Dome 43
Earth is dead. Survivors are divided into three groups, each with its own solution, for humanity.
Dome Forty-Three
Prologue: Earth is Dead
An angry, haughty man stood at the podium. He wore a silver-gray jumpsuit, his chest emblazoned with a gaudy starship logo. To hell with scientific proof! Decorum ruled out hurling epithets at his questioner, but he was powerless to disguise his anger. So he growled, “What makes you think you can keep us here?”
Planetary Science Professor Laura Wray, whom he was addressing, stood three rows back from the front of the room. Her eyes narrowed at the suggestion of imprisonment. How crass! She fired back, “What-makes-you-think-you-can-go?”
It was a regularly-scheduled meeting of the Governing Council. A moderator had been seated to the right of the podium, and he stood up quickly, stepping over to it. His rank was somewhat higher than most of the others in attendance, and Dr. Wray immediately sat down. The haughty man simply took a half-step back and folded his arms.
“Four hundred years ago, this would have been considered a “Mexican stand-off”, the moderator asserted. “Between Dr. Wray, Dr. Moore and myself, we have three completely different points of view. In a way, I wish I could simply make both of you shut up and listen.” He smiled as the group laughed appreciatively. “But that last exchange really tells it all. What, indeed, makes us think we can stay here? Or what makes us think we can leave?”
The moderator continued. “As ever, our mission is to seek and to find scientific truth. I propose that the people who are passionate about each of these ideas should organize and meet separately. Assemble as many of your supporters as you want. Elect officers if you wish, but choose a leader. Then we should spend the next two months preparing for a full presentation of each point of view. One group, to be represented by a maximum of four persons, will have two hours to make its presentation. It is clear to me we are divided into three different camps. I don’t have to tell you to prepare to present evidence supporting the practicality of your proposals, or the strength of your claims. This is my suggestion. Shall we put it to a vote?”
The motion was made, the vote was held, and it carried. Now Laura had even more work to do, and the worst part of it was, it would interrupt her research. She got out of there as quickly as she could, hoping to escape a further confrontation with her opponent. Unfortunately, Dr. Moore again had a different view, and hurried to catch up to her.
“Dr. Wray! Dr. Wray!” He passed and stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop. “Please be reasonable! Think about it. If we were already in space looking for a planet to make livable, Earth would be one of those passed-by. It’s too far gone!”
Laura had already begun thinking about what more she had to accomplish that day, but the remark snapped her train of thought. “And you’re making that judgment as a planetary scientist, I suppose? It’s a matter of opinion, and as a genuine planetary scientist, I completely disagree! Now leave me alone. Go design a rocket ship, or something!” She stepped around the gray jumpsuit and stalked away.
“I’ll do just that,” he called after her.
******************
To young Olav, it was just another brown day. Outside, the day was always brown. On planet Earth, the color of brownish light varied all the way from light brown to dark.
That might have been okay, to a point, if the air out there was breathable. It was far from it.
Sitting in a control chair that was affixed to the floor, Olav Lee, age fifteen, watched a daily event take place. Everything essential to the basic functions of this settlement was programmed, and there really wasn’t much of anything for him to do, other than to watch for possible problems. So Olav, whose present responsibility was to witness that all functions were executed, had decided to see if he could modify the event without interfering with those functions. It was, at least, something else to do.
For teens in this small society, civil maintenance tasks were an essential part of achieving adulthood. Olav was beginning his second year of it. After one more year, he would be advanced to University, where his scientific education would begin in earnest. He wasn’t sure if he wanted that, but it was expected of him, as it was of everyone. But Olav fancied himself, of all things, a musician.
On a monitor screen above the control panel, Olav watched as a small electrically-powered airplane drone exited its little hangar on a conveyor belt. The propeller began to spin, the tail lifted as power and motor torque increased, and then a pawl dropped, releasing the plane for takeoff. A second monitor displayed the output from the vidcam mounted on its belly. Olav slipped an index finger across the panel and dragged that view onto the main screen. He watched intently as the rocky, sandy ground dropped away. Then he gleefully paused the program and assumed the controls of the little plane, as he had discovered he could do. The little plane picked up a lot of extra height, and banked out over the settlement for Olav’s independent look-about.
From an altitude of four hundred meters, forty-odd residence domes gleamed against a dark mountainous backdrop. Together they presented the appearance of the unlikely, an array of soap bubbles in a sandbox. The domes were huge, although they didn’t rise far in height relative to their breadth. They seemed to be transparent-bronze in hue. In fact they were clear, laced inside with light gray structural supports. The deep amber tint was the color of reflected light from a toxic sky. The unmanned flight was routinely carried out to scan the outer surfaces of the domes, searching for crazing or surface fissures in the thick outer coverings. In the year 356 A.D., these domes housed and protected the entirety of humanity. The “A.D.” was for “After Delta”. The collective human habitat was known to the residents as “Heliopolis”. Chosen by its founders, it was seen as a hopeful name.
But something was going on outside Heliopolis today, an unusual event, just about a half-kilometer from the edge of the interconnected system of domes. Olav moved the little plane closer and zoomed in on the activity for a better look.
On the barren, rocky and lifeless landscape, an eminent scientist and her assistant worked feverishly. Laura Wray moved from point to point, making last-minute checks. Both were clad in bright green helmeted pressure suits. High overhead, the perpetual cloud cover churned in mottled shades of dun. The two needed to complete an experiment well before darkness fell, and temperatures dropped with it. And time was quickly running out.
Between them stood a refrigerator-sized apparatus, shrouded in straight-walled, silvery sheet metal. The large flywheel of a generator spun noiselessly three meters away, and a trio of heavily-insulated cables lay between them. “Are we ready?” The technician nodded. Laura watched a monitor to judge when cloud density directly above had reached a typical maximum. “Now!” she shouted into her helmet. A switch thrown and a key pressed, and three slightly angled, reddish beams of pulsed, concentrated heat shot skyward. The beams revolved together, moving off-center in a widening circle.The flywheel slowed as the generator was drawn down under load. The beams shut down after twenty seconds as the two stepped beneath a canopy, a few meters away. Then they both peered skyward, past the edge of the canopy, to see what, if anything, had happened. They noticed the drone aircraft, now banking quickly away.
The thing that Olav had not known was that there was a time limit to how long he could pause the program before it would reset. He had passed that point a couple of minutes earlier. Also, when you returned the controls to the program, the program needed to be there, because you couldn’t take them back. That was because the physical system would also reset, in the absence of control input.
Ah, well.
“Shit!”
The little plane dropped out of the sky while executing a lovely pirouette, like that of a falling maple seed. And only Olav saw it go down. At least, it hadn’t hit anything. He opened a report screen and entered, “Aircraft lost. Apparent motor failure.”
It was a system that worked. It was on-the-job training. Lesson learned, cost minimal.
Shortly, a misty rain began to fall from the sky above the two experimenters. The mist was gray, the larger droplets were reddish brown.
