“Millenium Eden”
On screen, planet Earth is a huge shadow with only a few dim pinpoints of brightness, less numerous than last year. In all of its cities, the lights had gone out more than three decades ago, a downward spiral which our onboard scientists predict will lead to complete darkness within a year or so, as the last small pockets of survivalists expire along with their support systems. Seen from the Hubble IX Space Station, bustling with 144,000 expatriots, Earth seems no more than a huge and strangely antiseptic partner in the midst of an emptiness more vast than our minds can conceive. The Hubble cannot hold nor support more than its current population. Those people remaining on Earth are doomed to extinction and we are helpless to intervene.
Space station is a term which does no justice to what we have here. This round hub, this wheel in space, is a colony, a small city comprising 522 modules, a fully functional, self-replicating and self-repairing life support system for all of those who live within. Not quite silent, the white noise of air scrubbers is ever present all around us. One side of the wheel, with its covering of photoelectric cells, always directly faces the sun when we are not on the dark side of Earth. Small rockets are never felt as they pulse and keep Hubble IX precisely in its prescribed eliptical orbit at an average altitude of 230 miles above Earth's surface, and traveling at an average velocity of 17,227 miles per hour, completing 15.7 orbits per day. This space station will remain precisely on orbital schedule one thousand years from now, or ten thousand years if need be, and 144,000 people, descendents of those we know today, will be safely onboard. Zero population growth is mandated. As one person passes away, one new child will be allowed. Like the air and water and food, the people will be recycled. It can work. It must work. We have a task to accomplish, and we will get the job done.
Standing next to me, his eyes glued to this same futile screen, is none other than the venerable Jules Gabriel Verne, plucked from February 16, 1886, less than one month before he would be shot in the left leg by his 25-year-old nephew Gaston. Jules is 58 years young, and we will return him to his own time so he won't miss gaining his famous limp on the 9th of (his) next month. Our very secret Temporal Transit Facility (TTF) remains unknown to all but a select few aboard the space station. Jules made the trip very well. My knowledge of French makes it possible for me to converse with him because his rendering of English is archaic and completely beyond my comprehension. Before he returns to his own time, Jules will be sworn to secrecy regarding this visit and what he sees here.
For many decades, the leading edge of technology worked in secret, a dark occupation known only to an elite few. The first TTF was operational at the end of the 20th century, back in the years when Earth was mostly non-toxic. Within a few decades, machine intelligence surpassed human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represented a rupture in the fabric of human history. Technological growth excreted growing toxic waste which went largely unnoted and unchecked. Oh, here and there, people viewed small communities where odd illnesses cropped up. Deaths and illnesses were blamed on wastes coming from local industries, and no one thought much about it. Over the decades of the 21st century, scholars noted an escalation of toxicity in the earth, waters, and in the atmosphere. As early as 2013, contamination caused by 250 million tons of hazardous waste generated annually was mounting a major threat to public health. Early reports indicated polluted and contaminated surface, ground, and drinking water supplies as well as significant increases in cancer rates. There were 5,400 toxic waste sites at Federal facilities alone. Unregulated industrial processes were blamed for improper disposition of waste into municipal dumps, landfills, and ponds. Environmental protection laws failed because of lack of enforcement on the part of governments. By the final years of the 21st century, we saw pandemics sweep the land as environmental toxicity overwelmed immune systems of living creatures. By then, the process of extinction could not be halted, and the only solution was the Hubble IX Program.
The timeline of developing technology goes back as far as 2400 BC when the abacus, the first known calculator, was invented in Babylonia. When Mr. Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, about a submarine journey, it was no fantasy. The mechanical submarine was invented during the lifetime of Jules Verne, by Narcis Monturiol i Estarriol in 1862. But, here, Jules will tell you himself:
"The regulatory agency for this space colony will not allow me to see my own completed life history since I am being returned to an ongoing life. I wonder if I will live to see the dawn of the 20th century? Technology is evolving speedily in my own time and it seems to be accelerating as each invention spawns startling new innovations faster than we can keep track of them. And I can see that even my imagination never saw an inkling of how technology would change the world. As I stand here in the command module of Hubble IX, viewing a dying world, one thing becomes clear. The many-headed hydra of technology is a voraciously hungry beast which gobbles planetary resources at an ever increasing pace while exhaling its toxic breath into the air and excreting its toxic wastes into the earth and its waters. But I am aghast that this has brought about the extinction of life on such a lovely planet. It will be difficult to remain silent about this revelation when I am returned to my own time. Here on this space colony named Hubble IX, the current date is reckoned to be June 20, 2211, only a mere 345 years beyond my own time. But even if I went back and warned the powers-that-be, they would only lock me up in some dank asylum for the raving insane. I will keep silent, as I have done in the past. You see, my fanciful stories, with a few added flourishes, were actually notes from my own journals and diaries. I knew people would never accept them as true accounts, just as they would never believe what I am witnessing here on this space station."
When he is returned to his own time, we have no doubt that Jules Verne will honor his oath of secrecy. In his writings, however, he may leave hints and scholars reading his works may be prompted to be more alert to hazards and solutions.
Unknown to most aboard the good ship Hubble IX, we do have an eventual destination. Many generations of "sailors" will pass away before we come to port, for our voyage may last a thousand or ten thousand years. Shuttles will probe the air and water and earth as centuries pass and Nature slowly purges the toxicity of mankind from her body. Special attention will be centered on one area of the planet. When the time is right, shuttles will convey our 144,000 colonists back to Earth for a new beginning. The "fertile crescent" refers to an ancient area of fertile soil and important rivers stretching in an arc from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates. It covers Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The Mediterranean lies on the outside edge of the arc. To the south of the arc is the Arabian Desert. On the east, the fertile crescent extends to the Persian Gulf. Geologically, this corresponds with where Iranian, African, and Arabian tectonic plates meet. As was the case in ancient times, this is a fitting place to begin a new civilization.
And our first city will be called Eden..
[ I found this essay while surfing about the earth's problem, all credits goes to the writer]
