The principal introduced the speakers. He spent more time talking about Mariah, who was a former student at their school and living proof that the future for students who were more inspired, more integrated, and harder working would know no limits. He described her personal trajectory. It was comforting that young people the school had known as teenagers had come back a short time later, so genuine and so surprising. As for Sofia, he reminded them that, despite her not having been a student at their school, she had a very special relationship with the community hosting the school and where a state-of-the-art laboratory had been set up.
“When they see cars carrying biological hazards markings entering and leaving our neighborhood, some people become apprehensive and ask themselves if this research should not be restricted to universities.” He preferred to emphasize the fact that the closer the geniuses who decided America’s future were to the community, the more the community could learn from them and the more the community could demand accountability. “We’re not here today to demand accountability. We’re here today to learn from Americans like us who love the earth as much as we do,” he ended.
The principal’s tone was very warm. During Mariah’s presentation, he’d shifted his gaze between her and the public, but during Sofia’s presentation, he only looked at the adults in the rows toward the back. He rarely glanced at her. Sofia immediately realized what the message was. If the conference turned out badly, she was the scapegoat. Mariah was the good example for everyone—the threat’s last name was Suren.
Sofia Suren approached the microphone to begin her presentation when tenth grade students began entering and sat along the sides and in the aisles. They were a mob, some of whom were painted like Indian warriors, others were wearing ET masks or those of exotic mutants, but the majority came in only with the rowdiness of fifteen year olds.
The principal got up, retook the podium’s center, and waited for everyone to enter. He then said that the younger students who wanted to learn something could stay but that this was not Halloween, and he would allow no horseplay that would disrupt the conference. Sofia smiled and the principal had almost finished, anticipating the removal of those with masks, when she interrupted him with a very agreeable and secure voice. “Oh, look, I see we’ve got some Indians here.”
The Indians applauded and the principal looked directly at her.
“That’s good,” continued the scientist, “because they remind us of America’s native inhabitants and that, to those original inhabitants, with our ships, our firearms and our horses, we looked like aliens to them.”
The teens laughed.
“Some seem to be from other galaxies.”
“Yes,” a few voices shouted.
“You, galactic beings, you’ve certainly had the opportunity to get to know the earthlings,” she continued, smiling warmly as if she were at least forty years old. “But let me show you some photographs of Martians, as I imagine them within twenty or thirty years. I just hope your parents don’t sue me.”
The principal sat down, realizing that she had the audience in the palm of her hand. She tames teenagers, he thought. She could be a teacher in this school.
“Some of these Martians,” Sofia Suren proceeded, “will have blue eyes”—and projected images of a small child in the school nursery she had taken the day before. “Others will be chubbier”—and showed a photo of a Mexican baby, also from the nursery, trying to eat pap that was spilling from his spoon and running down his rosy face. “Others will love animals”—a black baby with two stuffed toys in each hand and a huge smile—“while others will like taming those savages”; a fourth baby was grabbing the tail of a friendly dog who was dragging him across the covered patio floor. She was interrupted by laughter and approving applause. The future Martians were today’s Earthling babies.
“You did well in coming, young men and women, all of you who are imitating mutants remind us of what may emerge after our species disappears if Earth is again hit by an asteroid like the one sixty-five million years ago that killed the dinosaurs or if there is a repeat of the worst for which we have a register; it took place at the end of the Permian, 250 million years ago. Then, not even insects survived the increase in methane in the atmosphere.”
Silence. Sofia Suren then quickly projected a short film about the effects of the giant tsunami that had struck Indonesia and the Pacific.
“Do you remember, during that terrible Pacific tsunami, the mother who had two children, a six-month-old baby and a four-year-old boy who barely knew how to swim? Remember, when she was swept away by the giant wave with one child in each arm, she made a heartbreaking decision to abandon the boy in the salty current, hoping for a miracle that, if it happened, could only happen to a four-year-old boy, but never to a six-month-old baby? They obviously did not remember, but they’d just been reminded.
