NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (40 page)

Part 2

Six months earlier: 7:15 a.m.

Aboard facility 7, Yanyan and Sascha sit in a booth in a diner having a quiet breakfast together despite being surrounded by the noisy chatter of the other patrons: their selective-hearing devices, which mediate auditory processing, filter out the excess noise, leaving them with only the sounds of their own local interaction and context in the booth while ensuring privacy through eliminating their conversation from other patrons’ auditory streams.  Consequently, most talk at normal volume, but Yanyan and Sascha both tend to speak softly to each other, regardless, yet without being self-conscious about it.

Yanyan stares at her noodles, fiddling with them more than anything, while Sascha sips at a strong black coffee and stares expressionlessly across at the newly terraformed Earth, which is still in its final stages of completion.  She reflects on how different it looks in comparison to her memories prior to Last Earth Day; in fact, apart from the outline of the continents and the distribution of the islands, the density of the plant life on land and the complete absence of any signs of human civilisation makes the contrast shocking to her…

• • •

The terraforming programme began initially with the need to reclaim the orbital nano-cloud as that was where a considerable amount of Earth’s raw materials was located; without neutralising and redepositing that, the planet could never be terraformed satisfactorily.  Due to the demands of the massive undertaking that this entailed, it took nearly 40 percent of the R&D time frame just to determine how the Hostile Nano-Agents (HNA) worked; once this was understood, they could then set about developing an asymmetrical alternative that was capable of restructuring HNA so that it was 1) rendered benign and 2) able to take on the form of the building blocks for all that was lost in a systematic and controlled manner.

The dense nanoparticle layer that covered Earth needed to be dealt with indirectly as conventional technology couldn’t touch it, yet reclaiming and processing the orbital dark cloud posed an immense challenge in itself as it was diffused across so much space.  The solution was particularly ambitious and expensive: raw materials sourced from other parts of the solar system were used to build an initial seven thousand processing stations that were placed on the orbital path of the nano-cloud (the number eventually grew to a total of over one million); a funnelled net nearly fifty kilometers in diameter was positioned in front of each of the stations; an electromagnetic field emanating around the funnel channelled HNA towards the processing zone at the centre, where it was disassembled, restructured, compressed into small rocks, and jettisoned along acutely decaying orbital trajectories.  The streams of rocks raced towards the surface of Earth while collecting more particles magnetically as they did so; the shattering that occurred upon impact caused the bonds between the Constructive Nano-Agents (CNA) to be severed in a cascade.  The individual particles then proceeded to restructure HNA in their surrounding environments according to stimuli such as solar radiation, the magnetosphere of Earth, and a degree of geological and cartographic manipulation imposed externally by the terraforming team’s coordinating programs: a network of space stations was positioned around Earth to provide specialised digital signposts for the CNA in particular regions by channelling magnetic pulses towards the surface.  This gradually resulted in the formation of all the necessary layers of Earth’s crust, providing the foundation for the physical features on the surface, such as hills and mountain ranges, and the distribution of rocks, sand, soil and water.

Meanwhile, the funnelling stations continued their activities over a two-year period until 98 percent of the nano-cloud was reclaimed.  Once this threshold was reached, no further rocks were sent propelling to the surface.  This was primarily because the next phase of the terraforming operation had already begun: establishing the atmosphere and the flora and fauna of the planet.  Instead, the additional CNA rocks were stored and transported there manually over the following months and years until 9.9999 percent reclamation had been achieved.

Once a critical threshold in the redevelopment of the foundations of Earth’s surface was reached, a secondary process was initiated: certain CNA began forming oxygen atoms and dispersing them into the atmosphere; others engaged in rapid growth of flora and the primitive levels of life needed to support it.  With accelerated growth potentials, the trees in forests and jungles, for example, grew to various levels of maturity within a six-month period as swarms of bugs and flying insects emerged from the surrounding soil in numbers required for optimal ecological sustainability for their given location.

During this process, three thousand fauna production factories in orbit produced a near-endless stream of the higher-level creatures and transported them in freighters to their allocated settling zones.

After months of continuous growth and settlement, Earth was starting to look like some idyllic prehistoric world, ironically devoid of human interference…

• • •

The booth in the diner: 7:20 a.m.

Sascha reflects on their trek through the mountainous jungle of Papua New Guinea just yesterday — their first trip to the surface.  She activates the amplification program that allows her to re-represent all of the sensory information that almost overwhelmed her while she was there.  She now finds it just about irresistible to re-experience it; she’s also aware that her sense of exhilaration was heightened considerably after being locked away in the sterile environments in space for so many years.

Yanyan glances at her and asks, “Do you want to go back again today?”

“Of course,” replies Sascha, “but to do so would be … well, indulgent, particularly when only a small group of us have been so far.”

Yanyan nods.  “I know what you mean … but I can’t stop thinking about it either.”

“I was kind of unprepared for it,” adds Sascha swirling her coffee and staring straight through it at some streaming footage of her battle through the dense undergrowth with all the rustling of leaves, the cracking of twigs, and the squishing of mud around her boots.

