A Brush with Extinction and a New Way Forward

By Michael P Rooker

If you have ever wondered how our grandchildren may live and what their world will be like, A Brush with Extinction opens a compelling window into our future. The post-apocalyptic saga paints in vivid detail the challenges that confront humanity in the years following a late 21st century near-annihilation event.
The Catastrophe had been predicted by the greatest scientific minds of our time decades before it happened based on global warming, but deep inside people always believed it would never come to pass. In 2070, half of the world’s population was wiped out. A massive volcanic eruption capped a long series of natural disasters brought upon by mankind’s relentless tampering with nature. As humanity recovers from the ashes and moves into the 22nd century, five New Zealand postgrads aspire to build meaningful lives in a brave new society. The planet is ruled by WOMIC, a single government, and human labour has been largely replaced by automation. Prison islands are proliferating and a budding human colony has taken root on Mars. Haunted by the Catastrophe and driven by a desire not to relive errors of the past, the postgrads are thrown into a maelstrom of adventure that will expose them to the meticulous designs of the new ruling elites and the insidious resurgence of criminal elements which threaten to condemn life on Earth to an even more terrifying future.
Its descriptions of political intrigues, environmental changes, human passions, and profound sense of introspection make A Brush with Extinction simultaneously a cautionary tale and an enlightened reflection on the consequences of mankind’s eternal struggle to overcome the dark side of their nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael P Rooker
• Release date: Jun 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773025223

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A Brush with Extinction

and a New Way Forward

A Novel by Michael P. Rooker

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

CHAPTER 1

A Catastrophic Century

CHAPTER 2

Postgraduates

CHAPTER 3

Otago University

CHAPTER 4

Dark Islands

CHAPTER 5

Fiordland

CHAPTER 6

A Far Distant Colony

CHAPTER 7

Journey to Taupo

CHAPTER 8

Prospects

CHAPTER 9

Wedding Ceremony

EPILOGUE

Ten Years Later

APPENDIX

More about the Partial Extinction

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Many of us blithely assume that we’re the greatest of the species but go about our lives with little profound thought about who or what we are or where we’re going. Even our leaders, many of them, take our ongoing conquest of nature for granted. But we seem to accept that mankind is not collectively peaceful and will not change. We’re well aware that our planet protects us from what would harm us in space and yet in our greed and lust for power and possessions many of us abuse her bounties and take her for granted. We’ve continued to gamble in these matters, not taking the warnings of the past seriously enough.

However, our 21st century will contain a time of reckoning. Our children and grandchildren will suffer a partial extinction and the order of species will be violently altered. But mankind will dodge outright extinction and find a new way forward. That’s the premise of my story.

What you need to know of our 21st century to read on is within the first chapter. But as you read, some of you will become intrigued for more details of what brought us into such dire peril or for more of the background to man’s colony on planet Mars, an adventure recounted in Chapter 6. I’ve added such further details in the Appendix: More about the Partial Extinction and this may be referred to at any time. Don’t be upset by a short spell of text written in Spanish. This occurs in Chapter 3, six pages in. For the translation, you can flick forward to the end of the book, to the Appendix.

MPR

Cover story: In 2070, spacecraft Odyssey 2 has left Space Transit Centre and as a mobile command centre, views Earth’s great ash cloud to locate emergency shuttle landing sites.

CHAPTER 1

A Catastrophic Century

Late spring has arrived in New Zealand’s South Island. The last veins of deep red light, reflected off shrouds of high, thin clouds, are all that remain of another sunset. Occasional breaths of a strengthening night breeze sway an orchard’s fruit trees. Early apples can just be made out in silhouette in the approaching darkness between the jagged black limbs and rounded leaves.

A man rests with feet raised in a comfortable reclining chair and watches, intrigued as the dark tree forms move erratically, almost menacingly across the grid formed by the paned windows. He’s bathed in a deep red afterglow from outside and must have dozed off for a few minutes. Still, there’s enough fading light to make the normally pale, thinning skin of his forehead and grey-white hair appear dark red. Cut short, it stands up and he looks odd. But in fact he’s far from odd; he’s Raymond Graham, dean of Otago University. He reaches for the light switch but in a reflective, easy mood, changes his mind to enjoy the quiet peace for a short while longer.

Then he opens a cover in the chair arm, activates the wall screen and selects a calendar planning grid. It first displays its default setting – all twelve months of the year 2100. He moves it to October and then to the upcoming daily social engagements that have been on his mind. Aha, the clash he thought had arisen has been resolved! He chuckles in thanks yet again for his wife Belinda’s efficiency. Then something subliminal makes his mind skate back through time to reflect on his life.

