Entry-2(II) – The Storm

Continued from last part…

The storm in the horizon, slowly creeping towards our Dome City kept on bringing flashbacks in my head, the destruction wreaked by the unwanted yet unavoidable repercussions of the war, frozen dead bodies on the streets, building the Vault, everything.

I had my breakfast in silence and left for the Center as soon as possible. Husky observed me almost silently occasionally letting out a whine, he could always sense me well. Even though we were inside a virtually impenetrable dome, the storm worried me and he could smell it.

My anxiety was not because of the harm it could cause to my city because Dome City was nigh impenetrable. Dome City is the only settlement in my knowledge that exists on this destroyed planet and my current place of residence. I was worried because every storm brought news of fresh trouble be it radiation or formation of acid pools that would slowly eat away at the ground beneath. New Minnesota was under water for a month the last time it was hit by a storm.

The storm had begun its onslaught on the dome by the time I reached our command facility or in short, the Centre because it was at the centre of the city. The rest of the city was built around it. The Centre houses the administrative counterparts of all the civic facilities, R&D buildings, and the central command and at accessible distances from all corners of the city.

I went to the meteorology department as soon as I reached and enquired about the storm situation. Its origin was quite far from our city. This meant the storm’s current intensity was lesser than initial. Meteorologists were trying to trace the path of Domino, the storm. Bhagirath, a young member of the team, came up with that name and it stuck since the others couldn’t come up with anything better.

The tracing could be done using our highly sensitive underground sensors. The satellites that survived were still in their orbits but incapable of studying the Earth’s surface because of the perennial cloud cover, mistress of the nuclear winter. The data from the sensors brought creases on everyone’s forehead except mine. After the loss of Martha I stopped feeling any kind of emotions except for Husky, my only best friend.

The storm’s accurate origin however could not be found and nor was it continuous. Its presence was first recorded 500km north of Dome City which is practically a cold barren land, the Cold Fields as we called it. The storm seemed to just have appeared from nowhere, there was no abrupt change in air pressure anywhere in that region before the storm. Then things got weirder, the storm seemed to disappear from time to time. There were a lot of theories from the specialists but none seemed to hold. The only effective method was to send an unmanned probing vehicle for field observation and wait for results.

I was a little enthused because the unmanned probing vehicle or UPV was my design and tomorrow was going to be its first field operation. It is literally an all-terrain vehicle with a top speed of 431kmph powered by a huge fusion engine coupled with axles made of aluminium alloyed with carbon nano-tubes. The shock absorbers are pneumatic gas charged pistons with small heat exchangers for compensating the temperature difference. The vehicle employed 4 wheels, 9 feet diameter each, 1.5 feet thick in the rear and two slightly smaller ones of equal width at the front. The air pressure inside the wheels can be altered so as to maintain appropriate traction over the terrain. The outer shell of the UPV is inspired from a Rotem battle tank but with more effective aerodynamics.

When required, this vehicle can also operate underwater though we didn’t know of any existing water bodies yet. I had always wondered how it would feel to sit inside. Pity, it is an unmanned vehicle with no space for passengers.

The UPV was completely prepped for launch but the process was tedious. Of course , it was important that every little part was checked and rechecked before releasing my creation into the wild. There was no room for mistakes. Then again, it did exhaust us entirely.

The UPV is due to start tomorrow as soon as the storm dissipates. Hopefully that would happen before we reach the Center so that no time is wasted when we start recording our observations. Let’s see what nasty stuff the car drags in. I should sleep now.

Entry – 2 part I

7th May 2355

I woke up pretty early in the morning owing to Husky’s howling. It was odd since the number of break-ins after the war were zero. What else can be expected when all of the population in the world has been obliterated. I was able to save a few and the civilization was not all lost. I went to the door cam to check and the sight was not soothing. A storm was brewing in the horizon and a storm could never be a good sign.

The last storm was a few months ago in erstwhile New Minnesota and it wreaked havoc for two whole weeks. We don’t have rainy storms anymore, there’s no humidity outside, for obvious reasons. The atmosphere had become very dense during the later part of the war. The results were disastrous. Humans, animals, plants, insects all started dying. There were massive piles of dead bodies, rotting away and no one to burn or bury those bodies. Governments were busy establishing their dwindling superiority.

The colder regions were the worst affected. Smog killed thousands every night till there were no more living left to die. The dead froze by the morning. All living entities would have choked or nuked to death if they had not been moved to an artificial environment. Some of us had seen this situation coming and had already built a huge underground vault in the then non-operational Cortez gold mine, artificially supplemented with plant life.

However, this vault was still restricted in size and only a few hundred could be settled. Although, there was something none of the brilliant minds could anticipate, these storms. Now, that the air was denser, all sorts of heavier particles floated around causing immeasurable damage to both living and man made. The storms just accelerated this damage exponentially.

I remember being outside the vault during one such storm, a hundred and fifty years ago maybe. I had planned a field trip to study the current environment for future reference. I had been searching for potential areas for a settlement for a long time but the radiation levels were still too high. It was during one of those runs, I was taking readings on my Geiger counter, when I saw the approaching storm from the corner of my eye. I packed up and ran inside a derelict high rise to save myself and my supplies. My next strategy was to hide in the basement which proved to be one of the best decisions in my life. These storms don’t just carry dust particles, they carry chips from stones and metal objects, whatever can float in the dense combination of smog and acid vapours.

