Chapter 18

With Theresa’s help, Mike convinced Linda to gather the students and faculty together in the assembly room for an important presentation of his findings. Kali and the National Guardsmen were invited to attend as well, since what he had to say affected them too, and with so many students laid up in the trauma ward, there were plenty of seats for everyone. Kali declined, however, choosing to stay with the sick and dying, in case one of her patients passed away during the assembly.

The four guardsmen sat together at the far back of the room, quietly talking, while everyone else took seats closer to the white board where Mike stood, waiting anxiously for everyone to settle. Linda sat off to the side in the front row, her expression muted, appearing shell shocked by the loss of three of her students.

She wasn’t alone in her grief. Students and faculty openly wept and comforted one another. It was decided that news of the tragic passing of their classmates would not be kept from the students. Particularly since many more such announcements were expected to follow in the coming days and weeks. Scirewood was a tiny, close-knit school, and everyone took the news hard. Mike dreaded that he was about to make one of the worst days of their lives even worse.

“Okay everyone,” Mike said, pushing his hands to the floor in the universal signal to quiet down. “Please, ladies, take your seats. Thank you.”

Teachers hushed their charges as best they could, and soon the assembled crowd quieted as dozens of pairs of eyes settled on him. As the resident science expert, many had turned to him at various points over the past two days seeking answers, but he’d had very few to give. That was all about to change. Delirious with fatigue, he dug deep to find the strength he needed to get himself through this. After a final deep inhalation through his nostrils, and a breath through his mouth, he began.

“I would say good afternoon to you all, but there’s nothing good about this day, so I’ll just get straight to the point. I’ve spent most of the past two days working through everything we know so far about Sunday’s event. To determine its cause, and what, if anything, it means for all of us here in this room.”

He paused for a moment, then strengthened his voice. “The undeniable conclusion I keep coming to is that humanity is facing an existential threat not seen since the Toba Catastrophe seventy-four thousand years ago, when the human race was reduced to just a few tens of thousands of individuals.”

The lingering rumble of hushed side conversations quieted, until a pin could be heard falling onto a bed of cotton. Even Sergeant Chapman twisted in his chair to more fully face him, and tuned in on what he had to say. With everyone’s firm attention, Mike turned to pick up a blue dry erase marker from the aluminum tray beneath the whiteboard and, with a piercing squeak, drew a small circle. He pointed to it.

“Earth.”

He drew a second, smaller circle, about a foot away from the first.

“And this was a large star, somewhere nearby in our local part of the galaxy. I don’t know where, exactly, but...”

He drew a large dotted circle around the first two, with Earth at the center and the star at the edge, then wrote ‘10kly’ next to it.

“I can say two things about it with a fair degree of certainty. First, this star was within about a ten-thousand light year radius away from Earth, which, cosmologically speaking, is incredibly close. Too close, as it turned out. Second, it was located somewhere in the Taurus constellation. So, for the sake of this presentation, I’m going to refer to this star as Asterius.”

Mike turned to face the crowd, slipping into his familiar role as a science communicator, and latched on to that persona to help him get through the next several minutes.

“I say ‘was’, because around ten-thousand years ago, while our ancestors were busy learning to cultivate crops in the Fertile Crescent, and developing the first permanent settlements in the Indus valley, Asterius was burning its last light. After hundreds of millions of years, it finally ran out of fuel and, when that happened, its core collapsed in a violent explosion we call a supernova. Now, Asterius must have been spinning very fast when it died, because the energy of the explosion became concentrated at the poles in tightly focused jets of high energy particles and radiation, which shot off into space like an arrow from a bow.”

Mike turned back to the board and drew a line connecting the star to Earth.

