“That sounds way too depressing for television,” Rodney interjected. “It’s almost as bad as watching the news!”
“Well, the truth is important,” Alicia said. Jane was really getting to like her. She might even go watch her movie. “Plus, there’s a silver lining, right Dr. Ingram?”
“Well, areas high up in the mountains and land above the arctic circle should still be habitable,” Jane offered.
“I refuse to live anywhere north of Hollywood,” joked Rodney.
“So what is our government going to do to stop all this?” Alicia continued.
“The organization that I work for, The International Climate Change Foundation, is working with governments around the world to try to regulate carbon emissions and prevent this doomsday scenario from happening,” Jane explained.
“I’ve heard about the ICCF,” Alicia said. “But not until a year ago. What does it do?”
“Well, the ICCF was actually formed eight years ago under President Charger. We just kept a low profile while we grew into a truly international organization. We now have 154 member nations that have signed on to be a part of the foundation.” Jane could see that Rodney was searching for something to say, but nothing must have come to mind. His mouth still opened and closed out of habit, but nothing came out.
“And what does being a part of the Foundation entail?” Alicia asked.
“Our tax dollars must be good for some great parties I reckon?” Rodney blurted out.
Jane chuckled half-heartedly. She wasn’t cut out for smarmy chatter. “Actually our parties have no air-conditioning and are dominated by conversations about the end of the world. So yes, they’re a blast. But seriously, member nations are required to provide proof that they have a system in place to reduce their carbon emissions. Through the Foundation, individual nations are assured that all nations are reducing their emissions together, so that their contribution is not offset by the pollution of another party.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Alicia commented.
“Oh, but there’s been a lot of talk recently about the energy race with China,” Rodney cut in, back in the swing of things. “Some are saying that the Chinese are continuing to use fossil fuels to grow their economy at the expense of U.S. interests. They point to data that global carbon emissions are still rising.” Rodney said. “Does that mean the ICCF’s efforts are failing?”
“We’re making some progress,” defended Jane. “China is actually our most important partner in the ICCF. We work closely with our colleagues in China to reduce carbon emissions. But it’s certainly true that at our current rate, we will not succeed. That’s why we need people in all countries to petition their governments to make more aggressive reductions. We all have to sacrifice short term growth for long term sustainability.”
“That all sounds wonderful,” Rodney said. “Thank you Dr. Ingram for your advice.” He started to raise his hand to cue the cameras.
“Wait, we should talk about her book,” Alicia said, picking up a copy from the coffee table and lifting it up so that the audience could see it. Jane wanted to hug her right then. Alicia continued. “I haven’t read it yet, but it’s titled Beyond Carbon.”
“Whoa,” Rodney cut in. “There’s more to worry about besides Carbon?”
Jane chuckled. “You can relax. The book isn’t about more problems we face. It’s about finding more solutions.”
“Really, I mean, the subtitle is Understanding the World Before we Destroy it. That sounds pretty scary,” objected Rodney.
“Well, one of the reasons we’re in this mess is that we don’t really understand the natural world,” Jane continued. “We’re just starting to really focus research on global ecology. The last century has seen enormous strides in industry and computers. But we haven’t matched that innovation in the botanical sciences.” Jane took a deep breath. This was the hard part to explain. “We can solve extraordinarily complex and difficult problems with technology. We are proactive, always finding new solutions and making things better. And yet when it comes to the environment, all we can do now is try not to screw it up too much. Trying to cut back on carbon is crucial, but it’s just a band aid. It’s like taking a computer and trying to use it as rarely as possible so that it doesn’t break. Instead, we should learn how to fix that computer if it breaks and possibly even make it better.”
“Wait, are you suggesting that we can make the environment better?” Alicia asked incredulously.
Jane looked her straight in the eyes and hoped she didn’t think she was crazy. “Yes,” she said. “If we can understand our world, then we can make it better. As with machines, we can create biological and ecological tools that help create the temperate environment and the freshwater that we need to live.”
“That’s fascinating stuff,” Alicia said.
“Yes, fascinating stuff,” Rodney repeated, turning to the cameras. “We’re out of time now, but if you want to find out more, pick up a copy of Dr. Ingram’s.”
GUUUNK. Suddenly the room went completely dark, and silence filled the room. Jane suppressed the urge to panic, waiting instead for her eyes to adjust before making any movements. Alicia cried, “What was that?”
“We’re offline,” someone else said in the dark.
“Offline?” Rodney said, his voice rising into a whine. “We can’t go offline.”
“No need to panic, Rod. We’ll be just fine,” reassured Alicia. “I went to summer camp once, and we spent an hour offline each night before going to bed.”
A large murmur started to arise from the direction of the studio audience. Then Jane saw a light. Someone had brought out their mobi, using its display as a light. Jane did the same, using her mobi as a flashlight to examine her surroundings. Soon, the studio was decently lit from the light of dozens of handheld devices.
The show’s producer carefully walked up to the set. “Everyone please stay calm,” he announced loudly. “We’ll have this fixed soon. Please remain seated.” Then he said more softly to the side, “Where are the emergency lights?” Jane couldn’t hear the response. And then, “ Well, call facilities.”
