The Ones We're Meant to Find(47)
U-me’s not programmed to vocalize a response to a direct command, but I know she hears me. She was the first one who did on this island. Before Hubert, and before Hero, she was all I had.
“I’ll be back for you, too,” I say, and to my relief, U-me, unlike Hero, believes in me.
“Strongly agree.”
Overcome, I drop a kiss on her bulky head. Then I seize the oar Hero made for me and row into the sea, toward the rising sun.
18
THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF CIVILIZATION, humans had looked to the heavens for answers. In stars, they found maps. In suns, they found gods.
In the sky beyond the sky, they thought they’d find a second home.
But when faced with the question of where to house displaced coastal and island communities, the founding Mizuharas hadn’t looked up, but down.
Ocean deep.
Science backed the decision to build the first eco-city prototypes on the seafloor. Hydraulic-pressure turbines were more efficient than their air counterparts, and the sea was also a natural buffer against erosion. As long as you didn’t (1) build over a tectonic region, or (2) use materials that would react with saltwater electrolytes, the cities could theoretically last a millennium.
But not everyone was married to the idea of a plankton-like existence, and as the beta-testing population grew, so did demands for better conditions. The people, Kasey imagined, likely made the same arguments as Celia. Why should they have to sacrifice access to basics such as sunlight and air while the rest of the world went on with their day-to-day, unaffected lives?
And so the seafloor eco-cites were abandoned. Forgotten. Beta-testers had signed non-disclosure agreements that allowed their memories to be cognicized post-experiment, and knowledge of the first-gen eco-cities died out of the populace, living on only among the world’s governing bodies and the Mizuharas.
As a member of both, Kasey had immediately thought of the underwater cities when presented with the annual science competition challenge: Save the world from an asteroid on course for Earth.
The rest of the team had had their doubts. “Dinner’s on me if this works,” Sid had said.
They’d won.
By proving the first-gen eco-cities could contain the entire human population if everyone were stored in a medical-grade stasis pod, their team modeled a scenario where mankind skipped the worst centuries of hellfire and sooty-darkness by waiting it out in stasis under the sea. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was more realistic than manipulating space time or diverting the asteroid, and less of an upheaval than an extraterrestrial exodus.
“Hibernation,” Meridian had dubbed the solution, which Kasey now posited to the P2C and Worldwide Union officers through the conference room speakers. Asteroid fallout, carbon emissions, and radioaxon releases all had something in common: Time was the best medicine. Climate might change. Oceans might rise. Species might mutate, or vanish. But given enough time, nature would do what nature did best: break down the elements that didn’t belong.
“An advanced barometer will measure outside conditions,” Kasey explained. “When habitable thresholds are reached and verified, stasis-pods will open.”
She finished to a deathly silent room.
“It’s decided,” said Ekaterina, setting off a chorus of protests, Barry’s among them.
“No offense to Kasey—”
“None taken.”
“—but let’s be realistic.”
“Do you have a better idea?” asked Ekaterina. To the room at large: “Well? Do any of you have a solution that can be implemented with available resources, on a universal scale?”
“Universal if all parties can agree,” said Barry. “We can’t speak for the territories or their governments.”
“But we can convince them,” said Ekaterina. “I want PR teams on this, stat. We’ll host conferences in all of the territories. Kasey will lead a portion of the presentations.”
“A student?” said one of the Worldwide Union officers incredulously.
“Her name is rather well known,” another muttered.
“For a scandal!”
“I suppose she’ll be seen as a neutral party, above the geo-polity establishments.”
“She’s a P2C officer!”
“Enough,” Ekaterina said, clapping her hands. “Kasey, what do you have to say?”
No reply.
“Kasey?”
“You may use the solution.” Heads turned toward the conference room door as Kasey stepped through, in person and alone. Actinium was waiting outside headquarters. She told me if there was anyone who can change the world, it’s you, he’d told her before she exited the copterbot, and Kasey had wanted to scoff. Then it came back to her, what she’d said to Celia that day in the water. It’s just the way things are. Both of them had been wrong: Celia, in thinking Kasey wanted to save the world, and Kasey, in accepting the status quo.
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” she now said to the policymakers in the room. “On two conditions.”
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TWO DAYS.
That’s how much time passes before I wonder if sea monsters exist.
I know, I know. Not exactly the best thought to have when you’re traversing the great blue in nothing but a mattress boat. But I can’t help it. There’s not much else to do out here besides think, row, and rest.