Dr. Wray smiled triumphantly through her faceplate. “I think we’ve done it!” she exclaimed. Her assistant, Second Engineer Bernard Pelham, nodded agreement.
“We’d better get inside,” he suggested. While the professor gathered data recorders, Bernard collected and capped sampling vials, and both of them headed for the residence dome. This experiment had been an apparent success, because it obviously had freed and precipitated bromine directly from clouds in the atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere.
The two discussed the results as they walked back, and then while a fine swirling spray cleansed their suits in the detox chamber. “It’s the most encouraging thing I’ve seen to date,” Bernard offered, his tone serious. “I really didn’t expect to see it falling right out of the sky like that.”
“Well, I did,” a smiling Laura replied, “And I can’t wait to see the concentration level of the precipitate.”
Technician Bernard headed home to his family, and Laura did what she’d done for most of her adult life - went back to work at her lab. The solution to this particular problem, the prevalence of atmospheric compounds of bromine, was within reach. She was about to work through the next four hours, adding to thousands already spent, trying to craft a unified approach to solve them all. It wouldn’t be done this night either. The hours passed as she fretted, first with one portion of the approach, then another.
Interdependent systems were so complex! Laura touched her desk lamp to darken it, and rubbed her tired eyes. There had to be a practical way to re-initiate self-sustaining planetary processes. Must it be all of them at once? It was past time for a rest period, and for nourishment.
Laura was a highly intelligent and attractive woman, a near-perfect human, and she was aware of the fact. After the Delta, arguing over moral issues of genetic engineering and selective breeding had vanished. It was a new day for humanity, the entirety of which was one massive scientific community.
As unlikely as that might seem, it was indeed so, and for one very good reason - only a community of scientists had survived the Delta. Laura was one of their descendants. So was everyone else.
She touched the security button on the way out of her lab, and walked easily through the causeway and into the clean street. Despite the fact that tens of thousands lived there in Dome thirty-six, by all appearances, she was alone. The public tram would deliver her to within a dozen meters of her little apartment. There she would change her attire, take nourishment and enter her rest period.
Laura arrived at the portal, placed a palm on the wall and then entered. The doors closed silently behind her from both sides.
Stepping fully-clothed into the shower booth, Laura held her arms out at her sides and felt a cleansing warmth cover her body. In four minutes and two motions, she was clean and re-attired. It was such a routine action that she didn’t bother to take notice of what the new outfit looked like. It was white, a neat top and bottom. It was nearly always white. Comfortable, cool or warm as needed, body-hugging and efficient. There was no need for makeup, and no one to attract at this juncture anyway.
Body hair, a phenomenon that was resolved by genetic elimination nearly a century prior to Laura’s life, was unheard of.
It was time to eat. Selecting several items from varying food groups via touch screen, Laura collected the plate from the synthesizer and sat down to her meal. Her preferences had been set, and the social monitor brightened as she ate. There were news events of the day, prospects presented by the latest research, and a rundown of planetary conditions.
To her pre-Delta predecessors, Laura’s existence might have seemed somewhat dry, but she and most of her contemporaries were generally satisfied with it. Laura’s passion had always been science, and she lived for it completely. And to a true scientist or engineer, tackling problems is what life is all about. For sure, she and her contemporaries had their share of them to solve.
For despite the seemingly trouble-free lives they led, Earth was indeed a dead planet, save for this single enclave of humanity. Delta had been an “apocalypse”, a term once bandied-about as if it was a hopeful future. People do love intrigue, after all. Everybody wanted to imagine this or to imagine that, “What if...” - until it happened, of course.
When it did, it bore no resemblance to any of the once-popular, end-of-life-as we-knew-it themes. It was more insidious; more devastating. More lasting. And more horrible.
The Delta had been a painfully-slow, unstoppable nightmare of planetary changes. While people had been arguing about whether humans were the cause of global warming, that phenomenon had advanced beyond a point where they could really pull it back. So was global warming a cause of Delta?
Apparently not - not unless you wanted to blame global warming for providing a distraction. Politics did that, too. So did rampant commercialism, sex, religious wars, the struggle to survive or the pursuit of wealth. And now, centuries later, it was still a topic for debate as to exactly what had initiated the Delta. Earth’s molten planetary core, continental drift, crustal subduction and volcanic activity had continued as always. The ionosphere was still in place, although reshaped and thickened. The magnetosphere seemed to be unchanged. Solar activity, although slightly more violent than it had been, was not in itself enough to have altered weather patterns as much as they actually had been. No doubt the complete destruction of the ozone layer had played a major part. But even that appeared to have been an unnatural occurrence brought about by natural processes. There had been nothing new to implicate a human-generated event.
So the plankton had died, quite suddenly. Oceanic life spiraled quickly downward. The atmosphere began to change, and both oxygen and carbon dioxide levels had actually dropped, precipitously. Compounds of bromine and their effects began to appear in seawater, and some time thereafter, in the atmosphere. Wildlife bore slow and heart-rending extinctions that never stopped until they were complete. Insects dropped by the tens of billions. Crop failures followed, and not very long afterward, the steep slide of humanity. The planet was on an accelerating death-spiral. The entire process took most of a decade, but there was no apparent single explanation. When it began, thetechnology of the day was capable of no more than recording data from the symptoms. The true source of the planetary malady had remained terrifyingly unknown.
During the early stages of Delta, people could breathe the air, but they also needed to eat. It turned out that famine would, by itself, negate any hope of man-made solutions that might have come in time. Of course it was a violent time, chaotic and terrible. It was called “Delta” for the changes that proceeded toward the inexorable destruction of planetary life. It was “Delta” everything.
One other quasi-scientific group had banded together and had attempted to provide itself with food by agricultural means, within hastily-constructed domes. For a while it appeared they would succeed. But they didn’t have the facilities to cleanse enough air, and they didn’t have what they needed to produce a sustainable mimicry of the oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange process between plants and animals. Or perhaps they hadn’t known how. An attack by hungry citizens finished off both the effort and their community.
Of course, artificial synthesis of nutritive materials was really the only other option. It was a poor effort at first, and it didn’t have the early success that the agricultural effort had. Raw materials were in short supply because they hadn’t yet learned how to generate them. However this group did learn from the errors of the first, and kept their project a secret. The entire effort was carried out in a comparatively small and cramped subterranean environment. When the survivors no longer had to fear attacks by others – because they were all dead – then plans for construction of living facilities on the surface began, sited well away from former cites, for so many reasons. For decades thereafter, community growth was limited mainly by the availability of people to carry out manufacturing of materials, and construction. The new atmospheric mix outside was corrosive to lung tissue. Oxygen generation systems and scrubbers operated continuously to provide oxygen and to remove carbon dioxide from environmental air. Eventually, a genuine controlled-fusion power source was perfected, robotic assistance for outdoor tasks was incorporated, and expansion finally began.
