The Aftermath Read online

  What should we be doing about energy, food, water, health care, education, disarmament, communications, urban blight, population pressures, and fanatical terrorists...? This was the time for a holistic, interdisciplinary review of our engineering abilities vis-a-vis our most vexing human problems. This was the time for such a new beginning, just as the end of World War II was the time to found the United Nations. In the first decade of the new millennium, the world was free from cold war and superpower tensions. We had grown rich—at least some of us. Computers, the Internet, and genetic engineering had put powerful new forces at our disposal. Engineers could accomplish much, not just by meeting and talking but by having the world take note of their meeting.

  Dad took his vision to the Pacific coast, to Bill Gates and his zillionaire colleagues and competitors. To fund the proposed conference, my father sought an outlandish amount of money. But in the larger scheme of things, and especially in the high-flying high-tech world, the sum was relatively insignificant: a mere $30 million. He had in mind a group of fifteen hundred people at a cost of $20,000 each, which covered the cost of the trip, including $5,000 per head for spending money. Only with an extravagant gesture, he argued, can we attract the best and brightest to our enterprise. And only with the best and brightest can the enterprise succeed.

  He sold this vision, incredible as it may sound. My father, an aging civil engineer, senior partner in a firm that designs dams, tunnels, and bridges—something of a hardhat, despite his doctorate degree—sold this vision to the slickest, sleekest techies in the world. He sold them on the idea that all professional engineers, from muddy boots builders to geniuses of software application, are linked in a fellowship, and that this fellowship has the genius, the opportunity—and the obligation—to ease human suffering.

  And among the invitees, who could resist? A fully paid luxury cruise aboard a brand-new ship on an exotic, seldom-traveled route, partway around the coast of Africa! Bring your family, including children (up to the age of thirty, as long as they are still enrolled students), and pocket $5,000 spending money for everyone in your party. More important than the money and the travel, how about the excitement of being with talented peers who are seeking the Holy Grail of human salvation? The inevitable attention of the world's media to this remarkable enterprise was also a plus for career builders.

  Most of the people who were invited accepted enthusiastically. With fifteen hundred passengers aboard, we were a veritable village. It is hard to believe that we embarked, in such high spirits and with such high hopes, just a little more than a year ago.

  —————

  Today, we are indeed a village, although not at all like a village that any of us has ever seen before. But we have survived, and the mood of crisis that prevailed for so many months has recently begun to lift. It seems as if we can now look ahead to more than a few days at a time.

  Yes, we have survived. But our magnificent ship is sunk, and the few precious objects that we were able to salvage from it don't really amount to very much. Complex appliances—a radio, a few flashlights, a laptop computer—only mock us now. Most of our batteries were quickly used up, and we have few sources of new energy—no fuel, other than wood and a little coal, no electricity, yet. We have the use of animal power, most notably herds of powerful oxen. And we have ample running water in nearby rivers, which we have already put to use with a number of rudimentary waterwheels. Also, we have embarked on an ambitious program of technological recovery. But we have had to start from such primitive circumstances—from so far back—that one has to wonder about our long-term prospects.

  I recall in one of my history courses reading about Curtis E.

  LeMay, longtime commanding general of the Strategic Air Command, who eventually became chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. A darling of right-wing extremists, and known as a zealous proponent of carpet-bombing, he retired from the military and in 1968 ran for vice president with George Wallace on the American Independent Party line. During the Vietnam War, LeMay proposed telling the North Vietnamese that unless they put an end to their aggression, we would "bomb them into the Stone Age."

  Well, yes indeed, General LeMay. Not exactly the circumstances you had in mind, but it happened very much like you suggested. We're living proof. Bombed into the Stone Age!