He recalls things from age four onwards – competition with his elder brother on the farm near Melbourne – the black widow hidden under a leaf that nearly killed him – his elder brother Lawrence and the things he originally thought were done in spite but later realized were really acts of sibling rivalry – but the unrelenting harshness was from nature, not from his family – seasonal flooding in some years and droughts with spectacular fires in others – firm, loving parents who had the endurance and moxie to tough things out and survive. How they used to enjoy telling him their contrasting stories of their own upbringing near Sydney! That was almost a century ago, before the climate changes and the alarm bells.

He muses on alertly, recalling how many other countries had it worse than Australia. Indeed, the effects of global warming had been everywhere, diverse, occasional but all punishing. In fact, the chain of natural disasters had started several decades before his birth, continuing up to his marriage and precariously onwards, partly uncorrected. Back then all the warnings that humans must live differently to safeguard the planet had become a pressing reality. The biosphere had continued to suffer until decisive industrial changes were at last carried out by force on delinquent nations. By about 2060, he recalls the gnashing and screaming in the media that a controversial balance of nature had nevertheless been reached amid dire predictions of the irretrievable tipping point and extinction. He recalls how hard and for how long he and many others had campaigned but it had never ceased to amaze him how many people had still taken nature for granted: that the biosphere would recover, that weather would stabilize and that enough food and water could continue despite global overpopulation and past abuse.

It had always saddened him to reflect how mankind had so mismanaged his evolution. The many nations and their legions of demands had created so many diverse challenges and had become so depressingly complex. He used to wonder whether mankind was ultimately and inherently self-destructive with his greed, ignorance and lust for power. The technical ascent had produced terrible weapons and the truth about anything had become so hard to disentangle.

For the sake of family happiness he’d avoided dwelling on the Catastrophe of 2070 but sometimes, alone like this, he would reflect on that fateful period. He recalls how nature had intervened – the insidious appearance of Vandoka Island rising out of the Pacific ocean and years later its sudden obliteration – the cataclysmic eruption bigger and far more deadly than Krakatoa – the unimaginable volumes of rock and ash exploding into the skies, obliterating the island and setting off the massive tsunami with wave heights recorded around the World – the deadly after effects with further volumes of gas and fine pumice ejected as high as the stratosphere – the globally circling giant ash cloud forming a great belt centred about the Equator and extending for hundreds of kilometres to the north and south – the poisoning of lands and the severe disruptions of infrastructures including power, transportation and communications.

He would never lose the shock and horror of what happened over the next agonizing months. He recalls with dread the global panic, drastic military and police interventions, deaths from shock, exposure to the colder temperatures and mass starvations on a scale never before contemplated. This was in the Great Devastation Belt that photographs from space showed so clearly. He’d been so thankful that he and his family lived in Australia well south of the Belt since world population had plummeted down to 3-1/2 billion and the order of species had been violently altered. The scientists had dubbed the disaster the Catastrophe or, more technically, Earth’s Partial Extinction of 2070. It was caused by the deadly combination of the man-made build-up along with the disastrous effects of Vandoka.

His anticipation that leaders of the World’s most powerful nations that met as members of the UN Security Council would prevail had proven to be correct. Out from chaos, leaders of other devastated nations had empowered those few member nations with a temporary martial law to wrest initial order with deadly force but under an entirely new banner.

The dean’s eyes stare ahead, unfocussed as he recalls how painfully the new order of leadership evolved – Yes, out of the ashes of a devastated civilization came the Phoenix: WOMIC (The World Military Council). But it became the vehicle of hope so that nations enduring only consequential impacts willingly ceded emergency powers as well – as long as their vital cultures and domestic interests were recognized and protected.

The dean recalls the charismatic leaders and the hope that had brought the surviving world through – then the next three decades – and thank goodness, the biosphere starting its long term recovery but with a new balance of flora and fauna.

He was well aware that based on reef gap data, Earth had suffered five great extinction events over the last 4.3 million years – that the causes were unproven but that volcanoes and meteorites were front-running suspects. The dean had always been in awe, knowing how narrowly mankind in his fleeting little period of evolution had survived to dodge the planet’s sixth great extinction. He remained an agnostic and had no explanation for the long chains of evolution’s accidents and the odds of them taking place to allow mankind’s arrival. But he nursed an ever-growing hope that mankind, wiser now at last, would treasure his survival and control his destiny.