Laura, her mind wandering due to fatigue, finished up and headed straight for her bed. Her apartment was top floor and her bed was placed centrally, beneath a sky observation portal. She stretched out on the mattress and it dynamically densified beneath her weight, forming perfectly to the shape of her body. It shifted slightly as she raised an arm and touched a button, and the portal’s iris opened. Had it been daytime, it would have provided a clear view to the atmospheric enclosure dome, overhead.
But the total blackness of Earth’s nights had long since fallen on their portion of the planet. High above but unseen, the darkened cloud cover roiled. Once, it had parted long enough for Laura toactually see stars. Since then, she had always looked. It didn’t appear there would be any chance of that tonight. She left the portal open anyway, and drifted off to sleep. There was so much to do, and so little time to complete the presentation. She needed rest.
Laura functioned as the academic head of the group that advocated a human-initiated recovery of Earth’s essential planetary systems, and restoration of a set of conditions that would support life outside. Humanity’s system of domes provided sufficient protection, for now. But it seemed that the only area of consensus the entire community enjoyed was that it wouldn’t always be enough. While the current conditions had remained stable for more than a century, it had taken a tenth of that to progress from a green planet with clear waters and life-supporting gaseous balance in the atmosphere, to something far less hospitable. The reasons for the Delta, as far as the others knew, had not been completely solved, and most had no real hope of reversing the damage...so for what reason should they expect to be able to live indefinitely and safely within the huge domes, as they were?
The three dozen men and women who had been survivors of the Delta were the founders and sole ancestors of the only human society in existence. They were exceptional people, who had been employed by the United States government when the Delta struck. Their origins however, had been quite diverse. Some were of Asian descent, a few were from India, several more, European, and so on.
In fact those born in the United States did not constitute a majority. All were scientists, pure and simple. The new society they formed bore no resemblance to anything that had come before it. The most critical change had been decided first. There would be no money and no commerce, as it had been known. There were people, there were resources, the needs of all would be met. There was not even any debate on the topic. What remained was how to accomplish that without a traditional government, which sooner or later would become corrupted. What remained was to balance human potential with some form of motivator that was completely unlike a market currency.
That motivator became one of personal honors and recognition. Rather than a system of payment for achievement, people strove to achieve in order to grow their resumes. While maintaining but a single class, those who had done more for humanity as a whole through scientific achievement were far more likely to advance their own positions. Those in the higher positions made decisions for everyone else at a monthly conference in the capital dome. And to prevent unsubstantiated or faked credentials, each person was in possession of a data trail that provided ready proof of their qualifiers, if questioned. And anyone at all could advance to a position of leadership, if he or she so desired, and was in possession of the necessary talents.
As might have been expected, as the population grew, factions formed. But they were not divided over laws or goods or government. They were divided over how this enclave of humanity should solve the problem of living on a dead planet. With the sum total of just over eight hundred thousand humans and with all manufacturing being done within just a pair of domes, none questioned that resources were too limited to proceed simultaneously in multiple directions.
While Laura and her group wanted to find ways to restore planet Earth to its former life-supporting grandeur, a more conservative group wanted to stay the course, improving and expanding mankind’s system of domes, at least until there were enough living humans to do more. But, the most popular group wanted to head for the stars. Their aggressive leaders believed it was the only way to ever hope to live on a world that would support life.
And so Dr. Laura Wray knew she had her work cut out for her. One of the things she had accomplished was to finally identify the causes of the Delta - causes, plural. The devastation might even have been foreseen, had the sciences been afforded the attention they had so richly deserved. Laura wasn’t familiar with how money and greed had infested scientific effort.
Now, nearly four centuries later, reversal of the damage was only slightly more than theoretically possible. The issue that still presented the greatest problem was the interdependency of planetary systems. It was a bit like a string of light bulbs connected in series. If the filament of one bulb burns out, the circuit is opened, turning off all of them as effectively as flipping a switch. But unlike a string of lights, it was not as easy as replacing a bulb. Instead of simply slowing or changing, some of the systems were no longer detectable in any form, and were presumed gone.
The night slowly passed, and Laura awakened early, and suddenly. Above, she could see the sky had lightened slightly. What had awakened her? She was still so tired...then the pounding on her apartment portal resumed. So that was it. Who could it be? She touched a button, turning on the intercom.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Leia.”
Leia? Laura’s younger sister! She looked at the clock. It was six a.m. Struggling to get out of bed, she walked slowly to the portal and laid a hand on the wall, opening it. There stood Leia, all of fourteen years old, smiling and clothed identically to Laura, except for her goofy, lopsided red beret.
Laura placed a hand on her own forehead, imagining it would clear her vision. “What’s up, little sister? What brings you out so early?”
“You gotta let me live with you, sis,” Leia replied, as she stood, tipping one foot to pivot an ankle toward the floor, then the other. “I can’t take their shit anymore.”
Laura peered out into the hallway. Nobody was around, that was good. “Get in here,” she urged. “I always have time for my sister. Some things will never change. That’s one of them.”
Leia entered and the portal closed. Laura punched up some hot chocolate, and the two of them sat down at the table. The social monitor began to brighten, and Laura quickly turned it off. “So what’s the trouble?”
“Well, it’s simple. I just don’t want to be a scientist,” replied Leia, as she dropped her beret on the table.
“So? You can be an engineer, right?”
Leia rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Hell no,” she responded, “I want to be a singer.”
Laura looked incredulous. “A performer? We don’t have any of those...”
“That’s it, exactly! We don’t even have to be that good! We got no competition...”
“We got no? What’s this I hear from my own sister? What kinds of kids are you running with?”
Leia laughed. “Hey Laura, you chose a career as a scientist. Why don’t people understand, not everybody wants to be a scientist or an engineer!? I wanna do something different...”
Laura could easily see where the conflict was coming from, now. An attitude like this was simply unacceptable in their society. She spent the next half-hour trying to explain to Leia how things worked. If you wanted to do something different, that was okay. Lots of people did. “But you still need a way to contribute,” Laura added. “You’ll need an education, even to be a technician. Then you can do what you want, on the side.”
“Um hum,” Leia answered, “and what if I want to be a mother, and have children, and be a singer on the side?”
“Leia! You’re fourteen!”
Leia got up and walked over to the synthesizer for a refill. Laura gasped. That was not the walk of a conservative fourteen-year-old. It was in fact, provocative. And as she turned to walk back to the table, Laura noticed something else. “Where did you get those bazoos, Sissy?”
Leia grinned, looked down and stirred her hot chocolate. “Just lucky, I guess. They came with the body.”
Laura looked at the table for a moment. She drank the last of her hot chocolate, and then did her level best to set her sister straight. Finishing up, she added, “You will go home, you will apologize to our parents, and you will enroll in the civil maintenance program. If you complete University in good standing, I will do whatever I can to help you reach your personal goals, no matter how silly I think they may be. But you have to do this. For me!”