“Unfortunately for us, that arrow was aimed right at Earth, and this past Sunday, after hurtling through space for ten-thousand years, it hit us in a direct bullseye, centered somewhere off the coast of Canada in the Labrador Sea. The arrow, which astrophysicists call a gamma-ray burst, is one of the most powerful and deadly forces in the universe. It blasted through our atmosphere and, for over a minute, irradiated the entire hemisphere facing Asterius with a massive dose of deadly gamma radiation, roughly equivalent to what the reactor workers and first responders experienced during the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

“Those of us in this room were spared, because we all happened to be shielded from the worst of the radiation at the precise moment it arrived. You were on the lower floors of Overton House, or underneath Leavitt Hall, or inside a heavily fortified arms room. Those who were caught out in the open, or on the higher floors of buildings, were not so lucky. Within a day, a quarter of all life on this side of the planet was extinguished. Humans and animals alike.”

Gasps and murmurs of shock and horror swept over the crowd when they heard those figures, but Mike hurried to continue before it drew questions and comments he wasn’t yet prepared to answer. He’d debated long and hard about whether or not to tell them the next part, but he saw no reason to withhold it from them. Within weeks, they would learn its truth regardless.

“Many of those who didn’t die right away still received a large enough dose of radiation to suffer what’s known as acute radiation syndrome. Under optimal conditions, with the best possible medical treatment, the mortality rate can be as high as fifty percent within two to four weeks. Without treatment, which is the situation the vast majority will face, the mortality rate can be as high as ninety-five to one hundred percent. By this time next month, I estimate that ninety to ninety-five percent of all human and animal life on this side of the planet could be wiped out.”

The reaction to this horrifying news was unlike anything Mike anticipated. His audience sat stone still, and in complete silence. The magnitude of the carnage he described was so far beyond human experience that they were simply unable to wrap their minds around it. Seizing on the quiet moment, Mike quickly erased the concentric circles and drew two parallel, horizontal lines on the board.

He pointed to the lower line. “This is the surface of Earth.” He pointed to the upper line. “And this is the edge of space.” He quickly added two more horizontal lines between the first two and shaded the area between them. “This shaded area is the stratosphere, where our ozone layer is located. The ozone layer is what protects our planet from harmful UV rays and certain other cosmic radiation.”

He turned back to face the crowd. Their horrified expressions made him ill, but he forced himself to ignore them and continue to report his findings, as clearly and as dispassionately as he could.

“This next part is going to get a little technical, and involve some chemistry, but it’s important that all of you listen closely to what I’m about to say, and understand it, because it’s going to have a significant impact on all our lives going forward.”

Mike quickly turned before they could react. He drew several diagonal lines slashing through the layers of the atmospheric model.

“When the cosmic arrow hit our atmosphere, the gamma radiation broke apart the oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air, which then recombined into various oxides of nitrogen. In particular, nitric oxide.”

Mike picked up a red pen. Next to the atmospheric model, he drew a small red circle, then drew a small blue circle touching it.

“This is nitric oxide, a gas molecule made up of one nitrogen atom and one oxygen atom.”

He then drew three small, blue circles, all touching.

“And this is ozone. It’s a gas molecule made up of three oxygen atoms.”

Mike erased one of the oxygen atoms from the ozone model and added it to the nitric oxide model.

“This is exactly what’s happening right now. Nitric oxide is breaking apart ozone to steal away one of its oxygen atoms, forming one nitrogen dioxide molecule and one oxygen gas molecule in the process.

“This chemical reaction is happening right now, as we speak, in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Ozone is being destroyed on a scale we’ve never seen before. Within a month, a large portion of it will be gone and, when that occurs, it’s going to have profound and catastrophic consequences for the remaining life on this planet for years, if not decades to come.”

Mike turned now to face the crowd, his expression grim for the harsh news he had to impart to these poor high school girls.

“As I mentioned earlier, our ozone layer is what protects us from harmful UV light and cosmic radiation. Without it, that harmful light can now penetrate Earth’s atmosphere all the way down to the surface.” Mike touched his reddened cheeks. “Several of you may be wondering why you’re getting so badly sunburned. This is your answer.

“It will soon be too dangerous to go outside during the day without adequate protection. Even just a few minutes of exposure could lead to severe sunburn, and staying out longer than that could put you at risk for heat stress and dehydration. Without eye protection, you could also develop photokeratitis, which is like a sunburn on your eyes. They’ll feel scratchy and become sensitive to light, and could even temporarily blind you.

