by OMAR FINK
Nabith said, “Accelerate the motion to one thousand times real time.” The dots began to move, showing some circular motion around the Solar System.
Nabith said, “Mark the date the comet train began passing through this section of the asteroid belt as it exited the Solar System.” Text on the display noted the date marked.
Nabith said, “Move to the marked date and resume time base motion from that date forward.” The rotating ring of dots shifted to new positions, and continued a slow circular motion.
Nabith said, “Mark the sectors of the asteroid belt where the comet train passed through and zoom in show those sectors only, expanding to fill the screen.” The display was adjusted to show only a portion of the ring of dots, and zoomed in to a more close-up view.
Nabith said, “Highlight the comet train pieces in yellow.” The ring of dots showed a yellow streak moving slowing through it, painting the pathway of the comet train.
TYCHE asked, “Would you like to see the changes that were made?”
Nabith said, “Yes, mark any changes made to orbital trajectories during the comet train transit, and highlight them in red.” As the yellow streak moved through the portion of the ring of dots, some red trails began to develop like tiny eddies left behind the passing of the comet train.
Nabith studied this for a while as the motion continued, then said, “Focus on the current position of the comet train, and zoom in to one hundred times current view.” The display shifted and zoomed in on the current yellow streak and showed more detail of the red threads stringing out behind it.
Nabith was silent for several moments as he studied this carefully. He finally said, “Disregard the yellow highlight, continue the red highlight, also mark all other perturbations from the red changes and highlight them in purple. Cancel the time motion and show me only the red and purple changes for the entire time span from the start of the comet train transit to current time. Zoom out to show the entire asteroid belt.” The display shifted and changed again, showing only red threads and purple threads that entwined through each other around the entire ring.
TYCHE suggested, “Sector seventeen has the most interesting data.”
Again, Nabith paused and studied this carefully. Then he said, “Mark sector seventeen. Zoom in on that sector to fill the display.” The display complied, showing a knot of red and purple threads.
Nabith said, “Resume time motion on this sector only, moving backward from current time.” The red and purple threads began unwinding themselves.
Nabith watched for a minute then said sharply, “Stop!” The motion in the display froze.
Nabith studied it again, then said, “Increase zoom by a factor of ten.” The display complied. He said it again, “Increase zoom by a factor of ten.” He was looking at a tangled knot of red and purple threads.
TYCHE offered, “Would you like me to identify the large objects?”
Nabith responded, “Identify objects on the screen larger than one hundred kilometers in diameter.” The display added text tags to seven items.
Nabith said, “Resume forward time motion at the previous rate.” The text tags began winding their way through the red and purple threads.
Nabith said, “Stop.” The display froze.
Nabith said, “Rewind that sequence and play it forward again.” The display went back to the starting point of the last sequence and replayed it.
Nabith said, “Do that again.” The display complied.
Nabith said, “Do that again.” The display complied.
Nabith said, “Do that again.” The display complied.
Nabith was silent for many minutes.
TYCHE said, “That’s very interesting.”
+7 years, 12 months, HABITAT-58, AU 2.5
Delize Naidu said, “Nabith, Nabith, slow down. I can’t understand you when you talk that fast.”
Nabith Mehra replied, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Okay, let me catch my breath.” He breathed deeply twice, then resumed, “First, you must know we’ve been working on this for weeks. I wanted to be absolutely sure we’re not making some kind of error before we showed anybody. We have done that. We both are sure this is right. Now, we need to show you instead of just talking. Watch this.”
Delize interrupted, “Nabith, who is ‘we’? You and who else?”
Nabith muttered, “TYCHE, TYCHE, the computer. TYCHE and I have been working on this for many weeks. Please watch.”
Nabith turned away from Delize and Keel O’Donnell and faced the large wall monitor nearby. He said, “Authenticate Nabith Mehra, run program ‘billiards’.” The display flashed through a series of text and data, then began showing the ring of slowly rotating dots that represented the asteroid belt.
Nabith turned his head a little over his shoulder and spoke sideways to Delize and Keel, “Okay. This is the asteroid belt, right? Now watch as the comet train went through the belt and what it did to the rocks in the belt.” The display showed the yellow highlighted comet train enter the inner edge of the belt, and pass through a portion of it then exit out toward the orbit of Jupiter.
Nabith continued talking, “Now this is a closeup of those sectors that include changes made to orbital trajectories in red and any further perturbations that are ripple effects highlighted in purple.” The display zoomed in and repeated the passage of the yellow streak, and it spawned red threads behind it and eventually some purple threads spun off of the red ones.
Nabith said, “Pause program. Okay, are you with me? This is how the comet train went through the asteroid belt when it left the Solar System more than seven years ago, and also all the changes it made to our rocks and all the changes they made to other rocks. Got it?” He looked over his shoulder at Delize and Keel and they both nodded.
