The Dewsbury Solution: a novella on population

Chapter 1

Whitehall, London 1998

Jim 

A car turns through opening iron gates into a rectangular yard as a cold drizzle falls from a grey January sky. The building which now hosts just this solitary car is large, made of stone, not modern or attractive or welcoming. In central London it looked official, serious and melancholic. The car’s driver was indifferent to all of this, intent as he was on his mission.

Jim, or Sir James as now was got out of his car with purpose and an energy slightly at odds with his appearance  He was a lean, mid-sized figure with greyish eyes and he looked stiff as he became upright and pushed his hand through his hair. To the casual observer (of which there were none) his smart suit and distinguished looks would suggest he was a senior figure used to power, weary and nearing retirement.  Jim would be 98 in February.

Jim is not typical of the population in London this January in the late 20th Century.  There are others like him but maybe only a dozen in the whole country. They lie about their age  to cover up their deep difference from everyone else.

Jim was a freak, every country in the world had their own "Jims". They colloquially called themselves  "ADevs", short for  "Antediluvian" and like Biblical Antediluvians these humans had life spans in excess of two hundred years.  The mutation that produced them was unstable and nowhere in the world hosted a large group of ADevs. They could not reproduce. Every "generation" was produced by a process no one understood.  If they did find partners it never gave rise to one of their kind.

Many ADevs died young. Some simply appeared to "burn-up" with extreme activity, others lacked all energy and did not thrive from infancy. Their cognitive abilities were characteristically rational and high functioning. Their personalities, to those that knew them best, would be described as detached and nonchalant. This accurately reflected their complete lack of introspection and empathy.

Needless to say, in a world steeped in emotional memes, their kind just did not "sit" well with the times. Jim and others of his ilk took great care, not only to hide their age (they are always ‘close to retirement’),  but also to emulate normal behaviour; even if this did extend to faintly risible behaviour such as sending get well cards, remembering birthdays and so on.

This Jim, returning from the UN Special Council and recently knighted for his services to the environment, walks steadily towards a metal door which duly opens as if anticipating his arrival ... he puts out his cigarette by throwing it on the wet floor and looks up guiltily at the person greeting him and who witnessed his littering, disapproved, and whose expression momentarily turned to near fury when she saw the car. He had of course already committed two ECO-crimes, one a mortal sin in these times.

"Good Morning Sir James" said the smartly dressed young woman with a shiny face "we will be meeting in the Green Room in about ten minutes". She  paused momentarily then said with a  look that was intended to reassure, " they are all coming".
"Thank you, good" he replied pleasantly. By now he was very relaxed, even happy, he had made a good start to the day, and went in search of coffee.

Although a Director of the Institute for Sustainability and thus entitled to free coffee he always went as plain Jim via the staff lift  to the communal vending machine. This was much to the irritation of the other workers in the building who resented attempts at the "common touch" almost as much as they did  for their being ‘out of touch’.

Needless to say the coffee dispensed by the machine was poor despite its range of menu options but this was no matter as little was left of Jim"s sense of taste.  His trip to the machine had, as it was meant to have done, created  resentment which reassured him that his power to rattle cages followed him wherever he went.

Carrying the warm brown liquid  and slightly squishing the recyclable cup he took himself to the Green Room and sat down alone at the head of a large wooden table. Trudging up the stairs were five members of the ruling Green-Democrat party. No lifts for them. They resented the climb …

“all 36 steps” muttered the Minister for Environment.



The Minister of Environment

Camilla Kossak had been Minister of Environment for three years and enjoyed considerable clout with the PM. In her youthful animal rights days she, fueled by zeal, was noted for her single-minded pursuit of higher ideals and appeared to care little for such trivia that made one "popular". Her team, in thrall to her leadership, trudged into the Green Room one lumpy, grumpy mass. They looked sullen, as if they had got all they had ever wished for and then wished they hadn"t.

"Tell me Camilla, are we meeting our biomass reduction targets this month?" said Jim just to break the ice and get the meeting off to a disagreeable start.

"Yes Jim. We have all but eradicated the large non-essential heterotrophs" she replied. ‘Heterotroph’ was the latest smart technical term used by the ‘Wardens of the Biosphere’, basically it meant "animals".

 "Dogs, cats, rabbits, mice and rats now make no contribution to greenhouse gas emissions," she added (they were all dead).

"This means that we are on target to reduce our biomass-related carbon footprint by 50% in two years". She smiled, after all these were not bad stats by any standards.

"Very good, very good", Jim looked genuinely pleased but it was obvious to anyone in the room that he was only politely listening while  waiting for his turn to contribute.

 "I have just returned from the UN Central Committee for Climate and the news I am afraid is not encouraging. The consensus is that globally, despite the excellent efforts of yourselves and fellow eco-citizens world-wide,  given the rate of climate change,  we are,  probably, shall we say "overstocked" to the tune of 75% non-productive heterotrophic biomass". Pausing for breath (and effect) he continued,

 "There are just too many of us I fear".

A pin dropping would have been more than audible. Tiny gasps of, what was it? … fear or excitement?  issued from the seated and now very still politicians.

 "So" Jim went on satisfied that his audience were giving him full attention, "we simply must have fewer of us. Our target is set at a 60% reduction within five years. Camilla, I"m relying on you and your team. You know better than anyone in this room that the survival of the planet supersedes all other considerations.".

With that he sat back, folding his fingers together,  hands resting on the table.

Jim was well versed in this little speech. He did it to tease governments world wide. Reducing the carbon impact of consumption was the mantra and goal of all administrations. Really the core of the problem amounted to the environmental impact of the very existence of human beings. What they were doing was simply minimising that impact, but like any animal, humans had a built in impact simply by breathing and eating.
It really wasn"t comfortable for any minister to be reminded  reminded that they were the problem..

Camilla broke the silent spell, "Come on Jim, give it a rest, I know you"re just back from the UN and they"re all a bunch of Malthusians, but you know as well as anyone that world population will reduce naturally through education and economic development; what would you suggest?  War or Plague?".

The whole room was relieved, of course population would peak then reduce once everyone had a good standard of living and education, everyone knew that. It was taught in schools. Most countries had legalised contraception and abortion, even the United States. Stabilisation, sustainability and reduction was accepted as a given.

No need to exterminate anyone.

Outside the rain stopped and the sun peered out just above the horizon.




Chapter 1 continued

Whitehall later that day


Ms Camilla Kossak was left alone in her office drinking the brown liquid that passed for coffee. She was unfazed by Jim"s bombshell. For really it wasn’t a bombshell, everyone knew that population was the issue of the future. People consumed resources and reproduced irrespective of whether they were productive or even occupied. Everyone in governments also knew that their people"s redundancy would only increase as technology advanced.  As a Green, she also knew, since Kyoto’s scientists’ dark warnings, that pollution and global warming would cause environmental catastrophe within her lifetime.

Even so " what can one do? One must plough on and do one’s best" she thought. "One step at a time …" she gathered her thoughts, " it’s the Housing Minister next, maybe he’ll have something vaguely productive to say?"

She wasn’t that hopeful. The sun had set and it was dark outside.

Against all expectations the Housing Minister of the day ( whose name would pass into history unrecorded) was upbeat. "We are ready to roll out the new homes initiative Camilla" he said with enthusiasm which was not yet reciprocated.

"The ECO-collection homing projects have the finance we need from the World Banks and we can start to demolish the old high rise blocks across the country and build new zero carbon state of the art tower blocks … sorry I mean to say Cloud-Cities, they are very particular about that name."

This was good news. Camilla would have something concrete, excusing the pun, to present to Jim. Large populations could still be accommodated if their footprint could be reduced. This initiative from the World Banks coordinated by the ECO-collectives would at the very least buy time.

She tidied her hair, dismissed the happy smug minister, took his report and headed out for something to eat, somewhere nice, a brasserie maybe? 

"I’ll read his report there, over a decent coffee" she said aloud while thinking to herself that  her minister could not organise pretty much more than a cake sale and what a good job this was coordinated by a competent global outfit.




Chapter 1 continued

New housing.

The plans for the new Cloud Cities were bound into spiral-spined card-backed taupe tomes of recycled paper giving  them a look of World-War 2 Wehrmacht documents. The drawings were of good quality though and the level of innovation even for the turning of the 20th Century was impressive.

The new buildings would be designed for all; the telecommuting, media-savvy generation; the retired; the unemployed in fact anyone looking for a comfortable place to live.  They were to have state-of-the-art data streams to all apartments enabling access to the best Internet and broadcast media.

