Chapter the 17th-International Fallout!!

CHAPTER-17
OUTPOST, for Tom Luong Films
By Julian Phillips
Feb.18, 2010
"It is a joy to sin, sometimes, and a needful matter. Christ the Lord was familiar with wicked ways and means, the brutality and savagery of life, and the unexpected qualities of life’s long journey. Our sins are as holy as our good deeds and religion, and without an open door to errors and mistakes, the door also slams shut to visualize or realize a better tomorrow, for the absence of change and dynamic circumstance. I don’t believe in mistakes. To disallow for illness, broken legs, or broken minds, perhaps from a higher loving point-of-view, it does not follow we shall no longer have hospitals or doctors. The future will have many mistakes, and the Mars Space Program includes every variety of joys. Our astronauts are not robots. We are men, not machines. There are no sinless astronauts, Your Excellency. It is not a requirement for space-travel."
---US-Mars Space Program Director Lynn Rodgers-Smith, to His Excellency Imam Mohammed Petrarch-Jinn, Interpreter of Global Sharia-Law to the World Council of Nations, 2077

This man, Imam Mohammed Petrarch-Jinn, was part of the World Council of Nations, and was sent from Iran. In this era of 2075-77, and beyond, when the impending disaster of the approach of Big Baby Bertha, Asteroid-2756b, was now fairly common knowledge among world-leaders on Earth, and educated types, Iran was a much more powerful world power, by reason of religious philosophy common to billions of people. Global Sharia-Law, though not beholden to much more than one-third of Mankind, was a considerable impendence to the space program in the East, the so-called Russian-Islamic Space Alliance. By 2077, Iran had expanded its borders to swallow up many other regions, including Mesopotamia, the Tigris and Euphraties, Babylon, the Cradle of Civilization. They were part of the space-travel community. By the time Lynn Rodgers-Smith was addressing a closed-session of the Council, the Easterners had by then launched their five ship to Mars, now confirmed by most sources. It was a violation of International Law, as usual for times of crisis, and Big Baby Bertha certainly qualified as a crisis in everyone’s thoughts. His Excellency the Imam was busily accusing the US side, during the discussions, as a reply to defend the Easterner’s actions with the space-launches to Mars. As absurd as it was, under Global Sharia, the interpretation was that the sins of the West had produced the Wrath of God in the form of the meteor. Lynn, the busty Texas woman, Commander of Angels, could only shrug him off as irrelevant. But the World-Council had to hear all sides.
"They’re not quite sure if weightlessness is a sin or not, under Sharia," she confided privately to Ibrahim Mehudi, the Science-and-Technology guru for the Western program.
"Nothing they do can ever be wrong or cruel," said Ibrahim. "Global-Sharia means their astronauts are also Saints to Islam. We are all inferior in their minds, so taking the Mars-base is their right and duty, by any means."
"I could give a fig," Rodgers-Smith replied. "We have far more serious problems than pork products on the Mars-base dinner menu, for God’s sake."
The five deep-space cruisers were now two months out, at least, trailing Guy Reisling’s ship by eight or nine weeks, on the passage to the Red Planet. It was a bit of a race, but ship’s pilots could vary their engine speeds using the common hydrogen-thrusters, and also by changing course for shorter lines of travel, as the planets were moving. Because the Russian-Islamic launches were done in secret, and lacked the usual clearances and permissions, the World-Council was to be consulted. It was a drab affair, also conducted out of the public-eye, with many meetings in musty-stale rooms full of angry people alienated by culture and goals. And whatever their conclusions, nothing would change anyway. It was a done-deal, the ships were on their way. No amount of argument and legality was likely to produce a radio-transmission to the Russian ship-pilots with orders to turn around and head home, which was not even a navigational maneuver that was possible with any safety.