“So … do you think we have to … or should rethink our blanket ban on visiting rights for the general population?”

Sascha smiles.  “How could we not?  I mean, even though we refused so stubbornly to entertain the possibility for all those years.  I’m not interested in preventing casual visits anymore … nor colonisation for that matter.  Not after yesterday.”

“Mm … our aversion to the idea was probably reactionary to the events of After Earth Day,” suggests Yanyan, “and the countermeasures we entertained in order to reduce the influence of discontent were probably going a tad far.  I now have the feeling we’d be better off allowing limited yet inclusive access.  It would add to our quality of life … to everyone’s.”

“Would it, though?” asks Sascha deliberately doubting her own suspicions.

“I think it certainly has the potential to,” continues Yanyan.  “What we’re talking about isn’t just the difference between reality and simulation; it’s about the poverty of the stimulus…  That whole external sensory stimulation thing has tremendous power even though our senses are all but mediated by add-ons and their connection to the historical database.”

Sascha vacantly scans the variety of cloud formations over the Pacific Ocean.  “If it weren’t there … if it weren’t accessible or a possibility, then the simulation would be enough … at least it would seem like enough.  I mean, you could accept it … or tolerate it, on average.  But, as soon as that reality is on your doorstep — just right there — you want to experience it … even if it’s just to see and be there for its own sake: it’s just so compelling.  And, I have to say, my recollections of yesterday are compelling as well, more so than what I’d previously experienced with the total immersion simulations reconstructed from the historical database.  That’s the poverty of the stimulus again: old programs that collected data a long time ago … essentially providing us with copies that aren’t really noticeable as such until you experience the reality first hand.  Then there’s the fact that you just know it’s a copy, of course.”

Yanyan smiles.  “Yeah, even though things are different now with our more sophisticated representation programs obscuring the difference still further, perhaps even making it impossible to distinguish one from the other, there’s still that knowledge after the fact that it was just a simulation … even if you do choose to suspend that knowledge during the experience, which we have done.  It doesn’t help.  As long as we have our senses and our consciousness and there’s a real and present opportunity to experience reality as it is, we may well continue to find some kind of need, some desire for direct experience.  At least some of us will.  I think you’re right: we should rethink our settlement strategy … make it broader and more inclusive.  I wouldn’t mind seeing highly focused eco-cities and villages with footprint-control measures in place and adequately dispersed.”

Sascha nods.  “Anyway, we don’t have the population to go overboard.”

“So we should give them the chance if they want it, I suppose,” reinforces Yanyan.

“What about our experiment?” enquires Sascha.

Yanyan thinks about this for a moment before answering.  “Considering the small numbers we’re talking about in both cases and the potential for creating isolated pockets of communities, we can probably still go ahead with it more or less as planned.  Let me model an integrated roll-out programme for all this…”  Yanyan eats some noodles while the modelling is undertaken; she then downloads the results to Sascha.  “How about that, then?”

“It sounds good.  We can definitely accommodate that.  It’ll be interesting to see the results of the experiment.”

“It will. 
Both
experiments,” says Yanyan, feeling calmed with a sense of optimism pervading her.

Sascha pours herself another coffee while testing auxiliary hypotheses based on Yanyan’s results.

• • •

Five days after Andreas arrived back at facility 7

Yanyan and Sascha are busy performing their early-morning routines before leaving their apartments to attend their scheduled meetings; they haven’t dared contact Andreas and have felt too uneasy about using the virtual rooms he provided them with to discuss the matter with each other directly, preferring instead to focus on their work and do their best to suppress their thoughts and feelings the best they can.

Without notice, they find themselves standing in front of Andreas in one of his own virtual rooms.

Andreas nods politely.  “Morning.  Sorry for the delay.”

“It’s nice to finally see you here,” says Yanyan with surprise.

“We knew that you’d arrived, of course,” begins Sascha, “and were getting a bit anxious about what your silence meant.”

“I know.  I’m sorry about that,” says Andreas.  “I just had to complete my system check and develop a few programs in order to add extra levels of security.  It would have put everything in jeopardy if I’d contacted you earlier.”

“Don’t say that,” says Yanyan, recoiling from the implications.

“What have you found?” asks Sascha, preparing herself for the worst.

Andreas looks out the virtual window at Earth, which he’s had a constant view of from his apartment since arriving.  He provides them with his preliminary report and says after waiting a moment, “From what I can tell, this is the epicentre of the infection, or rather infestation.  I’ve tracked its traces.  It’s very hard to pinpoint as it’s constantly on the move.  It’s probably safe to say that it’s spread right through the network of the solar system.”

Sascha stares at him and asks, “You didn’t mention its origins in the report?”

“Yeah, I’m still not sure at present; my analysis of the records in the archives just indicated that the infiltration occurred during the assembly of the facility.”

“It’s responsible for Last Earth Day,” states Yanyan redundantly.

“It seems that way,” confirms Andreas.