Our Dried Voices (17 page)

Finally, in May 2224, the United Kingdom exited the arena, its army reduced to 300,000 soldiers. Algeria, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and France followed suit later that month. On July 4, the United States declared victory and pulled the ragged remnants of its former military might out of Africa. The rest of the alpha states did the same. The next day, the beta states also declared victory and exited the region. There were no relief efforts, no promises of international aid and no apologies whatsoever to the citizens of the African nations who had endured the greatest suffering throughout the war.

But Earth was a dying world, and Africa was merely the first casualty, no matter how hard the other five continents tried to ignore that fact. She had been dying for four billion years, from the moment the first microbe appeared in her oceans and began the gradual sapping of her resources. She had watched at first with amusement, then awe, then horror, as humans appeared, rising from hunched and innocent primates to stand erect on two legs, craning their necks like newly awoken monsters of Frankenstein and gazing greedily and immodestly over her flesh, then spreading, digging, cutting, poisoning and eating away at her body like some rabid cancer. By the 20th century she had lapsed into a coma, after more than 200 years of noxious coal fumes choked the once-pure breath from her body. One hundred years later, she gave no indication she would ever recover.

In 1900, the average temperature on Earth was 4.5 °C. By 2000, it had increased to 5.3 °C as the phenomenon of global warming began to take effect. Over the next 200 years, Earth’s temperature rose at increasingly greater rates, reaching 6.4 °C in 2100 and 7.6 °C in 2200. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, believed by most climatologists to be a primary cause of global warming, soared from about 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the 19th century to 380 ppm by 2000. By 2100, these levels had reached 620 ppm; by 2200, they had increased to 1120 ppm. As the Earth warmed, glaciers and polar ice caps melted and caused the seas to rise. They had risen steadily by 0.1-0.2 millimeters per year since 1000 B.C.E., but from 1900 until 2000, they rose an estimated 1-2 millimeters each year. They rose 300 millimeters by 2100 and an additional 400 by 2200. During this time, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Jakarta, Dhaka and New Orleans, as well as several other low-lying regions, were completely flooded. The seas also claimed parts of New York, Los Angeles, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Tokyo before dams could be built to stem the rising tides.

Irregularities and extremes in global weather patterns accompanied the increases in temperatures. Droughts became more frequent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in more densely populated regions, such as the areas surrounding Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Mexico City, São Paulo, Stockholm, Vienna and Moscow. The droughts often kindled violent wildfires, such as the 2189 blaze that decimated more than 10% of Los Angeles. At the same time, tropical storms and hurricanes also increased in number and intensity, and between 2050 and 2200, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane struck Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo at least once. Repeated onslaughts of tsunamis, tropical storms and hurricanes destroyed Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and several small islands in the Philippines and Japan. Yet these catastrophes were not limited to human beings and their empires of wood, mortar and steel. In those same 150 years, 100,000 different species of plants and animals went extinct, among them bald eagles, blue whales, right whales, leatherback turtles, black rhinoceroses, Asian elephants, zebras, gorillas, California condors, jaguars, tigers, orangutans and giant pandas. Gone too were 132 species of frogs, 37 species of toads, 28 species of salamanders, 73 species of turtles, 14 species of parrots, 6 species of salmon, 59 species of mice, 148 species of rats, 60 species of shrews, 155 species of bats and more than 75,000 species of plants.

Yet humans, far more adaptive and ingenious than any virus, long postponed the inevitable. The major damage had been perpetrated in the years before 2030. Thereafter, the human race devoted itself to saving its planet. Between the years 2030 and 2040 the United States reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by over 15% of its total from the previous decade. New technologies increased the efficiency of previous methods of energy production, and by 2047, 45% of all carbon dioxide emitted by power plants was captured and stored deep underground. In 2062, a Saudi Arabian physicist, Dr. Alim al Muwaffaq, unlocked the secret to power generation via nuclear fusion. In 2065, his countrymen built the world’s first fusion power plant. Ten more were built throughout the world over the next two years, and by 2078 there were 5,000 operational fusion plants worldwide.

In 2036, a South Korean automaker, Kwang Automotives, developed the first compressed air engine automobile having a range of over 2000 miles. By 2040, the company had sold 500 million of these cars. At mid-century, 85% of all cars in the world used some sort of non-petroleum fuel source. A completely petroleum-free commercial airplane, the Vesper VII, flew across the Atlantic Ocean in 2098, powered by compressed air and solar and hydrogen-based energy. A decade later, a revamped Vesper carried passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney. By 2147, 35% of all commercial airplanes were powered entirely by non-fossil fuels.

Yet despite their countless innovations, humans remained powerless to alter one basic fact: they could not make their world any larger. And this was the unassailable quandary that faced humanity in the 21st and 22nd centuries. Without their countless innovations, the human population would have almost certainly dwindled in number as a result of war, disease and self-pollution. In time, perhaps only the best and brightest of the species would have remained, those capable of caring for themselves and their precious habitat. But in providing new solutions to every problem facing them, the thinkers of the race, the scientists, doctors and inventors, successfully thwarted the law of the jungle, at least temporarily. Cures for disease and stop-losses for global warming meant a better, healthier environment, and as a result, the human race thrived. The population boomed, but this growth only meant less food and more pollution. While global warming might have culled human population to a sustainable level, stalling global warming meant more humans, more greenhouse gases, fewer resources, more wars and even more global warming.