“Phone lines are down,” the other person said more loudly. “I can’t get through to the network.”
“My phone is out too,” someone else confirmed.
Jane glanced down at her own mobi. The top of the display said “Network not found.” How large was this power outage?
“We better get everyone outside,” the producer declared as he offered his hand to Alicia. Just as Jane was about to get up, she was blinded by the bright light of spotlights turning on along with all the other electronic equipment from the studio.
Without pause, Rodney launched into action. “Welcome back to the Rodney Mackinsaw Show. I’m...”
************
The spotlights were off, and the cameras had stopped rolling. Alicia gave her a big hug and suggested that they get together for lunch sometime. Rodney shook her hand stiffly and thanked her for being on the show. Jane gave him her best fake smile and then excused herself. She looked out at the audience. Most of the people were still mingling around, many hoping to get an autograph from Rodney. But the giant Asian man was nowhere to be found. Kate/Kay came to escort her back to the green room.
“Good job out there Dr. Ingram,” she commented.
“Please, call me Jane,” she replied. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“It’s Melanie,” she responded, making Jane ponder adding some herbal supplements to her diet. “Do you need me to call you a car or anything?”
“No need,” Jane replied. “I’m just going to the train station. I’ll catch the metro.”
Twenty minutes later, she stepped off the metro and into the Los Angeles High Speed Rail station. After decades of planning and political wrangling, the High Speed Rail system had finally been approved and built twenty years ago. She remembered visiting L.A. once when she was in college. She loved the weather and the b
eaches, but the traffic was terrible. Though she still enjoyed some of the sights of the city. she was glad that she didn’t have to stay the night. She had actually flown in to San Francisco last night and stayed with Ashton, taking the train down after lunch. She glanced at her watch. She should make it back to San Francisco just after nightfall.
Jane walked onto the platform and then onto the train, letting the gateway scan her ID card. It would deduct the requisite amount after it detected that she had left the train. Upon sitting down, the screen in front of her asked her to confirm her identity. She swiped her thumb to verify, thus unlocking the entertainment features available. Jane scanned through the channels available and settled on the news.
The news correspondent was talking about the power outage she had experienced an hour ago. Apparently, though the incident had only lasted several minutes, the effect had been widespread. Power had gone out in most of Los Angeles. The government was telling people that everything was under control and that there was nothing to worry about, but the speculation had already begun. Blog sites were crying terrorism. Since this affected so many areas, most analysts were blaming some kind of software virus which had snuck into the electric grid’s control system. And of course that brought forth more cries for limiting our exposure to computers. Jane focused on a video showing a group of demonstrators throwing their mobi’s off the bridge. They probably had insurance plans for them.
Jane switched the channel to find something more light-hearted. Dateline was doing a piece on IFS, the International Futurist Society, a group that no one was sure even existed. According to Dateline, the IFS was a secret group of wealthy individuals that were working on prolonging human life. A host of radical technologies from bionic organs and nanobot blood substitutes to brain mapping were mentioned. The reporters were trying to cobble together a list of possible members based off of large donations to some foreign-based charities. There were a lot of famous names on the list, including Bryce Kandari who had disappeared from the public eye and conveniently couldn’t be found for an interview. His estate was still quite active, but no one had seen him for over a year. Jane just assumed that he disappeared because activists kept egging him whenever he appeared in public. Jane wasn’t the only one who didn’t approve of the grip his immersive virtual worlds had on America’s youth. Dateline, however, had a conspiracy theory that he was up to something bigger, like possibly building those guardian robots from the movie, Escape.
Jane switched off the screen. Rich people didn’t want to die. What else was new? By now, the train was underway. They accelerated smoothly up to over 200mph. Jane glanced out the window to watch the landscape go by, unnaturally fast. It felt like she was watching a silent film in fast-forward. The train route required an almost completely straight path as even the slightest curve would feel like a hairpin turn at these high speeds. A fence on either side of the tracks, 100 feet away, separated the train from the rest of the land, giving them a magic corridor where things seemed to slow down as the rest of the world flashed by.
The mobi in her pocket vibrated shortly after nightfall. She glanced down to see that Fran was calling her. Jane sighed. She had been looking forward to the train ride for some piece and quiet, but there was no escape from work in a digital world. She pulled the earbud from her mobi and stuck it in her ear. There was a highly sensitive microphone embedded in the earpiece that picked up the conduction of sound through her jawbone. It would allow her to whisper, keeping her conversation completely private.
“Hi Fran,” she said in hushed tones. “What’s up?”
“I saw the MacKinsaw Show,” she answered. “Good job.”
“Thanks,” Jane replied. “I was nervous at first, but I think I started to get the hang of it by the end.”
“Good, because I need you to do another one of these,” Fran said. “I’ve got you booked for the Tonight Show in New York on Thursday.”
“That’s two days from now,” complained Jane. “Come on, you hired me to be a researcher, not a publicist. Let me get back to work.”