So it was a stand-off. Following the Russian launches, the West gathered their intelligence and data-facts, more-or-less proving the matter to world space-travel authorities, as far as what the Russian-Islamic program had done, which was to send five deep-space vessels aloft and on their way to Mars. Inter-planet diplomacy was now a reality back on Earth. There was nowhere else for those ships to go, and much like the laws of the high-seas, Earth-powers had rules and laws about that sort of thing. The main reason was not philosophical, but instead was related to the success of orbital satellites and Earth-Moon commerce, a big business interest by this time in 2077. So they had broken laws, but everyone knew it was bullshit, a turd-in-transit, irreversible.
After they were called out on the deed, a predictably vague response from the East declared the Russian-Islamic powers were ignorant of the launches, or the accuracy of the Western intelligence. Official denial pretended they would "look into it", and tossed out the bone that there may have been some rocketry in the hinterlands, that was somehow less than authorized. By the time the World-Council took sessions on the matter, it was too late, and of course the Easterners knew this. At the same time, the World-Council continued to discuss the approaching meteor.
"The asteroid can destroy half the world. If it hits, the impact might wipe out entire continents, billions of people. An ice-age winter of darkness will descend for 1,000 years. Any survival at all would be almost unbearably bleak," Ibrahim Mehudi testified to the Council, as one who supposedly knew. "From this day-and-date today, here-and-now, we may be no less than four to six years away from such an event. That is the science and the truth as I know it."
And so did everyone else among them. Back at Vandenberg, as international diplomacy continued its useless and heated course (the meetings were held in Switzerland), there was a quick and inevitable decision to put into action the plans and preparations of the US-Mars Base Defense Task Force. And like dropping a hat, this meant the US side would also launch ships, as a defensive response---also in secret. Communications, decisions and choices, like waves of gloriously dubious destiny, were sent back and forth, continent-to-continent, coast to coast, and planet to planet. Older generation leaders recognized the signs---it was starting to look a lot like war. Indeed, as things were now in motion to secure the Mars-base, leaders as high up as the US Presidential Seated Council, were nervous as hell that war would also break out here on Earth over the whole thing.
"A rock," commented US Presidential Council-Seat Mark Renolds, a wiry and spry white-male of about age 65-years, known for his freckled face and background as a farmer. "This entire ape-shit world-fucking crisis has been caused by a rock."
By the year 2077, the American White House and the President’s Office, had been divided into a Presidential Seated Council of four individually-elected persons. So, in other words, America had finally made significant structural leadership changes and Constitutional adaptations, thought to be for the good of all, and having occupied previous leadership for many years to accomplish. Elected in a rotating four-year cycle, such that at no time was any member of the Presidential Seat without at least two years of on-the-job experience, the group now included Renolds, a Southerner named Boline Bouvier (a Black man and educator from the University of Texas faculty), a Caucasian woman named Martha Hazlett, who at age 45 was basically a widely popular athlete (swimmer), with a law-degree, and a youngish Hispanic man from a large farming family, also with a law-degree and business background, named Martinez Jeses-Garrido (age 38-years). Renolds and Bouvier were the more senior members, and more mature.
"A very, very big rock, Mark," replied his foil, Bouvier. They held a meeting one day in the traditional White House (still in use), during the heated fallout of the information about the Russian space-launches. "But just a rock, none-the-less." All four members of the Council-Seat were present.
"It’s not just Mars," added Martinez Jeses-Garrido, who had a fertile and active mind, very keen on the practical, ever the best of the utilitarian American character. "If they won’t back down, there may be retaliation or military response here on earth we’d have to respond to as well."
"I don’t see why," said Hazlett. It’s only a base, just---an outpost. If the East went into war-mode, what would be the motivation? They’d still have to deal with Mars. It wouldn’t solve a thing."
"It never does, does it?" responded Bouvier.
"With the meteor---decisions are likely to be irrational. A meaningless panic," said Renolds.
"Great," said Hazlett.
"Just tell Military to authorize Vandenberg’s response, and also I guess Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, and any of the others. We already have plans in place. Obviously, we have to protect Mars, and avoid an East-West global war or crisis at the same time. They sent five ships, we’ll send ten," said Renolds, who tended to take the lead. "Agreed?"
