Earth Rebooted
A dystopian novel about the aftermath of the sixth extinction due to human stupidity thus closing out the anthropocene epoch.
Short Summary
A total extinction of life forms on Earth precipitated by an oxygen depletion event due to global warming. Black holes, time dilation, advanced AI, sophisticated and very human looking humanoids driven by this advanced AI, a new paradigm for life on Earth – all hot button items that come together in a page turning tale when Earth is Rebooted.
Extended Summary
In the year 2076 Earth’s ecosystem collapses, culminating in a total oxygen depletion event that results in a mass extinction where no lifeforms are spared. POTUS 65, apprised of the inevitable demise of the human race, sets in place a desperate program to salvage as many humans as he can. There are 40 volunteers on Moon Base participating in a one-year deep-freeze study, twelve of whom are unwittingly picked for a bizarre experiment for which it is unlikely any of them would have knowingly volunteered. They are sent on a ten-year journey around a black hole with the intent of exploiting time dilation due to the black hole’s strong gravitational field, to return them to Earth one thousand years into the future when the Earth will be habitable again. The time dilation experiment works, and the primary thrust of the novel deals with the return of the intrepid astronauts to a world changed in more ways than they could have anticipated.
In conjunction with the black hole experiment, two other possibilities are explored. A nuclear submarine is an ideal, self-contained bubble, and as such represents another option for creating a long-term isolated habitat for a larger (300) number of humans to survive this oxygen depletion event. Likewise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, hermetically sealed to keep the environment out, poses yet another option that is exploited for safeguarding a much larger (3,000) number of humans. All good ideas on paper, but bad ideas when it is 400 years before oxygen levels reach the point where people can leave these confined environments for even short periods of time. The resulting degradation of the confined environments leads to depravation and social breakdown, and consequently, a very tragic version of humanity survives this experiment.
Meanwhile, on Earth, a new species runs the show, totally dedicated to preserving Earth irrespective of the cost to any form of sentiency at odds with their charter. Robots, as it so happens, do not need oxygen, and are unaffected by the oxygen depletion related extinction event. They have also evolved with the help of AI and technology into formidable antagonists if the humans that first destroyed and then abandoned Earth choose to challenge their authority. These proto homos, as they refer to themselves, need the help of the returned astronauts to get the vestiges of humanity that survived for 1,000 years under abhorrent conditions, and are now living on the submarine and aircraft carrier, to realize that the time of the humans has come and gone. There can be peace between these disparate yet merging species, but it will only be on terms set by the proto homos.
Sample Chapters
BOOK 1 – Retribution
(Year 2061)
CHAPTER 1
John Adams, POTUS 56, who shared a common name with the second President of the United States, and quite by coincidence, any number of common features with his namesake, woke up on a Monday morning early in May of 2066 with a splitting headache. And a morbid appreciation of the tragic irony that defined a Pyrrhic victory. At least that is how he viewed his circumstances.
His wife, Abigail (one of the many coincidences referenced earlier), was quick to point out that to be truly Pyrrhic, the cost of battle needed to significantly outweigh the prize won. In his case, however, the prize was so toxic that no cost of battle, however large, would ever outweigh it, never mind significantly so. The only way he could have avoided the attendant stigma would have been to lose the election, which he could not do – not for the country’s sake, not for Earth’s sake.
The headache persisted despite his ministrations, like some bleak harbinger of a sorrow to come, ill-prepared though he might be for it. Here it was then, a little past ten in the morning, and the intense pain with which he had greeted the new day was showing no signs of abating. It was understandable then, given the nature of the beast, that he would greet his visitor in the Oval Office as though he were the herald of doom itself.
“Tell me, Peter, are you ever going to bring me good news?” asked John in greeting, recognizing with dismay that a closer inspection of the haggard and defeated-looking creature facing him should have been answer enough.
Peter Sofal, Secretary of the latest executive department, the Science and Technology Advisory Panel for Climate Mitigation, shook his head. “Sadly, Mr. President, the probability of my bringing good tidings in the foreseeable future is dim at best.”
“I am wondering if there is even any good news to be had,” sighed the President. The nation, humanity itself, was still smarting from the loss of the Mangares crew – to a free-floating black hole of all things, something that had earlier only been speculated upon. That Mars mission had been one tiny glimmer of hope to a world starving for any semblance of grace, and even that had been denied them. The President was beginning to wonder if there was even anything good left to be had. “So, then, what new version of bad tidings has prompted this latest urgent meeting?” he asked.
