280 For Future E-Book

Andreas Elser

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 891

Beschreibung

Have you ever tried to envision YOUR OWN future? And what the following generations will be facing? As realistically as possible? Considering weather disasters getting even worse? Make up your own mind! Read 280 For Future ! The comprehensive science-based future and climate thriller. Join a group of researchers on their breathtaking journey for the most important project of mankind! Including political strategy to save the climate professionally!

Leseprobe

Andreas Elser

The ComprehensiveScience-basedFuture and Climate

280 For Future

© 2023 Andreas Elser

English edition:

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-347-77640-1

ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-347-77641-8

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-347-77642-5

ISBN Large print: 978-3-347-77643-2

German edition:

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-347-75675-5

ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-347-75676-2

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-347-75677-9

ISBN Großschrift: 978-3-347-75678-6

Printing and distribution on behalf of the author:

tredition GmbH

An der Strusbek 10

22926 Ahrensburg

Germany

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents.

Any exploitation is prohibited without his approval. Publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, to be reached at:

tredition GmbH

department "Imprint service"

An der Strusbek 10

22926 Ahrensburg

Germany

Dear reader,

first, a few notes to help you assess whether this book might be of interest to you:

'280 For Future' is my personal study in which I tried to answer the questions how the future climate situation and the fate of mankind could look like.

Up to now I don't see any actions on the part of political parties that are anywhere near sufficient, or any alliances of intelligent contemporaries that would be able to stop further destruction of our livelihoods or even reverse the damage caused to nature.

Moreover, officially published climate forecasts are overtaken by reality every few years and have to be corrected significantly by even worse prognoses.

Out of great concern about the future of our children as well as out of scientific interest as a physicist I decided to take a look into our future myself, as realistically as possible.

To achieve understandable results, I put together all the information available to me and adapted and related the current weather and climate events according to the ever-increasing global warming. This approach is similar to adding 1 plus 1, and at the same time trying to account for possible interactions, feedback loops, and tipping points.

To make the result easy to read I have written it as an exciting and informative novel as you will hopefully find. Scientific jargon is only used in few places for stylistic reasons to emphasize the overwhelming complexity of nature.

Some parts of the plot may seem fantastic to you, but all of these scenarios and events described could be quite realistic, although I do not consider my personal judgement as infallible.

Also '280 For Future' makes some assumptions that not everyone will like. Basically, they do not describe my personal preferences, but for me they are to be seen as the logical consequence of today's socio-political and climatic conditions. Likewise, the views expressed in the dialogues do not necessarily reflect my own opinions.

However, I hope that my novel will provide you with interesting ideas, suggestions, and information for your own view of the future.

Examples of this are the 1.5˚C target set by politicians to limit global warming, which by no means can even come close to being achieved. The 'slackening of the Gulf Stream' and its dramatic consequences are also illustrated by the plot of '280 For Future', as is the greenhouse effect and its physical basis.

The detailed discussion of a political strategy in the chapter 'Historical Review 2045' could be interesting for climate activists to help solve the climate problem professionally.

There is overwhelming evidence of the destruction of our livelihoods already today: The devastating fires in Australia, California, Siberia, and Brazil in recent years, the ever faster melting of the ice-covered areas at the North and South Pole and in Greenland, as well as the permafrost and glaciers, the enormous increase in floods, storms and droughts of unprecedented extent, heatwaves with daytime temperatures of well over 40˚ C in many regions worldwide and unimaginable heights of even above 50˚ C for many days in a row, and the rampant extinction of species.

All this is a consequence of 100 years of entire disregard and misconduct despite the warning of physicists about the harmful effects on the climate due to combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas.

This had been well known in scientific circles at the time, interestingly enough even in the fossil fuel industry and general public since 1959 at the latest by the warning of physicist Edward Teller.

The rapid 50-percent increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the oceans compared to preindustrial times within just a few decades has severely damaged the equilibrium of the Earth's climatic system. As if hit with a mighty club it is reacting with enormous oscillations which can be seen by devastating weather events across the world.

The rise of greenhouse gases will continue for many decades causing deteriorating living conditions for centuries. The only remedy can be to implement scientifically based measures. However, too many pseudo studies serve as a basis for political decisions, influenced by lobbyism or ignorance. Half-hearted and even false counterproductive measures will force future generations to live in a devastated environment that is no longer humane.

The intended goal of climate neutrality will remain a pure illusion for many decades to come.

For the novel-like story of '280 For Future' I have exercised the right to artistic freedom, since the plot can, of course, only be exemplary. Any resemblance to real things and people or even exact matches would, therefore, also be purely coincidental.

The main story takes place in the years 2203 and 2204. This may seem incredibly far away to you at the moment and presumptuous of me to describe this time. However, the consideration of climate and social developments made in '280 For Future' led me there. Since the basic human needs will in any case be the same as they are today and the descriptions of nature also draw on phenomena from the world we know today, the descriptions should appear comprehensible. Several inserted short stories about personal fates in earlier years (2032, 2045, 2047, 2049, 2078, 2099, 2103) also lead to this future.

All in all, '280 For Future' will certainly strike you as very unusual and will also require some perseverance, especially during the first two chapters, which describe the living conditions and some technical possibilities of the year 2203. You should, of course, be interested in scientific, political and social developments and be open to new perspectives.

I would like to stress that '280 For Future' is not for the faint of heart and can shake the worldview of even die-hard thriller fans to the point of panic.

I also do hope, of course, that the events described will not occur due to particularly fortunate circumstances.

Since you, dear reader, made it this far, this book might be of interest to you.

It only remains for me to wish you exciting entertainment!

Find out for yourself what our future could look like and accompany a group of researchers on their journey for the most important project of mankind!

