Eidolon april 2nd 2005
Seattle Washington
Ironwood sat at a massive table, the seedling was huge. Along the rafters members of project Phoenix were typing on computers, going over the creation of an entire world. This was just the people who worked here, the project was hiring more people from around the world, many of which worked from home.
His hands were touching a white wing.
"The Malaysian people have my thanks, this... This revolutionizes everything."
I tilted my head.
"Really?"
"My sister is... um the closest human word I have is Cunt, but she was always the best Thinker out of all of us."
"And?"
The screen showed images of a galaxy of stars in black and white.
"Our problem is that there was enough power, more then enough power. Efficiency was the stumbling block. This... this solves that problem, with this we can drop the power requirement to one corpse per world."
"So we could have two planets instead of wasting a corpse on Venus."
He slumped.
"No... it wouldn't be a good idea, it's easy to warm things up but cooling things down, not so much. Venus was chosen because it would take less effort to terraform, and it was chosen over my complaints."
I leaned back.
"Such as that it's a terrible location and a long term poverty trap. I mean even with the extra power."
A image of the world popped up.
"This is with the extra power, 10% of the planet is encased in Ice, at the poles. Theres a span of roughly 22.5% from each polar region thats a temperate zone. This is where the best farmland on Venus will be. So roughly 43% of the planet. The other 47 percent has temperatures about equivalent to the equator, it's going to be mostly desert, marsh and rainforest."
His screen went grey.
"That leaves Venus with 1000 million hectares of arable land, rounding down, and that's after cheating by using fresh water oceans."
"And?"
"Earth has over 1400 million, Mars has over 3000 million, of course I'm being pessimistic,
"That's still a lot of farm land."
"Most of it's still useless, for anything that isn't tropical agriculture."
I looked at the future world.
"And if we remove Sharr?"
The globe changed.
"The amount of arable land is cut down to a third, the temperate zone shrinks in half at the very least and the margin of error shrinks. The defense against radiation shrinks so skin cancer goes way up, cancer rates in general."
He sounded annoyed.
"I haven't kept up with your human media, can I start the creation of a World tree to venus and get this finished?"
I shrugged.
"Theres a fight going on in the UN, over who gets it. The Arab league says that since Sharr attacked Mecca they suffered a special injury and should get the planet."
He shrugged.
"Then give it to them."
"It's more complicated then that Woody."
He leaned back.
"The goal of project Phoenix is to perserve and save the human race, whether those humans are black, white, or blue, whether those humans worship a god, gods, or nothing at all is immaterial, all that matters is that your species survives."
"They want their own world tree to Venus."
The screen was filled with ones and zeros.
"That... Do they realize how much work it is to create one, how much easier it is just to expand the current network?"
He sounded frustrated.
"They also want it closer to home in the Indian ocean."
He froze and was silent.
"So they want to seperate me from my children for at least 2 months so they can get an exclusive tree to themselves."
"Yeah..."
He took in deep visible breaths.
"Once... I'm doing this once, just once. It will be a jump tree more limited then the World tree. It will not have an entire tree city. It will have one job, create worm holes from Earth to Venus. That will be its' only purpose, in exchange the future worlds will have to be connected to the main network."
"Some people won't."
"If that is unacceptable then they don't need those worlds, it's easier to use an existing network then it is to create an entirely new network to satify someone's selfishness."
He stopped.
"And this by the way only makes the poverty trap worse, Venus will be disconnected from the primary trading network used by the rest of the solar system."
"Pure foolishness."
He sounded annoyed.
June 1st 2005 Indian ocean.
"It's finished."
The tree was the size of a skyscraper, he shook his head.
"Has the squabling stopped yet?"
I showed him the paperwork.
"The Solar Compact, ten worlds will be regional worlds, each of the five members of the security council will get a world of their own, one world will belong solely to the UN, and one will be used as a prison planet."
"A waste."
I shrugged.
"The Thinkers looked over the numbers, exiling capes who go to far and offering exile to normal criminals just causes a lot less strain then our current system."
"Still a waste."
The portals lit up and bright blue light reflected throughout the Indian ocean, breaking up the darkness. An unmanned ship sailed into the tree and the lights cut out.
"So how long?"
"A week before the process is finished, I left notes on how to operate the tree."
There were cheers and celebrations that could be heard, I activated my senses and looked at the dignitaries in the night. We stood there enjoying the night breeze.
"This is an important moment, an important time, Woody. It's been a shitty year, people needed some hope."
He leaned against the tree.
"I know... I hope we win this war E, that my children live in a time of peace."
"We're all hoping that."