"Ten, or eight, or nine," said Bouvier. "Yes, agreed."
"Agreed," said Hazlett and Jeses-Garrido, almost in unison.
It was morning, and the World Council meetings about the Russian-Islamic space launches, and efforts to deflect Big Baby Bertha, had now been underway for three or four days in Switzerland. The Presidential Seated Council at the US White House met together in a large rotunda, complete with all the traditional US-White House décor and flourish. Washington, D.C., was typically muggy and warm, but the lilt and clouds that met the new day and hot sunlit dawn, reminded even these four world-leaders, as close and dear as any family, in their office, that life goes on, no matter what happens.
"Make it official, send down a directive. Let’s get back to work on what’s being done about this fucking rock out there in space that’s going to kill us all in a few years," said Renolds.
Bouvier, the Black man, who was somewhat younger than Renolds at age 57-years, and had a very round, cherubic face, as dark-skinned as any Afrikaaner, leaned back in one of the deeply cushioned chairs they used. "Speak for yourself," he said.
And so it went on, in the halls of power and empire-Earth, that year in 2077, once again with an impending war and disaster. The lighted paths of hope for the future were dimming, closing like the iris of a camera-lens, or as the iris of the eye shrinks in light, or widens in the dark. None could predict the outcome. But if the meteor were a certainty to strike the Earth, be it the Wrath of God or no, the base on Mars, and other outposts on the Earth’s moon, and Molinari, and the ships-in-space themselves, and Earth-orbiting life-support stations, could be vastly important, perhaps even the only surviving advanced helps for whatever remained. If it took 100 years, following a devastating meteor strike like BBB, some sort of sustained extrinsic presence, with the technology and knowledge retained in their computer libraries, could potentially begin to rebuild a civilized Earth, the only home mankind had ever had. Thus, a somewhat passionate dilemma.
Likewise, and not easily dismissed, away in the Southern Ukraine, in the chilly crags and rocky woods of Spaceport KKF/Region Six, Rudolph Terchenko, the Russian Commander of the launch-site and secret facilities there, well knew and understood, that the fallout of their decision to launch the five Mars-bound ships, would pester and boil for a long while, as everything else was happening. The Region-Six ‘think tank’ was on full-power now, and Terchenko found himself oddly strengthened and even delighted at the chaos. His personal assistant, Milana, the gorgeously youthful and also quite educated young woman from Saint Petersberg, could not help but admire the older man’s vigorous thrill and rush of power, as he handled all the various difficulties. She was secretly in love with him, as a less-wealthy and lesser-stationed common Russian girl who had found her way into a cool job. Rudolph Terchenko was big and bold, but also at least somewhat kind-hearted, and wise.
"Are we really all going to die, Commander, if the meteor hits us?" she asked him.
"There is no death, girl," Rudolph replied. They were in his private office. Milana had somehow gathered reams of paper data-files showing every known radio, telephone, TV, Internet, and print communication or research, or email transmissions, radio-logs from satellites, and even collected recordings from ‘bugs’ placed in various embassies and certain hotel rooms in Switzerland. The two of them had now been hours at work going over each of them, to learn what was known, or supposed, as to how the ‘real’ actions of the Eastern space-program had filtered out into the un-real world of mass-communications, and governmental sources.
"Please, Commander Rudolph," Milana said. "People die almost every day."
"That is their choice. They are---or, we all are---30 billion suicides."
"30-billion suicides? 30-billion---people? 30-billion people who committed suicide? You are joking, Commander. The population of the whole world is only---"
"There is no death, girl," Terchenko re-affirmed. "Don’t be a pest. These radio logs are useless, I can’t even read them. What are you good for then, you tart? Just put those down on the table, and run out for my dinner if you would, please. I am not a philosopher who can comfort your fears of death. You’ll be fine. There is no death."
She did as she was told.
　
---Julian Phillips
2,294-words