Chapter 25: Chapter 26 ATLAS Cambrian Explosion

[note chapter numbers change because there's a few chapters I only have in the final book]

Atlas stood in his genetic engineering lab, staring down a microscope focused on fungus sample number 2023.

The lab was a dim blue colour, simulating the environment beneath the ice of New Europa. The whole room was cooled to negative 104 degrees, to reflect the temperature there. Along the wall were rows and rows of sealed glass boxes with fungi growing in them, all simulating different environments.

Ship teleported in. “Atlas, I need to show you something important.”

“Hey, Ship.” Atlas waved. “Let me show you this first.”

Atlas walked over to the wall containing the glass boxes. He continued to the far end and stopped at the very final box. He pulled it out and placed it on the table. “I think I’ve done it, Ship,” he said, pointing at the box. “With an oxygen-rich environment, we just needed to breed fungus that could feed on the debris found in the water. There is a lot of it near the edges of the hills and mountains where the earth pokes up towards the ice shelf. This little guy here ¼” Atlas pointed to the little green fungus in the glass box, “¼ feeds on the organic compounds found in the debris and breathes oxygen. It was a little hard to get it to work right as these are fungi not plants. It can’t do photosynthesis. It needed something to eat, and this little one has been evolved to be good at eating New Europa dirt.”

Inside the glass container was a Petri dish with samples of New Europan dirt and water. The water was covered in a layer of slimy green mould.

“It took two months to get like this, Ship. Only two months. The only thing slowing it down is the amount of oxygen in here. It’s converting it quickly into carbon dioxide.”

Ship gave a little clap. “Impressive, Atlas, but I really need to show you what is happening on the surface of New Europa.”

Ship, ignoring Atlas’s preference for physical paper rather than hapticgram, threw a hapticgraphic screen into the air. A screen hovered to the right of them, displaying an image of New Europa’s surface. It was a flat sea of ice with jagged lines crossing all over it.

Atlas took a closer look at the lines. “Are those cracks in the ice?”

Ship nodded.

“When did they appear?” Atlas wondered what it meant. It was amazing – he thought perhaps the ice shelf was made up of tectonic plates, like Earth. In all their time they had surveyed the planet, they hadn’t once seen any movement of the ice shelves. He figured ice shelves moved slowly.

“I just noticed it now,” Ship said. “But wait a moment, there’s more to this video.”

Atlas looked back at the screen. A massive crack appeared in the ice. It started from one end of the screen and travelled to the other, splitting along the entire length of the video.

“That has got to be a kilometre long?” Atlas asked.

“Seven.”

Suddenly there was an explosion as the crack reached the bottom layer of the ice. Water and ice shards violently spewed out. Then the screen went white as the image of the surface of New Europa disappeared.

Ship pointed at the screen. “It’s worse than you realise, Atlas. That’s a mix of hydrogen and oxygen gas flowing out of the crack. This is happening all over the planet.”

Atlas bit his lip and shook his head. “Hmm, so we should have thought about this?” he remarked as he processed what it might mean. “When splitting water into its constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen are produced. These two gases combined make a great propellant because they are extremely flammable. Combine those two molecules, point them out of a rocket engine, light them up as they exit the engine and boom! That will create a massive amount of thrust.”

Ship nodded some more before Atlas continued.

“Put oxygen and hydrogen under pressure. Add an ignition source. And ¼ you have a bomb,” Atlas said with his hands miming an explosion.

Atlas cocked an eyebrow. “So we’ve turned New Europa into a bomb?”

Ship nodded. “Exactly. We should probably leave orbit. If it did explode, the shock wave would almost certainly send debris our way.”

Atlas wondered how this had happened so quickly. He assumed doing something like that would have taken centuries. “I still don’t understand, Ship. How did we blow the ice sheets up like a balloon so fast?”

Ship looked at his feet. “I gave the job to Lex.” He paused, still a little ashamed of what he had done. “I installed the first three electrolysis machines. Like you said.” He paused again. “Then I figured it was easy enough for Lex to do so I handed the job over. Lex had jumped wholeheartedly into building anodes and cathodes. They are the large wires that stick into the water. Once an electrical current is run through those two wires, the anode side produces oxygen and the cathode side produces hydrogen. Two hydrogen molecules are produced for every oxygen molecule.”

“I know how electrolysis works, Ship,” Atlas interjected. “Get to the point. How did we end up turning the planet into a bomb?”  

“Well ¼” Ship was still reluctant to tell the whole story. “Lex continued producing thousands of the units and installing them. He put more fabricators to the task of doing it, and quite quickly the only thing fabricators were producing were cathodes for electrolysis.”

“Ship, we really need to check in with each other more often. Your invention of changing the playback speed of reality is cool, but it’s easy to jump too far into the future with it.” He looked over at the corner where the orb usually floated. “Is Lex still building electrolysis machines?”

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Ship flickered for a second. Atlas could tell the answer was yes. He could tell Ship had quickly gone and spoken to Lex.

Ship replied moments later. “Not anymore.”

“Since when? A second ago?” Atlas laughed as he said it, knowing he was correct.

