Our Dried Voices
Authors: Greg Hickey
Tags: #Fiction: Science-Fiction, #Fiction: Fantasy
Our Dried Voices
Published by Scribe Publishing Company
Royal Oak, Michigan
www.scribe-publishing.com
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015 by Greg Hickey
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
ISBN 978-1-940368-94-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942255
Printed in the U.S.
To Jessica
Thank you. I haven’t stopped yet.
“I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.”
René Descartes,
Discourse on the Method
Chronology
2000: The average temperature on Earth reaches 5.3 °C, up from 4.5 °C in 1900. Earth’s seas rise an estimated 1-2 millimeters each year since 1900, compared to a rise of 0.1-0.2 millimeters per year between 1000 B.C.E. and 1900. Atmospheric carbon dioxide measures 380 parts per million (ppm), in comparison to 280 ppm prior to the 19th century.
2030-2040: The United States reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by over 15% of its total from the previous decade.
2036: Kwang Automotives of South Korea develops the first compressed air engine automobile having a range of over 2000 miles. 500 million are sold over the next four years.
2047: 45% of all carbon dioxide emitted by power plants is captured and stored underground.
2050: 85% of all cars in the world use some sort of non-petroleum fuel source.
2050: Global population reaches 10 billion people.
2050-2200: The equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane strikes Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo at least once. 100,000 different species of plants and animals become extinct.
2054: Japanese engineers design and build a spaceship capable of transporting human beings to Mars.
2056: A Japanese manned mission to Mars is forced to return to Earth when the spaceship’s navigational system malfunctions one-third of the way into the journey.
2056: Polio is cured.
2061: A team of American, British and Japanese astronauts aboard
Mars Odyssey III
complete a three month journey and land on Mars. Private investors from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Iran found Space Exploration for Sustained Human Life (SESHL, or Seashell).
2062: Saudi Arabian physicist Dr. Alim al Muwaffaq unlocks the secret to power generation via nuclear fusion.
2065: Saudi Arabia builds the world’s first fusion power plant. Ten more are built worldwide over the next two years, and 5,000 by 2078.
2087: Huntington’s disease is cured.
2089: British oncologists led by Dr. Thomas Greene develop a synthetic enzyme to treat cancer. Clinical trials on lung and breast cancer patients prove successful.
2092: Seashell scientists discover an Earth-like planet approximately sixteen light-years from Earth, which they later name Pearl.
2094: Muscular dystrophy is cured.
2096: Omega Laboratories purchases the rights to Dr. Greene’s patented enzyme and begins sale of the drug under the trade name Neoplastase.
2098: The Vesper VII, a petroleum-free, commercial airplane powered by compressed air and solar and hydrogen-based energy, flies across the Atlantic Ocean.
2100: Earth’s average temperature reaches 6.4 °C. Seas rise an additional 300 millimeters above their levels in the year 2000. Atmospheric carbon dioxide measures 620 ppm. Global population surpasses 13 billion.
2101: Seashell engineers modify the Bussard ramjet prototype to construct the Petrov ramjet-powered satellite
Pearl I
for an unmanned mission to Pearl.
2103: Seashell launches
Pearl I
on January 1, followed by a new satellite every five years until 2153.
2108: South African veterinary virologists led by Dr. Christian van de Saal discover bovine infectious anemia (BIA) while searching for a vaccine against equine infectious anemia (EIA, better known as “swamp fever”).
2108: A revamped Vesper airliner carries passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney.
2116: Osteoporosis is cured.
2128: Indian oncologists led by Dr. Ashakiran Avani discover a general vaccination, called “frondosavani,” that prevents mutation by carcinogenic agents.
2135: Japanese virologist Dr. Kameko Yamashita unearths Dr. van de Saal’s work, and discovers cattle infected with BIA develop immunity to bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV).
2139-2147: World War III creates alliances of alpha, beta and gamma states drawn along religious and ideological lines.
2143: Cystic fibrosis is cured.
2146: The satellite
Pearl II
crashes on Pearl, but its video equipment is damaged and no images of the planet are available.
2147: 35% of all commercial airplanes are powered entirely by non-fossil fuels.
