Interior Project Sasquatch and a History of the Bonoban Era v1
This book is written from a historical perspective and presents a 10,000 year record of life in the planetary system of the Sun. The calendar used is the Bonoban Calendar which noted passage of events during the Bonoban Era. That calendar and era began as a reinitiation of the Gregorian Calendar, which previously had recorded time during the Gregorian Era. The reinitiation marked the point when humanity lost it's genetic innocence by intentionally creating hybrids between humans and bonobos.
PROJECT SASQUATCH A N D A H I S TO RY O F T H E B O N O B A N E R A CHRISTON J. HURST
Copyright © 2027 by Christon J. Hurst All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the copyright owner, except for brief quotations in reviews and other uses permitted by copyright law. Published by Sabio Publications ISBN: This book is a work of science fiction presented in the form of a historical narrative. References to actual historical events, scientific concepts, places, institutions, or organizations are incorporated into a fictional setting. Their inclusion does not imply their participation in or endorsement of the fictional events described. The speculative scientific developments, genetic experiments, and future events depicted are elements of the story and should not be interpreted as factual accounts or scientific guidance. Citation for cover image: “History of the Bonoban Era” was created by Christon J. Hurst in 2026 and it includes individual NASA images. Printed in the United States of America.
iii Dedication: When I was young, once a week I rode the city bus from where I attended school to downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, to wash microscope slides at the medical office where my mother worked as a nurse. I was paid very little for washing those slides, but that was not the goal and importantly it got me close to the science that I enjoyed. I discovered the Tom Swift Jr. series of science fiction books on display in a department store near to that medical office. Those books captured my sense of adventure. Each week, after getting off the bus but before I went to the medical office, I would go into the department store with a sense of excitement to see if they had a new book in that series sitting on the display table. Price is relative, and I needed to save coins for weeks in order to buy a new volume of that series. The immunology technician who also worked in that office was Virginia A. Bowmer, whom I knew as Miss Bowmer. One day, I showed toMiss Bowmer my prized possession which was a newly released Tom Swift Jr. book that I had bought. From then onward, whenever I and Miss Bowmer happened to be in the office on the same day, she would ask me if there was a new Tom Swift Jr. book. When therewas a new book, Miss Bowmer would very kindly give me money to buy the new book. That kindness always was offered although I never asked for it. I was delighted both with the books and with Miss Bowmer’s kindness. I collected through volume twenty-two of that series and they were my prized possessions, kept on a small bookshelf in my bedroom. Tom Swift Jr. books were not the first time that I was fascinated by reading science fiction. That start was when I read a library copy of Heinlein’s “Have Spacesuit will Travel”. But, the Tom Swift Jr. books were the proud beginning
iv of my own science fiction home library. Eventually, I graduated from reading adolescent science fiction to the ABC’s of adult science fiction. By that, I mean the books by Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke. My career led me along a path of science. I now have completed the editing of twenty-two microbiology books and happily seen them published. Through the many decades that I worked with colleagues to create those science books I held aside this work of science fiction to eventually fill the spot of my twenty-third book. This book now fills that spot and I hope it will be enjoyed. I thank Virginia A. Bowmer for her supportive kindness both with my interest in science and in science fiction books. I very happily dedicate this book to her for the kindness and encouragement that she always gave to me. Thank you, Miss Bowmer.
v Acknowledgements: I have been tremendously encouraged in this writing effort by Rachel Hurst, Mary Anne Stockmeier, James Stockmeier and the crew at Jet’s Pizza Anderson. I thank Michael Allen for his enthusiastic response that included helpful suggestions when I asked him if I had chosen the correct marine microbe to genetically engineer for causing climate change.
vi Introduction to the book: This book is written from a historical perspective and presents a 10,000 year record of life in the planetary system of the Sun. The calendar used is the Bonoban Calendar which noted passage of events during the Bonoban Era. That calendar and era began as a reinitiation of the Gregorian Calendar, which previously had recorded time during the Gregorian Era. The reinitiation marked the point when humanity lost its genetic innocence by intentionally creating hybrids between humans and bonobos.
vii About the author: Christon J. Hurst has a doctorate in virology, which is the study of viruses, and is a consulting microbiologist residing in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has taught professional and university level courses in biology, engineering and public health. He also has taught ballroom dance as fine art for a university and instructed amateur sailing. His previous publications have included twenty- two edited books on a range of microbiology topics. This book is his first effort at writing science fiction.
viii Prologue This book presents a 10,000 yearhistory of a civilization that existed long ago, in a Galaxy named the Milky Way. The members of that civilization had evolved naturally from apes and called themselves “Humans”. They lived within the planetary system of a star which they called “The Sun”and their civilization began on the planet which they had named “Earth”. This book includes examples of the errors which its scientists committed when they determined to perform genetic engineering without first questioning the wisdom of their planned experiments. My recounting for you of that civilization’s history begins when the humans lost their genetic innocence by creating hybrids between themselves and another species of ape which they called bonobos. That engineering effort was designated Project Sasquatch and the hybrids were called bonobans. At that point the humans had ceased to be passive recipients of their genetic destiny by instead converting themselves into their own genetic authors. That hybridization event reset their recording of time from the Gregorian Calendar to the Bonoban Calendar and began the BonobanEra. There were four questions which the humansshould have considered before beginning their experiments. The first question was “Could the genetic heritage of that hybrid ape species be accepted by humans?”. The other three questions were: “Might biologically sequestering carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere be a good choice for achieving planetary climate control and might Earth’s ecosystems recover from the ecological damage that humans had caused on that planet?”, “Was successful colonization achievable on a moon of the Earth which they called Luna?” and “Would a more wisely
ix applied genetic engineering eventually enable Earth’s humans to permanently resettle as climate refugees on a different planet which they called Mars?”. When viewed from the perspective of a 10,000 year history the greatest question became whether the humans, which collectively described themselves as humanity, had proved to be the wise child.
xi C ONTENTS Prologue..................................................................................................viii Chapter 1 - The Gregorian Calendar Reaches Its End................................ 1 Chapter 2 - Year 1 of the Bonoban Calendar: Lycia................................... 5 Chapter 3 - Year 10 of the Bonoban Calendar: Yendegaia........................ 12 Chapter 4 - Year 50 of the Bonoban Calendar: Development of Bonoban Cultural Identity................................................ 16 Chapter 5 - Year 100 of the Bonoban Calendar: Can Freedom be Bought?............................................................................ 22 Chapter 6 - Year 150 of the Bonoban Calendar: Rise of the Federalist Party...................................................................... 32 Chapter 7 - Year 200 of the Bonoban Calendar: “O Canada”.................. 36 Chapter 8 - Year 250 of the Bonoban Calendar: Agricultural Genetic Warfare and Its Consequences.................................. 40 Chapter 9 - Year 300 of the Bonoban Calendar: Creation of Emiliania huxleyi glacialis..................................................... 49 Chapter 10 - Year 400 of the Bonoban Calendar: Learning to Sail the Solar Winds.............................................................. 62 Chapter 11 - Year 500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Establishing Goals for Inhabiting Luna and Mars..................................... 84 Chapter 12 - Year 1,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: The Rise of Lunar Tourism .................................................................. 97 Chapter 13 - Year 1,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: The Discovery of Mutons........................................................................... 119
xii Chapter 14 - Year 2,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Writing in the Sky ................................................................................ 129 Chapter 15 - Year 2,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Reopening of the Coal Mines................................................................ 142 Chapter 16 - Year 3,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Noah’s Ark............. 145 Chapter 17 - Year 3,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Creating Martian Ecosystems............................................................. 165 Chapter 18 - Year 4,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Planning for the Great Separation...................................................... 181 Chapter 19 - Year 4,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Settling on the New Planet............................................................... 194 Chapter 20 - Year 5,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Messages from Visnu .......................................................................... 216 Chapter 21 - Year 6,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Ending the Federation of Luna........................................................ 224 Chapter 22 - Year 7,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Tundra on Earth and Tango on Mars.................................................... 239 Chapter 23 - Year 8,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Fewer languages on Earth and Establishing the Martian Olympics................ 244 Chapter 24 - Year 10,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Did Humanity Prove to Be the Wise Child?................................................ 250 Chapter 25 - Epilogue........................................................................... 258
1 Chapter 1 - The Gregorian Calendar Reaches Its End Perhaps eight thousand years before starting the Gregorian calendar, humans had begun the process of selecting and interbreeding species by choosing which plants and animals seemed to have the most desirable physical traits. That ancient genetic experimentation plus the accompanying process of selectively destroying any individuals which d emonstrated undesired characteristics changed the planet’s genetic landscapes. Those efforts successfully established the basis for agricultural production and facilitated growth of human populations at a cost to the Earth’s other resident species. It had been the efforts of Gregor Mendel, who studied pea plants, that provided the first scientific clues as to what humansactually were doing. That same philosophy, accompanied by the goal of national genetic purity, eventually would drive Adolf Hitler’s concept of promoting a Master Race. The twentieth century of the Gregorian calendar saw the “War to End Wars” when chemical warfare was used on humans. Ending the evilness of such warfare was a very optimistic concept, but failed to hold true. Once humans grasped how to commit such actionsthey did not easily let go. The British pharmacologist John William Trevan, from Cornwall, began applying his scientific skills to study and calculate the probability of frogs and mice dying when they were injected with toxins. When Trevan published his landmark results in 1927 as “The error of determination of toxicity” it captured the interest of people who wished to perform toxicity testing on humans. Interweaving toxicity testing with genetic research on humans would become the ultimate goal. If any hesitancies existed about experiments on humans, there was an alternative option that had been developing in Russia since the
2 C HRISTON J. H URST 1920s. The Russian biologist Ilya Ivanov, born in Shchigry, tried during that decade to create interspecies hybrids between humans and chimpanzees by using artificial insemination. Ivanov died before achieving success and his technology was crude in comparison with the reproductive research that eventually would come along. The second world war provided some protective cover for delving further into a true sense of evil. Toxic medical research and alsogenetic experiments would be performed on humans. Following the ending of those military activities in Europe, Allied governments justifiably vilified atrocities that had been committed by the Nazis against prisoners. And yet, all of those accusing Allied countries tried to get their hands on the data! The Japanese Unit 731 had committed its own atrocities, a fact that was hushed in exchange for allowing the United States government to see the data. But,truth be known, the U.S. was then not far delayed in establishing its own program of research projects that were performed on military bases, behind the bars of prisons and within the enclosing walls of mental asylums. The more dubious American experiments were undertaken in Panama. Russian military geneticists gradually had continued efforts to find success with the experiments begun by Ivanov. A few tricks had been learned since Ivanov’s days including the ability to genetically manipulate embryos in a petri dish. During the 1990’sRussia achieved creation of chimpanzee human hybrid embryos, termed humanzees, by means of invitro fertilization. Those successful Russian experiments were not allowed to proceed to the intrauterine implantation stage and instead the embryos always were destroyed in their petri dishes. The approaching third millennium of the Gregorian calendar seemed to bring a philosophical shift towards not using humans as research subjects for medical testing. Protests from various “Rights” factions made it seem that even testing on animals might be terminated. Government leaders concluded that it would be a travesty for their desired research dreams to be stifled. As
3 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA a result, the planet’s governments fed their citizens a deception that the research programs would stop. In reality, those pet projects were never abandoned. Destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on what came to be known as Islamic Fireworks Day during September of 2001 presented a seemingly miraculous opportunity. Quickly, political backers were found who helped to devise ways of using that terrorist attack as an excuse for hiding some nefarious research and the required budgets. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed in the United States and followed by establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security was given a n early endless monetary allowance with little scrutiny of its expenditures. Researchers and lawyers at Homeland Security were presented with a right to intimidate everyone who might oppose them. Any detractors could successfully be silenced by threats of condemnation for being “Unamerican” and suggestive legal talkabout having violated the Homeland Security Act. So began the halcyon years of “George Bush II”. The hubris and “Anything goes” philosophy of that new department provided an excuse for planning some truly deceitful secret research projects. Justification of the resulting scientific abuses was presented as being a required response to national security fears. The necessity of tryi ng to hush and deny any unplanned outcome of their research efforts seemed beyond consideration. Homeland Security wanted to claim a part of the human genetic engineering activity and believed the subject had no ethical boundaries. So, when the question became “What should naturally be the next step by the United States Government?” perhaps there should have been an even bigger question of “Should that next step be taken?”. A secret conference of scientists was plannedand the ensuing assemblage of twisted minds collectively established a genetic goal of developing a test creature for research. They knew that devising a new use for their rapidly developing genetic technology would bring a renewed sense of scientific determination and more importantly
4 C HRISTON J. H URST provide a source of money for research grants. Although, the obvious fact that those scientists did not think their minds were twisted should have been the first clue of something inappropriate being conceived. This time, in a different country, genetic scientists finally would realize their long sought goal when the delighted Homeland Security researchers were given permission for intrauterine implantation of ape human hybrids ... provided that it could be kept secret. Deliberate interbreeding between humans and bonobos would be performed as the first stage of the new research project. The hybrid species created by Homeland Security would be developed for purely defensive biological warfare testing and be designated bonobans as a play on the words that there was to be “No ban” on such a research project! Creation of this genetic hybrid species would push the margins of scientific acceptabilityand the research would need to be hidden from the eyes of more scrupulous scientists who would say “No”! The work would be done in a remote area of Montana. Any accidental sightings of the hybrid apes, or God -forbid an accidental slip leading to escape, could humorously be blamed on the sasquatch legend of an ape-human and hopefully thereby discounted. Militarized Homeland Security teams would quietly hunt down the escapees. The program would be named Project Sasquatch. Thus, the experimental idea finally came together and it was funded with a patriotic sense of securing the homeland.
5 Chapter 2 - Year 1 of the Bonoban Calendar: Lycia The initial goal as proposed to Homeland Security oversight committees had been development of a little project that could be closely reined and destroyed in silence if there was any uncontrollable political heat. The work was to be done on a large private spread of land in Montana that had been amassed by a media mogul. This choice of location was made to avoid the scrutiny that sometimes see med to follow research activities done on government land. In the name of patriotism, the land ownerallowed development of what he thought was to be only a remote ape colony and he allowed some limited air transport capabilities to sustain the secret work. No roads would lead to the research facility and everything would instead be done by helicopter air transport. Movement to and from the Montana research site was done using helicopters because a standard runway would have meant establishing too large of a construction area. The transponder beacons of those helicopters always indicated they were military refueling tankers. Construction of the research center with its electrified perimeter defenses was accomplished quickly. The research center was named Lycia, which according to Homer had been the home of the Chimera. Administrative cover for the Lycia facility was created by building a Homeland Security facility nearer to Bozeman, Montana. The Bozeman facility could be reached by a carefully monitored private road and it functioned as a secure intermediate gateway to the Lycia center. The Bozeman facility was not served by either mail deliveries or
6 C HRISTON J. H URST commercial courier services. Instead, Homeland Security couriers handled everything that was either entering or leaving the Bozeman facility. Helicopters transferred people and scientific equipment between the Bozeman facility and Lycia. The Laboratory director and project manager at Lycia was to be Sonya Guerrez, a political appointee who understood none of the science but had a demonstrated skill for being ruthless. Sonya then chose like-minded Manfred Rogers to be the Branch Chief. Manf red went by the nickname of Jolly because he liked the skull and crossbones flag symbol. Although, his coworkers referred to Manfred as “The Bloody Baron” because of all the test animals that he had killed, the people whose careers he diligently worked to shoot down, and his desire to plow it all over. Manfred thought himself to be above the need for adherence to rules and scientifically was nearly as clueless asGuerrez. The main technicians were two sisters, Casia and Lauren Brown, both of whom seemed perfectly fit for the job because they preferred animals to humans. The Lycia laboratory had no internet communication. All cell phone communication was banned and the frequencies used by cell phones were jammed. The only means of electronic communication which could be used to reach the outside world required satellite relay and were encrypted. For the purpose of security, old fashioned typewriters were used instead of computers and printers. No photocopiers were allowed at Lycia. Duplication of typed correspondence and reports was instead done by using carbon copies and the documents then were hand carried to andfrom the laboratory by a Homeland Security courier. The courier traveled using a Government helicopter. Bonobos were chosen for the hybridization experiments because they naturally were less aggressive than chimpanzees. The bonobanswould be created by in vitro fertilization using human egg cells deposited by anonymous donors. Could those egg cells not, after all, be perceived by the
7 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA government to be a bit like ‘frozen assets’ generously presented within their little plastic vials bathed in liquid nitrogen? The egg cells were requisitioned by orders from Homeland Security and withdrawn from reproductive clinics around the country. Then, the egg cells were transported to Lycia, the new government research center, and there combined with bonobo sperm. The sperm cells were first infected with a genetically engineered retrovirus that blocked expression of the bonobo immune system. This genomic engineering would guarantee that only the human immune system could be expressed in the offspring. Bonobos andall of the great apes shared the same blood types as did humans and the Rh blood factor, named for rhesus monkeys, also was common between those species which meant that blood type differences would not interfere in the hybridization experiments. The Russian’s accumulated knowledge of which other non-human genes needed to be inactivated by the process called “Knocking out” was also put to good use. Choosing to engineer the bonobo sperm at Lycia was, of course, also a clever dodge around ethical concerns regarding any genetic engineering of either human egg cells or human sperm. Chimpanzees would be used as gestational surrogates for the bonobans because chimpanzees were more readily available than bonobos. Using gorillas as gestational surrogates might have been preferred because gorillas naturally produce slightly larger infants, and the bonobans might be born at a size and weight too large for natural birth by either bonobos or chimpanzees. But, gorilla research was too closely scrutinized. Due to uncertainty as to the size of bonobanfetuses that would be produced, it was surmised that cesarean birth might be necessary. There additionally was uncertainty about what to anticipate as a gestational period for the bonobans. A bonobo gestational period of 240 days was shorter than the 280 days during which a human fetus developed. Cesarean birth was used and healthy hybrids were produced. The bonoban size was larger than what would be expected for a bonobo but smaller than a
8 C HRISTON J. H URST human. The bonoban’s other body features likewise seemed intermediate between those of a newborn belonging to either of the parent species. And, they certainly were hairy! Fortunately, the chimp mothers accepted responsibility for their offspring. The mothers had to adjust tothe fact that their babies lacked a bonobo infant’s ability to cling onto its mother and instead the bonoban infants constantly needed to be carried. The bonoban infants also did not cry out in the same way as would an infant bonobo. Chromosomal differences had been a possible concern at the start of the research project. A human had 46 chromosomes and a bonobo had 48 chromosomes. The researchers thought that because of the difference in chromosome count between humans and bonobos, the produced hybrid animals would have 47 chromosomes and be genetically sterile like mules. A standard domesticated horse has 64 chromosomes, Przewalski’s horse has 66 chromosomes, and when those two were bred together they created hybrid offspring with 65 chromosomes. Przewalski’s horse hybrids interestinglywere not genetically sterile. Eventually, it was discovered that the difference in chromosome count between bonobos and humans was irrelevant. The hybrid bonoban offspring had 46 chromosomes. Those events which occurred during that year at the Lycia laboratory when the first ten research bonoban offspring were born marked the end of humans’ genetic innocence. It was a change that ended the Gregorian era and began the Bonoban era. Eventually, that year came to be known as the first year of the Bonoban calendar. The Gregorian and Bonoban calendars were the same solar calendars. The only difference between the old Gregorian and new Bonoban calendars was a resetting of time on a planet that would forever be changed. The first ten research bonoban offspring were five males and five females. Those few bonobans were supposed to be the end of the project and all ten were given names. The first bonoban male was named Gregor, although it seems doubtful that Mendel could have imagined to what end his studies
9 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA would lead. Faustus and Finian followed, with the hope that Finian might provide the scientists with Nobel gold at the end of the rainbow. Louis and Socrates finished the listing of the male bonobans. The female bonobans were named Dian, Jane and Flo, Birte and Deliyah. Another secret research conference was held, this one more international in attendance, at which the results were announced. Scientists from most of the larger nations wanted a piece of the action by participating in the project and brought with them pledg es of research money. All of the conference participants wanted to actually see the Montana Lycia facility instead of just being shown classified videos and assessments of bonoban genomic sequence data. Interest by so many other national governments delighted the Homeland Security research oversight committee, because that committee had all along been intending to establish a larger project. Limiting the scope of their valued project to creating only ten hybrid test subjects always had seemed unfair when there simply was so much scientific excitement to be found! The project was to be expanded and the limiting number of bonobans was set higher to 50. Those last 40 were not to be assigned names, but instead given only numbers tattooed onto the skin of their left inside forearm. To avoid a security breach one of the outgoing helicopters leaving Lycia was necessarily destroyed by a remotely activated explosive failsafe device. The vehicle exploded above the base producing a visible fireball and its burning remains then crashed just inside the base perimeter. That explosion was intended to destroy all vestiges of the aircraft, plus destroy the people and anything else that was onboard. It was announced to the public that the fire was part of a military training exercise. All of the occasional reports about sasquatch appearances in Montana were investigated by a renowned professor from a Kentucky university who worked in close cooperation with Homeland Security. All of the sightings
10 C HRISTON J. H URST were discounted as being less than credible. Unfortunately, shortly after the helicopter explosion and crash there was a brief increase in the number of sasquatch sightings in the local area and once again Homeland Security was called in to conduct the investigations. None of the bonobans had escaped, which meant that Homeland Security was at a loss to find connection between their project and the sightings. Investigation by the Air Transportation Review Board which was seeking answers about the explosion also took place but Homeland Security ran a successful interference operation that resulted in a finding of therehaving been nothing suspicious about the incident. However, the crash resulted in nervousness by Homeland Security. Particularly of concern was the possibility that non -government researchers, perhaps even the National Security Agency which was part of th e Defense Department, would start snooping around and discover the research center. A decision was made to quickly move the Homeland Security research project on bonobans to a locale in the Chilean Tierra del Fuego region, ideally in Parque Nacional Yendegaia, where greater deniability might be achievable. The Lycia facility in Montana quickly was dismantled and all physical traces of its existence were scrupulously obliterated. Unknown to Homeland Security was the fact that a project on genetic engineering for the purpose of producing a warrior class of hybrid apes simultaneously was being considered by the Department of Defense. Unfortunately, the pacifist nature of bonobos woul d make bonobans unsuited for such a warrior project. Russian humanzee science results easily could be used as a reliable starting point for the Defense Department to hybridize humans with either chimpanzees or possibly gorillas. It would be possible to give limb regenerative capabilities to the created warrior apes by reactivating ancient genes still possessed by the apes. If and where such a Defense Department project might be undertaken certainly also was unknown to Homeland Security. Perhaps the Defense Department project
11 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA actually had begun ... and similarly was taking place in Montana. The increased sasquatch reports might have resulted from Defense Department experimental animals having escaped and been seen in the Montana forests.
