by Paul Reaver
“Let me try it telepathically,” he said. “It’s so much faster, and the depth of understanding is so much greater. If I find it too difficult, I’ll revert to reading,” he said with a smile.
Kirlin made some hand movements on a small device in front of her. “Ok, it is available to you now,” she said.
John knew what to do next. He cleared his mind so he could absorb the information. This had taken some practice, but was not as difficult as expected. He didn’t know how the Martians did it, but the data appeared in his mind in an organized fashion. As before, he could access each bit of information like chapters in a book, though the information did not appear that way in his mind. It simply seemed as though he was remembering it. The main advantage was that it was much faster, and the comprehension, even of technology with which he was unfamiliar, was 100%. Apparently absorbing knowledge telepathically ‘educated’ him somehow as well as making the information available.
He stumbled a bit at first, but then the data flowed smoothly with his mind in control. He easily absorbed all of the information in a matter of minutes. When he finished, it was as if the material had been in his thoughts all along. He was ready to discuss everything with the two Martians. They, of course, had absorbed the information much faster than he, and they were patiently waiting for him to finish.
“What do you think?” John asked.
“We think the teams have done excellent work,” said Kirlin. “There will, of course, be changes and suggestions, but the information is excellent and very complete.”
“I agree,” said John. “What they have accomplished is truly amazing. It seems that with each step we take, I get more and more confident in our success.”
“We do as well,” said Jenore. “Let’s discuss how we will proceed with each project; there is an obvious flow to the path of progress. We need to decide what that path looks like. One of the main reasons is that many of the tasks are intertwined and have to be done in the proper order.”
“Yes,” said John. “If we can get the steps organized and ready to present to the teams this afternoon, we should be able to make some immediate progress. That is, we can get the teams started right away on their projects.”
The three of them began to discuss the projects and how they would unfold and meld with one another. Though they started with a verbal discussion, they soon switched to a telepathic conversation. John had gotten used to this too, and it made the process of communication significantly faster. Though he did not possess telepathic abilities himself, Jenore and Kirlin could put thoughts into his mind and read his thoughts as though he were telepathic. Soon they had developed a schedule for the projects. After some fine-tuning, Kirlin converted their telepathic document into an electronic one so that John’s people could read it. He knew that a few of them had become interested in communicating telepathically and were trying to use it. Others were concerned about privacy issues, but both Kirlin and Jenore had assured them as they had said before that Martians considered reading the thoughts of others without their permission as extreme personal misconduct. He would have to get his people together for a meeting on this; communicating telepathically during these upcoming projects would significantly increase the speed of the progress they would make.
The three hours went by quickly. It was almost 3 o’clock. John looked up and saw that most of the team members were already entering the room, many engaged in conversation. He liked what he saw. The people from Earth and the people from Mars were not just co-workers – they had become good friends.
After everyone was seated, John said, “Jenore, Kirlin, and I have created a master project plan for what we are all about to do. We have distributed the document in electronic form to all team members. For those that prefer the telepathic material, that is also available. Regardless, this will be very much a work in progress because we know we will have to modify certain things, adding and subtracting our efforts in different areas as events unfold. But we need to start somewhere. This will be a monumental undertaking and will require a tremendous amount of effort. We go through our team plans to reach our goals, and it seems so easy to express what those processes are. But if you stop to think about the project in its entirety, it’s almost overwhelming. We are going to restore the planet! We are fortunate to have a group of gifted scientists gathered here. All of you have made it clear that there is no fear about what we are going to do. You have made it clear that we have a path, and all we have to do is follow it. And the great thing about this attitude is that it’s true! As I said, we have created a master project plan. But that is based on your individual team project plans. You have based everything on your willingness to do whatever it takes to complete this incredibly complex task. I am confident, and I think that Jenore and Kirlin agree with me on this, that this tremendous undertaking will succeed because of your commitment, your intelligence, and your obvious belief that we can accomplish this. Your belief gives us belief. We have reduced this massive undertaking to a step-by-step procedure, and as long as we follow these steps, we will reach our goal! I just wanted to say that. I think we get so caught up in the steps we will take that we lose sight of our goal. I don’t mean that in a negative way. If we look too much at the big picture, we may find that it is easy to become overwhelmed. We do have to keep that big picture in the back of our minds, but to accomplish our goal, we simply need to follow our steps. Thanks to all of you for your dedication. He stood up and applauded, with everyone else following suit. The Martians also joined in, having learned this Earth custom. They were applauding for each other. It was a remarkable show of camaraderie. It brought the group closer together mentally and emotionally because they were showing a truly profound expression of solidarity. This, of course, was exactly what John had in mind.
Once the applause had faded, John said, “Let’s go over the document now. We’ll need input from each of the respective teams when we get to their specific areas of contribution. If any of you have questions, please ask. If there are suggestions, we are all ears.”
