|
‘They shine in the night sky like a thousand moons.’ I thought as I looked at the moonwashed sky.
I felt proud of myself. SunDiscs were a real smart invention. Overnight, they had made me the most acclaimed scientist in the world.
My eyes settled back to the road, and I thought about my discovery.
There was only one real problem in the 23rd century:
How to feed the world’s billions.
Most of the planet was covered with cities with people crammed into every corner. All the land not yet covered with cities was under cultivation.
Despite the use of the latest genofixed plants, growth booster chemicals and modern techniques, there was not enough food for everyone. Largely tasteless, artificial food had not delivered on its promise. Wars were fought, and the political heads of the world wasted all their time negotiating over a few extra sacks of grain for their regions.
I smiled.
Every able scientific brain in the world had been busy looking for a way out, but I had discovered it first. The solution was as simple as it was unique.
I had found a way to strengthen the molecular bonds in silica to create a transparent material that could withstand thousands of tons of pressures per square cm. Then I introduced a thin coating of silver between two layers of this transparent silica, to make the world’s largest and strongest mirror. I called it the SunDisc.
When the world first learnt about my idea, funding money flowed to me like water. I assembled a team of expert space technicians, astronauts and robotics experts and bought up time on the space launch facilities of every country in the world. In just a decade I installed over 300 SunDiscs in geo-stationary orbit in space.
Each mirror reflected solar light to a food farm on earth. With a constant amount of solar light available 24 hours a day instead of the usual 12, crops ripened twice as fast. Farmers could plant as many as 12 crops in a year instead of the usual 6. In a single go I had doubled the worlds food production.
"Hah!" When people saw it, they couldn’t believe it was so easy to manage.’ I thought.
Of course, I patented the technique immediately. So now, I was also a very rich man, in addition to being very famous.
Awards had come to me in heaps after the success of the first mirror. But tonight was going to be special. I was on my way to receive a special Nobel prize…
I received the award in the UN building, in the presence of the heads of state of almost all the nations of the world. Next day my picture would be splashed on the front page of every newspaper across the globe.
Yawn…
I didn’t know being a celebrity was so exhausting. The session with all the presidents and then the media had been absolutely excruciating. I was asked ‘How I felt about the award?’ at least a thousand times by dorks with an IQ below 100, and had to deliver a polite reply, accompanied by a smile to every single one of them.
***
On the way back to my hotel room I decided if someone asks me the question again I’d punch him in the mouth.
When the hotel receptionist did just that, I had to use all my will to resist the temptation. I imagined him smiling with his front two teeth broken and it made me laugh out loud. He was still wondering when I left him in the corridor, still not having received an answer to his question!
On reaching my room I removed the shoes and hit my bed like a sack, without bothering to remove socks or necktie. I don’t know how long I slept.
I woke up dreaming of a 4-foot troll trying to strangle me while shrieking in my ear and found my necktie caught under my body, gagging me. The phone was ringing.
I removed my tie and dragged myself to the phone, whoever had dared to disturb me was in for some serious ear chewing. "What in the name of Hell do you want from me at this hour…" I started, but was interrupted by a serious male voice. "Mr Ray Sutthins, this is the office of the UN president, the president would to like to speak to you."
‘So soon! I chatted with the old duck just last night.’ I grumbled in my thoughts, then summoning my politest voice I asked the assistant to put him on.
….."Ray, there’s something wrong with the mirrors, they are not working correctly." The president didn’t waste any time.
"What! Mirrors are not working correctly? They are just supposed to reflect. What’s wrong with them?" I asked feeling very stupid and irritated.
"You better get down to North Carolina observatory quickly Ray, We’ll talk about it there." He said.
***
I was back in my car., rushing to a new destination. The exhilaration I felt in my earlier drive was missing, it had given way to an expectation of doom. There was something definitely wrong with the SunDiscs, they were still shining in the sky, but somehow they looked different, more menacing.
"Damn! Did it have to happen so soon?"
I got to the observatory and found an assistant waiting at the door to receive me. "Come in quickly Mr Sutthins, the president is waiting for you in the main hall."
We walked over to the hall from where the astronomers observed the skies. Three giant telescopes peeped through the wall at the heavens.
"Ray! You finally got here! Only you can show us a way out of this terrible situation." The president said, walking up to me.
"Really! What’s wrong?" I asked, trying to sound confident that I could indeed solve the problem.
"Something is seriously wrong with the SunDiscs."
The president paced around the room like a man about to burst. "Ray, have a look at the SunDiscs through the telescope," he said.
I grabbed a chair and peered through the giant lens.
"Notice anything unusual?" The president asked.
"Yaah! Because of the light from the SunDiscs, a large number of stars are not visible any longer."
"What else? Look more closely."
I had a good look at one, then at another and another and then at many more. "They all seem to be pointing in one direction," I finally reached a conclusion.