Your friendly physicistAndreas Elser

I would really appreciate if you sent your qualified comments and questions to my email address:

[email protected]

The secret of change is not to put all your energy into fighting the old, but into building the new.

Sokrates, 469 - 399 BC

Historical Review

July 28, 2032

Europe, Southern France / Avignon

It was three in the morning. Louis Morrisant lay awake in his bed, exhausted from what had happened during the last few days. It was freezing cold in the room and he was shivering like never before.

Outside the blizzard howled.

Snow in August …

Instead of the usual heat dome

with plus forty-five degree Celsius …

or flash floods …

Absolutely crazy!

While he was reflecting on these so far unimaginable events, unbridled hatred against the government welled up in him.

Only a week ago he had still hoped for a decent yield. But then the catastrophe came again.

This was the third year in a row that there was a total crop failure in central and southern Europe. This time it would mean his financial end, if not more.

The evening before, he had held a brief video chat with his Chinese business partner Jing Chiang in Beijing.

She was the head of a large group of investors that owned over forty percent of France's most prestigious wineries. She was furious at his announcement that the entire grape harvest would be canceled again and that all stores were now empty.

Two years ago, on the other hand, there was hardly any precipitation almost everywhere in Europe and the temperatures in summer here in the region had set again new records next to fifty degrees Celsius. Since there had also been no significant amount of rain in the previous years, almost all the reservoirs, lakes and rivers had dried up. This caused enormous damage to agriculture.

Industrial production had also collapsed massively due to the lack of water because the nuclear power plants could no longer be cooled and therefore had to be switched off. Especially here in France, with its enormous dependence on this technology, there were huge problems since the power production had come to a standstill. The population also had to cut back to the utmost because most electrical devices could no longer be operated.

Last year from February to October it was far too cold, stormy and rainy. The average temperature in Central Europe in 2031 was more than seven degrees below normal. Food prices had at least tripled over the past five years as a result of the crop failures, and depending on the product they had even increased tenfold because they had to be bought in the USA, Russia and Ukraine. For the vast majority of people, this, of course, was a financial catastrophe.

The European Union had begun to make agreements with North African countries in order to create new agricultural land under the somewhat more favorable climatic conditions prevailing there. But of course it would take years to deliver the amounts required.

To assess the current situation, Morrisant threw aside the duvet, switched on the old flashlight on his bedside table, and got up. Filled with fear, he shuffled to the patio door. The windows were steamed up on the inside and prevented a view outside. Despite the roaring blizzard, he opened the door a little. Immediately, the icy air of the storm pushed into the room.

Morrisant looked south toward the city and the old papal palace. Because of the snow and since Avignon was completely in the dark without any electric lighting, it was difficult to see anything. Only for brief moments, the moon threw some light on the scenery through gaps in the speeding snow clouds.

He still could hardly believe what had been happening here for days. Now, in the height of midsummer, when the countryside and town were normally sweltering, everything was buried under a thick blanket of snow.

Since last night it had grown by at least thirty centimeters and it was still snowing heavily. The balustrade of his terrace, over one meter twenty high, had already vanished underneath it. Here at the door the snow even reached his chest.

The blizzard, which originated in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, had swept at hurricane force across Scandinavia and the Baltics to Poland and Belarus, and on through central Europe and the mountain ranges of the Alps and Pyrenees to central Italy and northern Spain. A state of emergency had been declared weeks ago in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Germany due to the onset of local winter weather.

Now it had also hit Central and Southern Europe.

Nature outside of agricultural areas was also increasingly being destroyed. The leafy branches of the trees and bushes broke under the enormous loads of snow that piled up on them. Most of the animals had not been able to get to safety and had frozen to death or suffocated under the snow masses.

The situation was now also acutely life-threatening for the population. The meter-high snowdrifts had made all roads impassable, so that the entire infrastructure and supply chain had collapsed. The President then declared a national emergency and deployed the National Guard. The most important roads and airports were cleared of snow with heavy clearing vehicles. However, as in all of Europe, there were far too few helpers and evacuation equipment to quickly get the situation under control.

The army had been on duty around the clock for four days now to keep the most important facilities operational, at least to some extent. Of course, this was only successful in a few places and they were unable to prevent massive looting of shops and private houses.

Monsieur Morrisant felt weak at the thought of how the situation might develop. He realized that it was about survival for him too, since his food supplies were almost exhausted. Tomorrow he had to leave his house to get the bare necessities. At the moment, however, it was still completely unclear to him how he could manage to do this. The only hope left was that the military would quickly take over supplying the population from the air. He felt his throat tighten with fear, making it difficult to breathe.

A violent gust of wind suddenly pushed the door inward. Mr. Morrisant was unable to react and the edge of the door banged against his forehead and nose with full force. He staggered backward, tripped on the carpet, and banged with the back of his head on the iron bedstead. After the first painful blow to his face, his head was pounding from the second hit. He fell to the floor and lay there, completely dazed.

Enormous amounts of snow blew in from the patio through the wide-open door, burying him and everything in the room under a thick layer within seconds. Just because of the cold on his bloodied face and bare legs and feet he regained consciousness fast enough and did not suffocate. In extreme shortness of breath and completely disoriented because he could no longer see anything, he managed at the last moment to push his head and chest with his hands up through the heavy snow. Completely shocked, he gasped several times in panic.

When he had recovered a little after a while, he got up with difficulty. Full of anger and desperation, he staggered to the patio door, which was banging wildly in the storm, and pushed it back into the lock being totally exhausted.

February 12, 2203

Northern Europe / Svalbard

Svalbard, the mountainous archipelago of bare, graybrown rock lying in the North Atlantic between Europe and the North Pole, was the only remaining inhabited region on Earth apart from Antarctica.