Leia looked hard at her older sister. She sure had become an adult. Damn. “Tell you what,” she said, “I’ll go with the program, for now. As long as you’ll promise to come and hear us perform. We’re practicing at the high school auditorium Wednesdays and Fridays, after four. I want you to hear my friend Olav play, too.”
“Deal,” said Laura. “Now scoot on home, and stay out of trouble. My hands are full right now. Like, you wouldn’t believe.”
*****************
II
To Make a Case for a Planet
When Laura arrived at her lab about an hour later, she found three people waiting for her. Two of them were her colleagues. Ezra and Shara were both fellow Planetary Scientists, but she didn’t know the third person. “This is Michael,” said Ezra. “Michael is a historian.” The statement stopped Laura in her tracks.
“A historian? Full-time?”
Michael laughed. He answered, “Of course not. The ‘powers that be’ won’t allow me to do just what I want. I’m a computer engineer, specializing in virtual reality.”
Laura had looked him over from head to toe without even realizing it. Michael was strangely…attractive.
“For instruction? The virtual reality, I mean...”
“Well, no,” Michael admitted. “But in this case, it might be used for that. Take over, Ez.”
“Actually, Michael is a lot more than a historian. As you know, when planetary systems went down, there wasn’t much time for anyone to do more than work toward survival. But our founders were scientists, too. So while the window of opportunity was open, they did collect and freeze DNA from a wide variety of plants and animals, although the specimens were expired. They also archived tons of biological materials and data that had been collected previously. Michael is in charge of that entire archive. But that’s not why he’s here. He’s here because humans are imperfect.”
“So, he’s perfect?”
The three of them laughed together. “No comment,” said Ezra, who had noticed Laura looking Michael over. “But people make decisions based on what they feel, not just what they know. That’s the imperfection; attention to emotions as opposed to rational thought. Michael has access to thousands of archived videos of life on Earth before the Delta, and to all of the data we still have on air, and water, and life in general, as it once was – outside.”
Laura looked puzzled. “And that’s useful, because?”
“Virtual reality!” exclaimed Ezra. “Michael got the idea from old television programs of a show called Star Trek. They had something they called a “holodeck” on their starship, where they could recreate cities, or countryside, or anything. The objects, even the people, were computer-generated. And they were solid objects!”
Laura looked at Michael. “You can do that?”
“No, no,” he replied, “That was science fiction. I don’t know of any way to reproduce solid objects. But the objects will look solid, the surroundings, quite real. With the right props and equipment, we can create a very realistic scene that will be an accurate representation of a place in the countryside before the Delta, complete with wildlife, and water, and scents. So that people can see what it is, exactly, you’re trying to recover for them.”
“But we don’t have that kind of time,” Laura objected. “Something like that could take – years!
We have only two months, and I’m already too busy...”
“Laura,” Ezra interrupted, “Michael has already been working on this. For years.”
“Really? Where?”
“In my lab,” Michael replied. “I’d like you to come and see it.”
“That’s not the only reason we’re here,” added Shara. “Of course, we weren’t included in the assembly at Council yesterday, but we heard that we need to pull everyone together, and choose you for our leader.” Shara smiled coyly. “You’re the obvious choice, you know. You are the academic head of the effort.”
“I have a better idea.” Laura looked straight at Michael. “You are a tall man, an attractive man, and you have a baritone voice. People will listen to you. You all are right, people are flawed and emotional. You could be our presenter, our voice, and I will stand by to answer questions.”
“I couldn’t,” Michael objected. “I don’t know the first thing about...”
“Let’s have the meeting,” said Ezra, “and hash this out. I tend to agree with Laura. A strong presence with a strong voice might be a tremendous advantage. As long as she’s there to respond to questions, it may work out. Laura, I know you’re busy. Let Shara and I pull it together.” Michael just stood there looking concerned, unsure what to think. The archaic term, “railroaded” came to mind.
“You know,” Laura observed, “If we come out on top in this thing, this competition for Council support, it will be because of all of you, not me. Left alone to accomplish it, I would certainly fail.”
“That’s why they call it a group effort,” replied Ezra. “We’d be nowhere at all without you. We’ll get back to you this evening.”
Michael said, “I’m very pleased to have met you, Laura! My lab and the virtual display are at Twelve Fifth Street, Dome Thirty-two. Suite seven. Please come by.”
“I will!”
The three walked away as Laura waved, uncertainly.
“Get a grip!” she thought to herself. “Think positively!” Then, “Get to work!”
It was her personal trilogy of self-motivating commands. She mentally repeated it often, and she listened, too. It wouldn’t be an effective trick for everyone. It seemed to be working for Laura.
********************
III
Springtime for Leia
Over the next two months, Laura carried out a carefully-planned series of tasks. The effort, in her view, was to prepare an effective, winning presentation while impacting her ongoing research only minimally. The single interruption to all of that came from her sister Leia, whose practice performance she had promised to attend. On a Wednesday afternoon, Laura excused herself and headed for the high school in Dome Twenty-two.
Personal transportation between domes was accomplished via subterranean pneumatic tubes. It was an arrangement that worked. The advantage, as seen by their designers, was that in the event of a
catastrophic breach to the outside atmosphere, it would be possible to quickly and automatically seal off the tubes, isolating the breach. It hadn’t ever happened, but the systems that isolated each dome from the rest were tested regularly. If larger prefabbed or manufactured objects had to be brought in, they were containerized and moved through a series of airlocks by way of the outdoors.
To travel via the tubes, all one needed to do was to recline. Laura did so, lying flat on her back with her head forward. A clear screen closed and sealed the cylindricaly-shaped car. The portal to the transport tube closed immediately after. Then, pressurized air worked against a vacuum to speed the capsule to its programmed destination. At one time, the same system had been used at banks and hospitals to transport money or samples between points. The system had evolved, considerably.
As Laura sped toward her family’s residence dome, she wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have used the same block of time to visit Michael’s virtual reality display. Michael had been working closely with Laura in an effort to develop the understanding necessary to make the presentation, so she’d seen him daily. She realized she should have already been to see the display, but after a while, he had simply stopped asking. Laura would see it at the presentation. For now, at least, Leia’s needs took priority.
When Laura entered the high school auditorium, a practice session was already in progress.
Laura stopped just inside the rear door of the auditorium and stared. She had heard musical recordings before, and she rather liked the classical music. But she’d never even imagined anything like this!
Laura felt more than a little out of place, and considered sitting in the rear. But no, Leia was her sister. She deserved better than that, and besides, Laura couldn’t afford to waste the trip. Leia needed to know she’d come. She moved forward to a point about three rows from the front, which seemed to beabout her favorite position.
Leia never missed a beat when she saw Laura coming down the aisle. Stepping, gesturing and gyrating, she held a microphone and was singing her heart out:
...Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a...
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good!