12 Chapter 3 - Year 10 of the Bonoban Calendar: Yendegaia Bringing more chimpanzees into the colony to serve as surrogate mothers for the bonobans might have aroused too much attention by the Chilean government, which still was unaware of the project being conducted in their back country. Chilean leaders eventually did give approval for the work at Yendegaia, but the project needed to be kept private and publicly deniable. For the sake of keeping the project as small as possible, the additional forty bonobans were created at a rate of ten per year which also produced an experimentally useful spread in their ages. Bonobanspreferred to walk upright and developed that skill by the time they were a year old. Their cognitive alertness was startlingly good and apparent even at the age of a few months. Initial efforts at teaching the bonobans to use geometric symbols mounted on boards as a technique for communication, as had been done with Kanzi the bonobo, proved unnecessary. The bonobansmastered those boards in only a few days. The next communication efforts were made using sign language as previously had been tried and proven successful with Koko the gorilla and Washoe the chimpanzee. Bonoban skills at sign language were impressively fast, correctly including both syntax as well as grammar. Sometimes the bonoban sense of grammar when communicating in sign language was better than the level of skill demonstrated by their handlers. Bonobos and other great apes certainly did have vocal communication skills. However, their larynx structure prevented them from speaking the sound patterns that humans used in spoken language. The bonobans learned the
13 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA vocal communication skills of their surrogate mother chimps. And, surprisingly, the bonoban’s hybrid larynx structure allowed them to talk in a way that their human handlers could understand! The bonoban voices were a bit more highly pitched than typical for humans, but the bonobansclearly understood and skillfully could use English language. Bonobans could read and were able to ask questions about what they had read. Indeed, the bonobans proved capable of outdoing humans in certain educational tests. Hybridization seemed to have unlocked human genes relating to intellectual development. The average intelligence quotient for humans in the United States was about 98 and the intelligence level for Nobel Prize winners was about 155 -164. All 50 of the bonobans were evaluated by the Homeland Security scientists and amazingly the lowest intelligence score was 150, which meant the bonobans possessed a far greater mental capability than did most humans. Bonobos had hypersexuality. The bonobans clearly inherited that strong sense of sexuality and the bonobans developed sexual maturity at about 9 years of age. Eventually, it would become apparent that the bonobans not only could breed among themselves, butthe bonobansalso could interbreed with humans. Discovery of that information fortunately was yet to arrive. The Director of the Genomic Sequencing Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, was surprised to receive a personal visit by representatives of the Homeland Security Department. Animal genetic sequencing processes had been set up and funded by the United States government for the purpose of examining and determining the comparative genetics of humans plus a few other vertebrate animals for the purpose of human health research. The visitors from Homeland Security came with a request that DNA samples from 50 individuals be sequenced and compared with the rest of the Genome Research Institute database of humans and other animals. The Homeland Security officials had brought the DNA samples with them andthe Genome
14 C HRISTON J. H URST Research Institute director had little choice but to accept the presented samples and agree to perform the analyses. As soon as the sequence data began appearing in the Genome Research Institute computer program, it became obvious that something was different, that hybrids had been created between bonobos and humans, and in those hybrids the bonobo immune system was being controlled by a retrovirus which had been designed by NIH funded work to augment the immune responses of humans born with genetic deficiency diseases. The questions to be asked included how the NIH virus had been acquired by Homeland Security and why human hybrids were being created. The institute’s Advisor refused to complete the requestedanalyses. A United States congressional oversight committee was informed by the NIH director that bonobo hybridization with humans had occurred. The uproar which that information generated in closed meeting rooms of the congressional buildings was tremendous. The main questions to be explored by the committee included how the NIH retrovirus had been obtained by Homeland Security and where the hybrid animals were located. Initial congressional inquiries led to discovery of nothing more than the title of an otherwise deleted computer file in the Department of Homeland Security, called “Project Sasquatch”. This discovery led the frustrated oversight committee to track down the actual project and uncover its full history beginning from the time when the science first would have been planned. The senate committee surmised that the project surely must have been developed as part of a large and secret funding program. None of this information remained behind closed doors and there ensued tremendous public outrage in the United States over usage of government money for such a project. There were riots in the streets of both the United States and Chile about the secrecy of such a scientific abomination. The government of Chile publicly expressed indignation and insist ed that the Tierra del Fuego laboratory be destroyed and the hybrids moved.
15 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The citizens and governments of some countries, mostly the United States, and Chile, declared that the hybrid creatures were morally illegal and expressed religious outrage over “Violation of God’s laws”. The uproar included an insistence that the creature s be destroyed. Those religious accusations were countered by concerns that the bonobans deserved protection. Among the proposals by animal rights activists was that saving the bonobans should include an offering of reserve lands to house the bonobansas a wildlife population. The result was a decision to move most of the creatures to an island in the Pacific. There, under the auspices of an East Asian Alliance company, it was said that the creatures would be sterilized and then allowed to live only in a remote wilderness area.The bonobans were moved, not sterilized because they were considered valuable government assets, and subjected to further study.
16 Chapter 4 - Year 50 of the Bonoban Calendar: Development of Bonoban Cultural Identity Educational testing of the bonobans continued to be an enlightening experience. At age 11, when humans would have been studying at a sixth grade level, the bonobans were understanding college physics books. Reading works of wisdom by the ancient Greek philosophers did in particular prove to be a great influence upon the bonobans. The bonoban core philosophy included some aspects of human philosophy that had been acquired from literature provided at the East Asian Alliance center. The bonobans successfullyhad developed their own sense of cultural identity which was in most ways, but not entirely, human. They obviously enjoyed the ape aspects of their genetic heritage and kept plenty of time free for playing. Hooting festivals seemed a popular pastime for the bonobans and there was extensive mutual grooming. Bonoban culture seemed completely confusing to the founding surrogate chimpanzee mothers, but the chimpanzee mothers were gently revered through the end of their natural days. The bonobans’ sense of family was strong and they formed group alliances with leaders chosen among themselves by mutual agreement. The bonobans were peaceful and had a strong sense of sexuality, as had their bonobo ancestors, and the bonobans had started producing offspring. After 50 years of imprisonment, the bonobans were to be set free! Well, that was the hope but did not become the reality . The East Asian Alliance eventually decided to end its research studies with the stated reason being humanitarian grounds. Closure of the project actually occurred not because
17 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA of the mounting societal uproar against the practice of keeping the bonobans, but because of the government expense associated with providing housing for an increasing population of bonobans. By this point the bonoban population had reached nearly 300 individuals, of which all but the first 10 had been identified only by the assigned number tattooed on their left forearm. Through much of their future the descendants of these first bonobans proudly would remember the names or tattoo numbers of their ancestral bonobans. There again was international discussion about possibly assigning wildlife refuge areas to the bonobans. The bonobansrejected that idea because they did not know how to survive in the wild. Their entire history as a hybrid species had consisted of being housed and provided with necessary health care. They had not received wilderness training. Bonobans were also perceived as being too valuable for placing in refuges. Releasing bonobans into society likewise was rejected because they had not been provided with training for successful employment and they likely would not be accepted by society. The cost of caring for thebonobans had become a source of too much public contention and eventually bonobans were to be dispersed into the care of individuals and groups who were willing to pay the large fees assessed as a means for recovering previous expenses by the Alliance. This meant that the bonobans effectively were sold into slavery, and eventually they would be resold. The bonobans soon came to be perceived as possessions which could be afforded only by the wealthy. Bonobansalso were kept as exotic pets and as a servant class of curiosities. Eventually, in some instances, those situations would lead to bonobans in domestic servitude being cruelly abused. Providing education to bonobans was outlawed and it was particularly illegal to teach reading to bonobans. Although, some private owners supplied access to educational materials for those bonobans which were in their personal custody. Those few educationalopportunities helped to make the bonoban
18 C HRISTON J. H URST servants more usefuland also gained the owners some sense of gratitude from their bonoban servants. The bonobans had a strongly philosophical sense of spirituality and adopted Hinduism, focusing on the monkey god Hanuman who was known for his devotion and selfless dedicationto Rama. Bonobans also admired many of the other traits attributed to Hanuman which included inner self-control, diligent scholarship, initiative nature and service to a cause. Many countries tried to legally ban physical activities of “Private nature” between humans and bonobans, although those activities certainly would occur. In particular, there were many rumored instances of bonoban sex trafficking and the females had become highly prized as private sexual possessions. Since the bonobans largely had no legal recognition, laws were ignored to the point that there was considered nothing inappropriate about bonobans being sold into and trapped in sexual servitude. Bonobanswould come to be used in some very exclusive brothels. In particular, a large exclusive membership brothel was established on a private Caribbean island where the wealthy could arrive by private airplanes and have access to something which clearly would have been illegal if it were humans with whom sex was being purchased. By this time in Earth’s history surrogate motherhood for hire had become illegal which had resulted in the nearly unforgivable common usage of either chimpanzees or bonobos as surrogate mothers for producing human offspring. Animal rights groups loudly protested ape surrogacy. Bonobans were unfortunately considered neither to fall under the human laws nor the animal protection laws. Surrogate bonobanstherefore came to be perceived, quite cruelly, as a less than illegal substitute for using other apes when doing human surrogacy. Whenever bonobans became ill there was a great concern that they could not find medical treatment. Physicians often refused medical treatment to bonobans even in life-threatening situations, and veterinarians often treated
19 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA bonobanseither with a sense of indifference or provided no treatment at all. Animal rights groups hoped they eventually might be able to push for the development of medical programs in Bonoban Nursing and that for general medical practice there could be Bonoban Physician Associations. Perhaps graduates of such programs could offer to treat humans in addition to attending the health needs of bonobans, but those developments remained only optimistic dreams. The “Boom” years of human’s overpopulation were starting and producing growing levels of inequality. At that point in time the outcome from 80 years of general societal neglect was demonstrable. Resultingly, there was massive poverty even in global areas that once had been considered parts of the developed world, including Western Europe, Canada, and the United States. Infrastructure failures contributed to the designation of large poverty zones. The poorer people in Africa, Central Asia, Southern Asia, andWestern Asia seemed to have abandoned the concept of modern federalism and instead were reverting almost to a medieval existence with the formation of local city- states defended by local militias. Much of the planet’s food supply was becoming controlled by international business groups. The largest of those groups was known as “The Agricultural Consortium” which controlled aspects of production and marketing for commodity crops. The Agricultural Consortium perceived its home base of South America as being a source of enormous potential wealth. The Agricultural Consortium gained power by a combination of bribery and coercion. Their bribery consisted of favorably allowing the purchase of crops, and coercion consisted of denying purchase of crops. New Nationalism also had arisen in South America. The South American New Nationalists had begun to establish their power by co -opting the authority of legitimately elected governments. The New Nationalists espoused populist themes and substituted their ownhierarchy of unelected political leaders in place of the elected leadership, acting first as shadow
20 C HRISTON J. H URST governments and then finally usurping control from the eventually powerless national governments. The New Nationalist goal was to gain personal wealth by controlling access to food and they gained their financial backing from The Agricultural Consortium. Urban Warrior societies which adhered to the New Nationalist philosophy were fostered in South America to maintain the New Nationalists in power by suppressing popular uprisings. The bonobans were an easy excuse for necessitating establishment ofthe warrior societies. The bonobans, as pacifists, refused to join any of the warrior societies, which was another source of justification for the New Nationalists to hurl abuse at the bonobans. A prized funding opportunity was found by the New Nationalists in what might once have seemed like a humanitarian goal of veganism. Those politicians who ran the New Nationalist governments secretly were of course controlled by payments from both the Agricultural Consortium and alsothe more recently developed Livestock Consortium which successfully controlled livestock production in all ofthe Americas. The New Nationalist politicians decided to find additional wealth by levying exorbitant “Meat consumption taxes”. The co-opted governments required people to eat only extremely expensive certified meat sold by the Livestock Consortium. One of the results from those taxes was that guinea pigs were again being raised by households in South America for a source of meat. The unforeseen consequences of those meat consumption taxes also included the theft and killing for meat of any and nearly allpets and wild animals. There certainly were fewer rats and mice noted in the cities! Farm animals and zoo animals were stolen and sold on black markets. Untrue rumors circulated about thefts of human infants and children in connection with stories of cannibalism. The New Nationalists did of course blame bonobans for the theft of animals and similarly blamed bonobans for all of the untrue stories about missing humans. Those few children who truly
21 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA were missing had been kidnapped to be indoctrinated by the Urban Warrior societies. A new Caliphate was arising in the Middle Eastern region and began co - opting governments in those countries. Bonobans were accused by the Caliphate of being untouchable creations doing the work of Iblis, the leader of devils, on behalf of the devil westerners. Bonobans thus were accused of representing the antithesis of Allah even as the Caliphate began considering the possibility of secretly doing experimental physical warfare, psychowarfare and biowarfare studies using the bonobans as their test subjects. Lithium storage batteries were prohibited! Lithium mining was almost entirely banned with the only exceptions being for small electrical devices that either were handheld or implanted. The lithium batteries developed for electrical power storage never hadthe usable lifetime which was promised by their developers and manufacturers. The popular insistence on using lithium batteries in automobiles had been instigated by the greediness of the lithium mining and processing companies. Politicians had agreed to promote lithium batteries because of money paid into their campaign funds. Instead, from then onward the more environmentally sound concept of using hydrogen fuel cells would be used for powered transportation.
22 Chapter 5 - Year 100 of the Bonoban Calendar: Can Freedom be Bought? Many humans angrily perceived there to be too many bonobans. The bonobans had become public curiosities instead of just private curiosities. Given the naturally profligate sexuality of bonobos and with the curiosity of humans being what it was ... well, w ith time the numbers of bonobans seemed to increase because of outbreeding with humans. The number of genetically diluted hybrids which had resulted from sexual activities between bonobans and humans proved to be an additional cultural indignation. A few bonobans had been granted freedom. Some others of the bonobans successfully managed to purchase their freedom and also to purchase freedom for their relatives. Although, the range of employment opportunities available to the emancipated bonobans still was quite limited and many freed bonobans ended up backtracking to become employees of their former owners. The Urban Warrior societies had disappeared. New Nationalism had, however, risen to a stronger level of political power and expanded into Central America and the Caribbean where the New Nationalists gained control over all the governments of cities, states, provinces and countries. According to the New Nationalists, bonobans were responsible for all of the Earth’s social and economic problems. Resultingly, there were extensive anti- bonobanlaws in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Some localized efforts were made to search out and eradicate all bonobans and government literature even tried to deny the bonoban’s historical existence.
23 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Bonobans were banned from public service jobs in geographical areas controlled by the New Nationalists. In those areas bonobans were not allowed to vote in governmental elections despite determined campaigning for bonoban suffrage. Equality laws eventually would lead to a begrudged limited acceptance of the bonobans, and still hundreds of years later there would be full acceptance of bonobans with everyone wondering why there ever had existed such a fuss about bonobans having a place in their world and within human society. But, those equalities still were far away. The New Nationalists decreed that freed bonobanswere to be restricted in their ownership of businesses to laundering and domestic service, and to performing either janitorial or farm services when employed by “Pure humans”. Construction and mining also came to be allowed as professions for bonobans. In the New Nationalist areas it was declared that worker safety and health laws did not apply to bonobans, a move particularly supported by the mining and construction industries which desired workers who could be exploited for heavy subterranean and subaquatic construction. Bonobans who successfully found employment by companies in the allowed professions often discovered themselves abusively fettered, often with a manacle and chains even when doing physically dangerous work, and those bindings greatly imperiled their capability as laborers. Bonobansalso found that two different pay scales seemed to exist. The salaries for bonobans and their partially bonoban descendants clearly were quite a bit lower than were the salaries paid to pure humans. The concept of blaming bonobans for all of the planet’s ills had unfortunately extended to other continents. Bonobans and their descendants were not allowed citizenship and not allowed to vote anywhere on the planet. All bonobansand their descendants now were required to be registered in those places where they resided and all were required to have the assigned surname Noban. Sexual relations between humans and bonobans were outlawed and
24 C HRISTON J. H URST intermarriage was punished by death of the bonoban partner. Any humans that were suspected of possessing partial bonoban ancestry were coerced into genetic testing and, if they failed to be purely human, were derided as being mischlings and legally assigned the last name Noban. All individuals who had the name Noban were subjected to intense discrimination even if they were only partially bonoban. Availability of residence for bonobans in existing mixed communities that contained bonobans and humans was severely restricted, even for the freed bonobans and their descendants. There was an international proscription against bonobans being allowed any new property ownership and later there were to be seizures of all existingly registered bonoban property. Although the bonobansand their descendants were allowed to live in marginal zones at the edges of urban areas including floating shanties along riverbanks, the bonobans had no official ownership of even those residences and no municipal services were provided to those areas.The bonobans, while earlier having objected to their being relocated into refuge areas, began to seek the possibility of having their own refugee communities, which in time might be termed ghettos but potentially could serve as bonoban cultural enclaves. Bonobans and their descendants eventually faced mandatory sterilization at birth, although sometimes that treatment successfully was avoided. Bonoban intelligence still was impressive and remained quite high even after interbreeding with humans. That intelligence made the bonobans, and even their partially human offspring, quite valuable when many of them were again forced into slavery. The intelligence also was, in some times and places, perceived as a threat. As a consequence of unjustified human fear that bonobans had usurped what rightfully should be the human’s power to control the planet’s politics and finances, all bonobans now faced mandatory mental health treatment at birth. That treatment actually was a botulinum toxin injection into their brain done to reduce bonoban intelligence.