Today here on the seventy-ninth northern degree of latitude the polar night came to an end, which meant that the sun would rise above the horizon again for the first time after many weeks of the polar winter.

The small team led by Jia Giacomelli had just left the security lock of the protective dome of the research institute for a short stay in the open air. The weather conditions in Svalbard rarely allowed to be outside, but for the moment the usual storm had died down to a light wind, the sky was only slightly cloudy and the air quality was also quite good with values in the yellow-green range. So none of them had even put on the otherwise essential protective clothing.

Jia was among the elite of nature scientists employed here, dedicated to restoring the conditions for life on Earth. They called their project 'Fixin', an artificial word, like many terms used today, which the Chinese and American founders of the project had put together from 'Fùxīng' and 'Fixing', meaning rebirth and repairing.

The project consisted of two large sub projects. The research facilities of the CC project were located here in Svalbard, in which algae were being researched, because they were required as the basis for an intact climate.

The site on this remote, northernmost archipelago was chosen because it still contained the first global gene vault predating the climate catastrophe. Many plant seeds and microorganisms had been able to survive in this facility to this day. In addition, with its vast distance from Antarctica, Svalbard was well protected from sabotage, which was of the utmost importance because the project had many opponents in the public.

The second important area of research dealt with flora and fauna, that is the plant and animal world as it once existed on the old continents. They called it the FF project for short. There attempts were made to adapt old species to the new living conditions that might prevail in the future.

The main site of the FF project was on Finistere, an island in the northernmost region of Antarctica, also remote from the Antarctic mainland.

Jia and the team had ventured some fifty meters from the protective white dome that sat enthroned on the main island's highest mountain plateau. With a diameter of more than seven hundred meters, it spanned the entire Svalbard research facility, which consisted of fifty-eight individual multistorey buildings. These were built in the typical industrial look of former times in a non-spherical design and offered space for the laboratories of the two hundred and fifty researchers and technical staff.

Due to the extreme wind speeds that occurred here, the dome ran in a particularly flat arc over the entire complex and ended all around directly on the rock surface in a ring wall, so its interior was hermetically shielded from the outside world.

The group was now standing just before the edge of the plateau, above the steep slope down to the fjord and looking south in expectation. The mountain range on the horizon there appeared as a sharp-edged black-bluish silhouette in front of the already very bright glowing orange and violet sky.

In a few minutes the most upper and very small sector of the sun's disk would appear there between two of the 'Blue End' peaks, as they called this particular spot. This was a special event for Jia, for after having been locked inside the Svalbard research facility during the long period of darkness, she longed for daylight and a break from the sterile environment of the labs. Unlike the cities of Antarctica, this outpost of civilization was not endowed with artificial skies or one of the beautiful natural parks. Svalbard was purely a research location. Antarctica, on the other hand, offered its population a wide range of conveniences, so that hardly anyone there noticed the polar night.

The surrounding mountain peaks and the upper part of the dome were already hit by the first rays and bathed in a reddish-violet light. Barely a minute later the tiny piece of the sun appeared on the horizon. A pleasant shiver ran down Jia's back at the sight of the glistening, narrow arch, even though she knew that the extreme UV radiation posed a danger to the unprotected parts of the skin. Her eyefoil's readings also instantly jumped to sixteen and began flashing red. So the UV-B index was dangerously high.

Although she too was tempted to enjoy the sight for a few more seconds, she quickly walked back to the dome like everyone else. On the way there she looked back briefly. Her nose and lips already felt hot and dry, like a sunburn.

I should have put on a helmet and protective suit! she thought.

After a deep puff of her Fresh-Air, she entered the high security and air lock system of the shelter facility again.

After reaching the nearby building where she worked, she went downstairs to the laboratory on the second basement. There were the large, closed seawater containers in which their so far most technically advanced algae experiments were being carried out.

Jia routinely checked the status indicators of the current test sequence that had been running here for days.

It still didn't look good, which surprised her in no way. For weeks, hardly anyone here had expected to achieve better results quickly.

They were facing life-threatening problems, and after eight weeks here in Svalbard, Jia couldn't wait to fly back to Antarctica and Byrd Island tomorrow to hopefully find some sort of solution there after all.

Svalbard was one of the headquarters of their project for historical reasons. A kind of Noah's Ark was erected here more than two-hundred years ago at the beginning of the climate catastrophe.

At that time, the archipelago was covered with mighty glaciers and snow, and the temperature of the rocky ground below, was constantly minus eighteen degrees Celsius down to great depths all year round. This permafrost supposedly offered an ideal environment for the preservation of plant seeds far into the future. The nature scientists of that time had therefore collected millions of specimens from all over the world to keep them viable here in the ice. To shield off higher temperatures they created deep tunnels with huge arrays of air-conditioned rooms in a mountain.

It was thanks to the foresight of the planners that they built the facility well above the waterline. It was not immediately flooded when the sea level began to rise at an unimaginable rate in 2035 and when storm surges made the coastal regions more and more uninhabitable.

Whether and to what extent this would ever happen was not exactly known beforehand of course. Most people probably assumed that only one or the other animal and plant species would die out as a result of the warming of the Earth. Moreover most of them believed that the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would not take place noticeably within thousands of years.

Hardly anyone would have thought it possible at that time that all continents, with the exception of Antarctica, would soon be uninhabitable.

Within a few decades, however, temperatures rose to extremely high levels worldwide through a cascade of completely unforeseen feedback processes. This not only destroyed all life in the wild outside on the old continents.

The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland as well as the permafrost soils of the polar regions and high mountains quickly melted completely, causing sea levels to rise by ninety-five meters.

