Cold War: Pt 2
It was Ivy Gold that predicted the frigid descent onto North America. The supercomputer labeled the dramatic and life altering climate shift in the only way it understood, a Polar Vortex. What the scientists monitoring the perplexing messages, dubbed errors, did not know was that the forecast was the cumulative effect of a silent menace starting in a lake on the opposite side of the globe.
The brief but profound creation on the bottom of Baikal created a binary climatological disaster. Russian scientists had in fact conjured a momentary flash of cold dark matter that came into existence because of Baikal’s magnetic anomaly. The infinitely small bundle of matter uncoiled and collapsed, sending a burst of energy across the globe in an equally brief moment of time. In this explosion of matter unseen since the dawn of the universe, the Earth’s magnetic briefly ripped wide above Siberia. The protective barrier, those layers of atmosphere that blanketed the globe were left agape for a surge of impossible cold and radiation. A column of cold, possible in the zero gravity of space, splashed onto Baikal which froze, all 5,000 feet in depth, in minutes. Trees turned brittle as icicles and boulders fissured by a blast of freezing air from 80 kilometers above Siberia.
This icy event spread a cold across Siberia in hours and Eurasia in days. Ivy Gold’s computations were influenced by those strange bits of matter sparking in and out of existence. Its forecast, like the ice age that collapsed on Earth, was a fluke.
***
Humanity recoiled when the cold spread across the North Pole. In weeks a new ice age was crippling the northern latitudes. Sea ice stretched across the Atlantic and Pacific. Within a year most of Europe, Canada and United States were blanked in an ever thickening blanket of snow and ice. Russia, the epicenter of this accidental climate reversal, turned inward and other than satellites and imagery from the International Space Station, little was known about their frigid state of existence.
As the ice inched towards southern points, deeper than ever in recorded human history, nations and peoples moved southwards ahead of the cold. Equatorial latitudes, normally hot and tropical, took on climates more like Alaska or Norway.
Nations argued to find a quick solution. But nature, working on its own methodical cumulative timeline, would not be easily moved by the feeble measures of man. It was man that brought the miniature black hole into existence, but it was the laws of nature and the cosmos that unraveled man’s arrogant tapestry.
As the Earth slowly became an icy orb with life clinging to its surface another group looked to space to survive. Leading that group, Sonja Mehta.
***
The Mehta Space Habitat grew from a proposal scrawled on a napkin in a Washington D.C. coffee shop. A ring of inflatable modules, based on 60 year-old technology, started as a worst case scenario as a lifeboat for humanity in Earth orbit. Sonja Mehta and three of her fellow grad students at the Space Policy Institute brainstormed a space-centered solution to the quickly freezing Earth. It was dreamed up in those early days, when the cold seemed to reach only as far as the great Lakes. But when those massive bodies of water iced over and the cold kept advancing, the idea that mankind may freeze to death became a distinct reality.
What made Sonja’s proposal different was its reliance on off-the-shelf design innovated by 21st century materials and manufacturing. The only obstacle, funding and governmental support. The former was achieved by Alex Mehta’s wide respect and influence, as well as purse. The latter appeared when the napkin plan emerged as the only internationally supported project to defend humanity from the deep freeze.
“Moving into space seemed ludicrous,” Sonja Mehta announced to the crowd surrounding the small podium. “Remember those arguments, the Earth can’t be warming and then cool. The freeze was temporary.”
“We’re in the tenth year of the Freeze and the Earth is not warming,” Sonja glanced over her shoulder to a frosted globe hanging in the darkness. “Those nations still clinging to the Earth hope to reverse the damage done by the Baikal Experiment. But the further we are from zero day, the less likely that seems.”
“We must embrace that this life, hanging on in geosynchronous orbit, might be the only way humanity survives for the next three generations. It is not a life we wanted or expected for our children, but it is the way we survive until our Mother welcomes us back.”
Applause filled the white walled module of Mehta Habitat — Alpha as Sonja stepped away from the dais. Over 900 Mehta habitats spun in orbit around the cold Earth, providing a home for nearly one million Earthlings displaced by the Freeze. Below them, the rest of humanity survived along the thin belt of pale green ringing the equator. The rest of the once diversely colored planet was now a pure white.
Those who remained behind, governments and power brokers, attempted to replicate life as usual while plotting ways to turn back the tide of ice that choked the land and sea. Sometimes, those conversations were loud enough to catch the attention of the million aboard the Mehta colonies.
“Dr. Mehta, care to comment on the United States new proposal to reheat the Earth’s atmosphere,” a reporter for the colony’s virtual news organization asked Sonja attempted to sneak out of the soiree.
“You mean detonating nuclear weapons in the atmosphere? Ludicrous.”
“No, Dr. Mehta. There is a new plan moving forward,” the reporter replied. “The United States has a plan to melt the ice.”
“How?” Sonja laughed.
“From space.”
***
Tomorrow, the conclusion of COLD WAR.