  In the course of just a few hours we were transported back to Neolithic times, before 4000 B.C.E., when the first copper was smelted in Sumeria. Like our Neolithic ancestors, we could cultivate crops and domesticate animals. Those two talents—momentous in the history of Homo sapiens—date to about 10,000 B.C.E.. We could make lots of clever devices out of stone, wood, and bone. We could manufacture pottery and cloth—not very well, but we knew the basic principles and could develop the skills. Indeed, some of our Inlander neighbors, who had in the past been less reliant than we upon modern machines, turn out some very good pottery, and serviceable cloth from wool, cotton, and miscellaneous plant fibers. These skills are, come to think of it, remarkable, bespeaking a natural human genius for adaptation and survival. It took hundreds of thousands of years for hominids to progress from the first stone-cutting tools to the Neolithic revolution of agriculture and animal domestication.

  Then it took six thousand years of Neolithic living to bring us to where we are—or rather, where we were twelve months ago. Thinking of this passage of multiple millennia, what hope has our small group to make its way back to the modern age? Assuming— as seems so far to be the case—that a return to the modern age is the course we wish to pursue.

  1

  ABOARD THE QUEEN OF AFRICA

  DECEMBER 25, 2009, 5:00 P.M. LOCAL TIME

  Jane Demming Warner, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, had come on the cruise along with her husband, Jacob Warner, one of the leading computer engineers in the United States. It was to be their first vacation together in several years. Jane's life had long been devoted to the study of comets, meteors, and asteroids; but she had planned to take a break from all that for three weeks, just kick back and enjoy the trip.

  Sitting on the still-unmade bed in their stateroom, wearing an old tanktop and running shorts for a planned two-miler on the track, Jane gripped the telephone impatiently, waiting for the connection to be established, grimacing at the clicking and buzzing that she heard on this her third attempt to get through to her colleagues in Tucson. She had a sick sensation in her stomach about this whole thing, compounded by a guilty feeling that she had "deserted" her post at home.

  The cruise had been fantastic, everything she and Jake had wanted it to be. During the days, he was cheerfully busy with his seminar activities; and their evenings were filled with splendid dinners, dancing, and strolls on the wide decks of the luxury ship. The stars—she had never seen them so brilliant and close other than through the business end of a telescope. She gazed up at them like a cockeyed "civilian," as if she had never noticed them before. The winter constellations of the southern hemisphere, so familiar in theory, seemed startlingly fresh in their present reality—a revelation ... Finally a voice on the other end of the line.

  "Geoff, is that you? It's Jane. What's going on there?"

  Despite the tenuous wireless connection, Geoffrey Baird's voice was clear and crisp, his New Zealander accent unmistakable. "Not good news, Jane luv. Not good at all."

  "What the hell is it? Be specific."

  "The missiles"—he pronounced the second "i" very long; she could hear his labored breathing—"They went awry—or at least one of them did. We don't know whether it was sabotage or what. Who could possibly be that suicidally crazy? What could their objective be?"

  "Stop hemming and hawing, for God's sake," Jane said, wanting to reach through the phone and shake her friend and colleague.

  Just a few hours earlier, she and Jake had sat in the lounge with a group of other passengers watching news of the intercept on a satellite feed from ITN in Great Britain. Jane understood exactly what was at
stake and how the nuclear explosives were supposed to thwart the comet that was hurtling toward the earth. Jake had been sipping a Jack Daniel's with a blissful grin on his face. He was having one hell of a good time away from his lucrative but stressful consulting business. She had been drinking an iced tea and looking at her watch, thinking about the best time to call her friends at the university, knowing they'd be at the lab monitoring the diversion effort closely.

  "Jane, we're not going to make it. Based upon our rough calculations—"

  "What do you mean? Who's not going to make it?"

  "All of us, the entire bloody planet. I'm saying we're doomed. About six hours from now. The impact—"

  She could not hear Geoffrey's words for the roaring in her ears. What was he saying? It couldn't be ... it just could not be what she thought he had said. The mission a failure? The end of the world? Too fantastic, too horrific to contemplate.

  "Slow down, Geoff. Have you been drinking or something?"

