Launch: Chapter 2

  One of the most important developments of the last two centuries’ biotechnology revolution was the ability to engineer custom microbes capable of replicating just about any process which occurred naturally.  These technologies allowed among other things, the creation of algae which consumed carbon dioxide at much higher rates than plants alone naturally would, as well as the removal of other greenhouse gasses and pollutants from the atmosphere.  Individual plastic bags ten meter squared and filled with these microbes, made up vast multi kilometer fields which floated atop the open ocean.

  The bags were constructed of a material durable enough to survive the worst recorded hurricanes, but also microscopically porous enough that water and gasses could slowly pass through the material while microbes on either side could not.  Inside the bags, great teeming masses of laboratory engineered green algae sloshed about absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and excreting oxygen in the process.  When an individual bag reached the point at which it contained far more dead algae than living, its contents were simply sterilized and then released into the water.  This way all of the dead algae simply fell to the bottom of the ocean or were eaten on their way there, once again sequestering back to the Earth all of the carbon they had consumed while they were alive.  

  Another revolutionary biotechnology solution were plastic eating bacteria which were released into the sea in order to consume all of the finely beaded plastic which had been blighting the oceans for over two centuries.  Since plastics effectively never degrade, they had instead just been breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces until tiny beads of the material had become totally omnipresent in Earth’s oceans by the twenty-first century.  Naturally concerned that plastic eating bacteria could become gravely destructive to civilization on land if they ever got out of control, they were engineered to be unable to replicate.  As a result, vast quantities were produced in massive industrial scale bio reactors, and then unceremoniously dumped into the oceans at strategic points where large scale currents would carry them all over the world.   They gorged themselves on whatever plastic they could find (except the algae bags which were specifically constructed of a material impervious to the plastic eating bacteria), until they had absorbed all the plastic they could or could no longer find any, and then died and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

  It had taken time to develop technologies such as these, and to implement them on an industrial scale.   While atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was now far less than what it was at its peak, it was still well above pre-industrial levels.  Climate changes slowly, and the planet was still in the middle of the still worsening effects of a changed climate.  Humans adapted to it as they do, and it was stoically understood that it took several hundred years for the damage to be done, and that it would likewise take at least several hundred years more to undo the damage, if it could be undone at all.   Extreme weather of all kinds were more frequent and severe than ever in recorded history.  The Earth’s biodiversity was still suffering a mass extinction and invasive species were a serious problem the world over.  Much of the Earth’s equatorial region had been devastated by drought and the ocean coastlines of the world had advanced inland, leading to a mass exodus of people living near the equator or the ocean, either north or inland respectively.

  While severe weather events could be terrible they were nevertheless occasional, unlike the one meter rise in the sea level which was a more constant and unforgiving disaster.   It was believed that the water level had finally stopped rising further, and there was optimism in the world for the first time that maybe, maybe things had finally stopped getting worse.  No one knew how long it would be before any reversals of things like the ocean level could be measured, but there was a sense of validation that efforts to date were beginning to pay dividends.  If was often lamented how bad it never would have had to have gotten, and how reversals could already be occurring, if only their grandparents and great grandparents had taken appropriate action when the problem had first been identified.

  Modern communications technologies were an equally important development in recent centuries, now allowing effortless communication between any points on the globe.  This made it ever harder to isolate oneself and avoid exposure to, and immersion in, all of humanity’s common culture.  Now more than ever, media, communication technology, and information were completely ubiquitous.  It became ever harder for parents to instill and maintain in their children any scientifically preposterous world views which had been taught to themselves as children.  Science based knowledge was ubiquitous and readily accessible to anyone at any moment, which made the maintenance of blatantly unscientific religious beliefs incredibly difficult.  This is the tension which led to the conception, construction, and launch, of the first generational starship.

  At first the smaller, less popular or less insular churches slowly faded away or simply lost their doctrinal focus, and became more focused on fostering a sense of community and togetherness.  The more emphatically dogmatic however, devolved into ever more insular and fundamentalist communities.  This trend continued until the larger original institutions were able to reconsolidate their influence in a sort of reverse reformation.

  The two richest, most organized, and most powerful religious organizations in the world were the ‘Old Christian’ Roman Catholics, and the ‘New Christian’ Mormons.  But even those mighty institutions found recruitment increasingly difficult as most jurisdictions in the world had instituted early childhood education in critical thinking and introductory science programs in elementary school.  These policies were originally conceived and instituted to elicit a generation of scientists to tackle the challenges of climate change, but the ancillary spin off effect was a tremendous infusion of scientific literacy into the public discourse.

    The Mormons were the first to go, and since he was raised Mormon it could be a touchy subject for Hugh.  His parents were onboard that first G.S.S. when it left and they were now out there somewhere distant, silently sailing through the void.  It was only a modest leap of faith for the Mormon true believers; they were after all a people who already believed that their god came from the stars, and that heaven was a planet which a starship could take them to.  A couple centuries into the space age, the Mormons and the Catholics were the only organizations on Earth with sufficient resources and motivation to pull off a generational interstellar colonization project.

