CHAPTER 18 – STEPPING AWAY FROM ARMAGGEDON
15 :11 (Washington Time)
Monday, December 15, 2087
The Oval Office, The White House
Washington, D.C., USA
President Charles Lewis reread twice a particular paragraph of the executive summary of the report he was holding in his hands, then looked up at his science advisor, Doctor Janet Russell.
‘’How solid is this data, Janet?’’
‘’Pretty solid, Mister President. It was collected by over thirty scientific stations worldwide and verified by our top climatologist experts. What this study says is that global temperatures have gone down for the second year in a row, and this after temperatures have been steadily rising non-stop for over ninety years. I will concede that these two decreases in temperature may sound insignificant to most people, being respectively 0.3 and 0.5 degrees Celsius, but our experts are convinced that this confirms one thing: we are finally winning the battle against global warming, thanks to our atmosphere CO2 scrubbers and our new thermonuclear power plants, which have allowed us to finally phase out our last fossil fuel power plants.’’
Lewis sat back in his padded chair and let out a sigh of relief while closing his eyes for a second.
‘’Thank God! To be able to finally see an end to this calamity… How long do you expect that it will take before we could hope to see temperatures, as well as sea levels, return to the normal levels we were accustomed to at the start of this century?’’
‘’Uh, that is a pretty hard thing to guess, Mister President, especially concerning the sea levels, but it will certainly take many decades, maybe a century or more before we could return to 2000 levels. Now is definitely not the time to slack off our efforts, on the contrary. Our people should be made to clearly understand that before someone raises false hopes and tries to cut the budgets for our climate control efforts.’’
‘’You’re too true about that, Janet: we have no shortages of politicians and industrialists who can’t see further than their noses…or their wallets. I will thus instruct my cabinet secretaries along those lines. Could you prepare a presentation based on this report, to be shown to the cabinet by Friday?’’
‘’Friday is quite a short deadline, Mister President, but I will do my best.’’
‘’Good! Another thing: I fully expect some of my secretaries to use this report to cut or even terminate all support for the Mars Home Project, under the excuse that it is now made redundant by our climate progress. What should I say to that?’’
Janet Russell, a 53 year-old physicist, stiffened at once at that question and answered it in a resolute tone of voice.
‘’Tell them that it would be a most stupid decision, Mister President. After over forty years of herculean efforts, our colony on Mars is now on the path to self-sufficiency. However, it will still need many more decades of material and financial support before it becomes truly self-sufficient. In fact, I estimate that we will need to support our Mars colony for at least fifty more years. Yes, it is already able to welcome immigrants from Earth who were refugees from climate disasters and actually helped over 10,000 such refugees to resettle on Mars during the last few years, but there is still a lot left to be done.’’
‘’I see! Well, I suppose that I will need all of my legendary leadership and oratory skills for that Friday cabinet meeting and for the discussions and debates that will follow in Congress afterwards on this subject.’’
09:50 (GMT)
Friday, February 6, 2088
Apartment # 1015, Rosewood Tower, Southern District
Elysium City, Olympus Mons
Mars
‘’Here you are, Mister Djinigwina: your new family residence, Apartment 1015. It has three bedrooms, a lounge, a dining room with kitchenette, a complete bathroom and a separate washroom, plus a large storage closet and a balcony.’’
‘’Uh, it is Djiningwinan, Mister Robertson, not Djinigwina.’’ Corrected politely the thin 37 year-old man with dark skin and curly blond hair, making the building superintendant smile apologetically to Bo.
‘’Sorry about that, mister. Just out of curiosity, where are you from on Earth? I never heard a family name like yours before.’’
Bo nodded his head at that, understanding how the superintendant could be ignorant about that.
‘’Djiningwinan is a very old Australia Aboriginal name, sir. My ancestors arrived on the Australian continent some 60,000 years ago, coming from South-West Asia via a land bridge.’’
‘’Oh, I see!’’ said Nick Robertson, who then looked down at the three young children accompanying the newly arrived couple. ‘’Your children seem quite lively and good-spirited, Mister Djiningwinan.’’
‘’They certainly are, Mister Robertson. Let me present you my family: first, this is my wife, Merindah. Then, you have my ten year-old son Daku, my eight year-old daughter Bindi and, finally, my four year-old son Monti.’’
‘’And what kind of job will you have here on Mars, Mister Djiningwinan?’’