Of course, of all of the music Laura had never heard, the Janis Joplin classic may have been the least likely she would ever have selected. There was no way for her to know that the teens on the stage were performing an excellent rendition of it.
Leia bounced down from the stage to talk to Laura when the piece was finished. “Whadda you think, Sis?”
Laura didn’t know quite what to say. But, it came out anyway...”Is it necessary to shout, and scream? This is your singing??”
Leia wasn’t hurt at all. Instead, she laughed, a seemingly overconfident laugh for a fourteen-year-old. “Okay, she said, “I understand.” Turning to the stage, she called out, “Olav, could we do
“Lovin’ You”?
Olav smiled, put down a guitar, and walked over to his keyboard. Leia stepped back up onto the stage, tipped a glass of water for a moment, and Olav began to play. The others in the group didn’t touch their instruments, but it was plain to see they were anticipating. Laura sat back. This was her little sister. It should be over soon.
Olav had constructed the musical synthesizer himself, and he played it to perfection. The intro was both beautiful and error-free. And then, Leia began.
Lovin’ you, is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful
Makin’ love with you is all I wanna do
Lovin’ you is more than just a dream come true
And everything that I do is out of lovin’ you...
At first, Laura was simply stunned. Leia had an amazingly beautiful voice, clear and sweet. But then, Leia hit a high note that was part of the song, with perfect vibrato at the end, and it quickly brought her big sister to tears. Leia had just sung the first verse of Minnie Ripperton’s classic to perfection. As she continued and completed the piece, Laura couldn’t even see her sister clearly on the stage, through her tears. She hit that high note again, and Laura couldn’t believe her ears. Never mind that she seemed to be singing directly to young Olav. Never mind that the lyrics seemed completely inappropriate, coming from a fourteen-year-old. It was far beyond anything Laura had expected to hear.
Leia finished the piece and then came back down to talk to her sister. She found Laura still tearful. “I’m sorry,” Laura apologized, “I had no idea. No idea at all. That was...unbelievable.”
Leia became serious, and her smile vanished. “Then you do see, Sis? Not everyone even should be a scientist or an engineer. You’re on the Governing Council. Talk to people.”
Laura hugged her sister and left. Little did she suspect, this would not be the most emotional she would become during the next few weeks.
As she returned to Dome Thirty-six, the words Leia had sung echoed in Laura’s head. “Stay with me while we grow old, and we will live each day in springtime...” -As if any of them had ever even experienced a springtime. It made Laura’s job, and their presentation, seem ever so much more important. Springtime for Leia. It had to be made real.
IV
The Coldest of Hearts
The two months had slipped quickly by. Laura’s efforts had been far from unassisted. She had led a dedicated group of twelve and a group of assistants in pulling together mountains of data, creating graphics and charts with overlays, and putting together a massive proposal. Laura’s research group had been much closer to being ready for this than she had believed. This would be the culmination of years of highly concentrated research carried out by her team, addressing recovery and remediation of planetary damage. If properly presented, it should easily succeed in winning the support of the Governing Council. Then, perhaps Leia would have her springtime.
As the group prepared to enter the transport tubes en route to the capitol dome, Laura stared through the clear walls at the dark-outlined, shadowless and lifeless landscape beyond. Nothing they could ever do could make it worse out there. Hopefully, the appearance of it wouldn’t bolster the arguments of their opponents.
The development of the domes had been progressive, with Domes One and Two dedicated now entirely to manufacturing. Dome Three was the capitol dome, although it also held the University, and many more labs than assembly rooms. All of the rest of the domes were combined residence and laboratory facilities, with the exception of Dome Twenty-four, which had already been dedicated entirely to the space program. It had built and launched scientific satellites of current design, with cloud-penetrating capability. Laura’s group had used the satellite data extensively in their own research.
Soon the group arrived outside the structure that housed the Governing Council chambers.
About three hundred people were gathered there, mostly young people, chanting and waving banners in support of the space program. Obviously, its leaders would continue their aggressive approach.
Humanity had changed in some ways, however. Being the only living things on the planet had drawn them together in unexpected ways. Once there had been life everywhere, in the forms of plants, animals, even insects. Now, it was humanity alone. So before any group set about any serious task, whether within the protection of the domes or not, they formed a circle and each placed a hand in the center as a sign of oneness and solidarity. It was referred-to as “forming a star”. Members of Laura’s group of twelve were all there, and they formed the star. Then the four presenters, Laura, Michael, Ezra and Shara did it again, themselves. When Ezra and Shara broke away, Laura realized that Michael had held on for just a moment longer.
Inside, the former moderator, Dr. Elwood James, opened with the initial presentation. “The last shall be first,” he quipped, to the laughter of the others. The rest of the Council was in audience.
Dr. James and company made a convincing case. They provided a review of the extensive infrastructure already in place - atmosphere production and filtration, systems to synthesize foods that met all human nutritional requirements, energy sources, education and advancement for all. “With no livable space outside of our domed city, I guess it would be hard to claim Utopia,” he observed, “but we do have everything we need here. From a few dozen scientists, we now number over eight hundred thousand individuals, and we are growing. The goal of securing our civilization against almost any eventuality would not require as much of our resources as a move into outer space.”
Dr. James capped the presentation with his own version of a realistic future for human civilization. “At this stage of our technological advancement, we have too many unsolved problems to begin construction of a craft capable of supporting human life in outer space, over long journeys. We would need reliable propulsion systems, a means of carrying enough fuel, and to solve the on-board gravitation problem. We would need life support systems that are condensed in size and yet, effective. But when our numbers have increased, likely over the next two decades, when we have more of our planet’s resources under our control, perhaps then we can begin a series of exploratory missions into space.” Then he presented hard numbers to illustrate. During the likely period of time it would take to construct a ship, a diversion of resources to that effort would create a “bubble” of human civilians that would be inadequately housed.
It seemed almost an afterthought when he added, “We can work toward recovery of some of Earth’s life-supporting systems then, as well, if that effort appears to be practical.”
The sole presenter for the space program advocacy was Dr. Moore. His four associates stood aside and allowed him to handle it. Michael grinned as they filed onto the stage, all wearing the now-familiar silver-gray jumpsuits with starship logo. Two of the men in particular really didn’t have the figure for a close-fitting jumpsuit, and they looked somewhat comical as a group, standing to the side with arms folded, as if attempting to convey a military-like solidarity.
Admittedly, Dr. Moore’s preparation had been thorough and their graphics were impressive. A list of hundreds of fellow engineers and scientists who supported the effort had been printed and was distributed as a handout. Someone among them had prepared an impressive 3D rendering of a sleek spacecraft, completed and in various stages of construction, in high-earth orbit. “We are much closer to implementation of a sturdy drive system and reliable life support than Dr. James has suggested,” he asserted. His group proposed making the space elevator system a reality in order to speed construction, and they believed that most of the materials needed were to be found in the centuries-old commercial stocks of metals, in the old cities. “Just to determine if we are correct will require the support of the council,” he added. Then, “But just think about it. There may very well be entire civilizations of beings living in space already. The Delta was the kind of catastrophe that should bring that sort of adjustment about. We are poised to take the step. As long as we have to remain within confined spaces, we might as well be traveling toward a new planet while we’re doing it. A new world, where we can again step outdoors and breathe the air!”