“AMOC is collapsing. All our metrics indicate that this is the beginning of the end.” The admission prompted a defeated sigh as Sofal collapsed into a chair facing the President.
“Whoa, Peter, whoa! Enough with these acronyms. I have them crawling out of my ass. Which version of the end are we talking about here?”
“My apologies, Mr. President. I forget how acrimonious a barrage of acronyms can sound.”
“I like that, Peter,” the President butted in. “A witty prelude to whatever wretched ditty you have to offer.”
“I don’t quite know if Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation qualifies as a ditty, but that, Mr. President, is what we are dealing with.”
“And where exactly does this Atlantic overture, or whatever it was you called it, hang out?”
“A quick reminder then, Mr. President, of where AMOC hangs out. If we face tragic consequences today, it is because we have repeatedly underestimated, repeatedly ignored, how complex Earth’s ecosystem is. In this instance, there is an intricate global network of ocean currents, a conveyor belt of sorts that is responsible for moving salt and warm water around the world. The oceans appear homogeneous, but are actually layered, and these currents are responsible for maintaining the properties of the layers so as to preserve an equilibrium we are dependent on for the world’s climate to stay stable.
“The AMOC current is an extremely significant aspect of Earth’s present stability, and it has just about stopped flowing. The consequences for Earth, and especially Europe, could be quite tragic.”
Adams groaned. “Peter, I thought we had quarterly meetings so you could keep me updated on events. We just had our last meeting, what, less than two weeks ago, and granted, there were threats galore needing attention, but there were no indications that the End Times would come visiting, so why this sudden revelation? Why this sudden, tragic ending, even if a sad story deserves one?”
“If I may be so rude as to correct you, Mr. President…” Sofal started to say, when the President sharply interrupted him.
“For God’s sake, Peter, cut the fucking pleasantries and just dish out the shit. The times call for nothing less.”
“Okay, John, you asked for it, and have been cautioned that this shit really smells. To your point, all we can do is run our models and hope that the parameters we use and our interpretation of the results are accurate. A word about the models then: they are complex, have thousands of variables, require thousands of different inputs, and can only be run on massive, superfast computers. That said, at the end of the day, all we can accurately provide is what the models predict, while keeping in mind that the predictions could as easily be wrong as right.”
“I hope this is going somewhere,” snapped the President.
Peter acted unperturbed by this interruption and continued with his monologue as though everything he had to say was relevant. “The AMOC current is just one of the many variables we track with our models, but it is important to keep in mind that everything is interrelated. You can’t change one without everything changing. These climate change models epitomize the butterfly effect. A small change here can be a very large change over there.” Sensing that the President was about to interrupt him again, Peter raised a hand to constrain him.
“It is important that you realize the genesis of our fear, and how all our fears are interrelated, so be just a little more patient. At our last meeting, we pointedly brought to your attention that Greenland’s ice sheet was melting faster than our earlier predictions. The changed prediction was a direct consequence of what we learnt from the Thwaites glacier being undercut by warmer sea water, hastening its demise. This was followed in short order by the accompanying loss of 20% of the WAIS, sorry – Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. You are well aware of the consequences of that event. We have already seen a worldwide sea level rise of almost four feet, which has been an extremely disastrous situation for many coastal cities. Entire communities have been displaced or decimated, and island nations have gone underwater.
“Keeping this in mind, where we had earlier thought we had perhaps two decades of grace time, we were wrong. As a consequence of the speedier melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, all the latest runs of our models started to clearly predict an imminent and catastrophic failure of the AMOC current. What we couldn’t quantify up to now was what exactly imminent meant. Was it tomorrow, the day after, or some day in the near future? All the models were throwing out different numbers. What we did know was that AMOC would collapse very shortly, and when it happened, the consequences would not be pretty. Well, the imminent just presented itself, and there is nothing we could do to prevent it. There isn’t even much we can do to mitigate the consequences, I’m afraid.”
“If there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening, and nothing I can do after it happens, why are you telling me all this?” asked an irate President.
“Just because you can’t mitigate them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be preparing for the consequences.”
“Okay, what should I be preparing for?”
“Here’s the main fact to keep in mind. Because AMOC has basically shut down, we have lost a key element that affects the climate and ocean forces of the planet. We should be prepared for the consequences to be on a planetary scale. The temperature of northwestern Europe will start to fall precipitously, dropping by almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit within the decade. Global rainfall patterns will change, Arctic ice will extend much further south, and there will be worldwide food and water shortages. Usually, such events are closely associated with political upheaval; democracies will fall, dictatorships will rise, and guns rather than laws will shape the lives of millions of people.