‘’Please, just call me ‘Bo’.’’ Replied the Aborigine, seeing that the superintendant had some real trouble pronouncing his name correctly.
‘’Only if you call me ‘Nick’.’’
‘’Deal! To answer you, I was offered a contract to work as a sheep shearer and herder for the sheep farm here. Until a couple of years ago, I was working as a sheep shearer at a sheep ranch in Southern Australia, but global temperature risings have transformed what had been rich grasslands into a parched desert. The sheep herds progressively died out and I finally decided to find another place to live when the ranch I worked for was forced to close for good some two years ago. Unfortunately, most of Australia was in no better shape and New Zealand, which had fared better than Australia, was already packed to over-capacity with refugees. My family had to live in a resettlement camp for two years before this opportunity presented itself to us.’’
Robertson nodded his head slowly at that story, having heard many similar sad tales from other immigrants to Mars during the last couple of decades.
‘’Sadly, too many people have lived through the same kind of misfortunes that you had to go through, Bo. However, you now have a chance at a brand new life here on Mars. The lifestyle may be totally different from what you knew on Earth, but it has many good points to it. For one thing, you may find our society here to be a lot more egalitarian and fair than what is found on Earth. Also, due to the special living conditions on Mars, our community group spirit is much stronger than usual. Here, everybody helps everyone.’’
‘’That is definitely to my liking, Nick.’’ said Bo, meaning it. ‘’Uh, with the time we arrived by ship on Mars, I am afraid that we kind of missed breakfast. Is there a place where we could eat at this hour? And talking about the hour: what kind of clock and calendar system do you use on Mars? I must confess that I didn’t read too deeply in my immigration guide brochure.’’
‘’First off, about food: no problems! Our cafeteria is open from five in the morning to ten in the evening, while we have a small night counter where you can get ready-to-eat food all night. You also can either eat in the communal dining room of the building or take out portions of food selected by you, to bring up to your apartment and eat it there. Your kitchenette has the basic appliances to help in that, including a microwave oven, a refrigerator, a coffee machine, a toaster oven and a hot plate. I can guide you and your family to our cafeteria afterwards if you wish so.’’
‘’That would be truly appreciated, Nick. You are really kind.’’
‘’Just doing my job, Bo. Now, about our system of time and dates. In the first decades of this colony, we simply used the standard Earth calendar and Earth time, based on Greenwich Time. However, as our population grew and started adapting to life on Mars, it was felt that depending on a time out of synch with our new home planet didn’t feel right. So, in 2074, thirty Earth years after the first successful landing on Mars, a new system was adopted. However, the old Earth system was also kept and can be referred to at anytime, especially when dealing with ships’ arrivals and with Earth-Mars communications. Watches now produced on Mars actually show both time and dating systems on demand. Now, the main things for you to know is that the Mars day, called properly ‘sol’, is nearly the same length as one Earth day. In fact, one sol is 24 hours and 37 minutes long. Then, the Mars year is 687 Earth days long or, more properly, 669.79 sols long. The decision was taken to split the Mars year in 24 months, with 22 of those months counting 28 days each and two months counting 27 days, for a total of 669 sols. The small fraction left is added every two years. Thus, while 44 Earth years have passed since the start of Human presence on Mars, we are now in the Year 23 of the Martian calendar and today is the fifth day of Tharsis, the second month of the Martian calendar. But don’t worry about those kind of details, Bo: nobody will be offended if you continue using Earth time.’’
‘’Still, I certainly intend to learn this Martian time and date system, Nick: I want to live in harmony with this planet, the way I did in my old ancestral land.’’
Robertson, his expression sober, gently patted his shoulder.
‘’I like your way of thinking, Bo. You and your family will make outstanding Martian citizens. Now, I will let you get out of your spacesuits and unpack your things, then will show you the facilities of this building. I strongly advise that you put on your ‘fat suits’ before leaving your apartment with me: one excited jump and you or one of your kids may end up all the way across the street…or in the middle of it and among the traffic. There is a weighing and filling station on the ground floor where you will be able to refill the integrated pouches of your fat suits with the appropriate weighing-down pads. I will now leave you and will return in half a hour, to bring you to the cafeteria.’’
Robertson then left the apartment, with Bo and Merindah exchanging smiles.
‘’He seems to be a truly nice man, I must say.’’ said Merindah, a short and thin, 31 year-old Aboriginal woman. Bo nodded his head at that.