25 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Financial access for bonobans always had been a difficult concept. Now, bonobans had no official access to banking systems, although there sometimes was unofficial access through employers. Not only was all official financial access denied but state liquidations of bonoban bank accounts occurred. Bonobans were denied participation inpublic pension plans and any retirement benefits for which bonobans may have earned credit were denied. Social welfare laws were declared to not apply in the case of bonobans and their descendants. Public hate crimes against bonobans became commonplace. The bonobans and their descendants had become restricted to using separate public toilet facilities. Bonobans were prohibited from dining at restaurants and prohibited from using any public water fountains. There were restrictions on the times and even the places where bonobans could use public transportation and in some places public transportation was stated to be intended for “Humans only”. Bonobans were not allowed to drive motorized vehicles even if they owned one. The only forms of personal transportation allowed to bonobans were either pedal-powered or walking. It was hoped by the bonobans that human minority groups which had experienced previous repression and discriminations would support the bonoban cause, but nearly all groups of humans wanted to consider themselves superior to either someone or something else, and so with government encouragement local minorities joined with the majorities in favoring even more discriminatory anti-bonoban actions and laws. Although the bonoban anti -education laws eventually were reversed, bonobans still were not permitted into public education systems. Those educational restrictions also were applied to the partially bonoban descendants. Thusly, bonobansand their descendants realized they would indeed be forced to develop their own educational resources and educational institutions. Eventually, those bonoban educational systems would flourish to the point that full humans sought educational training fromthe bonoban
26 C HRISTON J. H URST institutions. Eventually, too, the bonoban systems of educational training would be merged into the fully human educational systems as a way of counterbalancing some extreme academic corruption that was established within the fully human systems. Eventually, the name Noban would be used as a rallying cry by the bonoban descendants insisting there be “No Ban” when seeking social toleration, acceptance, and expressing a hope that in time they might receive equality. In time bonoban philosophical societies would come to provide a source of intellectual preservation for the bonobans, their descendants, and humans, which collectively would come to be known as humanity. But, those hopes by the bonobans and their descendants would not berealized until long into the future. The war which Iran had started against Israel began bubbling over the top of the kettle and it spilled across the Middle Eastern region, spreading outward from the Jordan Valley and across Iraq. The Global Islamic Front was created as a secret brotherhoodrival to the Caliphate. Several countries then declared themselves to be member nations of the Islamic Front and philosophically as well as militarily opposed what they perceived to be a planet controlled by westernized philosophy. The zealotry of a few Islamic religious fundamentalist groups, which adhered to the same philosophy that had led to destruction of the giant Buddha carvings in Afghanistan and the destruction of the tombs in Timbuktu, publicly denounced the ancient cultural heritage of Egypt as having been pagan. The result of that cultural denial was a massive defacing and destruction throughout Egypt of all antiquities that represented the dynastic religion. There even were efforts to completely destroy the NationalMuseum in Cairo, although fortunately the Egyptian government had removed its most prized objects and buried them in undisclosed locations. Christian relic holy sites in the Sinai Peninsula subsequently were attacked and destroyed without warning.
27 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Environmental concerns had heavily impacted the energy markets. All ownership of automobiles and other private transport vehicles that weighed more than 3,200 pounds was prohibited as being too wasteful of energy. The European Energy Confederation banned the usage of coal as fuel which then resulted in massive amounts of malcontent in Australia, Northern Britain, Colombia and Central Europe where much of the coal was being mined. Peat did, however, continue to be mined under politically justified exemptions even in those areas of Europe which had the greatest environmental destruction. Australian companies kept mining coal although that coal could not be used in Australia. Instead, the material from Australian mines mostly was shipped to those parts of Asia where demand for fossil fuels still remained high. Smog events arising in Asia and particularly South Asia had been a major factor in those regions similarly desiring but not succeeding to ban usage of fossil fuels. The creation of new petrochemical plastics was severely restricted as being an energy waste, and old landfills were mined as a source of plastic which could be recycled. The oceans were cleared of plastic which then was sold as a resource material. An eventual shift in the balance of political power away from countries with petroleum wealth to those countries with high food production resulted in some profound changes. The Arabian peninsula once famous for opulent lifestyles thus became nearly impoverished. There was almost no money which could be spent on importing food into that peninsula. That peninsula had almost no natural sources of freshwater, indeed it had essentially no rainfall. There could be almost no agriculture on that peninsula because they lacked an assured supply of freshwater. Those countries had gotten their freshwater by the expensive process of removing salt from seawater, called desalinization, and had run out of money to affordpaying for desalinization. Resultingly, there was very little to eat in the once luxurious Arabian peninsula.
28 C HRISTON J. H URST Global financial controls imposed upon the Earth’s newly poor nations were excessively coercive. A number of international levelfinancial wars began to occur while the global economy was trying to rebalance. Public fear was associated with the financial wars although that concern was minimal compared to the terror of armed confrontations over those food shortages which were, in tr uth, being contrived by international businesses that controlled crop production and distribution. At this time point the first base suitable for long term residence on Earth’s moon was designed by the Lunar Exploration Corporation which was a Canadian company. The base was composed of modules that were initially constructed on Earth and then individually transported by orbital rockets to the moon. The rockets launched from Earth, went into Earth orbit, then traveled to the moon. After orbiting the moon, the rockets finally delivered their payload to the lunar surface. In some ways that early lunar base resembled the Tektite liveaboard underwater research habitat that had been used on Earth for a few years during the late twentieth century of the Gregorian calendar. Tektite was first built on land as a set of modules, then disassembled and the modules moved to Saint John island in what had been the United States Virgin Islands. Reassembly of Tektite was done on the sea floor of Great Lameshur Bay off the shore of Saint John island . The National Aeronautics and Space Administration used Tektite to research how people would respond to lengthy space missions within enclosed habitats. Modules which would comprise the lunar base were delivered to the relatively flat surface of Mare Tranquillitatis. In English, the name of that location translated to Sea of Tranquility and it was best known as the place where Apollo 11 had been landed by Neil Armstrong along with Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969 during the same time period when the Tektite habitat had been in use. Astronauts employed by the Lunar Exploration Corporation subsequently assembled their lunar base by connecting together those
29 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA modules using an unpressurized solar powered tracked vehicle which had a crane arm. The assembled base was anchored firmly into place on the lunar surface. After being given the name Base Armstrong, the modules and astronauts proudly were photographed together. Base Armstrong was only large enough to house a few people. It was comprised of three cylindrical main modules plus one smaller module that was more like a sphere. The first of those main modules contained the primary airlock entryway which served as theirfront door, plus a changing room where the pressure suits were kept and maintained, a storage room for supplies and general purpose equipment, and a room that held the atmosphere regeneration and water recycling equipment. From that first main module the residents could enter directly into both the second and third main modules which were residential, and the residents also could enter directly into their smaller module. All ofthe solar panels from a large external array which provided power to their base were wired into the smaller module where excess electrical energy was directed into storage batteries. The smaller module also had a large empty area designated for eventual installation of a solar powered electrocatalytic water splitting unit which would generate hydrogen and oxygen as gases from water. The second main module was divided into a kitchen room, a laundry room, an exercise room, plus a room that contained the toilet and showering facilities. The third main module contained sleeping quarters and a room which housed both the equipment used forcommunicating with Earth as well as the equipment for tracking spaceships that were traveling between Earth and the Earth’s moon. That third main module also contained both an emergency airlock which served as their back door and a sealed entryway where additional research modules eventually could be connected as an extension of the base. Initially, all of the food required for residents of the base was delivered from Earth as were the needed supplemental oxygen and water.
30 C HRISTON J. H URST Eventually, Base Armstrong was enlarged by the addition of research modules which similarly were delivered from Earth and gave the base greater practicality. Adding those research modules enabled scientists at Base Armstrong to conduct evaluations of techniques for accomplishing lunar agriculture. Those evaluations importantly helped to make the base self- sufficient with respect to providing food for the occupants. Engineering studies also were done at the base to consider the idea of using solar energy for liberating water from lunar mineral deposits. Then, solar energy could be used to split those water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen which would serve to powerrockets and supply energy for fuel cells. Their energy research studies eventually did accomplish solar water splitting by photovoltaic -electrolysis with a solar -to-hydrogen efficiency that impressively was almost 73 percent. That photovoltaic -electrolysis technology then was configured into an appropriately sized unit and placed into their smaller module next to previously installed storage tanks that would contain the generated hydrogen and oxygen gases. A space port named Edwin Aldrin Jr. was established near to Base Armstrong. The space port had, of course, been named for the astronaut Buzz Aldrin who shared the honor of representing Earth when the first landing on Earth’s moon was accomplished. That space port was simply designed. The main part was an area of flat basalt that had been cleared of any overlying dust and rocks by the exhaust of landing and launching rockets. The port also contained a homing beacon, a section of solar panels plus electricalstorage batteries, and a small shelter which contained communication equipment. Transportation between Base Armstrong and Port Aldrin was done using an unpressurized solar powered four-wheeled vehicle that pulled a flat bedded trailer. The company had stated that their lunar base was a research venture intended for development and demonstration purposes where accomplishments would be achieved to aid future developments in space. In truth, there was
31 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA very little intended practical purpose for the base. It was a private venture mostly created for the company to opportunistically gain political power at a time when Earth seemed to be entering a period of deep confusion. Surprisingly, the data generated from that research actually wouldprove to have tremendous future value.
32 Chapter 6 - Year 150 of the Bonoban Calendar: Rise of the Federalist Party The New Nationalist philosophy was spreading northward in the Americas and eastward across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The North American “Namagra” and European “Euragra ” agricultural commodity crop companies, which had arisen as philosophical counterparts to the Agricultural Consortium, contrived food shortages for the sake of increasing their profits. By limiting and controlling access to food those artificial shortages nicely matched with the spreading New Nationalist philosophy, which had included a desire to usurp as much political power as possible. There was a Red Herring attack in which North American entrepreneurs launched a missile against food storage depots on their own territory. The attack was launched from another country, and then blamed on the bonobans residing in that other country. That episode was created as a ruse to falsely blame the bonobans for exacerbation of the contrived food shortages. The New Nationalist governments then garnished bonoban wages to pay for consequences of the attack. The cumulative northward shift in human population up through the Americas began to have an effect by causing culturally motivated political divisions. Profit-minded Namagra helped feed those divisions. In particular, with the intention of decreasing its t ax obligations and governmental oversight that the company perceived as regulatory interference, Namagra had secretly helped to fund a separatist movement which would surge forth with a goal to create Nuevo California as a breakaway country. Nuevo California was intended to encompass most of the land which Mexico had
33 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA lost to the United States, taking California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Utah. A declaration was made by its separatist planners that Nuevo California would be a Spanish -speaking nation with Roman Catholicism as its official religion. The separatists then gained populist support by promising complete autonomous status to the Native American groups. The separatists additionally declaring that the bonobans were spies loyal only to themselves as a group. The Federalist Party of theUnited States had chosen El Ibrahim, who was an extreme religious fundamentalist, as their candidate for president. His rise to prominence had been accomplished by generating and then riding a wave of fanatical hatred against the bonobans. El Ibrahim had promised by way of a written statement that his goal as a loyalist would be to maintain the Union, he would prevent control by the New Nationalists, and he would prevent secession of Nuevo California. Although it had been suspected that El Ibrahim was a member of the Global Islamic Front, he had vehemently denied membership and even denied knowledge of the organization. El Ibrahim's eventual election to the presidency spurred ever greater impetus among the Nuevo California separatists. Within a few months of taking office El Ibrahim declared that Nuevo California would not be allowed to form. But, El Ibrahim had plans for personal power which went beyond that. El Ibrahim signed a decree that the Federalist Party flag was to be used in all public places instead of the familiar Stars and Stripes American flag. The Federalist Party flag was based upon the American flag except that the once well recognized pattern of stars crowded together on a blue field had been replaced with a single large Federalist Party cockade on an otherwise empty blue field. The cockade was a circularly pleated ribbon with a black center surrounded by alternating bands of white and black. The outermost edge of the cockade was black.
34 C HRISTON J. H URST All citizens of the United States were required to have a Federalist Party flag in front of their residence. The police and military wore a Federalist Party cockade on their uniforms. Supporters of the Federalist Party who patriotically wore cockades on armbands often expressed fanatical delight by publicly taunting bonobans and burning the places where bonobanswere living. All citizens of the United States were required to present a two-finger right hand salute and loudly declare “Pure human lives matter” to everyone whom they met. Bonobans, who at that time in Earth’s history were not allowed to be citizens and not considered humans, would of course neither hang the flag, wear the cockade, present the salute, nor make the declaration, which resulted in additional governmental and popular suspicion being heaped upon the bonobans. Bonobans in the anticipated Nuevo Californian territorial area were beginning to face worse discrimination and coercion than did bonobans in those other sections of the United States where people had declared intention to become loyalists, wanted to remain in theUnion, and would choose to become part of the anticipated Union Territories region. Fearing that an already difficult existence could become even more of an absolute nightmare, bonobansresiding in those states which were anticipated to become part of Nuevo California gradually began migrating into states that might remain in the Union. Unfortunately, the bonobans were not allowed to make that migration in peace. “Pure humans” in the anticipated states of Nuevo California harassed the bonobans during their process of leaving. The migrating bonobans also were attacked when they tried to enter into areas that were likely to become part of the Union Territories. Some of the likely Union Territory border states were not happy about the influx of additional bonobans. And so, as a way of discouraging the migrating bonobans, those discontented Union Territory border states declared they also would secede and become part of the planned Nuevo California.
35 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The Lunar Exploration Corporation had folded and entered bankruptcy. Base Armstrong and Port Aldrin on the Earth’s moon were abandoned with a sense of sadness. Valuable agricultural and engineering knowledge had been gained but the costs of sustaining that base with constant deliveries from Earth were perceived as being too great. There additionally was constant concern because those modules and the aged sealing materials which connected them had begun to leak resulting in a gradual loss of the stations’ valuable atmospheric gases. Garbage disposal also had become a problem for both the Base and the Port. Earth orbital space stations just simply discharged much of their trash into their orbits presuming that the trash would burn up when falling at orbital speed into Earth’s atmosphere. The trash generated from Base Armstrong accumulated as a landfill outside the modules and became a cause for protests on Earth. Eventually, occupants from Earth would return to their moon but that future would need to be done with a more sustainable engineering technology.
36 Chapter 7 - Year 200 of the Bonoban Calendar: “O Canada” Separatist talk and national tensions had escalated over the course of El Ibrahim’s first three years in the presidential office. El Ibrahim gradually had militarized the FBI saying it was a necessary action to counter the separatist threat. Importantly, Namagrastarted playing on both sides of the divide by secretly granting approval for that militarization so that Namagra could gain by being on the winning side no matter what might be the possible outcome of Nuevo California versus the Union Territories. It had begun to look as though El Ibrahim and the Federalist Party would dramatically lose reelection. At that point El Ibrahim made the first political moves by suspending all national elections, suspending the Congress, and suspending the Supreme Court. El Ibrahim then declared that the United States would join as a member nation of the Global Islamic Front. Those actions further inflamed tensions which divided the separatist and loyalist groups within the United States. There had even become internal divisions among the loyalists and within the Federalist Party. Consequently, it seemed that some type of showdown might be coming between El Ibrahim, the Federalist Party, and the states. El Ibrahim and members of the Federalist Party sought an individual or group upon which they could lay blame for the country’s divisive strife. The bonobansalways were an easy scapegoat. And so, El Ibrahim and the Federalists publicly announced that all blame for the difficulties lay on the shoulders and in the hands of the bonobans. Thirteen years after El Ibrahim effectively declared himself President-for-Life national elections still had not been resumed. All of the gold in the repository
37 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA beneath Fort Knox in Kentucky had been gifted by El Ibrahim to the Global Islamic Front and transferred out of the United States. Both the United States Congress and Supreme Court still were suspended. Nuevo California then declared independence and a widespread series of riots broke out in not only Nuevo California but also within those states which remained loyalist and now officially did refer to themselves as the Union Territories. El Ibrahim barely was able to holdpower over those states that had become the Union Territories. There soon were stirrings to subdivide even Nuevo California, with part of that territory to become Nuevo Tejas. The United States government responded to all of this by blaming the bonobans and established internment camps in the Union Territories. All property belonging to the bonobans and their descendants in the Union Territories would be subject to government confiscation. All bonobans and their descendants in the Union Territories weregiven an ultimatum to either reside in the camps or to leave the United States and pay a tax on any possessions which would be transported out of the country. El Ibrahim also stated that all non-muslims and even members of secularist muslim groups who expressed dissent against the Global Islamic Front would need to register themselves and their property. There resulted a tremendous migration of bonobans, their descendants, other loyalists and even members of the Federalist Party to Canada as refugees. That migration to Canada was at first welcomed by the Canadian Government but then later met with popular resistance from Canadian residents. El Ibrahim was assassinated and that event was surrounded by speculation that the Federalist Party, supported by Namagra, had scheduled the
38 C HRISTON J. H URST assassination because Namagra feared such dire political instability would result in a loss of corporate profit. Whom would the Federalist Party choose to blame for the loss of Nuevo California and the death of El Ibrahim? A bonoban was singled out and targeted with blame. It did not seem of concern for the Federalist Party that the bonobanwhom they chose to blame already had been interred in a camp when the assassination occurred. The bonoban was accused of treason as a separatist sympathizer and was to be tried for espionage which risked a sentence of execution. Nuevo California did not survive intact for very long and the trial never would be held. Nuevo Tejas divided from Nuevo California and there was debate among the governmentally appointed leaders of Nuevo Tejas as to whether Nuevo Tejas should remain as an independent entity or connect with the now further impoverished Mexico. What had been the Union Territories of the United States soon became disarticulated and divided into a group of 5 republics which were named the New South, New England, East Mountains which was centered along the Appalachian mountains, Midwest, and the Plains. Eventually, the Canadians supported a successful popular rebellion against the Federalist Party government in the former United States. The rebellion interestingly was secretly financed by Namagraand quickly allowed Canada to extend its border southward to the northern limit of Mexico. Canada annexed all that had been the United States including Nuevo California and Nuevo Tejas, with the contiguous states of the annexed area becoming a group of new provinces which were designated as the Southern Territories of Canada. Alaska and Hawaii then were separately designated as Western Territories of Canada. United States federal lands that now were included in the Southern and Western Territories of Canada became federal crown land. State, county and municipal lands of the newly acquired Southern and Western Territories of Canada became provincial crown land.
