Our Dried Voices

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by Hickey, Greg


  Yet even with an effective cure so widely available, human beings continued to contract cancer. Indeed in the world’s poorer nations, cancer remained an affliction until the late 2140s. But the combined forces of heredity and human endeavor would eventually take their toll. The turn of the 22nd century saw the continued homogenization of race and ethnicity, a consequence stemming not only from technological advances in communication and transportation that brought human beings together from across the globe, but also from the steady erosion of strict cultural and religious values. And while highly polarized blocs of religious extremists and cultural conservatives remained in regions such as western Asia, northern Africa, Central America, northern South America and southeastern North America, by and large humans became increasingly willing to unite outside once-rigid social boundaries. The combination of these conditions resulted in the gradual amalgamation of once-diverse peoples into homogeneous, brown-skinned, multiracial individuals, large numbers of which first appeared in southern Africa and southwestern North America. But of course these phenotypic convergences were merely the consequence of genotypic tendencies toward a stable norm. Evolution had been at work since the dawn of humankind to drive those few sequences with a cancerous or otherwise malignant predisposition out of the gene pool, and as the faces of mankind became one, so too did their genetic makeup.

  Even so, nature is never hasty, and outbreaks of cancer continued to arise from genetic mutations engendered either by sheer caprice or by the ever-growing abundance of carcinogens produced by so-called human progress. But in 2128, a group of Indian oncologists led by Dr. Ashakiran Avani discovered a general vaccination that could prevent mutation by carcinogenic agents. The key for Dr. Avani and her staff was the discovery, identification and isolation of a particular protein from the maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa). This protein, coined “frondosavani,” proved to be both mildly oncogenic and common to all known carcinogens. In clinical trials on rats, subjects injected with small doses of frondosavani experienced minor benign neoplastic tumors that disappeared without any trace within a few weeks. Furthermore, once treated, these subjects proved immune to any hint of cancerous infection even after exposure to a variety of common mutagens. In 2135, after years of further testing, Dr. Avani’s laboratory made frondosavani available as an anti-cancer vaccination. By 2141, it was prevalent throughout all corners of the world. And finally, on the morning of June 6, 2153, the Global Health Organization (GHO) in London announced that cancer had at long last been cured.

  In 2189, the GHO announced a cure for human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS ), another dreaded disease of the 21st century. Dr. Kameko Yamashita and her team of Japanese virologists engineered the first clinically successful vaccine against HIV in 2147, after a decade of research based on the early 22nd century work of a group of South African virologists. The South Africans, led by Dr. Christian van de Saal, had been employed by a wealthy Capetonian horse breeder in 2108 to find a cure for the equine infectious anemia virus (EIA, better known as “swamp fever”) endemic to horses in that region. While recombining viral RNA in search of a vaccine against EIA, Dr. van de Saal and his team stumbled upon a new strain of the virus capable of infecting cattle. At first, Dr. van de Saal feared this new variant, which he named bovine infectious anemia (BIA), might do serious damage to the South African cattle industry if ever transmitted on a large scale; however, subsequent tests showed that the virus was only present in cattle in the subacute form, could not be transmitted from mother to calf and was nonlethal. Consequently, BIA was largely ignored, and Dr. van de Saal continued with his previous EIA research.

  When Dr. Yamashita came across Dr. van de Saal’s work in 2135, HIV/AIDS researchers had resorted to the random recombination of various retroviruses in hopes of stumbling upon a potential vaccine. When she infected a test group of cattle with BIA, Dr. Yamashita discovered that these cows developed immunity to bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV), a disease that emerged among cattle in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These promising results led Dr. Yamashita to suspect that some recombinant form of BIA might serve as a vaccine against HIV. In 2147, after twelve years of research, Dr. Yamashita announced the first successful human trials of her HIV vaccine. The key step in the development of the vaccine was the synthesis of an entire viral membrane for the modified BIA virus. The synthetic membrane consisted of the gp120 envelope glycoprotein characteristic of the membrane of HIV, as well as receptors specifically designed to stimulate human immune responses in the form of both cytotoxic T lymphocytes and memory B cells, thereby triggering the body’s production of the necessary antibodies to stave off HIV infection. After two more years of experimental trials, Dr. Yamashita released her HIV vaccine for global distribution in 2149.