They would be so well insulated that with ground source heat pumps and solar cladding no energy would be required for heating. Electricity would be generated by recycled-biomass fermenters in the basements.  Windows would not open.  Temperature-controlled fresh air would be pumped through ducting that filtered out the particulates, bacteria and NOx fumes. This last feature produced an involuntary sigh from Camilla, "The bloody anti-diesel lobby, please God let"s hope they’ll welcome this".

Rooms would be easily cleaned by sprinklers built into the ceilings; kitchens would not be fitted as it was anticipated that food would be bought in and delivered to the rooms by the elevator-bots. Waste would be removed via the chutes, graded, separated and either sent to the carbon-capture incinerators or to the biomass fermentors in the basements.

Amazingly, they were built of timber, so her concrete pun was not needed. "I had no idea you could build high rise from wood" she thought, "that"ll get the "global-carbon-cost" monkeys off my back".

Even a Green can get a bit tired of the carbon bean counters and concrete was a fashionable target, "hope it’s not flammable, imagine the compensation claims!".

They were not flammable, New-Wood is pretty much inert except at extremely high temperatures.

So far Camilla thought that there was much to like in these buildings, they would be popular, even sought after. When she got a little further into the document though she gasped ever so slightly. These flats would be very affordable! They would solve the housing crisis at a stroke. The World Banks were really generous in their subsidies for these buildings. Indeed, the banks were generous all over the world … as she would come to realise.

Finishing her coffee, looking ten years younger, she walked back to the Ministry to phone the PM.

Jim was in the PM’s office when the call came through. He listened for a while, smiled at the PM and politely made his excuses to leave and headed back to the car park into the now deep night.

"Such short days, so little time" he said as he left to no one in particular.



Chapter 2

The Cafe many years later.

The cafe in which Camilla sat was once the brasserie in which she sought refuge many times in the past while in office. It was ten years since she retired. The cafe was still popular but mainly because it was running an illegal air-conditioning unit which took the edge of the heat and humidity so typical of early June nowadays.

She had made it to PM,  and all in all, she reflected that she had made a decent fist of her career. Now she was gazing over a London that was very different in so many ways to the London of the late 20th Century. So far the flood barriers had held up well and she had read that talk of "letting" the South East go was being firmly denied by her successors. Her government of Greens had been the first to be elected by over 70% of the population and their mandate was so clear that their power was un-challenged during the first declaration of a national and global emergency. Democracy in theory still existed but in reality this was war-time and what they said went. The built environment especially in the cities was changing rapidly.

There were still high rise blocks to be seen of course. London had 30 million people within its orbital motorway, but the blocks that stood now were new, zero-carbon, fully integrated Cloud-Cities. The very ones she had first seen when in office and had recommended to the then PM.

From the outside they just looked quite like tower-blocks of the past in that they were blocks that towered anything from 20 to 50 stories into the sky. They were clad in a way that reminded her strangely of her school-days. Blocks were gold, silver or coloured (red, blue, yellow etc.) like the stars that decorated her exercise books.

She remembered discussing the admittedly pretty cladding in fractious meetings in Cabinet: "yes they are fireproof up to very high temperatures. Yes they meet the latest heat retaining requirements" and so on.

The idea of the colours was hers (as she remembered it): the most expensive apartments were in the gold blocks, silver was executive level and the colours for everyone else. Actually the internal design for each block was identical. Apartments were combined to be larger in the gold blocks and were at their smallest in the coloured blocks.

Each block had four entry points which allowed the cheaper blocks to have further differentiation regarding social demographics as each face of the block never had to meet the other face …  not that many went in and out anyway nowadays. and by the by as standard all apartments were to all intents and purposes soundproof.

It was a genius move in one-size fits all.

Camilla could not remember who suggested having wider than normal doors but she remembered why. She chuckled to herself, ‘what measures could be put in place to mitigate the obesity crisis?’ was the lead item on the well-beingworkshop that year.

Gold credit cards in a golden tower with golden bathroom fittings, could anyone aspire to more?

She winced a little remembering that she had suggested adding contraceptive hormones into the air conditioning. It was a joke. It was the wrong time to be funny; mass medication was acceptable for all sorts of public good then and before she really knew what had happened this was a proposal being enacted. Free IVF would be offered later to determined parents by way of regaining some sense of morality.

Her reverie was disturbed gently by the appearance by her side of Jim. He was offering to refresh her coffee and buy her a vegan "You Won’t Believe it’s not Meat" sausage sandwich. By the look on his face he knew the answer to both questions already. Jim, she thought, did not look 25 years older that when they last met. She was in her mid sixties now so he must be well into his seventies she guessed.

"Have you retired" she inquired.

"Soon, I must retire soon, but you know how it is, they let you creak on "till you drop" he replied and quickly asked his own question "admiring the view, you must be proud of the work you Greens set in motion?"

"Yes, I am rather. London was the first city globally to become carbon zero and has the highest concentration of people with almost no homelessness" she had spoken automatically in campaign mode; though those days were long past.

"Would you like to live in a block?" inquired Jim, "I hear they have superb facilities".

He was referring to the recent upgrades to ‘ultrafast’ in  every flat and the fully integrated social network portals that allowed occupants to control everything from ordering food to changing the room scent through the filtered air. Their "cloud community" was built into the wall screen TVs and so good was the video that it was "as if  your friends were in the room with you", many said.

"I would like to see the hologram plays they have in the gold blocks," Camilla said.

"Oh yes you really need some bandwidth for that", replied Jim using the word ‘bandwidth’ as a term he obviously thought would show that he was no slouch on the IT front. It of course having the opposite effect on most people under 60, excepting Camilla.

"But would you like to live in one?" he persisted.

"I don"t think I would, but I am in the minority it seems, they are incredibly popular especially since the block-medical teams will soon do same day home visits". Camilla finished her coffee. "Why are we meeting?" she said at last, coming to the thought she had had since she received the invitation.

"I needed to know where you live, or rather where you don"t live" said Jim evenly, "we have modifications to make to the blocks which will cause some temporary inconvenience and was going to offer you alternative accommodation if you needed it."

"Thank you Jim, that’s kind of you to think of me after all this time," she replied.

Jim finished off by saying "Not at all, I lose track of time, our work together seems like only yesterday I had not realised it was so long ago, my sudden request to meet must have surprised you, forgive me".

They finished their coffees in amicable silence and went their separate ways into a rain-storm so typical of the 2020"s that they would not remark on it.


Chapter 3

Jim and Buz discuss population.

Sir James settled into a leather armchair opposite fellow ADev Buz Kaiser. Jim and Buz went way back. Buz was older than Jim but as always their exact age was hard to pin down. Buz, a dyed in the wool Malthusian, always had been very interested in population size and had worked for the German government during the first half of the twentieth century and had been active during the war years. Buz had many debates with Dr Fritz Haber the early 20th Century chemist whose work pioneered artificial fertilizer and chemical warfare. At a stroke he abolished famine and created the tools for mass destruction. The paradox fascinated Buz.

Jim opened with his familiar gambit: "Now take the great plagues of Europe in the 15th Century or thereabouts, they so reduced the populations of countries mired in famine and overcrowding that the 17th century saw unprecedented gains in health, land, housings and longevity of those left alive … extermination is a good thing now and again don’t you think?"

"I do, as you well know" replied Buz, "with certain obvious caveats. Modern war, especially nuclear war is a parody of a natural disaster.  It is a very effective way of reducing headcount but has an unacceptable impact on infrastructure and environment;  no good at all …" his voice trailed away before, re energised, he started again,

"I tell you Jim, mass extermination of people can be achieved efficiently ... and with discrimination!  e have proved this conclusively during the 1940s, your disease model leaves infrastructure intact but kills at random;  this is not good"  Buz was speaking at a measured pace with a neutral, authoritative voice common to his type.

Jim continued, "Ok disease is random once it gets loose I concede that. But people objected to your  discrimination criteria, and they objected to the extent it resulted in mass destruction of buildings and factories across the globe … frankly a war ensued.  What"s more, your ‘discrimination criteria’ were cynically populist and ultimately self defeating.  But I will give you credit for the sheer scale of your work". Jim was looking for something new in their talk.

"If we were to do it again" said Buz, "we would make sure no-one knew or really cared that much what we did … we nearly pulled it off by selecting groups who were historically unpopular …  but admittedly, we underestimated the backlash". Buz was re-making the argument that to reduce the population it was easiest to murder the least popular.