However the numbers they presented didn’t quite add up. To transport the number of persons they proposed with likely inadequate space, the ship would need to be at least a thousand meters long. The ship they proposed to construct was less than half that length, still a behemoth of a project.
Then, as expected, Dr. Moore attempted to place the stability of Earth in question. In that effort he appeared to succeed. “We don’t know that a single earthquake won’t come along and wipe out the entirety of humanity,” he pointed out. “Human civilization is concentrated in just a single area. That’s just a bad idea.” Laura noticed Dr. James nodding his agreement.
Laura realized that the attraction of the space proposals was in large part due to the limitations of living entirely within a domed city. Humans had always craved adventure and had always sought to explore the unknown. Setting out on such a mission had a singular appeal that, at this point in time, could not be matched by any excursion about the planet.
Dr. Moore made his closing remarks after just one hour, but he and his group received more than just polite applause.
The assemblage broke for lunch. Laura decided to remain with the materials her group had brought, wary of possible sabotage by proponents of the space program. As Michael prepared to leave the room, she said, “When you come back, you’ve gotta knock ‘em dead.”
Michael smiled. It was another archaic expression, but he understood its meaning.
When Council reconvened, Michael was ready. Laura had been concerned about the lack of rehearsals, but their presenter seemed confident, which she found reassuring.
As it happened, she had selected the best and most talented public speaker in Heliopolis.
Michael stood and approached the podium, but then stood beside it, smiling.
“We want to thank you all for the preceding, eye-opening presentations. My name is Michael. I am, by profession, a mere computer engineer. But my passion, I admit, is history. Before Delta, humanity on Earth had a wondrous history, and the devastation of the Delta didn’t stop it. Nearly so,” he intoned, “But thanks to science, and scientists with a vision for the future, humanity has endured.”
He paused and looked directly at Laura.
“The question before this astute Council is not whether to abandon a vision for the future, but to decide what path will assure it. We believe and can show that we have already discovered that path.
Today we will open our presentation with heretofore unpublished discoveries. We do hope you will appreciate them, as we do.”
Laura beamed her approval. She turned on the projector, and images from space appeared on the screen.
“As you can see, the space program’s efforts have yielded fantastic images of our planet, as well as hundreds of terabytes of useful data. Here you see enhanced images of the ocean floor along a segment of the Pacific Rim. This location is in fact the origin of the Delta.” The frame changed.
“Delta did not emanate from a single event. In this location, just inside the rim, there arose a range of mountains, likely millennia ago. The crustal upheaval had little effect for a long period of time. However the concentration of bromide salts in the rock of most of this crustal upheaval was unusually, extremely high. Any marine chemist will tell you that cold ocean water will dissolve almost nothing out of that rock. However...the conditions created when superheated steam from ocean brine is driven through that rock, is something entirely different...”
“This overlay clearly shows deposits of magma below the surface, on both sides of the range.
When the Delta began, it was because of vent tubes that allowed a large volume of water to be supplied directly and continuously to the magma.” Laura changed the frame again.
“This frame shows the locations of the vent tubes. Had the superheated steam that resulted come back out the way it went in, there never would have been a “Delta” at all. This frame shows the patterns of bromides radiating away from the underwater mountain range, affected by the underwater currents. It strongly indicates there are pockets, “bubbles” in the rock that no doubt also were formed by the magma. These pockets are full of cracks through which pressurized, superheated steam can escape. And it escaped directly through the bromide deposits, at high velocity.”
Laura turned off the projector andbrought the lights back up.
“For a century before the Delta occurred, humanity used the toxicity of bromide compounds to cleanse water of bacteria and to control insect populations. With the onset of the Delta, oceanic plankton was particularly affected by that toxicity, and that loss alone would have been catastrophic to the biological chain. But as we know, it didn’t stop there.”
Michael began to go through a series of placards on a display stand. “The Delta took place in three stages. In very short form and without getting redirected by the complex chemistry involved, the pockets of magma formed on both sides and beneath the bromide-encrusted mountain range, beneath the ocean. Massive quantities of hydrogen bromide were evolved and released, both into solution and into the atmosphere. Of course just about every other compound or acid involving bromine was also formed, each to some degree of detriment to the biosphere...but hydrogen bromide was primary.”
“It was known that continental shelf formations of gas hydrates, primarily methane ice, were in existence all over the world. They were also within or beneath permafrost, in broad areas of the planet.
When dissolved hydrogen bromide reached the gas hydrates, there was so much of it that a small percentage of it did react with the hydrated methane, forming bromomethane gas. This was the onset of stage two. At this point there wasn’t nearly enough of it to directly kill life on land, although the plankton was already doomed. But there was approximately twelve times the amount needed to completely destroy the protective ozone layer around our planet.”
His tone changing with the seriousness of the events he was recounting, Michael’s expression hardened. “The complete loss of the ozone set off stage three. The ultraviolet radiation that would ordinarily have been stopped by it, then made it all the way to the surface, and began to heat the oceans like they’ve never been at any point in recorded history. That and exposure to higher levels of light immediately started the rampant production of bromomethane. The planet was being fumigated. The methane ice is largely gone, but the process continues.”
Michael placed the placards aside and the lights went back down, and the projector screen brightened again. “Dr. Wray and her associates have just published the complete chemical workup of the progress of the Delta, derived in part from historical data, in part from the information gathered much more recently, from space, and from current experimental data and soil core samples. All of the unusual processes have been reproduced in the laboratory, they were also modeled by computer, and we are sure you will agree, our conclusions are undeniably correct. Onscreen you can see the simplified chemical formulas involved. The simplification was to make the data fit the screen.” Michael paused.
“This is a bit less than half of our presentation, because we want to go over a proposal for recovery of the planet. But at this time there may be questions that we’ve generated. Dr. Wray and her associates stand ready.”
Both Dr. James and Dr. Moore immediately stood up. Observing rank, Michael accepted Dr. James’ question first. Dr. James queried, “The Delta is ongoing? It’s not over?”
Michael didn’t need Laura for that one. “Unfortunately, no, it’s not. It is a continuing process.”
Dr. James sat down. Maybe it was indeed time to find another planet. Dr. Moore then said, “Methyl bromide, bromomethane, is colorless. How is it we have brown skies? Can you answer that one?”
Laura stood, clasping her hands together in front of herself. “The cloud cover does include some free bromine, which of course is reddish brown. But the bulk of the brown coloration is due to oxides of nitrogen. That’s what else has happened to our atmosphere. It’s being “cooked” out of existence. It was our first tip that the process was ongoing, because oxides of nitrogen are short-lived. It’s a process that must be stopped, or Earth will indeed be both dead and unrecoverable.”
