MONO-GLOBE ( Chapter 5 )
Mono-globe is my home, and my home is a giant dome that rests at the bottom of the Pacifica.
The books tell me that the Earth was suffering from severe temperature changes, and huge storms, and massive waves had swallowed up large amounts of land that were once continents. The people had been short-sighted, thinking only of their own needs in the moment, and had treated the Earth terribly. No plans were made with future generations in mind.
An international group of scientists had been pulled together by an American Physicist named James Vincent Mullis. Mullis had partnered with a Dutch Astrophysicist named Marcus Van Peel. The two of them worked tirelessly on projects that might still help reverse some of the damage that had been done to the Earth by pure thoughtless and selfish greed.
The loss of land masses had sparked territorial wars. People having lost their homes and lands were pouring into neighboring countries and were fighting them for their resources. Wars had started to break out everywhere.
Still, Mullis, and Van Peel, and their group of elite scientists, didn’t want to give up on the Earth. On humanity.
Until the day that Marcus Van Peel, while working at the Astrophysical Observatory, in southern Ukraine, discovered an asteroid, headed on a collision trajectory directly towards the Earth.
This changed everything. The focus of the work the scientific group was doing changed completely when they realized this asteroid could mean the end of civilization. The group had eighteen years before the asteroid was scheduled to strike the Earth.
The scientists got to work on a well guarded design for saving as many people as they could. They worked on every aspect of this design and came up with the “Mono-Globe Project.” An enclosed, transparent dome, made of the newest material that had been recently discovered. It looked like glass, but was as hard as diamonds. Nothing could break this material, not even the pressures of the deepest oceans. Studies were done and a decision was made about the exact location for the Mono-Globe to be placed.
Every country realized what was at stake and contributed billions of dollars to save at least part of human kind. Large underwater “ships” were built from the same material as the Mono-Globe. It was called “Mono” Globe because it was soon clear to everyone involved that there would be only enough time to build “one”. So, Mono-Globe was built to house the population of a large country, into a smaller area. The hope was that they would be able to save close to 400 million people.
They started bringing people down as soon as Mono-Globe was set in place. The population at large were still unaware of what was coming. The thousands of designers, and builders, and maintenance crews, were given the choice of staying and having their families join them, but they were not going back up. If they wanted to return to the surface, they could, but they would never be able to come back down. Most of them understood, as they had made the difficult trip once, and knew what was involved.
The brightest minds on the Earth were interviewed and offered a position on the Mono-Globe Project. When shown the science and the asteroid trajectory, many agreed to come, but others would not even think of going to the bottom of the ocean for the rest of their lives. It was understandable. This would be like colonizing a new planet in an unknown world.
One of the top priorities for Mullis and Van Peel was the collecting of the books. They both agreed that every book of any importance was to come down to Mono-Globe. Millions of books were collected and a special room was built to house them.
Many things were collected and stored, including every kind of seed that was ever grown to feed humans. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, about 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole, joined the Mono-Globe Project to preserve every variety of seeds gathered from gene banks worldwide. Crews worked day and night to secure and store these precious necessities.
Artists, inventors, and creative minds of all kinds were approached. Medical geniuses from every University in every country were offered a spot in Mono-Globe. As the time drew near, the news came out about the impending disaster. People heard rumors about the Mono-Globe Project, but it was impossible for anyone to get there without a special invitation. It was in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean and the “pick-up” spots, for people going there, were changed daily.
Many people spent thousands to have bunkers built, but sadly these bunkers would only turn out to be burial tombs. Others set out for the highest mountains, hoping to hide out in caves where the rising waters would not reach them. In the end, a little less than 300 million people were brought down to Mono-Globe.
The impact date arrived and there are few reports after the asteroid hit the Earth. All communication with the surface was lost within minutes of the strike. Mono-Globe was designed to gather all seismic activity coming from the surface lands and from the bottom of the oceans.
This is where our history begins. “Synapse” was created to monitor and pick up every nuance of life in Mono-Globe. It was a project as big as Mono-Globe itself, and this technological intelligence evolved as time went on. “Synapse” took the place of the peer review of science. Instead of peer review, this new artificial intelligence processed and analyzed all scientific information from that day forward. Without “Synapse,” Mono-Globe might have failed.
“Synapse” is at the core of all life here beneath the sea. Now, I am preparing to take up my assignment as “Scanner.” I will be leaving Mono-Globe and my job will be to “scan” the surface of the Earth above the ocean. I will no longer be connected to “Synapse.” I plan to take as many books with me as I can.
