Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (2 page)

BOOK: Outland (World-Lines Book 1)
4.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Discussing Toba

Millions of people come to Yellowstone every year to see the marvelous scenery and the wildlife and all, and yet it’s clear that very few of them really understand that they’re here on a sleeping giant.

— Robert Christiansen, USGS

 

June 8              Erin

Erin Savard maneuvered through the other students to get a seat dead center, a few rows up. As usual, Lise and Donna were already there. Erin smiled at them as she sat down and started removing items from her backpack in preparation for the lecture.

Students filtered into the lecture hall in ones and twos. A few of the die-hard, too-cool-for-school types took seats at the back of the hall, but most sat down at the front. On the stage, Professor Collins was setting up.

“So how was your date night last night?” Lise asked Erin. “New boyfriend, some dishing is required.” The girls leaned forward in anticipation of a little light gossip.

“No such luck,” Erin replied. “Matt blew me off. Something about a project planning session with some friends. This is not the way the universe works. New boyfriends don’t blow you off. I want my money back!”

“Well, I’ve seen Matt,” Donna replied, “and I’d be willing to forgive a bit of ignorance of the rules.”

Erin felt herself blush. “Mm, yeah, can’t disagree.”

Before she could continue, the professor turned on his lapel microphone, resulting in an amplified “pop.” Students cut off whatever conversations they were having and turned to face the stage.

Professor Collins used the remote to put a picture up on the screen behind him. “This is a picture of the Toba caldera today. Or what’s left of it.” The picture on the projector screen showed an idyllic aerial view of a large, calm blue lake with a large island within. Human development alternated with jungle and meadows. The professor worked the remote and a sequence of pictures showed different views of the area.

“And this is an artist’s reconstruction of what the area might have looked like just before the eruption of the Toba supervolcano.” Another picture went up, this one bearing no resemblance to the earlier scene. This image depicted a mountain range, with no lake in sight.

Professor Collins paused while a few latecomers got settled, and Erin took the opportunity to look around. Row after semi-circular row of seats rose into the darkness from the stage where the professor stood, dwarfed by the projector screen behind him. The indefinable aroma of paper dust pervaded the hall—an aroma that Erin had always found homey and comforting.

Erin knew that there were more students seated than were registered for this class. That was typical of Professor Collins’ lectures. While some faculty might have been offended at the idea of freeloaders, Professor Collins considered it a badge of honor that students didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming to his classes. It was one of the reasons that he was her favorite teacher.

The professor resumed his lecture. “Toba literally blew part of the mountain range into the air when it erupted. What we think of as a caldera is now a lake so big that you can’t see the ends of it when you’re in the middle.”

He started to pace as he talked. “It’s about a hundred kilometers along its long axis. Krakatoa met a similar fate. Where before there was a large mountainous island, afterwards there was just a bay surrounded by some small atolls. But Krakatoa was a pipsqueak compared to Toba.” Several pictures were shown in succession, showing different before and after views.

A student downhill from Erin raised her hand. “So, professor, how do you define a supervolcano versus a volcano?”

Erin smiled.
And that would be one of the freeloaders…

The professor was unfazed by the very elementary question and answered with no trace of condescension or impatience. “It’s just a matter of size, and it’s strictly arbitrary. Any eruption that ejects more than a thousand cubic kilometers of crud into the air is considered super. And Toba sent off twenty-eight hundred cubic kilometers, by most estimates. That more than qualifies. Mount St. Helens, by comparison, only managed about one measly cubic kilometer or so.”

He played with the remote for a moment. “The damage to the planetary ecosystems from that much ash and dust in the atmosphere would have been devastating. It would have caused entire species to go extinct, and changed the climate for parts of the planet. It may even have hastened an ice age in the longer term, although that’s controversial.”

Professor Collins bobbed his head side to side. “There’s a theory that’s becoming popular that the Toba eruption caused a genetic bottleneck in Homo sapiens that may have directly contributed to us becoming what we are.”

“Wait. How does that work?” another student asked.

The professor worked the remote, bringing up an evolutionary chart depicting genus
Homo
. “Evolutionary biologists believe that most if not all occurrences of speciation happen for one of two reasons.”

He held his hand up with his index finger extended. “One, the species undergoes a genetic bottleneck where the breeding population is reduced almost to the point of extinction. At that level any mutation has a good chance of spreading through the population. Genetic isolation of a breeding population works the same way. Genetic drift, essentially.”

He held up two fingers. “Or in the second case, new, unexploited ecological niches become available. In this case, you get a breeding frenzy of specialization and differentiation that results in new species with altered life-styles to fill the various ecological niches. The colonization of the Galapagos Islands is an excellent example.”

“Toba would have created the first situation, especially for our ancestors, who were already having trouble with the changing African landscape due to recurring ice ages. The timing of the Toba eruption is about right, given the genetic information.”

A student raised his hand. “Will this be on the test?”

The professor frowned. “Everything will always be on the test, Ted. The point is to understand it so you don’t have to memorize it.”

Erin rolled her eyes. Ted really needed to get a clue…

***

All too soon, as far as Erin was concerned, the class was over. Professor Collins turned off the projector and said to the class, “Remember, next lecture will be a planning and Q&A session for the Yellowstone field trip. Make sure you have gone through your packages, and make sure that you have signed all the forms and handed them in. I don’t want to have to chase you through the halls and tackle you. It’s hard on the knees, and the Dean frowns on it.”

The students responded with a susurrus of chuckles before resuming their bolt for the exit.

As the three friends shuffled their way out of the lecture hall through the crush of bodies, Donna asked Erin, “Do you think you’ll be seeing hot-stuff tonight?”

Erin gave a head-bob in agreement, and Donna continued, “So, maybe some gossip tomorrow, then?”