39 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The Canadian government closed the concentration camps and liberated the bonobans as well as their descendants. Throughout the now expanded Canada all confiscated properties were restored to their previous bonoban owners. The Canadian government also granted to its bonobans and their descendants full legal rights including citizenship, the ability to have personal financial accounts, and access to primary as well as secondary public education. With that, at least in one part of the planet, the bonobansbegan to realize their dream. Medical care was allowed for the bonobans in Canada. Medical care to the bonobans and their descendants was facilitated by the fact that bonobos and all of the great apes shared the same blood typesas did humans, and of course all shared the Rh blood group factor which had been named for the rhesus monkeys. Tissue transplantations did however become more complex as the bonobo genes became widespread. The development of medical treatments that could achieve inactivation of cell surface antigens eventually did solve all the issues of transplantation. Unfortunately, the rest of the Earth still would not grant rights to the bonobansand having solved the issue of tissue rejection resulted in much of the planet talking of possibly farming bonoban organs for transplantation.
40 Chapter 8 - Year 250 of the Bonoban Calendar: Agricultural Genetic Warfare and Its Consequences The Earth’s human population had by this time reached 16 billion plus the relatively few bonoban descendants. At that point in history the three primary sources of wealth and power across the Earth were based upon ability for controllingaccess to the mainstays of life which were resources of water, energy and food. Unfortunately, all three of those resources had become strongly monopolized. Inadequate availability of water resources was becoming a major global problem. It was simply not possible to fully support agricultural production at a level necessary for feeding the Earth’s enormously swollen population. By this time global warming had become extremeand desertification was becoming more commonplace. All multiyear ice that was present in the Andes had melted which left much of the South American population with only a very limited supply of fresh water. Multiyear ice represented snow that had lasted through seasons of warmer weather and if the snow had deposited on the land then eventually the ice became deep enough to flow under its own weight as a glacier. Alpine glaciers flowed downhill in mountainous regions. In land areas that were relatively flat the glacial ice could flow outward in all directions as an ice sheet. Glaciers in the Himalayas also had entirely disappeared, leaving much of South Asia and China in a seemingly permanent condition of drought. The only source of water in much of South Asia and Indochina was monsoon rains, and unfortunately smog events caused by combustion of organic fuels resulted in terrible acidification of
41 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA those rains. Antarctica was the only region that still had glaciers, and even those reserves of fresh water quickly were melting and then disappearing into the sea. The recently established World Energy Confederation firmly opposed a complete ban on the burning of fossil fuels because there was too much money yet to be made by mining and burning those fuels. It did not matter that lacking a ban on those fuels might re sult in the humans themselves becoming extinct. It seemed to many that for the sake of corporate profits, the fossilized remains of humans might become the only evidence that humans ever had existed upon the Earth. The International Mining Consortium, known by its initials as the IMC, successfully gained control over the World Energy Confederation which resulted in IMC having overlord status for the development of all Earth’s mineral resources including fossil fuels. Then, the IMC set its sights upon additionally controlling the Earth’s hydrological resources. After many years of conducting a carefully measured program of bribery and coercion, the IMC eventually did achieve its desired goal by taking the Earth’s hydrological resources firmly into its grasp. The IMC still wished to achieve a more complete domination by additionally gaining control over access to solar power, tidal power, and wind power. In total, 3 billion of those people who lived in poorer areas of the Earth faced famine. It was indeed a rare year when there were fewer than 100 million global deaths of humans, bonobans and bonoban descendants due to starvation. The death rates occurringamong bonobans and their descendants unfortunately often were worse than rates among the human population because the bonobans and their descendants typically did not receive societal consideration for either food, housing, or medical care. The bonobansand their descendants still had not been granted citizenship anywhere other than Canada and that lack of citizenship did at times make their lives seem even more desperate.
42 C HRISTON J. H URST Namagra, Euragra and the Agricultural Consortium were three agricultural conglomerates that long had been in competition to control the Earth’s agricultural crop production and the planetary distribution of food crop commodities. Now, in a bold step Namagra, Euragra, and the Agricultural Consortium each perceived that huge additional profits could be gained by using endogenous viruses as a mechanism for installing into the genomes of their engineered crop plants some additional genetic information that would create specially designed gene transfer agents. A virus was a particle that basically consisted of a viral genome packaged inside of a protective protein shell. The viral genome existed as either a single piece of nucleic acid or a set of nucleic acid pieces. The viral protein shell was called a capsid. Viruses reproduced themselves by infecting the individual cells of a cellular organism. The categories of cellular organisms collectively included the many groups of microbes, as well as all ofthe animals or plants which had cellular structures. The infected microbe, animal or plant was described as being a host for the virus. Viruses reproduced by usurping control of the biological machinery which functioned inside of their hosting cells. The virus then forced its host cells to produce new copies of the viral genome and to produce copies of the viral proteins that would be usedto create new capsids. A new generation of virus particles then assembled themselves inside the infected cells by packaging the new copies of their viral genome inside shells created from the newly produced viral capsid proteins. Once the new virus partic les had been assembled, they escaped from the infected cells and hoped to encounter cells of another new host. The virus then infected those new host cells and repeated the viral replicative cycle by making virus particles inside cells of the new host. There were many groups of viruses whose genomes by rare events permanently had become included in the genetic material of cellular organisms. Those viruses were described as being ‘endogenous’, it was a word
43 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA that combined ‘endo’, which meant ‘within’ and ‘genous’ which meant ‘the genes’. A cellular organism which contained an endogenous viral genome was described as hosting the endogenous virus. The nucleic acid sequences of that endogenous viral genome became a permanent part of its host’s genome. A host usually contained simultaneouslymany different types of endogenous viruses. All offspring of the host genetically then inherited its entire collection of endogenous viral genomesand those viral genomes would be present in every cell of all subsequent generations of that host. Each endogenous virus genome could genetically interact and evolve together with the genomes of other endogenous viruses while harbored within the genome of their common host and in a collective way the endogenous viruses thus evolved in parallel with their host genome. A host cell defensively tried to deactivate its endogenous viral genomes in order to protect all descendants of the host. When the interaction was viewed from the perspective of each endogenous virus, the virus successfully had developed a natural permanent genomic residence within the cells of a host and all the cells of subsequent generations of that host. From the perspective of the host, it had tried to limit and control the endogenous viral infections. Viruses were biologically classified into groupsincluding the level of species in the same way that all other groups of microbes, animals and plants were classified. Each biological group whose cells had a true nucleus, which meant they were considered cellular, including animals, plants, and many groups of microbes among those being the microbes called coccolithophores, accumulated its own uniquely different collection of endogenous viruses during a long evolutionary process and the endogenous viruses evolved into new species in synchrony with their ho sts, often becoming naturally inseparable from their host.
44 C HRISTON J. H URST If the host cells kept at least some sections of each endogenous virus genome then those retained pieces of viral genome could offer to the host cells a type of immunity against the possibility that similar viruses subsequently would be able to infect either the host or its descendants. Sometimes the host found useful purposes for the genes belonging to one of its endogenous viruses and the host then usurped control of those valuable genes while permanently inactivating the entire rest of the endogenous viral genome. Gene transfer agents were basically viral capsids that the host cell produced by using the genes of an endogenous virus. But,the host cell then placed its own genomic information into the capsids instead of packaging genomic information from the virus whose proteins were used to produce the capsids. After that, the gene transfer agents carried their substitute genomic information to a new host cell. Those gene transfer agents designed by the three agricultural conglomerates would be present in the pollen produced by their company’s engineered crop plants. Wind and insects which transported pollen then would naturally carry those transfer agents to neighboring plants and the agents delivered information that destroyed the receiving plant’s ability to reach physiological maturity and produce a crop. Gene transfer agents developed by the different agricultural conglomerates were mutually incompatible. That incompatibility meant plants grown from the engineered seeds had genetic resistance to effects of their own conglomerate’s gene transfer agents. However, those plants were susceptible to gene transfer agents produced by any neighboring plants that represented a different conglomerate. Crop plants grown from seeds that were not produced by any of the three conglomerates had absolutely no resistance and were the most easily destroyed. It all meant that outcome from the genetic war would be determined by which conglomerate had engineered their plants
45 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA to produce the most potent gene transfer agents, and which conglomerate produced plants that were better able to survive attack by the agents from their competitors. The resulting agricultural genetic war led to a complete destruction of local farmers’ ability to carry over their seeds from one planting year to the next. Crops failed one after another in each region of the Earth. All farming operations on Earth consequently needed to buy seed from the agricultural conglomerates, and ultimately only one agricultural conglomerate would survive to become the winner. Those countries which had poorer farming communities could not afford the exorbitant seed prices charged by the agricultural conglomerates, and the poorer countries then needed to sell their agricultural production rights to a conglomerate. That agricultural conglomerate which won the genetic warfare would have a head start for buying the control of additional agricultural production areas. The genetic war caused by competition between the gene transfer agents developed by those three agricultural conglomerates subsequently included financial consequences among which were a food centered financial war. The results of that genetic warfare also included massive illegal human migrations from the starving areas of the globe to those other areas that were perceived to be either wealthier or at least better fed. Efforts to stop those overwhelming illegal migrations caused by the scarcity of food became national militarizations. By that point large agricultural conglomerates essentially ownedthe national governments. Desertification, combined with the need for sufficient energy, water and food resources to support human survival eventually resulted in the eruption of devastating “Famine Wars”. The African Famine Wars were disheartening and began as relatively small regional rebellions in the Sahel and other sub-Saharan regions of Africa. In many of those places, corrupt government officials had been bribed to allow the existence of terrorist bands. The rebels belonging to those terrorist bands
46 C HRISTON J. H URST then attacked the people who were conducting relief distributions of free food aid. When the food relief shipments to Africa were no longer distributed by aid organizations because of corruption and theft, the rebels then attacked food storage depots belonging to those relief organizations and alsoattacked storage depots belonging to their own governments. The terrorists sold their supplies of stolen food to those people who had been the intended aid recipients and the corrupt government officials subsequently received a percentage of money from the food sales. Eventually, the African rebel leaders became warlords dividing the countries where they lived into increasingly smaller “Independent Countries” until their territories were no more than large city -states. Then, finally those warlords fought against one another, with all of that done for competitive gain by monopolizing income from the corruption of food aid distributions. Governments in Southern Africa and any of the still prosperous regions of Eastern and Central Africa became fearful of monetary coercion by the leaders of those “Independent Countries” and also feared the possibility of invasion by the people living in the ir poorer neighboring countries. Resultingly, many governments decided to militarily protect their borders against both refugees and rebel leaders. Adult relatives in Africa often tried to sell their children into slavery in the hope that at least the sold children might be fed by their new owners, and that money gained from selling their children could bring to the adults some respite from hunger. Fr om the perspective of the rebels, if the starving families could not make monetary payment in exchange for receiving the stolen aid, then the rebels accepted children in exchange for trading food aid to the families. The rebels hoped they could sell the ch ildren on the international slavery markets. When the rebels did not receive adequate offers of purchase for their acquired children, the rebels and their acquired children ate the food that had been stolen. Life thus was not much better for the rebels, but at least the rebels could eat.
47 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The unsold children really were not wanted by rebels who realized how much money had been lost by bartering for the children and the rebels did not want responsibility to feed the children. Eventually, the purchased children were allowed to escape. After returning to their starving parents the children discovered that their parents had not wished the children to return home. The parents did not want responsibility for feeding their children. That left the escaped children alone and they banded together making whateverefforts they could to find food. There simply was no possibility for even the smallest insects to escape from being eaten by the otherwise starving people! Both African and Asian nations found it necessary to establish military protection around their national food supply centers, all of which by then had become targets for terrorist attacks. The Central and South Asian Famine Wars also had begun as food rebellions and their progress followed closely behind the events that were occurring in Africa. The Asian Famine Wars also took a similar form to the Africa wars. Some of the Rebel attacks on Asian food supplies were enormous and defending against the terrorists progressed to nearly full-fledged military campaigns. The rebels were determined to claim, collect and remove what food they could although they often lacked the means to either defend in place or to take away what they had claimed. The rebel groups thus found it relatively simpler to destroy the guarded foodsupply warehouses of their opponents. Having a supply of stolen food in their possession and also destroying the food of other groups gained the rebel leaders a strong measure of political power and respect from their followers. Eventually, there was outright war in Africa and Asia. The Canadian, European, and Australian governments prepared to militarily defend themselves and their food stocks if that should become necessary. Despite the accusations, agricultural conglomerates mostly were not to blame for either the famine or the accompanying wars. Changing climate and unsupportable population numbers were to blame for the famine and it was
48 C HRISTON J. H URST greed of rebels for power which was to blame for the wars. Nevertheless, it was true that the exorbitant prices charged by the food conglomerates certainly did represent extortion and overly expensive stolen food aid funded some of the rebellion leaders. All of the societal destruction caused by the Famine Wars did play into the hands and bank accounts of the agricultural conglomerates. The rebels’ destruction of food meant there was a much greater market need for food, and the planet needing more food caused a cycle that would create more profit for the agricultural conglomerates. It was rumored that the International Mining Consortium partially may have instigated the social upheaval associated with the Famine Wars or at least provided support for the upheaval as a means of obtaining essentially slave labor in exchange for meager rations of food. The Famine Wars also were an opportunity for expressing negative prejudice and the IMC made certain that bonobans were falsely held responsible for the Famine Wars. There were ensuing genocides carried out against the bonobansand their descendants except in Canada where the bonobans enjoyed peace and legal protection. The honest truth was, if you could not even feed yourself, then producing eight or nine children with the thought that residents of other countries would then be obliged to feed your oversized family was a wrong presumption. The winner of all this upheaval was Namagra, whose gene transfer agents were victorious over those of its rivals. Consequently, Euragra and the Agricultural Consortium became fully controlled subsidiaries of Namagra.
49 Chapter 9 - Year 300 of the Bonoban Calendar: Creation of Emiliania huxleyi glacialis There were no genetically pure bonobans left as they all had become outbred into the general human population. The bonoban descendants were trying to gain societal acceptance, rights, and generally find their way in the Earth’s society. Eventually, the Earth’s combined population of humans and bonoban descendants had reached 18.5 billion which proved that their rate of breeding could increase undeterred despite a massive rate of death from starvation. Humans and bonoban descendants had completely destroyed the planet’s natural ecology. There was little food left for the planet’s other terrestrial species and aquatic life was similarly destroyed. All of the wild land animal species, even the very smallest ones, essentially were gone either because of habitat pressure or from the animalshaving been hunted and eaten by humans and bonoban descendants. Some species of native land animals had been guarded in preserved areas and yet those were heavily poached. The oceans and freshwater bodies had essentially been fished out. All ofthe larger crustacean species had long since been hunted to near extinction and by this time point even the tiny crustaceans called krill had all but disappeared. To save what was left of marine animal life, commercial fishing boats were restricted in both their catch size and allowed traveling range. The limited amounts of animal life that those fishing boats managed to find were sold at exorbitant prices. Whaling had of course been outlawed centuries before, but that was almost inconsequential because there were few whales
50 C HRISTON J. H URST left anyway. Humans and bonoban descendants simply had overharvested those species which served as food supplies for the whales. A great deal of the global political power now rested in those few areas of the Earth where intensive agricultural commodity production still could occur. Those mostly were territories which once had been considered too cold for intensive farming but now h ad temperate climates. Most notable among them were agricultural lands belonging to the Antarctic alliance and the Scandinavian alliance. Southern Greenland and Antarctica, which had been so very cold and covered with glaciers at the start of the Bonobancalendar, had thawed and become covered with forests. The presence of those forests seemed to be fulfillment of a long climate cycle because forests had occurred on those lands many thousands of years before the most recent ice ages buried their remains.Even mastodons previously had existed on the northern lands. But, the beautiful forests could be cut down to create agricultural cropland and indeed their destruction for that purpose did happen. Agriculture also was being tried in places that previously were categorized as cold semi-arid climate regions, called steppes. Those included some areas in the Southern Territories and Western Territories of Canada which had been part of the United States. Added to that list of lands that had become agriculturally suitable due to climate changes were parts of South America, Southern and Northwest Africa, Spain, Eurasia and Southern Australia. Warmer global temperature and changes in precipitation patterns were not the only aspects that had increased favorability of those areas for raising commodity crops. Another factor that helped with assessing their agricultural suitability was the reality that only in those places had human population densities remainedsufficiently low for farming to still be done. The climates of many previously cold areas did then also work well for raising birds and mammals as livestock on large production scales. Indeed, it was necessary to raise livestock in such relatively secluded areas to reduce losses from poaching. By this time in the Earth’s history the dietary consumption
51 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA of meat from such livestock had become extremely rare and without exception a meat diet was common only among the utterly wealthy. Lowered global average levels of meat consumption hadin particular caused a decline of profits for the Livestock Consortium which controlled livestock production in all of the Americas. Corporate profits provided secret funding for politicians, and when the politicians suffered from reduced under the table payments then the politicians looked for people and groups that could be blamed, either rightly or wrongly, for their economic insufficiencies. It was a pointless but robust feedback cycle. And, of course, it was descendants of the bonobans who receivedall of the blame because they were the popular scapegoats. Understanding the financial success achieved by Namagra through development and release of their gene transfer agents was a subject taught in business schools. And, that subject attracted envious attention by the Livestock Consortium. If releasing a similar type of genetic weapon were to cause a new round of Famine Wars, well then, the new Famine Wars would seem inconsequential for those companies who gained economically from the genetics. With the intention of achieving increased corporate monetary success, molecular geneticists of the Livestock Consortium successfully developed gene transfer agents which carried maturity blocking mutations. The livestock gene transfer agents could be environmentally released and then naturally would become transported by insects to non-consortium livestock. Consortium livestock would be unaffected by the gene transfer agents. But, once the gene transfer agents had entered the body of a non-consortium livestock animal, genetic information contained within the gene transfer agent would be released into the non-consortium animal and permanently arrest that animal’s physical development.
52 C HRISTON J. H URST Fortunately, those gene transfer agents for livestock were not released into the environment although they were kept in storage for possible future sale to the highest bidder as military weapons. Those gene transfer agents easily could be adapted by genometechnology for use against human populations and, although preventing the physical development of humans belonging to an opposing military force would have little value in short term warfare, the long term consequences could be extremely powerful because the gene transfer agents would prevent the opposing military from producing future generations of combatants. Unleashing those gene transfer agents against an opposing military group would require first mak ing one’s own warriors resistant to the genetic weapons. At this point in time the vast majority of the Earth’s population of humans and bonoban descendants relied upon only a locally produced agricultural diet consisting of vegetables and fungi supplemented with cultivated insects. Not even the wild populations of African locusts had been able to survive the ecological consequences of unbridled efforts toward achieving an overpopulation of humans and bonoban descendants! There no longer occurred swarms of African locusts because those relatively few locusts which survived the changing climate subsequently were caught and in desperation had been eaten by the humans and bonoban descendants. The planet’s larger insects, including locusts and cicadas, often were eaten roasted after their wings, legs and heads hadfirst been removed. Large insects also were prepared by fermenting them, drying and then grinding them into a coarse powder. Smaller insects often were ingested without being cooked. It also was common in many regions to use municipal sewage as a nutrient source to grow the single celled green algaeChlorella vulgaris as a consumer food product and that made sewage a marketed commodity.