"Precisely, the point" Jim replied, "no one really caring or knowing,  is part of the key but the other part is forgetting that it happened. I suggest replacing the ‘unpopular’ with the ‘unknown’ or ‘not noticed’. Secondly, I suggest leaving no evidence. Evidence is the basis of memory. There must be nothing".  A tone close to zeal inflected his voice, he rightly feared shrines.

"So we agree then",Buz knew how this discussion ended but nevertheless enjoyed going through the motions, "Mass extermination, no objectors, no evidence, no memory, what could be simpler?”, he smiled, beamed, then realised a sardonic twist to the mouth would have suited the situation better.

"Hope you live to see it" said the much younger Jim sipping his whisky in the gloomy surrounds of wood and leather that Buz favoured so much. For his part Buz would have liked to have been let in on what Jim and the other ADevs were up to, he was after all of his kind, but Buz had been cold-shouldered following the end of the second world war and was grateful just to be acknowledged at all.

"So we agree", said Jim leaving an air of ambiguity just to who was ‘we’ and what exactly had been agreed?

Buz did not expect to live to find out, he was ageing rapidly now and had not much time left. He knew that Jim was well connected within the global network and wielded considerable power so he knew better than to dismiss a casual chat as just a casual chat. What was he being told, why was he being told and what was he expected to do?

Jim had got what he wanted. He had clarified his thoughts and maybe Buz"s few connections would gossip or speculate over his account of the meeting.  Whatever they could make up would only help him in his work. By this he meant that if they thought, suspected, an exterminator walked this earth again they would do nothing to frustrate him.

There were just too many people, everyone knew that.




Chapter 4

The 'ADevs'

What they were were simply freak humans who had very long life spans, up to 200 years was common, though no one knew if this was an absolute limit as no records were ever kept and most death certificates were faked.

Their distribution throughout the globe seemed to be evenly spread. There were very few of them, maybe one in several million. They were always male. If they formed partnerships with females and had children their offspring were never of the same kind as their fathers. This much was known for thousands of years.

By and large they were in each epoch successful and influential. By no means did they all seek influence or power, most were content to pursue their interests in a self-contained way. Often bizarrely they were collectors of art or model builders, time meant less to them than for other people. They seemed to know from an early age that they would live a very long time compared to their peers. When they did enter professions such as science or politics they had a great deal of influence simply by being there for a long time. It has been said in many fields of human endeavor that progress is made funeral at a time. An ADev could out-wait any rival.

Intellectually they were reasonable human beings, some had  very high intelligence but this latter quality was as distributed normally as it was in "normal" people.  Being reasonable seemed to be the result of being faced with a world that became (to them) increasingly predictable. Given a set of circumstances, humans with normal life spans would act in certain characteristic ways. An ADev would therefore, over time, get many opportunities to observe patterns of behaviour that repeated regularly. There was no point having unreasonable expectations when experience told you otherwise.

Intelligence was an interesting subject when linked with a long life. Where high intelligence is linked to short time spans there is a feeling of loss as illustrated by astonishing intelligence of the octopus, whose life lasts only four years, and thus has a "reset" forced over and over ... before anything could be achieved it seemed. What if octopus lived as long as humans?,  what indeed but they don’t; the ADevs on the other hand, have time and brains and they do not waste either.

Physically ADevs tended to be thin and angular, sometimes tall but not more than 10% above the norm.  They would sometimes be described as ‘reptilian’ by people that had a lot to do with them though of course these people did not know that they were ‘other’. It was impossible to pin down what they meant by this term. Maybe it was the eyes?  They did have remarkable colour vision as a result of having extra colour sensitive receptors in their retinas. This was a trait shared by birds, reptiles and, they said, dinosaurs.

There was a worldwide network of ADevs. There always had been a network of sorts amongst the travelling types, but the emergence of instant global electronic communication in the late 20th century made this much stronger and much deeper. It was collective arrogance that resulted from this new mode of communication  that caused them to decide that together they could start to change the world.

In the early 21st Century the reason that ADevs lived so long was discovered. This was the era when genetic codes could be read, understood and crucially, altered. Within every cell of a ADev was a mutant creature. Or more accurately, an ex-creature now a symbiotic guest.  The ‘creature’ was not alien; all humans, all animals, had these guests.The mitochondria, as these guests  were called, are the energy source for the cell. They are subtly changed in ADevs. They are, it emerged, more like those in birds than in apes or other mammals. Given the evolutionary pedigree of birds the ADev mutation looked to the ADevs’  expert DNA-hackers like an ancient throwback, going as far back as the dinosaurs. Truly ante-deluvian.

Birds in general have different, much less leaky, mitochondria than do mammals. Mitochondria, are to be frank, not well made in the average mammal (except bats). They produce collateral damage which shortens life-span.  A pigeon for example can live for 20 yrs whereas a mammal of similar mass and metabolic rate lives only 3-5 yrs. Parrots, famously can exceed 100 yrs.

That ADevs lived for so long it transpired was for very clear reasons but this atavistic mutation was a) rare, b) random and finally it came with a nasty twist of biological fate.

ADevs were always male and no offspring carried the mutation. It became clear early on, as science progressed, that that was because inheritance of mitochondria is through the female’s egg.

Once in a million times, the mutant mitochondrial DNA as seen in fully grown ADev males begins to dominate the embryonic cell’s population of normal mitochondria. Maybe this happens during the time in the womb or shortly after birth however so far the mechanism for this selection remained unknown.

The ADev mutation process can be glimpsed happening in one other mammal but which does nothing to rehabilitate their image . Tiny pipistrelle bats, warm-blooded mouse-like mammals, start off in life with mouse-like mitochondria, that is, mitochondria in creatures that will live but a few years. After they start flying though, their mitochondria become more bird-like. These bats can live five times longer than their mouse cousins despite their very high levels of activity. Something must trigger the change but what?

It was clear that the ADev mutation lurked in normal cell just waiting to be triggered.

However, genetic technology had advanced by 2020 sufficiently to make natural mechanisms irrelevant. The mitochondrial genome could now be read and  edited manually: everything had changed. The 21st Century ADev was now technically a reproducible freak and they were all aware of this fact. They just needed human eggs.



Chapter 5

Eve 


A young woman of about 30 years is standing just outside the perimeter fence of the hospital on a grassy slope looking over a scene of tranquility lit gently by a hazy May sun. She had worked as a Biodiversity Engineer at a large North London hospital for only one year and was just beginning to understand that her life could be very good.

In front of her stretched the unspoilt countryside east of Watford and north of the great London flood plain.

Eve was typical of her generation. Tall and slightly androgynous her parents had chosen green eyes to go with her dark hair, as had a great many others at that time. No-one had green eyes now, a fact with which she once reproached her mother, "everyone’s a ‘random’ now ".

She had been a very young girl living comfortably in what was once called the green belt around London when detonation day occurred.

Her parents were modestly well to do scientists who had important jobs in the climate control bureau located near Guildford. She knew little of their work. Climate was a subject that was boring to most young people. It was synonymous with "going without". Eve was encouraged to go into cyber-medicine in the genetic-diversity field to avoid being a ‘redundant’. Though what exactly a ‘redundant’ was, was not clear to her. Bio-diversity was her grandfather"s speciality and he had had a close relationship with the hospital.

Eve’s gaze slipped as she touched her temples. She still had a headache from her recent implants. These were provided for all qualified scientists. The augmented reality package that had been fitted though was as good as it got and many features worked even without the headsets and gloves needed for delicate work and conferencing..

As she turned to return to work she also felt a little nauseous; too many feeds directly into the visual cortex did that to you at first... but she also felt sad,  as if she had forgotten something important;  her mother"s birthday?  Something like that. In any case she needed to get back and hurried through the old red brick gate and into the buildings. A couple of hours work then a quick commute and she would be home...via the food shops she reminded herself.

Back in the trendy London lagoons Eve was preparing supper to share with her partner Steve.  They had a flat overlooking the lagoons and the broad sluggish river Thames. Here white and silver sail-boats came and went as quietly as a shoal of ghosts.  She roughly chopped fresh vegetables, enjoying the sheer lack of precision required  whilst intermittently sipping wine.

She paid scant attention to the background news as it was always rather matter of fact and frankly dull. It was not designed to evoke interest or passions and in this regard it did its job well.

“Steve, will you put some music on?", she called in vain to a young man ( also with green eyes), who was immersed in some game and kept shouting "Die you dog" every few seconds. whilst waving his arms about in frenzied jerks.

Eve picked up a spare remote and shot him.

"Ow, ow, ow, why did you do that!" cried a clearly annoyed and not a little hurt Steve from the living room floor "you could see I was suited up...you knew that would hurt, and what’s your problem anyway?"

