Newton's Ark: Emulation Trilogy, #1

By D.A. Hill

December 20, 2047 - the day the human race faces extinction.

With a little more than two years to prepare, President Paul Carlson struggles with the awful choices he must make to ensure the survival of the American people.

Meanwhile wealthy industrialist James Newton, aided by ace programmer Cyrus Jones, embarks on his own audacious and radical plan to save humanity.

As both sides race against time and the growing economic and social collapse, Major Regina Lopez finds herself caught between these competing forces.

Which side will she choose as she faces sacrificing everything she thought she believed in to protect the people she loves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.A. Hill
• Release date: Apr 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9798201613563

Book preview

prologue

January 2050

Even after all this time, the authenticity of the simulation could still surprise Emmanuel. Like now. The tightness in his belly that came from overeating and the lightness in his head that was the price for too much drink were almost enough to make him wish he hadn’t partied quite so hard.

Almost. He sank into a large, soft chair with a contented sigh. It wasn’t every day you celebrated your sixtieth birthday in space surrounded by your family.

His granddaughter climbed onto his lap and snuggled up close to him. Come on Granddad, tell us the story.

What story would that be? He knew exactly which tale she meant, but they both enjoyed him teasing her like that.

Elizabeth punched him playfully in the shoulder. The story. Of how we left Earth.

"Oh, that story. But you’ve heard it so many times before, my dear."

You know kids, Granddad, his grandson Eric, fifteen, said. They like to hear the same stories over and over again.

Eric’s observation was true. His grandchildren never tired of the story, no matter how many times he told it. It was fortunate then, for him and for them, that he never tired of telling it, not even the sanitized version he told for their protection. There were parts of the story that were much too dark for children. And there were things they weren’t supposed to know, at least not yet.

In that case, Eric, I suppose I should tell the story. He winked at his grandson. Eric liked the story just as much as his sister did, maybe more. He was old enough to remember his part in it. But at fifteen he was trying on adulthood. His grandfather wasn’t going to be the one to burst his bubble by pointing out it was still a size or two too big. To keep your sister happy, you understand.

He waited for the children to settle before continuing. As he surveyed the room, he stretched out his legs, brought his hands together on his chest, and smiled. He was a man completely satisfied with his life despite knowing that everything he saw was an illusion, and despite the fact these children he loved so much weren’t really his grandchildren.

They weren’t even real children. Hell, in ways that most people would once have considered important, he wasn’t even himself—but he wasn’t supposed to mention that in front of Eric and Elizabeth…

chapter 1

March 2030

Colonel Manny Smith reviewed the mission briefing in his mind as he lowered himself into the pilot’s seat and the technicians busily attached the cables to his head and body.

A routine reconnaissance mission would be a nice change of pace after some recent missions he had flown. Sooner or later he would make a stupid mistake unless he eased off a little. Not that he minded the excitement. Combat pilots were adrenaline junkies, and Manny was no exception. But given the shortage of pilots who could do what he did, he had been pushed, and pushed himself too hard for too long.

Only a quarter of the pilots who entered the drone program graduated, so there was always a shortage. Their flying skills weren’t the problem. They selected only top-grade, experienced pilots for the program. It was the psychological effects that washed so many pilots out.

Those who couldn’t tolerate the link never flew again. The lucky ones were quietly discharged on medical grounds with a generous pension and a new life in some out-of-the-way town. The unlucky ones saw out their years in a Veterans’ Administration psychiatric facility.

It seemed a high price to pay, but UAVs—Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as the drones were officially known—were now the way the US Air Force and its foes went to war. A pilot’s tendency to black out at high Gs limited an aircraft’s performance, so drones were drastically more maneuverable. Taking a manned aircraft into a combat zone these days was like bringing a dinner knife to a gunfight.

Manny pulled on the virtual reality headset. A technician pressed a button and he was sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft lined up on a runway somewhere in Turkey, ready to open the throttle for take-off.

Much had changed since the early days of the drone program in Afghanistan, twenty years ago. Back then, piloting a drone was like playing a video game. The operator sat in a dark room watching a low-resolution feed from the drone’s cameras and controlled the plane with a joystick. Now, with the virtual reality headset, the feedback chair he sat in, and massive amounts of real-time data coming from the drone’s sensors, he felt exactly like he was inside the aircraft flying it.

***

The mission had been uneventful for the first ninety-seven minutes. It wasn’t until the ninety-eighth minute it all began to go pear-shaped.

Manny’s instruments indicated an enemy missile, almost certainly Chinese, with a lock on his aircraft. "Sonofabitch. So much for routine."