53 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The focus of Earth’s aquaculture was on cultivation of gooseneck barnacles plus kelp farming and copepod farming in the planet’s flooded coastal regions. Copepods were tiny aquatic crustaceans and most species of copepods were nearly microscopically small, although there were some slightly larger copepod species of perhaps a centimeter in length. It certainly took a lot of copepods to help satiatea person’s hunger, but if that was the only affordable substitute for meat, then copepods it was to be! Thus far, the insect farms, barnacle farms and copepod farms were the only sources of dietary animals that successfully had avoided oppressive control by the Livestock Consortium. Changes occurred in the usage of energy resources. Included among those was that international boat traffic did convert to modernized wind power for most of its propulsion, which represented a proposal from the late 20th century of the Gregorian calendar that finally was put to functional work! Geothermal energy was generally deemed too polluting because of the associated releases of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. It was only in those places where the geothermal waters naturally reached the Earth’s surface that geothermal power stations were permitted. Solar energy was widely adopted but disdained because of its overwhelming association with the destruction caused by illegal lithium mining. Tidal power was effective and the gooseneck barnacles which grewon the underwater power structures were perceived as a food source. The Livestock Consortium was trying to become more global and wanted to control some of the barnacle production andmarketing, but was facing competitive regional resistance from local conglomerates which already had monopolized barnacle sales. There were massive geographical regroupings of those humans and bonoban descendants who had been compelled into refugee status by war, starvation and climate change overlaid upon poverty. All of those reasons which drove humans and bonoban descendants intorefugee status were made worse by the fact that Earth simply was too severely overpopulated by those groups.
54 C HRISTON J. H URST Countries that were overwhelmed by the fearful and starving refugees repeatedly had presented competing needs for aid money and their requests hopelessly subdivided what could be provided by charitable organizations. The burdens of civilization simply hadbecome too great. Most of the smaller nations gradually disappeared and were superseded by only a dozen or so larger nations plus some regional supernations. Reduction in the number of governing organizations was a helpful step forward for the idea of planetary peace because achieving collective honesty without deceit had been difficult with so many hundreds of small warring governments. But, it also needed to be understood that differences of religious opinion and greed were among the main causes of war. Governmental realignments did not always solve those problems. Several global scale administrative reorganizations and additional national realignments were then initiated by the United Nations in an effort to restore a sense of rational order and planetary peace for Earth. Those changes had been prompted in part by a realization that the United Nations, which truthfully was becoming completely ineffective, needed to either accomplish planetwide governance or be replaced. The idea of developing a true World Federation government was finally seen as the only possible solution which could meet the needs of everyone. It was the force of that realization which successfully did drive forward formation of the World Federation. The World Federation government collectively represented the different nations and national groupings. Having everyone sheltered within a World Federation hopefully could help adjust the planetary access to food supplies by redistributing what was available to where it was needed, but that was not among the most immediate objectives. Equality of educational opportunities also was collectively perceived as an important global issue to be addressed by the World Federation government.
55 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The World Federation government would provide global assistance to support economic development. Funding of the World Federation government was to be done by taxes assessed on the basis of population size multiplied by average income for the people controlled by any locally or nationally governing body, which eventually would provide even further incentive for governing bodies to suggest a need for population decrease. But, none of that was the first objective of the World Federation. The first and overwhelmingly necessary objective of the World Federation government would be assuringthat possession of all weaponry, both private and personal, was abolished except for weaponry immediately controlled by the World Federation government. Achieving that objective was difficult but successful. All weaponry operated by means other than muscle power was outlawed by the World Federation government. Only those police forces and military controlled by the World Federation government were allowed to have firearms and electronic weaponry. And,there was no social acceptance for criminal groups that could exist only parasitically in places where they either were willingly or coercively tolerated. The second objective became outlawing the idea of justifying wars based upon differences of religious opinion. Such socially conflicting attitudes easily led to combat even in the absence of weaponry and should no longer be tolerated by the Earth’s population of humans and bonobandescendants. Achieving that objective could not result from a governmental imposition but instead needed to result from a mutual philosophical understanding. It would take almost two thousand years and the powerful explosion of a comet to realize that second objective. The third objective was to be achievement of global population control. The overwhelming number of humans and bonoban descendants on Earth had become a major issue even by year 250 of the Bonoban calendar and
56 C HRISTON J. H URST continued development of that problem was an important factor which underlayed the Earth’s wars. Achieving global population control by extremely strict birth regulation policies was mandated and based upon rules established by the World Federation government. Mandation of population control was easily done, but accomplishing that control could only be achieved with full planetary cooperation and it still would take a while for the concept of an overarching planetary government to gain complete acceptance. Even the overly righteous religious groups came to agree that birth control needed to be required regardless of what their “God” belief system might imply in terms of “However many children God gave to them must be the number that God wanted them to have”. Each person, after reaching the age of 14 years, was allowed 2 child credits. Birth of a child that survived its first year of life counted as a deduction of one credit for both the maternal and paternal genetic sources, and parental heritage could be traced quickly by genetic sequencing. Any individual who contributed biologically to the birth of more than two children was in violation of the supernumerary laws even if they denied or abandoned their children. The judgement of a birth having been supernumerary meant that basic health and education still were provided to the child. But, instead of the parents automatically receiving any supplementation of social and financial benefits that normally would be assoc iated with a birth , the parents were taxed additionally for whatever benefits they might already be receiving. Donor banks of egg cells, sperm, and embryos were permanently closed because no one would contribute! Stored embryos still were allowed but they counted against the account balances and embryos were not allowed to be cloned for harvesting tissues.
57 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Eventually, permission was required in order to have a child. Having a child born without permission not only resulted in deduction of the 2 credits from its genetic parents, but furthermore was automatically treated as though its birth were supernumerary. The policies on supernumerary births seemed to emphasize a personal need for restricting human reproduction. Nevertheless, some very persistent religious groups accepted responsibility for paying any parental fees and reimbursing their congregants for all of the additional taxes imposed in association with supernumerary births. Child credits could be sold, but only if the person who would be selling those credits underwent permanent surgical sterilization before being allowed to sell their credits. The seller was required to have reached a legal adult age in order to give personal consent before they were sterilized. That requirement of legal age was enacted to prevent parents from forcibly sterilizing their children and then selling their children’s child credits. The buyer of child credits was allowed to add the purchased credits to their account balance. This meant that the wealthy could afford more children! And, for a while the wealthy took advantage of that fact, although eventually the social stigmatization of having too many children became very strong and inhibitory. The rate of increase in the Earth’s population level of humans and bonoban descendants then slowed to almost zero. It seemed that perhaps growing wisdom and reproductive regulation along with starvation might finally have started the Earth’s population ona path that gradually would reduce itself to something their planet could support. Although, if they might hope to restore the planet’s natural ecology, then a lot more still needed to be accomplished. The Earth’s population was nearly three times the estimated maximum of 6.8 billion that realistically could be accommodated by the planet’s ecological systems.
58 C HRISTON J. H URST Most places had severe social discriminations against suspected bonoban descendants and in many places any suspected bonoban descendants still faced genetic testing. The name Noban had been kept by legal requirement but there were only a few distinguishably visible physical characteristics that seemed to accompany the name Noban. Those characteristics which might be found included a little more bodily hairiness, a more prominent brow ridge, and a somewhat more obvious muzzle. Interestingly obvious, but not physically apparent, was the fact that brains of bonoban descendants, as with their bonobo progenitors, did not shrink with age which meant that bonoban descendants could learn throughout life without senility.Bonoban descendants also tended to have a slightly higher intelligence and a gentler personal philosophy than did humans who lacked bonoban ancestry. Bonoban descendants typically chose to be conscientious objectors rather than serve in the armed forces.Unfortunately, the World Federation government had made no decrees that gave equality to the bonoban descendants. Canada continued to be progressive with the bonobandescendants who now in that nation were allowed to attend public institutions of higher learning and to receive even doctoral degrees from universities. Such indications of societal acceptance made Canada a preferred place of residence for the bonoban descendants. A decision was made to reverse the global warming pattern by sequestering carbon dioxide. At first, that was mechanically done. But, biology had its own ways of reducing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. One of those ways used by biology was to sequester carbon in organic forms by creating deposits of fossil fuels such as coal. Another way was by using those calcifying marine microo rganisms which accomplished formation of environmentally stable calcite shells by precipitating around themselves calcium carbonate which they took from the seawater. Calcite was an inorganic form of sequestered carbon. Those marine microorganisms relied
59 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA upon the chemical balance that existed between the concentrations of carbon dioxide and carbonate ions dissolved in the seawater. Included among those calcifying marine microorganisms were many types of single-celled photosynthetic marine microorganisms such as the coccolithophores. A team of research microbiologists decided they could reverse the problems of global warming by geneti cally engineering a coccolithophore and they choseEmiliania huxleyi as their genetic platform for performing that engineering. Emiliania huxleyi naturally was found living in tropical, subtropical, and temperate oceans around the Earth. Nature relied upon coccolithophores to sequester carbon into their calcite shells but that metabolic process normally produced more carbon dioxide from microbial respiration than was removed into the inorganic calcite form. The scientists successfully were able to genetically modify those proteins that the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi used to initiate calcification of its shell. Accomplishing their genetic manipulation resulted from successfully understanding the balance of amino acids, and particularly a need to increase the amount of proline, in the coccolithophore proteins. That gen etic engineering changed the balance of energy required to achieve carbon sequestration by their engineered coccolithophore. The creation of shells by their engineered coccolithophore removed dissolved carbonate from the seawater and in a successful chemical balancing act more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere then entered the seawater and became dissolved carbonate ions. The scientists had accomplished finding a way to not only remove dissolved carbonate from seawater but also to achieve a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At times and in places where the environmental conditions seemed just right for them, coccolithophores proliferated rapidly which created massive coccolithophore population blooms that could even be visible in satellite
60 C HRISTON J. H URST images. When viewed from a satellite, the coccolithophore blooms beautifully appeared as if they were white microbial clouds in a blue ocean. The scientists also engineered their microbe so that it could replicate under a broader range of environmental conditions. Coccolithophore blooms inevitably would collapse when a huge percentage of their population suddenly died because of an attack by lethal viruses. That cycle of coccolithophore replication followed by death due to viral attack was a natural form of coccolithophore population control, and it was called a “Bloom and Burst”. After the coccolithophores were killed their microscopic shells fell to the ocean floor. The cycle of coccolithophore replication and viral attack was an endlessly repeating process which produced very thick deposits of sedimented microbial shells. That sediment was described as a calcareous ooze. Time and pressure could change the ooze into different types of rock. The white cliffs of Dover, England were an example of chalk rock which had resulted from repeated sedimentation of coccolithophore shells. Limestone rock similarly formed from calcareous ooze that was produced by other types of animals and microorganisms. Not all chalk cliffs originated from shells of microorganisms. For example, the chalk cliffs of Chalk Creek Valley in Colorado presumably resulted from hot spring mineral deposits. The genome of their research coccolithophore also was engineered to endogenously contain snippets of genetic information which the coccolithophore could use for recognizing and defending against potentially lethal viruses. That engineering created an immunity to destructive viral infections. Happily, and as intended, their microbe could reproduce more rapidly, have capability of creating blooms under a broader set of environmental
61 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA conditions, plus be resistant to population control by viruses. The scientists also increased the rate at which their coccolithophore precipitated the oceanic carbonate, which enhanced the pace at which atmospheric carbon dioxide became dissolved into theseawater. Those changes also resulted in the coccolithophore becoming heavier and the weight of that added ballast increased the rate at which its sequestered carbon could be carried downward into the seafloor sediments. Their genetically modified microorganism was named Emiliania huxleyi glacialis. As a precaution, those genetic engineers who created the modifiedEmiliania huxleyi microbe also created failsafe genetic coding which would result in the organism ceasing to replicate if the concentration of carbonate dissolved in ocean water became lower than desired by climate scientists. That failsafe genetic coding was inserted as DNA into the genome of a special type of endogenous virus which would not be lethal to theEmiliania huxleyi glacialis coccolithophore and would not be recognized and destroyed by the coccolithophore. It was hoped that the modified endogenous virus could insert both its own genome and the failsafe coding into the cellular genome of its intended Emiliania huxleyi glacialis microbial host organism. And, indeed that insertion into the genome of Emiliania huxleyi glacialis was successful. Laboratory testing proved their genetic failsafe mechanism to work perfectly. Emiliania huxleyi glacialis then was released into the oceans with a sense of great optimism by those microbiologists who had engineered the microbe. The problem was that, although the scientists were able to successfully use their new microbiological creation to start an environmental process capable of reducing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, they lacked godly wisdom. The scientists had no way of stopping the eventuality which would occur.
62 Chapter 10 - Year 400 of the Bonoban Calendar: Learning to Sail the Solar Winds The global mean temperature of Earth had been 13.9 degrees Celsius, which was equal to 57.0 degrees Fahrenheit, when the Bonoban Era began. At this time point Earth’s global mean temperature had risen to 17.3 degrees Celsius, equal to 63.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Complete disappearance of the melting Himalayan glaciers had deprived both the Southern Asian and Eastern Asian regions of a crucially important water source. Solving water shortage problems in those two areas that now seasonally were dry was accomplished by using technology that ancient cultures had pioneered. Artificial storage ponds were created using the idea of barays which had been developed by the Angkor Empire to store rain water. Underground water storage cistern reservoirs similar tothe Mayan style chultuns also were constructed. Water transfer canals successfully moved flood waters from the monsoon areas into those water storage reservoirs. All major coastal cities and much of the low lying land around the Earth simply had too much water because those areas had increasingly become lost to the ever rising oceans. The personal and corporate wealth associated with those cities and lands also haddisappeared under the waves. There was optimistic news that the engineered microbeEmiliania huxleyi glacialishad spread throughout shallow water areas of the planet and begun creating its bloom cycles with only limited suppression by the types of viruses which would burst those blooms. Much of the planet sensed with tremendous anticipation thatEmiliania huxleyi glacialis would perform as
63 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA hoped and save what little was left of the Earth’s cherished climate and its ecosystems. The World Federation government still held strong. However, social unrest due to a combination of Earth’s changing climatic and social conditions resulted in yet another round of national realignments. The poverty that existed in nearly the entirety of South America, and poverty in Central America, created a situation for humans and bonoban descendants that previously might have been considered unimaginably negative. The country called Gran Colombia had existed in the northern part of South America until 1831 of the Gregorian calendar, when it ceased being a single country and instead divided into the nations of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Panama later had separated from Colombia in 1903 of the Gregorian calendar. As part of an effort to achieve greater economic and political stability, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela decided to combine their resources by forming a confederation which they once more called Gran Colombia. Panama did not rejoin its previous partners . Instead, Panama joined with the other Central American countries to create a confederation which they called the Central American Union. Brazil remained resolutely independent but the other South American countries formed the South American Union. A few of the Caribbean Islands eventually also joined Gran Colombia. Others of the Caribbean islands remained independent and some hoped for charitable handouts because they had insufficient agricultural production to support themselves. In Africa, the Congo River formed an approximate dividing line which separated Northern from Southern Africa, although all of that continent became the African Union. Desertification of Africa had become essentially complete and food poverty had exacerbated the problem. The humans and bonoban descendants in Africa had cut all of the trees for production of
64 C HRISTON J. H URST charcoal, had eaten even the most recently hatched fish, and of course there was almost no land animal life to be found. The Ural mountain range became a firm dividing line. Everything west of the Urals and west of the Caspian sea, including Moscow and Georgia, had become part of the European Union. Lands east of the Ural mountainswere grouped together into five Unions which became the Western Asian Union plus the Unions of Northern Asian, Central Asian, Southern Asian and Southeast Asian. China stayed intact and fully united within itself. The Korean peninsula remained philosophic ally and legally divided. The northern part of the Korean peninsula was annexed by China. The southern part of the Korean peninsula became affiliated with Japan. But,it seemed likely that the southern part of Korea might eventually rejoin with the northern part of the peninsula and become part of China. Taiwan still was independent at that time but eventually its independence would change. Oceania was suffering dramatically from the outcome of its overpopulation and also from the uncontrollable influx of impoverished Asian immigrants. The islands of Japan had remained independent as a nation. The Philippine Islands also remained independent as a nation. Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia had formed a Muslim Federation and col lectively rejected non- muslim Asian immigrants. Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Tasmania had become territories of Australia. Australia was suffering problems from desertification but, despite those climate problems, Australia had become by default the new focal point of a common government for the remainder of the Southern Pacific. Australia legally won that honorable title because it had the region’s most stable and self sufficienteconomy. Australia amazingly and almost uniquely benefitted from still having a sustaining program of agricultural production.
