Project Sail (16 page)

The
Sergey Gorshkov,
of the Russian Federation.

19. Food for Thought

Professor Matthew Carlson did not understand why people still referred to the Additive Food Processing Station as a 3D Printer; it had little in common with those crude machines of the twenty-first century.

But as he opened the access panel, the pungent, rotting odor of spoiled protein paste and souring dairy granulates made him understand why some chose more colorful names to describe the contraption.

Nonetheless, he preferred sticking his nose into the foul innards of the faulty machine to sticking his nose into the conversation at the table behind him in the
Virgil’s
canteen. After days of snide remarks, the friction between Leo Wren the atheist and Ira King the believer escalated into direct confrontation.

Carlson shined a penlight into the cabinet, illuminating cylinders connected to hoses. Behind him, the debate raged with Wren firing the first volley.

“What God allows an entire nation to be wiped out by a batch of bacteria? Or were they sinners?”

Carlson spied the source of the problem but had to turn away; the odor caused his stomach to lurch.

“You clearly do not understand the New Christian way,” King explained in a voice that strived to sound calm and motherly but carried a tone of aggravation in every consonant. “God provided us with our world and has stood aside to let us do with it as we will, for better or worse.”

“Man did not create viruses or tsunamis; they came with the fucking planet, gifts from your great flying spaghetti monster.”

She said, “Some bad can come from the world but how can you deny the existence of a Creator when you see how perfect the Earth is for mankind? The air, the water, the balance between land and sea; ideal for man.”

Carlson’s light found the guilty tube; a pink cartridge with a smiling cartoon pig and script lettering proclaiming, “Southern Sense Pork Concentrate: The Flavor of Real Boar Protein now with extended shelf life and yield!”

The seal between the cylinder and hose had loosened and paste oozed down the package into a stale puddle. The sour smell came from an older spill; someone had replaced the dairy cylinder but had not cleaned the mess.

This bothered Carlson nearly as much as the conversation at the table. He did not understand how an adult could leave such filth for someone else to clean up.

“So you say there is a God because Earth is perfect for mankind? Let me ask you Doctor, is the Grand Canyon the perfect vessel for a river?”

“I do not follow.”

Carlson did, but he focused on pulling free the tube of pork flavoring, releasing a sharp odor of plastic mixed with bacon.

“The Grand fucking Canyon is perfect for the Colorado River because the river carved it. You only have the Grand Canyon because of the fucking river, not the other way around. So it’s not that Earth is perfect for humans, it’s that humanity is the form of life that would evolve on a planet like ours. Earth was not made for us; we were born from it.”

“You are a foul-mouthed person with a mind so weak that you fall back on obscenities instead of making coherent points. Did you ever even read The Bible?”

“I read the three testaments and I loved the Old Testament. A flood that wipes out the whole population, the slaughter of every man, woman, and child in Jericho, and telling the Israelites to kill everyone on their promised land. That is cool shit right there. Now the New Testament, that was too soft; God went from a bad ass to a pussy.”

Carlson pulled the loose tube of Pork stuff free and used a moist cloth to clean the hose and the cylinder. The smell grew more intense but he fought through the urge to vomit.

Wren went on, “But the New, New Testament—”

King corrected, “The Book of Reconciliation.”

“That shit was just loony. First he uses a burning bush, then he sends his son, but then he speaks to his flock of sheep on the internet?”

“God reaches out to his people using the tools of the times, and in a manner that emphasizes his message.”

“So ninety years ago the best way to reach his people was to send a message through everyone’s computer?”

Ellen Kost said, “That and other devices like phones and tablets; all the electronics that were tied to the ‘net at the time.”

Wren cocked his head in her direction.

“When I was in school I wrote a paper on God’s message of 2023.”

Carlson wedged the cleaned cylinder between the vial of “Simulated Chicken” and the generic “Multi-Purpose Protein Pack” responsible for foods that did not fall into the other categories.

