“He is German,” Maria interjected.
Doug knew she held some deep-seated reservations concerning Germans. “But what he said seemed to make sense,” he said, “and the professor remained pleasantly calm.” Doug did not like people whose passion seemed to be driven by a sense of mission. He wanted to be convinced rather than converted. This German professor argued in a very rational fashion, even when asked whether everyone would die in six months.
“Shouldn’t we ask Watson what he thinks about it?”
“Good idea, Maria,” Sebastiano replied. “Watson, can you tell us how you judge the danger?”
“I discussed this with Siri for a long time. The first reports appeared in the net yesterday. But then they were only rumors.”
Watson, Doug thought, has been spending a lot of time with Siri recently. “And what was your conclusion?” he then asked.
“There is something to it,” Watson answered. “Part of the data has been made public. I downloaded and analyzed the findings and came to similar results.”
“And the same ending?” Doug said.
“Yes, that too,” Watson replied. “But did you know we have the best seat in the house to watch it?”
“What do you mean?” Maria asked.
“The asteroid we’re sitting on does not orbit in the ecliptic, the plane where the planets move, but at a high angle to it, almost vertically. And guess where that strange object is coming from?”
“From above?” Doug asked.
“Colloquially speaking,” Watson continued, “yes. It is following a course that is vertical to the ecliptic, similar to ours. No one will be able to observe the object as well as we could.”
“That’s great,” Sebastiano said. Doug recognized the ironic undertone, but Watson did not.
“Yes, isn’t it? It’s very exciting. These will be the six most interesting months of my life.”
“Nice for you, Watson,” Doug said, “but what happens afterward? Are you looking forward to dying? In about two years we all could be rich, living on Earth in a nice house by a lake...”
“That won’t happen,” Watson said. “The flare will wipe the lake and the house from the face of the Earth. It is unclear whether the planet itself will survive.”
Doug paused for a brief moment and then said, “For all that, you sound surprisingly happy.”
“I simulated the accretion of the sun by the black hole,” Watson said. “The majority of the energy will be released in the plane of the ecliptic. This is caused by the rotation of the sun, which turns in the same direction as the planets.”
Maria grasped a bar on the wall and looked at the loudspeaker Watson’s voice was coming from. “So we will survive the catastrophe?” she asked.
“At least for a certain time,” Watson replied.
“How long?” she asked.
“That depends on how quickly the black hole swallows the sun. Judging from its size, the process might take a while. Ten years, or rather fifty? During this period the sun’s brightness will at first decrease suddenly, and then continue decreasing more gradually.”
“So we won’t die in a burst of energy, like Earth, but slowly and painfully from a lack of energy?” Sebastiano speculated.
“Oh, it doesn’t have to be painful,” Watson said. “We have enough reserves on board to last your lifetime, and we can increase the area covered by solar collectors tenfold. Only if you, Doug, were to have children with Maria, it would get rather tight for them.”
“And what about you two?” Doug asked.
“Siri and me? We don’t have a predetermined lifespan. We should be able to generate enough energy for the main computer for several thousand years.”
“Then you are optimistic?”
“The destruction of Earth and your deaths would also be a catastrophe for us. Then we would be forever cut off from that supply of knowledge and experiences.”
“That does sound cruel,” Doug said in a sarcastic voice.
“It does,” Watson replied, and Doug realized he actually meant it.
February 5, 2072, Strasbourg
It had still been dark when two men in black suits rousted Maribel from her bed in Pico del Teide. Her first thought had been a kidnapping. On the way to the private jet the men in black had revealed to her that she was urgently needed at the EU. Maribel felt cold. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, angry at her ‘escorts’ for not having told her to dress more warmly.
And just where were the people Maribel had been brought here to meet? Except for the logo of the European parliament, the conference room looked rather nondescript. It might as well have been in the basement of the IAC in La Laguna. In front of her stood a ceramic mug filled to the brim with steaming hot black coffee. She had not yet taken a sip. Instead, whenever her arms were uncrossed she was using the mug to warm her hands.
Where are these people? she wondered again. She had been told the EU science ministers would come. Maribel suggested either Crewmaster or Zetschewitz should be here instead, but her former professor had received an invitation from the President of the United States for a review of the matter, while Zetschewitz, who was fluent in Russian, was on his way to Moscow. Afterward, he would travel on to Peking, while Crewmaster would meet with the Japanese prime minister. She was glad she only had to deal with EU ministers. At least they would know something about science—she hoped. That ought to be a requirement for their jobs!
Behind her the huge door squeaked, and Maribel stood up. It must be the ministers. She counted ten men and seven women, each followed by one or two assistants who whispered in their ears or handed them notes. No one even noticed her. Good that nobody is wearing coats, she thought, otherwise I bet they would hand them to me to hang up in the cloakroom.
Another man entered the room. He walked directly toward her.
“I am Eric Theunemann,” he said. “We spoke on the phone. I am glad you managed to come.” He shook her hand.