  By that time, AIDS was no longer the terror it had been throughout most of the 21st century. The incipient cancer cure, as well as cures for a multitude of other human maladies, ensured that AIDS—itself a mostly nonlethal disease—resulted in far fewer deaths than in decades past. Still, some complications remained. Japan reported zero incidences of AIDS in 2156, and near exterminations were reported in the United States and several European nations during that same decade. But the disease persevered in other parts of the globe, most notably in certain northern and central African nations, where militant dictators regulated the distribution of the vaccine as part of a vicious ploy to maintain political power. Eventually, the situation improved under the combined influence of internal revolutions and sustained external political pressure, but in 2163, the German government announced an outbreak of AIDS at a hospital in Munich. The virus, perhaps one of the most adaptive the world had ever known, had mutated. The race for a cure was on once more. Finally, in 2183, a joint effort from virologists and pathologists around the globe produced a series of vaccines that neutralized all known strains of the virus. And on September 30, 2189, the long-awaited GHO announcement came: AIDS was dead.

  As was mentioned earlier, science had made significant progress in the fight against several of humanity’s previously uncured diseases throughout the 22nd century. A complete account of the development of every cure would require more time and space than is necessary to devote to these annals. Instead, the author of this brief history simply offers the following list of many such illnesses and the year in which they were declared to be cured.

  -polio: 2056

  -Huntington’s disease: 2087

  -muscular dystrophy: 2094

  -osteoporosis: 2116

  -cystic fibrosis: 2143

  -cancer: 2153

  -Ebola virus: 2160

  -Tay-Sachs disease: 2162

  -amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s

  disease): 2178

  -influenza: 2181

  -multiple sclerosis: 2186

  -HIV/AIDS: 2189

  -Alzheimer’s disease: 2192

  -diabetes mellitus: 2195

  -acute viral nasopharyngitis (common cold): 2207

  Thus by the early 23rd century, science had all but rid the Earth of those many diseases that had plagued humankind throughout its existence. Geneticists continued to explore the hereditary aspects of such maladies, and in 2234, the first genetically enhanced, disease-resistant human child was born. From that point on, man had no more reason to fear death or discomfort from the world that existed beyond his sight.

  Yet at the dawn of that first day without human ailment, the day when all the brilliant microbiologists and virologists and oncologists woke up to find themselves idle and obsolete, who can ever say whether that new world was better served to the comfort of humankind than the old one of disease and pestilence and plague? Some millennia ago, the great thinker Plato wrote that all kings should be philosophers. But perhaps in truth it would have been better that all kings had been scientists, for there were more than a handful of politicians of that time who, believing themselves capable of understanding the world’s intricate and myriad connection
s and synapses, would have willingly sacrificed millions of Somalis, Swazis, Haitians and Afghanis to disease, starvation and eventual death in the perhaps disillusioned hope that the world would be a better place for the survivors.

  But scientists and politicians are two different sorts of men and the will of nature is beholden to neither. For if the human world may be likened to a house, then the scientists are the builders, the fixers, the problem solvers, shortsighted perhaps but persistent and unfailing in their aims, while the politicians are the architects, the foremen, the overseers, all with an apparently flawless blueprint in their hands but perhaps lacking the insight or foresight to realize their great plan. Yet little unity exists between the builders and architects, as the builders fix every problem in their own way and ignore the shrieking demands of the architects, who are constantly revising the blueprint, sometimes adding a new wing for good measure or perhaps filling in the basement when the foundation seems weak, despite the builders’ tireless contentions that a solution is always possible. However, nature is not some passive collection of wood and brick and mortar to be shaped by humans into whatsoever they desire. Nature builds the house of the world herself, and so the scientists, politicians, nature and the rest of humanity are always at odds as to the final form of the edifice.