“Further south, an already stressed Amazon forest will be severely damaged, perhaps irreversibly. The average temperature will climb by at least one and perhaps even two degrees Fahrenheit. With fewer trees to take up the carbon dioxide we seem incapable of curtailing, the increased partial pressure will drive it more into the only sink it can find – the oceans. Higher temperatures, greater acidification, further bleaching of corals – we are looking at a catastrophe that could unfold in as little as a few years. Perhaps as few as two. Perhaps even less than that.
“But the real kicker is we simply don’t know how all this will affect the health of the plankton population.” Peter stopped to stare at his feet dejectedly.
“Plankton?” asked the President, feeling equally despondent. “I thought only whales gave a damn about plankton.”
“Krill,” corrected Peter.
“Kill what?” asked the President.
“It’s krill, not plankton, that the whales give a damn about, and we should have given a damn about plankton,” said Peter, his gaze firmly affixed to his feet. “Sixty percent of Earth’s oxygen comes from plankton. We lose that oxygen, and we lose life as we know it on Earth. This is an extremely dangerous situation we are in. Any one calamity could bring us to our knees. Two calamities, and we are doomed. The first of the two is about to unfold.”
CHAPTER 2
“Plankton?” the President asked again in surprise. “Aren’t they those tiny creatures you can barely see? And you are telling me they are responsible for our oxygen?”
“Yes, John, those same tiny creatures. Prochlorococcus is one such species of ocean-dwelling phytoplankton. It is so tiny that close to 20,000 of them can fit into a single drop of water. It’s also the smallest organism we know of that is capable of photosynthesis. Yet its impact is massive – one of every five breaths you take could very well be attributed to this tiny creature. Plankton has played a major role in us standing here having this conversation. It was plankton that introduced oxygen into the air and the sea, making everything we enjoy possible. Plankton made the trees, the forests, the meadows, and the grasslands possible. And now we are about to kill all the plankton.
“All of life hinges on a very complex tapestry, a fact we have ignored at our own peril. In the past, our recklessness has caused holes in this fabric, but the whole has survived. Now we have started to unthread it. This is an extremely dangerous cusp we find ourselves on, because one more tug, one unexpected calamity, and it doesn’t even have to be a big one, and the entire fabric could unravel. At that point, we are doomed.”
The President sighed, sounding deeply wounded for missing the shield he couldn’t field. He leaned back in his chair and turned so he could look out the window. He stayed like that for a while, as though recognizing that this view was a joy he would shortly be denied. “We are doomed says the man. What then, what happens next?” he asked.
“A lot depends on the extent of the damage these tiny creatures suffer. Some damage, and our largest creatures on land and sea die out. Whales, elephants, hippos, sharks, rhinos, giant manta rays, and beluga sturgeon are all gone. Even medium-sized creatures like lions, tigers, and other large cats that consume loads of oxygen during the short bursts of high-speed chase they need to catch prey could die out, including the prey they are chasing. Extensive damage to these tiny creatures and everything larger than a pissant could be finished. The likes of you and me, all gone.”
“How long would this era of oxygen shortage last?” asked the President.
“Hard to say with some certainty. If the scientific community is to be slighted for a failure, it would be in this regard,” replied Sofal.
“The regard in question being?”
“That we didn’t pay enough attention to this oxygen loss scenario. We are now playing catch-up, and the models are showing erratic results.”
“Isn’t there anything you can share with me for guidance about how long this shortage might last?” asked the President. “I don’t care how wide the range might be, just something that I can get a handle on and go to the Security Council with for their input.”
Sofal looked down at his feet again and mumbled something.
“Speak up, man, I can’t understand you,” snapped the President.
“Anywhere from 400 to 1,000 years,” Sofal snapped back.
“You are shitting me,” said the President.
“I wish I was, John, I really wish I was. We will run our models repeatedly, adjusting our parameters as we get more data, but it is going to be a long, long time.”
“So the human race is fucked, with a capital F?” asked the President.
“I’m afraid that would be the case, John.”
“And there is nothing we can do to reverse any of it?”
“Afraid not, John. Not at this point. We were aware of this potential calamity over 60 years ago, but did nothing. It’s too late now. The forces at play here are gigantic, well beyond the scope of human intervention. Looking for a quick fix is delusional.”
“Your thoughts, Peter, on why we might have failed ourselves?” asked a despondent President, even as he continued to gaze out at the Rose Garden.
“May I presume this is only a hypothetical inquiry?” asked Sofal.
“Entirely so,” replied the President.