King fired back at Wren with a surprising surge of confidence, “And there is your proof, Dr. Wren.”

He countered in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “So you think it more likely that God hijacked the internet one day as opposed to a hacker group playing a joke?”

“No one ever traced the source of the message,” she pointed out. “There was never evidence of a hacker and the best computer experts of that day could not breach the security of so many major systems.”

After tightening the hoses, Carlson used another damp cloth and a plastic knife to attack the dried dairy stain, scraping away the patch of gunk.

“Over the years researchers have recreated the entire cyber-attack.”

King replied, “In faulty simulations. No one has demonstrated how any person could have undertaken such a widespread takeover of so many systems at once. It was God’s message and it was exactly what the people needed to hear.”

“Marching orders from their overlord?”

“A message of unity. At the time, Earth was dominated by three major religions and dozens of smaller ones. There were religious wars, intolerance, and a constant clash of ideologies, even though those religions worshiped essentially the same God. Within ten years New Christianity had supplanted them as the primary belief system among religious people.”

Wren stood and walked to the coffeepot near the food station.

He said, “The wars never stopped and there were public executions in some places of people who converted. It was fucking nasty.”

“No, that is revisionist history. It was a mainly peaceful transition because the proof came with the three promised miracles, each within eighteen months. No one could deny the truth.”

“Science accounted for all three.”

Carlson finished his work, shut the cabinet, and stood. He found Wren next to him pouring coffee and worried he would be dragged into the conversation, so he inputted an order even though his stomach ached at the thought of those vats of goo. He selected a chicken breast with a side of pasta. Spray jets and hoses went to work inside the processor like needles knitting a sweater.

King called across the room, “Religion is about faith, but the miracles that followed the message were indisputable. Science could not explain them away.”

A chime announced the completion of Carlson’s meal. He opened the lid to find a white, fibrous patty and a thatch of noodles that seemed a plastic imitation of pasta.

Wren elbowed him and nodded toward King as he said, “Can you believe her?”

Carlson—focused on his plate—replied, “I do not want any of this crap.”

Wren mistook his comment and said, “Me neither, but let’s take a look at these so-called miracles.”

Their conversation was temporarily interrupted by Kelly Thomas and Commander Hawthorne moving into and across the canteen on their way toward the cargo compartments. Judging by their shorts and t-shirts, they planned another handball lesson.

Clearly, Hawthorne had told a joke and Kelly was laughing at the punch line. Her giggle drew Carlson’s eyes from his plate of processed meal; otherwise he would have paid her no attention. He found her loud and bubble-headed. Unlike most of the men aboard the
Virgil,
he did not find her attractive, for various reasons.

That being the case, the relationship between Thomas and Hawthorne did pique his curiosity. He was not sure they were having sex, despite how much time they spent together.

The pair moved on, their voices bouncing off the bulkheads as they disappeared to aft.

Carlson returned his attention to the newly manufactured chicken and pasta dish sitting atop the food processor. Normally he did not mind meals from the processor but the stench from the leaky tubes had chased his appetite.

Wren returned to his seat.

“Not every Bible-thumper believes in the miracles; New Christians are not as unified as you like to think.”

She answered, “You exaggerate. The media likes to give attention to the malcontents and to paint religious people in a negative light. That does not change the truth of the miracles.”

“What you call miracles, I call science. What order should I tackle them in?”

King huffed but did not answer.

“Fuck it, we’ll do it chronologically. The asteroid came first, right?”

“No,” she corrected through grit teeth.

“The so-called black hole.”

“It
was
a black hole, created by the Tevatron II Particle Accelerator three months after the message.”

“Not according to the people who manned the Tevatron. The accident had nothing to do with an experiment. There was an explosion and a cave in, the result of human error in managing the power supply and shoddy construction. The collider had just come online.”

King said, “To put it in language you would understand, bull shit. One researcher called his wife and told her the world was ending, and then he killed himself.”