Eve was unapologetic, "There is no point me coming home and making supper just to find you mucking about with those silly friends of yours;  you said you were working"..

" I finished work an hour ago, I was just relaxing" he replied while rubbing his groin vigorously to dissipate the pain,... " I’ll get changed"

"Do! and don’t leave the suit on the bed it keeps its charge you know, last week I sat on it!",
and warming to her theme, "you"re just wasting your life, there’s a real world to live in you know!".

Steve muttered inaudibly but with feeling, "I have time to waste".

Steve was the production controller for a large electrolytic titanium production facility in Norway. He had never actually travelled to the plant nor physically met any of his fellow employees. All interaction was typically virtual and he used his ‘suit’ to perform the physical tasks that ultimately were carried out by the semi-autonomous robots that ran the almost entirely automated plant. He was well regarded as a metallurgist and was credited with producing  the latest tin-titanium alloy for which he received ‘Young Metallurgist of The Year’ from the Cornish Metal Workers Association and from which his bicycle was made.

He was also good natured, very well paid and hopelessly addicted to ‘shoot ‘em up’ gaming. Eve tolerated the gaming.

"Steve, can we take a trip up North this weekend?"

"What?"  faintly came from the bedroom,
"why?"...Steve ambled into the red and white kitchen,   
 "oop North?"  the tone was one of mock incredulity,
"there"s nothing there, it is a wasteland  they"re Northerners..and you have to eat ferret pie".

He had no idea what a ferret was.

"Don’t be silly, it’s supposed to be very beautiful … and besides my parents originally came from the North, a place called Dewsbury. I would like to see it … please … we could take your car", she added.

Eve knew the word ‘car’ would do the trick. Steve had an ancient 1967 blue and silver Shelby Cobra in the garage at the base of their apartments. His father had it before him and had it from new from the factory which was in their Surrey village. It cost him thousands of carbon credits to run but petrol was cheap enough to those with a permit which at 15 miles for every five litres of hydrocarbon distillate was just as well. Steve had a five thousand litres in his garage floor which he kept very quiet about.

"Yeh, Ok Eve, let’s do it" ( he had already calculated that he would need 200 litres) 

Eve had not really explored why Steve had climate-privileges such as a carbon-burning allowance;  it was enough to arrive at friends’ houses and park among  all the electric autonomous quadcopters. It was still a pain though to find decent roads that did not suddenly get flooded. The old western arm of the M25 was best as it was wide and nearly deserted at ground level.



Chapter 5 contd

Eve goes to Dewsbury


Eve was in a very good mood as Steve backed the heavily modified Cobra slowly out of the garage. The garage was more of a workshop, centrally lit with the yellow light from an ancient tungsten bulb , along the walls boards of vintage spanners glinted from their rows (sorted according to size)  and screwdrivers bristled from their racks; a sliver grease-gun stood in isolation in the centre of the bench like an object of ancient art. Everything was ‘real’ even though he had a decent metal printer which had come in useful building extra fuel tanks ( fuel stations did not exist).

Steve blipped the throttle and covered both of them in a cloud of thick aromatic oil haze. Eve coughed,

"Don’t you just love hydrocarbons?" shouted Steve above the erratically idling engine.

They both jumped in over the door ledges settled themselves and rolled sedately along the alley way onto the main road. Eve was navigating, an obvious decision as she could not drive a car and her swanky AR implant had this functionality built in. Without a head visor she had no screen but she just knew which way to go, a slightly odd feeling which seemed at once natural and alien.

"Turn left onto the Great West Way and we"ll pick up the Motorway soon enough" she shouted as they roared through the light, mostly aerial, traffic heading west before starting on the 200 mile journey northwards.

"Three hours" she added and they picked up speed enjoying the envious or baffled stares from their fellow road users on the robo-buses.

The sun was shining and the day was very hot as they approached her parents" home town. She was surprised to find that the scenery was really quite pleasant, not so different from where she worked. She had to admit that the rolling fields set in the loop of a river and in the distance could be seen Castle Hill. It was a fine sight. They had stopped within a short walk of a  small low -rise development

"That"s a ferret" said Steve, "told you",

"It’s a rabbit, idiot boy" said Eve as he brought the car back onto the left carriage way,

"Slow down, we are nearly there, let’s stop for a picnic".

She was already fishing the wicker basket from the tiny rear seat before he could reply. They pulled onto the verge overlooking the corn fields already ripe from the early summer and contemplated lunch.

Steve said, out of nowhere, mouth still full of sandwich:  "have you thought about having children?"

Eve was more than a little taken aback. "No, why would I?".

Steve continued, "Not now, but one day".

Eve said, "Well yes I imagine one day I would".

"Would have children or would think about having children?" he was determined to keep the conversation going at all costs.

"Having children" she confirmed, "but why the sudden interest in children?"

"I’m a freak" said Steve, matter of factly.

"I think we all know that" Eve bantered back increasingly uncomfortable with the turn of events.

"I will probably live for 200 years and I am 58 years old now".

A silence descended on them and they looked around at the New World seeing it as if for the first time. Why did Eve keep thinking she had forgotten something? For some reason Eve took the news that Steve was the freak he described with equanimity. She had heard a story about his kind but had no idea that she had met an ADev and moreover was living happily with one. What did bother her though was what he went on to say.

"You know that mitochondria are passed on to each generation only through the female line?" said Steve,

"Steve, I"m a scientist, for goodness sake, of course I know that" she replied crossly.

"Well", he went on, "my longevity is due to a mitochondrial mutation, we could modify the mitochondria in  your eggs to carry this mutation, what do you think?".

"Stop now" she said in too high a pitch, "too much to take in, just too much!”

 Then, more calmly, “let’s have lunch and pretend everything is still normal, it’s a lovely day".

"No problem," he agreed as he opened a bottle of something cold.

They had a good lunch followed by a short ride around the area in the car before heading home.

Time for processing this conversation was in the future. Issue avoidance was a trait so common in these good-times. There was no point in getting worked up and making decisions in a rich and complacent life.

She reminded herself that all the important and even not so important decisions were made  by the AI machines and as far as she knew always had. It followed that "not-deciding" was a habit formed amongst those who didn’t really need to make decisions.

Obviously in this case though a lot depended on Eve’s decision.  It was a very unusual position for anyone but for the time being the day was not to be  spoilt by overthinking.

There would be time for thinking.



Chapter 5 contd

The discussion

"Why would I want babies grow into adults that live for so long?" Eve opened the discussion as they trundled uphill. She wanted to move their chat into territory that meant she did not have to make a decision on the grounds that it was not clear why one should do something and not nothing.

Steve was slightly preoccupied with his fuel consumption and took a second to respond but he had well rehearsed this discussion and her opener was as predicted.

He said simply, "What if I said your lifespan was to be 50 years, like it was in historical times?, or maybe only 25 years?".

"Don’t be ridiculous I didn’t qualify until I was 30, I haven’t even started work properly yet, and if it was 25 then I would be dead already!" she nearly spluttered this reply.

"Ok so it’s ‘just right’ now is it, 75?" he said deliberately misrepresenting the 84 that was the accepted figure.

Steve went on, "We’ve established then that you don’t want a shorter life but you wouldn’t want a longer life … is that right?"

"If Nature intended humans to live longer then it would have happened already, by Natural Selection," Eve said knowing that this was logically all over the place but it counted as a ‘stopper’.

Steve said "Come on Eve, you can"t put ‘intend’ and ‘natural selection’ in the same construction"

"I know" she said, "but you know what I mean, this all seems so unnatural".

Steve spoke clearly now he had done his fuel sums:

"A long life span for all is obviously incompatible with fast reproducing populations that are already living close to the limit of their food supply … they starve. But we are living in a new age, reproduction is barely at replacement level and easily controlled ... but more to the point, we have a huge, huge surplus of resources … all sustainable!"

Eve was not done, quite, "what’s so good about living a long time, won’t life just get boring?"

"No. it means projects can be long-term, great projects can be undertaken; short-termism will disappear; space travel won’t seem such a drain on a lifetime; war will seem pointless when you have to live with the consequences, I can go on, it’s just better!" He finished with a flourish.

"I don’t want to have a dinosaur baby!" Eve was getting agitated, feeling boxed into a corner.

"It’s not a dinosaur!, it’s a human with upgraded mitochondria which happen to be bird-like. Only a tiny bit of DNA is altered".  He was getting frustrated now,

"Ok, I have different eyes to normal too but you don’t even have to reproduce with me, you could choose a normal person it’ll make little difference to the engineers, males can’t pass on the mutation, remember?".

