The 2084 Precept (47 page)

"You also mentioned travel and
transport?"

"Oh yes, those as well. We now have over 1
billion land vehicles on the planet. Of these, an average of 150
million are underway
at all times
, day and night, burning
fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere."

"Now that
is
a huge amount of
pollution. Non-stop, did you say?"

"Non-stop. Permanently. Day and night. And
at the same time, Jeremy, there are over 40 million airplane
flights per year; that is over 100,000 flights per day; more than
one flight per second. In other words, there are between 10,000 and
15,000 planes in the air
at all times,
massively polluting
our excruciatingly thin atmosphere, without pausing for breath if
you will forgive the pun. From this purpose alone, we burn one
billion liters of kerosene each year and create 650 million tons of
carbon dioxide. And much of this is totally unnecessary. We
transport football teams across continents to world championships,
European championships, South American championships, African
championships, and even 'friendly' test games go intercontinental.
In addition to the national teams, we also do this for individual
club championships: you name it, football teams, handball teams,
basketball teams, volleyball teams, hockey teams, cycle-racing
teams, squash teams, badminton teams, swimmers, skiers,
ski-jumpers, tennis players, track athletes, horses and their
riders, Formula I drivers and their cars, truck racers and their
trucks, rally drivers and their cars and/or their motorbikes—I
would need half an hour to give you a complete list of everything,
Jeremy, including chess tournaments. And all of that is accompanied
by thousands of trainers, managers, mechanics, medics, and
others—and of course, masses of spectators, family members, T.V.
crews, journalists and so on. And this is all multiplied by the U21
teams, the U19 teams, the U17 teams and—believe me, Jeremy—the U15
teams."

I paused. Is there anything else? Oh yes,
there is plenty. The money is good. I'll give him his money's worth
every time.

"We also transport tons of chicken feet
from, for example, the U.S.A. and Europe to China."

"Chicken feet?"

"Yes, we would normally throw them away here
but the Chinese like them. Whether it's the poor Chinese, because
chicken feet don't cost much, or whether it's because they are a
delicacy there, I am not quite sure. But someone figured out that
there was business to be done, so there you go. Same as the
turtles."

"The turtles?"

"River turtles, Jeremy. The Chinese like
them as well. So much, in fact, that they have just about killed
off all of the turtles to be found in their rivers and so the
U.S.A. does them the favor of selling them tons and tons of turtles
every year, so that they can continue to enjoy their turtle soup.
But we pollute the air with thousands of other ridiculous transport
activities, Jeremy. It would really take me a lot of time to
mention them all, the ones I know about, that is. So, if I may, let
me turn to another very major item. Manufacturing plants.
Industrial air pollution."

"O.K., O.K., Peter, presumably that is
getting out of control as well. I think I have the overall picture
well enough, thank you. Do you think you could just round off the
subject with a brief summary of what you are all doing about it, or
at least trying to do about it? I appreciate that you have told me
about what you are
not
doing, but someone must be doing
something, surely, something effective?"

"We are doing virtually nothing, Jeremy. We
can't even take the first few baby steps, like stopping car and
truck racing. It would be easy enough you might think, surely our
species has a few thousand other things with which to amuse itself?
Non-polluting things? But no…the answer is no."

"But you
are
aware of how thin and
fragile your atmosphere is, and that there are now over 7 billion
of you humans polluting it?"

"Yes, we are aware. Some of us, anyway, and
certainly those in charge, the elected clowns. They have made a
draft of another of those useless agreements I told you about. They
have decided that it would be a good idea to limit our activities
in order to prevent the increase in our planet's temperature from
exceeding an additional 2 degrees. Not to
prevent
any
further increase, mark you, let alone—heaven forbid—to
reduce
it. But the whole thing is useless and laughable
anyway. The agreement is due to be ratified in the year 2020, by
which time, at the current accelerating pollution and population
rates, we will have exceeded the intended limit before the
agreement even comes into effect. If it ever does of course—that is
yet another of those 'agreements' in which certain major polluting
countries are refusing to participate."

