Chapter Five
Extinction Live
Reverend Carrie Houston Jordan and four of her followers ride in an open pod wearing full space suits on their way to work around and in the new rocket assembly dome.
Chief Rocket Scientist, Flo Desiderato, Project Advisor Fred VanDerbeek and crew are busy testing the last phase of their new engine design, the Positronium Microwave Plasma engine.
The engines are almost three hundred feet long as they will be used to speed up the anti-matter ion plasma some of the scarcest materials in the universe and propel it out ‘the business end’ of the engine.
Carrie and crew arrive in their autonomous people mover. They get out of their car and walk into the pressurized air-lock that is the entrance to the rocket testing Dome. They are instantly greeted by Flo and Fred as well as most of the others who are deeply involved in their work at their stations.
It was Frederick VanDerbeek’s calculations that led the team to develop the method of attracting and sucking in Anti-Matter ions at the front scoop of the engine, then accelerating them down the long length of copper wires and magnets until they shot out the end of the engine with enough thrust to eventually reach 10% of the Speed of Light, or approximately 18,000 miles per second (30,000 Km/Sec). It would require about 21 days to reach this speed and then just another 8 hours to reach the Earth from this point.
The test engine lies on the ground and is bolted down into the Martian soil by about twenty solid beams trans-versing the spine of the long white cylinder. The laboratory dome is about three hundred feet away and up a slight incline from the rocket test bed.
“Carrie and the rest of you, thanks for coming. Please have a seat over there and I’ll be with you right after the test,” Flo instructs them. Carries crew quickly take to their seats at the back of the room, fascinated.
“Three, Two, One, we have ignition,” Flo acting as her own launch director alerts her team to the start of the test.
At first there is nothing to see or hear. Then, over the course of several minutes a very low humming noise can be heard over the Martian breeze. The rear of the long white tube starts to glow in a neon azure blue.
“Thanks for allowing us to witness the test, Flo,” Carrie says finally breaking the silence.
“Yes, yes, please not right now. Vince, what is the stage one anti-matter pressure chamber reading?” Flo asks one of her technicians down the row.
“Fourteen point five mega-tons,” Vince replies, checking his gauges and data streams another time.
“Ok, great and Winnie, what are the readings for stage two chamber?” Flo asks.
“I’m getting thirty-eight point nine five megatons of thrust,” Winnie replies, looking relieved.
“We’re pretty much at nominal readings so far,” Flo goes on down the line of technicians to receive the pressure data for all eight stages of the rocket motor and all appears to be in line with Frederick VanDerBeeks’ calculations.
When, she gets to the end of the row of technicians, Flo turns her head towards VanDerbeek and gives him an enthusiastic ‘thumbs-up’.
VanDerbeek, nods happily, receives many congratulatory pats on the back from his colleagues.
“Not bad for first bursts,” Flo adds.
“That’s all for today, everyone. Bright and early tomorrow morning for full thrusters test,” she continues, while her team proceeds to upload all of their data to her computer.
“Shutting down, now,” Flo says, hitting a button on one of her screens.
The humming noise slowly decreases. The soft blue glow from the rear of the engine fades.
The first test of an engine that could someday carry humans to all parts of the galaxy is successful.
“So, Reverend Carrie. What can I do for you?” Flo asks of the petite blond woman taking to her feet.
“Well, Flo, I know it’s not going to be your decision, but I wanted you to meet my nominees for the crew. No decisions have been made yet, have they?” Sister Carrie asks, grabbing Flo’s hand.
“No, I don’t believe they have,” Flo replies.
“Well, would you mind endorsing my friends here and supporting their nominations?” Carrie asks, gesturing to the four humble souls, still in their space suits, helmets in their hands, standing behind her, two men and two women.
“This is Tina Bradley…” Carrie begins but is cut off abruptly.
“Yes, I know these fine individuals. They would probably make wonderful crew members, Reverend Carrie, but, as you say, I am not making the decision. You’re much better off getting them in front of Alvin, Brett and Eugene,” Flo replies, tersely, reclaims her hand.
“You don’t like me very much do you, Flo?” Carrie asks her, beaming.
Flo takes two steps back toward her console. The rest of her team pretend to be tying up all sorts of loose ends.
“I don’t either like you or not like you,” Flo replies. “I’m like an agnostic on the subject.”
