Published on Dec 11, 2008:
Introduction
This story won the sponsored prize in the 2008 Scifi Contest. Author Narendra speculates on a possible collision of events where a martian bacteria may help solve global warming on earth. Read on to find out how things turn out.
About the author
Narendra is an IT professional by day and wannabe writer by night. He is addicted to reading and is usually working on two books at a time. In between reading books on Philosophy and SciFi he loves to read James Hadely Chase, John D. McDonald and others of the same ilk. If asked which is his favorite book his instant answer is 'Catch 22'. This is his all-time fav and he re-reads it every so often. He is inspired by Asimov and hopes that one day he can write a novel on the lines of Nightfall.
Bangladesh, 2060
Gadai wouldn’t stop crying. He was miserable because he was wet, wet from the water all around him. His father, Bishnu Prashad, a fisherman in the small town of Chaprashir Hat in the Noakhali District, Bangladesh, came from a tribe of fishermen and for generations they had subsisted on fishing in the sea. The traditional family home was literally on the beach - or had been till last year. Now it was in the sea. As a matter of fact so was most of Chaprashir Hat. There had been many warnings that the sea levels were rising and they should move out to higher ground – but where was Bishnu to go, when his home, which had been occupied by the family for at least the last two hundred years, was under water because the sea had consumed it slowly over the last year. This was a situation beyond anyone’s comprehension. They could understand the sea rising due to a storm or a cyclone but then it always receded after its fury was spent. This was very different. The sea had risen so slowly that month by month the waters crept into the town till only the corporation building which was on a small hillock was the sole survivor in the town.
In 2004 there had been an article in the National Geographic talking about the dangers of global warming and especially what would happen if the ice caps were to melt. The article read “At the present temperatures, about half of the snow that falls on Greenland melts and runs off as water. The rest of it stays and is discharged in the form of icebergs. An increase of just three degrees would change the delicate balance, producing an increase in melting that will outweigh the increase in snowfall. This will melt the Polar ice sheets.” Further, according to the article, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet would raise the oceans to a height equivalent to a two-storey building, threatening to submerge cities located at sea level, from London to Los Angeles. Even a partial melting of the ice sheet could have catastrophic consequences for low-lying countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives. The general prediction had been that somewhere in the vicinity of year 2100 the meltdown would begin if no counter measures were taken. In 2004, it was felt that humanity had ample time to take precautions and so everyone left it to the next generation to deal with the problem.
The gods in their wisdom didn’t see it fit to wait till 2100 but decided to bring on the great melt-down as early as 2060. Already a series of low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean like Micronesia and Cook islands, Atlantic islands, Maldives in the Indian Ocean were all under water. Most people from these islands had become refugees in neighboring mainland countries. Large chunks of land were disappearing every day. In the next three years, unless something was done (and no one had a clue as to what they could do) LA, London, Chennai, Sri Lanka, most of Bangladesh and many European coastal cities would be under water. There was panic around the earth.
Bishnu Prasad could see no way to make Gadai stop crying. All he could do was try to console him. He would have liked to cry too except that if he cried there was no one to console him.
Mars Geostationary Unit, 2063
NASA had just landed their fourth Mars Lander. The first three Landers had sent back copious amounts of data but nothing conclusive about life on Mars. Low-level aerial reconnaissance of Mars was now possible with the fourth Lander, which was designed to carry two Mars Aerial Reconnaissance and Survey Explorator robots. Based on early research from 2008 when it was observed that if there was ice on Mars it would be all covered with dust and dirt, the MarsBot, a self-programming aerial robot, was specially designed to find ice on Mars’ surface. Its on-board software could dig through the dirt (pun intended) and using highly sophisticated pattern recognizing algorithms, analyze the incoming images along with the temperature and other related data to locate possible ice deposits. The idea being, where there’s ice, there is water, and where there is water there might be a possibility of life. Once the MarsBot found such an ice patch it could land and take samples.
The first MarsBot flew around seven reconnaissance missions and then suddenly stopped flying. Ground Control could not decipher the problem. The second MarsBot was brought into action which on its sixth reconnaissance mission found a promising patch of ice and procured ample close-ups before returning to the Lander. It was sent back to the location to collect samples. It landed, collected the samples but could not take off again due to indecipherable malfunctions. There were no more MarsBots which halted further exploration of the ice patch. If the patch still remained, analysis was to continue with the next Lander.
The next Lander landed very close to the ice patch to facilitate easy exploration of the patch and to collect a sample to be sent back for detailed analysis. A newer version of the MarsBot was loaded on the Lander this time. This MarsBot was fitted with miniature rockets to allow it fly out of Mars orbit to the Mars Geostationary Unit positioned right above the Mars Lander. Once the sample was in the Geostationary Unit, it could be sent back to the Lunar Space Station on Earth's Moon which had been continually manned by humans for the past 30 years.
Lunar Space Station, 2064
John Arlington was looking at a slice of the sample from Mars which had arrived that morning at the Robotic Microbial Lab at the Lunar Space Station. No human would ever come in contact with any samples being analyzed in this lab to prevent any contamination by earth-borne biology.
John executed a complicated maneuver with the robotic arm. John was relatively junior to many of the veterans in the astro-engineering fraternity at the Space station. This was the last week of his three month stint at the station; He would be starting the Earth Adjustment program for Stationers as soon as he was off duty from today. The program rehabilitated all Space-stationers - humans and animals - to adjust to Earth and its gravity-ridden life. Typically the program back on Earth lasted four weeks for anyone who had been in Space for less than 90 days. It usually took John, who was probably fitter than most astro-engineers, about six weeks to get back on his mountain bike and ride through the trail that started rom his backyard in Colaroda. The sample analysis was complete, he would start with the new sample tomorrow.
The new sample was a single tube - one inch in diameter and about 6 inches in length. MarsBot had taken the ground temperatures at the top and at the bottom of the hole from which sample had been taken and this temperature gradient had been dutifully maintained on the sample all through its journey. Also, an amount of atmosphere from around the sample location had been captured to be sealed in with the sample. So in a manner of speaking any organism - if it was alive - in the sealed sample should not know that it had been uprooted from its home rock in space to another rock elsewhere.
John had sliced off a 7-micron slice off the sample and was looking at this under a standard microscope. His first reaction when he saw the bacteria under the scope was that something had gone wrong and that some microbes had infiltrated the robotic lab. He initiated a thorough test sequence to ensure that the unit was still airtight and that there was no contamination. Once this was confirmed, he sliced off another 7 micron slice of the sample and started a fresh study. He couldn’t believe his eyes; was he the first human to look at any form of extra terrestrial life! This was beyond any thing he had ever dreamed of. He was so ecstatic that he just sat there silently, looking at the bacteria swimming in their broth, unaware that they had been sighted by an alien. His silence worried Sugu and Entebe, his co-astro engineers who were used to a constant chatter or at least a hum from John.
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