  "No, but I wish I had a good shot of vodka right about now, Jane. We're looking at the Big Barbecue. I don't mean to be flip, but I don't know what else to say or do. We're all going under one way or the other. Some of the people here have gone home to their families ... others of us have decided to stay, ride it out the best we can. There is a chance we're wrong. But I don't bloody think so."

  She felt as if she were choking. She couldn't breathe, and she struggled to speak in response to his news. "Have you told anyone? What about the press, the government?"

  "Oh, yes, the big mucky-mucks called Washington. I think they got to the Secretary of Energy or some such. But it's too late, you understand. Even if we did tell everybody, there's absolutely nothing any of us can do. We're toast, as the kids say—or mine used to say, twenty years ago."

  What a decent, smart, agreeable colleague Geoff Baird was. Yet at this moment nothing he said made any sense to Jane Warner, except the first statement about there being an accident or miscalculation. Even though the chances were infinitesimally small, still, there was always a possibility that the so-called fail-safe system would not work. But how could they have missed by such a margin? With all the backup systems and contingency planning? The first time they had tried it, they had done it without seeming to break a sweat. Why now? What in the world...?

  "Geoff, you're going to have to walk me through this. Please stay on the line." She dropped the telephone receiver on the bed, grabbed a writing pad from the desk, and picked up the phone again. "Okay, start at the beginning and tell me what exactly happened and what you're basing your numbers on. I'm going to write all of this down. Maybe there's something..." She started to say, "something you guys missed," but she caught herself and did not finish the sentence.

  Geoff Baird heard her unspoken words. "Sorry to say, Jane, we didn't miss anything. We've run the calculations at least a dozen times already. But, for what it's worth—here goes."

  MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES, EARLY MORNING, DECEMBER 26

  A little boy with a big name, Juan-Carlos Francisco Jaime Triunfo, sat at his mother's kitchen table organizing his precious collection of Pokemon holograph cards. J. C. was almost nine, a bit small for his age, and he was the youngest of ten children. The day after Christmas was his favorite day. There was, of course, no school. After mass, the family would spend the day together just as they had the day before, and his cousins would come over and there would be kids galore in the Triunfo house—and he would show off his fine collection to all. At midday the family planned a trip to Rizal Park, the greensward in the center of the old Spanish city that looked out onto Manila Bay. There were war monuments and playing fields and picnic nooks, and usually many people throughout the park. The boy loved it, looked forward to it. It was going to be a fine day, indeed!

  The old Delco radio with the clock that had stopped working long ago sat on the kitchen table where J. C.'s cards were piled. Only his mother was awake, starting her preparations for breakfast and for the family's planned picnic lunch, her back turned to the boy. He paid her scant attention; he took her for granted. After all, that's what mothers did—prepare meals. Nor did he really listen to the music on the radio, or the occasional news broadcast. All was well in the world of J. C. Triunfo.

  The Triunfo family was wealthy compared to so many others they knew. The vast majority of people who lived in Manila existed in utter, paralyzing poverty. Foreign visitors who drove the few miles from Ninoy Aquino International Airport into the business center of the city passed the world-class waterfront resort hotels on their left and a high blank wall on their right, which shielded them from the depressing sight of shanty towns and slums. The wall— and the squalor it masked—was a legacy from the Marcos regime. Subsequent democratically elected governments had not improved the lot of these people very much, in part because Muslim rebels in the outer islands drained military and economic resources and political attention.

  The table shook slightly, causing the Pokemon cards to move. "Mama..."

  Senora Triunfo was paying no attention to her youngest child. She prayed silently as she worked, her lips moving to form the familiar words. It was as natural to her as breathing, as slicing the vegetables into the soup pot or wringing the neck of a chicken destined to be the main dish. The routine of life was a comfort to her, albeit hard, unending labor. Her husband went to work at his factory job at eight A.M. every day except Sunday. He worked only half days on Saturday, Jesus be praised. But he was of little or no help around the house when he was home: he drank liquor and slept, sometimes played cards with friends. He did not beat her or abuse the children in any way. He was a decent man...

