The Destroyer

Chapter Ten

"Then what about Sahara?"  Carmelo pressed.

"By then, we would have transferred all vital information and human uploads to Sahara. I will handle the repositioning to three thousand," said Lola. "I need to get out of the direct line of sight of the moon. It will also take the brunt of the burst, the reflected light could cause damage to Phoenix."

One of the generals still grappling with light speed concepts, couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "And why are moving to three thousand? I am no rocket scientist, but I am guessing that Sahara will then no longer be stationary. And that's what you want?" The question rang credible and relatively well informed, more than the dim general could have hoped for.

"Yes," answered Lola, no longer one to tire physically but mentally still hesitant to suffer fools.

Now emboldened, the terse response didn't sit well with the general, who was privately looking for an education. "You want the thing at three thousand, but how in the hell will you know where it's gonna be? You might be sittin' over China when this death ray comes a callin'."  Last ounce of credibility now spent, the room was silent, supposedly in hopes that Lola would field the question. She didn't. The silence persisted and the general shifted uneasily in his chair.  Unlike the time he had farted in the situation room, where no one knew who to blame, he was now exposed and left dangling. He reddened.

Compassionately, President Carmelo finally broke the silence. "I'm sure Lola knows what she's doing. General, if you still feel uncomfortable, why don't you follow up with her after the meeting."

"Let me say one thing in response to the general's question. The fact that Sahara will be orbiting nearly seven times a day, implies quite a high velocity. It suggests that the knowledge of when the burst will hit is known very precisely. I can't explain to you why I know the time so precisely. All I can tell you is that I have never been so certain of anything in my life. You can be skeptical. You can demand the real data, all of the things that science teaches us to do. In this particular case, you would be sorely mistaken to follow that path. You will be paying with your life and the lives of all those who follow you. I don't care if you are skeptical. That's fine. But please cover your bets. The cost and the difficulty, is minimal."

"Okay, I've heard enough. As much as I really do harbor skepticism, I will allow this exercise to go forward. And the caves and the tunnels. I guess we are tee minus a little less than two years. Soon we will know, one way or the other. Of course I speak for all of us when I say that I hope you are wrong.  But as you say. Let's cover our bets." With that, the madame president concluded the meeting and they set about to reposition the satellite and discreetly finish the underground caves.

Lola and in fact all of humanity was fortunate to have Sahara, a relatively new, unmanned global data center. It was a practical effort to deal with the immense amount of computing energy required in a digital world. The built-in, tenth of a second delay was more than compensated by the massive parallel direct transmission technologies developed to allow this computing and storage behemoth to sit in its remote location, sucking up vast quantities of sunshine and burning nuclear fuel, then radiating nearly all of that energy back to space at lower frequencies. It was an ideal entropy machine. But it saved immense amounts of thermal radiation on earth, which was now an even bigger problem than high energy consumption.

Sahara used a combination of high efficiency, multi junction GaAs solar arrays, capable of generating nearly seven hundred watts per square meter in space, and a cumulative generation of one point five terawatts across one hundred and fifty, ten gigawatt Thorium reactors. The solar array was essentially just an emergency backup, to bridge any service intervals related to reactor downtime, as it only amounted to several megawatts of power.