Erin shook her head with disbelief. “You have way too much time on your hands, girl. You need a hobby.”

 

Toba, Sumatra - 74,000 B.C.E.

The sudden earthquake moved the forest canopy and sent flocks of birds fleeing into the safety of the air.

The yearling stopped browsing and looked to the other herd members in alarm. The adults barely looked up at the shaking.

The herd of Sambar deer lived in the shadow of Toba. The Sumatran forest was thick and lush, deer paradise if not for the predators. Certainly not a territory to be given up casually.

The tremblors had been coming for a few seasons now. Had the deer been able to measure and count, they would know that the quakes were coming more frequently. But the deer had learned through repetition that the quakes caused no harm. The bushes would shake, a tree branch might break, and the stream might slosh momentarily out of its bed. But to the deer, these events were less noteworthy than the frequent tropical downpours, which were at least uncomfortable enough to make them seek cover.

Taking his cue from his mother, the yearling went back to the important business of eating.

Another quake hit, this one much stronger. There was a loud grinding sound, accompanied by the sharp crackling sound of collapsing trees. The yearling bugled in fear and pushed himself as close to his mother as possible. The herd milled around in confusion, and the shaking stopped as abruptly as a light being switched off.

The deer stood still for a few moments, then turned back to their grazing.

It was the last act of their lives.

With no buildup or preamble, a massive explosion ripped the mountain right off the face of the Earth. The eruption ejected 2,800 cubic kilometers of earth, rock, mud, ash, and magma into the atmosphere at supersonic speed.

The herd was lucky — they were vaporized immediately by the incredible heat. Their nervous systems had no time to register the event, let alone feel any pain.

Animals up to a few kilometers farther away were ripped apart by the explosion and flying shrapnel. Up to twenty kilometers away, the earth was simply scraped clean as if by a sand-blaster.

Pyroclastic flows, rains of rock and ash, and poisonous gases took out another wave of victims up to a hundred kilometers away. Ash fall caused yet another wave of deaths, and obliterated ecosystems for tens of thousands of square kilometers. Lack of potable water killed many. Ash-induced pulmonary diseases killed far more.

The real death toll came, not from the very impressive pyrotechnics, but from a slower, more insidious cause. Over the next weeks and months, the cloud of ash spread in the upper atmosphere until it covered a significant portion of the planet. The reduced sunlight and acid rain caused ecosystems to crash worldwide.

As the clouds of ash and volcanic gases from the eruption fell to earth, the heaviest settled first, drowning the local ecosystem in a heavy, suffocating blanket. The finer particles hitched a ride in the jet stream, spreading over the planet. The heavy haze blocked sunlight, causing phytoplankton die-offs in the oceans and plant die-offs on land. The loss of their food source caused population crashes in both environments. The effect dominoed up the food chain, resulting in partial or total collapse of regional ecologies. Many animals didn’t have time to starve, dying long before of respiratory and related diseases. Their bodies provided an emergency food source for smaller scavengers and less fussy predators.

Sulfur dioxide from the eruption converted to sulfuric acid, which fell as acid rain, killing more land animals and acidifying water. Corals in the oceans died en masse; fish in fresh-water lakes were all but obliterated.

The devastation took a couple of years to peak. The effects were far-reaching. In Africa, several species of hominids, our close cousins, were driven to extinction.

Lab Prep

June 10              Bill

“Here are the specs for the focusing device.” Richard handed Bill a set of untitled printouts. Kevin hovered in the background, looking like he wanted to say something but was unsure how to go about it.

Bill looked at the diagrams from several different angles. Although they had started out as CAD printouts, they had suffered a significant amount of manual editing with colored felt pens. “So, it’s a hoop-shaped device. I see wave guides, and something that looks like it’s trying to create a toroidal magnetic field?”

“That’s right. Plus some low-level lasers intended to produce single-photon emissions in a precise sequence.” Richard pointed to a spot on the diagram. “Doable?”

“Oh sure, no prob. This is all about the internals, though, right? The casing doesn’t enter into the tolerances?”

“That’s correct. Why?” Richard looked puzzled.

“Oh, no reason…” Bill replied, smiling.
Leaves room for a few extras
.

Richard frowned, suspicion written all over his face.

Matt looked up from the controller module he was working on, rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Calling Captain Reference…”

Bill gave him a sideways look and a minimal shake of the head.
Chill, dude. Don’t blow the ‘reveal.’

Diagrams in hand, Bill paused for a moment to look around the lab. At one end, a couple of louvered windows let in the summer breeze and managed to cool the room to a tolerable level. At the other end, part of the room had been split off by a pony wall topped with thick safety glass.

Looks a bit Mythbusters.
What kind of physics experiments require that kind of glass?

Matt, meanwhile, had finished installing the Linux controller card and was booting it up. A wireless network connection to the tablet he held allowed him to monitor the process. When he was done, he handed the tablet to Richard. “It’s all set up for you. You just have to turn on the power, and it’s all at your fingertips.”

“And how are you handling the timing on the lasers?” Richard poked at one of the setup dialogs.

“Eight-core processor,” Matt answered, “More than enough throughput.”

Bill clapped his hands in satisfaction. “Well, hell. Looks like we’re gonna have us a working mad scientist’s lab!”

Richard stared at him for a long moment, then went back to examining the menu tree on the tablet software.

Bill sighed.
Wow, dude. Grow a funny bone
.

 

BOOK: Outland (World-Lines Book 1)
4.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman
The Perfect Deception by Lutishia Lovely
Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk
I So Don't Do Famous by Barrie Summy
Fly the Rain by Robert Burton Robinson
Dusk (Dusk 1) by J.S. Wayne
Private Dancer by Suzanne Forster