Dodging the Apocalypse | Climate Fiction Series

Alpert (yelling): Yo, people! It’s me, Mark Alpert, from Dodging the Apocalypse! Can someone tell me—

Unidentified Protester: Holy shit! Those guards have guns!

Alpert: I’m here to listen, people! Please, calm down and tell—

Oleg: What are you doing, Alpert? Get BACK in the car!

(Sounds of gunfire and screaming. Sound of a car door slamming shut as Alpert gets back inside the limo. Engine revs and tires squeal as the car careens into the spaceport.)

Alpert (panicky): Jesus Christ! What the hell’s going on here?

Oleg (disdainful): You’re one to talk. You started this mess.

Alpert: Me? It’s Steele’s fault! Why do you even work for that bastard? He doesn’t—

Oleg: I’m getting paid, that’s why. And paid in K-Coins, which go up in price every day. All right, we’re at the hangar. Get out.

(End of clip)

Alpert: I was still trembling when I staggered out and saw Eric Steele, cool as a cucumber, smiling that triumphant grin of his beneath aviator shades. His cocksure hubris focused my mind. I shook the jerk’s hand, and we took an elevator to his executive suite on top of the hangar’s dome.

His office had an incredible, 360-degree view through floor-to-ceiling windows. The desert plain was sprouting with runways and launchpads and dozens of rockets and orbital modules in various stages of assembly. Clearly more than a few billionaires had already put down deposits; the pace of construction seemed frenetic. All I could think was: I have to stop this madness.

Steele eased into a swanky black-leather chair and motioned for me sit down too. But I just set up my microphone on his desk and stood there. Here’s how the interview went:

Steele: I’m truly delighted that you’re here, Mark. I know you don’t—

Alpert: Let’s cut to the chase, okay? This space station is the worst idea you’ve ever had. It’s a freakin’ disaster for the planet.

Steele: I’m sorry, I don’t understand what—

Alpert: I’ll lay it out nice and simple. Right now the climate shit is hitting the capitalist fan. Property values in the flooded cities are plunging. Insurance companies are going bankrupt, the stock market is tanking. The filthy rich are finally realizing that if they don’t do something fast about global warming, the devastated poor are gonna tear them apart. But you’re giving the elites an easy way out. A way to save themselves without lifting a finger to help the rest of humanity.

Steele: With all due respect, I disagree. The Sky Cove project won’t stop anyone from pursuing new ventures in sustainability and—

Alpert: Don’t give me that. The trillions you’re planning to spend on your orbital torus? That money could go to carbon sequestration instead, or to renewable-energy projects.

Steele: Please, calm down, Mark. You clearly don’t understand the role of entrepreneurs in our economy. We make investment decisions based on the potential monetary return. As you know, I’ve proposed renewable-energy projects in the past, but the risk/reward ratio just wasn’t attractive enough to investors.

Alpert: You want to talk about risk/reward? The risk now, the immediate risk, is that global warming will cause billions of people to starve. That’ll be a nice sight for you and your fellow tycoons to gaze down on while you’re swilling champagne on your space station.

Steele: You have a true gift for high moral dudgeon, Mark, but you’re aiming your righteous fury at the wrong target. It’s not my job to slow down global warming. That’s the government’s responsibility.

Alpert: My God, I’m gonna scream! You plutocrats control the government! You can make it do anything you want!

Steele: Now you’re being hyperbolic. We live in a democracy. If the public really wanted to make sacrifices for climate-change mandates, they’d have voted for it by now.

Alpert: They didn’t vote for it because capitalists like you corrupted our democracy! You used your lobbyists and propaganda and campaign war chests to convince half the world that global warming isn’t a problem! And when that lie didn’t work, you insisted that the only solution was voluntary mitigation—and not government rules!

Steele: Well, I think we’ve strayed from our agreed-upon topic. Do you have any specific questions about Sky Cove?

(After a long pause, the sound of Alpert slapping his hands on Steele’s desk)

Alpert: Nope, no questions. Thanks for the interview. I’ve got everything I need for my next podcast. Can I use one of your computers to upload the audio files to my website?

Steele: Uh, sure, I suppose. But I do have more to say about—

Alpert: No, we’re done here.

(Click)

Alpert: Now, dear listeners, let me tell you why I cut the interview short. During that long pause in my conversation with Steele, I was thinking about the limited power of my profession. In all my years as a journalist, I’ve always tried to use truth-telling to make positive changes. But even the most hard-hitting investigative exposé is no match for a rich man determined to grab his next buck. I could broadcast a hundred fiery podcasts about Eric Steele’s perfidy, but that wouldn’t stop him from building his billionaires’ club in outer space. During that long pause, I realized the futility of trying.

So, I decided to try something new. I left Steele in his suite, and a secretary led me to a an unused workstation. But instead of removing the memory card from my audio recorder, I reached into my pocket and pulled out an old flash drive I’d labeled “Plan B.” While the secretary wasn’t looking, I slipped this drive into the computer and uploaded the software that an anonymous source had sent me six years before.

Behind Steele’s corporate firewall, the software worked its magic. It automatically decrypted a message hidden in the network archives and forwarded it to an online forum for cryptocurrency traders. This message told the traders how to use a mathematical shortcut to create new KierkegaardCoins almost instantly, without any complicated calculations. By the time I exited the building, millions of new K-Coins—indistinguishable from the old ones—were appearing every second. And just like that, the value of every K-Coin in circulation dropped to zero.

As I walked back to the limo, I noticed workers and security guards gawking in horror at their phones, which buzzed with notifications about their now-worthless crypto accounts. News of Steele’s ruin spread like a tsunami. Some of the guards abandoned their posts at the fence; others converged on the hangar, probably looking to break Steele’s legs. Protesters poured through the open gate and started hammering the half-built rockets and orbital modules.

If you’ve seen the CNN coverage, you know the rest. The governor of New Mexico, a golfing buddy of Steele’s, called out the National Guard to rescue him. They stopped me at the airport and arrested me on charges of corporate sabotage.

But many of my listeners also happen to be lawyers. The next day, several showed up at the federal courthouse in Las Cruces to pay my bail and file the motions that got me sprung. According to the lawyers, all I did was inform the public of a flaw in the K-Coin’s code, and that’s not a crime.

But here’s a tidbit of news you may not have heard yet. Just yesterday financiers in Germany and Japan announced that they’re forming an international consortium to purchase—at bargain-basement prices—the rocket and spacecraft parts left lying on the ground at Spaceport America after Stellar Technologies’ bankruptcy. They want to resurrect Steele’s original plan to build giant solar-power arrays in orbit. Because Germany and Japan shut down all their nuclear plants, they need another reliable source of clean power to replace the coal and gas they’re still burning to stabilize their electrical grids. And just this morning someone at the consortium called to ask me if I would join them as an adviser. Apparently, they want me to “guide them through the sociopolitical minefields of these perilous times.”

I’m thinking it over. Can I work with these financiers? Overall, capitalists have a terrible track record on the environment. Should I take a leap of faith and trust them anyway?

What do you think, listeners?

Let me know in the comments—and be sure to hit the subscribe button to stay up to date with our latest episodes.

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Top image: SPS-ALPHA concept and illustration courtesy of John C. Mankins of Mankins Space Technology Inc. 

About the Author:
A former astrophysics editor at Scientific American, Mark Alpert is the internationally bestselling author of eleven novels. His latest climate-fiction book, The Doomsday Show, will be published by Severn House in October 2022.