Nabith said “Resume program.” The display zoomed back out to show the entire asteroid belt which began moving again, and the yellow comet train left the image, but the red and purple threads continued. Eventually the motion stopped and a text label said ‘current time reached’.
Nabith said, “Pause program. Okay, this is now, today. We just saw all the changes and perturbations made to rock trajectories because of the passage of the comet train. Now, we’ll let the program move forward in time to show us the state of the rocks when the comet train returns several years from now.”
Nabith said, “Resume program.” The display showed the ring of dots swirling around the center again, with the red and purple threads continuing to propagate through the dots. Eventually, a new yellow streak entered the edge of the ring near Jupiter and began moving back through the asteroids toward the inner planets. When it reached the inner edge of the asteroid belt, Nabith said, “Pause program.”
Nabith turned to look at Delize and Keel and spoke, “We’ve just seen the comet train come back and pass through the asteroid belt on its way to impact with Earth and destroy it. The configuration of the rock trajectories when it returns is slightly different than it was when it left because of the changes it made as the large comet portions passed by rocks, and the gravitational attraction between them made small changes. The small changes created other changes, and many ripples were created changing the trajectories of many rocks. These changes are small, but there are many of them, and the degree of the changes has accumulated over time. But now I want you to see one sector in particular where the comet train will be returning.”
Nabith turned back to the wall monitor and said, “Resume program.” The display zoomed in and showed the yellow streak of the returning comet train moving through the asteroid belt. More detail was noticeable in this close-up view. The motion stopped when the yellow streak reached the inner edge of the belt, and two blue lines appeared that seemed to bracket the movement of the yellow streak.
Nabith said, “Pause program. Now, see those blue lines? Those lines form a channel that I have defined. This channel is crucial because any attempt to change the trajectory of the comet train would have to be made inside this channel. Ceres is
one of the few objects in the belt that has enough mass to seriously deflect the comet train all by itself, but it’s not really in position to do that. If it was, we might consider nudging Ceres into a new position where it would have the ability to bend the comet train trajectory enough to deflect the comet train and make it miss Earth.” He paused to breathe.
Keel asked, “Nabith, you’re implying that there may be a way to save Earth from the impact. But you say Ceres can’t do it. What can do it?”
Nabith replied, “Bear with me. Ceres is about nine hundred fifty kilometers in diameter. There are over sixty other objects in the belt that are over one hundred kilometers in diameter. Now let’s look at where those objects are in relation to the blue lines I drew. Program resume.” The display added text labels to fourteen objects near the blue lines.
Nabith sighed, “We’re almost there. Now we’re moving back to current time, and applying some small nudges to some of these objects.” Orange arrows appeared next to the fourteen objects and the motion resumed. When it stopped again, the fourteen objects were inside the blue lines when the yellow line representing the comet train went through the corridor formed by the blue lines.
Nabith threw his hands up in the air, and shouted, “Voila! Eureka! This will do it! By moving these objects we can create enough gravitational pressure on the pieces of the comet train that they will miss Earth. We can do this!”
Delize said, “Nabith, I understand what you’re proposing. But how can we do this. How can we do the nudging?”
Keel interrupted, “Nabith is correct. We can do this. We know because we’ve already done it. Every time we’ve adjusted the trajectory of a habitat ring or a rock we’ve been mining, we’ve applied force to nudge them into slightly different trajectories. It’s just a matter of determining how much force needs to applied over how much time in order to move the object the desired amount. Then we calculate how much fuel it we’ll have to expend and if we can afford to that, then we do calculations to optimize the process and save as much fuel as possible. I assume Nabith has already done these calculations or he wouldn’t be so excited. Is that right?”
Nabith jumped up and down and shouted, “Yes! Yes! We can do it!” He frowned, “But there’s not much time.”
III EPIPHANY
14 Jubilation
“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
― John Milton
+8 years, 1 months, HABITAT-107, AU 3.3
Lee Martin smiled, and ran some fingers through her short blond hair even though it needed no tending. She said, “For the last few years, there has been some angst among the inner circles of HU leadership over whether the evacuation of Earth would finish on time. We’re just now finding out about this, and that the numbers were showing them that it would not. The best projections they had were predicting we could get about three to four billion of the more than eight billion human beings off the planet in time to save them from the comet train. In other words, about half of us could be saved, and the other half could not. There simply wasn’t enough time, and the ribbon cables could only support so much weight. We could have built more elevators, but it was becoming too late to do that.”
Lee frowned, “Basically, somebody made a bet that we’d be able to make stronger ribbon fibers, and that never happened. That was a bad bet. It’s also in our past now, and we need to focus on the present and the future.”