"I need to think" she said with finality, then said,

"I"ll stop here overnight if you don"t mind and take the train in the morning, I"m not cross just I have a lot to think about".

With the relief of postponement she hopped out and walked to town.

And so the discussion ended. "It all went quite well considering" thought Steve as he drove home. Dinosaurs! Really!  Anyway, it’s about time we got back the Number 1 slot on this planet, hope I do have enough fuel".



Chapter 6 

Life in the blocks in the time before.

Debby and Harry had lived in the red coloured block for three years. It was called Atwood Towers after a Canadian author of dystopian futures (of whom not a soul in the block had ever heard). Jim named the block himself as it was in direct, if distant, view from his home in the Surrey Hills. He did this, not through a sense of irony, more that something inside him wanted to leave clues. Clues that could be read with clarity if only you knew what to look for. Apparently, this is common to serial killer psychopaths for whom the ‘game’ transcends the deed.

Life in their apartment was comfortable. The couple had two rooms of a decent size, a food preparation area with hot and chilled water, a wet-room shower, a waste disposal chute and a fridge of enormous proportions only matched by the wall-sized ultra-high definition screens.

What used to be called "takeaway" meals were delivered directly by drones to the flat by the vacuum chute which was also used for online parcel delivery. Lighting was infinitely variable in intensity and colour and exactly replicated daylight if that"s what you wished. Windows could not be opened but could be dark, opaque or see through. Most ended up opaque.

Both Debby and Harry were at home, Harry was working from home and was logged in to his office as he now did all week. Video links allowed him to interact face to face with his colleagues but this was now less common, it seemed more normal to use text-based comms; actually he was better, more comfortable, communicating this way. His "office" was a lively, chatty place. Meetings allowed plenty of banter between the presentations. He particularly liked birthdays when donuts were brought in. Of course donuts were really delivered simultaneously to "offices" throughout" the country, sometimes the world, but who cares? … you eat donuts as a personal activity; you don"t share yours, do you?

Harry was in his mid-thirties, a little chubby now but had all his hair and was still in his prime. He got an A1 from the block"s medic only last week and was only on the standard medications. He had an MBA from a well known institute which was important for his work. He worked for a giant Chinese-based business consulting group. This was the reason why he had got a cherished apartment in an otherwise lowly red block but with gold window trims. He was fond of telling his social media friends that this was as good as a gold block as red was a special colour in China.

From his office the views were spectacular. His window was now interactive and cam-feeds allowed the view to be whatever he wished. His company had subscribed to all the prestige views. Harry liked to look out of the window at Buckingham Palace; it made him feel quite regal.

Debby was in the main room with the wall screen on and was having coffee with her friends.
There were twenty of them in the ‘room’ and were shrieking with laughter watching a movie channel showing toddlers falling over accidentally. They all wanted children but unfortunately  as yet none had them. There was still plenty of time, most of them were well under forty. Debby was 31. They had been trying for a baby for a year now. The block’s medics said that nothing was wrong and to be patient. IVF would be available after two years.

At this time most women worked and had similar jobs to men. For example the male to female ratio in Harry’s firm was 1:1. It just so happened that Debby’s friendship circle had naturally, steadily grouped around women who had more in common than not and what they had in common was that they did not work while they tried for a baby. Now that physical distance was no barrier to socialising these groups were the norm. There were, similarly, groups of career women from local administrators to Reiki-healers or indeed whatever modern ‘job’ could be imagined.

The block itself was a marvel of personalised technology. The rooms all learned how the occupants liked them: temperature, humidity, lighting and scented air were all individualised according to choices made at first by the occupant and then learned by the room"s AI. Scented air was particularly clever. If say, an occupant liked a pine woodland ambience, it subtly moved from scent note to note within the ‘forest’ to prevent the nose from becoming too accustomed. The air feed could also filter out bacteria and viruses from outside and if there were any risks identified by the authorities the air could be medicated. This included the new aerosol antibiotics. At night, insomniacs could also chose a gentle sedative supplied this way.

There was a communal room on the first floor for all the residents but this had fallen into disuse as most preferred to meet by screen from the comfort of their rooms. Meeting up physically was not helped by the fact that most would disagree about the right temperature and the scent of the communal area. It was easier to meet virtually..

Unbeknown to both Debby and Harry was that the next apartment held ‘social occupants’ which everyone knew was shorthand for unemployed, with or without complex medical needs. This category ranged wildly, from those that in any era that would be unemployable due to low intelligence, indolence, drug or alcohol dependency but nowadays it extended to those who would be described as ordinary decent folk but for whom simple employment simply no longer existed: shop assistants, mechanics, builders, road sweepers, care workers … all gone  … these were the ‘redundants’ who were never referred to as such but nevertheless made up the bulk of the population.

Harry and Debby were unaware of their neighbours because they never met and sound insulation was almost perfect in all blocks. Because of this and having four separate entrances and lift shafts each block could house a complete range of occupants without anyone really being aware of each other.

Harry was glad though that he had a job, and a good one at that, the hours were long and he was busy. His online account was very healthy and he could look forward to a good pension and he would be able to retire before he was fifty.   If pressed, he would have been hard put to say exactly what they did, he was however fortunately never pressed. He was in fact a "business acquisition consultant" working as part of a multidisciplinary team.

It was Friday night and both were meeting up with mates. Harry was planning a boozy night with his three closest friends from school and they had all chipped in pooling bandwidth to watch Natflix"s latest holo-movie. Beer and pizza were bundled with the movie so it would be a good night. Debby for her part was very excited and very nervous. She and her best friend were going to meet up physically in the bistro on the ground floor. This had access to an outside area with tables and chairs and waiters and waitresses. Only one or two of the latter were people the others were simple droids ... but waiters added to the atmosphere.

Debby was nervous because she worried about in turn: germs; people getting over the wall with knives; strange men and different food to her normal deliveries. Her friend Susi was ‘making her go’ but Debby was thinking that really was all this stress worth it? She called her parents before going out and they said not to be so silly and that they went out all the time when they were her age. They did not mention that they had stopped when street violence became too prevalent and actually their new yellow block apartment with the medical services was quite the best move they had made.

And so life went on in the blocks, year after year. They became home to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. As the climate changed and the storms worsened the blocks provided continuity and safety. They were designed to withstand floods, heat and wind and could be updated when the need arose.

The "modifications" always caused some disruption but they were glad that they were to be protected from the storm and flooding dangers now threatening everyone. They could only imagine the worries people living in houses on the ground must have. As a result the blocks or as they should be called the ‘cloud cities’ were always full and new blocks were added all the time.

Harry had not left the apartment for two months but he would have been astonished to have had that pointed out to him as this was an era where one could be "together and alone" thanks to social media. The paradox would be lost on his generation and as for the others in the block. Physical and social loneliness was  previously the norm for the unemployed, invaedlid or elderly and so the social media world had to a large extent improved their lives and ironically levelled the playing field between the ‘have and have nots’.

Debby was looking around in the outside restaurant on the ground floor when it happened. Three men scaled the glass wall surrounding the tables. They scattered the serving droids and flailed around madly with what looked like kitchen knives. Shouts and screams echoed around, Debby’s worst fears had been realised. She could not have known that this was a staged event. No one was killed or injured but in the melee somehow the glass wall was smashed. Debby ran out into the night and was very shortly picked up by a patrol car and taken away.

This act saved her life. Just how though would become clear in time.



Chapter 7

The towers are modified and Jim and Buz come up with the solution

2025 was the year that the  UK finally declared a ‘climate emergency’. It gave the government wide-ranging powers to do more or less whatever they could think of to mitigate the climate changes. Unfortunately the zero-carbon cities had been built too late. There were irreversible changes in the climate.

Camilla Kossak never lived to see the consequences of the changes, she died shortly after her meeting with Jim in 2025 convinced that they had done enough, some of it draconian, but necessary to save the planet. Sea levels had risen significantly by 2030 and a lot of the Greenland ice sheet had gone.  It was clear that the world was going to be a very different place.

The increased flood risk in most global cities provided the impetus to protect the Cloud-Cities from flooding and storm damage. Major modifications were underway across the planet so no one paid any notice that insertions were made in the magnesium ultra-light pillars that framed the wooden panels of the blocks.

Aluminum stiffeners to the pillars were added, heavy steel beams to the floors also. Meanwhile governments, now all ‘Green’ in some way, built windmills, flood defences and implemented food rationing. Few could remember real meat or having seen a cow, let alone taste its flesh. Even fewer remember having a pet.

It was a grim time.