  "Mama, the table is shaking," little J. C. said.

  Juanita Triunfo, who had survived hurricanes and earth tremors and revolutions, said, "Say a little prayer, nino. God will keep you safe." She held an unpeeled plantain in one hand, a small glinting kitchen knife in the other. "One of your little cards is on the floor." She pointed with the knife.

  The boy bent down to retrieve his precious possession. He could smell the mingled odors of vegetables and fruits and cooking oil. He was getting hungry and heard his belly rumbling, felt it vibrate. He sat back in the chair. Then he realized that it was not his belly that he heard and felt. The table, the floor, indeed the entire house was rumbling, vibrating slightly, and it blurred his vision and scared him. Then he heard a noise, not loud, not close—he could not tell what it was or where it came from. He had never heard a train, but he knew the sound of cars and motorcycles, of jet airplanes overhead taking off and landing at the nearby airport. What was it?

  "Mama!" Now he was really frightened.

  The entire household was awake, and everyone, J. C.'s brothers and sisters and father, streamed into the kitchen, their eyes wide open and questioning. What could be happening?

  Throughout the city of Manila and the islands of the Philippines, indeed, across the western Pacific region as far south as Australia and as far north as Vietnam and China, the atmospheric phenomenon released by the impact of the comet was spreading its swift and inexorable destruction.

  As the Triunfo clan huddled together in the kitchen, they all heard the approaching roar that had first captured the youngest boy's attention. Suddenly, an emergency message came over the radio, interrupting the music that, for several minutes, had been an inane background noise to the family's increasing sense of dread. The mother and father pressed all their children, from the eldest daughter, age twenty-two, to little J. C, between them—the protective, parental instinct at work, but to what end?

  Over the past few days they had heard news about the approaching comet and the mission to deflect it; but this news had barely registered with them. They were vaguely aware that this sort of thing had happened before and that there was no imminent danger. At least that was what the news broadcasts had said...

  "Emergency, emergency, emergency," the voice on the radio repeated. "The government requires that all persons should seek shelter immediately—"

/>   The family listened, but within seconds the radio was dead and the increasing roar was deafening, causing the young ones to cry out in pain and fear. The older children and adults looked at each other incredulously, expressions of panic now impossible to conceal.

  The room—the entire house—heated up to an incredible degree: rising quickly to one hundred, then one hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Within thirty seconds it was nearly two hundred degrees! A smell, an acrid, foul odor of burning plastic and rubber and other unidentifiable substances, wafted in with the hot wind. The temperature continued to rise at a rapid rate and mercifully the family lost consciousness.

  Within minutes their home burst into flame, consumed by the firestorm that sucked oxygen and flesh and every material substance into its wake. The Triunfo family and all they had ever known ceased to exist.

  WASHINGTON, D.C., LATE AFTERNOON, CHRISTMAS DAY

  Senator Christopher P. Hartwyck of Delaware sat in his office in the Hart Building on Capitol Hill staring at the paperwork that littered his desk. He'd had very little sleep the night before and had dragged himself in to the nearly deserted building several hours ago. As a single man, never married, with no children, he was devoted to his job and wanted to keep it for as long as he could; so he spent every waking hour in his office studying briefing papers and reading correspondence from his constitutents—or out campaigning perpetually among the people of his state. The problem was, even though he had what he wanted, he was not a happy or contented man. Sometimes he got into a funk, feeling lonely and lost, despite family and friends and career ... Is this all there is? he would ask himself.

  Just a week ago, at a meeting of the Technologies Development Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, overcome by boredom, he had struggled to stay awake and focus on the subject of the hearing called by the chairman. Facing the two-week Christmas recess, the Senate tried to clear up as much business as possible—often to little effect. The upcoming intercept launch was the topic in question, and everything seemed to be running smoothly, according to the techno nerds who testified. So what was the big deal? We did it before, no problem, and we'll do it again—nuke the confounded planet or comet, or whatever it was. We need a hearing for this?