“It could be a fundamental flaw in the manner in which our belief system overlays our base nature. Actually, one may have led to the other.”
The President turned in his chair to face Sofal. “This is not a day for abstract ambiguities. Can you spell it out in simple terms?”
“Sure, but it’s not pretty.”
“Pretty, my friend, is for long legs in a short skirt. Must I remind you that nothing about this job is pretty?”
“Okay then, let’s start with a premise that some might find questionable, but for which there is ample empirical evidence. We homo sapiens have a base nature that will surface and overtake our sensibilities given the right provocation. The root cause is not relevant – whether it is inherent in the species or inspired by the devil exploiting free will, the fact remains that evil has a footing in the human psyche. This evil can take many forms along a broad spectrum, all dictated by how prevalent and how potent the rule of law is in any given society.
“When the rule of law is suspended, evil can surface as the wretched bestiality we saw in Nazi Germany, where a large percentage of the population either belonged to or enabled the Nazi party. All it takes is one despot in power for millions to die. We have seen this over and over again in any number of countries. The brutality of the Japanese during World War II, Russia under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot, the list is impressively long.
“However, where the rule of law prevails, like in the First World countries, the base element takes a more muted form, surfacing as a callous selfishness that chooses to serve only the self – a distorted version of the Darwinian ethos, where survival of the fittest equates to survival of the self. And capitalism plays right into this ethos, because it lauds the individual who exploits the environment for his or her own success.
“Capitalism does not praise the masses of industry; it praises the champions of industry. The individua…”
“Do you mind, Peter? After all, you are the one reminding me that we have run out of time. Is there a point to all this stupidity I cannot change?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Fact is, we all, every one of us, knew we had a problem, but the vast majority of us believed it was for someone else to solve. It was someone else’s monkey. Someone else had to make the necessary sacrifice. Just not me. And now, here we are.”
CHAPTER 3
“It gives me great pleasure to introduce our next speaker for the morning. She is a polymath in every sense of the word, having degrees in fields as diverse as quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, and morphic anthropology. In a sense then, she is equally versed in the notions of non-local causality and the attributes of species survival. Consequently, it would behoove those of us gathered here to heed well her warnings. With due regard then to the considerable paucity of time the species faces, let me, without any further delay, introduce my coworker and good friend, Dr. Darleen Schuman.”
Having made his introduction, Peter Sofal sat down. His introduction was deliberately brief, but then so was his audience. Just eight in total: himself, Schuman, the President, the Vice President, and four others. All on a need-to-know-only basis. All sworn to utmost secrecy so as not to needlessly hasten an inevitable end.
A brief ten days had transpired since his fateful meeting with the President, and already the inevitable was casting its ghastly shadow on a species chased out of the first Eden due to stupidity and greed – and now destined to destroy a second Eden because of greed and stupidity.
They had time before the symptoms would be too obvious to be ignored, though exactly how much time was unclear. The models always gave differing and sometimes confounding results; the models needed input, while the input they got was driven largely by the assumptions used by the modelers. In this instance, the models were all predicting a difference of from one to two years from when the first symptoms were seen before the entire biosystem would collapse from a catastrophic oxygen depletion event.
Sofal had gone first and done his bit to show how unassailable a tragic fate awaited them. Schuman’s task was different – her job was to point out in unflattering terms what it meant to be the species that would be held responsible for the sixth mass extinction. And this one would truly live up to its name, because it guaranteed the death of all other species larger than a pinhead.
They both viewed such a discourse to be a necessary evil; if humanity was to focus on the survival of the species, as it was bound to do, and was to explore methodologies to salvage at least a few – even if only in the hope that these would one day become the many – then those in charge of such a salvage operation needed a clear-minded perspective of what they were expending their energies on salvaging.
Was Schuman the ideal protagonist to defend against the expected antagonism of the gathered few against such an outrageous realization? Only time would tell. She certainly had the credentials and knowledge to go with her responsibility. And looks that just begged for attention – tall, stately in bearing, with a vibrant, flowing blond mane of hair that offered natural camouflage for the few silver strands that age imposed. Her face was attractive, more oval than round, with a simple beauty unmarred by any harsh angles and lips that teased an unnatural invitation. In appearance, she personified an over-sexed Hollywood starlet. She clearly had what it would take to garner their attention, though with what in mind was a different question.
The hem of her skirt was a good two inches above her knees, accentuating her shapely legs, which seemed to go on forever. A distance he was intimately familiar with, having traced their length with a greedy tongue from one end to the other, wherein resided a prospect that could easily suck in his soul again if she would let it. They had been lovers for a short while, though even infinity in her embrace would be too short a time. Then she had found a higher calling and moved on, leaving him to flounder in the emotional muddle left in her wake. They had remained friends at a professional level, for which he was grateful.