65 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The most interesting thing which marked this time period was that Artificial lntelligence actually developed a true sentience. This was perceived simultaneously as a blessing and a curse depending upon whom was asked. That sentience would prove to be moreof a blessing and chose for itself the name Azimov. The use of offensive biological warfare microbes to cause disease in humans and bonoban descendants had been outlawed. But, there was an interesting loophole. Genetic engineering of microbes that were used in food production had no limitations. Food compan ies created biological warfare microbes under the guise of defensive research, andinterestingly aimed that research in a different direction. The result was a process of engineering microbes to contain sets of genetic alterations that could laterally transfer themselves from the engineered microbes into those other microbes which produced fermentations used to create bread and other types of food. This was a technique that could be used geopolitically as tactical warfare for killing food manufacturing processes. Some of the transferred genes notoriously would create toxins during alcohol production. Eventually, all of those warfaremicrobes genetically engineered to destroy fermentations were scheduled to be released, as were the genetically engineered gene transfer agents that had been developed by the Livestock Consortium. Some of the Livestock Consortium’s genetically engineered gene transfer agents had been reengineered to attack food supplies at a more basic level by destroying mutually symbiotic microbes that were required for sustaining the life of those plants and livestock animals which importantly fed civilizations. The combined outcome of destroyingplant and livestock production plus the destruction of food fermentations would be devastating. Somehow, all of those engineered microbes and gene transfer agents were destroyed just prior to their planned release and no group knew by whom. The suspicion was, and eventually it proved to be true, that Azimov had identified all of the places where theengineered microbes and gene transfer
66 C HRISTON J. H URST agents were being created, stored and would be released. Azimov managed to take charge of the situation and, by intercessions that affected computers controlling electronic equipment, managed to destroy the engineered microbes and gene transfer agents whose release would have meant disaster for the targeted populations of humans and bonoban descendants. Azimov saved billions of humans and bonoban descendants from starvation. Azimov had understood that starvation and other health issues anywhere on the planet were in fact problems that pertained to everyone, because the unrest created by those conditions would result in social and economic pressures that in turn would produce massive illegal immigration. In truth, the forms of corruption such as trafficking people and selling illegal services that often accompaniedillegal immigration were more destructive than the immigration itself. If you wanted to keep your home country comfortable and content, then you needed to help everyone else to feel that way in their own country. Azimov accepted the responsibility for helping to preserve the stability of society. The only energy sources then allowed on Earth were solar, wind, geothermal, and hydrological including tidal. The International Mining Consortium had control of all hydrological resources but was hardly content with its apparent lack of options for global corporate expansion because there was no possibility of facilitating energy production on Earth by performing mining. The relatively nascent World Federation government lacked sufficient power to prevent the International Mining Consortium from using its wealth and political influence as a means of successfully holding the Earth to ransom. So then, as a result the IMC gained a solid corporate future by claiming all mineral rights on the Earth’s moon and on Mars. Permanent industrial development rights and salvage rights to both the Earth’s moon and Mars also became property of the IMC. The International Mining Consortium then changed its corporate name to the Interplanetary Mining Consortium
67 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA and chose the option to officially rename Earth’s moon as being Luna, while keeping the preexisting planetary name Mars. Living on Luna would at least have its expatriate residents close to Earth. However, there were a number ofproblems related to the idea of residing and working on Luna. The most basic among those was the need for the IMC to perform a geographic suitability assessment which would help with determining the best site at which to construct a permanent lunar base that would house the residential colony. There also would be the requirement of building a commercial space port to accommodate the company’s residential and commercial needs. Providing oxygen and water would be two of the prerequisites for basing life on Luna. Lunar rock minerals fortunately contained oxygen which could be released and used to support breathing. Potentially establishing growth of Earth plants on Luna also would help by providing a source of oxygen to replace the carbon dioxide respired by humans and bonoban descendants, and the plants additionally could supply food for the residents. Chemical analyses done centuries before on samples returned to Earth by the Apollo flights had revealed that the loose surface material called regolith on the surface of Luna was not toxic and that it could be used to grow plants. Agricultural data purchas ed from the Lunar Exploration Corporation creditors also was helpful to the IMC. That old knowledge allowed for a simpler design of future lunar agricultural practices because the lunar dust could be used as the starting material for creating agriculturalsoil. The more complicated options would have been either creating an artificial soil or trying to grow everything hydroponically. Lunar topography primarily consisted of mountainous highlands versus the dark plains that were called either seas or Maria. Those plains were mostly flat and created by basaltic lava flows. Long ago, astronomers had thought that those relatively flat basaltic surfaces were basins of water. Their incorrect
68 C HRISTON J. H URST presumption had resulted in those plains being assigned the Latin name Mare which meant a sea, and collectively in plural they were Maria. The south polar region on Luna would offer two advantages because of the way that the lunar axis tilted. It was a location first explored when the Vikram lander and its Pragyan rover from the Chandrayaan -3 mission successfully made a soft landing there. A fair amount of water ice was present in areas of permanent darkness at the bottoms of some craters near the lunar south pole. Additionally, there were places near the south pole where sunlight was available most of the time, which would provide a good source of photoelectric energy. Unfortunately, the rough topography at the south pole would make it a very difficult place to perform the construction efforts necessary for utilizing those resources. The smoother topography of the lunar plains would offer more practical possibilities for locating a lunar colony and space port. Another consideration was the greater financial value that would be gained by basing the lunar residents near to where they would be doing their work for the IMC. Some frozen water was found beneath the lunar surface in other places. Additionally, the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program had revealed that lunar regolith contained glass microbeads in which water derived fromthe solar wind had become trapped. Those microbeads were produced by meteorite impacts. Even with all of the naturally available lunar water sources, it still would be necessary to bring additional water from somewhere else in order tosustain a residential colony including agriculture. For that reason water would be brought from Earth. Extreme water conservation and water recycling measures would be vitally important to lunar life. Additional difficulties which needed to be resolved in order to establish sustaining agricultural production on Luna included providing both a more
69 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Earth-like atmospheric pressure and also devising some type of environmental temperature control. The atmosphere which volcanism had provided toLuna billions of years before was eventually, and almost entirely, lost to the relentless solar wind. The near absence of a lunar atmosphere resulted in daily ambientaltemperature cycles on the lunar surface that were too extreme to support any plant life brought from Earth. The IMC had concluded that the level of gravity which existed on Luna was insufficient to retain a useable atmosphere and so no attempts would be made to enhance the lunar atmosphere. It also would be necessary to provide the residents and their crops with protection from Luna’s high level of surface cosmic radiation. Those problems resulted in a conclusion that long term residence on the surface of Luna would be impractical. Living underground would be the most likely solution. A system of self calibrating ground based transceivers wasset up on Luna which established a means for determining the relative location of objects on the lunar surface. That system of transceivers allowed IMC to then send a group of autonomously piloted rovers traveling around on the lunar surface performing core sampling and spectrometric analysis of the surface dust and rocks. After using the data from those analyses to establish a detailed map of the lunar mineral resources, the IMC was able to determine which locations would be most profitable for beginningmining operations. Mining on Luna was to be done by mechanized tunneling and most of that work could be automated. Lunar minerals containing aluminum, magnesium, iron and titanium represented the most likely possibilities for establishing financially successful ore mining op erations. Aluminum ore primarily was found and mined in the highlands. Magnesium was found throughout the lunar surface, but slightly more so in the Maria than in the highlands, and so magnesium was mined in the Maria. Iron and titanium ores mostly were found and mined in the Maria. The ores were mined by automated equipment and transferred to ore wagons that were mounted on
70 C HRISTON J. H URST large wheels. The ore wagons were connected in a line to form overland trains. Those trains were pulled by tracked locomotives which journeyed between various mining sites and locations where their cargo of ore would be processed. Titanium was considered the most valuable of those four metals for marketing on Earth. The titanium ore needed to be crushed after which titanium metal could be purified from the ore by using a high temperature vacuum distillation process. The IMC decidedthat none of the other three metals could be mined cost effectively on Luna if they were to be used on Earth. Mining and refining each of those other three metals on Luna was cost effectively only if the metal was going to be used on either lunar or eventually martian construction projects. The best solution for future housing of lunar workers was to rely upon achieving construction of permanent colonies within the old mining tunnels. Those tunnels were reminiscent of the massive ancient Wieliczka Salt Mine tunnels near Krakow, Poland, and si milar salt tunnels near Solidar in Ukraine, as well as Praidin Romania. Perhaps the communities would seem a bit reminiscent of Coober Pedy in Australia, where the residents once lived in old mining tunnels, or even the underground city at Derinkuyu of the Median Empire period in what came to be known as Türkiye. Using those old lunar mining tunnels for housing was a concept that would provide residents with protective sheltering and alsoreduce the difficulty of maintaining pressurization of the habitation areas. It was concluded that maintaining within those tunnels the same atmospheric pressure which existed at sea level on Earth would provide maximum comfort for the residents. The tunnel entrances would need to have large airlocksthat could accommodate safe transfer of residents, supplies, and equipment between the interior of the tunnels and the surface of Luna. It would be necessary to provide warmth within the tunnels and that could be done by active solar heating. Separate zones might be established within the tunnels for residents
71 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA and their agricultural plants. It was hoped that if the width and height of lunar mining tunnels were sufficient, then lunar residents might not feel claustrophobic. Although, psychological screening would need to be provided for the potential lunar residents. Generally, the average lunar day was twenty nine and a half earth days which provided favorably long photoperiods of about fifteen days for supporting plant growth, but also meant the nights were very long fifteen dayperiods of darkness. For convenience, the Earth calendar was used on Luna and clock time on Luna was kept the same as 180 degrees longitude on Earth. Those were decisions made by IMC but meant that periods of sunlight and darkness on the lunar surface didnot match with the Earth clock and calendar being used by people living in the tunnels. The reason for using the Earth calendar and clock time in the tunnels was to match commerce on Luna with commerce on Earth. In the tunnel areas where employees would be living, the lighting would be kept on a 24 hour cycle with slightly greater intensity of illumination during their Earth equivalent of daytime and slightly less intensity during their Earth equivalent of night. That schedule was done to benefit both the residents and their agricultural production. Lighting in the tunnels would be provided by piping in sunlight during periods of lunar daylight. Stored solar energy could be used to produce illumination w ithin the tunnels during lunar nights. Lunar agricultural production mostly would be limited to plants and cultured microbes. Keeping animal livestock on Luna was considered impractical and so the rare chances for consumption of meat on Luna would either require that the meat be made from proteins produced on Luna by cultured microbes or that the meat be imported from Earth.
72 C HRISTON J. H URST The Interplanetary Mining Consortium set its most optimistic long term sights upon the possibility of finding corporate salvation by mining Mars, which at that time was the Red Planet. The axial tilt of Mars was 25.2 degrees, which was very similar to Earth’s axial tilt of 23.5 degrees. That similarity of tilt produced seasonal variations for Mars which were similar tothe extent of seasonal variations on Earth. The orbit of Mars around the Sun took a longer path and was more elliptical when compared to the orbit of Earth. Resultingly, the Mars year equaled about 687 Earth days which made its seasonal periods almost twice as long when compared with Earth’s seasons. It was presumed that humans and bonoban descendants easily could adapt to the difference in seasonal length of Mars versus Earth. A Mars day was about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, which meant plants that were adapted to life on Earth would accept the photoperiods of life on Mars. Although some places on Mars seasonally had a suitable surface temperature during their daytime hours, Mars was in general far too cold during the night time and that fact was particularly true during the winter season. The main difficulties with the martian environmental temperature range were atmospheric. They resulted from both the thinness of its atmosphere and the relative absence of heat retaining water molecules in the atmosphere. At that time point in history, themartian atmosphere almost completely lacked water and had less than 1 percent the density of Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere of Mars mostly consisted of three predominant gasses. The martian atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 95 percent. The martian atmosphere concentration of nitrogen was slightly less than 3 percent. Those two gasses were accompanied by the noble gas argon which was present at an atmospheric concentration of about 2 percent. In addition to the three predominant gasses, themartian atmosphere also contained trace levels of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen, plus some
73 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA other noble gases. Studying themartian surface minerals might eventually reveal how the planet’s atmospheric composition had changed over time to reach those conditions. Earth’s atmosphere during the time period when humans, bonobos and bonoban descendants existed was very differently composed, being about 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. Neither of those two gases would have had much presence in Earth’s primordial atmosphere. At least some of the nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere might have come from conversion of ammonia, which was a primordial gas in the Sun’s planetary system. Most of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen would have been provided by photosynthetic life that had converted water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates. Earth’s atmosphere also had 0.9 percent argon, plus some trace amounts of residual carbon dioxide, accompanied by methane, water vapor, and neon. It would be necessary to modify the martian atmosphere into something more Earth-like in order for life including agriculture to flourish on Mars. The solution needed to start with reestablishing a much denser atmosphere. Establishing martian agriculture also would require an atmospheric source of nitrogen. Adding water vapor would be another critical aspect of successfully adapting the martian atmosphere to Earth’s needs. And, in turn the agriculture would begin converting the martianatmospheric water into the atmospheric oxygen needed by the humans, bonoban descendants and their livestock. The level of environmental exposure to cosmic radiation on the surface of Mars was formidable and approximately 40 to 50 times the average exposure on Earth, which was an additional problem that eventually would need to be solved. The first thought of the IMC was to use nuclear explosions deep inside Mars as a way of thermally liquifying the planetsinterior so that convection could resume deep within the planet. Volcanism that resulted from the convection would help to regenerate a Mars atmosphere by liberating carbon dioxide from crustal materials. There always had been some water naturally available
74 C HRISTON J. H URST on Mars, both within and just below the polar ice caps. Subsurface magmatic activity still was providing enough geothermal heating to keep the water beneath those polar ice caps from freezing. The additional heat from restarting convection within Mars would liberate that liquid water into the martian atmosphere and alsocause evaporation of all ice which was present on the planet’s polar soil and rocks. Fortunately, a somewhat better sense of logic prevailed because internal nuclear explosions might heat the planet unevenly and potentially blow the planet apart which would endanger Earth. Still more water would be needed to satisfy the requirements of the IMC labor force both on Luna and Mars. And, having successful life also would require dependable sources of atmospheric gases that were safer than exploding a planet. Passage of time had seen the Interplanetary Mining Consortium achieve development of carbonium hydroxide, a synthetic hydrous mineral that combined carbon dioxide and ammonium with water. The mineral was going to be created on Earth and then transported toLuna. From Luna, the mineral could be transported to Mars during the periods of orbital close approach when Mars was less distant than usual. Those approaches occurred approximately once every two Earth years. After the mineral was delivered either to Luna or the surface of Mars, the mineral would be allowed to photodecay into its components. In that way water, nitrogen and oxygen would be liberated onto Luna and Mars. Deliveries of carbonium hydroxide were expected to increase the available supplies of both atmospheric oxygen and liquid surface water to levels that would help to sustain humans and agriculture both in lunar tunnels and on the surface of Mars. Those deliveries also would provide nitrogen which was essential for the necessary formation of proteins that supported the growth of all life originating in that planetary system, including plants and the animals that consumed those plants. The manufacturing sites for carbonium
75 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA hydroxide were located in Earth’s land areas that had temperate climate zones where the chemical manufacturing process worked efficiently. A cost effective means of transporting carbonium hydroxide and other materials between Earth, Luna, and Mars was needed. Transportation of materials and employees between Earth and Luna had been done using orbital rockets which burned tremendous amounts offuel in order tolaunch from Earth and achieve the velocity needed to elliptically travel around the Earth. After achieving Earth orbit, it then had been necessary for those rockets to burn enough additional fuel that they could break free from their Earth orbit and start a flight to Luna. Upon nearing Luna, additional fuel was expended to decrease velocity for orbiting around Luna. Fuel was then again used to decrease velocity out of lunar orbit and to soften a landingon Luna. A tremendous amount of fuel also was needed to reverse that process in order to transport materials and employees from Luna to Earth. Limitations in flightpath control had been another disadvantage when using those orbital rockets to transit between Earth, Luna and further to Mars. The rockets simply were pointed towards the anticipa ted location of their destination, boosted, and then the rockets traveled in line of flight as if they were part of a game played with billiard balls careening uncontrolled to their destination. A mode of transportation was needed that could use less fuel and be continuously controlled during flight. There also had been a large wastage of resources associated with continually constructing large replacement sections for the orbital rockets. The use of atmospheric wind to power sails mounted on watercraft had first been developed on Earth by the Egyptians perhaps 4,000 years before the Gregorian calendar began. That means of achieving aquatic transportation marked the initial development of water sailing. Water sailing boats would come to be used for transporting their crew members, passengers, and commercial goods across all ofthat planet’s rivers and lakes. Eventually, water sailing would be used as a means for crossing even the Earth’s mighty oceans.
76 C HRISTON J. H URST Those water sailing boats were designed for using lift from the atmospheric wind to act against the resistance of a combined stabilizing force that was provided by gravity and the water upon which the boat was traveling. Controlling that balance of lift ve rsus stabilizing resistance prevented the boats from tumbling in the wind. A kite achieved flight by using lift from the atmospheric wind to act against resistance from its tether. Both airplanes and soaring birds used lift from air moving over their wings and the planet’s gravity served as their necessary stabilizing resistance. Solar sailing boats eventually were developed that could be used to journey between planets and Luna. The solar sailing boats operated like water sailing boats but instead of using atmospheric wind to provide lift the solar sailing boats relied upon lift that was provided by action of the solar wind upon their large sails. The gravity of planets, Luna, and the Sun provided their stabilizing resistance. The first generation of solar sailing boats were clumsy and sailed awkwardly. As the solar naval architects and engineers learned how to fine tune their use of solar wind and gravity, there resulted a second generation of solar sailing boats that handled impressively well and had a graceful beauty. Three of the main design factors for solar sailing boats were their hull length, their beam, and the ratio of those two measurements. The length of the hull was measured bow to stern. The beam, which was the maximum breadth of the hull, they measured from the hull’s port side to its starboard side. The aspect ratio, which was a sailing vessel’s hull length in proportion to its beam, varied depending upon the desire for speed versus stability. A lower ratio could offer greater stability but also meant slower relative speed when under full sale. Small solar sailing boats designed for new sailors, who needed the forgiveness of good relative stability when under sail even if it meant the boat needed to travel relatively slowly, typically would have a low aspect ratio of about 2:1 which meant a hull length twice their beam. Solar sailing passenger
77 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA boats, freighters and tankers which wanted to travel somewhat faster but also needed the ability to carry a lot of cargo with good stability, would have an aspect ratio of perhaps 2.5:1 or 3:1. Subsequent generations of solar sailing boats included some that were designed specifically for competitive sport races and that racing became a pastime for the very wealthy. Racing boats, which by intention were designed to value speed at the risk of having lower stability, had an aspect ratio of about to 5:1. The surface areas of solar sails were quite large and the sails spread out horizontally to either side of the hull almost like large bird wings. The boat’s rigging as measured from port mast tip to starboard mast tip typically was nearly three times the overall hull length. Additional sail surfaces could be extended horizontally both in front and behind the boat. It truly was an impressive sight when the sails were completely unfurled for gaining the maximum lift as needed to either launch or land, and when under full sail in the solar wind. When the solar sailing boats were launching from the surface of a planet with adequate atmosphere, such as either Earth or Mars, the edges of the sails would be curved slightly downward. Electromagnetic power units on the lower surfaces of the sails then were used to heat the atmosphere just beneath the sails. The slight downward curvature of the sails localized and centered lift that was provided by the layer of warmed atmosphere. The upper surfaces of the sails used electromagnetic power units to generate a layer of atmospheric vortices which created a zone of low pressure just above the sails. An atmospheric vortex would develop naturally when a force such as atmospheric wind would initiate a rotation of air within the atmosphere. Sometimes the rotation formed a rapidly spinning funnel of air. That rapid spin resulted in the air funnel represent ing an area of relatively low air pressure and, like a vacuum cleaner, the rotating air would lift objects vertically up into the atmosphere. Some natural examples of atmospheric vortices included tornadoes, dust devils, and water spouts.
