AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Lambert was a teacher of history
who began writing historical fiction when he retired. He has now ventured into
science fiction.
All his stories show how the past
determines the present and influences the future. This process also applies in
science fiction.
John’s writing is essentially about
people and their achievements, about the best, and worst, of human behaviour. In
his science fiction there are still human beings and their best and worst
features are again explored.
Though science fiction, the story is an
almost believable study of human achievement.
By the same author
A Land of Plenty
Beyond All
Seas
Lost and Forgotten
Two Tales of the Mountains
Encounter Hall
Arthur King of the Britons
Risk and Reward
Two Tales of the West
PART
ONE: AN END AND A BEGINNING
CHAPTER ONE
The end came
unexpectedly.
Though some environmental prophets of doom had been saying for several
years that it was entirely possible, no one really paid much attention. Yes, the
average daily temperature across the world had increased five percent, eight
percent, and then eleven percent in the last three years, but the response was
simply to use air conditioners more intensively. After all, winters were quite
pleasant, especially as there was no longer any snow.
The last vestiges of the Arctic ice disappeared in 2025. Then, in the
summer of 2029-30, the Antarctic ice melted entirely. Sea levels rose by three
metres. But the world had become used to evacuating low-lying islands and
coastal towns. Wealthy cities had constructed sea walls as early as 2015. All
that was necessary was to add more height to them.
An American environmental scientist called Alan Williamson had written an
article in 2030 pointing out that rising sea levels could reach a point where
water entered cracks in the Earth’s surface and poured down into the vaults of the molten plasma, which were in many places
quite close to the Earth’s surface. This would not ‘put out’ the ‘flames’ but
would simply cause the water to turn
to steam with such pressure that the Earth’s crust would disintegrate. His
article was published in several scientific journals and generated many critical
refutations from eminent scholars, the general view being that he was unduly
alarmist. The world populace remained ignorant. Even if they had known of his
article, it is doubtful if any one would have believed him, let alone done
anything about it.
Not that there was much that could have been done. The point of no return
had been reached as early as 2018. In this year, climate change involving
heating of the Earth’s surface had gone beyond levels where winter temperatures
could restore the moisture that summer’s heat drained from the Earth in both
hemispheres. From then on, the heating of the Earth became of greater magnitude
each year. The pollution of Earth’s atmosphere with carbon gases from motor
vehicles continued unabated and compounded the problem. The ozone layer hole
over Antarctica increased till it covered the
entire southern hemisphere. As the Asian nations increased their industrial
development, and with it their overall wealth, so the number of motor cars
contributing to the pollution of the air around the world multiplied. Coal-fired
power stations and industrial plants, although purporting to comply with world
standards, continued to spew forth pollution.
Williamson was right. On 2nd January 2031, off the east coast of Hawaii, there was an
underwater volcanic explosion measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. A day later,
an explosion of similar scale took place in the Sea of
Japan. The two eruptions may well have been unrelated, but the
tsunamis they generated reached across the whole Pacific and as far as northern
Australia.
Water flooded into river estuaries along the coasts of China, Japan,
Canada, and most
significantly, the west coast of the
US. Sea water broke through barriers around
cities and flooded into areas never before subject to such inundation. Massive
quantities of salt water entered aquifers under the surface and from there
drained into the molten core of the Earth. Similar penetration took place along
the northern coast of Sumatra. It was here and
in the the San Andreas Fault in California that the results were most
dramatic.
Almost immediately, seismologists began reporting increased volcanic
activity in all the ‘hot spots’ of the Pacific Rim.
It was three days later that the shaking began. Initially it was felt
throughout Indonesia, across
most of Japan,
and in the cities of the American west coast. Then it spread to parts of China, Australia
and the eastern sections of Siberia. Once it
started, it did not stop. Earthquake-proof buildings withstood the violence, at
least initially, but all other buildings collapsed. Each day, for three days,
there were reports of more countries where the shaking was destroying buildings,
where dam walls were cracking, where services were ruptured, where crevasses
were swallowing rivers and people. Water supplies disappeared, communications
broke down, bridges collapsed. But this was only the beginning. The shaking
spread to Italy
and Greece, and then to
southern Europe and Russia.
The end came swiftly on 12 January. It was as if every volcano on the
Earth exploded at once, including unknown numbers under the oceans. Ash and
fumes enveloped the Earth, lava flows destroyed cities. Tsunamis flooded the
coasts of every continent, crevasses widened and whole towns were swallowed. The
ash and lava ignited fires in forested areas generating even more smoke till the
whole Earth was wrapped in a choking, impenetrable blanket. But it was the fumes
of poisonous gas which were the major problem for humans and animals. As more
and more eruptions occurred, a mixture of carbon and sulphur gases smothered the
Earth, depleting the supplies of oxygen to a point where living things could not
breathe.
The explosions and eruptions did not abate but rather increased. Molten
plasma consumed mountains, creating entirely new shapes for the continents. The
high-security bunkers, designed to preserve national leaders and protect them
against nuclear attack, were buried under hundreds of metres of molten rock.
There was no escape and no place of safety. Oceans disappeared. Plains were
turned into mountains; mountains into plains. The Earth became a molten mass.
The destruction and turmoil continued for two weeks before it gradually
subsided, and by then the poisonous gas, which now replaced the once
oxygen-friendly atmosphere, had obliterated all life.
But a little of the water vapour in the atmosphere remained.
For fifty thousand years the Earth slept. The poison in the atmosphere
gradually dissipated. There was rain upon the dry rock. Some fresh water lakes
were formed and primitive aquatic life appeared. Rain washed grains of rock into
pockets of soil which then supported grasses and plants, but there were no
trees, no animals and no humans.
~~
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