 

 

The team moved quite quickly to get to safety. They didn’t move the spacecraft out of orbit, but increased their orbit around the planet instead, sticking their spacecraft further out. They assumed one of the eleph-ANTs on the surface of the planet could warn them of any explosions, giving them enough time to escape. They also turned off all solar equipment and pointed the mirrors away from the planet to avoid any random sparks lighting up New Europa.

“I can’t believe we turned the planet into a bomb,” Atlas said, laughing at what they had achieved. He looked at the orb. “Lex, if we exploded it on purpose, do you think it would melt the ice?”

Lex wobbled from side to side. This amused Atlas – he hadn’t seen him do this before and guessed it meant ‘maybe’.

He wondered if he could use the explosion to kick-start a global warming cycle. He thought about the possibilities. Perhaps the explosion would be enough to put the planet over the edge where the mirrors could do the rest. But he ruled that idea out as too risky – the same as moving the orbit of the planet. Worst-case scenario, they might totally destroy the planet, spewing so much dust and debris into the atmosphere that the starlight would be blocked out completely, plunging the planet further into an ice age. Besides, he really wanted to see how his fungus went and find out if it could heat up the planet.

Atlas pointed to the orb in the corner. “Lex, here’s another job for you. Now that you’ve made a mess of the planet, start bottling up the hydrogen. It’s a great fuel. We could probably use it later.”

Atlas had another thought. He didn’t want to make the same mistake Ship had made. Removing all the hydrogen from the atmosphere would be hard to do without removing the oxygen too. He didn’t want that to happen. Also there was a lot of risk with Lex doing anything down there. “Don’t do anything that even has a one per cent chance of starting a spark or fire. If you also need to bottle the oxygen, then come and alert me when you’ve captured five per cent of the gas under the ice.”

While Lex set off on his tasks, Atlas set about introducing his fungus to the planet. His plan was simple – test introducing the fungus to one location near the mountains. Then, if successful, seed the fungus all around New Europa.

He was giddy with excitement. The ANT touched down on New Europa carrying a sample of the fungus Atlas had spent years perfecting. This ANT was about the size of a beer can with a corkscrew-shaped cone at the front. Its body contained the live fungus.

The ANT began its seven-hour burrow into the ice. It turned on its front digger and its nose started spinning, its four front legs anchored into the ice. It pointed its nose towards the ice and pressed it in, the corkscrew slowly pushing the ice backwards.

It needed to dig through at least 100 metres of ice. Lex had identified the first spot. It was a location with oxygen under the ice, but was under low pressure due to a recent venting of the gas. It meant once the ANT broke the final layer of ice it wouldn’t be blown back out of the hole. Nevertheless, Atlas made sure the ANT used its back legs to fill in the hole behind it as it dug.

The ice was thick and hard. The body of the ANT was now fully beneath the ice, its progress steady.

Atlas’s excitement was marred by impatience. Watching the ANT move millimetre by millimetre was so painful. He thought about the fact that the ice had probably been sitting there for millions of years. Layer upon layer must have built up and been compressed until it became solid ice almost as strong as concrete.

Finally, Atlas gave up. He took a deep breath in and out, then dialled up his playback speed. He watched as the ANT went from barely moving to tunnelling through ten centimetres every subjective second.

The speed was satisfying. It reminded him of putting a hot spoon through ice cream. Actually, he thought it was like dropping a magnet through an aluminium pipe. Ten minutes in, he decided to speed things up further and increased his playback speed again, watching as the ANT’s legs became a blur, its body diving deep into the ice. Within a matter of minutes it had reached the bottom.

Atlas quickly returned to real time, just as the nose of the ANT broke through the final layer of ice. A rush of air hit the ANT, knocking it back. Luckily it had filled in the hole behind itself, it hit the wall, bouncing off it and falling out of the tunnel with a loud plonk as it hit the water and began to sink.

The ANT spun up its corkscrew nose, which acted as a propeller and pushed the ANT back up. It continued moving along the surface of the water until it landed on a piece of New Europa dirt.

The ANT was in a bubble of oxygen and hydrogen between the New Europan surface and the ice. Lex had identified a location with all three pieces required for the fungi’s survival. Water, dirt and oxygen.

The ANT lodged itself into the dirt and spewed its insides out. A green film sprayed all over the dirt in front of the ANT. It took a few steps back, cameras pointed at the green fungus.

Atlas smiled. “Ship, I’m addicted to your invention. I think this is the most I’ve used it.” Atlas couldn’t wait any longer. He sped up his playback speed and looked at the fungus again. Nothing. It still looked exactly the same. He increased his playback speed further. He thought he could see something change. Did it look thicker, or were his eyes deceiving him? Maybe, but he couldn’t be sure.

Atlas increased his playback speed again. Instantly there was something – an explosion of green. It got thicker. He raced to change his playback speed back to normal.

All the rocks the camera could see were covered in green. But that wasn’t the most important part of the test.

“Did we do it? Did we do it?” Atlas said, running to the printer in his office to read the results. He pulled out a piece of paper with a myriad of numbers on it. He was looking for just one reading. “It’s there, Ship. There’s carbon dioxide there!” 

Ship froze for a second, a moment of worry on his face. “Atlas, sorry to change the subject, but Earth has just stopped broadcasting signals.”

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