She immediately liked Eric, who had a firm handshake. Would he soon start moderating the conference? Was he here to help her?
“Your men really left me no choice,” she said. The men in the black suits had created the impression one of them would sling Maribel over his shoulder and toss her in the car if she had not come voluntarily.
“They can be quite persuasive,” Theunemann said, laughing.
Yes, I like him. So far...
“Maribel,” he added, “unfortunately, I have to leave you to handle this alone. You won’t believe how crazy things are today. Of course the catastrophe interferes with everything else. But I am convinced you can manage this.”
Her look seemed to express the opposite. Therefore he put his hand on her shoulder, turned her toward him, and whispered into her ear, “Look, they are all quite tame. Just be careful with the Austrian. He always thinks he is the best and the greatest.”
“And what about their subject knowledge?” Maribel asked.
Theunemann smiled. “They are professional politicians,” he said reassuringly. “They know what their assistants briefed them on. I wouldn’t assume they are familiar with anything. As you realize, this is all quite new. I have to go now… you’ll manage.”
Maribel’s eyes followed him for quite some time while he went toward the door. She was convinced her expression betrayed panic, but she was unable to move or turn around. Her savior went through the door and closed it behind himself.
Here we go, she thought.
Everyone was still whispering. Maribel turned to the assembled group of ministers and the room fell silent. These important men and women really wanted to listen to her! She could hardly believe it.
Now where is the...? With a slight feeling of lingering panic she picked up the sheets lying on the table in front of her. Below them was the note the receptionist had handed to her. It showed her personal code, necessary to control the technology in this room.
During her search, those present had taken seats around the long table and start
ed typing on their mobile devices. Maribel cleared her throat and everyone looked at her again. Fascinating. Now she could imagine why someone might want a leadership position.
“Good morning!” she began. “My name is Maribel Pedreira. I am employed at the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias.” Her nervousness gave way to an intense concentration while she described her work.
“Computer, Code fdbf2f! Start holo-display,” she requested.
From the ceiling a cube with an edge length of about 1.5 meters descended toward the conference table. An area of the same size opened up in the tabletop. Then jets sprayed a thin fog curtain from above. Three seconds later, lasers started drawing. Colored lines and dots appeared in the translucent fog.
“I would like to make sure we are all at the same level of knowledge,” Maribel continued. “You have probably already recognized the solar system in this display. You see the sun in the center, and Earth as the third planet.”
When she mentioned Earth, the little sphere depicting the planet blinked briefly.
“Up there, centrally above the sun, the small bright dot is the black hole. Unfortunately we cannot see it in reality quite as well as we can display it here. It has a diameter of only six meters, approximately, but it weighs as much as the fifth planet, Jupiter. Now let me fast-forward. In one month the object will be here, then the next month, here, and then here.”
“Not so fast, please,” requested a woman with a Scandinavian accent. “What happens at those points?”
“Nothing,” Maribel replied.
“‘Nothing?’”
“Correct. We will not feel any effects.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “Thank you very much.”
“Now, we are at the end of the sixth month,” Maribel continued. “The black hole hits the sun and devours it.”
“Even though it is only six meters wide?” asked an older, baldheaded man with a distinctly German accent. “That’s smaller than our conference table. Something like a gnat devouring an elephant?”
“Yes, because the gnat has an insatiable appetite,” Maribel explained. “Everything it swallows will be compressed to an unimaginably small size. At the same time the gnat is also growing. If it were to completely devour the sun, its diameter would be about three kilometers. But that will not happen.”
“Is that the good news?” the baldheaded man asked.
“It’s the bad news. As soon as the sun gets partially devoured, it won’t be able to retain its outer shell. A part of it will be flung off in the direction of the ecliptic.”
Then they saw in the 3D display how a wave of glittering dots separated from the sun and flew into the plane in which the planets wander around the sun. The room fell silent when the cloud reached the Earth, enveloped it, and left it behind.
“This is going to occur approximately two days after the object collides with the sun,” Maribel explained.
“It’s not just a regular solar storm, is it?” asked a man in jacket and jeans. He spoke in an accent-neutral English, as best she could tell.
“Not at all,” she said. “Most likely, the wave of hot matter will sterilize Earth. It will tear everything away, the water supply, the atmosphere… anything on the surface. Afterward, Earth will be a rocky desert with a black sky.”
“I understand,” the man said, having to pause and swallow before he could continue. “I had not imagined it to be this drastic. What can we do?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know,” Maribel said. “I am just showing you our future, which I discovered only two days ago myself.”
“Ms. Pedreira, I implore you,” the same man said, sounding really desperate. “We don’t have any magic solutions up our sleeves either. You are the expert. Give us a hint. What would you do?”
“Unfortunately I have no idea what is even possible,” Maribel replied.
“Humanity is about to be extinguished. Anything should be possible now,” the Scandinavian minister argued.
Maribel hesitated. She was not prepared for this. She was here to present the diagnosis, not to suggest a therapy. She looked at the 3D display and had the hot storm wash over Earth again and again.