"Yes. And that particular direction is the North Pole. So instead of a dark and cold Winter that lasts six months, we are having bright sunlight there for the first time in the history of the Earth. According to experts watching the area, it is receiving more sunlight than the equator."
"Sunlight? Poles? What’s happening?" I asked bewildered, and then slowly it dawned on me.
All 300 mirrors were pointing at the poles, heating up the atmosphere there. All that extra heat would cause the polar ice caps to melt, and increase the level of the sea.
"Yes." The president said as if reading my thoughts. "The snow has started melting already, and the speed of meltdown is increasing rapidly. The rise in water levels is still not visible, however if nothing is done, the sea level will rise by about 10 feet in a day’s time."
"In a month, almost all of the coastal cities will be completely drowned. This of course includes the city that we are in now. At the end of the year, enough ice would have melted to submerge the entire world except high plateaus and mountainous regions. All major towns and cities would be lost, not to mention billions of lives."
The words were awful to me. I had designed the ultimate solution to mankind’s problems, and it had turned out to be the monster that would destroy civilization!
"… So I want you to find a way," the president interrupted my thoughts. "They are your creation Ray, you’ve got to find a way to stop them." There was a menacing tone to the President's voice.
Each SunDisc was operated independently by the owner country through radio controllers, so the idea that suddenly all of them had gone faulty simultaneously was ludicrous. There was no way this could happen, unless….
"Sabotage!" I cried out. "This is bloody sabotage, can’t you see, sir, someone is trying to damage my reputation."
"Damage your reputation? My left foot! This is an attempt to destroy the world Mr Sutthins. The full responsibility falls on you as the creator of these monsters, even if it is sabotage. You have exactly 6 hours before I make this news public. I can’t hide it anyway, anyone with a telescope and an ounce of brains will know the truth."
Unable to prolong this interview I decided to leave for my lab immediately. It was a 1-hour drive to the airport and from there the flight to my lab was 3 hours.
"Oh! And yes. Take my security advisor Bethwall with you. He will take care of reporting on your progress so you can concentrate on your work."
‘So, he doesn’t trust me anymore,’ I thought, and began to resent him. But could I really blame him??
"Let’s lot not waste any more time Mr Bethwall," I said aloud.
We stayed silent during the drive and the flight. I was lost in my own thoughts, working on my laptop, and Bethwall didn’t dare bother me.
***
The night was breaking into Dawn when I reached the Lab. After the launches, my work here was finished and there were no more assistants working with me. The only person in the lab was an old janitor.
I got right down to business.
Each SunDisc had a pair of gears that controlled where it pointed. The gears were controlled by a signalling device on Earth. Owner of each disc could in practice actually decide where he wanted the disc to throw the sunlight. This gave them the capability to point the disc exactly to the area which needed sunlight.
It was hard to believe that all of them had developed homicidal tendencies at the same time or that someone had managed to get hold of all the 300 discs. I decided to start by contacting the owners myself. The first on the list was a farm owner in Australia called Jones. A corporate farmer, who controlled several thousand acres. I called him.
"Hello. Is that Mr Jones? This is Ray Sutthins, I want to talk you about…."
"I have been looking all over for you!" He bellowed. "The SunDisc has gone out and the controller won’t do nothing! I just sowed my fields last week. I need an immediate solution before my saplings die."
I quietly hung up. There was no point in trying to explain things to him. I didn’t call the others. I knew I’d get the same reaction.
It was evident that they still had the signaling devices but they weren’t working anymore. Someone had found a way to override the signals.
I considered how this could be done.
The signaling devices used radio waves to communicate with the SunDiscs. An identification signature, based on PKI's from the late 20th Century, was appended to each communication. The signal told the SunDisc that it was coming from an authentic signaling device tuned to it. Proof of bona fides…
So…someone who knew the correct identifications and had made his own signaling device could control the SunDisc. No! That wouldn’t be the answer. He’d need three hundred signaling devices and then the signaling devices of the owners would work as well.
It wasn’t possible. Unless ... someone had planted an override switch in each of the SunDiscs when they had been created. Astronauts! They were the only people who could do it, but why would they? It occurred to me in an instant.
"Mr Blackwell, call the president immediately. I want to talk to him."
"The name is Bethwall," he said quietly, but he dialed.
"Mr President, did you have signal overrides installed on the SunDiscs by the astronauts who engineered the installations?"
"Aah ... Err ... Yes. It was important for national security," the president stammered.
"And yet you dare blame me for this disaster? You have brought this on us. You have discredited me, destroying Earth in the process. Is the device still with you?"
"It is, but it’s not working."
So that was it. American astronauts had performed the installations, and the president had a single override code stored on every one of them. Some smart guy had acquired the code, overridden the SunDiscs and pointed them towards the pole.
I took a deep breath. "I think you should wait for a ransom call."