Because the previously ice-covered land masses were still rising today due to the relief of the subsoil, there were constant earthquakes and rockslides of enormous proportions. The tremors often reached a magnitude of 10.0 and when they hit coastal areas, which was very common, they triggered huge waves, which were also being created when enormous rock masses that the tremors broke loose crashed into the sea.

These waves triggered in Greenland raced across the North Atlantic and thundered against the coast of Svalbard as mega tsunamis up to sixty meters high. Unfortunately, the gene vault facility, which had been located on a West coast fjord, was now right on one of the worst affected regions and was therefore in serious danger.

To keep the valuable content from being destroyed, a new facility was built even at this time when the old world was collapsing. To protect it from the rising high temperatures in the long term, it was equipped with huge cooling systems and was located in one of the least hot places on the island at an altitude of one thousand meters.

Of particular importance, and perhaps even life-saving for them today, was the fact that reservoirs for the micro organisms of the sea had also been built there. Like the millions of plant seeds, these had been preserved and kept alive to this day.

Fortunately, this second facility was saved from destruction even in the war during the climate catastrophe, because all the warring parties were interested in keeping it intact.

In the time that followed, during the building of the cities in Antarctica, the system was maintained with great care. Even today, for safety reasons, it was operated in parallel with the laboratories on Byrd Island in Antarctica and had been expanded time and time again.

For many years, the preservation of the plants conserved here was one of the most important tasks of all, because they were vital for the colonization of Antarctica and for feeding its population.

The huge distance of almost twenty-thousand kilometers between Svalbard and Antarctica was a major problem in the early days. There were only slow submarines available to cover this route, because the extreme storms made the airplanes of this time unmanageable, especially during take-off and landing. Therefore, an attempt was made to set up another gene vault in Antarctica as quickly as possible. For this purpose, a research facility had already been established in the 2120s on Byrd Island, a small, uninhabited island that was also far from the mainland. All species existing in Svalbard were propagated and brought to the newly built vault there. In contrast to the research that was also carried out on Byrd Island from then on, the current experiments today were only conducted in the high-security laboratories on Svalbard because of the increased risk of sabotage. This location was out of reach for people who were not absolutely in favor of the project.

The next morning, in her small Svalbard apartment, Jia was, as always, gently woken up by the caressing movements of her bed. After a while she opened her eyes. The room was still dark. Only on the ceiling the play of colors of the northern polar lights could be seen, which was part of her wake-up program and which she loved. These were the live images transmitted by the cameras outside the protective dome of the current events in the sky, where the different gases of the atmosphere were glowing like turquoise, violet and orange-red transparent veils moving in slow motion. Jia knew that this was caused by energetic particles coming from the sun, interacting with the gas molecules in the upper layers of the atmosphere which they could reach due to the perpendicular orientation of the Earth's magnetic field in polar regions.

Still slightly drowsy, she watched for a few minutes, then swung out of bed and put on her data glasses, which she had placed on the sideboard next to her. Her first glance was at the status of the experiments that had been going on in the lab overnight.

Unfortunately, the situation had not changed even now.

Data glasses were used by almost all adults today. They called it 'eyefoil' for short, and with its 'augmented reality' function, which could highly improve the image and always displayed all currently required information in the field of view, it was part of the basic equipment of everyday life. It was worn throughout the day, also because it served as a communication medium and control center for a wide variety of devices and processes.

With its shiny surface, its appearance resembled the oversized sports glasses that people used to wear in the past.

It covered much of the face, from the middle of the forehead almost to the mouth. Its shape was slightly curved, as if cut out of a large sphere, and it fitted snugly around the upper half of the face, with a cut-out for the nose.

In order not to restrict the field of vision anywhere, it also retained these dimensions on the sides and also ran uninterruptedly over the temples and cheekbones, as it was made of a single piece without hinges or a frame. Only just before the ears did it narrow and form a semicircle around the external auditory canals.

This part was also individually adapted for each person, not only to achieve a very good grip, but also because the audio unit was located there, which was also equipped with AR functions and delivered optimal sound.

Since the eyefoil consisted of a foil of an LCP high-performance polymer that was only one millimeter thick, it was extremely light and yet extremely durable.

Its outside and inside reflected all the colors of the rainbow when it was held up to the light and as long as it wasn't switched on. These colors came about through the microscopically small pixels that were used on the outside to capture the image and on the inside where they directed the rays of light of the computer generated image into the eye.

The principle how they worked was quite simple. The data generated during the image recording was forwarded to computers to which the eyefoils were permanently connected wirelessly. Today, these computers generally belonged to the quasar class which were based on quantum technology so they could perform all calculations at the same time and solve any task almost instantaneously. With this parallel data processing the quasars were billions of billions of times faster than the old type computers which could make calculations only sequentially.

With their ultimate speed the quasars created a perfect image of the environment which they sent back to the eyefoils without any noticeable delay, including all relevant and desired additional information.

Most people only used their eyefoil in the two standard modes 'normal' and 'real'. In real mode, the environment appeared exactly as it would be seen with the naked eye, and in addition important information could also be displayed. In normal mode, everything was displayed according to the personal profile and the preferences set in it, showing everything with optimal clarity and brightness. This was the case even in complete darkness, so in this setting everything appeared as clear as in daylight.

Of course, the eyefoil was also used for video and audio communication. The images it created for its owner could also be streamed to others. For audio, the entire surface of the eyefoil served as a microphone, picking up sound waves from all directions.

In addition, it could be used as control center for the various functions that one wanted to carry out. These could be offered in the form of symbols that, depending on their type, topic or importance, were displayed in dedicated sectors in the eyefoil's field of vision and could be activated by finger and hand movements. To do this, they were constantly tracked and analyzed by the eyefoil's micro radar system and tracking algorithms to coordinate them with the symbols and execute the desired commands.