“Our planet can’t be saved,” she finally said. “The side facing away from the sun will not fare much better, either.”
“We could retreat into the interior,” the baldheaded man said, “and build huge bunkers there. How deep would they have to be?”
“Perhaps… one hundred meters?” Maribel speculated. “Other people will have to calculate this more precisely. But what happens after the storm is over? We could never again live on the surface. While Earth would not leave its orbit, a black hole would be in the gravitational center instead of the sun. The airless surface will likely experience a frigid temperature of approximately minus 250 degrees.”
The baldheaded man rose from his seat, and then sat right back down.
“Could we leave Earth before this happens, at least a few of us?” The woman asking this question sat directly to the right of Maribel. Her meticulously-parted hair and her no-nonsense eyeglasses made her look like a former professor.
Maribel began to say something, but stopped before any words came.
The woman then said, “When I look at the course of the storm, I see an area which will be mostly spared.”
Maribel ran the final storm once more. The woman was right—and her comment confirmed to Maribel that she was, or had been, a professor. The shock front issued from the sun at an angle of about 20 degrees, so it became wider and wider. However, one would be reasonably safe in areas clearly above and below the ecliptic.
“That is true,” Maribel said. “A spaceship located at the orbit of Earth and about half an astronomical unit from the ecliptic, at six months and two days from now, should survive the catastrophe. But then there would be no viable Earth left for it to return to.”
“Apart from that, would it be realistic?” the baldheaded man asked. “Is it worthwhile thinking about it?”
“Half an AU is further than the shortest possible distance to Mars,” Maribel replied. “Currently, the median travel time to Mars is three to four months.”
“We therefore would have to prepare a powerful spaceship within two months,” the same woman added.
The baldheaded man scratched his temples. “This would only work if all nations on Earth invest hitherto unparalleled sums,” he said. “I think we should all discuss this with our parliaments.”
Everyone nodded. A few of those present started typing on their communication devices. No one seemed to notice Maribel anymore.
“Do you need me any further?” she asked loudly. “You can find my contact data in the presentation material.”
No one bothered to answer her. After a moment of disappointment, Maribel remembered this was her first time in Strasbourg. The city was supposed to have a magnificent cathedral. She had six months left to see everything.
Maribel grabbed her papers, pulled on her jacket, and hurried from the room. In the foyer, Theunemann waved her over. No more conversations, she thought. She definitely needed some fresh air, and right now. She acted as if she had not seen him, and left the building.
February 6, 2072, Pico del Teide
The journalists were gone, and no vans blocked the road. Maribel was surprised. She had not expected things to calm down so quickly. Of course, the discovery was now public knowledge, even if the scientific paper would not be published until the day after tomorrow. The news media had changed focus to the world’s parliaments and on the markets, because people had started panic-buying.
Fine, Maribel thought. This would allow her to focus on her work. Last night she had gone to bed late, since her return flight had not landed until 11 p.m. Afterwards, at home, she had thought for quite a while. She had six months left in this world. What did she want to achieve during this time? Which places did she definitely want to see? The list became so long she doubted she could manage all of it. At some point the transportation system wo
uld probably become overloaded, because the other ten billion inhabitants of Earth would make similar ‘to do’ lists.
And which people did she want to see for the last time? That list was short.
In the end Maribel decided to devote one month of the last six to her work. Thirty days would be enough to see what would become of her troublesome aberration, but she was nonetheless skeptical. What mankind failed to achieve during that month it would never manage to do, and she could not imagine any real solutions being found. Yes, perhaps they would build a spaceship which would save a few humans from the approaching catastrophe, but this was probably nothing more than a tiny spark of hope. Would 30, 50, or at best 100 people on board a spaceship, hastily cobbled together, keep humanity going after their home planet had become inhabitable?
Maribel definitely did not want to be a part of that group. But there would be many other people who would claim that right, and even more who would begrudge them a place on the ship. However, the ship could only be built if all of mankind worked together.
And retreating below Earth’s surface? Maribel started to sweat just thinking about it. She had once visited one of the hotels in Las Vegas, ‘The Venetian,’ where you can shop and eat in a virtual Venice under an artificial sky. Even this luxury version of subterranean life made her shudder. The rapidly-built bunkers that could be constructed in such a short time to shelter as many people as possible would be far less luxurious.
Since yesterday she had been waiting for the grief and the fear to materialize. Shouldn’t she be afraid of the end? Yet at the moment she felt only curiosity and a strange kind of determination. She was not even afraid of Zetschewitz anymore.
Maribel had been startled when the office door opened by itself. She had completely forgotten she was to be alone today. Her boss must have arrived in Moscow yesterday evening. Was he just sleeping off his first drunken night? The colleagues there were supposed to be real party animals. She would have liked to have seen Zetschewitz drunk. That was probably the only way to experience him relaxed. Or maybe she was unfair to him and he was the nicest and most relaxed person in his private life.
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