For all the incredible surveillance technology his country used, the intelligence filtering down to guys like him on the front line could be maddeningly inaccurate. A computer could tell you a lot, but it couldn’t tell you what you really needed to know—what was going on in the mind of your enemy.

For that you needed operatives on the ground, agents who could blend in with the local population and win their trust. Human intelligence. Unfortunately, HUMINT was an area where the United States had been seriously lacking longer than he’d worn a uniform.

He threw his plane into a hard dive to the left. The aircraft pulled 10Gs. The feedback chair cleverly attenuated the perceived force to 6Gs, using his physiological limits to remind him that his plane was nearing its engineering limits.

He was flying one of the most sophisticated war machines ever built. The United States had thrown its best minds and trillions of dollars into developing it with only one goal: keep ahead of the Chinese. Too bad the Chinese were throwing their best minds and whatever trillions of dollars was equivalent to in their money at building weapons systems to defeat America’s best technology.

Most of the time American aircraft still managed to come out on top. Most of the time, but not this time. He pushed his aircraft to its absolute limit, using every trick he had, but he still couldn’t shake the Chinese missile.

The information on his Head Up Display indicated the damn thing was right behind him and closing. His ride would soon be nothing but a pile of junk cluttering some dirt-poor farmer’s field in an anonymous country in Central Asia. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, he did as he was trained to do and pushed the abort button. Like any pilot worth his wings, he hated losing an aircraft, even a drone. But he could live with it, knowing he would go home to his daughter tonight.

***

Manny kept his eyes closed as the techs removed the virtual reality headset and monitoring cables. He hated this part of his job. As much as he loved flying, at forty he was getting too old for this. It was disorienting enough when he completed a mission and the link closed down in a controlled manner. When forced to abort, the link was cut abruptly. For days it left him feeling like he had the worst hangover, without the pleasure of getting drunk first.

He blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the light.

The blurry outline of a face filled his field of view. Colonel Smith, can you hear me?

He smiled as he recognized the voice. It belonged to Kate, a particularly cute nurse. He almost asked her out several times, but always changed his mind at the last minute. Raising a daughter alone made it all seem much too complicated.

Maybe soon. He should start dating. His daughter would be off to college in a few months, and then who would he have? But he had made her the center of his life for so long, he wasn’t sure he would know how to build a relationship with someone new.

As nurses and technicians continued to prod and poke him, Manny heard the familiar voice of his commanding officer, General Rhodes. What happened, Colonel?

Manny’s vision started to clear. Chinese missile got a lock on me, Sir, he croaked.

He sat up and reached for his water bottle. His mouth and lips were parched from several hours without hydration. He took a big gulp. At least that would keep him going until he could swallow something a little stronger. Couldn’t shake it. Threw my bird around like crazy and deployed counter-measures. All to no effect. Damn, they’re getting good.

Bio-indicators are within an acceptable range, General, nurse Kate said. But barely.

The stern look she shot in Manny’s direction expressed both concern and mild disapproval. He wasn’t the only one who believed flying drones was a young man’s caper.

Good, General Rhodes said. Manny, I want you to go home and get some rest. His delivery made it clear it was an order, not a request. We can debrief once the medics say you’re ready.

Yes, Sir.

As bad as this groggy feeling was, it was better than the alternative. Manny imagined his aircraft blown into a million tiny pieces. He was thankful he wasn’t in it.

***

Manny’s world suddenly became nothing but a blaze of heat and light. What went wrong? Did the self-destruct initiate early? Or did the Chinese missile hit his plane before the link closed down?

Not that it should matter. He wasn’t even in the aircraft. He should be fine. But the pain he felt in every inch of his body told him otherwise. He didn’t understand how, but he knew he was dying.

So be it. His only real regret was leaving his daughter behind, knowing he wouldn’t see her graduate from college, or live to see her married. And he would never be a grandfather…

***

Cyrus Jones was proud of the work he did. It was crucial to national security. That was what they told him, the men and women in uniforms who recruited him. They told him he had a chance to be a patriot. He would have to work in the shadows, hidden and unacknowledged, but he would be doing what needed to be done to protect his country from danger. ‘That should be enough’ they said, even if the people he protected could never know what he did.

It was nice to think of himself as a patriot, but his real reward came from working at the cutting edge of technology and pushing his programming skills to their limit. He would have done this work without the patriotic appeal, but being part of the military—national security complex certainly had its advantages.

He wasn’t above the law, but as long as they could use him, the military would protect him. That was how the young Cyrus found himself on the drone program in the first place. They caught him hacking a highly sensitive government computer, but not until he was well and truly inside the system. Instead of locking him up or sending him to juvenile detention, they gave him this dream job.

