“No, leave the target’s presents where they lay. Those are the orders.” Shome watched as she seemed to talk to herself as she walked away from him. He noticed a small stiff threadlike piece of metal slip back into her wrist. Shome lay there, unable to breathe as the world passed him by and people walked near him without taking any notice of him. His vision started to narrow and he tried to lift his arms up. It was only then as his vision began to black out that the irony struck him how he was dying alone in the world he wanted to live in. His last sight was of the woman who killed him, dressed in a business suit like all of the rest of the people around her.
***
Hours later, the cylinder’s batteries ran out and the magnetic field containing the antimatter died out. The antimatter touched the side of the cylinder. The cylinder bottled up the energy for a fraction of a second before it released the energy caused by the matter and antimatter collision. Three explosions ripped out of the train as it traveled in the vacuum tube running over to Asia and the Nippon Island Arcologies. The tube, itself containing three interconnected railways so that no train would ever be able to collide with another, exploded outward in a fury of energy that had nothing to hold it back in. For a few minutes water flooded into the tubes before backup systems activated the nanoshielding that sealed the tube from further destruction. It did not stop another second train heading to the PanAm Stalk from colliding with that seal and causing another explosion as the fusion chamber of the second train ruptured. The fury of the core of a miniature sun erupted in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Seals erupted over several parts of the TransPacific Vacuum tube, one of the main causeways for transporting food and supplies that came down from the Stalk and also one of the few vacuum tubes that connected the Stalks together. Over three hundred kilometers of tubing was destroyed, tubing that would take months to repair and replace. Thousands of people died. But that was not as important to the Commonwealth as the economic instability the destruction would cause.
Chapter 5
The Global Collapse and the overexploitation of oil not only led to the death of more than nine billion people but also led to the collapse of the airline industry. In the years after the remaining governments and companies found it more economically feasible to use electric railways to transport goods. Nanotechnology allowed the use of the miniature robots to repair rails automatically and without human oversight. Years later the development of smaller fusion chambers allowed for the construction of train systems that did not need refueling for decades and also did not impact the environment like the combustion engines of the airplanes of old did. This caused not only for the construction of a worldwide grid of railways but also of the construction of a worldwide intelligent electric grid. The development of this grid led to the construction of the Arcologies at important connections where industries and fusion generators were placed. This is similar to the construction and development of the first suburbs in the United States in the immediate years following the end of World War II and also the development of western towns in the United States following the construction of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the year 1869. The development was also related to the extreme weather that formed after Global Climate Change hit its peak right after the Global Collapse, which caused large and small airplanes alike to experience extreme turbulence and the inability to land at their desired destination for weeks at a time. However, while politicians still debate on whether humanity contributed to Global Climate Change, most Senators in the 25th century have agreed that humanity did contribute to it and accelerate it's effects.
-The History of the Earth Commonwealth
Exsid shook his head slightly. “A what?” he asked.
“An Armory.” Darvin said in a happy manner. They both walked into the building through the gaping hole.
“Who the hell would put an Armory into a civilian station? Let alone a Ring?”
“Beats me. But check out these rifles.”
“Don’t, Darvin.”
“What?”
“You got that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The look that says ‘Oh pretty shiny objects.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Darvin said cheerily.
“Just check for some evidence and do your damn job already.”
“Oh I’ve been doing it. You just haven’t noticed.”
“So you say,” Exsid replied dryly.
They walked through the room, noting that the only door had a very expensive and complex looking electronic lock on it that also had a manual component on it to prevent hacking. “You would think they would have made the structure of this place better with how that lock on that door looks,” Exsid said after a few minutes.
“They did. There is a titanium layer inside of the masonry, plus it looks like this place is wired up inside of a faraday cage,” Darvin replied back to Exsid.
Exsid moved back to the entrance that someone blew apart to get inside while Darvin moved deeper into the room. Exsid took his scanner implant, located right inside of his eye, and scanned the wall’s structure. “Scanner says it’s a self-repairing nanotech physical shield. But somehow they turned off the self-repairing part.”
“Must’ve been a demp.”
“A what?”
“You realize that’s the second time in the past five minutes you’ve said that?”
“Stop being a jerk, Darvin, and just tell me what that is.”
“Alright old man, since it seems I am the only one reading the news about new tech coming out. That stuff is supposed to be only military. It sends out some sort of electromagnetic pulse that disassembles the nanobots. Don’t ask me how; I don’t understand much of it. But that’s why they call it a demp, a disassembling EMP.”
“Is anyone else calling it a demp or is it just you?”
Darvin put a big smile on his face and looked over towards Exsid. “Just me. You should read some more instead of sitting on your rear watching those Grav games of yours.”
Exsid sighed heavily. “Let’s just find out who this place belongs to.”
“Oh I already know the answer to that.”