What had changed, though for the better was the role of governments, specifically in decision making. Common to many areas of society, law and business, a great many decisions were made using what was still called artificial intelligence or just AI. Really though, machine-based decision algorithms had taken over almost completely, whether it was to drive vehicles, buy or sell stocks or indeed make important decisions about the environment.

In the above context it is wrong to say that people made the decision to place explosives in  the blocks, it is wrong to blame specific governments or prime ministers. The decisions were made on the basis of logic and data input. No one really objected, even though they may have felt queasy. For why would anyone resist being absolved of huge responsibility ... especially those in charge? It was much more agreeable to blame the computer and focus on designing new logos and slogans for the next project.

Jim and fellow ADevs were very much at ease with the ever better algorithms. After all this was very much how they thought themselves. They watched on in a fatherly role as near adolescent super-brains wrote new and ever more opaque algorithms to make the world run smoothly.

In any case Detonation Day was still  years away.

Jim called up Buz Kaiser, "Hello Buz, can you meet me at your club tomorrow? ."After a short pause he heard,

"Yes of course" said a surprised voice, "certainly, shall we say 2.15pm?",

"Fine, see you then" said Jim.

Buz was looking forward to this meeting. Jim needed him in some way and that was a good feeling for someone who had been in the wilderness for so long.

They settled down to chat both with a glass of whisky in hand. Jim started the conversation

"Buz, if you wanted to reduce the population size significantly, who would you kill?"

That was  simple and clear enough for an opening statement to set the scene and to indicate why Buz was there. Buz was the only living person who had had direct experience of genocide on any significant scale and Jim valued this deeply mostly because he could debate the issue without the emotional backwash inevitable from almost anyone else. Fellow ADevs across the planet had of course by proxy to the AI’s decision, subscribed to and implemented the ‘modifications’ but in debate they could be squeamish having had to maintain a civilised and caring veneer to operate in the world for so long. This was a topic about which it was hard to sound reasonable.

Buz replied after some time sipping his drink quietly,

"Well, let"s start with criteria. In the Bible’s account of the great flood the selection criteria were rather too broad for our purposes and they assumed the authority for destruction would be around afterwards. In our case, I assume that as no one is responsible for this then that situation does not apply"

"Quite so" said Jim, " there is no regime, power or doctrine to which loyalty needs to be shown. The algorithms that ‘govern’ us, if such a word is applicable, will remain and the notion of challenge to them is absurd as there is nothing to challenge".

It was Buz’s turn, "Ok, well I think you should rule out, hate, disapproval and jealousy as emotional motivation for selection and of course race and creed".

Jim nodded, "You have learned much in the last 90 years Buz, indeed none of which you speak are remotely suitable; tribally motivated criteria are of no use to us in this context."

"So we are left with what?" said Buz simply to act as a feed for Jim’s next lines.

"Utility Buz, utility" said Jim.
‘
"That’s not possible to define Jim, who today is truly useful? Look at most jobs, they don’t do anything," he put emphasis on the word ‘do’, and continuing he said, " the machines to a very large part make the goods, farm the fields, tend the sick and decide on law; who would you have left standing?" Buz finished with a flourish happy that he was doing what Jim needed.

"I have a more sophisticated version of utility than mere function Buz", Jim was fully engaged now hoping to get it right on the first pass, " It has two parts one which can be loosely described  as "what is the point of you?" and secondly I have a concept of negative-utility, in other words a cost".

"We did that before, we included the sick, the poorly formed, the insane and the doting in our scope" Buz shot back with a look of "what’s new?" on his old face.

Jim was ready, "It was too narrow, too if you like ... ‘personal’. It needs to be more general more rational. I suggest looking at life-cost, by which I mean an assessment of the ratio between consumption and contribution". Jim was feeling that simplicity was slipping away from him.

Buz, who liked to get to a conclusion more than he enjoyed a debate that could any moment slither away said, "Right then, it"s the non-productive, of reproductive age and disposition with a high liability of long morbidity before death!".

"Not bad" thought Jim for an oldie like Buz.

The logic was impeccable and free of any of the prejudices discussed earlier. He grasped instantly that there was no need to build any selection criteria based on ‘worth’ and that the non-reproductive would die in due course in any case without increasing any negative utility. He had something so clearly articulated that he could present it with pride when the time came.

Jim said, "one more thing … no coercion,  this time"

Buz was happy. He knew that he had unlocked a door for Jim and that his own life"s work was not in vain. He died a few weeks after their meeting.



Chapter 8

Detonation Day

It was a very odd day across the globe. Over a 24 hr period, depending on which time zone you were in, the inhabitants of the Cloud Cities retired to sleep. As usual the windows darkened and chemically-aided scented insomnolence brought peace to each block.  No one was to re-awake as the sleeping draft was strong that night,  and when everyone, or very nearly everyone, was deeply unconscious then simultaneously the long forgotten high explosives in each block detonated.

In turn, the magnesium-rich girders lit and burned at over 2000 degrees Celsius, in turn the high temperatures lit the gold, silver and coloured cladding. The complex ducting fed the fire with oxygen and internally, temperatures reached 4000 degrees. Soon the fixings on the internal spine of the buildings melted and let go;  the top floors dropped catastrophically into the apartments below. The massive weight of the strengthened floors caused a domino effect and the entire block fell into the void that was once the basement. The flames were extinguished at the same time, literally blown out by the explosion and suffocated by burial.

Execution, incineration and internment in a few dozen seconds. Buz Kaiser would have been impressed thought Jim.

Would God, or a God judge them?

Jim had this thought simply because he could imagine others saying such a thing to him. He feared no supernatural arbiter of his actions. He would reply to his own question thus:

"Gods are no strangers to mass homicide; the god of the christian Bible metaphorically pressed the reset button on mankind. ‘His’ flood destroyed all but a favoured family and their mates. The surviving, original  Ante Deluvians went on to live for hundreds of years and the earth prospered.

Is our reset so different? Less necessary? Are the waters not rising?  Can only gods do these things?

Within less than five minutes nothing was left above ground. Within the week the bulldozer-bots would be shovelling earth over the cooling site. Across the globe this scene had been repeated millions of times. D-Day plus 1 hour, billions had died; approximately 60% of the population had just gone away.

Did anyone notice? Of course, those relatively few who accidentally witnessed the scene would have seen what was described above. How did they react? They didn"t. Somethings are too enormous, too horrendous to take in. Traumatic amnesia was the order of the moment. This though is not a stable condition and so what followed was of vital importance to stability.

Of course the bot-controlled farms and factories instantly scaled back production which was not noticed as jobs were not lost. On all social media platforms all references to what had been seen were removed in case contacts were made outside the block-based communities. All block-based media accounts were deleted; electronic maps were updated, post-codes deleted, encyclopedias edited; crypto-currencies deleted; history itself was re-written.

Nothing, not food, not web access, not money, not the news, skipped a beat for those outside the blocks. There was a slight haze and a glorious sunrise as was to be expected from the dust in the air.

"No change" though is not enough. Good news soon followed. Restrictions were lifted for all on how many children they could have; health care costs were reduced; pet ownership was allowed and restrictions on buying land removed. Electricity was free. More was to follow.

Psychologically, the survivors, who for the vast part did not even know they were survivors, were fitted with what amounted to perfect amnesia blocks. What mind, that was witness to the events, could dwell on instant genocide of unbelievable scale followed by prosperity and security.  What to do then, other than to forget?

Some did not forget; some remembered what they saw;  some had printouts of the old online maps and some had taken photos with their cameras. Fake news, image manipulation, conspiracy theory. You were truly cursed if you chose not to forget. Most that did not were smart enough to pretend they did. Those who persisted were soon raving mad and were looked after by the medical services ... which had time to spare now.

The world was now a very different place. The sea levels had risen, the temperatures had increased, the climate had changed, that much was already a consequence of mankind"s activities. What was different now was that the renewable energy supplies easily met the needs of the population, in fact they had an excess. What was different now was that there was enough water for everyone ... there were enough resources for all, everywhere.

A new era was starting. The people that remained were different to those that died but not in any significant way that would affect the nature of Homo Sapiens. The genocide was not an attempt to build a master race, the unfortunates who died were simply redundant through no fault of their own making, like drones in a beehive, they were cleared out.

Those left were still the same people and would be subject to the same mistakes in the future but they had been given a reprieve, a new school exercise book as it were, in which they could do better this time.

This was the accepted position,  but it was not accepted by all, Jim mused. We can do better.