The energy required for operation of the eyefoils, like all other mobile devices and machines, was supplied via charging points from the ubiquitous energy network to which they could connect wirelessly and recharge within seconds.

The energy itself was generated in a completely climateneutral manner by fusion reactors, which were available in compact form everywhere.

Jia was quite disappointed, although she had already expected that the tests which had been started yesterday would again be negative. Despite developing a further improved poison resistance all the algae had died again, albeit a few microseconds later than before.

The algae in their experiments descended from the old species from before the climate catastrophe and had special abilities which they urgently needed now in their project.

However, they were not adapted to the new species of algae that lived in the seawater today. Each of them produced extremely strong toxins to ward off all competing species of algae. In many regions of the oceans, the sea water was as dangerously poisonous as the strongest snake venoms used to be. These were even surpassed by some of these algae toxins, only the dilution by the seawater reduced the effect somewhat.

For months, Jia had been working with other outstanding nature scientists on a gene sequence that they could use to make the microscopic creatures resistant to these toxins.

Unfortunately, they had only had marginal success so far. The whole project might be doomed if they didn't make a breakthrough here soon.

Only recently, and that was the good news, had they been successful in another important issue of the project, which dealt with CO2 absorption from the atmosphere by means of these algae.

Jia still had enough time for her fifteen-minute morning workout before heading to the hyperport, as the airports were called, which were equipped with all facilities to operate the super fast hypersonic planes used for long distances.

She quickly slipped into her V-shoes, which she always wore for simulations, to give the impression of walking or running on real ground without actually moving more than one meter from the spot. She made her way to the small living room and the V-ground pad in its center where she clicked the virtual button in the eyefoil to start her favorite track.

Immediately she was immersed in the scenery of a small Caribbean island. It was as beautiful as ever with its lush greenery, endless array of colorful flowers, and blue ocean.

Jia looked around briefly. As always at the beginning of her training, she was standing on a flat rock near the sea bank. Below to the left a narrow bay stretched eastward lined with hundreds of slender palm trees. In the turquoise water, the sun glittered in thousands of small stars and gentle waves splashed on the white sandy beach, only about fifty meters from Jia. For a moment she toyed with the idea of going swimming there, but the next moment she dropped it because of course it didn't work with the gear she was wearing.

She turned away from this side of the island, having now the nature trail in front of her which she loved so much. After only a few meters, it disappeared into the dense, tropical vegetation and led up into the hilly landscape, from where she always enjoyed fantastic views on the island's gorgeous panoramas.

The images in Jia's eyefoil were reconstructed by algorithms from the real world dating back two hundred years.

All the exotic plants and the movement of the leaves in the wind, the birds flying by, the waves on the water as well as the fluffy old-type cumulus clouds in the light blue sky appeared in the most detailed way.

However, the entire scenery was not only visually absolutely realistic. The perfect illusion was created by the VG, a generator that simulated all other environmental conditions so the animation could not have been distinguished from a real stay on site.

When Jia started walking at a leisurely pace, she immediately felt the warm, light headwind in her hair and on her skin. In addition to the slight airflow, the VG also generated a pleasant tingling sensation there via electric fields.

It also sprayed real substances that matched the respective scenery. With deep breaths she inhaled the typical smell of the sea and the sweet scent of the plants. After having covered a short distance she became much more lively.

She clicked on a suggested soundtrack and only after a few meters the happy Caribbean sounds together with the beautiful scenery made her long for real, intact nature in her own world. Due to the persistent problems in the laboratory and the short time remaining to solve them, today this feeling seemed even stronger to her than she had ever experienced before.

After the run and some final tai chi chuan exercises, she went to the bathroom to freshen up.

'What goes best with today's travel day?' she asked Aida, her personal bot.

A hologram immediately appeared in front of her two meters away, showing herself realistically in a three-dimensional mirror image with the suggested outfit, her gray-blue, silky shiny suit with a white top and white air-conditioned soft boots. She nodded briefly, whereupon Aida went to the closet and got the clothes shown as well as the backpack that she had already packed for her.

After two bāozis and a cup of hot tea, Jia left the apartment on time which was at her disposal in this residential complex, as was the case for all nature scientists who only worked in Svalbard for certain times.

The shuttle station was only a two minute walk away, located 50 meters deep in the ground, since all the shuttle lines led exclusively through tunnels in Svalbard. The shuttle went directly to the hyperport, which was located in the central region of the island. It took fifteen minutes to cover the distance of one-hundred kilometers, including a short stop.

Today she had a three-hour flight ahead of her. Jia already knew that a completely new model of hypersonic aircraft was being used on this route. It was almost twice as fast as any machine she knew and would fly at even higher altitudes. She was looking forward to it, because from there one would be able to already guess the curvature of the Earth's surface. In her youth, she would have loved to be an astronaut, but there were no longer any projects on the moon, Mars, or in Earth orbit, except for bots servicing satellites.

The hypersonics as they called them briefly had only been around for about forty years. They were used on all long-distance routes today, not just the Antarctica-Svalbard route.

This twenty-thousand kilometer distance had taken almost two weeks by a submarine. Today, these subs, as the submarines were called for short, were almost exclusively used to transport goods to remote Antarctic islands. In the time before the hypersonics, they also connected widely separated cities in Antarctica's archipelago.

The Fixin project had been founded in 2122, as soon as the situation in Antarctica had allowed it. Because after the war and the migration to the almost empty continent, all the infrastructure needed for survival had to be set up there first. However, the goal of the nature scientists also had always been to allow the Earth to cool down again as quickly as possible and to restore the climate to its old state of equilibrium, just as it had leveled off millions of years before.