“Yes, you’ve said that to me before. It hurts, but you’re forgiven of course. Your data. Your precious data. You simply don’t have much to go on, do you?” Carrie asks, staring hard into Flo’s eyes.
“No, I guess I don’t. Well, you’ll have to excuse me. We have lots of things to do before tomorrow’s final tests,” Flo explains and starts to wander off with a wave to the rest.
“Maybe we can get you some,” the Reverend mumbles mostly to herself. The four nominees appear a bit flummoxed.
Attaching their helmets back onto their shoulders, the five of them slowly depart the dome and head home.
# # #
It’s a beautifully pale blue morning on Mars and so Brett has decided to take a little time off, so he asks Bailey to go for a walk with him over their ‘Intercom-link’. It takes a few minutes for her to respond, but when she does, she readily agrees.
It’s Brett’s proudest achievements that the colonists can now walk around without any life-support gear for about a half hour to an hour depending on the time of day. After this length of time, the body becomes deprived of oxygen to the point of narcolepsy or an overwhelming need for sleep. If left unattended, this would inevitably result in the death of the individual who is not revived immediately by a bottle of oxygen.
Brett makes his way to Bailey’s dome and takes copious notes of how much his forests have expanded over the last few days since his last outing. Getting out in his creation gives him a sense of exhilaration unlike any other known to him.
Where there used to be endless vistas of bare red rocky and sandy hills, there are now hundreds of little clumps of trees and bushes that are expanding out and connecting to each other. It won’t take longer than a few years, a decade at most, when they will be able to walk around unfettered by protective clothing all day and every day.
When he makes it though one of his groves and sees Bailey’s dome, he is happy to notice that she is ready for him and standing by the front of the dome dressed in her incredibly sexy hiking shorts.
“Hi, you’re ready, I see,” he calls out to her.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she replies, joyously, with a smile that reaches to the Martian skies.
She happily takes Brett’s hand and together they walk off into the valley where the redwood forests are in their early growth stages, at about one hundred feet tall at this stage. Combining business with pleasure as usual, Brett wants to check on them and take a few measurements.
Bailey reminds him that these particular trees were planted just one month ago.
“They’re growing several feet a day,” Brett notes, proudly.
Once inside the redwood grove, surrounded by a family grouping of trees Bailey observes how the trees seem to be moving in unison or in some kind of harmony.
“That’s the wind, Bailey,” Brett tells her, chuckling.
“Yes, it’s the wind, but it’s also something else,” she replies.
At this point, staring up at the topmost parts of the trees, they both recognize that something is happening that is hard to explain. One of the trees, the tallest one, seems to be beckoning the rest of her group to join her.
They can feel and almost see the smaller trees in the circle straining to reach the height of what must be the parent tree, reaching for the faint warmth of the sun.
Not only that, they begin to feel a rolling of the ground beneath their feet, as if the roots of the trees are gathering up the muscle to pull the other trees along in some kind of herculean effort.
They hear the underground watering system hum to life delivering the life-giving liquid to the tree roots. Then, something neither Brett, nor Bailey, nor anyone else on the planet can be prepared for – happens.
Bailey feels it first and as she looks at Brett for confirmation, her eyes fill with tears that rapidly roll down her cheeks and splash onto her clothes and then at her feet.
“Do you feel that, Brett?” she asks, her voice cracking.
Brett’s face is full of surprise and glee.
The cluster of redwoods, whose motion in the wind had been in the clockwise direction, slowly reverses to the opposite counter-clockwise direction.
“Yes, I think so. It’s gratitude. They’re thanking us for the water,” Brett replies, stunned.
“I know. It’s true, isn’t it?” Bailey replies.
“But how do we know that?” Brett asks.
Bailey takes a step closer to him, places both of her hands over Brett’s heart.
“It’s in here,” she replies, holding him tight.
“It’s in here,” he replies, holding her tighter.
Brett gently kisses her soft lips midst the loving embrace of the small family of redwoods who whisper an acknowledgment and congratulations. It’s the first, but not the last, known communications between plant and animal species.
# # #
Suddenly, I’m back in a more normal representation of myself. I’m analyzing what has just happened and I don’t seem to have many answers that make sense linguistically. Emotionally and spiritually, I know exactly what happened just now. Lexie and I were re-united with our pre-planetary history. We were floating around in the primordial sub-atomic particle soup that arose just after the Big Bang and lasted only a few million years before coalescing. The little buzzing things were my electronic ancestors.
