The Storm

CHAPTER 26

GAMAY WALKED INTO THE MAKESHIFT LAB TO CHECK ON Marchetti. She found him hunched over an experiment that involved a heat lamp, several temperature probes and a tall, narrow beaker full of water, the top layer of which looked murky.

“Am I right to assume there are microbots in that beaker?”

Marchetti sat straight up. “Oh, Mrs. Trout,” he said, holding his chest. “You snuck up on me.”

“Not really. You’re just very into your work.”

“Yes,” he said, tinkering with one of the probes and checking a display.

“Care to tell me what it is?”

“I’m just trying to figure something out,” he said, sounding as if he’d rather not talk about it.

She sat across from him and stared into his eyes. “Why is it men don’t like to share their hunches?” she asked. “Are you so afraid to be wrong?”

“I’ve been wrong a million times,” Marchetti said. “I’m more afraid to be right, actually.”

“About what?”

“I have a hunch as to what might be occurring out there.”

“And yet you’re keeping it a secret,” she said. “Like most men I’ve known, you want proof before you speak, or at least a reasonable amount of corroborating evidence.”

She waved her hand over the setup. “This looks like an attempt to get that to me.”

“You really have a marvelous sense of intuition, Mrs. Trout. I bet Paul can’t get away with anything.”

“He’s learned not to try.”

“A wise man,” Marchetti said, offering a sheepish grin. “You’re right of course. I have a hunch that the microbots are indeed responsible for the temperature anomaly. I remember hearing of a plan to stop global warming. It involved years of continuous rocket launches and the dispersal of millions upon millions of reflective discs in orbit around the planet or perhaps only over the poles, I really can’t recall for certain. These reflective discs would block a portion of the sunlight, reflecting it back into space. A small percentage. Just enough to counteract the effect we’ve begun feeling.”

She remembered hearing something about it.

“Obviously there were huge problems with the idea,” Marchetti continued, “but the concept intrigued me. I’ve often wondered if it would really work.”

“There are precedents,” Gamay said. “After large volcanic eruptions, the ash in the air spreads around the globe, doing much the same thing as these discs you’re talking about. Famines in the sixth century have been blamed on ash dimming the sun’s output and causing crop yields to fall. Eighteen fifteen has been called the year without a summer because the average temperatures around the globe were surprisingly low. The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia is the prime suspect.”

“I feel a similar principle may be at work here,” Marchetti said. “Not in the atmosphere but in the sea.”

He pointed to the experiment. “I’ve attempted to re-create a solar warming-and-cooling cycle in this water sample. But there’s a problem with my theory. Even with the murky layer of bots at the top, it behaves almost like regular salt water.”

“Meaning?”

“The microbots absorb some of the heat, but nowhere close to what would be required to cool the water in the manner we’ve seen.”

“How large is the difference?”

“Very substantial,” he said. “Close to ninety percent deviation. And that’s a lot in anyone’s book.”

“You mean in your experiment you found—”

“Only ten percent of the cooling we’ve recorded out there in the open ocean. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

She looked around. She didn’t have to ask if he’d done the experiment right or if he wanted to try it again. He’d been secluded up here for hours, and he’d been an engineer before becoming a computer programmer. She guessed he knew what he was doing. Besides, she saw six other setups that looked identical to the one in front of them. She assumed they were controls.

“So what does that mean?” she asked. “And this time pretend you’re a woman and share.”

“There are two possibilities,” he said. “Either something else is responsible for the majority of the cooling or the microbots are cooling the ocean through some other process or mechanism that we’ve yet to observe or discover.”

“All the more reason to keep sailing toward them,” she said.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied.

Before Gamay could say anything more, an alarm began to sound throughout the lab. It was sharp, piercing, and accompanied by flashing strobes.

“What’s happening?”

“Fire alarm,” Marchetti said. He reached for an intercom switch and pressed it. “What’s happening, chief?”

“We have multiple heat signals,” the chief replied, sounding as if he was still checking. “We have confirmation,” he added. “There’s a fire in the engine room.”