  So as the reader of this history will undoubtedly surmise, Earth’s human population skyrocketed in the late 22nd century. By that time, global population had climbed steadily for some centuries, having surpassed 10 billion people in 2050. The growth rate declined slightly in the next half century as several countries passed laws to limit the number of childbirths per family. But these measures were not enforced in nations where they were perhaps most necessary—for example, the population of sub-Saharan Africa continued its dramatic climb—and it was also these nations that were most dramatically affected by cures for the world’s diseases. In 2100, global population hovered around 13 billion, but it would nearly double in the next century, with the most significant boom following the cure of AIDS. In 2198, the world’s population reached 24 billion people. From 2050 to 2200, the population of Africa more than tripled, reaching 6 billion people in 2196. Two centuries earlier there had been only 6 billion people in the entire world.

  In 2213, war broke out in central Africa, among what one British political theorist had termed the “gamma states” at the end of the Third World War.1 Throughout the region, victims of poverty and famine revolted against their respective governments in a series of popular rebellions that claimed nearly 200,000 lives and were punctuated by the horrific bombing of the American embassy in Kinshasa. The American and South African governments immediately denounced the attacks as acts of terrorism. But while South Africa verbally supported the gamma governments while attempting to negotiate with the rebels, the United States deployed 200,000 troops to Kinshasa overnight, as well as an additional 500,000 to the rest of the region. Leaders of the powerful Islamic bloc in western Asia and northern Africa, the so-called “beta states,” condemned this rapid military escalation as yet another example of overbearing American imperialism. In response, the beta governments began the covert delivery of weapons manufactured in the “mini-beta” Islamic states of Southeast Asia to the African rebels. Over the next several months, the militaries of the gamma states (aided by the Americans) and the African rebels fought pitched battles throughout central Africa, with little direct intervention from the world’s other nations.

  But in early 2214, a Japanese intelligence report found that the beta states had started to send their own generals to Africa to lead the revolts. South African intelligence later confirmed these reports and recorded footage of one such general ordering his troops to use XR nerve gas, a lethal chemical weapon, against the civilian population of a city still loyal to its national government. The news galvanized the remaining allies of the United States, the so-called “alpha states,” into joining the war. Japan, the United Kingdom and South Africa all declared war in February (against whom they declared war remains unclear since every battle of the conflict was fought in Africa), and Germany, France, Russia, Mexico and Brazil joined their allies in the following months. The beta states, most significantly Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, declared war on the United States around the same time (and later against the other alpha states); the mini-betas, led by India, soon joined their allies in the effort. World War IV had begun.

  Detailed descriptions of the battles and stratagems of the war are superfluous to this account, but suffice it to say the war lasted for eleven years and claimed 289 million lives. Of those 289 million, 53 million were soldiers of the alpha states, 44 million were from beta militaries and 192 million were civilians—almost all of them African. The combatants set off two pure fusion bombs, with payloads of 84 and 96 kilotons. To this day, it remains unknown which side detonated these weapons, as both accused the other of doing so. By 2219, the African nations on whose land the war had been waged were begging for peace, desperate to accept almost any terms proposed. Sadly, these nations played little part in the war aside from being the primary suppliers of its victims. In 2221, South Africa, the leader of the African Union and a prominent member of the alliance of alpha states, withdrew its soldiers from the battle front. The next year, its government condemned the war as “the worst atrocity committed by humankind against humankind in the history of this Earth.” But still the war raged on for two more years.