“Do you have any idea that the improbable miracle actually did occur and remember, on television, the look of the saved boy who was not thankful for the miracle, but seemed to wonder why his mother’s protective arm had abandoned him? Why had he not been chosen instead of his sister?”
Sepulchral silence.
“The catastrophe we’ll have if an asteroid hits us won’t be a tsunami. It will be of another dimension, it will be of a different degree and thousands of children will be left alone. I guarantee you that, this time, if we do not take the necessary measures, no miracle can or will happen. What we can hope is when a cataclysm the size of the one that exterminated the dinosaurs takes place again, if it does, it will, for the first time on this planet, encounter a form of life bordering on having a response to that challenge. And this response is being created right now in the northern continent between the Atlantic and the Pacific, here in the United States, here in Columbia.
The youth applauded wildly. Mutants, Indians, Martians, and extraterrestrials of various colors and numbers of eyes, clapping quickly but explosively a simple message: catastrophes are inevitable but they do not inevitably produce helpless victims. The school’s teachers did not applaud her salvific speech. It was based on very little. Sofia had begun defending the existence of laboratories preparing life to survive in very hostile situations, but what worried them was the possibility of this hostility being provoked by mankind itself, by Sofia and her colleagues and, worse yet, the hypothesis of a mini-catastrophe happening in the middle of their neighborhood.
Sofia emphasized that the United States government, with the help of friendly countries, had developed two projects, one medium and the other long term, related to the species’ survival in the context of unique unfavorable global events: one devised to detect large celestial bodies on a collision course with the Earth or Moon as early as possible, and if possible, to annihilate them. She showed a series of moderate level risk objects that had passed by so closely in the last few years that some had crossed the space between the Earth and the Moon. Sofia showed a photo of an asteroid in a slide where you could compare it to an Earth-bound structure, like the high school itself, a large bridge or a small city. Next, another image with the date it would cross and how close it would come to Earth visible in the graphic. The threat was gaining reality.
“These objects are real, they are recent and they are almost invisible. They are not rare. They are gigantic rocks that wander through space and that we did not know existed only a short time ago. At this moment, NASA and friendly agencies are monitoring more than five thousand objects with those characteristics.
“If our first strategy is to detect and, if possible, annihilate these rocks, the second strategy is an alternative in case the first one fails—arrange a planet in the solar system that can receive human life if Earth becomes uninhabitable, be it due to impact with a cosmic body or an internal phenomenon on our planet like what happened during the Permian.
“Of the choices at hand, Mars seems to be the best candidate. Venus’s atmosphere is too dense and its clouds are sulfuric acid. It’s too hot, in addition to having a day that
is one-year long. The Moon will never have an atmosphere and it will share Earth’s destiny. Jupiter and Saturn’s great satellites, like Ganymede, Europa and Titan, are very far away. Jupiter is at the end of the world, seven hundred million kilometers away and Saturn is even beyond the end of the world, at more than a billion kilometers. Now... Mars is not perfect, but it has water, a day equal to ours and at sixty million kilometers, it’s a close neighbor. It’s freezing because it has a rarified atmosphere and that is what we have to improve.
“In order to transform Mars into a habitable planet, we can take various paths. These stratagems have one thing in common: living beings are indispensable for the new planet and here I am thinking about microbes and plants. Plants will take on the principal role since they last longer, consume little energy, are easily modified without constituting a threat and improve the environment where they are implanted in two ways: they diminish the carbon dioxide that is in excess in Mars’s thin atmosphere, transforming it into oxygen, like what happens on Earth. They also contribute to increasing the Martian atmosphere’s mass, increasing its pressure.
“I’ll tell you something of my experience in the greenhouse we built at Mariah’s house and in which we are trying to prepare plants that cannot survive on Earth but that would survive on Mars. Worse than the cold—and I can guarantee you that Mars is cold, worse than the lack of oxygen and I can guarantee you that walking around with an oxygen tank on your back is complicated, what is worse is the lack of pressure.
