The world was like a fish out of water, already begging for a breath.
When she arrived at the World Crisis Organization, Yan Dong reported to the bureau chief. The bureau chief brought her to a large office and introduced her to the group she would be working with. Yan Dong looked at the office door. Unlike the other ones, this one had no nameplate. The bureau chief said:
“This is a secret group. Everything done here is strictly confidential. In order to avoid social unrest, we call this group the Monument Division.”
Entering the office, Yan Dong realized the people here were all somewhat eccentric: Some had hair that was too long. Some had no hair at all. Some were immaculately dressed, as if the world weren’t falling apart around them. Some wore only shorts. Some seemed dejected, others abnormally excited. Many oddly shaped models sat on a long table in the middle of the office. Yan Dong couldn’t guess what they might be for.
“Welcome, Ice Sculptor.” The head of the Monument Division enthusiastically shook Yan Dong’s hand after the bureau chief’s introduction. “You’ll finally have the opportunity to elaborate on the inspiration you received from the alien. Of course, this time, you can’t use ice. What we want to build is a work that must last forever.”
“What for?”
The division head looked at the bureau chief, then back at Yan Dong. “You still don’t know? We want to establish a monument to humanity!”
Yan Dong felt even more at a loss with this explanation.
“It’s humanity’s tombstone,” an artist to her side said. This person had long hair and tattered clothes, and gave the impression of decadence. One hand held a bottle of sorghum liquor that he’d drunk until he was somewhat tipsy. The liquor was left over from the Oceaned Days and now much cheaper than water.
Yan Dong looked all around, then said, “But… we’re not dead yet.”
“If we wait until we’re dead, it’ll be too late,” the bureau chief said. “We ought to plan for the worst case. The time to think about this is now.”
The division head nodded. “This is humanity’s final work of art, and also its greatest work of art. For an artist, what can be more profound than to join in its creation?”
“Fucking, actually…. Much more,” the long-haired artist said, waving the bottle. “Tombstones are for your descendants to pay homage to. We’ll have no descendants, but we’ll still erect a fucking tomb?”
“Pay attention to the name. It’s a monument,” the division head corrected solemnly. Laughing, he said to Yan Dong, “However, the idea he put forth is very good: He proposed that everyone in the world donate a tooth. Those teeth can be used to create a gigantic tablet. Carving a word on each tooth is sufficient to engrave the most detailed history of human civilization on the tablet.” He pointed at a model that looked like a white pyramid.
“This is blasphemy against humanity,” a bald-headed artist shouted. “The worth of humanity lies in its brains, but he wants to commemorate us with our teeth!”
The long-haired artist took another swig from his bottle. “Teeth…. Teeth are easy to preserve.”
“The vast majority of people are still alive!” Yan Dong repeated solemnly.
“But for how long?” the long-haired artist said. As he asked this question, his enunciation suddenly became precise. “Water no longer falls from the sky. The rivers have dried. Our crops have utterly failed for three years now. Ninety percent of the factories have stopped production. The remaining food and water, how long can that sustain us?”
“You heap of waste.” The bald-headed artist pointed at the bureau chief. “Bustling around for five years and you still can’t bring even one block of ice back from space.”
The bureau chief laughed off the bald-headed artist’s criticism. “It’s not that simple. Given current technology, forcing down one block of ice from orbit isn’t hard. Forcing down one hundred, up to one thousand blocks of ice is doable. But forcing back all two hundred thousand blocks of ice orbiting the Earth, that’s another matter completely. If we use conventional techniques, a rocket engine could slow a block of ice enough that it would fall back into the atmosphere. That would mean building a large number of reusable high-power engines, then sending them into space. That’s a massive-scale engineering project. Given our current technology level and what resources we’ve stockpiled, there are many insurmountable obstacles. For example, in order to save the Earth’s ecosystem, if we start now, we’d need to force down half the blocks of ice within four years, an average of twenty-five thousand per year. The weight of rocket fuel required would be greater than the amount of gasoline humanity used in one year during the Oceaned Days! Except it isn’t gasoline. It’s liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, dinitrogen tetroxide, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, and so on. They need over a hundred times more energy and natural resources to produce than gasoline. Just this one thing makes the entire plan impossible.”
The long-haired artist nodded. “In other words, doomsday is not far away.”
The bureau chief said, “No, not necessarily. We can still adopt some nonconventional techniques. There is still hope. While we’re working on this, though, we must still plan for the worst.”
“This is exactly why I came,” Yan Dong said.
“To plan for the worst?” the long-haired artist asked.
“No, because there’s still hope.” She turned to the bureau chief. “It doesn’t matter why you brought me here. I came for my own purpose.” She pointed to her bulky travel bag. “Please take me to the Ocean Recovery Division.”
“What can you do in the Ocean Recovery Division? They’re all scientists and engineers there,” the bald-headed artist wondered.
“I’m a research fellow in applied optics.” Yan Dong’s gaze swept past the artists. “Besides daydreaming along with you, I can also do some practical things.”
After Yan Dong insisted, the bureau chief brought her to the Ocean Recovery Division. The mood here was completely different from the Monument Division. Everyone was tense, working on their computers. A drinking fountain stood in the middle of the office. They could take a drink whenever they wanted. This was treatment worthy of kings. But considering that the hope of the world rested on the people in this room, it wasn’t so surprising.
When Yan Dong saw the Ocean Recovery Division’s lead engineer, she told her, “I’ve brought a plan for reclaiming the ice blocks.”
As she spoke, she opened her travel bag. She took out a white tube about as thick as an arm, followed by a cylinder about a meter long. Yan Dong walked to a window that faced the sun. She stuck the cylinder out the window, then shook it back and forth. The cylinder opened like an umbrella. Its concave side was plated with a mirror coating. That turned it into something like a parabolic reflector for a solar stove. Next, Yan Dong pushed the tube through a small hole at the bottom of the paraboloid, then adjusted the reflector so that it focused sunlight at the end of the tube. Immediately, the other end of the tube cast an eye-stabbing point of light on the floor. Because the tube lay flat on the floor, the point was an exaggerated oval.
Yan Dong said, “This uses the latest optical fiber to create a waveguide. There’s very little attenuation. Naturally, an actual system would be much larger than this. In space, a parabolic reflector only about twenty meters in diameter can create a point of light at the other end of the waveguide with a temperature of over three thousand degrees.”