‘’Indeed! If all the people here on Mars prove as nice as him, then leaving Earth will have been worth it. Well, let’s get out of these spacesuits. You remember in which suitcase we packed our fat suits?’’
‘’Yes I do, Bo!’’
Some 32 minutes later, Nick Robertson showed up at the door of their apartment, as promised. Merindah was the one who answered his knocks and opened the door wide for him.
‘’We are ready to go down, Nick.’’
Robertson nodded with satisfaction when he saw that the whole family was wearing their fat suits, technically called ‘Felt Weight Compensation Suits’, or FWCS.
‘’Excellent! First stop will be my office on the ground floor, where I will distribute the weighing-down pads appropriate for each of your suits.’’
Turning around, Nick led the small family to the nearest elevator and called a cabin. The ten-level ride down was both smooth and fast and the six of them soon stepped in the central hallway of the tower’s ground floor. As they were passing various offices and shops, Nick described them quickly for the family’s sake.
‘’To your right, you will see the entrance to the tower’s kindergarten and daycare center, where children of up to six years of age can be educated and cared for while their parents are out working. Your little son Monti will be able to go there, starting next Monday. Next, on your left, is the tower’s infirmary, where a nurse on duty will examine and treat residents as needed. If an injury or sickness proves above her ability to treat it, she will then have the patient transferred to the city’s hospital, which is a fully equipped and manned advanced medical facility. Then, you have the tower’s gymnasium, which has an assortment of exercise machines and weight-lifting equipment. Outside the tower, on its patio facing Lake Styx, you will find a large external pool, two tennis courts and, most importantly for you, a well-equipped children’s playground, complete with a sand square.’’
The eyes of the three Aboriginal children lit up at those last words, while grins came to their faces. Nick finally stopped in front of a large door bearing a sign saying ‘Superintendant’. The door was not locked and Nick simply opened it, letting the family inside a fairly large reception room where a mature woman sat behind a desk supporting a computer and a videophone. Nick turned half around and presented the woman to the Djiningwinans.
‘’This is Misses Juliette Chablis, my secretary and receptionist for the tower. Her job is to answer the questions and requests from the 693 present occupants of the tower and to help them as much as she can. Another secretary, Miss Minnie Makwando, fills the post during the evenings and nights. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to call them: they are here to help. Juliette, this is Bo Djiningwinan and his family. I will let you first record their arrival in the building and register them, then I will give them weighing pads for their fat suits.’’
Juliette, a medium-built woman in her mid-forties and with long brown hair, smiled to the Djiningwinans and signaled them to approach her desk.
‘’If you will please pass me for a minute your citizen cards, I will register you in, so that you can use all of the tower’s facilities without problems. What apartment are you occupying?’’
‘’Apartment 1015, Misses Chablis.’’ answered Bo while collecting the citizen identity cards of his wife and three children, which he then gave to the secretary. Juliette punched a few commands on her computer, then scanned the identity cards one after the other, punching in more commands with each card. Less than two minutes later, Juliette was giving back the cards to Bo while smiling to him.
‘’Here you are, sir. You and your family members are now fully registered as residents of this building, with full access to its services and facilities.’’
‘’Thank you very much, Misses Chablis.’’
Next, Nick led them to a weight scale and storage cabinet sitting in one corner of the receptionist’s office and had little Monti stand on the scale, which was designed to take account of Mars’ low gravity. Looking at the display showing the calculated total weight of weighing pads needed for the toddler boy, Nick then took out of the cabinet the appropriate number and size of pads needed for his FWCS and inserted them in the pouches sewn to his fat suit, distributing them around equally while talking aloud for the benefit of the Djiningwinans.
‘’The pads used in your fat suits are both flexible and compact, in order to keep comfortable the wearing of your fat suits, and do not absorb liquids, so they won’t become heavier if you are ever drenched by water. Their fabric also contains lead particles, which makes them denser and also provides you with some protection against radiations if you are ever accidentally exposed. I strongly urge you to wear your fat suits at all times during the day, including when practicing sports, so that your bodies could stay fit and strong enough to allow you to visit Earth in the future without encountering medical problems due to weakened bone structures and muscle mass. You should of course take off your fat suits before going to swim in our external pool. You will be each issued two spare sets of fat suits later tomorrow, so that you could wash the suit you wore on a given day, but remember to take out the pads before you put the suit in the washing machine. By the way, we have a communal Laundromat on this floor, with the cleaning products provided for free. As for the cleaning of your apartment, cleaning robots will take care of it, coming in on a daily schedule or on call. Your suits will be exchanged as needed in the future, as your children grow up. The only time when the wearing of a fat suit is advised against is in the case of women in late stages of pregnancy: they already have some extra weight to carry.’’