  Finally, in May 2224, the United Kingdom exited the arena, its army reduced to 300,000 soldiers. Algeria, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and France followed suit later that month. On July 4, the United States declared victory and pulled the ragged remnants of its former military might out of Africa. The rest of the alpha states did the same. The next day, the beta states also declared victory and exited the region. There were no relief efforts, no promises of international aid and no apologies whatsoever to the citizens of the African nations who had endured the greatest suffering throughout the war.

  But Earth was a dying world, and Africa was merely the first casualty, no matter how hard the other five continents tried to ignore that fact. She had been dying for four billion years, from the moment the first microbe appeared in her oceans and began the gradual sapping of her resources. She had watched at first with amusement, then awe, then horror, as humans appeared, rising from hunched and innocent primates to stand erect on two legs, craning their necks like newly awoken monsters of Frankenstein and gazing greedily and immodestly over her flesh, then spreading, digging, cutting, poisoning and eating away at her body like some rabid cancer. By the 20th century she had lapsed into a coma, after more than 200 years of noxious coal fumes choked the once-pure breath from her body. One hundred years later, she gave no indication she would ever recover.

  In 1900, the average temperature on Earth was 4.5 °C. By 2000, it had increased to 5.3 °C as the phenomenon of global warming began to take effect. Over the next 200 years, Earth’s temperature rose at increasingly greater rates, reaching 6.4 °C in 2100 and 7.6 °C in 2200. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, believed by most climatologists to be a primary cause of global warming, soared from about 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the 19th century to 380 ppm by 2000. By 2100, these levels had reached 620 ppm; by 2200, they had increased to 1120 ppm. As the Earth warmed, glaciers and polar ice caps melted and caused the seas to rise. They had risen steadily by 0.1-0.2 millimeters per year since 1000 B.C.E., but from 1900 until 2000, they rose an estimated 1-2 millimeters each year. They rose 300 millimeters by 2100 and an additional 400 by 2200. During this time, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Jakarta, Dhaka and New Orleans, as well as several other low-lying regions, were completely flooded. The seas also claimed parts of New York, Los Angeles, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Tokyo before dams could be built to stem the rising tides.

  Irregularities and extremes in global weather patterns accompanied the increases in temperatures. Droughts became more frequent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in more
densely populated regions, such as the areas surrounding Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Mexico City, São Paulo, Stockholm, Vienna and Moscow. The droughts often kindled violent wildfires, such as the 2189 blaze that decimated more than 10% of Los Angeles. At the same time, tropical storms and hurricanes also increased in number and intensity, and between 2050 and 2200, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane struck Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo at least once. Repeated onslaughts of tsunamis, tropical storms and hurricanes destroyed Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and several small islands in the Philippines and Japan. Yet these catastrophes were not limited to human beings and their empires of wood, mortar and steel. In those same 150 years, 100,000 different species of plants and animals went extinct, among them bald eagles, blue whales, right whales, leatherback turtles, black rhinoceroses, Asian elephants, zebras, gorillas, California condors, jaguars, tigers, orangutans and giant pandas. Gone too were 132 species of frogs, 37 species of toads, 28 species of salamanders, 73 species of turtles, 14 species of parrots, 6 species of salmon, 59 species of mice, 148 species of rats, 60 species of shrews, 155 species of bats and more than 75,000 species of plants.

  Yet humans, far more adaptive and ingenious than any virus, long postponed the inevitable. The major damage had been perpetrated in the years before 2030. Thereafter, the human race devoted itself to saving its planet. Between the years 2030 and 2040 the United States reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by over 15% of its total from the previous decade. New technologies increased the efficiency of previous methods of energy production, and by 2047, 45% of all carbon dioxide emitted by power plants was captured and stored deep underground. In 2062, a Saudi Arabian physicist, Dr. Alim al Muwaffaq, unlocked the secret to power generation via nuclear fusion. In 2065, his countrymen built the world’s first fusion power plant. Ten more were built throughout the world over the next two years, and by 2078 there were 5,000 operational fusion plants worldwide.

 

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