They began to discuss the master project plan. One of the areas that John, Kirlin, and Jenore wanted to clarify was how they were going to handle the prototypes. Each team provided any necessary details during this process. The group updated the document with any new information as they went along.
By the time they had finished, the discussion had stretched into the evening hours. Kirlin, John, and Jenore were satisfied with the updated document, which was now as complete as it could be considering the circumstances. The teams had all their questions asked and answered.
Kirlin said, “All of you are permitted to start your projects tomorrow. During the processes you will be performing, if you have any doubts or questions whatsoever, please contact Jenore, John, or myself. We’ll be working alongside of you. Other than that, I bid you all a good night and wish us all the best with our work going forward.”
Everyone left except for the three ‘managers.’ Jenore said, “John, just as you had expressed your confidence, I also feel a great deal of confidence at this point in the project. And also, as you said, I think we have confirmed that all the work and the processes for this huge undertaking are destined for success.”
Kirlin and John agreed. John said, “Well, we will know what’s going on throughout the project since we each have our parts to play in the work that we need to do. From that point of view, we are additional scientists on the staff. So, we can monitor the progress and be cognizant of any hiccups in the process. Friends, the project is officially underway.”
Chapter 33
Several months had passed. During that time, the three primary scientific teams and the “manager” team of John, Kirlin, and Jenore had worked tirelessly on their projects. Although they all met once a week during that time to keep everyone up to speed on the overall progress, everyone eagerly anticipated this week’s meeting. The expectations were that each team was going to report that their prototypes had been tested and were both functional a
nd successful.
They had scheduled the meeting at 2 o’clock. It was ten minutes until two and all the team members were already there, talking excitedly amongst themselves.
Kirlin brought the meeting to order, “Welcome, everyone. We all know that this is a special day because our respective prototypes are completed and tested. We will go around to each group for an update. Ranella, would you begin, please?”
“Certainly,” said Ranella. “As we all know, there were a pair of prototype satellites, a primary and a secondary, that we wanted to put into place to perform at least two tasks. The task required of the primary satellite was to divert the Sun’s solar winds around the secondary satellite orbiting immediately below it. This was to verify our theory that a group of such satellites could cause the solar winds, and CMEs, to circumvent the planet and prevent another catastrophic event that devastated the Mars planetary surface. A companion goal was to make sure our blocking satellite was also protecting the Mars from x-rays and UV rays. The secondary task was to be able to use the gravity engines onboard the primary satellite to manipulate the atmospheric gasses.
“We did preliminary tests with both of these goals. The first step was to teleport the satellites into a testing position, which went reasonably well. We had to use the satellites’ thrusters to position them exactly where we needed them once they were in orbit. Fortunately, due to the large distances involved from the satellites to the targets, we had a lot of leeway as to where the satellites’ positions could be. We used the Martian technology to control the satellites’ semi-stationary orbits and make them stable.
“That left the final part of our project, the testing, which was primarily the diversion capability of the primary satellite. The goal was to maximize the area that one satellite could protect. A minor caveat was that the larger the area we tried to protect, the more power that was required. Power was not too much of an issue; we were using solar panels to provide it. After some manipulations of the satellites’ positions, they determined that when the satellite was producing the shield at the maximum area of coverage from solar radiation, it was protecting 8% of the atmosphere below from both solar radiation and from x-ray and UV radiation. This is also why we will only need 15 satellites for the diversion of negative solar radiation for the entire planet, and it not only covers atmosphere as the whole, it allows for some required protection overlap. The primary satellite has been officially deployed in a semi-stationary orbit to protect the area of the surface where we will construct the first dome. The rest of the satellites will also be implemented and activated very soon so we can prevent losing any more of the atmosphere. Fortunately, we were able to program a computer to deploy the satellites. This will significantly accelerate the process. Also, as planned, we can use the satellites to work with moving the various atmospheric gasses around the entire planet when we reach that part of the project. We have tested the first satellite’s ability to move and hold the gasses, and it’s working just as expected.
“To summarize, the projects not only met but exceeded our goals.
“Originally, the next part of our involvement in the project was nitrogen mining. This was handed off to Mark’s team since they are working on collecting and relocating atmospheric gasses.”
Jenore said, “That’s incredibly good work. We commend your team for its patience and determination. We need to hear from the other teams, and then we will circle around and advise you how to proceed.”
“Thank you,” said Ranella.
“Mark, please bring us up to date on your team’s efforts,” said John.