This looked like a terrorist attack, but even they wouldn’t dare destroy the world. It would soon become a regular hijack drama. ‘Deliver such-and-such amount to so-and-so place. Or else...’ The Prez had seen this a thousand times in the movies.
‘Serves them right for meddling with the SunDiscs.’ I muttered.
The next few days became a public relations exercise. Many independent astronomers around the world had realized what had happened and they were shouting at the top of their voices. I traveled around the globe with government agents, talking to country heads, scientists and newspaper editors, trying to convince them things would be online shortly.
They waited patiently for the ransom call, but it never came. Meanwhile the sea level had risen visibly, and panicked city dwellers were rushing to the mountains in hordes.
***
"It’s not an attempt to hold the world to ransom. It’s an attempt to destroy it, nothing less." The president spoke in a hurriedly convened UN Security Council meeting a week later.
"If the poles melt, a large part of the modern world will be submerged. Only a few regions like the high plateaus of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Central Africa and some parts of America will remain habitable."
‘He's taken his Geography lessons well,’ I thought.
".… it’s imperative we act fast. Already many homes in coastal regions are flooded with sea water. The best science and defense experts are working on the problem and they will come up with the solution soon." The president continued.
"Hardly likely," I whispered softly, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t hear me.
I knew those ‘experts’, a bunch of free loaders who drank coffee and munched free sandwiches while shuffling through statistics to look busy. They couldn’t solve a simple math sum, let alone a problem of this magnitude.
We had tried every conceivable code and frequency but the SunDiscs had refused to respond. Whoever had changed the SunDisc direction had also changed the override code.
Finding the correct override code was a near impossibility. The override code was a ‘guID’ – a Globally Unique Identification Number. ‘guIDs’ are special sixteen digit numbers traditionally used by computer operating systems to identify software programs. Microsoft’s software used to generate guIDs ‘guaranteed’ that it would generate a new guID every time, even on separate machines around the world.
If all the computers in the world started generating guIDs 24 hours a day, chances are a guID would appear twice in about thousand years. Even if somehow we could generate the guIDs, who would match each one of them with the override code?
"There is only one solution in sight. I admit it is awfully painful, but we have to destroy the SunDiscs." I did not mince my words when they handed me the mike.
How do you think the assembly reacted?
Picture this: In the last 100 years there have been no wars. Earth is home to over 12 billion people. There is very little farming land left, food has become a luxury. Millions walk around with food substitute pills in their mouth, and an empty feeling in their stomach. Then I arrive on the scene. With my magical solution I coerce governments and individuals to pump billions of dollars into the SunDisc project. People pin their dreams and hopes of a contented life on the SunDisc. SunDiscs are everywhere; on tiffins, t-shirts, comic books, you name it. Finally when the project is completed and just starting to work, we find out it has to be destroyed to save the world. To me it feels like killing my favorite son with my own hands. The people must feel worse. Conned perhaps?
There was absolute silence in the assembly. Nobody spoke, someone started sobbing, and then they all broke down, even I. Hope belied.
***
So it was decided. Five teams of astronauts left for space. The only cargo they carried were cobalt missiles. Each powerful enough to destroy a complete city block. In a little less than an hour, they would start their mission, the SunDiscs would be snuffed out of existence one-by-one.
It was nighttime. I was peering at the first target through my telescope, expecting to see a flash and then a moon disappear.
I saw a flash and flinched. It had started. When I looked through the telescope again the flash was gone, but the SunDisc was still there.
"….I am giving the SunDiscs everything I’ve got but nothing is happening. I just fired 3 missiles at the target at once, but couldn’t even scratch the surface…." I heard the astronaut’s report in the control room.
***
They’ve put me in jail. In a few days I will be executed. For treason and homicide, and crimes against Humanity. The doctor has already done a checkup and pronounced me healthy enough to die. My mental health is not in question.
Jail has given me time to think:
SunDiscs could never have been that sturdy. Nothing on Earth is strong enough to survive the impact of a Cobalt bomb. Someone or something had changed the SunDisc formula to make them stronger.
Conjecture - The human race has just started to spread its wings beyond our planet. I've always suspected that we weren't alone in the universe. The Greenbank Formula, though speculative, even put a numerical estimate on the number of technological civilizations present in our galaxy.
So, what if some alien race; far more technologically advanced than Man, has been monitoring us. We are not a peaceful species, we've been warring with each other since long before we became Humanoid. Now that we've started exploring space, this alien race might suspect that we could be dangerous to them in the future. Did they decide to nip us in the bud?
What an extraordinary way to eliminate a complete species - without bloodshed or effort, and largely through their own efforts, and, maybe arrogance…
But what's really bothering me now is - did I really think of SunDiscs myself, or did something plant the idea in my head? I guess I’ll never know…
…and neither will Humanity.
|