He excelled in his time on the program. Nearly twenty years of Moore’s Law worked in his favor. Six or seven generations of processing power doubling every two or three years meant today’s unmanned aircraft had more than a thousand times the computing power of the early drones. But someone still needed to know what to do with that enormous processing capability, and that someone was him.

No drone pilot ever figured it out. With the numerous software improvements he’d already made, and the radical enhancements beginning to take shape in his mind, none ever would. It wasn’t arrogance that made him so confident, but an honest understanding of his own programming genius. Not only had one of the most secretive and powerful government agencies recruited him as a teenager because of it, but he had proved them right a hundred times since.

Sometimes he wondered about not telling the pilots what really happened when they sat in the feedback chair and put on the virtual reality headset. But his singular focus on technology meant he knew little of anything else, certainly not philosophy or ethics. He couldn’t debate the morality of what they were doing, and he didn’t want to. It wasn’t up to him to decide whether the pilots should be told. His job was to take care of the software, not worry about the wetware.

chapter 2

June 2045

The Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and State sat on one side of the large table awaiting the arrival of President Carlson. On the other side, next to the NASA Administrator, Karen Schauble, sat the President’s Chief of Staff and the National Science Advisor.

Administrator Schauble glanced around the Situation Room, watching the others. They had years of government service under their belts. Surely they didn’t feel as anxious about the news they were about to deliver as she did?

Their faces and the lack of conversation suggested otherwise.

The President entered the room and took his seat at the head of the table. So people, what’s so important you needed to interrupt Monday Night Football?

They all looked to Jack Brown, the President’s Chief of Staff, to take the lead. Mr. President, we have received some disturbing information from the Copernicus Deep Space Telescope.

The President turned to the NASA Administrator and gave her a look that would freeze water. Karen, I hope you’re not about to tell me we’ve wasted another trillion dollars putting a pile of junk into space.

Karen Schauble had spent much of her life striving to be right here. Not just working for the President of the United States, but for this President, a man she greatly admired and to whom she owed a great deal of her success. But when the President called on her, she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Three of the four major NASA missions during her tenure had been unmitigated disasters.

One exploded on launch. The second did a beautiful swan dive into the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. A micro-meteor just three millimeters in diameter—about an eighth of an inch—struck the third spacecraft, taking out the power cell. It was just another piece of space junk now. Yes, it was floating dead in space further out than any man-made object had ever traveled before, but she decided against mentioning that detail.

Despite those dramatic failures and NASA’s patchy record since the glory days of the Apollo program, Congress had funded the Copernicus Deep Space Telescope.

NASA, like all government agencies, had a dedicated constituency. Enough influential people and organizations rode this particular gravy train to ensure it never stopped. And if a government agency existed, it had to have something to do, and therefore it had to have public money to do that something. In effect, NASA existed to ensure that space missions continued and space missions existed to ensure that NASA continued.

Fortunately not, Sir. This time Administrator Schauble had a successful mission to report. Copernicus is working exactly as expected. It has increased our ability to see small and faint objects at the edges of our solar system and beyond by a factor of ten.

***

"So what is the problem?" Paul Carlson said.

The President’s Chief of Staff jumped in to answer. Mr. President, the telescope has detected a previously unknown object with a very troublesome trajectory.

Jack Brown had been with him since he first ran for the Senate twenty years ago. Of the many things he did for the President, one of the most important was making sure he heard the truth clearly, to protect him from the yes-men, even when the truth was unwelcome. If Jack Brown was using weasel words like troublesome, it must be bad. Really bad.

But the best thing for bad news, Carlson learned long ago, was to get it out and deal with it. Jack, no need to sugar-coat it. Give it to me straight.

Of course, Mr. President, Jack Brown said. The object—official designation 2045 KC—is approximately fifteen kilometers or nine point three miles across. It is forecast to hit the Earth sometime on December 20, 2047.

How sure are we of this?

The National Science Advisor answered, Earth impact probability is 97 percent.

An asteroid hitting the Earth definitely fit his definition of very bad, and these people were clearly worried—people he appointed, people he trusted—but nine miles didn’t seem so big. What damage should we expect?

Sir, 2045 KC is one and a half times the diameter of the object responsible for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event.

Carlson was a political science major. Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event was just so much scientific mumbo-jumbo to him. Which is?

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.

Carlson looked around the room at them, his face stiff, and then stared at his feet while he tried to wrap his mind around the scale of the problem that had just been dropped in his lap.

He looked up, the life returning to his face as he took several deep breaths. So to summarize, you’re telling me there is a chance that two-and-a-half years from now the human race will go the way of the dinosaurs, wiped out by an asteroid?

That’s a fair summary, Sir, the National Science Advisor said. Although I would characterize the odds as far more than just a chance.

How many people know about this?