He scoffed, “He was a fucking technician with a history of mental illness in the middle of a divorce.”

She insisted, “Watch the contemporary newscasts, before the skeptics started their rewrite. Several workers at the complex stated they had created a black hole that was devouring the matter around the collider. Almost half the building was lost.”

“The investigation blamed an explosion and a collapse because of poor construction, not the collider. Besides, a particle accelerator cannot create a stable black hole.”

Carlson pulled his eyes away from the tray of formed goo, raised his finger as a point came to mind, and then dropped it as he remembered he wanted no part of their discussion. Instead, he turned his attention to a shelf and rummaged through cans of food that served as emergency rations, hoping to find something not made from tube gunk.

King growled at Wren, “Then why did the other major supercolliders on Earth introduce nearly one hundred new safety protocols dealing with particle experiments? Why were the sensors that monitored Tevatron damaged, destroying records of the event? I will tell you why; because the sensors were like the black box on a space capsule and they wanted to hide the reason the collider crashed. It was a black hole, and it would have consumed the Earth but God stopped it. The first miracle.”

“You do not understand the science behind particle accelerators. This is like arguing with a bulkhead,” he shot and took another sip. “But let’s move on to number two. An asteroid a mile wide freaks everyone out when it comes around the sun and takes us by surprise. You fucking people see it as God’s judgment and call it a miracle. I don’t see how that one fits.”

“You are forgetting that it was going to hit Earth.”

“No it wasn’t. Three days after they discovered the asteroid, astronomers calculated it would bounce off the atmosphere.”

“Wrong again, Dr. Wren. Astronomers at the time predicted impact within days. The major powers moved political leaders to bunkers and there were evacuations around the Pacific Rim. At the time, they were certain it would hit.”

Wren shook his head but conceded nothing. To Carlson, it appeared as if he enjoyed playing with her, like dragging a string in front of a cat.

King said, “The newscasts of the time predicted a disaster that would have wiped out hundreds of millions, but then the asteroid missed. Science was wrong, God was right.”

“You think the news broadcasts are the best source of information? Are you fucking nuts? The real astronomers…the real scientists…not the knee-jerk God-fearing imbeciles did the math and realized it would miss.”

“You don’t even pretend to have an open mind,” King huffed. “But you can debate the Tevatron incident and even the asteroid, but you cannot ignore what happened in Seoul. An atomic bomb detonated downtown, and no one died. The third miracle.”

Wren chuckled and leaned back in his chair as if incredibly relaxed. King projected the same demeanor of confidence. Both felt they were about to win the argument.

“When you say it like that, it sounds like a miracle,” he conceded. “But like everything else with you people, look close and the whole pile of crap falls apart.”

He leaned forward again and his chair hit the metal floor with a
clang
. Wren then ticked off his list one after another too fast for her to respond.

“First, the bomb accidentally detonated in an underground parking garage. Second, it occurred in the middle of the night in a business district with no one around and the skyscrapers lessened the shock wave. Third, the terrorists used a crude bomb that detonated at a fraction of its potential. Oh yeah and fourth, there were people killed, at least two hundred in the initial blast and a couple hundred more from radiation poisoning. I call bull shit on number three.”

When he finally stopped to take a breath she said, “As usual, people like you have spent years trying to come up with phony reasons to pick apart what was a miracle. You use the filter of time, hoping that people forget what actually occurred so your excuses will take hold. A terrorist organization protesting New Christianity exploded a nuclear weapon in the heart of a major city and the casualty count was so low, people attributed it to divine intervention. You offer weak excuses so you can ignore events your science fails to understand.”

The volume of both voices increased.

“You can’t really be so stupid as to believe this nonsense!”

“You aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are!”

Carlson found a package of crackers that was part of an emergency rations cache. He held it in one hand, eyed the combatants, and then said, “I’ve lost my appetite.”