“Humans need water because we are made principally of water and that is not lacking on Mars. But water must be in a liquid state and to keep it a liquid at our normal temperature in order to not boil at thirty-seven degrees, having minimum atmospheric pressure is indispensable,” Sofia Suren continued.
“On Earth, it gets colder, there is less oxygen and water boils at a lower temperature as we increase our altitude. We can go to the top of Mt. Everest because, in spite of everything, there is still temperature and pressure that a specially trained person can survive for some time—hours. They can spend hours there, but not days. Above eight kilometers is the so-called zone of death for common mortals, even the young.
“There is, however, an altitude at which the pressure is so low that water boils at thirty-seven degrees. That altitude is nineteen kilometers and is called the Armstrong limit. No one can survive above that limit for even a minute. It is not a question of training. If Everest had an altitude of twenty kilometers, no one could go there without a spacesuit because his blood would boil, so let me simplify this.
At this point, a young man from twelfth grade football team, Ted Sullivan, slightly sweaty, commented, “Yes, please simplify it because I’m looking at you and my blood is already boiling despite feeling enormous pressure in my heart.” It was a signal that Sofia was spending too much time on Mars. She quickly came back to Earth, responding, “It’s not your blood that is boiling, son. It’s other bodily fluids. You have to pay attention to that when you’re next to people.”
“Oh, mermaid, careful. You’re approaching the Sullivan limit,” the boy warned.
“Okay, Sullivan, you’ve already said what you practiced saying at home before coming here. It turned out well, but you’re done,” Sofia said. The principal moved in his chair and the boy remained quiet.
“Think about Mars as just another continent,” the young scientist challenged them. “When the red planet had oceans, the amount of free land was perhaps equal to the surface of Asia and the Americas combined. It’s merely one more continent waiting for us.
“So, what are we doing in the greenhouse on Violet Street? We’re preparing plants to be able to survive on Mars and transform its atmosphere into one more like our own. We pay a price the closer we get to our objective: we come up with plants that cannot survive on the Earth,” Sofia forced. “Remember that, in order to grow, plants need specific conditions. Sahara Desert plants will not survive in a Brazilian rainforest, and neither these nor those would survive in the northern United States. What’s dangerous about bringing plants from the Sahara Desert to our garden? For the plants, it’s very dangerous—they won’t survive, but, for us, there is no danger. We’d only have more garbage to carry out.
“Mariah, who you can find in a past yearbook at this fantastic school, is going to explain now why we brought the least sophisticated part of our research to this city and why, sometimes, you see trucks painted with those famous overlapping open circles that mean biological hazard and then we’ll willingly answer whatever questions you might have.”
The public applauded and Mariah Dexter came forward. Sofia Suren had dealt with the most global part and she now had to leave them unconcerned, notably Dr. Radcliff and her questions about the safety of the greenhouse’s effluents, specifically the permeability of the soil, contamination of the lake and the stability of the mutagens used. It went well. No one imagined a young woman so simple and well known would harm the neighborhood where she also lived.
At the end of the conference, the scientists were surrounded by students, teachers and by several residents, including Dr. Radcliff. While they exchanged greetings and a few words, they saw Dr. Crane’s very tall figure in the background.
“We didn’t know you were coming,” Sofia said, smiling. “You make us feel very important. Thanks.”
People looked at that charismatic individual who they didn’t know.
“We liked your presentation very much,” Crane said, smiling paternally. “It’s difficult to perceptibly translate what we do in science and explain our work’s usefulness to people. You have a talent for both things. Congratulations.”
It wasn’t clear if Crane was using we as the majestic plural or as a true plural and, in the latter case, who were “we”? Could it be NASA?
“Look who’s here,” Mariah whispered to Sofia, pointing at a young, very tall blond man with lots of freckles and wearing glasses who was approaching them.
“My God, it’s Eric. What am I going to do?” Sofia asked.
“Give him a kiss that will transform him into Prince Charming,” her friend suggested.