The next morning, after the storm had died down, I thought to come out of hiding and finish the remainder of my task. The sight on ground shook me to my very core. Everything above the basement was ripped apart except the core steel frame with chunks of concrete that could not be ripped away. The rest of the area was ravaged in a similar manner and that was not the end. New crevices had formed and my Geiger counter spiked whenever I approached one of them.
I knew that day, our Earth was just one step away from the biblical end of days. Thankfully the war was over by that time as no one else was left to continue it. I returned back to the vault as soon as I could, the oxygen supply was running low.

To be continued…

Entry 1 Part II

Continued from the last post.

Vladivostok, the space station orbiting Venus confirmed the approach of the vessels after 50 minutes of launch and recalibrated their trajectory. The time for them to decelerate was approaching fast and precision was of essence. The ships approached their drop points, approximately midway between the orbits of Venus and Mercury. Mercury, has a short period of revolution around the Sun and hence, the choice of orbit.

After the carriers aligned themselves in five stable orbits, they would deploy their respective payloads, thirty million mica filled silver plate capacitors, each about ten kilometres long, folded over each other like the steel in the blade of a samurai sword to decrease their length. The capacitors were guarded by prótégo coated high carbon steel plates with one face connected to solar panels.

These plates were to form 5 elliptical rings which would form sections of a sphere. These rings had enough gaps between them to allow enough solar radiation required to maintain the brightness in our star system. They would revolve around the sun according to modified Kepler’s laws without disturbing the balance. Planning it was not a walk in the park. The calculations took months and a team of five people headed by our brilliant mathematician, Irene.

I always found mathematics beautiful and it was a treat to the eyes watching those mind-boggling equations come into play while those thirty million massive plates unfolded to form the five rings.

The solar panels blazed up to give a bright bluish white color. The sight was literally and figuratively out of this world. Why wouldn’t it be, the rings are my brainchild.

The whole process took 6 hours to complete. It was the biggest achoevement since the discovery of petroleum and also after the depletion of petroleum reserves. I still remember the day when it was announced that the rock oil reserves have been depleted. Riots spread like wildfire killing thousands on the very first day. It took over a month to bring everything under control during which thousands of cities were destroyed. It was a symbol that destruction caused by man can be as severe as caused by nature. Even though it was more than 300 years ago, the memories are still fresh like an open wound. I lost Martha in those riots, it was the last day for my dwindling hope in humanity.

I got back to my quarters after a long and unnecessary loud celebration. I never understood why any kind of celebration has to be loud for people. Centuries of technological innovation and yet the party culture never died down.

Husky ran down to greet me as soon as I drove down the garage door. We had a nice dinner and then I sat down to write the journal, my first journal after the war got over.

To be continued…

Entry 1

This is the first entry from the journal. I won’t add any more from my side.

5th May 2355,

It was just another cold morning, I don’t know why do I even bother to mention the weather. I haven’t seen a moderately warm day in the past 300 years. I always preferred cold weather but only for two or three months at a stretch. It used to become a drag at the end of the third month.

Now, there’s no waiting for spring or summer or even autumn. It’s always winter, the same depressing sunless winter. Why am I even going on about it? This winter was invited to stay and it is not going away anytime soon. Today was too important to be wasted on this godforsaken weather.

The Dyson Rings were to be launched today, our one hope for a perennial energy source. I had to start with my routine much earlier today. Husky was not happy since we were gonna miss the usual morning run and he knows he is not going to see me the whole day. Husky, my canine kindred spirit had a temper and he was not shy of showing it. I tried to make him understand the importance of the launch. He whined for a while and then sat down with his breakfast.

I had to leave earlier for the Center than other days. I wanted to take Husky to the office to witness the event but most people there won’t prefer the presence of a gray wolf. Husky is a very loving companion even though he is a little longer than me but only I can appreciate that fact.

At the Center, everyone except me was visibly excited. They had their reasons to be excited as the Dyson’s Rings were gonna solve a lot of our impending issues. The proper placement of the rings would remove any kind of problem with energy deficit. As for me, I haven’t found many reasons to feel anything, even fear or excitement in a long time. I prefer to not get excited, excitement always brings a large scope of error in judgement.

The engineer and their assistbots were busy checking the launch vehicles and the payload. It was imperative that there were minimum errors during the whole process.

We had ten carrier space shuttles that needed to be launched within a period of ten minutes or else the rings wouldn’t be set in tandem with each other. Speed was an important factor and fortunately, we had Gregor.

Gregor had developed an engine that can harness and store energy from the thunderstorms continuously raging in the stratosphere, it reduced our dependency on solid fuel by a huge margin. The batteries in the engine also delivered high power at constant capacity to maintain the momentum. The atmosphere is much denser than the time when UAE had its first moon landing.

I can’t help but wonder about the state of our program if quantum batteries had not been invented. We would not have been able to even test our calculations. Whatever, we did do it, against all odds and are now on the way to harness energy from the Sun which we cannot see anymore from the Earth. I have longed to see the sun from the day we moved inside the Vault. I don’t know how many centuries more I have to wait to see our life giver.

After equalization of pressure with the outside atmosphere, the carriers were launched precisely at 10:00 AM IST and all of them were in their designated trajectories by 10:20 AM. The easy part was over, now we had to wait till they reached Mercury.

To be continued…

Note: Dyson rings, quantum batteries have been defined under the category Definition