2147: Dr. Yamashita engineers the first clinically successful HIV vaccine based on her research on BIA and BIV.
2153: Cancer is cured.
2156: Japan reports zero incidences of AIDS. Near exterminations are reported in the United States and several European nations during the 2150s.
2157:
Pearl IV
orbits Pearl. Video indicates the planet seems capable of supporting human life.
2160: Ebola virus is cured.
2162: Tay-Sachs disease is cured.
2163: An AIDS outbreak occurs at a Munich hospital due to a mutation in the virus.
2170: Seashell launches the generation ship
Pearl Voyager I
carrying four astronauts and their spouses. Communication systems fail ten years into the journey and the ship is lost forever.
2178: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) is cured.
2181: Influenza is cured.
2183: Virologists around the world produce a series of vaccines that neutralize all known strains of HIV/AIDS.
2184: Seashell launches
Pearl Voyager II
.
2186: Multiple sclerosis is cured.
2189: HIV/AIDS is cured.
2189: Extreme weather patterns occur more frequently, exemplified by a rogue wildfire that decimates over 10% of Los Angeles.
2191: Seashell launches
Pearl Voyager III
.
2192: Alzheimer’s disease is cured.
2195: Diabetes mellitus is cured.
2196: The population of Africa reaches 6 billion people.
2198: Global population reaches 24 billion people.
2199:
Pearl Voyager II
returns to Earth after experiencing mechanical failures.
2200: Earth’s seas rise an additional 400 millimeters above their levels in the year 2100. During these hundred years, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Jakarta, Dhaka and New Orleans are completely flooded. Earth’s average temperature reaches 7.6 °C. Frequent droughts plague sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Mexico City, São Paulo, Stockholm, Vienna and Moscow. Atmospheric carbon dioxide measures 1120 ppm.
2207: Acute viral nasopharyngitis (common cold) is cured.
2213: World War IV begins in central Africa. The alpha states (United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, France, Russia, Mexico and Brazil) declare war on the beta states (Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia and the Philippines), though all battles take place in Africa.
2224: Both the alpha and beta states declare victory and withdraw from Africa, ending World War IV. 289 million lives are lost in the war: 53 million alpha soldiers, 44 million beta soldiers and 192 million civilians, almost all of them African.
2225: Astronauts aboard
Pearl Voyager III
become the first humans to orbit Pearl. Fifty-six manned
Voyager
ships are sent to Pearl over the next two years to erect a colony.
2234: The first genetically enhanced, disease-resistant human child is born.
2235: Seashell completes construction of the
Pearl
Colonizer
, a ramjet-powered generation ship capable of transporting thousands of people to Pearl, and launches it on December 31.
2252: An estimated one-fifth the total distance to Pearl, the
Colonizer
loses contact with Seashell headquarters on Earth.
2325: The
Colonizer
lands on Pearl.
I
T
he sound of the bells echoed across the colony. They sounded five times, and by the end of the fifth peal everyone had stopped what they were doing and started to walk toward the nearest source of the noise. The bells had a tinny, hollow sound to them. To be sure, it was unmistakably the sound of bells, but it lacked that rich, thunderous, rolling swell once heard in passing by an old church at the top of the hour. Instead, it was as though the sound of real bells had been recorded and re-recorded
ad infinitum
until only bell-like sounds now remained.
The bells called the people to the midday meal. All across the lush meadow, the colonists fell into a kind of reverie. Moments earlier, they had been romping through the meadow or splashing in the river with the joyful abandon of children, while others napped blissfully at the base of a modest hill or fornicated with some momentary lover in the shade of a spreading tree. But now their innocent laughter, their hushed excited voices, their intermittent shrieks of pleasure all ceased for an instant as they moved as one toward the sound of the bells. As soon as the fifth toll had faded in the air, the human noise resumed as though it had never been silenced. The colonists walked eagerly but unhurriedly, small, hairless, brown-skinned people, all barefooted and dressed in simple, cream-colored smocks.
The bell sounds came from the seven meal halls spread throughout the colony—long, tall, rectangular buildings erected from the black, craggy rock characteristic of the mountains of Pearl, now smoothed down and cut into bricks and painted a soothing off-white. Another smaller building abutted one end of each meal hall. Their wan stone façades matched those of the larger halls and there were no discernible entryways in their solid exteriors.