“Over a slightly longer exposure, the intense UV radiation could damage the DNA in your skin cells, greatly increasing your risk for skin cancers, especially melanoma. If it gets bad enough, it could even suppress your immune response and make you more susceptible to infections.

“Despite how terrible all of that sounds, however, I’m afraid that this still isn’t even the worst of it.”

He took a deep breath, and forced himself to continue. “Phytoplankton, which form the base of the marine food web, and are responsible for a significant portion of Earth’s oxygen production, are going to start dying off en masse. Plants here on land are going to start showing signs of burning and wilting. Over the coming weeks, ecosystems across the world will begin to falter. Marine and terrestrial food chains will collapse. Crops that should have been ready for harvest will fail. All of this combined will result in a worldwide famine of Biblical proportions.”

Mike’s final words reverberated in the small room. The assembled crowd stared at him in stark terror as the implications of everything he’d just told them finally sank in. Girls rose to their feet and shouted, their voices rising to a shrill, frightened roar. They gesticulated wildly and peppered him with a hundred panicked questions at once. Mike raised his hands and waited patiently for the clamor to die down before speaking again, but there seemed to be no end to their vociferous concerns.

Both the extremity of Mike’s dire prognostications, and the students’ frightened behavior, finally snapped Linda out of her malaise and spurred her to action. She stood to join Mike at the whiteboard and whistled loudly.

“Quiet!” she shouted angrily, pacifying the terrified teenagers in an instant, and then her demeanor instantly softened. “We’re all scared and traumatized by the events of the past two days, but that’s no reason to forget our manners and start acting like wild animals.”

This comment squelched the final lingering discussions, and the girls returned to their seats. Linda flared her nostrils and gave Mike a sour look from the corner of her eye.

“We’re all aware that Mr. Messina is a very smart teacher, and we’re all very impressed by his little science presentation, but there’s no need for anyone to panic, okay? Neither I, nor Mr. Messina, nor anyone else for that matter, can say definitively what really happened the other day, and any predictions about ozone layers and ultraviolet light and global famines are nothing more than wild speculation and conjecture, without a shred of hard evidence to back it up.”

Mike opened his mouth in shock at her words, but she held up her hand to silence him before he could respond.

“What we’re all going to do is exactly what these fine young soldiers told us yesterday,” she said, indicating the guardsmen sitting in the rear, who looked to be just as alarmed as everyone else in the room at Mike’s presentation. “We’re going to sit tight, shelter in place, and wait for the local authorities to tell us when it’s safe enough to leave and return to our homes and our families. I understand everyone is scared, and still grieving over the unfortunate passing of our classmates and colleagues, but this is no time to get swept up in Mr. Messina’s wild, apocalyptic ravings, which have no basis in reality!”

She turned to him, and his face flushed under the intensity of her glare. She lowered her voice, but not enough to prevent her words from carrying to the back of the small room.

“It’s incredibly reckless and cruel to prey on everyone’s fears like that, and to put such awful ideas in their heads. This school prides itself on reason and fact-based teaching, and I refuse to stand by and let you demagogue like some kind of deranged doomsday cult leader. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Messina?”

Without waiting for him to respond, she turned back to the assembled mass of terrified students and teachers, and spoke in a firm, reassuring voice.

“We’re all perfectly safe, right here. Even without power, we still have gas to operate the stoves, plenty of clean water to drink, and enough food to last for at least another week. I’ve taken more than my fair share of disaster preparedness courses over the years as part of my administrative training, and I can assure each and every one of you that our elected leaders have thought through every possible contingency, and have solid, tested plans in place to deal with this disaster. For those reasons, we will continue to operate by the book, and follow all prescribed guidelines to the tee. What we will not do is give ourselves over to mass hysteria.”

Mike finally found his tongue and sputtered his response. “No!” he screamed. “This isn’t just some wild guess on my part, Linda! It’s a fact, backed by a mountain of scientific evidence! This planet is going to die, and unless we start making preparations right now, we’re all going to die right along with it!”