The CC project that Jia worked for aimed at just doing that. The abbreviation CC was derived from the two central terms of their research, CO2 and coccolithophores. CO2 was the chemical formula for carbon dioxide, that is the greenhouse gas that had triggered the climate catastrophe and most of which they had to remove from the atmosphere again.

Coccolithophore was the scientific name of a special kind of calcareous algae. These had the property of forming a kind of scale armor made of small limestone plates, which protected them from predators and gave them stability.

Earlier nature scientists had discovered that these algae were ideal for creating a new species that could remove CO2 from the atmosphere in any desired amount and in a very short time. They named this new artificial species 'Proto'. The trick with it was that it could convert the CO2 into an endogenous chemically stable substance that, once the alga died, sank with it to the sea floor and remained there forever.

Jia had been researching these algae for five years now. Before she had graduated from the University of Montecito as a nature scientist with a focus on biology. As the best graduate in a long time, she was immediately given the position in the Fixin project, which as a rule only accepted the very best. Together with her colleague and friend Gaia Zhen, a nature scientist specialized in biochemistry, she played a key role in the development of the new protoalgae.

Two years ago, they had already succeeded in significantly increasing photosynthesis in these old calcareous algae through genetic modification. This was an extremely important prerequisite for their project, because this process of plant-based energy production also released oxygen. This in turn was vital for humans and animals. Because all the algae that produced oxygen today would be destroyed in the course of the project and replaced by the protoalgae it was imperative that they were able to do the same.

The algae that existed today had been the only remaining source of oxygen on Earth for over one hundred years, after all land plants had burned up in the early phase of the climate catastrophe. All old types of algae had disappeared from the oceans, because these had become too warm.

Why people had risked this loss and never thought about where the oxygen they constantly breathed in order not to suffocate within a few minutes actually came from was considered by most people today to be the greatest blunder of humankind.

The most important sources of oxygen, in addition to the algae, had been the commercial forests of Europe and North America, as well as the primeval forests in South America, Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Siberia. They could not be reforested at that time or grow back on their own, because young plants were not able to survive anymore. They fell victim to months of droughts and flooding, withered away or were drowned and swept away by the floods. Without any vegetation, of course, all land animals also disappeared.

The situation in the seas was no better after all ecosystems in them had collapsed over a hundred years ago. At that time, natural selection replaced all previous algae by more heat-resistant species. It was an incredible stroke of luck that these also produced oxygen, even if it was significantly less than before. Otherwise all people and animals would have suffocated long ago.

But three years ago, the algorithms made a most frightening prediction that marked the end of this phase. In fact, dramatic changes had been looming for a few months now, since the surface of the Earth and the oceans were still warming today.

The reason was that the cooling effect of cold deep sea water on the heated surface water was becoming less and less, because ocean currents had been mixing these for decades. Therefore, an ever-increasing warming of this cold reservoir and thus of the oceans as a whole took place.

The resulting shrinking habitats had forced the algae into increasingly fierce competition. For decades they had been producing even stronger toxins to push each other out of the sea surface and thus be able to use the high-energy UV radiation available there for their sophisticated metabolism. With it they could produce the required huge quantities of both these poisons to defend themselves as well as special chemical substances which they released into the atmosphere in the form of tiny droplets. These were called 'aerosols', which meant suspended particles dissolved in the air. The water vapor in the air condensed on these so that clouds formed, which in turn led to the cooling of the air below, the sea surface, and the algae.

However, competing against each other had already escalated to such an extent that, as predicted by the algorithms, the first algae genus, Oscillatoria, had even given up this vital property allowing it to produce an even stronger poison than before. This enabled it to displace its competitors much more effectively, but this advantage could only be a shortlived one. In the longer term, it also destroyed its own livelihood because it was now dependent on the cooling effect of the aerosols from the other algae, which it was about to destroy.

This fatal consequence was only delayed for the moment because the other species and genera were still producing sufficient aerosols. However, it was only a matter of time before these algae would be pushed back by the new and then most powerful toxins of Oscillatoria to the point where they could no longer provide adequate cooling. Oscillatoria's strategy would not only cause all other algae to disappear, but would also be its own undoing, since of course at some point it too would no longer be able to withstand the rising temperatures. Because the algae were the only and last oxygen producers on Earth, the basis of life for mankind would also be destroyed.

Jia's research was therefore no longer just about long-term goals, but suddenly about the most important task that mankind had ever had to face.

The CC project was thus given absolute priority over all other research tasks. According to the latest computer forecasts, there was a maximum of at least two more years to avert the threat of suffocation. In fact, the temperature on the sea surface was already above the critical point in more and more places.

Fortunately, Jia and her colleague Gaia had already succeeded in genetically modifying the coccolithophores in such a way that these could actually remove any desired amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere very quickly.

The principle was quite simple. The carbon dioxide in the air constantly got dissolved into the seawater through natural physical and chemical processes. There, the metabolism of the alga detached the carbon and built it into its calcareous scale armor. As a result the greenhouse gas was safely removed from the atmosphere forever.

In the newly created protoalgae they had improved this process by modifying the underlying gene segment. The protoalgae now created much larger limestone plates and scale armor structures. The amount of CO2 consumed in the process could now be perfectly controlled, as could the speed at which this process was to take place. The increase of both parameters easily reached one hundred times or more of the previous values.

This was one of the basic requirements for the project to be successful. The plan was to release these protoalgae into the oceans, where they would proliferate and eliminate all other algae. After a certain time, they would die off themselves and sink to the bottom of the sea.

Jia and Gaia had already come up with a trick so that CO2 would not be released again when the protoalgae decomposed, as was the case with previous algae.