There were no more questions, and the presentation went forward. Michael, Laura, Ezra and.Shara all presented portions of an immense remediation program. But this portion of the program was opened again by Michael, who had been charged with presenting a means of stopping the Delta process, first. “We have identified, again using the satellite resource, thirty-seven partially-submerged
drilling platforms, which were still in use for the recovery of crude petroleum before the Delta,” he explained. “We calculate that six of them will need to be made operational and moved into position for drilling. The objective will be to redirect the magma flows at six key points, away from the undersea range of mountains that have created this mess.”
“Secondly,” he continued, “we want to straighten up the chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans, simultaneously. That will be far more difficult. But doing just one and not the other will not enable us to fully halt the process of fumigants being produced, in less than another century. By then it would be too late for what’s left of our atmosphere.”
“That of course leaves the soil, and there at last we have some good news. It will not need much cleaning. As long as Dr. Wray’s process to separate and remove bromine from the atmosphere is carried out within specific areas for collection of the precipitate, the soil elsewhere should be capable of growing plants within a decade.”
Dr. James spoke up, and asked, “Excuse me, how long until the atmosphere might support those plants?”
“Unknown, and impossible to project,” he replied. “Everything would depend on how long it takes us to get it stopped. “
Taking Dr. James’ cue, Dr. Moore interjected, “What are the guarantees the Delta process can even be affected, let along stopped?”
Michael smiled, a broad, confident smile. “As you know, sir, there are no guarantees of much of anything. The same question might apply to the likelihood of finding a habitable planet in deep space. But we are one-hundred percent confident that we can get the process stopped. In fact,” he added, “the space program will become even more indispensable as remediation progresses. Because ideally, we’d like to remove the bromide-bearing rock, over time, and launch that into deep space. Imagine the scope and importance of such a project!”
As Ezra and Shara excitedly took their turns speaking, murmurs of hopeful amazement began to fill the Council chambers. The remaining time was down to just fifteen minutes when Michael re-took the podium, and asked for quiet.
“Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues, we have one more part of our presentation to offer, and we scarcely have time. When any of us look at the conditions of our planet through the walls of the domes, we see devastation, lifeless landscapes. We would like everyone to see and feel what Earth was really like, before the tragedy of the Delta, to illustrate what we will be striving to recover.
We have prepared a virtual reality display that is precise in its features in every way, right down to the breeze and the scents in the air. We’d like you to enter the display in groups of two, because it is fairly small. We have set up our exhibit in an adjacent room.” Pointing, he added, “If you would, please form a double line to enter through the doors at the right front corner of this room. When you’ve been in the display for four minutes, you will be asked to allow the next pair to take your place.”
Dr. Moore stood up and objected. “That will take you past your allotted time! Thirty people, that’s an hour!”
Dr. James stood, and asserted, “Their main presentation took just an hour and forty-five minutes. I declare their presentation over, and the display optional. But I’d recommend that anyone interested in making an informed decision should take their turn. We won’t be voting today anyway.”
Of course, that meant nobody should leave. As people began to enter the adjacent room, Laura was thoughtful, hopeful their presentation had been enough. It had gone well, thanks to Michael.
But then the first two people exited the display, a man and a woman. The man’s face was stern and unsmiling. The woman was weeping, covering her eyes as if trying to hide it. She was doing a very bad job of it. Laura hurried over to Michael’s side.
“Michael!” Laura urged, “Tell me what’s in that display! I was expecting to see happy people...”
Michael smiled down at Laura, comfortingly. “Have no fear, “Underdog” is here.” He laughed. “I asked you to come and see it. Now you’ll just have to wonder.”
Laura had no idea what that meant. Probably some more of that weird historical stuff he was always watching. Michael constantly had multiple items checked out of his own archive, for viewing.
Dr. James entered the display as half of the third pair. He was in there a bit longer than four minutes. When he came out, he walked straight to Laura and Michael. “Michael,” he queried, is that scene in fact, accurate? Was it really like that? Do you really think it could be, ever again?”
Michael looked seriously at Dr. James, and replied, “It’s Dr. Wray you want to address, but having worked with her the past two months, I can safely answer “Absolutely” to all three of those questions.”
Laura quickly added, “There’s really no way to predict how long it might take, sir...it took ten years for the Delta to destroy the biosphere, it surely won’t be recovered anywhere nearly that quickly.”
“Is there any way to expedite the process, if the Council approves this effort?”
“The next construction will be Dome forty-three,” Laura replied. “Do for us what has been done for the space program, and dedicate it entirely to Delta cessation and planetary damage remediation. It can be two-thirds manufacturing for needed equipment, the other third, administration and tracking of progress of our projects. You do know, by the way,” she added, “Earth’s biosphere was supported by processes that have been broken. Fire and ice, wind and water, uptake of nutrients from the planet and feeding of the atmosphere by extensive rain forests...everything worked together. Even the polar ice caps were involved, and they are presently completely gone. We can’t possibly predict what processes will re-start by themselves, and what we’ll have to try to restore.”
“Dome forty-three.” Dr. James smiled slowly. “I like it. I really do. And I like you two...Michael, you should be on the Council. And Dr. Wray.” Dr. James wore an expression of deep respect.
“I was right, earlier, but didn’t know it. The last did indeed turn out to be first.”
Dr. James began to walk away, but then he stopped, and turned. “I’ll announce an emergency session for the day after tomorrow. We need to get this going. Of course we’ll have to conduct a vote.”
Then he proceeded on, and out of the chambers.
Just at that moment, Shara and Ezra came walking over. They had just exited the display, but they had also seen the project while it was in progress, so they hadn’t really reacted. Shara laid a hand on Laura’s arm, and exclaimed, “Laura! You’re gonna love it! Michael made a bunny!” Laura had no idea what that was. But nearly everyone else had been through, and it was finally her turn. Who should be left to enter with her, but Dr. Moore. Haughty as ever, he nevertheless joined her to enter the display. The display attendant, brought in to instruct the entering viewers, happened to be young Olav - Olav, destroyer of aircraft, musician extraordinaire, significant-other to Laura’s little sister. He smiled at Laura and said, “If you sit on the log, the view will be best. Four minutes, please. Exit at the chime.”
They stepped inside. The whole display measured just seven meters square, but it appeared to go on forever. It looked as if one could walk into the distance in any direction. The doorway had disappeared upon closing. The air was sweet with the scents of wildflowers, and a gentle breeze wafted over them from the south. The sun was setting in the west, over the familiar set of mountains that formed the real backdrop beyond the domed civilization. But there were no domes here. There was a forest to be seen to the west, between the viewers and the mountains. The sun would be setting throughntall trees, the branches of which were gently disturbed by the breeze. Three meters away, a clear, sunlit stream splashed over brown and gray rocks. They were standing in a meadow of tousled green grass, and the wildflowers appeared in random scatterings of yellow and purple. To the east, the meadow blended into a plain. There, white-tailed deer stood, some apparently watching the viewers while others browsed on low shrubs.
