The cop said, “Really? Good luck with that. It is less than half a mile to the White House. I will walk with you to the gate, if you don’t mind. You helped us catch the guy. It is the least we can do for you, especially if you are not going to the hospital. You could actually have been in the morgue if he hit you in the right place. You are a lucky man.”
“Yes, I know I am lucky. Thanks for the escort, but I am sure I will be fine. Thanks again.”
They shook hands, and the cop went back to his business of policing the demonstrators. Tom checked himself out one more time, took off all the protest slogan pins he had on, and put them in his pockets. He did not want to have people notice him and did not want the president to see him with those pins on. Although he still felt some pain, there was no blood, so he straightened himself up.
He walked over to the White House gate and gave the Secret Service his name. He waited a few minutes. Then, he was escorted to the Oval Office and introduced to President Trump. They shook hands. The president introduced Tom to the national security adviser, the White House chief of staff and the secretary of state.
President Trump began, “I have been advised by my national security adviser, Mark Egan, that you wish to speak to me about some kind of exploratory space trip due to problems that you believe are occurring because of global warming. So far, no one seems to be able to figure out exactly what you wish to do and what you want from me regarding the project. Please tell us what you are planning so that I have a better idea if we can or cannot help you. We particularly want to know what this will cost the government in terms of the budget and whether we will be able to make any money off of it.”
“Mr. President, you need to reverse your positions on the climate and global warming by rejoining the Paris Accord. You keep insisting that global warming is just a phase we are going through. Instead, you worry more about the stock market and how much money you are making. When the stock market crashes to zero, how much money will you have then? You could have worked with the world to prevent the catastrophes that will occur, but you refuse to believe it. You will not accept the scientific community’s research findings that continuously warn you of what will probably lead to the extinction of life on Earth.”
Trump said, “Look, many scientists do not share your opinion about the climate, and my gut tells me they are right and you are wrong. I am not going back to the Obama days. The environment is fine.”
“Mr. President, I am not here to ask for your approval or blessing on this project. I just thought as a United States citizen that I would let you know what we are planning and that is it. I would like your support, but whether you support the project or not makes no difference to the people working with me. You have made a total mess of just about everything you have done in your position and robbed the good citizens of this country and the world of any possible future. Just look at the strength of the recent hurricanes. Floods are getting worse. The Arctic is slowly melting, and the oceans are rising. Your grandchildren will probably not live to see old age. Your Lago Mar residence in Florida could be underwater in a few years. Mr. President, the only way to save humanity is to find another planet to ensure our survival. That is my team’s project. I am not sure when we will launch, but a certain number of people will be traveling the galaxies until we either find a planet or die trying to find one. I am not asking you for any funding. I do not care if you want to help me. I just thought it would be courteous for me to let you know our plans.”
The president looked like he was ready to explode. He looked at his Cabinet people in the room. Then he shouted, “You are right about one thing. The Earth is not going to end anytime soon. The stupid research scientists are just trying to get on my nerves and make money with their fake findings. You will not get any help from me or anyone for your fantasized dream of a spaceship to nowhere. No person can talk to me that way. It is evident, if you try to do this, everyone on board will probably perish.”
“You can believe what you want, Mr. President, but people have the right to decide their future. You are playing with the lives of everyone in this world and will go down in history as the man who destroyed life on Earth.”
Tom walked out of the room.
As Tom got into a cab to return to the hotel, he wondered what the president would think when things started to become worse.
This was all too irrational to Tom. It seemed that the man in the White House had never found any contentment in anything about the meaning of life, the substance of life or anything to do with maintaining life. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the cab’s rear-view mirror and saw in his own eyes a tension that threatened to strain his very cornea. He felt as if they were speeding around a curve being thrown outwards despite the fact that they were driving on a very straight stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue. He felt fortunate that the world and so many countries had so many scientific minds. How could the highest office willfully ignore so much substance? The feeling he felt was like the loss of equilibrium that he’d only felt during earthquakes. Any moment it could shift again, and you couldn’t trust the ground you stood on for fear of another aftershock. It was shocking how overlooked he felt now.
The cab stopped at a red light. Tom was uneasy. Humankind had been on a quest for knowledge and somehow had found itself merely led by a man who feared the loss of what he knew. His own loss welled up in him momentarily, as he considered whether his courtesy call had been a total loss. He recalled the pain in his arm. The threat he’d posed to his assailant’s sovereignty was a loss and unfortunate, but he’d gained by getting him locked up. He started to feel better. If he was going to do anything about his plan, he had to do it before he talked to another windbag with status that could reduce the entire cosmos down to ‘nowhere.’
Chapter 6 – More Planning
Tom Burns, Aurora, CO
While Tom had been in DC, he had several members of his team set up a temporary office in Aurora until they were able to get further along and secure a permanent location. He’d already put in a few calls. It was barely 8 am on Monday morning when he walked in to meet with his team. The offices would be fine during the planning phase, and it was a short drive from his house.
He along with five members of his team began to implement their plan. They all agreed that it was clear that our solar system did not have the right planets to save the human race. However, many possibilities had been discovered in the past twenty years. By 2016 scientists had found approximately fifty-one galaxies which contained about five hundred solar systems. His boss, Frankie, was right about one thing. At the current top speed of a rocket, Mach 4, the human race would never be able to reach any of them. They recognized an increased speed would be necessary for any spaceship that was developed. It was estimated that there could be approximately ten or more (currently undiscovered) worlds capable of sustaining life as we know it. Thus, scientists had to figure out how to succeed and survive such an undertaking.
Tom recalled reading that Carl Sagan had once told Michio Kau: “We live in the middle of a shooting gallery with thousands of asteroids in our path that we haven’t even discovered yet. So, let’s be at least a two-planet species, as a backup plan.” So, of course, the battle of the billionaires trying to shape the future meant not only keeping up with the latest Silicon Valley space explorer ready to fulfill a childhood dream but also keeping up on scientific genetic breakthroughs like the Mighty Mouse gene and the possible super-Earths.
Tom had spent hours reading about the gravitational field differences. He shared his findings with the group. It would be a big challenge to overcome Earth’s gravitational field by fifty per cent, but as some who have studied transhumanism have found, an increase in muscles and bones could be just the enhancement needed to adapt to new frontiers if terraforming became essentially impossible. Once initial experimentation phases happened, the adaptations might even become possible. Scientists hadn’t rejected the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B and the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b despite questions about nearby outbursts of solar flares. The flares may have harmed the atmospheres and ruined any chance of possible habitability if the environment is too extreme for life as we know it, but it was still up for debate and their impact was still being measured.