  From the Mormon’s perspective they were abandoning their home in search of a new one, and in their position it no doubt seemed the only reasonable option left available to them.   It was after all a part of their culture given their historic exodus to Utah.  Once the Mormons had taken the initiative and shown that it was possible though, the Catholics soon followed suit and used their even vaster fortune to build and launch another even larger G.S.S. project.  With that, the only two major centralized religions left the Earth altogether and forever.  They gathered their remaining flock, and headed out into the stars.

  Markus was looking out the window and enjoying the view as they gained altitude, while Hugh was working on his medium scroll.  Scrolls were the standard portable computer interface and consisted of two narrow rod like cylinders which could be tucked into a pocket when not in use.  To use the scroll, one simply pulled the two rods apart and unrolled the flexible display screen.  Once unfurled to the desired size, the screen went rigid at the prompting of a small electric current flowing through it, and the user could display whatever they wished on either side of the screen’s surface.  Hugh was currently only using the side of the screen facing him, but if he chose to he could display a duplication on the reverse side, or a different display entirely.

  The device itself was only part of what made it such a wonderful companion; the other part was the Earth General Archive system which it tied into.  A descendent of early internet search engines and online encyclopaedias, the archives effectively knew everything which humanity collectively knew.  Questions from as simple as what the current time, to as difficult as how the Roman Empire fell or what was happening in the world on a specific day four hundred years ago, could all be asked of the archives with coherent answers available at a customizable level of depth and complexity.   It also allowed the browsing of a detailed map of the world with any kind of informational overly and temporal slider, which together made it easy to view changing political maps or human population distributions over time across the whole world or in narrower areas.  The archives were also the repository for all publicly available music, video games, and audio or video entertainment programming, with newer content available for purchase through the same system.

  This was all of course very useful for someone like Hugh, who was a history professor specializing in the Nuclear Tragedy of 2042, and who during the flight up was using the system as he worked on a new lesson plan for his introductory course on the event.  The Nuclear Tragedy was one of those large pivot points in history like the Great Wars of the twentieth century; an event for which those who lived through it believed everything changed as a result.   Hugh was one of many academics who researched in detail this time of great geopolitical change.

  More than a century ago, without warning and on a deceptively peaceful spring morning, Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas were completely obliterated, and disappeared from the map entirely.  In the initial aftermath it was believed that someone, or some group, had somehow smuggled a nuclear bomb into the city’s port on a ship.  This assumption had devastating repercussions in the hours that followed, and was made all the more tragic by the natural nature of the original disaster.

  It was later determined that the explosion had been caused by a meteor over thirty meters wide slamming straight down into the Earth’s surface with full force.  Studies in the aftermath revealed it to have had an explosive force in excess of ten megatons as measured in TNT equivalence.  The object had not been spotted on its approach since it came towards Earth from the direction of the sun, and insufficient resources had been dedicated to spotting these most elusive potential impactors.  The immediate mystery of the cause and source of the explosion were in part responsible for the senseless additional horrors which ensued in the following hours.

  “I’ve been researching,” Hugh suggested in getting Markus’ attention, “how people felt in that short hour between Tel Aviv and the retaliations… when nobody knew anything about what had just happened…  The social media archives reveal a lot of interesting insights.  Most of it was just people asking if anyone knew any more about it… some seemed to understand exactly what was about to happen in response though, and I was surprised at how many people made postings which were actually… well, I’d have to say rejoicing.  I mean, this was long before the first G.S.S., and there were still a lot of people in the world who thought that it was the beginning of… Armageddon,” he said shaking his head.  “They were excited that it was the end of the world… they thought it was the fiery ending which they believed was the whole point of all existence.”

  “That is… positively disturbing,” Markus answered thoughtfully.

  “Yes it is…” Hugh responded, quickly sinking back into his work again.

  While Israel was in a confused panic after the attack, one high ranking military official launched a retaliatory strike on Iran.  There was of course, no evidence of their involvement but he was unable to communicate with his government and assumed the worst.   He was among a select few military officials who had been authorized to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on their own initiative in the event of the government being destroyed or disabled, and unable to give such an order.  The suspicion that Iran was responsible was not entirely without merit given the political tensions of the day, but it was a suspicion entirely without evidence.

  When Israel launched nuclear missiles east, warning systems alerted the Islamist military dictatorship of Pakistan.  The more reasonable elements in the Pakistani government were doing all they could to keep the fundamentalist hard liners at bay after the Tel Aviv detonation, but once Israel launched, the Pakistani military deposed the civilian government and launched a full nuclear strike of their own against their enemies.  They launched missiles against Israel, but while the chaos permitted them the opportunity, they struck at India as well, their bitter old rival.  New Delhi and Mumbai were hit around the same time Iran was being hit by Israeli missiles, and India was shooting back at Pakistan.