Unfortunately, this had so far only been possible in the laboratory, where they have been able to remove the highly toxic algae and their toxins from the seawater. Under real ocean conditions, the protoalgae died immediately because they were based on this ancient, non-poison-resistant species.

The test that had started yesterday brought the same result again, although they had set up the computers to laboriously recalculate the gene section of their test algae that was responsible for the protective reactions.

The repeated failure clearly showed that all their previous thinking was based on false assumptions and there was a fundamental flaw in the algorithms they had used. This meant that they had to try something completely new to be able to advance on this issue. Their imagination was obviously far too limited and they urgently needed completely new ideas. In their discussions of how to do this, they had come to the conclusion that there was only one way to get the inspiration they needed. They had to look outside of the lab and dive into the few existing areas of nature left on Earth to find a very different approach to solve the problem of venom resistance.

To quickly equip an expedition for this purpose, they were going to fly back to Byrd Island today.

The shuttle stopped deep down in the mountain right next to the underground hyperport. Jia threw her long, almost black hair back in the neck, grabbed her backpack and got out. It was much cooler down here than it had been above at the shuttle station where she had boarded. Shivering, she zipped up her jacket and glanced at the flight data displayed on the bottom information panel of her eyefoil. She gave a short nod as if to confirm to herself that everything would be going according to plan and that she was there in time. The earliest possible start time was still 8:25 a.m.. Because of the storms, a start could easily be delayed by several hours.

The hypersonic's destination was New Urumqi, the capital of the state of Antarctica. It was almost exactly opposite on the globe to her current residence in Svalbard and almost 1.400 kilometers from the South Pole.

The shuttle station at the hyperport was right next to the terminal. Jia went in and proceeded the short way to the only gate available here. Many fellow travelers were already in the waiting area and Gaia was also there. Jia spotted her immediately because of the transparent light blue sphere that surrounded her in her eyefoil, as was the case with all contacts and points of interest. Without this mark, Gaia would hardly have been noticeable in the crowd, as she was of medium height and like most younger people had dark brown hair, which she wore only to her neck, much shorter than Jia.

She headed straight for her.

As a precaution, Gaia had taken an earlier shuttle and had come directly from the laboratory, where she had worked until almost two o'clock in the morning and then spent the rest of the night there.

'Hi!', Jia called out cheerfully when she was only a few meters away from Gaia who also glanced up because she had just received a hint in her eyefoil that Jia was approaching.

Although they both wore their eyefoils, Jia and Gaia saw each other's entire face including live facial expressions. The eyefoils themselves were invisible to them because they had authorized each other for privacy mode. This setting made the inside of the eyefoil scan the part of the face it covered and passed these image data on to the receiver.

All the others without permission still could only see the colorfully iridescent surface.

'Hi too!' Gaia beamed even though she was completely exhausted and reached out to Jia. Both lay in each other's arms for several seconds.

Although they met almost every day at the institute, their mutual greeting was particularly intense today.

'Travel bug?' Jia asked, remembering that they had both been sworn to complete silence about the life-threatening situation of the drop of aerosols that had now occurred to avoid public panic. Not even the other nature scientists here in Svalbard were allowed to know about it.

'Yes, as usual I'm totally stressed because of the flight! And dead tired too. Can you imagine?'

Jia looked at her with pity for a moment, then raised her eyebrows and asked with her incredibly confident smile:

'Have you got them?'

Even though the currently unsolved problem scratched her basically optimistic attitude, it spurred Jia's ambition at the same time. So far she had solved every problem in the end, and it should stay that way.

'You mean 'them'?'

Gaia loved to give unclear answers to vague questions. Of course she knew what Jia meant and that she wasn't allowed to say any more in this threatening situation. Jia took it easy, because of course she knew her friend's fad. She rolled her eyes up, mockingly asking for help.

Gaia paused for a moment.

'Yes, of course I have got them!'

As agreed, Gaia had taken a sample of their algae from the lab.

'They're already in there.', she explained, pointing past Jia through the tinted glass separating the waiting area from the hyperport hall. There, at some distance, the hypersonic could be guessed, that would bring them to Antarctica today.

'I've been here for an hour. I wanted to make sure the transport was safe.'

'Good! Then nothing can go wrong anymore.'

After a moment's thought she added:

'And our boys can fire up the synths.'

By this, Jia was referring to her life partner Ray Donnellan and Mian Sorokin, with whom Gaia had a longstanding relationship. All four of them were also very good friends.

Parallel to the research work of Jia and Gaia in Svalbard, Ray and Mian had optimized the synthesizers in the laboratory on Byrd Island and further developed these biotechnical machines to the limits of what was technically feasible. Within the last weeks they had become so advanced that they were clearly superior to the current Svalbard devices now. If their experiments were eventually successful, they could use these much faster machines to produce larger quantities of protoalgae, which would be a crucial factor in the project.

Meeting again after having spent eight weeks in Svalbard was the only bright spot in the current situation. During all that time, they'd only kept in touch via eyefoil, or more realistically as a hologram. However, both modes of communication were sterile. The long separation made them feel more and more like strangers even if they saw and spoke to each other three or more times a day. Of course, after eight weeks, this avatar effect was stronger than ever.

At eight o'clock sharp, the sign for boarding was shown in the eyefoils. Apparently they were lucky with the weather conditions today. The doors to the hall slowly moved aside. Bright light came in immediately because in contrast to the terminal this area was lit up as bright as day.

Stepping outside, Jia and Gaia almost felt as if they were going into the open air, for the hall's size and its two-hundred meter high domed ceiling clad in monotone white gave a similar sense of spaciousness. However, they both were aware that it was two thousand meters below Svalbard's highest table mountain plane. On the way there, travel data in the eyefoils had already announced that the tunnel was going downhill for the last fifty kilometers so it also lay far below sea level.