"Again," said Jeremy.

Amazing, isn't it? Frankly, and maybe no-one
would agree with me, but if you were to relegate all participating
birdbrains to a secure, padded and sound-proofed meeting room in an
institute of their choice for the mentally ill, and place them
under the chairmanship of, say, a mixed Iranian/Syrian/North Korean
coal miners' association, the results would not be much
different.

"Yes. Again," I replied. "And so here we are
still in the springtime, and we have already emitted another 14
billion tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere since the
beginning of the year."

"Did you say 14 million or
billion
?

"
Billion
, Jeremy. 14 billion
tons."

"In just a few months?"

"In just a few months."

"And you know that your atmosphere is only
100 kilometers thick." Jeremy sighed. He was sounding somewhat
bewildered again. "Amazing. Interesting. Extraordinary. Well…I
think I have enough data on this section to do my research on, and
so perhaps we could call it a day. Enough is enough, as you
say."

"No Jeremy," I said. "With all due respect,
enough is not enough. There is more."

"Not enough?"

"Not enough, because we do not only pollute
our planet and its atmosphere. Oh no. We don't stop there."

"Alright, Peter. Tell me, tell me."

"Well, we worked out how to deal with
gravity and we can now orbit our planet, reach our one and only
moon, and in fact send devices to other planets, even to the end of
our planetary system and beyond. And what does that mean? It means
that in less than 50 years, we have, in our usual inimitable
fashion, created a vast junkyard up there, 12,000 detectable pieces
of scrap—detectable being a length of 8 centimeters or more—all
zooming along at speeds of between 15,000 and 30,000 kilometers per
hour. Not to mention the much larger number of undetectable pieces,
all orbiting at the same speeds and therefore, irrespective of how
small, equally capable of causing severe damage to a spacecraft, a
satellite, or even the International Space Station which is
orbiting at a height of around 350 kilometers."

"And what exactly are these pieces of
junk?"

"These pieces of junk are an estimated 7,000
tons of abandoned rocket stages, dead satellites and all kinds of
miscellaneous scrap, including scrap left over from destructive
'tests' of anti-satellite weapons and chance collisions. Our
scientists have determined as a mathematical fact that some of the
smaller pieces of debris will continue to hit the larger objects
and smash them into hundreds of pieces, thereby exponentially
increasing the probability of more such events. An accelerating
chain reaction, in effect, threatening hundreds of satellites and
anything else that dares to venture out there."

"And so what are you doing about it?"

"You would think, Jeremy, wouldn't you, that
we would at least stop doing things to further aggravate the
situation. But you would be wrong. Only recently, we fired a rocket
into space to destroy an old weather satellite. The Chinese this
time, testing a newly-developed anti-satellite weapon. The test was
successful and created over 1,000 new pieces of debris. At a height
of about 800 kilometers, which means that the debris will remain in
space for thousands or even millions of years."

"Garbage creation without garbage
collection," said Jeremy.

"Yes, and you had better hope that we never
discover how to travel throughout our galaxy, let alone to other
galaxies. It wouldn't take us long to turn the whole universe into
a huge, glorious, stinking, human-style shithouse."

"It sounds as if indeed it wouldn't," said
Jeremy. "That is, in between taking time off now and again to kill
each other and presumably any other species you might happen to
chance upon as well. But then, that is not of course going to
happen."

"Maybe not, but it might."

"No, Peter, it won't. Either you manage to
improve yourselves, mutate into a benevolent and caring species
which will accordingly respect its environment and everything else,
or the Governing Committee will take the necessary steps. In fact,
it may do so anyway, in spite of what I might recommend. And even
that will depend on whether we ever get to meet your U.K. prime
minister, not to mention your world powers."

He certainly had everything worked out in
his head. Did he make it all up as we went along, or had he created
this whole delusion and all of its multitudinous details in
advance? An interesting query, sure enough, and one which is
beginning to preoccupy my neurons from time to time.