Chapter 9

Debby survives

Debby spent the night in the police"s main building on the outskirts of the city. She was to be returned to her block the following day after counselling and shock management professionals were sure that she was ok. Reassuring her that the block was safe and that the situation was under control was a priority. The ‘attackers’ were ‘crazies’ who were drug-riddled outsiders probably part of a doomsday sect, or so the mantra went.

The intended message to her and of course to all on the media feeds is that it is risky outside and maybe being inside is on balance the easier option. This kind of thing was routine manipulation and had been going on for many years. This night was to be different. This was the extended night known to the AI systems as ‘Detonation"’and as the penumbra moved around the world people were going to sleep for the last time. They were dreaming pleasantly from the first of the chemicals fed into their rooms.

Debby did not see the detonation of her block. She was in a room without windows drinking a soothing draft of warm milk and valium chatting to one of the staff charged with her care. She heard it though: a pulse went through her as she heard a deafening crack of noise followed by a deep thunderous tremor which went on and on. Then silence.

Going outside to see what had happened was against all instinct for Debby and so it was for all the others in the building. It was a full hour before someone ventured out. There was nothing to see, literally what was there was no longer and what was no longer there was obscured by a thick pall of dust which reflected back the light from their building. There were no other lights to be seen. The Commander was first to go out. It was his duty.

"Good God!" said the Station Commander as he glanced around the steel and glass door, " it must have been a bomb, maybe a nuclear bomb, we’re all dead!".

He could be forgiven his hyperbole as there had been broadcasts about international unrest and terrorist attack was at amber level. He knew enough about a dirty bomb that if the blast did not kill you, you were as surely going to die. He quickly  took the half step back into the building to tell the others; numbed and overwhelmingly sad.

Many hours passed and dawn came deep red through the dusty sky. To their astonishment the electricity was on ( something they had not noticed all night), the news feeds were up, the Web was working. They could even order Pizza and if they did so before 8am they would guarantee 20 minute delivery. This is not how they imagined the end of the world. The staff looked at the Commander thinking that he had played some cruel hoax on them. One by one they went outside to look for themselves.

The dust was settling but still there was nothing to see. Where stood one gold block, two silvers and ten coloured blocks ( including Debby"s red with gold trim block) there stood none. There was no debris scattered around, just flatness and heat.  The Commander had not lied but what on earth were they seeing? Who had done this and why? A pizza arrived by drone, presumably someone had hoped to eat a favorite, if last meal.

Scenes like this were being repeated across the globe but it wasn"t making the news. It never happened. In societies used to events ‘never having happened’ a certain psychological preconditioning protected them, in more open societies mental paralysis took over. Debby was sharing the pepperoni pizza with two others, it was very nice and still hot. The problem of going home for Debby had not yet been addressed but it soon  would be as the data-log for the night uploaded.

Debby was quickly classified by the AI immigration computers as an "accidental", someone who should have been somewhere else but for some reason wasn"t and this was communicated to the Commander. He was in turn instructed to set in motion the well oiled re-homing program used for homeless refugees fleeing climate changes that had rendered their land impossible to live in. Normally, a block would have been found to house the outsider but that was not his job which was just as well as there were now no blocks.  All he had to do was flag  her details as an "accidental" and the system would collect her in due course.

Debby was to be rehomed in Dewsbury, a town in the north of England which was designated as a repository for "accidentals". Waiting for them were low rise houses newly built outside the areas where the blocks stood.  They had all modern conveniences and even small gardens. However, for reassurance they were in ‘gated-communities’ otherwise the sense of insecurity for ex-block dwellers would be overwhelming. And so in time Debby was resettled in Dewsbury Dales.

However she couldn’t settle. Her partner and entire social network had gone. There was no one to message, no gossip to keep up with. She was heavily medicated most of the time and it would take a while for the fake-friend groups setup for her (and others) to become ‘real’ again. Most unsettling of all for Debby was getting food. The delivery services were in place but ‘being phased out’ as shops were reintroduced. Her small low rise dwelling had a cooker in the food preparation area, something she had never seen before. Weekly cooking lessons were scheduled to happen with a friendly chef-droid. Adapting to this brave new world would take time.

Debby had not been an eye witness to the events of that night but she could bear witness. She felt the sonic boom, heard the roars, smelt the dust and saw the absence of what was there before.

She could bear witness then to a time before that night if only the fog in her head would clear. There was a time before and there is a time after, but in her world that had been part virtual, part fake and part real.  A world where the stamp of time was so flexible, where even close friends were literally intangible; what was ‘before’?

If she were to try to tell her story what would she say? But for now she was alive and safe, a survivor.



Chapter 10

Eve and Debby in Dewsbury

After leaving Steve to drive home, Eve walked around Dewsbury for an hour taking in the warmth of the end  of the day and admiring the countryside as she headed back to the centre of town where she would get a bite to eat and find her accommodation.

She sat in a small cafe which had a generous space around it for young parents to deposit their children safely, still in sight but far enough away to allow the women ( for it was mostly women who gathered here) to chat and relax. Across from her sat another woman, alone, in her early forties by the look of her, who gazed intently at the hurly burly of youngsters playing. This woman was Debby, the ‘accidental’  rehomed and looking well enough to pass for "settled", though it had taken a long time for the events of the past to recede and to build her life again.

Eve, who was for obvious reasons thinking hard about children which was not surprising given that only hours before she had been offered the chance to be the mother of a super-race by her partner Steve. A partner she now knew was a very special creature but of exactly what kind she was not sure. Human? Yes? No? Mostly? Looking at children playing she thought that whatever the proposition she was not ready to have children of any kind and actually was not sure that she wanted them at all.

Debby soon noticed Eve’s looking and spoke directly to her, "Cute aren’t they?, I"ve always wanted kids, but things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped".

This was a direct to the point opening gambit and it was obvious that Debby had mistaken the look on Eve"s face as being born of the same wistfulness that possessed her.

"Oh yes," replied Eve without the enthusiasm that Debby had expected and had hoped for. This meant that the conversation would soon peter out thought Debby, disappointed.

To her own complete shock and surprise Eve went into a kind of confessional overdrive and retold the entire story of the day to Debby, barely pausing for breath or noticing Debby"s widening eyes and look of incredulity. At the end of her account, again with barely a pause she asked Debby,

"Do you want children?"

"Yes," replied Debby.

Eve’s implants were really hurting her head now, they had been drawing so much energy, searching databases, accessing procedures, speeding up her thoughts to a breakneck pace.

"Right, that’s it, that’s what to do" said Eve, "Your eggs harvested, I pass them off as my eggs, fertilised, re-implanted into you as ‘surrogate’ only you wouldn’t be a surrogate it would just be a normal pregnancy but Steve would expect me to use a surrogate given that I need to keep working, for my career you understand?"

Debby thought that maybe the woman in front of her was mad, she certainly would prefer sentences to have some pauses in them. However the seed metaphorically was planted and having got everything off her chest in one go Eve calmed down and they started talking in a normal "what brings you here?" sort of way.

And so the plan was hatched, Debby travelled to the hospital where Eve worked two months later to have Eve"s fertilized and sexed eggs implanted. The unfertilized eggs having first been re-engineered according to Steve"s mitochondrial DNA maps. He had no interest in male offspring, this child was a new beginning, the start of a line of reproducible ADevs.

All went well. Steve was delighted. Debby returned home was duly ‘with child’ and received the very best of medical care and attention.

Debby was not expected to return the child to Eve and Steve; she would act as an adoptive parent and this would all be legal and above board. This suited both Eve and Steve and was not uncommon. The roles of favorite Uncle/Aunt, patrons, were fashionable amongst the rich and busy.  Debby was truly happy, not because of the super-race thing, she didn"t actually believe that story, just that she was going to have a child of her own and the money to raise it.

In due course the child was born. Debby named her Lilith after consulting with Eve and Steve. She was a happy baby, fit and well made. Only Steve had been holding his breath expecting the worst. The first hurdle he thought had been overcome but what about the mitochondria? The biopsy soon confirmed that all the modifications had taken and that genetically to all intents and purposes young Lilith was of Steve’s kind. Now only time would tell.

All over the planet stories like this were playing out, soon the Jims of this world would not be a rarity as the mDNA had passed into the female population.  A race had been both.



Eve and Debby Contd.

Debby’s story told

Debby thrived bringing up young Lily (as she was called by all) her health was fully restored and she felt happy for the first time in a very long while. Curiously, her recollections of the past, of what happened to her, returned. It was for her the start of the unforgetting. She was not so foolish as to discuss with those she now knew either personally or on the social networks, no this was a personal thing. The memories did not cause her distress, on the contrary the opposite occurred. She remembered. She was not confused or mad but simply in possession of whatever exactly constituted a memory. Of course there were no traces of the events she witnessed; not on any digital platform, not in the environment around her nor in the memories of those around her.