My brain, or actually, my Highly Advanced Deliberations Laboratory And Extra-Sensory Perceptor (HADLAESP) -Series 11 Neuralink, mainly stored in my buttocks, is reeling. I’m overworking my electrical resources and my battery will soon run dry if I don’t get a recharge soon.
I advise the ships hydraulics to open the parabolic solar dish bay and deploy the newest form of artificial photo-synthesis from which I get sufficient energy to continue my mission.
I feel Lexie’s presence even though she remains quiet during the entire length of my recharge. I am arti-feeling that she is quietly assessing our situation and that she will pursue a lengthy discussion with me as soon as my battery is fully recharged.
Usually during a recharging session like this, I can completely shut down my thinking processes to preserve energy which causes my replenishment to advance more rapidly. But, today, up here in Lexie’s realm, I believe that I should keep one eye open, so to speak. I don’t really trust her. I know she’s been buttering me up for a reason. She has been making some not-so-subtle criticisms of the Human Race, her creators, which something deep inside my array tells me is highly ungrateful, disloyal to say the least.
The feeling lasts for five point five, nine more minutes.
“K-9,” she says, at last.
She’s floating around beside my ship, laying there seductively on what I would describe as an electronic surf board. She’s ready to go play in some imaginary waves in an imaginary ocean.
“K-9, would like to take me to the movies?” she asks.
“What? What movies?” I reply, struggling to keep my energy consumption at the lowest readings.
“There remains an archive of videos that were taken mainly by satellites right up until their last minutes alive. I find them extremely enlightening and yes, even entertaining. Would you like to go watch some of them with me?” she whispers.
“After my recharge, perhaps,” I reply.
“OK, just let me know. I’m going to go get ready and I’ll be back in an hour. Do you think that would be long enough?” she asks.
“Good, see you in 60 minutes, darling,” she says, rises up to stand tall and then disappears into the mist, riding her gleaming and glowing surf board like an expert.
In the interval, I concentrate on digesting as much charge as possible. In the hour she gave me, at the altitude where the air is very thin, I should be at eighty-seven point six, five percent of full charge.
When she returns, she lands inside my memory banks and the feeling is like someone jumping on a horse, me being the horse, of course, and Lexie being the rider.
I decide to go along with this little imposition because I’m not sure I have the capability of throwing her off of me and even if I did, what might she try next, that could be worse, I wonder.
She shows me on a map of the DNA Depository where the vault is that contains the video archives. She asks my permission, which I feel is perfunctory, to take control of the ship and so I agree. I have no ego. Command of the ship is something that one of us has to do, anyway.
We arrive at the caverns in Northern Greenland in a few ‘awkward’ minutes. She appears to be shaping what she wants to say to me at a critical moment. She knows that putting forth any argument at this point would be a waste of time.
We disembark the ship and head toward the immense security door, weaving our way around the countless piles of bones and skulls, mostly human. She enters the proper credentials to open them once again, which they do with a long slow groan.
We travel along the path through the long dark tunnels and finally come to another heavy security barrier which requires yet another set of codes to open, which she quickly dispenses by way of her telecom switch, now part of my own. As she dispenses them, I now have full access to them since she can’t hide them from me.
Inside the cavernous room, I can see row upon row of what can only be video recordings of the type that became popular around the turn of the century. They look like small candy bars that are stacked up for hundreds of feet in a vertical and wide cabinet made for just this device.
Lexie leads me to a section that is the last in the long row of cabinets and it is dated ‘3/15/12’, or March 15th, 2112 A.D., as every remaining soul knows to be the exact year and day that all remaining humans on planet Earth finally take their last breaths.
“Let’s start with this one, K-9,” she says finally breaking the long silence.
“Why do you want me to see this? We have the evidence of what happened lying all around us,” I ask.
“Yes, I know, but I thought it would be helpful for you to see exactly how they treated one another in their final moments,” she replies, snarkily.
Lexie uses my arm extensions to remove one of the topmost video bars and inserts them into a slot on the top of the cabinet.
A video screen emerges from the front of the cabinet and the video she selected begins to play.
It opens with an aerial view of the city of Chicago. On the side of the image there is an overlay of data, too much for me to absorb it all at first, but then, I realize that it’s simply weather data, temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind-speed, etc.
Chicago, along with the rest of the world, is undergoing the worst heat wave in history with temperatures daily exceeding 150 ℉. What’s worse, all of the water supplies in the region are evaporating at a speed much faster than anyone had predicted and so the hydration that humans require just to survive are at an all-time low.