“Go very far away and die, Mariah. You talk to distract him,” Sofia said.
“He brought you a Christmas present. He’s the greatest,” Mariah whispered. “What could it be? A shredder for canceled cards? A robot that plays chess with its feet?”
“Hello, Mariah. Hello Suren,” Eric greeted them.
“Hello, Eric,” Mariah said. “Is that for me?”
“No, it’s for Suren.”
“Thank you,” Sofia accepted. “I don’t have anything for you. What is it? Can I open it?” she asked.
“No, open it at Christmas. I made it,” Eric clarified.
“Well,” Sofia said awkwardly.
They looked around. Dr. Crane had walked away. They went to the car and opened the package. It was a five hundred-million-pixel digital camera capable of picking up even gamma rays and was resistant up to at least two hundred degrees below zero. A card wished her a Merry Christmas and said the camera could be used in the Martian greenhouse.
“It’s a declaration of love,” Mariah said.
“That part, I noticed. But why a heavy camera that is as ugly as the devil. Is it so I can take selfies in the Martian greenhouse?”
“It’s better than the last one, the periodic table in classic Greek. And his parents’ bank account is still lovely,” Mariah joked.
“I’ll pass.”
“You have to get over that, Sofia.”
“I’ve tried, Mariah. It’s not easy.”
“Now it is. Give him the present back,” Mariah responded.
“I’m going to feel like a witch.”
At that point, Dr. Crane appeared, knocking on the window.
“Hello, Uncle,” they both greeted him. “We lost sight of you.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt earlier, but I’m going to extend you an invitation. Do you want to visit my lab at NASA? I’ll give you a lift
in my airplane.
“Excellent,” Mariah said. “When?”
“The day after tomorrow. You’ll be back home in time for Christmas,” the professor promised.
* * *
Crane’s laboratory looked like an airport hangar. There were dozens of engineers and millions of dollars of investment there. Sofia took Eric’s camera to try out, but NASA did not allow photographs. The professor was interested in the instrument and asked them to tell the young man to call him. When they reached his office, they took several selfies of the three together.
One of the things that surprised the young scientists was the international nomenclature in which Crane was involved. He was a man of a thousand hats. All types of identified geological structures on the planets and asteroids were the subject of proposals to name them that later had to be approved internationally. Crane, due to his classical and scientific culture, had been representing the United States in this consensus seeking organization for several months. For him it was a hobby. Sofia and Mariah were literally overwhelmed by that place’s technological sophistication. It was something epic that made them feel small but, upon taking their leave, Crane told them, “This seems great, but it’s irrelevant when compared to just one truly good original idea. At times a great leap is taken in a stairwell.” They didn’t believe him.
At Mariah’s house, Sofia reviewed the photos taken with Eric’s camera. They were better than usual. The colors were excellent and the images had so many pixels that you could easily zoom in on any detail, keeping the high definition. If only the boy were as interesting as his camera.
Instead of going to the Martian greenhouse with her friend, she spent the evening looking at the photos of Crane’s office. How had Anthony Crane reached that level in his career without a large number of publications or patents? His work probably remained in the sphere of industrial secrets. How had he found time to feed his classical culture? Many of the words Crane used in his nomenclature hobby were unknown to her, originating in dead languages. Sofia digitalized the photographs and ran a character recognition program, followed by automatic translation. To her surprise, the word Mariah appeared several times in diverse languages. Mount Moriah, Myr, Meryet, the Latin phrase Stella Maris, among others. Sofia was apprehensive. Crane was trying to give her friend’s name to geological structures in the universe. It was clearly inappropriate; it seemed like an obsession or a passion. She decided not to say anything to Mariah about it, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a pathological fixation to her. “This Uncle is nuts,” she typed distractedly on the computer. “Or it’s a disease,” she wrote. On the computer’s monitor, an analysis appeared that said, “Zero coincidences and one synonym: disease = virus” “Virus?” she pondered and typed virus. On the screen she saw, “Robot Virus with Organic Profile.”
Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn Page 10