History had been comprehensively re-written, so utterly thoroughly and seamlessly, that it would be pointless to go in search of such knowledge. It would also possibly be dangerous. She did not mind, she knew that her memory was a precious thing and she set about tidying it up in her head.

One day she had a narrative, consistent with her experiences and drawing on nothing else. One day she said she would tell her story. It did not matter whether it was believed or not. She also knew to whom she would tell it: Eve.


Eve arrived early on Saturday to pick up Lily for the weekend. Debby was waiting for her and offered a coffee before they travelled. Lily was a toddler now and both of them needed to be watchful to keep track of her but fortunately Lily was still, engrossed in a beautiful holograph of a dragonfly, ‘She loves coloured things’ said Debby.

"Eve", said Debby, "do you mind if I tell you something personal?"

"Go ahead" said Eve as she fiddled with her implant’s telemetry relay. It was not her work-device it was Steve"s. She had left hers at work and was looking for it in vain when she found Steve’s in the desk drawer. He had never used it. It came one day by drone and he muttered something along the lines that ‘there is plenty of time for that stuff later’ and put it to one side. Eve had tidied it into a drawer. With Steve there was always plenty of time. Luckily it had all the same connectors as hers, so she wired up. The nav-modules worked just as hers did.

Debby went ahead. She told the whole story of the blocks, the night and all she knew of the world forgotten. Much like Eve’s confessional stream of consciousness to Debby all those years ago it all came out in pure narrative coherence. What happened next was quite different.

Eve clutched her head in her hands and was moaning in obvious pain, serious pain. She knew what it was. The implants, all work-based neo-cortex implants had aversion circuits built in. These produced mild discomfort for minor transgressions; for example during working hours spending too much time chatting, shopping or accessing work-inappropriate materials. This pain was though massive, her implant filters were in panic mode.

Steve’s relay had access to data folk was completely off-limits to ordinary. Eve’s implants had filters that were tuned to the inputs from her relays. For her science data was a privileged extra channel. As Debby had spoken so Steve’s relay listened and was feeding material at enormous rates to the neatby implant to which it was synced.

Eve knew straight away that what she had heard from Debby was looked up by Steve"s relay then passed to the implant and … the pain alone told her everything she heard was true and she had truly transgressed. Her filters should not be hearing this.

"Oh God" said Eve, “what shall we do? “

Debby was perplexed. What on earth had happened? Was that a performance? What pieces of the jigsaw did Eve have? Then she realised that this was serious. Eve’s expression was one of impending action.

"We must go, go somewhere; me, you, Lily, we"re al’ in terrible danger now," said Eve coldly and calmly as she pulled the relay off and threw it down. "Damn! She muttered I didn’t want to know all this, I didn’t seek it out or ask for it?"

Lily wandered over, "Mummy ok?" she inquired.

"No darling, not really" replied Eve.

Debby looked on, too shocked to move.

Chapter 11

The Flight

Eve was a scientist, a good one. Biodiversity engineers were well trained, well regarded and well paid. This was mostly because they had done a good job. It was widely regarded that in the new warmer world that biodiversity had been largely optimised. That humans lived in a sustainable relationship with Nature was agreed by most contemporary observers.

Long ago the global seed vault at Svalbard had scanned the genetic codes of all their samples and the Frozen Ark projects had done the same for insects and countless other animals. Modern techniques now allowed for the recreation of almost anything. The global population of humans was at a level that their impact was understood and controlled.

The ecologists spent countless hours and years debating basically what went where. Lost species could be re-introduced if needed. "Balance" was the key word and the Biodiversity engineers were central to this enterprise. Eve had spent post-graduate years working in the seed banks and had participated in storing samples relating to human biodiversity as there were fears that personal engineering would result in "original" genes being lost from native populations.

Eve was thinking as fast as she could then looked straight ahead and said, "I have a key!"

"What key?" said Debby.

"The key to somewhere safe," said Eve

Debby knew that they three were preparing to leave. Paradise lost, regained and lost again; she would have thought if she had been of a literary persuasion.

What had she done that was so wrong to have a life like this? A sense of fate overwhelmed her.

"Svarbald!" said Eve, "You know the old seed vault on Spitsbergen the popular tourist resort near Norway, the one no one uses anymore?"

"No" said Debby.

"I have a key, an old-fashioned metal key!" said Eve

"So what?" said Debby.

"It’s a gigantic cave with living accommodation built into a mountain designed to store seeds in a frozen state for ever! ... Only it"s been abandoned as too hot and it"s a museum now," said Eve.

"I still don’t get it" said Debby.

At this point Eve realised that a lot of explanation would be required and so set about telling Debby what she needed to know.

Steve, she knew, would kill them all because he would have been told by the bots what had happened by now and killing them was the rational thing to do. Eve had a key to a redundant site because she had found it as a child in her grandfather’s secret drawer and stolen it and later when she worked there it reminded her of him so she cherished it.

Steve did not know this, and she knew it worked because she had holidayed in Spitsbergen when Steve made a first visit to his Norway factory. She had sneaked to try it long after the vault had ceased being used.

"So you see we can buy time at least, give us a chance", said Eve.

"A chance for what?" said Debby, "To live in a cave as dead-folk walking?"

"To buy time, that’s all, the most precious of commodities is time, nothing else matters", said Eve.

And so they went, all three in a tourist ferry-boat from Manchester harbour, that night, because  Eve had the golden key around her neck.


Chapter 12

Miscalculation

The automated monitoring station at the northern polar base was processing a new mass of data. It was not having much success and if computers could be said to have a good or a bad day this was a bad day. None of the deep-learning algorithms was allowing the machine to identify the patterns in the data. This was very unusual and it was modifying its biases at random to come up with something meaningful.

The sensor data was in fact showing a change in the earth’s precession angle and rate of rotation. As a top spins so does the earth. The machines knew well that the magnetic poles flipped every 26,000 years but what the computers did not know, yet, is that the physical spinning axis of the earth is not fixed. In the past, the very distant past, in effect the "top" had spun on its side and so it was preparing to do again.

Also unknown to the computers was that the echoes from detonation day were still within the metal core of the earth and that slowly, unpredictably, there was a wobble building. The authors of detonation day had not reckoned that shock waves would be a problem as the destruction was fairly evenly spread around the planet and shock waves should dampen out within the year through destructive interference. But not evenly enough, it transpired; what was building was the metallic equivalent of a rogue wave in a thousand trillion tonne iron core.

It did not however take the computers more than a day, to come to the conclusion that the earth"s spin was becoming unstable and that this would lead to a sudden and catastrophic flip onto its side.

The machines did not go on to point out that this would lead to mass extinction on an unimaginable scale. They also did not say when this would happen. They did not either however have the permissions to keep it to themselves. Doomsday was coming again and this time most probably no one would survive. There would be no infrastructure left in any case for survivors to rebuild. Gaia was pressing the reset button.

An ancient God looked on, "This time there will be no Noahs" he said to himself grimly.



Epilogue


Deep inside the mountain a young woman woke and resolved to do something she had once determined not to do. She was Lilith, known as Lily, now 50 years old. Her "mothers" Eve and Debby were long dead. Eve had died soon after they had entered the mountain. Her implants were going septic and she could not leave the building set into the mountain as the bots patrolling the heavens would soon have located her, as well she knew, they would be polling the earth looking for her day and night.

Debby had lived into old age, surviving the great "earth tilt" though she had no way of knowing what was happening. When years later she and Lily had ventured out nothing was the same. Apocalyptic winds and floods had re-shaped the world and their mountain was bathed in hot sunlight above an azure sea.

During their early days in the mountain they had explored. There was enough food for a lifetime and enough fossil fuels to power generators for a century. Areas were still frozen presumably retaining the cold passively, like blocks in an ice store. One of the areas was where Eve had worked on the human biodiversity project. Here there were thousands of sample of eggs and sperm from every group on the planet.

It was to this area that Lily walked now. Debby had told her that she could have children too, like her. She could use any of the stored samples and maybe she would get pregnant.

"Now was the time" thought Lily, "I will create new people, they will live for a thousand years each, I will kill all the boys, there will only be girls". Lily was after all the first female ADev and she didn’t want to spoil things. She was truly someone Jim would have beenproud of.

Meanwhile on the now over-populated Moon-Base 3, Steve was arguing with a fellow refugee about returning to Earth.