“And why don’t you enlighten me my most useful partner,” Exsid said as he walked over to Darvin.
Darvin raised his hand up, letting the flesh on the top of his forearm part to let a cylinder slide out of the recess. The top of the cylinder rotated a bit, widening out a column of light coming out from the cylinder to become a flashlight. “Standard Marine Exoskeleton.”
Exsid whistled. “No wonder this place is so high tech. Where’s the other four,” Exsid said as he pointed to the other four empty spots on the wall next to where the armor suit was hanging.
“Well remember those black pieces of armor plate we found outside?”
“Rebels?”
“Who else?”
Exsid sighed again. “My age is catching up to me; I’m getting too old for this.”
“Oh shut it. You are only just getting into your eighties. You are barely into your middle age.”
“Your point is?”
“You are going to live until you’re two hundred? C’mon. You haven’t even hit middle age yet. You’re not even over the hill.”
“Sometimes I feel like it,” Exsid said as they started to leave the building. He tagged it in his Exovision and sent over a request to the Chief to station someone there to guard it until it could be patched up. Exsid did this while pretending not to notice Darvin palming a few items on their way out. He didn’t stop himself from shaking his head at the matter.
“Feel it and look it.”
“What?”
“Your stomach. You complain about me drinking and you got that beer gut of yours.”
“Hey, this guy keeps me warm at night,” Exsid said as a joke, grabbing onto his stomach to make a show of it. “Now let’s move on to the station. We still got a few more miles to walk.”
***
“The Senate recognizes the Australian Constellation for its Ecology report.”
“Thank you Chancellor Burreta,” Australian Senator Williams as his virtual avatar took its stand at the central podium. Williams looked towards his audience of Senators arrayed out in front of him as if they were in a giant Greek Amphitheatre. The virtual room took place while each Senator was in their own respective Shift Rooms, rooms dedicated to housing the hardware for making these virtual meetings possible. Exovision expanded their view of the virtual reality, while their enhanced Biocomps gave them an extended consciousness and mentality. “It is with regret that I say that the Coral Restoration Project has been halted due to financial issues. Rising costs due to the artificial growth of genetically engineered algae continues to grow.
“I must say that we vote on amending the Gene Amendment of our Constitution. The limitations imposed by the Amendment cease to be beneficial to us in this day and age. The costs of altering the now legal pathways in cells are costly to the point where they are no longer economically beneficial. By amending this law, we may use those pathways that are shunted away from our researchers to further develop beneficial attributes in the algae.”
“The Senate recognizes the Indo-Asian Islands.”
“Senator Williams,” said Senator Kino of the Indo-Asian Islands. “Are you telling us that the work on the Great Barrier Reef has stalled?”
“Yes I am, Senator Kino. The transplanting of the coral reefs around the world has always been seen as a major setting point to the Ecological Restoration Project akin to the seeding of modified bacteria into the ground to create soil. It is a project that we must undertake to reset our world before the effects of our early industrialization change this planet into more of a wasteland than it already is. We cannot turn our oceans back to blue until we can install life back into them.”
“But Senator, we use the green algae to supplement our food supply and for our oxygen. The algae have been proven over centuries to be decreasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Are you saying that the coral reefs will be able to supply these demands?”
“No, I am not talking about the reefs becoming our replacement for our green oceans. I am talking about the restoration of the ecosystem that once made up our world before the Global Collapse and before the Industrial Revolution. The Nanotic Revolution after the collapse saved us from our previous mistakes, but we must not let up from our efforts to restore Earth’s natural resources.” Where is Kino trying to go with this, Williams thought to himself.
“And how does the Gene Amendment affect those efforts?”
“Genetic engineering of today is about using viruses to change specific parts of the DNA structure of the cells. We change certain pathways that alter what proteins can be produced as well as other things that make the cells more resistant to the extremes of the world around us.”
“Yes Senator, we all know about what genetic engineering is. What I asked was how the law inhibits your researchers work.”
“This law prohibits the certain pathways that could be used to help against the high concentration of mercury that is present offshore,” replied Senator Williams. He paused for a second, trying to figure out why Senator Kino would be objecting to him on this issue. Typically Kino’s interests were politically aligned with William’s interests. “We are not allowed to create organisms that, by the law, absorb the mercury into its cellular structure. The efforts at mechanically and chemically decreasing the amount of mercury are not feasible using nanobots. Instead we use the giant floating platforms that scoop up the water for it to be macro-processed directly on site. By using the organisms themselves to biologically decrease the amount of mercury we can trap it out of the water. It is then that we can program the organisms to be picked up by the scoopers where it can be disposed of in our space born facilities.”
