SIM:JP Atorin/Zuril: SECURITY FOOTAGE (II): The Gift of Zolrak
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SECURITY FOOTAGE: The Gift of Zolrak ((Ooyetirent Control Center, Asav, Year of the Gift of Zolrak))
Zuril: What happens if we are successful? That gives us water for maybe another century, but we cannot base our economy on chipping pieces of our own moon… Atorin: This is meant to buy us time, as we begin to phase out the water-fuel technology. Time we wouldn’t have had anyways. But that’s a discussion we can discuss at a later date. Right now, we’re on the cusp of history! :: The professor sighed and looked at the screens. The whole Gift of Zolrak project involved five unmanned ships. Two of them to dig under the required part of the ice satellite, and then detonate two nuclear warheads deep under the surface. That was supposed to chip a huge part of the satellite away. A hundred kilometers in diameter, about four trillion liters of water. The other three robots would generate a warp field that would separate the newly created meteor from the moon’s gravity well, and bring it towards Asav, where it would be destroyed and collected as it fell into the atmosphere. :: Atorin: ::over the din of the operations room as the mission reached its critical phase:: Look, look! The mining ships have broken the surface! :: Though he was ostensibly the government official in charge of the mission, in actuality Science Minister Atorin was but a figurehead. In the intervening years since the mission had first been devised, Chitern Corporation had slowly but surely taken over key elements of the planning, construction, and execution phases. The government had become basically a spectator in what was Chitern’s crowning achievement, and Atorin himself wasn’t even a prominent member of that government. The one thing he had contributed with any lasting effect to the mission was its name, “Gift of Zolrak”. In a fit of pique against a religiously-tinged opponent during a televised election debate, Atorin had invoked the name of the ancient water god as a tongue-in-cheek jab at the nouveau Balzog initiate. The name was apt enough to stick, and with his political title and as the originator of the mission name, Atorin was granted the privilege of overlooking this historic event. :: Zuril: :: raising from his chair, speaking terribly slowly. :: No… they have not. Are you sure this will work? Atorin: ::dismissive sniff:: No, I’m sure everything is fine. The calculations and projections have been checked, and rechecked, and double checked a dozen times over. It’s all going as to plan. :: Atorin, not as astute as should have been for a man in his position, was blissfully oblivious to the ominous change in smell of the room from the enhanced emotions, the subtle shift in the tone and gravity of the background din. He was too busy watching the pretty graphics on the news screens, the ones that showed no true information but were created mostly for the consumption of the uninformed and ignorant masses. Had he been watching actual data feeds like Zuril was, and had any scientific experience to support the worth of his title as Science Minister, he might not have been so blissful. :: Zuril: Is there a second detonation, maybe? Chitern Operative: No. This is all that was planned. It SHOULD have separated the objective meteorite. :: That ‘should’ hung in the air. It was dead clear that it didn’t. They had seen the explosion, the shockwave illuminate the dig holes, the moon’s surface rumble. But it had not broken apart. It could have been a problem with the warheads. Or a terrible miscalculation of the moon’s density or structure. Whatever their failure was, the moon was still whole. :: Zuril: Abort mission. Disengage Warp Field Generators. We have failed. :: The old professor had no real authority in that room. But his dark tone resonated on everyone’s moods, and no one was able to respond. Slowly, painfully, they started looking down from the main projector, towards their own workstations, to give the unmanned ships the orders to stand down and return. :: Chitern Operative: It’s not working. They are not responding. Zuril: What? Why? Chitern Operative: The magnetic pulse from the nuclear blast is interfering with our comm systems. :: That would mean the robotic ships would not be able to return, and would be stranded on the moon until their space program was advanced enough to retrieve them. It was a pity to lose three warp field generators, both for their cost and the amount of work the professor had put on them, but luckily there were no lost lives. The whole project had been a very long shot, anyway. :: Zuril: It’s alright. Let them crash on the surface. :: His whole career as a scientist, being a war veteran, and a prison camp survivor. None of his past experiences could have prepared him for the terror the following words awakened on him. :: Chitern Operative: No, professor. The system is automated. Unless they receive a counter order, they will keep up with the mission. Zuril: WHAT? Atorin: No. No. ::wringing his hands and sniffing rapidly:: They will just terminate their mission. The mission will just abort now that something had gone wrong. Correct, Professor? :: Before answering the minister’s question, the professor frantically checked the code of the robot’s programming. In hopes of finding something, some small line saying that they would automatically stop if something went wrong. There wasn’t anything. :: Zuril: The Warp Field Generators can’t be turned off. They will start bringing the chipped part down towards Asav. If there is no chipped part… they will bring the whole moon. Atorin: What do you mean, they can’t be turned off? Zuril, you designed those “bubble” generators, find a way to stop them! Zuril: I designed the generators, but the robots were Chitern work. And apparently they didn’t count a nuclear blast next to them, which was their intended mission, would be a problem. :: The Chitern operatives in the room looked away. They had not been involved in the design program, they were trained to control the system. But it was a terrible mistake on the part of Chitern, and they were a bit ashamed by it. :: Atorin: ::laughing, a nervous, shaky titter:: “They will bring the whole moon”... That is funny. You couldn’t seriously expect your little bubble machines to move a whole moon?! Zuril: Not in the same way they would have brought down the meteorite. But it will be enough to deviate the moon from its orbit. From there… anything can happen. It can crash on us in a month, a year, five years… who knows, but it will be definitely coming down. Atorin: Come down?? ::he couldn’t even fathom such destruction on a planetary scale:: It would… will… destroy Asav and everything on it... Zuril: Even before crashing, just orbiting close enough to us will drag our atmosphere away and destroy our ecosystems. :: In a state of shock, unbelieving yet stricken and frozen in place, Atorin didn’t know what to say or do. He was a nobody, a middling provincial politician who had gained his position in life more through luck and happenstance than through any reasonable amount of intellect or skill. Now, being the face of the mission which would ultimately end all life of Asav, Atorin never felt more small and helpless in his entire existence. As short as it would ultimately end up being. :: Atorin: We cannot allow this to happen. There has to be something we can do! We can, I dunno, blow it up or something?! :: Now, that was the first sensible idea that had come out from the minister’s mouth that day. It was completely crazy, but they were in a dire situation. Blowing up the whole satellite would require an arsenal far more impressive than what had failed to break it. But it would avoid them the main impact and gravity effects. :: Zuril: Let me do some calculations. :: he unceremoniously pushed an operative away from her computer. :: The moon is 750 km in radius, and that’s 1.7 times 10^9 km^3 worth of frozen water. :: Atorin had spoken out of panic and desperation, but with the professor taking the suggestion seriously, it cleared his head enough to embolden his words. :: Atorin: Yeah, I mean there will still be widespread destruction as shards of ice rain down on the planet, but there’s still a chance for life, right? Zuril: It is better than the alternative, but the amount of water we are bringing back is enough to raise the water level by five thousand meters. It will destroy civilization as we know it. Atorin: Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. The “Gift of Zolrak”, we called this. ::maniacal sniff:: I wish I had never said that. This is more like the “Wrath of Zolrak”. :: The professor just nodded. He didn’t want to be the one to actually say it, but it was their only option, and it was the minister’s place to convince the different nations of Asav to use their joint arsenal on this. The professor definitely did not envy his position. :: Atorin: ::defeated, shoulders slumping:: Somebody get me set up on a conference call to the President and the Minister of Defence. The unthinkable must be arranged.
Minister Atorin & Professor Zuril
& Lt.JG John Valdivia |