The only solution for humankind was to expand its empire, and that meant finding another habitable planet and the technology to reach it. In 2054, Japan announced that its scientists had designed and built a spaceship capable of transporting human beings to Mars. The Japanese attempted a manned mission in 2056, but the ship’s navigational system malfunctioned one-third of the way into the journey, forcing a return to Earth. A second mission in 2059 also failed. However, in 2061, a team of American, British and Japanese astronauts aboard
Mars Odyssey III
successfully landed on the red planet. The journey took three months from Earth to Mars, and the astronauts spent two days exploring the planet’s surface before returning home. Buoyed by the success of this mission, a team of private investors from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Iran pooled their considerable resources to found Space Exploration for Sustained Human Life (SESHL, more commonly referred to as Seashell). As its name suggested, Seashell investors possessed the single-minded goal of finding a hospitable planet to serve as a new home for humankind.

After decades of exploratory dead ends, Seashell-funded scientists announced in 2092 that they had discovered an Earth-like planet approximately sixteen light-years from Earth. This planet, later named Pearl, was believed to be rocky, about half the size of Earth, and potentially bearing surface water. It orbited a dim red star comparable to the Earth’s sun, called Falder 347, with a mean orbital radius of 56 million kilometers. The only problem, assuming Pearl was capable of sustaining life, was how to get there. In 2101, Seashell scientists built a satellite,
Pearl I
, to attempt a voyage to that distant world. The satellite was powered by a modified version of the Bussard ramjet prototype, renamed the Petrov ramjet after its designer, the Russian aeronautical engineer Dr. Ilya Petrov. The Petrov ramjet was driven by a fusion rocket capable of propelling the satellite at 70% light speed. The massive quantity of fuel necessary for this sustained fusion reaction could not be carried on board the satellite but instead was gathered in the form of hydrogen gas from the interstellar medium by a series of electro-magnetic fields, 50 kilometers in diameter. These magnetic fields collected and compressed the hydrogen to generate a thermonuclear-fusion reaction, then directed the energy of that reaction opposite to the intended direction of travel to produce the forward acceleration of the ramjet.

However, when collected while the ramjet traveled against the stellar winds, these hydrogen ions created a significant drag force equal to the mass of ions collected per second multiplied by the velocity of the ions as propelled by the winds, estimated to be about 500,000 meters per second. Seashell scientists decided
Pearl I
could not travel in a straight line, but instead would have to maneuver like a sailboat, tacking back and forth to either reduce drag force or maximize the effect of tailwinds. By traveling straight ahead at its maximum velocity of 70% light speed,
Pearl I
could have reached its destination in just under twenty-three years. Yet given the problem of stellar winds, the satellite would require an onboard navigational system to direct the craft in relation to wind patterns. Accounting for these course adjustments, Seashell estimated it might take up to 60 years to reach Pearl. Nevertheless,
Pearl I
was launched on January 1, 2103.

While they waited for their satellite to arrive at its destination, Seashell worked to improve the ramjet design, launching a new prototype satellite every five years from 2103 to 2143. In 2146, Seashell announced that
Pearl II
had crashed on Pearl, but its video equipment had been damaged and no images of the planet were available. Two more satellites were launched in 2148 and 2153, and in 2157
Pearl IV
successfully completed an orbit of the planet. Video confirmed what Seashell had believed all along: Pearl, indeed, seemed capable of supporting human life.

Further verification came courtesy of video from
Pearl VII
in 2160 and
Pearl IX
in 2164, convincing Seashell the time had come for the first manned mission to Pearl. The organization launched the generation ship
Pearl Voyager I
in 2170. The
Voyager
carried four devoted Seashell astronauts and their spouses, all of them committed to conceiving and rearing children to carry on the mission in their stead. Unfortunately its communication systems failed ten years into the journey and the ship was lost forever.
Pearl Voyager II
was launched in 2184, but mechanical failures forced it to return to Earth in 2199. Growing impatient, Seashell launched a third manned mission in 2191, while
Voyager II
was still en route, and in 2225, the astronauts aboard
Pearl Voyager III
became the first humans to orbit Pearl.

The next logical step would have been an attempt to land a manned spacecraft on the planet, but World War IV had given the Seashell investors reason to doubt the future viability of Earth as a cradle of human life. By the time
Voyager III
completed its orbit, Seashell had already drafted plans for a colony on Pearl. Over the next two years, 56 manned
Voyager
ships were sent to Pearl to erect the colony’s foundations, while Seashell undertook the construction of a massive generation ship, a ramjet-powered spacecraft capable of transporting thousands of people to Pearl. New designs had improved upon the aerodynamics of the old ramjet model, allowing for speeds of up to 90% light speed, but a generation ship the size of the
Pearl Colonizer
, with magnetic fields approximately 1,000 kilometers in diameter, was expected to travel much slower. Those astronauts who left Earth on the
Colonizer
would not survive the journey and the mission would have to be carried out by their descendants.

Seashell completed construction of the
Colonizer
in 2235 and launched the ship on December 31 of that year. Excluding the enormous magnetic fields, her body was 70 meters wide, 400 meters long and 70 meters high. She carried 3,245 human passengers and crew from all over the globe, 100 embryos of 20 species of livestock, and had a greenhouse with artificial sunlight capable of growing enough food to sustain 5,000 people for 200 years.

Seventeen years into the voyage, an estimated one-fifth the total distance to Pearl, the
Colonizer
lost contact with Seashell headquarters on Earth. The crew contemplated turning back but decided against it, fearing the worst had happened to their comrades back home. On June 21, 2325 the
Colonizer
landed on Pearl.

About the Author

Greg Hickey was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1985. After graduating from Pomona College in 2008, he played and coached baseball in Sweden and South Africa. He is now a forensic scientist, endurance athlete and award-winning writer. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.