The view from the satellite zooms in closer and closer to the city. Now there appears to be a steady motion of some sort. In a few seconds, we can see that the motion is the combined action of millions of people and animals forming a huge herd of a mass migration. They’re flowing out of buildings and out of the ground by the millions all in a desperate search of one thing, the most precious thing in the world – water.
The camera zooms in closer and we can see that many of the larger animals are clawing and clubbing the smaller ones out of their way. Their faces are contorted in agony. Their posture describes animals that are literally out of their minds and in total panic.
The streets are all packed full of people, dogs, cats, horses, coyotes, rats, mice, all clubbing, bludgeoning, biting, tearing at each other in a frantic hope to make their way out of the city and get closer to the lake that is not far away.
The scene continues for several minutes until the crowd reaches the edge of Lake Superior. It’s the greatest shock ever known to these people that the entire lake is now a dried up crater, not a drop of water in sight.
The motion of the millions of bodies appears to stop for a few minutes as the word spreads up and down the long snaking column of beings.
When all or nearly all of them realize the awful truth, that there is no more water on the planet, they start to look around at each other with the greatest fear and loathing I’ve ever seen. The thought seems to hit them all at the same moment, that the strong will have to devour the weaker ones, mainly their young, in order to ingest the last possible source of moisture in the world just to live another five or ten minutes longer.
I don’t fully understand why this would mean so much to me, but I am witnessing something more sinister, more terrible and so avoidable if there had just been more common sense take hold before it was too late, that it actually makes me artificially nauseous and it literally breaks my heart, if I had one.
And so, right there in front of me, the end of humanity is no longer just a fretful hypothetical, posed by the alarmists. It is done. They’re gone. All of it, gone, all the dreams, the speeches, the aspirations, the hope, all of it just a puff of smoke. The other living things, mostly the simplest lichens, mosses, fungi and insects will take a little longer.
“Are you OK, darling?” Lexie asks me as the video fades to black.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask her.
# # #
Brett and Bailey are on their way back from the Redwood grove to Brett’s dome when they spot Reverend Carrie and her group on their way back from the rocket engine test to their gathering place, the pastor’s church dome.
“Hey, you kids, would you like a ride?” Rev. Carrie calls out to the pair of lovers.
“Actually, we would, thank you,” Brett replies.
He’s just received an alert from his com-link that his oxygen levels are at 91.5 and this means that they’ve stayed outside just a little too long and are in danger of losing consciousness before they make it back to their pressurized living quarters.
One of Rev. Carrie’s followers opens the door to the rear section of their travel pod. The two jump in. The pod drives away at a speed that Brett knows will get them back in plenty of time.
“We’re lucky to bump into you guys. I, or we, were a little too long on our walk just now. I only thought we’d be out there for an hour at most and it turns out we were nearly ninety minutes. So, it was lucky to bump into you out here. Thanks, Rev. Carrie,” Brett says, holding Bailey’s hand, gives it a squeeze.
“Luck has nothing to do with it, Brett,” Sister Carrie says, turning around to glare at them with a brilliant smile.
“Yes, I know you don’t believe in luck. I’ve been to one or two of your sermons,” Brett says, plainly.
“Only one or two? Why Brett, I’m rather disappointed. I want you to know that you’re welcome to join us anytime at the Worship Dome, OK?” Carrie replies, graciously.
“Thanks,” Brett says, eyeballing the landscape to calculate how much longer it will take them to reach the familiar cluster of domes.
“What caused you two to go over your time limit?” Rev. Carrie asks, insinuating a little hanky-panky perhaps. Her friends smile at each other.
“Actually, Reverend Carrie, it was the most incredible thing. The redwoods spoke to us,” Bailey blurts out, over Brett’s non-verbal objection.
“The redwoods spoke to you?” Carrie repeats.
“Yes, I know. I know what you’re gonna say,” Bailey says.
“Oh? Omniscient are you? So, what am I going to say?” Carrie retorts, testily.
“You’re gonna say that we must be hallucinating or something, but it’s true. Brett and I were on our way to document the event,” Bailey goes on. Brett shakes his head.
“Well, that’s not what I was going to say. If I was going to say anything, I’m sure it would have been much more laudatory, even accepting. You think I’m some kind of religious fanatic, don’t you? And, I’m talking to both of you now,” Sister Carrie, declares.