Ahead of them now stretched the wide, circular expanse of the hyperport. In their eyefoils it also appeared white with many different colored lines marking aprons with taxiways as well as service and parking areas for various aircrafts.

'There, look!' Jia nudged her friend and made a head movement straight ahead.

The hypersonic was clearly visible in the center of the white area. Even from this distance it was very impressive. The long stretched black-blue shiny fuselage resembled an arrow and gave it an almost elegant touch. As they both knew, it was by far the fastest passenger plane ever built.

As they approached the machine, they continued to look around. At the very edge of the huge area near the dome wall service vehicles and various copters were parked. These wingless, rather boxy aircrafts with a flattened, however pointed nose were much more to Gaia's liking, because they were not designed for high altitude and usually were flying very smoothly too. However, they were not used for the long route to Antarctica because they were much smaller and slower than the hypersonics. Flying with a copter through the most powerful hurricanes over the Atlantic and Pacific was not a pleasure too. The hypersonics, on the other hand, flew at such high altitudes that all weather events in the atmosphere took place far below them.

The passengers were guided along barriers to the rear of the brand new aircraft. The closer they got, the clearer its enormous dimensions became. The fuselage stretched one hundred and fifteen meters from the needle-shaped nose to the stern, which was almost as pointed, and ended well behind the wings, which curved steeply upwards on their outer endings. Because of the very high temperatures that occurred during hypersonic flights due to air friction, its windowless skin did not show the slightest unevenness. There was also no paintwork or lettering, because both would simply have burned away during the flight.

This was definitely the largest and most streamlined hypersonic they could imagine.

Gaia was very curious to see whether the flight with this model would actually be much more pleasant than before, as had been announced.

Jia knew that her friend hated the shaking and roaring that occurred especially during take-off and landing which scared her to death every time. She herself occasionally got a queasy feeling too, but was otherwise fascinated by these flights, with which they covered the huge distance between the polar regions of planet Earth within a few hours.

'Hey, look at the front end! The new hyper winglets. You'll like that!'

Four very small wings protruded diagonally from the tip of the hypersonic which appeared like an 'x' when looked at from the front.

They were used for the finest directional corrections and to compensate for turbulence up to the hypersonic speed. Allegedly, this made the flight much more pleasant.

'I'm curious!' Gaia replied. 'I think it's about time that there was finally some progress.' and was surprised to find that she took it much more easily this time.

She hadn't thought about it until now, but with regard to the current problems, she felt less afraid of the flight today.

For reasons of aerodynamics and the high temperatures that occurred outside during flight, the only access to the interior of the aircraft was at its very back at the beginning of the pointed shaped part of the fuselage, directly below the vertical stabilizer. When looking up there, the numbers were displayed in their eyefoils, which illustrated the enormous dimensions of the hypersonic. With its strikingly high landing gear it was twice as tall as those they had previously flown in. Directly overhead, the empennage rose fifteen meters. Everything else on the machine was twice as big too. The cabin section was almost ten meters wide over almost its entire length, the fuselage being heavily flattened on both sides. It got wider and wider from the nose to here at the rear end and went very flat into the delta-shaped wings. Combined with the four massive engines integrated into their underside and the narrow wing span of just thirty-five meters, the machine's arrow-shaped design suggested that it could actually reach a top speed of Mach eight, eight times the speed of sound.

Jia and Gaia entered the mover, which took them up to the access area in the upper half of the hypersonic along with all other passengers. In the entire lower part, apart from the luggage compartment, there were only the huge hydrogen and oxygen tanks.

Except for the larger dimensions the access area was exactly as they were used to. From there it went both further forward into the passenger cabin and backwards into the cockpit, which, like with all hypersonic models, was located at the very end of the fuselage.

The cockpit crew consisted of two humanoid bots and two human pilots. They were on board only for psychological reasons, because manual control of the machine was not possible. During the entire flight they would only observe the flight data. Even in an emergency, the hypersonics would act completely independently. In the forty years, however, there had never been any problems or even accidents with the hypersonic aircrafts.

The four now stood at the cabin entrance and welcomed the passengers. Gaia and Jia took their seats in the tenth row on the left. Since they had already booked three days ago, they sat right next to each other.

For technical reasons, all seats and rows in this new model were arranged one meter apart, either side by side as well as one behind the other. Thus the huge cabin could only seat one hundred and twenty passengers in thirty rows of four seats each. The free space in between was necessary so that the seats could be turned against the flight direction for the landing approach without the passengers having to get up. With this new technology, the physical stress caused by the enormous braking forces was kept as small as possible.

'Hey, not bad! They've treated us to a lot of luxury there!', Jia commented as she looked around. The interior of the cabin was of high quality in beige and light gray. The seats were made of Xitrea, a smart material whose properties could be tailored to personal preference, making it feel like leather or any type of fabric such as silk or synthetic materials, theoretically even metal, stone or wood. The shape of the surface and the contour of the entire seat could also be changed.

Gaia nodded. 'Yes absolutely! Just look! The service seems to be good, too.'

She had just noticed the six humanoid service bots, which were still parked in the cabin aisles before liftoff, three at the front end of the cabin and three with them here in the middle section.

Jia and Gaia checked the views offered for eyefoils to allow virtually looking outside, and spontaneously decided on the normal view, which would show virtual cabin windows when they were in the air. Being still on the ground there was no direct view to the outside.

After just a few minutes when all were seated, the hypersonic began to roll to its starting position. There was no sign of movement inside the cabin. This could only be recognized by the data displayed in the eyefoils. An animation with only sketchy reality showed the hypersonic traveling slowly on a taxiway marked by green lines that led straight from the center of the hall to the edge, passing some engineering and service bots busy all over the hyperport area.