Lee went back to her baseline smile that warmed rooms, “Just when things were beginning to look pretty grim, along came a hero named Morgan, Professor Morgan in fact. He’s an obscure physics researcher from Texas, and he has invented a device he calls the Directed Matter Junction or DMJ for short. The DMJ uses some technical processes to shuffle the forms of matter and morph into new forms. We know that a simple change in the number of electrons or protons or neutrons in an atom can make a big change in the characteristics of the atom. What the DMJ does is like magic. Really.” She smiled broadly again.
Lee asked, “Why is this important to us? Because Professor Morgan has supplied us with the answer to our problem of making the elevator ribbon cables stronger. Not only can the DMJ help make stronger ribbons of carbon nanotubes, it can make a brand-new kind of ribbon fiber that is being called ‘diamond nanothreads’.” Lee nodded, “That’s right, diamond. It’s not really a stretch when you realize that flat sheets of carbon atoms are called graphene, and rolled up tubes of graphene are called carbon nanotubes, and crystals of carbon atoms can be diamond. The end result is a nanothread made of carbon atoms arranged like diamonds which is even stronger than the carbon nanotubes we’ve been using. And that means stronger ribbon cables on the space elevators, and more people going up them, and everybody on Earth can be saved.”
Lee continued, “So this is exciting, and that’s why there have been spontaneous celebrations around Earth. People are excited to hear that they can be saved, and there won’t need to be a lottery drawing to find out who will live and who will die. That’s right. There were rumors of such a lottery, although no official confirmation. But now, everybody can leave the planet, and emigrate out here to the asteroid belt. Everybody who wants to, that is. There are still some holdouts from the belief that this whole thing is a fraud and a scheme to take over control. And there are some who just want to stay on Earth no matter what happens.”
Lee put her hand just below her throat and ran fingers across her collarbones, “By the way, the diamond nanothreads aren’t just improving the space elevators. They’re also being used in the new third generation of under-skin garments. This will add strength to the skins, and the superconductivity will greatly increase the electronic capabilities. It’s a good bet the diamond threads will end up being integrated into exoskeletons, space-suits, and many more facets of our lives.” She smiled and her face faded away.
+8 years, 2 months, HABITAT-58, AU 2.5
Nabith turned toward the wall monitor, “Authenticate Nabith Mehra, run program ‘billiards’.” The display showed a ring of slowly rotating dots representing the asteroid belt.
Nabith said, “I know some of you have already seen this but some have not, so I’ll run through it quickly, and then answer your questions. This is the asteroid belt. Here is the comet train going through the belt and making some changes to the rocks in the belt. The comet train is the yellow streak.” The display showed the comet train enter the inner edge of the belt, and pass through it then exit out toward Jupiter.
Nabith kept talking, “This shows the sectors that were changed, and the ripple effects that spun off from them. This is the comet train going through the asteroid belt more than seven years ago, and all the changes that resulted. The changes are shown with red threads and ripple perturbations are purple threads.”
The display kept moving to show how the changes had rippled through the belt over the years since the comet train had left, until the time counter showed it had reached the present, then the motion stopped.
Nabith said, “This is today. We just saw all the changes made to rock trajectories because of the comet train. Now, we also need to look forward to show us the state when the comet train returns several years from now.” The display went back into motion, swirling around the center, with the tapestry of red and purple threads woven throughout. A new yellow streak moved back through the asteroid belt toward the Sun, stopping at the inner edge of the belt.
Nabith said, “We’ve just seen the comet train return on its way to destroy Earth. The asteroid rock positions are different when it returns from when it went through the belt as it was exiting our system. Everything has changed over time as the asteroids orbit around the Sun. Now, we need to focus on the sector of the belt where the comet train will return before it heads back into the inner Solar System.”
Nabith turned toward the monitor, and took control of the display program manually. He went back in time, then zoomed in
and showed the yellow streak of the comet train returning, but with more detail noticeable. This time, two blue lines bracketed a channel around the yellow streak.
Nabith said, “See those blue lines? They form a channel that is crucial to any attempt to change the comet train. There are fourteen objects inside this channel at the right time that are over one hundred kilometers in diameter. Each by themselves is not enough to have much effect on the comet train. But when all of them are brought into play, one after another, the changes add up, and we have enough gravitational influence to slightly redirect the trajectory of the comet train.” Nabith paused and took several breaths.
He continued, “We can’t change it much, but we can change it enough to push it just a bit closer to the Sun than it would have been otherwise. And when it swings back around the Sun, the track of the pieces of the comet will be changed significantly.”
Nabith paused again, then resumed talking, “It’s difficult to calculate exactly how the Sun will effect the trajectories of the pieces of the comet. But I feel confident that some will be pulled down into the Sun and destroyed, and others will be deflected strongly enough that they will no longer threaten Earth.”