Merindah smiled on hearing that.
‘’That makes eminent sense, Nick. The administrators of the colony seems to have some solid common sense.’’
‘’Well, you certainly don’t want some nitwits to be in charge of this place, believe me. Just adapting to Mars is already a demanding task requiring constant attention and precautions. Well, your little Monti is now all fitted. Next!’’
Another fifteen minutes and the whole Djiningwinan family was ready to go, with their fat suits weighed down by pads. Bo jumped up and down a couple of times and flexed his arms and legs, testing the final result.
‘’This is neat! I feel nearly exactly as if on Earth, in normal gravity. Whoever thought about these suits was a genius. This is truly a simple, cheap and effective solution to a problem that could have caused a lot of long-term grief.’’
‘’Indeed! Well, time to lead you to our cafeteria, so that you could have brunch.’’ said Nick before leading the family out of the office and in the central hallway, where he walked them to the building’s cafeteria. The spacious room, well illuminated by large windows covering three of its walls, was nearly deserted at the time, something that didn’t surprise Nick. Only a handful of residents and one attendant at the food counter were present at the time. Bo and Merindah were struck by the fact that there was no need for them to register their use of the cafeteria, nor did the attendant ask for their identity cards before serving them. Such a concept of free food on demand was already a striking difference to life on Earth, where either money or a ration card was needed to get something to eat. While the lunch menu items were not yet ready to be served, the brunch items proved to be both abundant and varied, with Bo and his family settling on omelets with a variety of bacon, sausages, potatoes and toasts. Nick accompanied them to their selected table but only took a cup of coffee for himself, sipping it slowly while exchanging small talk with the Djiningwinans and describing to them in more detail the facilities and services available at the tower.
Once the Aboriginal family had finished eating, Nick led them to a large vertical display panel set near the main entrance of the building.
‘’This is an interactive digital map of Elysium City and of its various annexes, which form a large ring around the shores of Lake Styx. The cavern containing Lake Styx and the city has a diameter of 5,740 meters at water level, with the ceiling being 13,100 meters above us. We are here, in the Southern District, near the southern access elevator well. Connected to the city’s ring at right angles, like the pokes of a wheel, are a total of twelve large annexes, each 1,500 meters long and 250 meters wide. Those annexes, which can be individually sealed in cases of emergencies, like fires and accidental decompressions, are used as either agricultural centers, fish farms or industrial complexes and are where the majority of the city residents are employed. We have only one sheep farm, situated in the nearby South-southeast Farming Complex, so I suppose that it is there that you are going to work, Bo. Its entrance is about 300 meters to the east of here, an easy walking distance. Lakeside Boulevard, the main artery of Elysium City, forms a closed loop around the lake and gives access to the whole city and its annexes via a well-served bus route that literally runs around the city. You can also call a robotic taxi from a console at the reception desk if you need one. The present annexes are regularly dug further and enlarged as we add new industries and agricultural complexes to the city. As you were able to see by yourself on arrival, the city has plenty of trees, bushes and grass areas everywhere. Those contribute both to the quality of life and to a clean atmosphere in the city. The atmosphere over the lake is also breathable. By the way, despite the abundance of patios with BBQ grills you will see around, including next to our external pool, BBQ grills are strictly of the electric type, to avoid polluting the air. The only places where you will see functioning smoking ovens will be in specialized food factories, where special air filtration and recycling units have been installed. To come back to this building, the nearest primary school is here, some 200 meters away. That’s where your Daku and Bindi will go on Monday. Well, that’s about it for the moment. Do you have any questions, Bo?’’
‘’In truth, I would have tons of them but I can’t even decide which ones yet. I will however make a point of chatting with other residents of the tower later today, at suppertime and in the evening. Thinking of it, I would have one question now: would I be allowed to go visit the sheep farm today, even though I am not due to work there before Monday?’’
‘’You certainly can, Bo. In fact, I am sure that the farm manager would be most happy to see you and talk to you about your past experience in Australia. I could call him in advance to set up a meeting with him this afternoon, if you wish so.’’