“Mai-lin’s running your lab just fine,” retorted Fran. “And we all know we can’t have her doing PR for us. She’d tell the American people they were all idiots for continuing to drive cars and then show off her collection of pink stuffed animals or whatever it is she’s got all over the lab. Look, the ICCF is on shaky ground with the new administration. President McKinley doesn’t trust the other nations’ intentions. She thinks that the carbon restrictions are killing our already weak economy and giving the Chinese, Indians and Russians an advantage in the energy market. She’s looking for an excuse to shut us down.”
“I know, we need the publicity to make it politically difficult for the administration to pull the plug,” Jane conceded. “But I really miss the days when we were Operation Visor and could just work on the problem in secret. Now that we’re public, I feel like it’s all politics. Our international counterparts are much more cautious now as well.”
“So you’ll do the show then?” Fran asked, getting back to the point.
“I never really had a choice did I?” Jane asked.
“Well, no, but I like to pretend sometimes,” Fran said flatly.
Jane sighed. “I’ll be there.”
Just as she pulled the earbud from her ear, Jane smacked hard into the seatback in front of her. A loud screeching noise filled the air as the earbud flew out of her fingers. For a split second, Jane found herself contemplating how ridiculously overpriced a replacement earbud would be. Then the lights flickered and went out. The screeching continued for an impossibly long time, pushing any flashback of her life’s memories out of her head. Suddenly the noise stopped, and an invisible hand shoved her back into her seat.
Everywhere around her, people chattered incomprehensibly. In the moonlight, Jane could see that some people were getting up and trying to get off the train. Jane couldn’t see if anyone was injured. There wasn’t an explosion or anything else really dangerous. It looked like the emergency brakes had just engaged for some unknown reason. She pulled out her mobi. Again, “No Network Found” showed up on the display. Twice in one day?
She glanced out the window, seeing the lights of San Francisco shining in the distance. Then in big rectangular chunks, one after another, the lights of the city of San Francisco went out. If Jane had been watching from an orbiting satellite, she would have seen the darkness continue to spread as city after city in the U.S. went completely dark.
************
Two weeks later, Jane was sitting at her desk back at Visor headquarters, 80 feet beneath the ground. She had a massive headache. It seemed like the whole world had gone crazy. The nation-wide power outage had spawned a major crackdown in national security. The conventional wisdom was that some foreign power had hacked into the U.S. electrical grid, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not happy about it. All of her communications with her colleagues in China, India, Russia, Korea, and a host of other nations had been suspended until further notice. She had been trying to reach Fran for days, but she was out of touch, likely fighting political fires up in Washington.
Meanwhile, the blogosphere was filled with news of the recent protests. Unemployment was at a record high, and the economy was in shambles. The blackouts had some people scared, but many more were angry and looking for someone to blame. At the Tonight Show, one of the audience members had accused the ICCF, and Jane personally, of taxing Americans and using the money to bribe other nations. Another person had asked her why America should be responsible for saving the world when they couldn’t even save themselves. Jane had felt utterly helpless. At least her giant stalker hadn’t showed up that time.
Suddenly Mai-lin popped her head into her office. “Fran’s on her way up,” she announced. “Security said she looked… rushed. Thought I’d give you a heads up.”
“Thanks,” Jane started to say, but Mai-lin had already left, not staying to exchange pleasantries.
A feeling o
f deep unease settled into her bones. Dr. Fran Forrester did not rush. She certainly made those around her rush to get things done, but Fran was always composed, collected, and in charge.
Outside, Jane heard the sound of hurried footsteps, slightly uneven, followed by some muffled shouts. She stepped outside of her office to see what was happening.
Fran was in the middle of the lab, issuing directives to her people. “Back up all the data onto portable drives,” she commanded. “Now, now. Go, go, go.” Fran was certainly in charge, but she didn’t look composed or collected. Her hair was disheveled, and one of her high heels had broken off, causing her to lean slightly to the right.
“What’s happening?” Jane asked, concerned.
“We don’t have much time, so I need you to focus,” Fran responded. “We leave in five minutes. I need you to get all your critical data ready to go with us.” She looked directly into Jane’s eyes. “Go, now.”
Jane nodded and then went directly into her office. She had made a backup of her computer onto a holographic memory drive last month. The key-sized stick could hold a couple terabytes of data, plenty for the test summaries that she kept on her office computer. She reached into her desk drawer, pulled out the HM drive, and stuck it into the HM port on her computer beneath her desk. They had made some good progress in the last month, and it would take just over a minute to do a fresh backup.
As she waited, Jane searched her desk for other objects she should take with her. Her eyes settled on the ecosphere which she had kept with her for over thirty years. She held it in her hands, studying the seamless glass surface and the tiny bits of algae that still remained.
“Dr. Ingram.”
Jane looked up to see that two burly men in dark suits had entered her office. One of them was holding onto Fran by the arm. The other man reached out his hand.
“Hand over the backup, Ma’am.”
Jane pulled back, clutching the ecosphere to her chest. “Who are you?” she asked. “On who’s authority do you make demands here?”