“Certainly,” said Mark. “Starting with the first of the items, we constructed a large-volume atmospheric gas extracting machine in an area on the planet’s surface where we will locate the dome. This machine was a much larger version of the one we used on Earth to gather hydrogen. In this case, at least in the beginning, we wanted to gather methane. We employed large tanks that could receive the methane and compress it for storage. After we had gathered five tanks, we began releasing the methane and using the gravity device to capture it and position it in the atmosphere where the initially deployed satellite is protecting it. Mind you, this was a minimal test area compared to that which comprises the entire atmosphere, but our goal was to achieve proof of concept; we wanted to show that we can distribute the methane as an atmospheric layer. Once the methane was in place, we used the gravity machine on the satellite to hold it in place. As we expand our efforts, the other satellites will position the layer of methane and subsequently hold it in place. We also gathered oxygen and held it in place in the same initial area as the methane. We needed to concentrate our efforts in one area of the planet’s surface so we could use it as a test area, and again, this will be the same area where we build the first dome.”
“As Ranella indicated, our team also began gathering CO2 from the atmosphere, concentrating it and increasing the density in the test area. Our efforts, combined with the efforts of Ranella’s team, made the density of the CO2 almost precisely the percentage we wanted. The density will be more than enough for the plants to respirate.
“Extracting the nitrogen also went very well. We had identified a dozen or so fairly large nitrogen deposits in the planet’s crust. We applied the extraction process to each, and used the antigravity equipment to pull it up from the surface and into the air. We set the antigravity force to pull the nitrogen gas up in a spreading motion. In this case, we do not want to keep the gas in one place; rather, we want it to spread out and fill the lower part of the atmosphere as it did in the original Martian atmosphere. Initially, it will remain in the area protected for the first dome.”
“We applied the appropriate extraction procedure to all of the deposits containing atmospheric components; we worked with ones that were located in an area of about 50 square miles in the area where the dome will be; there are a lot of these various deposits in the crust. We measured the density of the nitrogen in the atmosphere as we went, and after the procedures were completed. Since we did not spread the nitrogen out a great deal, within the 50 square mile space in which we worked, the atmosphere became 30 percent nitrogen. This is, of course, a lower percentage than what we want, but subsequently we will make the gas continue to thicken once it’s inside the dome. The gravity equipment is currently holding it in place. I’m pleased to report that the results with this test also met our goals at 100% for our initial efforts. When we release enough of the nitrogen from the planet’s surface into the air, we expect to reach our goal of having it comprise 72% of the atmosphere as it once did. As a side note, there is much more nitrogen in the crust of the planet. What is on the surface is not sufficient to reach our goal. However, combined with the underground nitrogen which we can easily access, there will be enough. The same is true of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and the other atmospheric elements.
“We are ready for the dome to be built. We have everything we need to populate it with the necessary gasses.”
Jenore said, “That’s great! “Gorev, would you please update us on your team’s activities?”
“Certainly,” said Gorev. “We have built a dome that is just over a mile in diameter. The programming of the nanites to construct the dome turned out to be extremely precise. We had a couple of small glitches, but we were able to correct them easily and it also became a learning process for us. Although John, Kirlin, and Jenore were originally going to plant the seeds for the plants in the dome, they made that task our responsibility. Since we were going to be taking care of the mature plants, they felt as though we should be responsible for the entire growth process. However, they did advise us on which plants to use.
“We are at the point where the dome needs to be populated with the proper atmospheric gasses and the greenhouse gasses to make it habitable. We need to monitor the temperature in the dome so that when we meet the proper threshold, we can plant the seeds. Since the dome is completely transparent, we should get a lot of solar heat inside the dome from the Sun’s ray
s going through the transparent material, as John referred to before. Mark, is your team ready to transfer the CO2, oxygen, and methane from the area around the dome into the dome? We have built portals into the sides of the dome, which will allow the gasses to enter from your storage tanks.”
Mark said, “We’ll have to extract and store some CO2 and oxygen and the other atmosphere components in tanks so that we can transfer those gasses from there into the dome; we have not obtained those gasses yet. But it’s an easy thing to do; it will just take some time to extract and transfer the relatively large volumes of gasses that we will need into tanks.”
“Very good,” said Gorev. “We have installed automatic air pressure sensors inside the dome to maintain the proper pressure as we introduce the new gasses. As we add the new gasses, the sensors will allow any excess pressure to be relieved. Although Earth’s air pressure is 14.7 PSI at sea level, Mars’ air pressure was 15.3. We are going to maintain a pressure of an even 15 PSI, which will split the difference, unless anyone has any objections.”
No one did, so Gorev continued, “Another thing we will need to provide is a source of ‘normal’ atmosphere to maintain the dome’s internal pressure at 15 PSI should it drop below that level for any reason. This will need to be the exact mixture of gasses that we are going to populate the dome’s atmosphere with, and it will need to be automatic.”
Mark said, “We can do that when we set up the equipment to populate the dome’s atmosphere.”
“That is excellent,” said Gorev. “Our team will work with yours to set up an automatic device to increase the air pressure if needed. Let’s get together after the meeting to set something up.”