Noah's Ark Snippet 2

 Sitrep: So, I was shocked to open my email and find the manuscript there waiting from Goodlifeguide. Awesome!

So, I will publish that hopefully in the next few days. (It is getting crazy now)

On to the snippet!

Chapter 2

 

Politicians across the world debated the news. There was no way to suppress it; too many people knew about it across the world. The media was struggling with accepting it, which gave them some traction and an opportunity to get ahead of the problem.

Most science advisers scoffed at the idea of getting ahead of the problem. Many got roaring drunk when they dug into the science and found it was real. They rapidly went through the five stages of grief. Acceptance for some was hard to come by. Many politicians were stuck in denial.

A conference was called to discuss the problem. The media covered the conference, but the scientists who presented to the conference had no good news, only bad news. The news was televised reluctantly. Talking heads on the various news channels explained the details in excruciating details. There were skeptics and deniers, but the majority of trusted scientists were in consensus. The black hole anomaly was real and coming to them. There was no stopping it.

This sent the population into a depression spiral. A despondent population stopped working as apathy set in. Religious organizations reported a sudden uptick in interest.

The end of days was plastered everywhere. Every scientist agreed that there was no way for mankind to survive. The apathy was palatable.

Riots were sparked, and a loss of control worked its way into some nations. The people on the space stations were not immune to the apathy but had tasks to keep doing in order to insure their continued survival.

“This is why the governments decided long ago to not tell people if the world was going to end,” Dutch Firecreek said in disgust as they watched the news. Dutch was a pilot for the Stellar Works Aerospace Corporation, a company that had set up shop in the space stations in orbit of Earth and the Moon. They had several space stations, a growing tug business, several gas mines on the outer gas giant planets, and interests in asteroid mining.

“Yeah, to keep order and property values up,” Jake Black, his colleague said sarcastically.

“Not just that.” Dutch gave him a dubious look. “To also give them and us a chance to find a solution. You can’t do that if you are trying to survive, right?”

“True,” Jake said grudgingly. He had been a pilot in the Air Force before he had been bitten by the space bug. The Air Force had gotten him through college but hadn’t given him the stick time he had wanted. Everything was migrating to drones.

It was a little ironic that the company also ran drones and he spent more time managing a dozen drone tugs rather than actually flying inside a craft.

“Right now the chicken littles are ruling the roost,” the news anchor said on the video screen. “What happens if this turns out to be a case of the boy who cried wolf? Like that asteroid Apophis?”

“Oh, nice one,” Jake said with a nod.

<<O>>

Two of the governments went into denial about the anomaly. North Korea was a third, followed by small countries that had no presence in space. Each country released their own version of statements that the reports were in error and that the anomaly was a vicious hoax or would miss the star system. They bent the facts that had been presented by the science community badly, irritating many there.

Anyone who denied the reports or tried to counter them was arrested and jailed. A few were shot. The crackdown did cut down on the riots and apathy over the course of a week, however.

The media stated it was one of the stages of grief. “We each go through it in a different way. Anger seems to be prevalent now. Denial is obviously in the works for others. Eventually we will all have to accept our fate.”

<<O>>

Dirk Bradly, CEO of Stellar Works, also known as SWAC, refused to accept that they were all dead men walking. He firmly believed that they could work any problem as long as they had time and the resources to do so. Besides, the governments were offering a lot of money to companies to design and launch probes. The catch was that they wanted a paper study within one week.

He had a quorum of votes from the board agreeing to push forward with the probe and any other paper studies. He was grateful for that trust. He knew many on the board were running scared.

Many companies signaled interest in the proposal. Grants were sent out within hours of a company submitting an application so it was clear that Uncle Sugar as the U.S. government and the various Space Departments in it was called was serious this time.

His company had a readymade probe from a previous project. They had been underbid but the probe design was solid and they even had some of the hardware still on the shelf. It was all proven tech. They also had a new ion drive for a tug. The tug was running fuel back from the gas mines in the atmosphere of Uranus and Saturn. Therefore, it too was proven tech. He married the two in a spec doc and shot it off to the engineers and gave them twenty-four hours to come up with an initial plan and another seventy-two hours to have a complete blueprint.

They howled and complained they wanted to design it from scratch, but he was adamant that they go with as much off-the-shelf components as possible.

They had a lot of overtime and sleepless nights but managed to meet the deadline. He had the CAD drawings rendered by public affairs and then marketing had their turn at the cover sheet and design proposal. That meant his company was the first to submit a proposal.

He was not surprised when his office began to field calls from the DOD and NASA over the probe. They didn’t just accept it and wait; they wanted to run with it even though bidding had not officially closed yet.

He had his legal team and sales work out the contract specs even as the engineers began to draw the components from inventory and then begin to do tests to make sure they would survive the rigors of space. They came back to him asking about the margin, and he flat out told them to go costs plus 5 percent profit. No higher. They were surprised but passed it on.

An hour later, the contract was approved.

A day after that they had received initial approval from NASA while his company’s engineers signaled they had completed virtual stress tests and other simulations and were ready to go. Money came in; it would come in via a series of drafts as they met each goal.

He released the funding and the engineers got back to work.

<<O>>