Enlightenment [Book 2: SEKTOR V Trilogy]

Chapter 10: Making Sense of it All

Chapter 10: Making Sense of it All

"OK, OK, let's get back on track. I asked a simple question to one person and I received tangential answers from everyone else instead. Let's try this again. Amita, did we see evidence of a nuclear holocaust in the re-runs?"

Dr. Amita Narain, the Director of Numerical Modeling at Næsta Kynslóð, took her time answering Maddy. She remained defensive given the incontrovertible findings from the eleven-month Jump teams. The world was scorched beyond recognition and repair. And the Jump in question was along their existing timeline, not some random, distant Ensemble member. But what could she do? She had the best modelers in the world on her team. She also had the most advanced, multi-faceted, and fully-integrated modeling system known to Mankind, not to mention the most accurate initial conditions ever assembled, thanks to the input from nearly fifty global teams who documented nearly everything she had asked for. And yet, their simulations didn't come close to matching up with this timeline's future reality. Not one of the nearly one million future possible realities depicted conditions anything remotely similar to what was documented by the Jump teams. The closest they had come was what looked like a regional-scale volcanic event depicted in 32 of the 1,000,000 Ensemble members. However, even in these few instances, the global climate impact was relatively modest and there was no evidence of a radiative signature.

She knew the Chancellor's question was a simple one and decided to answer it accordingly the second time around. "No, Chancellor, we did not see any evidence whatsoever of a nuclear exchange. Nothing even remotely close to that was simulated in any of our potential outcomes."

Members of her team, seated next to and behind her in the main auditorium, began to speak in low but audible tones.

"Please everyone, settle down!" Maddy snapped. "This is not a witch hunt. No one is trying to assign blame or is questioning your competence. We're trying to figure out how we could be so far off. I was hopeful that the lack of adequate initial conditions for the first Dial Jump was a primary cause for the disconnect between simulation outcome and our future potential reality, but as we now know, that was not the case.

"Amita, do you and your team think that simulation duration is a significant issue that needs to be looked at further? Eleven months out is farther than we have ever tried before and—"

"No," Dr. Narain cut her off. "My team has thoroughly explored this issue. While it's true that uncertainties associated with extreme duration simulations can, to a certain degree, impact the final solution, it's also true that the nature and sheer magnitude of the discrepancies documented between simulated and actual conditions eleven months from now are simply too extreme. Furthermore, given the unprecedented investment in global initialization for these particular runs, we believe that it's highly unlikely that none of the nearly one million simulations conducted would come close to the conditions observed by the eleven-month Jump teams."

"I'm confused. What exactly are you saying, Amita?"

"We're confused as well, Madam Chancellor," she replied as the hushed side chatter returned.

"Please, people!" Maddy barked. She didn't want to be 'that guy' but she also was losing her patience being schoolma'am to a collection of 150 plus IQ-ers.

The room settled down again...quickly this time.

"Please continue, Doctor."

"I will state this as plainly as I can," Amita said. "We believe that the socioeconomic-physical modeling system that we have successfully operated for years is performing precisely as it should. We believe that the source driving the discrepancy is elsewhere."

"But where?" Maddy asked. "The world that your team's simulations depict is barely noticeably different than what we have today. In most cases, the conditions suggest that only minimal additional political or social upheaval is likely to occur. In fact, the continuation of the global stabilization trend we have witnessed over the past twelve months is very likely to continue and the overwhelming majority of the Ensemble members that your team has analyzed seem to be in agreement on this. These results, when compared with the ground truth you and I have both seen from our Jump teams, are stark. If we do nothing, it is highly likely that our global population will be decimated."

She paused briefly as she eyed her science team. The cold reality of that last line had hit them all like a ton of bricks. She was pretty certain there would be no further interruptions.

"Our Jump team estimates, using in-situ sampling, global missile surveillance, and residual satellite resources, depict somewhere between three and four billion people will remain 11 months from now. This estimate, down from 8.8 billion today, would continue to shrink over time. Most water sources they found were contaminated while existing food stores were either completely or mostly destroyed."

The room was now dead quiet. Everyone looked uneasy as the urgency of the situation settled in.

Maddy couldn't see how any of what they were facing was possible. And why was their renowned modeling system suddenly failing? Or was it? Her gaze returned to Amita. Perhaps she's right. What's missing in the simulations?

And at that very moment, it hit her...hard.

Amita's earlier words of confusion brought Maddy the sudden clarity she'd been looking for. "The source driving the discrepancy is elsewhere," she said in a loud, deliberate voice.

Of course it was...

"The source of the discrepancy is Extraterrestrial."