In her new calling, she had found grace in understanding how lacking in grace her species was, how recklessly and foolishly they ignored how everything was interdependent. All this she had distilled into her theory of Interdependent Survivalism, which simply posited that in aggregate just about every life form needed just about every other for its survival – an inclusivity that stretched from the tiniest amoeba to the mightiest whale, with all the flora and fauna in between.
A very few of the dependencies were first-order, so that even a small change could have dire consequences. The vast majority of the others were more obtuse, involving a change that could be slower in presenting itself, while also offering time for adaptation. But all was one, and one served all.
There would always be external forces that tended to jar loose a stable equilibrium, but these events created the necessary change for the evolutionary process to meet its objectives. Meteorites, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and fires were all responsible for distorting an existing reality and replacing it with a new one, while the scale of the perturbation varied with locale and the nature of the event. The whole bit about complexity and diversity driving evolution was really the universe recognizing the fragility of all its creations in the face of arbitrary destruction, and filling every niche it could find to make sure something survived
Unfortunately, homo sapiens had transcended the arbitrary destructive event and replaced it with the deliberate, but with no clear substitute species to fill the gap in the wake of deliberate destructiveness. There was always a price that went with stupidity, even if the price wasn’t immediately obvious.
“Homo sapiens represents a unique species, but so is every other species out there,” began Darlene Schuman, harping on one of her pet themes. “The anthropological record is quite clear on one point – to date no one species has ever been viewed by the natural order as being sacrosanct. In fact, better than 90% of every species that ever existed has gone extinct. Every species is dispensable because sooner or later every species can be replaced, usually for the better. It is only homo sapiens, inspired by a supposedly divinely gifted free will, that has the hubris to think it has a special place in some god’s creation. Fact is, none of us sitting at this table, or anyone out there, for that matter, counts for shit. We are merely accidents of an evolutionary experiment, a path of lowest entropy until we prove to be the wrong outcome. At which point we will be discarded, either naturally or unnaturally, and replaced by some newer, better, species. We seem determined to explore the unnatural option.”
She paused briefly for effect, giving Sofal time to mutter under his breath.
“Steady girl! Try not to piss them off too early in the game.”
Her audience seemed less impressed, with some actually snickering in disdain, all of which she easily ignored.
“Nothing I have to say is unique or even new. View it merely as a reminder of what we should have constantly kept in mind,” said Schuman when she started up again. “The entire biomass is interconnected; we humans are just a small piece of the whole. We represent about 325 million tons of carbon equivalent mass, whereas the biomass of all trees and plants is closer to 500 billion tons. There is an incredible diversity of vegetation that has the role of supporting all life on Earth, and not just us humans. For all of this to come together and work, there is an extremely fine balance, an equilibrium of sorts, that has a certain amount of slack in it to make sure it will survive the consequences of the occasional arbitrary upheavals that are inevitable.
“Part of this fine balance is a harsh requirement Earth imposes on all creatures that are dependent on it for their existence. On a continuous basis, an hourly basis, actually, all species, and all members of all species, have to demonstrate that their presence is a necessary aspect of this collective entity. If not, that individual, and sometimes an entire failed species, is doomed to extinction – a process we call natural selection, or survival of the fittest.
“Nor is this an arbitrary requirement but an absolutely crucial one. For the whole to work, each part must play its role, must come together with every other part in harmony and strength – a notion that has recently been assigned the moniker of Interdependent Survivalism. For the whole to survive, each part must do its bit. The part that can’t is made redundant. There is enough slack in the system to accommodate a certain amount of redundancy, but if enough of the bonds of interdependency are broken, survival of the whole is at stake. That, unfortunately, is exactly where we are right now. The survival of all, not just humans, is at stake.
“Homo sapiens is the only species that has transcended the need for constant individual validation, and this has not served us well. We have achieved an unsustainable population, and our continued efforts to force sustenance of this unsustainable mass has set the stage for the entire system to collapse.”
“If you are done with your tirade, could you possibly offer a simple summary we can take away with us?” asked the President.
“Sure,” said Schuman. “Just like every other species, we humans were offered an opportunity to prove that we were necessary. We have demonstrated that we are unnecessary, and not just unnecessary, but downright dangerous. The whole is now prepared to reject the unnecessary and dangerous bit, buttressed by the absolute conviction that something better will come along. It always has.”