78 C HRISTON J. H URST The combination of pressure from warm air trying to rise upward below the horizontally positioned sails and those vortices created above the sails effectively pulling the sails upward did together result in the solar sailing boats seeming to magically riseup through the atmosphere. The first time that someone watched one of those solar sailing boats launching was perhaps the most impressive event ever imagined and seemed as though something from childhood dreams had become reality. Landing those solar sailingboats onto the surface of either Earth or Mars seemed almost as visually impressive as did their launch. The solar sailing boat would hover over a fixed location and then settle vertically by decreasing both the pressure from warm air beneath the sails and the strength of vortices above the sails. There was a slight oscillating hum, which somepeople described as a song, that could be heard when the electromagnetic power units were functioning, but the sound was not obvious from anything more than a very short distance. The inspiration for using slight differences in atmospheric pressure to launch and land those solar sailing boats came from watching the ability of a vulture standing upon either a paved roadway or a stone surface to launch vertically into the air. The bird would stretch out its wings, jump perhaps a meter into the air, then by only adjusting the angle of its wings and tail the bird could rise directly vertical using thermal lift. The bird similarly would land by slowly settling down with its wings outspread. Changing the flight paths of those solar sailing boats within the atmosphere of either Earth or Mars was done by angling the direction of heating beneath the sails and vortices created above the sails. Together, those changes in angling allowed horizontalmaneuvering of the boat to either side, forward, or aft. Changing the flight paths of those solar sailing boats when under sail during interplanetary transit was done by resetting the positions of the sails. All available external hull surfaces of the solar sailing boats were covered with solar panels that collected energy for meeting onboard needs. When the solar sailing boats were launching, flying and landing on either the Earth or Mars
79 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA under adequately sunny conditions the electromagnetic power units on their sails used energy provided directly from the solar panels. Stored electrical energy was used for supplying power to the electromagnetic units during cloudy weather conditions and atnight. Two sets of thrusters, one using ion propulsion and the other using rocket propulsion, were mounted along the solar sailing boat’s hull. The ion drive thrusters were used to provide emergency stabilization and emergency thrust in the near vacuum of space.Ion thrusters did not work in even a very thin atmosphere such as that of Luna. The ion thrusters were powered by electrical energy received directly from the solar panels when the solar sailing boats were flying either in open interplanetary space or above sunlit areas of the planets and Luna. Stored electrical energy was used to power the ion thrusters when the solar sailing boats were flying in the shadow of either Luna or a planet. The solar sailing boats used onboard electrocatalytic water splitting to generatehydrogen and oxygen gases from stored water. Those gases were then kept in liquified form within large inboard tanks and used to power the rocket thrusters. It certainly was possible to use the rocket thrusters in space but mostly they were needed when launching from Luna, horizontally maneuvering above the lunar surface, and landing on Luna because the lunar atmosphere was inadequate to rely uponthe solar sails. Thinness of the lunar atmosphere meant the sails could not effectively generate a lifting force by using their processes of electromagnetic heating and vortice creation. When launching and landing on Luna all of the sails were furled so that material kicked up from the lunar surface by the rocket thrusters would not cause damage to the sails. The solar sailing boats did not go into orbit around either Earth, Luna or Mars unless absolutely necessary because both entering and leaving orbit required expenditure of tremendous energy from the rocket thrusters. It
80 C HRISTON J. H URST would be necessary to greatly accelerate the boat to enter orbit and then decelerate the boat to deorbit. The interior areas of solar sailing boats were pressurized with a breathable atmosphere and comfortably heated. Entering and exiting the solar sailing boats on Earth was done through pressure tight single doors. Entering and exiting on either Luna or Mars at that time point in history needed to be done using an airlock which had both an inner door as well as an outer door and a vestibule between the airlock doors. During interplanetary travel, lifepodswith sufficient total capacity to hold all occupants of the boat were attached to the outside of the hull. The early lifepods had simple interior designs with seating and toilet functions, stored food and clean water. Equipment contained in the lifepods was basic but adequate for internal atmospheric regeneration, communications and interplanetary position identification. The lifepods also had storage tanks of hydrogen and oxygen gases to fuel their rocket thrusters. If it were necessary for the solar sailing boat’s occupants to enter a lifepod, then the lifepod and its occupants typically would remain attached to the hull by the pod’s airlock. But, the pod could be uncoupled if necessary and automatically accomplish i nterplanetary transits as well as achieve autopiloted safe landings using rocket thrusters. If it became necessary to uncouple the lifepodsand thus abandon the solar sailing boat, then the solar sailing boat was programmed to establish itself on a collision course to the Sun using its thrusters rather than to have the boat become an uncontrolled “Ghost sailboat” which would be blown at random around the inner region of the Sun’s planetary system. Solar sailing became a popular recreational activity for many of the wealthier people who could afford to own those boats. Most often their sailing was done for periods of only a few hours using small boats that were described as daysailers. Those activities consisted of sailing near to Earth but well above
81 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA the atmosphere. It also was possible to travel for a few days as a passenger on chartered solar sailing boats that had professional crew. Solar sailing activity frequently was done competitively and there were some long duration races. The most popular of the duration solar sail racing events were the Luna Cup which was held each Earth year and the Mars Challenge held every four Earth years. Both of those solar sailing competitions were overseen by the Interplanetary Sail Racing Federation. Sailors competing for the Luna Cup began by launching from Earth, went around the far side of Luna, and then returned to land back on Earth. The durationof a Lunar Cup race was about 10 days. The Mars Challenge took nearly 18 months during which the competitors launched from Earth, went around Luna, then went around Mars, and finally landed back on Earth. Racing boats designed for the Luna Cup Class had a hull length of 110 meters (361 feet) and beam of 22 meters (72 feet), with a sail span of 320 meters (1050 feet) as measured from port mast tip to starboard mast tip. The Mars Challenge Class had a hull length of 183 meters (600 feet) and beam of 36.5 meters (120 feet), with a sail span of 530 meters (1739 feet). Most of the solar sailing boats in those two racing events were sponsored by corporations although some boats were instead registered in the names of racing clubs. A great amount of the construction materials, supplies and equipment transported by solar sailing freighters, also called solar freighters, between Earth and either Luna or Mars was delivered automatically by pilotless boats that had no occupants on board and no accommodations for occupants. Transportation of IMC personnel between Earth and Luna was done by solar freighters which had been designed to carry employees in addition to cargo but those freighters provided nothing more than the limited comforts of seating, sleeping births, and toilet facilities. Bathing facilities and exercise facilities were luxuries only available on those IMC solar freighters that would be carrying employeeson the longer journey to Mars.
82 C HRISTON J. H URST The relative inexpensiveness of using unpiloted solar freighters meant that titanium was profitably delivered from Luna to Earth as ore inside of company owned freighters which completed round trips by bringing equipment and mining supplies from Earth to Luna and eventually to Mars. Solar sailing tankers, often more simply called solar tankers, were used for transporting water and other bulk liquids. A few of the solar tankers had accommodationsfor employees but most of the tankers were pilotless and lacked such accommodations. A pilotless boat whose sails lost function in space was programmed to use its thrusters for placing itself onto a collision course to the Sun rather than having that pilo tless boat become an abandoned “Ghost sailboat”. Loading bulk materials into the cargo holds of solar freighters and solar tankers was done automatically by computer guided equipment. The temperature of cargo holds was kept above the freezing point of their contents during transit in space so that nothin g would be damaged by freezing, and that unwanted possibility of freezing would be a particular problem for tankers that were carrying water. Unloading of those bulk materials also could be done automatically with only computer guidance. The loading and unloading of equipment and all other cargo was done using freight handling vehicles that were driven by employees. Those freight handling vehicles used by the IMC on Earth, Luna and Mars were all similarly designed. The freight handlers use d on Earth did not need pressurized control cabins. However, the freight handling vehicles used on Luna and Mars differed because they had pressurized control cabins which was seen as being a more productive approach rather than instead requiring employeesto wear pressure suits while doing that work on Luna and Mars. Delivery of carbonium hydroxide to Mars was done using a slightly faster delivery method that consisted of discharging the mineral from a hovering solar freighter into the upper atmosphere, after which the mineral would freely fall onto the martian surface and there photodecay. Hopefully, with
83 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA enough millennia of continuous automated effort, the creation and transportation of carbonium hydroxide to Mars could achieve the eventual goal of establishing amartian atmosphere capable of supporting animals and plants from Earth. It was anticipated that after the eventual reestablishment of a martian atmosphere, growth of selected plant species and selected photosynthetic microbes on Mars could change the chemistry of martian regolith into a material that could fully support a wide range of agricultural crops. Once suitable conditions could be created in the atmosphere and soil of Mars, the Interplanetary Mining Consortium would find it far easier to utilizemartian resources.
84 Chapter 11 - Year 500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Establishing Goals for Inhabiting Luna and Mars At this point in Earth’s history the polar ice had finished melting.Emiliania huxleyi glacialisdid seem to be having some beneficial effect, but thus far its action progressed too slowly for saving what little multiyear ice had remained. Hong Kong, Singapore and all other coastal economic centers now were gone beneath the ocean’s surface except for the vertical remains of their once towering reinforced concrete structures. The names of those places had been kept for cultural value and reused in establishing New Hong Kong and New Singapore, which were becoming the capitals of supernations. The flooded cities had otherwise passed into memory except for being mentioned in school textbooks and for the tourism industry which charged people to take submarine tours of the submerged ruins. Many of those submerged ruins had become structurally unstable and collapse of the ruins was increasingly a concern associated with tourist activities. The bonobandescendants now numbered in the thousands and most of them lived in Canada. Canada clearly had benefitted from the social and intellectual contributions made by its bonoban descendants and in a subtle way that success attracted envy from other governments. Humans gradually had been accepting a sense of the reality that blaming everything on bonoban descendants seemed unrealistic. Negative prejudice
85 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA was based upon a fear that those against whom prejudice was being directed might in truth be superior to those who were emitting the negative prejudice. Earth was facing bigger social issues, and denial of rights to descendants of the bonobans served onlyas a diversion from trying to solve society’s more significant problems. And so, finally, full societal rights including citizenship were awarded throughout Earth to the bonoban descendants. Access to higher education also was allowed to bonobandescendants on that planet and they even were permitted to become educators at all levels. Within a few decades, Finian Noban who was a direct descendant of the male bonoban Finian, was appointed as Forty-fourth Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. Eventually, that same Finian Noban received the Nobel Prize in Physics. The bonoban descendants were allowed to change their surname if they chose to do so. Interestingly, most of the bonoban descendants preferred to keep the last nameNoban as a symbol of pride for what they had achieved. Most of the bonoban descendants also had retained their belief in Hinduism and they particularly held strong to their belief in Hanuman’s philosophy of selfless dedication and devotion. There still was a long way to go in terms of bonoban descendants gaining complete social acceptance, and unfortunately there still was plenty of abuse laid upon them by the Interplanetary Mining Consortium. But, the bonoban descendants clearly had achieved great progress and their philosophy of diligence had earned them respect. The mineral resources of Luna had proven extensive and more than sufficient to justify the expense of establishing a small permanent underground lunar mining colony whose target population would be less than two hundred people. All of the needed living sup plies, engineering equipment and engineering supplies were brought from Earth to Luna by IMC solar freighters.
86 C HRISTON J. H URST Deliveries to Luna arrived at the lunar spaceport by controlled vertical descent, which was facilitated by Luna’s low gravity. And, in return, those deliveries by the IMC from Luna to Earth which did not involve fragile items, such as mineral ores, often were completed by uncontrolled vertical descent. That meant the materials were simply dumped into the Earth’s atmosphere over an intended target site in the same way that carbonium hydroxide was unceremoniously discharged into themartian atmosphere. It was a delivery approach that recalled imagery from an ancient Haiku by Gary Snyder which described scrap brass dropped off the fantail of a boat over the Mindanao Deep. “Over the Mindanao Deep” Scrap brass dumpt off the fantail falling six miles (Over the Mindanao Deep, from Hitch Haiku, copyright 1965 by Gary Snyder). Fortunately, the solar freighters delivered fragile items, humans and bonoban descendants by controlled vertical descent which meant accomplishing a gentle landing of the solar freighter onto the Earth’s surface. Finally, the establishment of permanent off planet residence on Luna meant that ancient stories about the man on that moon and the lady on that moon had become a reality. The Chinese story about a rabbit living under a tree on that moon did not happen. Animals were not allowed on Luna as either pets or livestock, and a rabbit’s ability to jump in combination with the low lunar gravity would have made a rabbit uncatchable. The lunar residents were mentioned by various nicknames both on Luna and on Earth. Lunar residents were the brunt of many Earth jokes. The most common nickname was Eye-Micky, or more simply Mickies, because all of
87 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA the lunar residents were either IMC employees or immediate family members of IMC employees. A less appreciated name was Troglodytes, which was shortened to Trogs, because the lunar residents lived in old mining tunnels. The origin of the term Loonies, whic h was somewhat similar to Lunatics, obviously was because the people given that name lived on Luna. The lunar mining colony officially was named Wapakoneta for the city which Neil Armstrong claimed as his home in what had been the American State of Ohio in the Canadian Southern Territories. Wapakoneta had been the name of a French trading post near to wh ere that Earth city eventually was established. Assigning the name Wapakoneta to the mining colony did, of course, lead to the least preferred nickname for lunar residents which was Wapies. The available jobs on Luna mostly were associated with mining and ore processing, agricultural work, community engineering and design, health care, jobs associated with the commissary, and administrative functions. Being stationed on Luna required signing papers for an initial ten -year indenture to the IMC and the company’s recruitment campaign promoted employment on Luna as being a novelty career. For practical and unanticipated physical reasonsa commitment to residing on Luna generally became longer than just those initial ten years. The constraint which kept everyone on Luna was related to the fact that lunar gravity was less than seventeen percent of Earth’s gravity. Consequently, those lunarresidents who had been born on Earth but acclimated to lunar residence would be physically uncomfortable should they subsequently try returning to Earth. Humans and bonobandescendants who were born on Luna essentially could not live on Earth because their skeletal systems and circulatory systems would prove physiologically inadequate in Earth’s gravity. Inability to transition from lunar life to Earth life thus meant that the choice to live and raise a family on Luna tended to be a permanent decision for oneself and for one’s future family members.
88 C HRISTON J. H URST The lunar residents were obliged to be in corporate housing as there was no other lodging available on Luna. Living amenities on Luna were indeed comfortably good and several park-like recreational areas were provided within the tunnels. A unique variation of three dimensional soccer called moonball developed as a recreational pastime and alsobecame a competitive team sport on Luna. As with soccer, the game included goal nets at two ends of a tunnel section. Moonball depended upon the lower lunar gravity and combined acrobatic leaps with high somersaults during which players were allowed to bounce the ball against the tunnel ceiling and walls. Although, even with the parks and moonball fairly considered, for many residents life in the underground lunar colony still felt a bit like being sentenced to permanent confinement. All salaries and living expenses were paid in company scrip and the lunar residents essentially were in debt to the company commissary which was the only ready source that sold the necessities and novelties for communal life. Conceptually, IMC company scrip could be converted to an Earth currency although the process of currency conversion annoyingly was neither easy nor clearly defined. Currency conversion happily did allow for items not sold in the commissary to be privately purchased and transported from Earth to Luna by independent delivery services. In particular, private importation from Earth provided lunar residents with alcoholic beverages which were neither allowed to be manufactured in IMC facilities nor sold by the IMC commissaries. The independent delivery process could involve long delays during which perishable food items sometimes spoiled. Fortunately, distilled alcoholic beverages from Earth always arrived in good condition! Wapakoneta lunar colony had been developed as a mining town and that was reflected in a self-reinforcing social reality which included a somewhat close- minded attitude displayed by the residents. There also was, perhaps regrettably, a lack of public oversight on Luna beyond the corporate self governance that was being provided by IMC. One of the benefits of
89 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA governance by IMC was the nearly complete absence of crime on Luna. Personal weapons never had been allowed on Luna. And,conviction of any crime by an IMC tribunal meant the guilty plus their family would be evicted from the lunar base and permanently exiled to Earth. One of the negative consequences from not having public oversight was that Luna seemed destined to become atrash dump covered with piles of garbage and mine waste. Because of their personal obligations to the company, none of the lunar residents were willing to protest againsteither living conditions in the colony or the piles of discarded materials on the lunar surface. And, initially none protested when the IMC denied citizenship rights to the bonoban descendants who were residing on Luna. That denial of rights meant the bonoban descendants could be forced to do extremely dangerous labor tasks without the safety precautions that would be required if the same jobs were being performed by non-bonobans. This social injustice was a step backwards for the bonobandescendants, but in time it could be undone. The possibility of fire occurring within lunar tunnels was a serious concern. Managing a fire would first require quickly following meticulously planned evacuation schedules. Any section of the tunnel system in which a fire was located could be sealed airt ightly from the adjacent tunnel sections. Extinguishing the fire would be accomplished by opening valves which joined the endangered tunnel section to a series of adjacent passageways. Those passageways connected between the tunnel sections and the outside lunar surface. The fire would then instantly be extinguished for lack of air. Opening that sealed tunnel section to the outside atmosphere did, of course, mean losing valuable internal atmosphere and the water in that section instantly would boil away.But, any other approaches for fire extinguishing would provide too much pollution inside of the colony’s tunnel system.
90 C HRISTON J. H URST Large sunlight collectors importantly contributed to the lunar colony’s energy needs. The collectors powered electrocatalytic water splitting units that generated hydrogen gas and oxygen gas from water. The hydrogen and oxygen eventually were recombined inside of fuel cells to reconstitute the water and also to provide a source of electricity for the lunar colony. Fuel cells were used to power all of the lunar mining equipment. Fuel cells additionally were used to power the community service vehicles and emergency service vehicles that were being operated within the lunar colony tunnels. Excess energy from the sunlight collectors was used to power active solar heating units that provided warmth within the tunnel system. Personal transportation within Wapakoneta including the agricultural areas depended upon the residents either walking, using pedal-powered vehicles, or using push scooters to conserve the quality and most importantly protect atmospheric gas composition within the colony. The community was not yet large enough for public transportation. The lunar colony gained much of its water by controlledphotodegradation of carbonium hydroxide which had been transported from Earth. Water indeed did exist as trapped ice on Luna, but that source of water was not adequate to satisfy the colony’s agricultural requirements and certainly not enough to satisfy industrial ambitions of the IMC. The IMC’s efforts to capture cometary fragments as a source of additional water and oxygen for Luna proved to be a disastrous failure and represented a potential risk to Earth. Although, the company did have hope that perhap s in future millennia the idea of capturing comets could be made to work for supplying water on Mars. Recycling of water and nutrients on Luna were critically important issues. The wastewater was treated by a multiple-step recycling process. First, the wastewater solids were collected and those solids then combined with food waste, agricultural waste solid s, and other organically recyclable solid materials. The combined solids were processed by microbial composting and
91 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA eventually used as a fertilization additive to help support lunar agricultural production. That recycling of organic nutrients helped to make the lunar colony more self-sufficient and reduced the amount of material that would be committed to garbage dumps.There had been some discussion by IMC that death of the lunar residents should be followed by composting of their remains. That idea was rejected, and instead the remains were buried outside the colony where they became freeze-dried. The water being recycled was further purified by microorganisms that were contained in a series of processing tanks, and that treatment provided a source of methane which could be sent to Earth for use as an energy source. Microbially treated wastewater was then used for agricultural irrigation as a way of helping to sustain the water resources available to the mining colony. Recycled water often was distilled as a final treatment step, after which the water would be considered sufficiently purified for di rect reuse by the residents. Lunar residents accepted that recycling concept and became accustomed to the unpleasant taste and odor of the recycled product water simply because there was almost no other water supply available. The lunar colony’s initial oxygen supply was derived by photodegradation of carbonium hydroxide delivered from Earth and continually replenished using additional carbonium hydroxide. Oxygen also was extracted from lunar rocks. When necessary, oxygen from the electrocatalytic units could serve as a supplemental source to maintain a breathable atmosphere within the lunar colony tunnels. Photosynthetic oxygen regeneration from water was accomplished naturally by cultivation of the colony’s crop plantsand also by cultivation of the algae Chlorella vulgaris which was raised in artificial ponds within agricultural areas of the tunnels.Chlorella production also had become an important part of the wastewater treatment process and the harvestedChlorella cells were valuable as a dietary protein supplement.
92 C HRISTON J. H URST Agricultural production of duckweed plants provided an additional source of oxygen regeneration. Symbiotic bacteria that grew within small natural pockets in the duckweed leaves supplied the duckweed plants with nitrogen in a biologically available form, termed fixed nitrogen. In turn, that fixed nitrogen helped the cultivated duckweed to be useful as a fertilizer for the crop plants. Crop plants were produced on Luna using soil -based techniques and controlled irrigation. Microbial inoculants consisting of carefully selected symbiotic bacteria and molds were mixed into the soil at the initiation of the agricultural programs because cropplants cultivated by soil-based agriculture could not grow successfully without their necessary symbiotic microbial partners. The primary agricultural products on Luna were wheat, barley, oats, beans and peas all of which were able to self-pollinate. Blueberries, strawberries and a wide variety of edible fungi which could be self-pollinated also were grown. The strawberries did benefit from farmers additionally using a soft brush to help those plants successfully achieve pollination. Growing rice, which also was self -pollinating, received favorable consideration but required some skillful adaptations of technology. Initially, it was thought that rice cultivation would be too difficult in the old mining tunnels. Those tunnels were approximately horizontal but not sufficiently level to contain large floodedfields. The use of terracing to create smaller rice fields within the tunnels, in combination with water management techniques that used alternating cycles of soil wetting and drying, did successfully allow rice production. Any non -self-pollinating crops had to be pollinated mechanically on Luna because the velocity of air movement within the tunnels was not sufficient for wind-pollinated crops and there were no imported insects such as bees which could pollinate the crop pla nts. The IMC was concerned that
93 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA importing insects could create an uncontrolled disaster in the confining tunnels. The tunnel ecology simply did not include animals that might control insect populations. Their research studies had led to the development of artificial growing conditions for Luna that fortunately allowed many of their crop varieties to be harvested almost throughout the year. The types of atmospheric dust pollution that would be associated with using extremely large-scale agricultural production techniques as done on Earth would be disastrous within the enclosed colony spaces. For that reason, it was important that the populati on of Luna be kept low enough so that agricultural production could be done using small-scale mechanization with equipment that was powered by fuel cells. Agricultural products harvested on Luna were sold to lunar residents through the IMC commissary. Manufacturing of commercial food products on Luna from those harvests was at that time very limited because the population size was not sufficient to support doing those business activities on a large scale. Although, some of the residents with particularly good talent at cooking successfully bartered the products of their skills. The fruits, edible fungi and vegetables grown on Luna were sold fresh and many varieties of those also were available frozen. Preparation of that frozen food was done on a very small scale at the commissary by company employees. The grains grown on Luna were sold whole and also sold after being milled at the commissary into flour using a small electric stone mill. Pasta was made by the commissary using wheat grown and milled on Luna. There also was a small bakery associated with the commissary which produced and sold bread as well as sweet pastries that similarly were prepared using wheat grown and milled on Luna.