Laura gasped. It looked so...real! She sat down on the log quickly, and knew that tears were coming. There was no way to stop them. It had been like this?? It didn’t seem possible…
Dr. Moore turned to storm back out. He was angrier than ever. “This is nothing but a dirty trick!” he exclaimed. “It’s an appeal to emotions, and nothing more! And it’s grossly overstated! It never could have looked like that!” He exited.
Now, in the comparative silence and the full light from a crystal-blue sky, Laura could hear the chirping of birds. A goldfinch flitted by, then circled back and perched on one of the bullrushes thrusting from the bank of the little stream. It flitted and moved and “chipped” at Laura. Then, a small juvenile rabbit appeared, hopping out of the grass and stopping just about a meter away. Laura shook her head. “Oh, noo!!” Its nose wriggled and its ears moved, one at a time, as it plucked a blade of grass and ate it.
At long last seeing just a bit of what had been lost, the entire, crushing weight of realization dropped on poor Laura. And she couldn’t handle it; not nearly as well as had anyone before her. She covered her face and sobbed uncontrollably. Only the coldest of hearts could have reacted as had Dr. Moore.
The chime sounded. Minutes more passed.
Michael walked over and asked Olav, “How long has Dr. Wray been in there?”
“Seven minutes,” Olav replied. “Shall I go in and get her? “No,” said Michael, “I’ll go in.”
The display was set to run for twelve full minutes. It would only restart when someone new entered. The four-minute limit had been selected to move people through it. Michael stepped inside, and the display reset. Laura never noticed, as her face was buried in her hands.
Michael asked, “Are you alright?”
“No.”
“Too much?”
“Yes.”
“It’s precisely accurate, you know.”
“I know.”
“Laura, let’s go. Let’s get started on making it real.”
Laura looked up, her face streaming with tears. “But it was real. All of it. And much more...and it’s gone... all gone.”
Michael needed to get her back to their world, needed to help her recover her grip. He sat down beside her and placed an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, Laura. Let’s go.”
“Alright,” Laura sobbed, “But answer one question.”
“Shoot,” said Michael.
“In your DNA specimen archives...do we have bunnies?”
Michael hadn’t expected to be moved by a question, but he was. He hadn’t expected to love this woman, either. He smiled slightly. “Yes,” he replied. “We have nearly everything.”
**********************
V
Epilogue: A Season of Change
Laura gazed into her sister’s eyes, and wondered. Leia’s question was as old as the existence of humanity. Laura’s simple answer would have been “Of course,” but, it wasn’t that simple. How exactly should she respond?
Two years had passed. Leia was about to enter University, and Laura had expected that she’d come to argue about her future. Laura wasn’t in the mood. There was so much to do, today and every day. Very much had happened over the past two years. Laura was now thirty-four. She had always been dedicated to her work, and to science. Michael’s advances had begun to soften her defenses, but they were still in place. “I’ll think about it,” was all she’d given him. But, it was time.
Out on the ocean, Dr. Moore was at last in his element. He’d been demoted within the space program, the silver-gray jumpsuits discarded. But now, working for Laura, he was a hero. His design skills and his quest for glory had saved the day during restoration of centuries-old drilling platforms. Most had been junk, but as a dedicated engineer, he’d known what to look for. Despite frustrating delays, the crews that were assigned to him got the job done. The source of the Delta was at last in complete remission, and he’d gotten a lot of credit for his part in it. Now he was contentedly captaininga small ship, supplying the beginnings of a robotic undersea mining operation, initiated to remove the offending rock. Sailing the great Pacific Ocean, the greenish-brown waves were crashing all about.
To stand outside on the bow as he was doing at that moment, a wetsuit and breathing apparatus were still required. But a helmeted pressure suit was no longer necessary. The air had begun to clear immediately.
The initial manufacturing in Dome Forty-Three was of Laura’s atmospheric bromine-precipitating device. Four scaled-up units had been built, and were strategically-placed to take advantage of new planetary wind patterns that had appeared. Secondary to manufacturing but likely even more important, was housing for the oceanography department. They were already advocating for their own dome, a request that Laura fully supported. They were building and placing huge “getters” at strategic points in the oceans in an effort to remove bromine compounds there. Water chemistry was now being monitored continuously, planet-wide. Obviously, recovery of the oceans was basic to everything else.
The construction of residence domes had scarcely been interrupted, with Dome Forty-four now underway. Forty-three was an unusually large dome, and had been rapidly constructed. Some of the fabricated facilities from the space program’s dome had been moved there. The space program’s administrators were fine with that, since they had been charged with construction of many hundreds of missiles, and they had been provided with new equipment to facilitate that effort. The first round of missiles had seeded the stratosphere with chemicals to mitigate methylene bromide. The second round deposited thousands of tons of compressed, manufactured ozone, a long-term, ongoing project. Temperatures had immediately begun to moderate, and the cloud cover finally had broken. The much-lightened sky had turned to pink and green, occasionally streaked with blue. No one had known if polar ice caps would re-form on their own, at all. But satellite data confirmed sharp temperature drops at the poles, and small areas had begun to ice-over.
Everyone knew that a biosphere could not be restored with chemicals. It would require living, breathing plants and animals. It would be safe to say that the entirety of Heliopolis was now involved in some way or other in the remediation effort, and the popular concern right now was, what are we going to do about restoration of life?
“This is all your fault, you know,” insisted Leia, a make-believe frown on her face. “I thought I was gonna be a singer. Now, because of you, it would be extremely un-cool to be an entertainer, when so many important things are going on. And you, sister, made it happen!”
Defensive, Laura prepared to retort. Obviously spoiled little Leia needed an attitude adjustment.
“Hold on, hold on,” Leia laughed. “I was kidding. I understand, finally, what life in Heliopolis is all about. That’s really what you made happen! After you told me what a springtime would be like, and I visited the VR display in the square, everything started to look different to me. I learned that bromine compounds can even adversely affect DNA. It probably affected the specimens that are archived. Things are going to have to be sorted out, and I want to help! The planetary biosphere was so complex...it’s completely amazing!”
“You want to be a geneticist?” Laura was taken aback.
“Ayup. I may have talent, but I’m pretty sharp, too,” she answered. “I want to use you as a reference to get into the curriculum. At least, I think that’s what I want.”
Laura smiled and pushed her chair back. “Wait right here. I’ve something to show you.”
Laura rose and entered the lab next door. When she returned, she placed a brown, six-week-old juvenile rabbit into Leia’s cupped hands. “First litter,” she said.
Now it was Leia’s turn to be tearful. She held the little creature close, fondling its ears with one hand.
“Laura?”
“What?”
“Do you think there’s a God?”
*****************