With hope aboard, his mind flicks to the Martian program. He recalls the breakthrough in nuclear rocket engines – development of the space transit centre – Dr. Fabrikant’s shields for structures in space – the wondrous new spaceships – the test colony with its underground horticulture halls on a distant Red Planet – then impacts from the partial extinction back home – the agony of shutting it all down – the courageous crews, homeward bound from their abandoned colony and years later, through the determination of a now established WOMIC, the return to Mars by the brave new astronauts. At last there was success in saving the program. But how ironic that success on a different planet would become the saving grace for a catastrophic century on Earth!

Raymond, Raymond? a voice calls from afar.

But the dean has dropped into a snooze.

A mature lady still in her athletic suit from afternoon tennis pops her head round the door. She starts forming her husband’s name again but hesitates and listens instead. Belinda can just discern his quiet breathing in the darkness. She just smiles and comes over to check him out. Satisfied, she leaves him and heads back to keep supper warm and take her shower instead.

Over the next several months of spring and summer, Belinda will find him snoozing like this twice more. But then that dreadful evening in high summer arrives. They’d agreed to sneak out and check on the barn owls but when she comes to remind him, she finds him in his favourite chair, fitful and gagging. The debilitating stroke that will end his career has just arrived and a few weeks after that will precipitate a new dean to replace him.

CHAPTER 2

Postgraduates

Framed by the large windows of a communal room a tall, greying man gazes through the tree tops at a distant lake below. He studies the angle of the midday sunlight and how the backlit leaves come to life in their bright hues of early autumn. Familiar sounds from behind break into his thoughts and he turns to focus on the arrival. PAT 42 glides up to him with a subdued whine and stops at the preset distance.

Good Day Dean Revelle, your lunch time guests have arrived. Ms Prefontaine is with them in the executive alcove.

Tomati Revelle, dean of Otago University looks PAT 42 over briefly, nodding in understanding.

Thank you PAT. You will continue with other duties now.

Even though PAT is a domestic robot, it is procedure to address it in speech and mannerisms with traditional, human-like courtesy. At first glance, PAT appears to be vaguely human in form and size. The upper turret contains its sensory monitors with eyes, ears and a mouth. Its voice range is typically unisex but programmed with regional accent. Indeed, PAT speaks a very pleasant Kiwi. From waist level down, a skirt extends almost to floor level. This conceals three uniballs that enable PAT to skim off with light loads in any direction.

PAT swivels and heads off at an angle across the large communal dining area. The dean watches it recede while casting his eyes down the long, sunlit room.

Thank God they’ve stopped trying to make them seem more human, he muses – a machine is a machine.

The shocking results of a recent debate still come to mind – so many stupid people who’d let machines run their lives.

His attention flicks on to the first few of his postgraduate students who have started to trickle into the area for lunch. He looks them over in a rather hawkish but nonetheless kindly way. Seeing some familiar faces and nothing unusual, he turns easily on the floor that looks so like solid wood and sets off to meet his guests.

More students trickle in from the distant stairwell making their way between large windows along both sides of the room towards banks of tables. Except for one very large one, the tables are circular with seating for six to eight but they each have a central area cut away. This gives them an unusual appearance, rather like giant, flat doughnuts floating above the floor. Two young men enter the room from the far staircase and amble across towards one of the tables where three other postgrads, Javier, Bev and Sita are already seated in jovial conversation. The arrivals, Zach and Chi make up an ad hoc group of five that frequently hangs out together.

Javier watches them alertly as the two approach the table. Hello guys, he says – his minimal greeting and bright, inquisitive smile are deliberate and they pick up on them rather intuitively.

At 31, Javier Sandoz is the oldest postgrad of the group that somehow seems to have cobbled itself together socially even though the study subjects could hardly be more diverse. Javier’s friendly magnetism and a series of odd little accidents of meeting have helped draw them together. Indeed, there is very little not to like of this man with his rugged, good Hispanic looks and easy, rather roughish airs. Like the others, Javier has finished two semesters of postgrad studies and has just started the third; his being in history, philosophy and spiritual studies.

Hi y‘all, replies Zach – Yup, we’re ready to shoot the breeze and enjoy more gourmet food – right Chi?

You got that right, endorses Chi while smiling wryly at the word gourmet – he knows that Zach likes to instigate little controversies – indeed, several other students complain about the food but this must surely be just another fickle human characteristic – in fact the overall quality of student