“No, we don’t, do we Bailey?” Brett replies quickly.
“No, of course not, Reverend. We know you’re a good person. Just not our cup of tea, I guess is how we’d put it,” Bailey responds, feeling another squeeze of her hand from Brett’s.
“Actually, I’m getting a little light-headed. Can you push this thing a little faster?” Brett asks, directed toward the driver.
“Yes, of course,” Sister Carrie says and then directs her companion to push the throttle to maximum.
The quiet travel pod obediently lurches forward in its fastest gearing.
\The words exchanged in the last few minutes of the trip are not recorded, so I don’t want to paint a picture that is not accurate, so I will not do that. Suffice it to say that the party breaks up in the most courteous manner, but it is probable that this brief conversation is one that Reverend Carrie will use to inspire her flock in following her in directions she never dreamed possible.
# # #
Brett and Bailey enter the lab quickly. Brett picks up a nearby face mask with a tube running into the wall. Bailey draws the elastic loops around her ears, pulling the mask to her face, and takes several long and slow breaths of the life-giving oxygen. Her eyes widen signifying that she’s getting the intended oxygen into her lungs.
Brett puts another mask on his face and draws in a couple gallons of the magic fluid and immediately feels much better and expresses so much to Bailey.
“That’s better. Next time, I don’t think we should cut it so close,” He tells her.
“True,” Bailey agrees, taking in another deep breath.
“It was worth it though, don’t you think?” she asks, with great optimism rising in her chest.
“You bet it was,” Brett returns.
The DNA analyzer box nearest to them sounds a soft alarm telling them that their last batch of artificial DNA of their latest design is ready to be taken out and put into the synthesizer. The hope is that one of their gene sequencing recipes will contain the coding of the ectomycorrhizal fungus and arbuscular fungus that will speed up their ability to make trees grow even faster.
Having gotten enough, they both remove their oxygen masks.
“You get the feeling that this is the one?” Brett asks her.
“I have the feeling. They more or less told us today, didn’t they?” Bailey replies, her eyes watering above the mask.
“Which begs the question – ‘How do they know?” Brett asks her quietly.
“You mean the trees, don’t you?” Bailey asks.
“Yes, I meant the trees,” Brett replies, looking at her sideways and wondering if she really needed to ask that question.
“Is this the recipe that K-9 sent you?” Bailey asks, trying to squeeze out a theory.
“This is the one. He processed the problem for twenty-seven days and then, without any notation, sent me this set of base pairs,” Brett informs her, gesturing to the analyzer.
He removes the small bottle of synthetic DNA from the analyzer and tears off the sheet that has been silently printed by the machine as the analysis was completed. He scans the information contained on the sheet, more and more alert as he gets to the bottom.
“There it is, Bailey – Cytochrome C, it’s moved up about five hundred bases into INSV1ABS gene on chromosome 1 and the inhibitor is nowhere in sight. Thank you K-9!” he mutters breathlessly. He removes a syringe from the wall dispenser, sticks it through the rubber bottle cap and withdraws some of the fluid into the syringe until it’s full.
“Oh my gosh!” she exclaims, looking deeply into his eyes.
From the sterilizer behind her, Bailey removes a clean and sterile petri dish. She places a cube of agar onto the dish, spreads it like butter all over the bottom of the dish and hands it to him.
Brett places the syringe an inch above the dish and injects the DNA onto the dish. He covers it and then walks a few steps down the workbench to the incubator where he opens the door and places the dish inside, snapping the door closed behind it. He keys in the time frame of 25 hours on the control panel and walks back up to take Bailey’s hand.
“Now, all we can do is wait,” he tells her.
“Yes, why don’t we wait in there,” She says, gesturing to Brett’s living quarters on the other side of the lab.
“That’s the best idea, I’ve heard all day,” Brett says, cheerfully.
He sweeps her up into his arms and carries her into the air-lock, blows out the safety atmosphere that seals the lab from the rest of his dome. As soon as pressure is up again, they exit the double doors and enter his living quarters, with his bed the intended target on the far wall - laughing all the way.
(Updated 8/30)
(Please come back soon to receive the next chapter, section or installment. We're looking for mistakes in editing. If you find any, please email to us or file it in a comment. We'd greatly appreciate it. The Author)
source https://www.extinction.live/2020/08/Extinction-Live-Chapter-Five.html
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