  And somehow, for some reason… that was it.  New Delhi, Mumbai, Tehran, and essentially all of Israel and Pakistan, were completely destroyed in only a few hours.   The mature nuclear powers of the world, namely those on the United Nations Security Council, had long ago war-gamed out every possible outcome of getting involved on either side of the conflict.  Whether on principle or merely to exploit the situation, they found no way to involve themselves which could yield any positive results.  They could only make things worse by taking sides and they knew it.   Together they instead unanimously and unconditionally offered aid to survivors across the entire conflict zone, to whoever would accept the offer.  In less than three hours, two hundred and twenty three million people were dead, and another half that again over the following weeks, months, and years due to the radiation.  At first it was feared that this exchange would only entrench and enflame the old hatreds, but instead something miraculously positive came out of the Nuclear Tragedy of 2042.

  “You know it’s amazing…” Hugh reflected, remarking on his work to Markus, “how as a species… sometimes we have to go through horrible things, for good things to happen.  What funny creatures we are.”  Markus got the impression Hugh was largely just talking to himself, so he let the comment go without a response and resumed his gazing out the window.

  Peace began again as it always must, with talk.  The collective will of the survivors to forever avoid the same nightmare in the future led all parties to work together towards picking up the pieces in the region.   Opposition religions, blessedly, were not generally held responsible as it was feared they would be.  Instead, Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, and Hindus the world over came to see their absolutist dogmas and arbitrary hatreds as the true and ultimate cause of the disaster.  It was a moment which forever changed all facets of the Muslim faith.   Never again could ordinary Muslims just trying to look after their families and live their lives in peace, have any patience at all for the violent extremism which had fed the toxic political climate and led to the tragedy.   Every one of them had been a bitter witness to the only possible ultimate result of such attitudes and beliefs.   In one fateful morning, all of Southwest Asia learned the importance of a clear separation between politics and religion.  Going forward, Islam the world over came to put less and less emphasis on the literal truth of its mythology, and instead focused more generally on the messages and motifs in the Qur’an which could enrich people’s lives as it gradually let go of its more poisonous elements.  

   It was in that moment across the world, that automatic deference and respect for religions in general, suffered a fatal blow from which it never recovered.  Jerusalem was rebuilt again, but this time as an exercise in peace, in symbolic cooperation between all peoples who held the site sacred and who were formerly so bitterly divided.  The western world stopped imposing their interests on the region, finally understanding that their ‘help’ only ever made things worse.  The callous claimed, that the Western world only stopped getting involved in Southwest Asia when fusion technology began to come into its own, and oil ceased to be the primary geopolitical driving force in the world.   Whatever the reason, finally leaving the area alone was the most helpful thing the West ever did for the region.

  Hugh once suggested to Markus that it was a historical and doctrinal irony that from a certain point of view, the Armageddon prophecies of the monotheists essentially came true.   The fiery war took place… many were ‘taken to heaven,’ and afterwards it now seemed as though there would indeed be a relative peace on Earth for a thousand years.

  

   “Attention Passengers:  Separation in… 3…2…1…”  With a jolt Markus could feel the shuttle drop as the clamps from the aircraft section released the daughter craft the two were sitting in, at which point the mother craft quickly popped back up into the sky after abruptly losing most of its weight.  It then banked off to the left to avoid the bright and growing trail of burning rocket fuel.  It lit up the sky behind the shuttle and they began accelerating, with none so subtle an acceleration this time.  The gee forces increased more and more until the passengers were eventually subjected to between two and three gees for about twelve minutes.

  Most people found this to be the more distressing part of orb-ups.  Not being terribly familiar with adrenaline or the thrill of intense sensation, they found it an unsettling and uncomfortable feeling.  The fascination with especially dangerous sports had declined over the last century or so, and was now considered almost vulgar.   Those who skydived, raced high speed land vehicles, or liked to travel the open ocean in a small craft, were nearly universally considered undesirably eccentric and foolhardy.  Markus had never been such a person but he wondered if it might be in him somewhere, buried deep down inside.  He’d certainly never pursued such activities or sensations deliberately, but he was only mildly stressed by moments such as these.   Like most things in his life, he simply experienced whatever happened to come his way.  He certainly never went out of his way to seek out such extreme sensations though, not like Hugh.

  Hugh was indeed just such a thrill seeker though.  It certainly didn’t consume his life, but on vacation and in his free time he enjoyed anything which caused adrenaline to flow through his veins.  When on vacation together, Hugh was always the one pushing the safety limits of whatever activity they were engaged in.  He often made Markus worry, and would only pull back at the point he did on account of his friend’s fearful pleading.  Hugh particularly enjoyed skydiving, and the feeling of being totally at the mercy of forces on a scale far beyond himself, and which made him and his body feel totally insignificant, or so he’d tried to explain to Markus.

  Hugh grinned at the sensation of the acceleration and the thought of the monstrous forces being expressed mere meters away, while Markus was gripping his arm rests increasingly tightly.   On many occasions he had tried to explain to Markus what he enjoyed so much about extreme sensations and situations; he’d tried to explain how it somehow made him feel more alive, but in response Markus could only ever blink.