on after this cataclysmic event, but at the same time, she realised that the world and all of its precious life had most probably just been saved by th
e event. Her emotions also swayed back and forth depending on which perspective she used to look at the situation.
Undeniable to Edward Payton was the fact that the remediation was a victory for the planet’s environment and its wide diversity of species. Humanity had suffered terribly, but now had a second chance to embrace an environmentally sustainable way of life and perpetuate its existence long into the future.
12:30 p.m. Earth: China Intact
Only one nation had emerged completely unscathed from the remediation. That nation was China. Their compliance had been achieved by the tightest of margins but were achieved nonetheless. This showed that the wide ranging reforms that had been instituted and managed by the Chinese Government had paid off. They had been challenging but had saved every Chinese citizen’s life as a direct result.
The Chinese people realised the scale of their reprieve, when watching the remediation unfolding across every other nation. They had their President and government to thank for the reprieve, and now fully appreciated their urgency and resolute enforcement of the Ultimatum throughout their nation. The people themselves had sacrificed much in their efforts to comply, and now understood why President Zhuge had so often reminded them that: ‘moderate sacrifice is better than indiscriminate suffering’.
China had prevailed in spite of the international community’s constant criticism. Now, the nation’s government and people could stand tall for having proved to the world that their determination, persistence and unwavering resilience, had ultimately spared their nation the horrific fate that had befallen every non-compliant nation. Their deliverance from remediation had vindicated their efforts, and now they would finally be given the positive recognition and respect that they had long deserved.
Wake-up Call: 2035 Page 45