Let me help him further along the delusional
trail.

"And how long do you think it will take for
your committee to reach a decision?" I asked.

"Oh, I think they will decide within the
next three weeks or so. That's quite fast for us. We live about
fifteen times longer than you do—an average of around 1,200 of your
planet years compared to, say, 80 years in your case."

"You live for 1,200 years! Well…and if you
don't mind my asking, Jeremy, how old are you at this moment?"

"I am only 28 years old. Extremely young,
still a student."

"And so you only have another 1,172 years to
go?"

Jeremy smiled. "More or less, yes; but then
I, like you, will die."

You sure will, I thought to myself, and in
your case while still believing that you've got over 1,100 years to
go. He must have spent years developing this fantasy. I can imagine
the psychiatrists drooling with delight when they eventually lay
their hands on him again. If they ever manage to, that is.

"O.K.," I said, "so back to your Governing
Committee. It
could
take a decision tomorrow if it wanted
to?"

"It could, but it won't. My professor tells
me they prefer to wait and see if we have any success in getting
the world's powers together."

"So that is at least is a small measurement
of achievement? A brief delay?"

"Yes, Peter, but it doesn't get rid of the
urgency in any way. In which regard, do you think we could have our
meeting on the fifth agenda item fairly soon? The day after
tomorrow, for example?"

"No problem, but I will be visiting Slough
that morning. It would have to be after lunch. Say around 1.30
p.m.?"

"Agreed. And hopefully the authorities will
have contacted you again in the meantime and you can fill me in on
what is, or is not going to happen."

"Will do, Jeremy. See you then."

I gave the small, frail-looking girl a big
smile on the way out. Miss Monroe, sexy name. Could be another
blinking red light to be checked out when I've finished with my
Céline depression, who knows?

Same weather, a meteorological depression to
match my emotional one. I decided not to go to work today; I would
just bill for about four hours or so of analytical tasks (never a
good idea to overbill too much).

I decided to have breakfast in Curzon
Street. I went down to the hotel breakfast room for a Lavazza
first, and then headed out through the lobby. Little Miss Ugly was
there, another big smile from her. And also there was Delsey
himself, sitting in a lounge chair waiting for me. It is truly
amazing how that guy always manages to look as if the end of the
world is nigh. And not only nigh, but not even enough time left to
have a cup of coffee before it happens. He reminds me of nothing so
much as Banksy’s famous or - as some would say - infamous rendering
of Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
(or, more correctly, of one of the
seven versions Van Gogh painted). An immaculate depiction of
portending catastrophe.

He stood up. "Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue,"
he said with a smile, a morose one of course, but hey, a smile is a
smile, good for him.

"Good morning, Mr. Delsey," I said. "Brought
my mobile with you, have you?"

"Yes, of course," he said. "Please accept
our apologies for the delay." And he took my phone out of his
pocket and gave it to me.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Nothing untoward, except for that Madeira
number of course." He looked at me, not really expecting me to
elaborate, and I didn't. I looked at the phone instead.

"Done anything to it?" I asked. Not that I
really cared.

"Of course not, sir." Surprise, surprise, I
have become a sir.

"In any case," he continued, "we would need
approval to do something like that and, to be honest, we would have
difficulty in justifying such a request at this stage."

"At this stage?"

"Well, Mr. O'Donoghue," he replied, "We
don't know where all of this is going to lead us, do we? You have
created waves, you and Mr. Parker, and you can't expect to be left
to your own devices until we have got to the bottom of it, now can
you?"

"No, I can't and no I don't. So why don't
you tell me what you and your bosses are doing about it." The word
'
why
' does not imply a question. It is just that I am one of
many who have adopted the American phrase '
why don't you'
as
a replacement for the simpler and more courteous word
'please'
. I think the Americans find it useful for whenever
they do not actually want to say 'please' to anybody. So do I.