Outside this room, said Karen Schauble, about a dozen people at JPL in Pasadena.

We need to keep this locked down while we formulate a plan, he said in his best take-charge-in-a-crisis voice.

He turned to his Secretary of Defense. "Harry, you are authorized to use all means necessary, including lethal force—do I make myself clear?—all means necessary, to prevent anyone or anything entering or leaving the JPL facility. Cut off all communications in and out. If a cockroach so much as tries to leave, you are to blast it to hell. Do you understand?"

Yes, Mr. President.

Jack, pull together whoever and whatever you need. I want options within forty-eight hours.

chapter 3

Paul Carlson sat in the President’s usual position at the head of the large, imposing table and surveyed the Situation Room, pausing to look each of his key advisors in the eye. For the past two days he had tried, admittedly with little success, not to think about the asteroid, knowing he should trust his team to bring him a solution.

Now it was time for them to step up. What do you have for me?

The people in this room included some of the brightest minds and biggest egos in the United States Government, yet nobody replied.

Well? Anybody? he said. Somebody please tell me how we’re going to stop this thing.

Not only was Harry Branston the most senior official present, he and Carlson had known each other since college. He could rely on him to deliver bad news when no one else had the courage, to give the reply that nobody else wanted to give. We’re not going to stop it, Mr. President.

Branston quickly elaborated. Despite what you see in all those holo-movies where they destroy the asteroid before it hits the Earth and everyone lives happily ever after, it isn’t possible with the technology and time we have available.

Why the hell not?

To nudge the asteroid off course, we have to hit it far enough out that we would need to launch now. The problem is we have nothing with the range and payload required. We haven’t launched anything bigger than a suitcase beyond an Earth orbit in over twenty-five years, at least not without using complicated slingshot maneuvers around the sun and other planets. Those take years to plan and execute.

Can’t we just nuke the damn thing when it gets closer to Earth?

Yes, Sir, we can, but we would just turn a single very large asteroid into multiple asteroids, each still plenty big enough to wipe out a large city and much of the surrounding area. The result is the same.

Harry, are you telling me we just have to sit here and wait for this thing to hit us? Carlson said. Jesus, how the hell did we get into this situation? Why didn’t we know about this sooner?

Jack Brown jumped in again. Mr. President, funding for programs to detect and defend against asteroid strikes has always lost out to more immediate and popular needs. Social Security and Medicare, for example. Apart from a few scientists who are regarded as somewhat fringe, there just isn’t an important constituency pushing for asteroid detection and interception. Sir, we are where we are.

Carlson had wasted much of his first term battling unsuccessfully with Congress on measures to bring entitlement spending under control before the ever-increasing demands of those programs, and the expanded military needed to contain China, completely bankrupted the United States. To add insult to injury, the very people who most strenuously resisted entitlement reform yelled the loudest that he was weak on national security. But they had been over the issue a hundred times, looking for a solution. Everyone knew the problem needed fixing, but the politics were radioactive.

Still, Carlson wasn’t happy with Jack’s answer. He wanted nothing more than to find someone to blame for putting him in this unenviable position. He hadn’t spent most of his adult life in public service and made the sacrifices required to attain the highest office in the land, only to have the world end on his watch. But Jack was right. Even if entitlements hadn’t been such a problem, there were always a thousand competing demands on government. During his own years in the Senate he would never have voted to fund an asteroid protection program, even if such a bill had miraculously made it out of committee.

Anyway, it was too late to worry about past failures. Let’s move forward.

Mr. President, if I may? Rajev Sandeep interjected.

Carlson gave a cursory nod, granting the Secretary of Homeland Security permission to speak.

Sir, since we can’t prevent an impact we need to move immediately, mobilize all resources, public and private, toward surviving the strike and its aftermath.

That makes sense. You have a plan?

Yes, Mr. President. But before we discuss what we’re proposing, I think we should explain exactly what it is we are dealing with. Sandeep pointed to a man sitting in the back, who now stood. I’ve invited Dr. Chen Wei from Caltech to describe the effects of the impact. Dr. Chen specializes in studying what are called Extinction Level Events.

That sounds ominous.

Dr. Chen stepped forward and bowed his head to the President. Sir, it depends on precisely where the asteroid hit. Which unfortunately we will not know until much closer to impact date.

The scientist spoke the English of a man who spent his childhood in China but most of his adult life in the United States, a relic of an earlier era when the country was willing and able to draw in the best minds from all over the world. Not anymore. The Chinese were doing an outstanding job of retaining their best minds to use to America’s disadvantage.

"If the impact site is at sea, immediate effect would be mega-tsunami—wave high as two miles. Actually, the term wave is misleading. A better description is an enormous mass of water destroying everything in