Chapter 11

I was looking thru the newspapers and magazines as I waited for dawn to approach. The articles were varied, from funny headlines, “Guardian leaves a swath of pregnant women along his flight route!” to more troubling, “A Modern God for the Modern World?” and, “Is he the Anti-Christ?”

I vanished them back to energy. Guardian was positioned 50,000km above the Earth’s surface, glowing a soft golden color, in the shape of a human, but 10,000km tall, facing the Earth, with my head to the North, and my feet pointing South. I was above the Pacific, standing a few degrees into the shadow of the Earth, clearly visible in the early morning sky.

My first clean up of the day was just past the international date line, repairing the islands damaged by phosphate mining. The committee had given me freedom to fix whatever was on the request list, which had been organized by the UN, in whatever way I wanted, knowing that I needed a way to express my creativity or I’d burst being stuck with the job.

As the sun rose, the islands were back to pristine tropical gems, filled with fertile soil and plant life they had probably never previously had. I even eliminated the invasive species, rats, feral cats, and others.

When Japan rolled around, I took care of not only the radioactive contaminants, but completely reduced the entire contaminated area to empty park land, filled with fruit trees. I left a stack of materials, recycled and purified from the structure, piles of steel, iron, and other metals, ready for reuse.

As the news hit the world stage, people stopped everywhere to look at the before and after pictures in awe. A few other industrial accident sites got a similar treatment, even if they weren’t on the list. Every country had its hot spot. Either toxic waste dumping, old landfills leaking into groundwater, or other terrible but unregarded local environmental catastrophes.

I also cleaned the air as I went. The generators had already improved air quality significantly in China and India, but when the sun rose in Mumbai, they found blue skies for the second time in a year. The industrial waste was everywhere.

I did one other thing as the Earth turned, I removed all the radioactives from the weapons beneath me. I figured it would take a few days to discover, but I wouldn’t announce it until after the process was complete. Where underground aquifers were empty from overuse, I refilled them, where desertification had occurred because of overgrazing, I brought good soil back and grew plants that would resist overgrazing, with strong and deep root systems.

I valiantly resisted the urge to make grain grow on the top of the mountains as I greened and unsalted the Middle East, but I did fill the Jordan valley with the fig trees that had been chopped down by the Romans nearly 2000 years previously. The Dead Sea, I brought back to life, stacking all the salt in massive blocks around the Sea where they would not be likely to get washed back in by the rain.

Invasive pests were eliminated, as were disease carrying pests. I had no qualms making tsetse fly and certain mosquito species extinct. The environmental tragedies in Russia, and the old soviet block were no worse than the same found in the western world. Chernobyl was only one of the radioactive cleanup sites, I left it a wild and untamed wilderness, all signs of human habitation removed.

I had fun restoring the Great Pyramid of Giza to its original splendor, then tackled the Sahara. I could restore it’s land, solidifying the sands, growing better ground cover to resist the degradation caused by human activity. The region’s farmers saw the connection between them chopping down trees, grazing as many animals as they could, and the growth of the desert that pushed them further south every year. There was just nothing they could do about it as the economics of survival required it.

I placed wells and pumps through the desert, reaching ancient waters buried beneath shifting dunes. I grew the plants that would do the best, bringing shade and life to the desert. The Sahara would need a final addition, but I waited till I was finished with everything else

Airplanes started flying over the region documenting the changes, as the sun kept turning. Europe had cleaned many of its messes, but there were still hot spots. Nuclear reactor experimental sites, deactivated reactors but contaminated buildings remained. The sunken ships I left where they were, but eliminated anything toxic or radioactive. I did mark the location of a gold filled submarine, and a couple Greek and Roman era sunken treasure ships. I didn’t need them, but they might be a nice gift to gain a favor.

The southern Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Africa was experiencing ongoing ecosystem collapse. The rich cold waters used to teem with fish, as they fed on the massive anchovy population, which fed on the even smaller creatures that thrived in the upwelling of cold rich water. European anchovy fishing had destroyed the balance at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it had never recovered.

I had the solution, as I copied and conjured billions of fish restocking that part of the ocean. The massive schools of native anchovies would soon feed a growing population of larger fish. The coastal African Nations would just have to keep the catches under control, and keep out the European fishing boats.

By the time I finally finished with the cleanup of the Bikini Atol and the Alaskan oil spills, I felt I had a much better understanding of ecosystem diversity, environmental pressures, and the effects of terrain on the water cycle. Fully prepared, I performed my last miracle.

Reaching out into the entire atmosphere I grabbed onto the extra 140 parts per million of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere, and still there, since the industrial revolution. The total released was much higher than that, but much of it had been absorbed by the oceans. I grabbed onto the atmosphere co2 only.

I pulled out just the carbon, creating a square bottom pyramid 6.15 kilometers on each side out of diamond. I couldn’t think of a better way to show people what had been in the atmosphere, and keep it from going back again. I placed it where the borders of Mali, Algeria, and Niger met. The height would catch water vapor from the occasional passing cloud, and the water repelling nature of diamond would send it all down around the giant pyramid.

I wasn’t sure if it would work, and I considered making it higher, but I didn’t really want to adjust weather patterns too much. The winds at the upper height were fierce. I wondered if anyone would try to scale the smooth surface.

I watched carefully as CO2 levels immediately went back up as dissolved gasses seeped out of the ocean, much faster than I had expected it to. It wouldn’t reach the levels it was previously at, but it was an excellent start to global mitigation. The final item accomplished, I stored myself, and faded the image away to nothing.