“That’s one long transport and supply chain Senator Williams, similar to the thinking in the early twenty first century that nearly destroyed humanity. But what you are talking about is changing the reason why these organisms existed in the first place. True, they are the filters of the ocean but what if your machines miss a concentration of these organisms that were due to be picked up. Biological with concentrated mercury inside of them could infect our food supply. Thousands could be affected and poisoned. There were reasons why this law was written the way it was those centuries ago.”
And there it was, Senator Williams thought. Fear of another ecological disaster. Preventing the recovery of one disaster to prevent the possibility of a second smaller one, which was what Senator Kino was trying to say subversively. But, it seemed to Williams, Kino was not done with his retort.
And oh the irony, Williams thought to himself. Don't we use that same supply chain solution you just rebuked as our model for our inter-colony trading? Williams bit down a chuckle. It would not do well for him to openly offend Kino when he wanted his old prodigy to see his side.
“The green algae of the oceans specifically do not absorb mercury, heavy metals, and other toxic substances for this purpose,” Senator Kino said with obvious emotion showing. “That is why the algae were designed to be processed into our food supply. It was designed to be every place where there was water. It eliminated our need for a thousand mile plus long supply chain just to bring our dinner to our table. The Arcologies could not survive today without it, especially those like the New York Arcology where over a hundred million live in one area.”
“If the law is not amended, then I am afraid to say that we will need a thirty percent increase in our allotted budget to have any chance of succeeding with the current level of toxicity present in our waters offshore. Everything else around the Sydney Arcology is a desert. Our water and our food need to be processed more so than what is needed for any other Arcology and we house over ninety million citizens in that Arcology alone.”
“Thirty percent? And where do you surmise those funds to come from?”
“If we decrease the funding to the THEL Shield, we would be able to support our efforts to continue our research and engineering efforts.” The THEL Shield was the rings of turret based tactical high energy lasers that surrounded the aggressive Islamic Theocracy, the only part of the Earth that did not swear its allegiance to the Earth Commonwealth on the basis of the freedom of religion in the Universal Religion Act. The extremists who had taken control of the Islamic Theocracy in the past had taken a strict stance on the practice of religion within it's borders and have kept that stance ever since. Their civil war had also prevented any meaningful dialogue on the topic internally, as neither side could agree with the other.
But then again, Williams thought to himself, don't we prevent them from practicing their religion openly in our lands? And we even have something like the Universal Religion Act. Maybe it will soon be time to actually live up to that. Williams snapped out of his inner thoughts as Kino continued to talk.
“The THEL Shield is the only deterrent we have against ICBMs and attacks from the Islamic state onto our Commonwealth,” Senator Kino retorted. Williams brought up in his personal Exovision the previous votes on the budget for the THEL Shield. He saw that Kino voted to upgrade it every time and was a strong supporter of the shield, but never really voiced his opinion of it so publicly. Every Senator knew that everyone with Exovision could turn to the feeds of the debates of the Senate, and many did. The CNC, Central News of the Commonwealth, were going to have a field day with this after. For a second, Williams was almost starting to regret the way this debate was going on the sole basis of how many calls he would be getting from reporters after this session of the Senate. But, Williams thought, this is where Kino wanted to lead the discussion all along.
But the thought of harassing reporters did not stop Senator Kino, which had to cross his mind as well, from continuing the debate. “Yes their economy has suffered through hyperinflation even after the Global Collapse, but they still display their aggressive tendencies against our land military. They would no doubt try t
o attack the Sahara Stalk if we give them the chance. The seizure of that stalk would give them access to space. Would you enjoy the fanatics of the old? Because reports have been made public of their voicing to bring back their Jihad against us. We even gave them fusion generator technology as an olive branch and they still act this way.”
“Senator Kino, it is well known that the Islamic Theocracy is technologically centuries behind the Commonwealth. In fact, the THEL Shield is still at least fifty years beyond their current research level and is also centuries ahead of their economic and industrial level. After their oil ran out shortly before the Global Collapse, they ceased to be able to function economically. They have no modern basis for their currency even still to this day. They still use the old Gold Standard. They are not as big of an issue as you claim to be. Our military currently stationed there can hold back forty times what they can throw at us and they know it. What is more important is what affects tens of millions of citizens and that is our waters. I submit to the Chancellor that the Senate votes on whether to increase the budget to the Restoration Project for the efforts of restoring our seas to their former glory.”
Chancellor Burreta looked over to Senator Kino. “Is there anything else you would like to add to your argument?”
“No Chancellor, I have voiced my opinion and everything I needed to say.”
“Very well, the voting will commence. If the vote is successful, then a subcommittee will form to detail where the funds will come from. This Senate will reconvene in one standard hour to review the results of the vote.”
Williams leaned back into his ergonomic chair. He brought his hands together, interlacing his fingers and leaned them lightly against his lips. It was his favorite thinking position and was a habit taken up when he was young and was watching his father work.
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