As the colonists entered each meal hall, they lined up along the right-hand wall to wait for their food. The walls were painted a pale sky blue, and on the far wall was a small square hole. One by one, each diner stepped forward in line, a small, red light above the hole flashed, a short clicking and whirring noise sounded and then a round, firm, dark brown cake appeared at the edge of the opening. One by one, each colonist took the proffered meal cake and carried it over t
o one of the many wooden tables or out into the meadow.
Near the front of the line at one hall, a male colonist turned to face the man behind him.
“Hellohoweryou?” said the first man.
“Goodthankshoweryou?” replied the second man.
“Goodthankshoweryou?”
“Goodthankshoweryou?”
The two men stared blankly at each other for a moment. Then the first man blinked and said “Goodweathertoday.”
The second bobbed his head and grinned. “Betterenyesterday.”
They continued to gaze at each other with vapid expressions until the first man turned around and stepped forward in line. The two men were right. It was Tuesday. It rained on Mondays. And thanks to the colony’s weather modification system, it had rained every Monday, and only on Monday, for hundreds of years.
* * *
When about half the colonists at this particular meal hall had received their food, an adult woman moved to the front of the line. A young boy, no taller than her waist, stood behind her. The woman stepped up to the wall, the red light above the hole flashed… and nothing happened. There was no clicking, no whirring, and no meal cake emerged from the hole in the milky blue wall. Some people a few places behind the first woman, by now so accustomed to the regular pace of the line, stepped forward in anticipation of her taking the food and continuing on. When the line did not move, they bumped awkwardly into the colonists in front of them, very much surprised that there should be a fleshy, breathing, human body in their path instead of empty space. Those closest to the front of the line fell silent when they saw the woman had not yet received her meal, and then the silence spread evenly and rhythmically down the line, like a row of pillowed dominoes falling to the floor. Yet all the colonists continued to wear the same insipid half-grin on their faces as they waited patiently for the food to be dispensed and the line to creep forward once more.
A long, loud, whining shriek from the young boy waiting with his mother at the front of the line broke through the stillness, and it was this sound, not the actual interruption of the food service, which seemed to have the greatest effect on those in the hall. The boy did not cry. He shed no tears, and the sound which emerged from his mouth was not a breathless and choked sobbing, or even the petulant howl of a child’s tantrum. It was a primal, animal moan that rose from the depths of his unfilled
stomach,
rushed up his throat with a cold and persistent ferocity and forced its way over his teeth, throwing his head back as it broke from his lips. No one tried to comfort the boy. His mother did not even turn around to look at him. Her weak smile faded, but she continued to stare at the dark hole in the wall, still waiting for her meal to appear. Then a child some dozen places back in the line picked up the boy’s howl, and then a woman farther behind did the same. Soon the entire line was wailing loudly.
Those colonists who had already received their meals hunkered over their cakes and stuffed their last bites into their mouths. One of them stood up, bumping hard into his table. The rest followed. They walked hurriedly to the door, brushing past the onlookers from outside who had gathered to see what all the noise was about. Those still in line stared dazedly at the others around them, at the now half-empty hall, an incipient question forming somewhere deep in their skulls.
A man in the middle of the line broke their unsteady ranks first. He ran, stumbling over tables and chairs bolted to the floor in his maddened dash toward the doorway. The rest of the line scattered in his wake. Out through the door they went, cracking bony limbs on the wooden furniture in their paths, pushing and trampling one another as they all tried to force their way through the doorway at once, like blood cells pumped through a clotted artery.
Those who had already finished their meals stood outside in a loose ring several meters away from the entrance of the food hall, and as the wild runners pushed their way through the door, they began to run as well, picking up the wail of the unfed as they went. They ran in no particular direction, a single mass exodus from the hall, teeming out across the gay green meadows, up and over the soft, undulating hills, and their cries rippled throughout the once-peaceful fields to fill the void left by the cessation of the bells with a sound far more vibrant than those stale chimes which had just called them to their uneaten meal.