Half Baked

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“The Gamma Ray Burster was a catastrophe. The only reason it didn’t sterilize the planet and kill almost ALL the life was that it was mostly boiling Sea. If you look at Earth from directly above the equator at the right place over the pacific ocean no land to speak of is visible. That was where the center of the beam of Gamma Ray Burster first illuminated the planet. If it has 'lit - up' almost anywhere else the loss of life would have been immeasurably worse. That happened once before” Shelby lectured..

When did THAT happen?” one of the water tribe asked

The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event” Colby told him. “The Great Dying, Two Hundred and Fifty Two million years ago. 96% of all life that existed on the planet at that time...died. Some think it was Gamma Ray Burster that caused it.”

Who ever had asked that question sat down hard and shut up. It was disquiting that a pre-teen like Colby would know about such things. The children of the WaterTribe were SCARY, particularly the RowdyBunch.

“It wasn’t as bad as the Great Dying” Shelby told them “ But it was definitely pretty bad."

As I was saying....this is what happened. Time went by. The survivors of the “cable guy’ team took a hit, but they recovered, grew and prospered. Technological civilization grew to levels undreamed of today. Nations rose to greatness that are only the stuff of legend and dreams.

It was a magic time. It was a Golden Age. All of our myths and legends talk of the time before the “fall”. That was it. It really existed...for thousands and thousands of years..

Everything was looking up until....

75,258 Years Ago, The End of the Interregnum

“Looks really good Hrynar. All the base numbers are still rock steady, looks like this'll be the final configuration once we fire them all back up!” Gadin tapped one of the gauges, an old habit from when they used to be analogue. A couple flickered slightly, then steadied again showing full output.

“I don't know, Gadin. I still think it's not safe when they're all hooked up and running full bore again. Remember the last time all six taps were on, it was a constant juggle to keep them from failing. All we managed was half a day before we shut down.”

“Hrynar, this new software and the digital gauges will keep them in sync better than we ever did! We ain't got anything to worry about anyway. What's the worst that can happen? They go asynchronous, the computer will shut them down or they blow their safeties and shut down. No problem!”

Hrynar shook his head, slowly, “I have my doubts about this.” Enough. I've told everyone my fears, I even put it writing. Hrynar sighed theatrically and dropped the whole discussion. Time to let it go, just move on. He would regret dropping the subject, along with every human on Earth.

Mendar looked around, beaming and pontificating to the media reps. Hrynar thought he looked like a short, fat proto-human, like one of the barely upright walkers on the sub continent. “All he needs is to grunt a little more and fling his scat everywhere! Strip him naked, roll him in dirt and he'd make a fine proto-human specimen. Crang, he's stupid enough to fit in with them, stinking politician! “

Stifling his grin, Hrynar checked gauges again. Seemed okay, steady enough. He thought “Even after 21 hours of wide open operation, he couldn't hear or feel the six Core Taps at all, not even the slightest vibration. Now, all we have to do is put the full load to them, see what happens then.”

One hundred eighty seven miles below the surface, well beneath the fifty one mile vertical shaft that powered the six Core Taps, a chamber rumbled uneasily. It had last rumbled into life 425,000 years prior to the current uneasiness. That had been caused by a deep earthquake generated by the movement of the two tectonic plates that intersected each other a stone throw away. This event would be worse.

Much worse.

Throughout all the known Dimensions, Core Taps were the most common form of energy collection (although Zero Point Power Plants were much more efficient and far less dangerous, those were an extremely advanced technology, and were much more rare). The number of multiple Core Taps into a single shaft that were successful, however, were so small it may as well been zero, on an inter-Universal scale. The reason for this was simple, while a single Core Tap provided power, they were also very dangerous to the end user, multiply the number of Taps and the danger increased exponentially. Six, together, was planetary destruction waiting to happen.

The volume of energy moved by the six Core Taps was immense, as was the mass of the energy. The physical shift of the weight of all the energy moving, set up vibrations deep in the mantle. Ripples that moved majestically across the molten magma, impacting the uneasy crust. Similar to ripples in a pond , they began to combine and magnify themselves, circling the planet albeit unseen. The ripples slowly settled into an ordered rhythm and, by themselves, would not have affected the Core Taps. They were not by themselves, however.

Rippling through the upper mantle, pressing against the crust in waves of pressure and not pressure, pulses of energy pounded into the shallow crust. The overstressed tectonic plates immediately responded. Two hundred years of stored energy in the subduction zone directly below broke free, allowing three plates the temporary freedom of unrestricted movement.

Compared to the energy output of six combined Core Taps, the energy released by the earthquake was minimal. Unfortunately, it occurred less than two miles from the Core Taps themselves. Lateral shifting of the tectonic plate, moved the entire island 16 feet sideways, severing all connections into the planet. All six Core Taps found themselves unregulated, their finely tuned connections severed and independent from each other, for a very short period of time. Perhaps a pico second, maybe even two. The earthquake began to shake the entire planet. Protohumans in what would be called Sub Saharan Africa were knocked off their feet as the ground shook from the quake. Hooting in fear, they huddled together seeking comfort with physical contact.

The six Taps went a-coherent, attempting to move energy in both directions simultaneously. The energy steams headed for the surface were chopped off, seven miles below the island. Those headed inward, were cut off nineteen miles underground. The energy rebounded. The plugged shaft full of frustrated energy looked for an outlet.

It made its own.

Six hundred seventy cubic miles of island immediately took to the skies, circled the planet several times, finally falling to the ground as ash loaded acid-rain over the course of a decade. Beneath the shattered island, an enormous chamber was formed, with a volume of over 7500 cubic miles, a massive chamber that filled with molten rock and expelled it all to the surface as ashes that clouded the skies, taking the center of the island upward and outward, as well as feeding a massive pyroclastic flow that covered over seven thousand square miles.

Mt. Toba had a tummy ache. It wasn’t shy about announcing to the world, that after 425,000 years of uneasy silence, it was still very much alive.

In hindsight, it had probably been a very bad decision to build the Core Taps where they did, but the thinness of the crust combined with having a convenient island to use as both a drill platform as well as a facility site, was too providential to ignore. This was a near fatal decision for all living humans.

Ash and green house gases, billowed high into the atmosphere and were carried across the planet, only to fall as acid rain. Temperatures worldwide began to plummet as the gray clouds reflected the suns warming rays. For ten years they fell, dropping below a global average of 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The minor cooling the Earth had been enjoying became severe.

The ice sheets began to grow and flow, toward the equator. For a thousand years the ice ruled the Earth while the pitiful remnants of humanity grubbed for bugs in the African snow and ashes just trying to survive. Less than nine thousand humans remained alive, sick, malnourished and a far cry from the proud humans they were descended from.They were alive but reduced to ignorant savages grubbing in the dirt. Nothing of their proud origins, thousands of light years away remained, not even a memory. In a world slowly recovering from an ice age, they would go forth and rediscover civilization. Or they would die out, a forgotten species, the blow by of survival of the fittest.

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“Oh Shit” Captain said.

“We only thought that we have had bad days” Marc agreed.

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All Illustrations are from pixabay