‘’Uh, to be truthful, I mainly wanted to see their sheep herd: The last sheep herds I saw alive was some nearly three years ago Seeing them again would remind me of the old country.’’
‘’I can perfectly understand that, Bo.’’ said soberly Nick. ‘’All areas and annexes of the city are open to all, except in certain parts of our industrial complexes which could present hazards to visitors. Feel free to visit them whenever you want. On this, I will leave you and your family free to go and walk around. If you need anything, just come and see me or Juliette.’’
‘’We will! Thank you for everything, Nick!’’
‘’My pleasure, Bo.’’ replied Nick before walking back to his office, leaving the Djiningwinans alone in the entrance lobby. Bo and Merindah exchanged looks, with Merindah smiling to her husband.
‘’Maybe we could go see first that Lake Styx, Bo: the idea of a lake on Mars intrigues me.’’
‘’I agree! Let’s go, kids!’’
Finding their way to the lake was easy enough, as the Rosewood Tower sat facing it. They discovered then that huge, airtight observation bays separated the city from the cavern containing the lake, holdovers from the time when the cavern had not yet been pressurized with breathable air. However, those airtight bays were still in place, most probably as protection against some possible accidental decompression of the cavern following some improbable tectonic movement of the crust. What they also found was that large transparent airlocks had been built along the bays at intervals of one hundred meters, airlocks that gave access to the shoreline of the lake. Using one of those airlocks, the Djiningwinans then walked down a large, moderately inclined ramp that connected to both a floating wharf and a wide seaside promenade that followed the shore in both directions. Quite a few people were either walking, jogging or cycling along the promenade, while a few small boats were tied to the wharf. Bo sniffed with delight the strong marine smell of salt water coming from the green waters of the lake.
‘’This place smells even more of the ocean than on the coast near Sydney. I love this!’’
On her part, Merindah looked up along the seaside promenade, then across the lake, with the opposite side of the cavern visible in the distance, nearly six kilometers away.
‘’Building this city in such a place and conditions must have been a truly herculean effort, Bo.’’
She then looked up briefly at the intense source of light illuminating the whole cavern, but had to look away from the dot of bright light after only a fraction of a second.
‘’I don’t know what they use to light this cavern, but it is about as intense as the Sun at home. It certainly does a good job of replicating the Sun here underground. I can also feel some heat from it.’’
‘’I guess that we will have to ask someone about that later on, Merindah. Well, how about we go back inside the city and visit that sheep ranch?’’
The answer from his three children was a chorus of happy cheers, so Bo turned around and, taking little Monti in his arms, led his family back up the ramp and through the airlock.
As Nick Robertson had told them, the annex containing the sheep farm was only a few minutes’ walk from Rosewood Tower and the small family soon stepped through one of the two airlocks connecting the city proper and the annex, one airlock being for pedestrians and cyclists, the other one, much larger, designed for heavy vehicles and large construction modules. Bo felt joy and nostalgia the moment that he was able to look down the vast, high ceiling cavern. The ground was entirely covered with thick, long grass, except for a ten meter-wide paved road forming a peripheral loop road along the outer walls of the cavern. Numerous, regularly spaced steel pillars supported a steel lattice that seemed to form the floor of a second storey covering the whole horizontal surface of the cavern, with the underside of the lattice structure supporting overhead lamps and what looked like multiple large sprinklers. What attracted the eyes of Bo, however, was the herd of sheep visible in the distance, with two horse riders slowly trotting around the herd.
‘’Look, Merindah! They use mounted ranch hands to keep the herd together. I will be able to ride a horse again.’’
‘’That’s great, Bo! You should be quite happy in this new job.’’
‘’Indeed! Let’s walk to the herd and those riders.’’
The family thus started walking on what was essentially 37 hectares of grasslands, adopting a calm but steady pace. When the Djiningwinans came to within 120 meters of the herd of about 300 sheep, one of the horse riders turned his mount around and pushed it to an amble towards the family. The rider came to within seventy meters before he hesitated a bit and shouted to them.
‘’BO? IS THAT YOU?’’
Bo’s surprise at being recognized quickly turned to joy as the rider approached further.
‘’DONALD? DONALD RAMSAY?’’
‘’BO! MY GOD, IT IS YOU!’’ replied the horseman before stopping his mount in front of Bo and bending down to shake his hand. ‘’I was t