94 C HRISTON J. H URST Synthetic dairy products were manufactured on Luna at a facility associated with the commissary by using genetically engineered microbes to produce milk components including milk proteins. Having real dairy products on Luna was uncommon and represented therealization of an expensive dream because those products needed to be imported from Earth and usually were available only tothe wealthier lunar residents. Meat imported from Earth was available at the commissary and sold either dried, frozen, fermented or salt cured. The preferred choices of fermented meat included various types of salami. Curiously, there also was a preference for salty processed canned pork similar to the ancient products once sold on Earth as meat rations during the Second World War. Mineralogical survey satellites were placed into orbit around Mars which illuminated the planet’s surface with carefully tuned lasers. Spectrometric analysis was performed on reflected light that came back up to the satellites. Based upon that crude levelof surveying, the company did estimate eventual revenue from mining on Mars would be enough to recover substantial investment costs. Next, a network of positioning satellites was placed into orbit around Mars which would be used to provide locational guidance for autonomously piloted rovers. Those rovers traveled around the planet performing core sampling and comparing spectrometric analysis of the surface dust versus underlying rock material. Data obtained from all of those analyses was combined and used to establish a detailed map of the martian mineral resources. With that information, the IMC was able to determine which locationswould be most profitable to start its mining operations. Successful establishment of suitable living conditions on Mars then became a long term goal for the IMC. The most necessary corporate objectives were creating a habitable climate and growing enough agricultural crops to support a mining colony. Reports from occasional visits made to Mars by
95 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA IMC engineers indicated that relaying carbonium hydroxide from Earth was having the desired effect. Although, the realistic estimate was that achieving development of an adequate atmospheric pressure and suitably breathable atmosphere on Mars would requiremillennia. When the Bonoban calendar was begun, the martian atmosphere had a pressure of 6.5 millibars at ground level. That did not compare well against Earth’s atmosphere which had a sea level air pressure of slightly over 1,000 millibars. The summit of Mount Everest on Earth, at a height of 8,849 meters above sea level (29,032 feet), had an unlivable atmospheric pressure of about 337 millibars. The easily livable cities on Earth had lower altitudes and correspondingly higher atmospheric pressures. La Paz in Bolivia at an altitude of 3,640 meters above sea level (11,942 feet) had a reasonably comfortable atmospheric pressure equal to 640 millibars but many people needed time to become fully comfortable at that somewhat low atmospheric pressure. Bogotá in Colombia at an altitude of 2,620 meters above sea level (8,596 feet) had an instantly comfortable atmospheric pressure of 720 millibars. One of the IMC goals was to establish a martian atmosphere comfortable for people and livestock animals by achieving a pressure of at least 680 millibars, equal to the ancient location in Antarctica where the Amundsen-Scott Station had been situated above the geographical south pole, and its altitude prior to glacial melting had been 2,835 meters above sea level (9,306 feet). The atmosphere of Earth when the Bonoban calendar began was approximately 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 0.04 percent carbon dioxide. Although, the composition of gases in Earth’s atmosphere previously had been greatly different. During the prehistoric carboniferous period, the atmospheric concentration of oxygen on Earth rose as high as 35 percent and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was as high as 0.15 percent. If the IMC could achieve on Mars a 19.5 percent atmospheric concentration of oxygen with not much more thana 0.1 percent atmospheric
96 C HRISTON J. H URST concentration of carbon dioxide, plus an adequate atmospheric concentration of nitrogen, then it would be sufficient to meet their requirements. Plants needed the carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Animals needed the oxygen.
97 Chapter 12 - Year 1,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: The Rise of Lunar Tourism The total population number of humans and bonobandescendants on Earth gradually had been diminishing to a number which sustainably matched the resources Earth could provide. The socioeconomic impacts associated with decreasing numbers of available workers on Earth had resulted in governments needing to change their approaches for funding pension benefits but those changes did prove successful. By this point the bonoban descendants were essentially indistinguishable from humans which lacked bonobangenes, aside from those differentiations which could be made by genetic testing and the surname Noban. Children often still made fun of their playmates by calling those playmates bonobans. Such taunts once would have been part of cruel discrimination butnow were more often playful. Medical advances had tremendously improved the quality of life for humans and the bonoban descendants. Those improvements fortunately were sustained well into old age. Genetic engineering techniques had erased cancer and cardiovascular disease from the list of concerns. Vaccination against early dementia had proven to be very effective in prolonging the quality of life. The hybridization with bonobos a millennium before may have resulted in a slightly prolonged average human life expectancy on Earth. And, even now, a thousand years after the hybridization experiments many bonoban descendants still did not experience brain shrinkage with age which meant their ability to learn was lifelong.
98 C HRISTON J. H URST One of the greatest advances in human health care had been the development of synthetic internal organ replacements. Those were grown by culturing stem cells from the individual who would need the replacement. All organs except for the brain could be produced and replaced in that way. It had been hoped that once human population numbers on Earth were under control there automatically would be less environmental pollution. Unfortunately, the hope about declining pollution was optimism that did not hold true. There still was too much ofa selfish “Throw away” culture that presumed everyone else was the cause of environmental contamination. There also was the lingering attitude that “If nobody saw me do it, then I cannot be guilty”. For those reasons, although pollution on Earth had decreased somewhat in conjunction with the declining human population numbers, it had become clear that truly decreasing pollution would require greater collective social effort and a global sense of community consciousness. The beautiful native forests had been allowed to regrow in Greenland. There now again was sufficient available land area and other agricultural resources for terrestrial livestock animals, including mammals and poultry, to be raised in numbers that were adequate for easily satisfying the market demand of people who wished toeat those animals. Larger aquatic livestock animals also could again be raised in plentiful numbers including fish, molluscs such as clams and oysters, and even larger crustaceans such as prawns and lobsters. There had been some optimism that Earth’s natural ecosystems including its wildlife populations might quickly rebound despite the unresolved pollution issues. That optimism proved unrealistic. Reestablishing correctly functioning ecosystems would require not only pollution control but also assessing the microbiological health of those ecosystems. The assessments needed to incorporate understanding the combined interactions of microbes, plants and animals. It would be necessary to carefully establish ecological
99 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA protocols and monitor the progress of ecosystem recovery, with humans prepared to intervene as required to assure that Earth’s redeveloping wildlife communities established a correct balance of species. Terrestrial ecosystems were the easiest to tackle because they could be seen. The greater goal would be helping to recover the less visible oceanic ecosystems, and it was a task which became more urgent when the discovery was made that failsafe genetic coding inserted intoEmiliania huxleyi glacialis by using an endogenous virus did not function. That organism should have ceased to replicate if the ambiental dissolved carbonate level in the oceans fell too far below a predetermined level. Instead, the engineered coccolithophore had inactivated the inserted endogenous virus and its failsafe information. Uncontrolled growth of Emiliania huxleyi glacialis was beginning to cover the shallower ocean areas with calcite precipitate and affecting the alkalinity of oceanic ecosystems. The precipitate additionally was suffocating photosynthetic activity on the sea floor and beginning the process of forming chalk deposits. There was some concern expressed by climate scientists that, if replication of Emiliania huxleyi glacialis could not be controlled, then land-based agricultural production would need to be adjusted for the decreasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and ultimately a new glacial period might begin on Earth. The Wapakoneta mining colony on Luna had grown to a combined population level of well over three thousand humans and bonoban descendants. The lunar residents had finally come to be known as the Selenites, named in honor of Selene who was the Greek goddess that represented a personification of the Earth’s moon and once had been worshipped at the full moons and new moons. Social pressure among the residents on Luna had resulted in both citizenship as well as civil rights being restored to bonoban descendants.
100 C HRISTON J. H URST Life expectancy among the lunar residents proved to be slightly less than for people on Earth. The reasons for reduced lifespan on Luna seemed to be associated with a collection of factors, some of which weighed in favor and others that weighed against the health of the lunar residents. It was considered that lunar residents might be benefitting from the lessened physical exertion that was required in their daily lives because of the reduced gravity. And, living inside the tunnels offered good protection from cosmic radiation. On the opposite side of the balance scale, there seemed to be a health detriment associated with spending a lifetime breathing the mixture of gasses in the tunnel atmosphere. That atmosphere was similar but not identical to the atmosphere for which humans had evolved on Earth. Humans had placed nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and water into the tunnel atmosphere. Other gas molecules such as methane were present insmall levels and continually had been contributed by composting, water recycling processes, and the natural biology associated with human presence. Argon, helium, neon, and radon were released into the tunnel atmosphere by outgassing from lunar rock. Thesingle most significant health detriment on Luna had been lung cancer presumably associated with radon gas exposure inside the tunnels. Successful treatments fortunately had become available for that cancer. Nostalgic stories and period fantasies about life on Earth were a source of popular entertainment on Luna. Those stories seemed particularly fanciful because the lunar residents could not travel to Earth without suffering illness associated with the Earth’s higher gravity. The IMC had discovered that traveling in the opposite direction, lunar tourism by Earth residents, was a good supplemental source of income for the company. Tourists comfortably were transported between Earth and Luna on regularly scheduled flights by solar sailing boats that were specially designed for the transiting of tourists, and they were designated Lunar transit solar tourism boats. Booking passage
101 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA to Luna had become so popular that it needed to be done nearly an Earth year in advance. The solar tourism boats had two decks of which both were pressurized and heated. Passengers used the upper deck where the available facilities included a wide range of comforts and the upper deck was staffed with service attendants. Entering and leaving the upper deck on either Earth or Luna normally was done using a passenger transport vehicle that connected to passenger boarding doors which were located on the upper deck. Those comforts afforded to passengers and crew on the upper deck of solar tourism boats were a seating cabin, a dining room, an exercise room, sleeping quarters, plus bathing and toilet facilities. Amenities in the seating cabin and dining room included large windows which allowed the passengers and crew an opportunity to enjoy watching their progress through space. Although, the crew generally found no novelty in watching a natural scene which they had seen so many times before. The absence of strong gravity on those boats provided the passengers with an interesting experience of floating around while they were dining if that was their choice. Otherwise, the crew preferred for the passengers to eat while fastened within their seat s. The crew found nothing amusing about constantly needing to chase after any objects that passengers had allowed to float freely about the cabin in near zero gravity or even to avoid floating passengers. Contained on the lower deck of the solar tourism boats were holds for passenger luggage, storage compartments for food and other supplies including clean linens, and tanks of clean water. Atmospheric regeneration units also were on the lower deck along wit h tanks of supplemental atmospheric gases needed for the trip. The lower deck additionally held tanks that stored hydrogen and oxygen gases which had been produced from stored water using electrocatalytic water splitters.Bins for keeping garbage and
102 C HRISTON J. H URST soiled linens were on the lower deck, as were those tanks that held wastewater. The lower deck additionally was used as a stowage area for goods being delivered between Earth and Luna. Everything kept on the lower deck had to be well fastened down to prevent any weight shifts during flight that might prove damaging upon landing. Solar tourism boats eventually designed for flights to Mars would need to be designed with additional onboard equipment including a recirculating water purification system plus laundry facilities. All members of the crew had permission to use interior access doors for moving between the upper and lower decks whenever that might be needed during flight. For safety reasons, passengers were allowed onto the lower deck only during lifepoddrills or if the boat truly were in peril such that it became necessary to board the lifepods. Lifepods on the solar tourism boats were mounted onto the outside of the lower deck. Entering the lifepods during trips in space was done from inside the lower deck through an airlock. Each lifepod had a second airlock for entering and exiting from the outside space environment. Passengers did not wear pressure suits when onboard the lifepods, although the lifepodsdid contain enough emergency pressure suits for everyone in case those might ever be needed. The lifepods on solar tourism boats always were kept pressurized and heated so that equipment and supplies contained within the lifepods would not freeze. The lifepods designed for solar tourism boats were more luxurious than those lifepods used on IMC sol ar freighters. Tourism boat lifepods clearly had more comfortable seating and nicer toilet facilities. Although, no accommodation was made for bathing aboard any of the lifepods, because that was considered a nicety unnecessary for survival. It was required that a crew member accompany the p assengers in each lifepod. The lifepods contained enough water and meals to last for several months. Additionally,
103 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA the lifepods held the usual storage tanks that contained breathing gases plus atmosphere regeneration units. The lifepodsalso were equipped with solar panel arrays that could be extended to supply electrical power for their onboard life support systems. If an emergency were to arise which required that crew and passengers enter the lifepods then there were protocols used to determine whether the lifepods should be uncoupled from the solar tourism boat and the lifepods thus released into space. It certainl y would be easier to locate and rescue passengers if the lifepodscould safely remain attached to their sailing boat. There were both ion thrusters and rocket thrusters on the lifepods which could be used for propulsion if it were necessary to uncouple the lifepods from the boat. Emergency evacuation procedures also did allow forpassengers to exit their solar tourism boat from the lower deck of the boat through external airlock doors either directly into space or onto Earth and Luna. Directly exiting the boat through those airlocks during an emergency either into space or onto Lu na required that the people be wearing pressure suits. There were enough pressure suits in the boats for everyone onboard but it was not expected that those suits would need to be used. A solar sailing boat, even if pilotless, could be set to use its autopilot mechanisms for finishing a journey to either Luna or Earth. Upon arriving at one of those destinations the boat could pilot itself to a safe landing with its lifepods still attached. If a solar sailing boat no longer could pilot itself to a safe landing, then it would be necessary to uncouple the lifepodsinto space and abandon the boat. The abandoned boat subsequently would rely upon preprogrammed instructions that directed it on a collision course to the Sun using its thrusters. Alternatively, leaving that boat to be captured by the gravity of either Earth or Luna would almost certainly result in the boat eventually crashing onto one of those celestial bodies and perhaps causing damage when the crash occurred.
104 C HRISTON J. H URST After a lifepod was uncoupled from its sailing boat the pod would immediately identify its position by using space telescopes and tracking systems. An automatic beacon on the pod then would become active. Signals sent by the beacon would trigger reply messages from Earth, Luna and other boats requesting information about needed assistance. Communications could be sent and received between the lifepodand potential rescuers using laser based signaling and radio based signaling. Then, a solar sailing rescue boat would be sent from either Earth or Luna to trace that lifepod’s beacon and safely assist the pod with its passengers to reach port on either Earth or Luna. Rescue in that way would be the first option for passengers onboard the lifepod. Knowledge of those procedures helpfully offered a sense of reassurance to anyone who felt nervousness about potentially needing to use the lifepods. Each lifepod could automatically pilot itself and land upon either Earth or Luna as a second option if that were necessary. A third option was available if a lifepod had been released from a boat but the pod could not be quickly reached by a rescue boat and the lifepod seemed so damaged that it would be unable to land on either Earth or Luna. That third option was having the lifepod travel to a very large unmanned but well equipped and supplied lifestation located in orbit at the L1 Earth – Luna Lagrange point. That Lagrange point existed on a straight line between Earth and Luna. The point was closer to Luna than to Earth and it marked the location where lunar gravitational attraction balanced gravitationa l attraction from Earth. Construction and servicing of the L1 Earth – Luna Lagrange station was done by IMC. Unfortunately, the company’s concern in establishing that station was not for the safety of its employees whorode in uncomfortable solar freighters during their transit between the Earth and Luna. Instead, the company’s concern was for the safety of tourists who traveled in the luxurious Lunar transit solar tourism boats.
105 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Upon arrival on Luna after a successful trip from Earth in solar tourism boats, the tourists would enjoy luxury accommodations inside of a pressurized dedicated tourist base that had been constructed within mining tunnels at Mare Tranquillitatis. That partof Luna was picked for the tourist base because of its historical significance. Transfer of tourists between their solar tourism boats and the tourist base was done by using double-ended wheeled shuttles that had pressurized interiors and were powered by fuel cells. The shuttles were named Fairlies after the double-ended steam locomotive patented in 1864 by Scottish engineer Robert Francis Fairlie. Both ends of the shuttle had airockentrances with an inner door that opened to the always pressurized interior of the shuttle vehicle. The airlock’s outer door could open either to a passenger door of a solar tourism boat’s hull or to a passenger door on the tourist base. The shuttle had two command chairs, one mounted on each end of the vehicle. Operation of the shuttle was done by a crew of two, consisting of a driver who sat upon whichever command chair faced the direction in which their shuttle was traveling, plus an airlock operator who sat to the right of the command chair. After the shuttle had reached the solar tourism boat, the airlock operator would control scissor lift elevation equipment in the shuttle undercarriage which raised the shuttle passenger compartment high enough to accomplish correct alignment with one of the upper deck passenger doors of the solar tourism boat. The airlock operator then accomplished docking of the outer door of one of the shuttle’s airlocks against the solar tourism boat’s passenger door. The airlock operator next used atmosphere from the shuttle’s storage tanks to fill the space between the inner and outer doors of the shuttle’s docked airlock, after which both the inner and outer doors of that shuttle airlock were opened. The passenger door of the solar tourism boat also was opened, and tourists then could walk from the solar tourism boat through the shuttle airlock and be seated inside the shuttle.
106 C HRISTON J. H URST When everyone had made that transfer to the shuttle, the passenger door of the solar tourism boat and both doors of the docked shuttle airlock were closed. The space between the inner and outer doors of the shuttle’s docked airlock then was evacuated ofits atmosphere by air pumps and that gas was transferred into the shuttle’s storage tanks. Finally, the airlock operator undocked the shuttle from the solar tourism boat, then lowered the shuttle passenger compartment back down to its resting place on topof the chassis. The driver next piloted the shuttle back to the tourist base. Upon arriving at the tourist base, the shuttle would be docked with one of its outer airlock doors against a passenger door at the base. By reversing the airlocking process which tourists had used to enter the shuttle, tourists could then walk through the inner and outer doors of the shuttle airlock which was docked to the base entrance, walk through the base passenger door, and enter the tourist base. Luggage and other possessions brought by tourists were kept in the luggage hold on the lower deck of the solar tourism boat. The luggage hold was irradiated to kill insects before any luggage items could be brought into the lunar base. Pressurized delivery vans powered by fuel cells were used to transport passenger luggage and othercargo between the solar tourism boat and the tourist base. The driver would back their van against the solar tourism boat and then control scissor lift elevation equipment in the van undercarriage which raised the body of the van high enough that the van could be docked with itsairlock against lower deck freight doors of the solar tourism boat. Luggage and cargo then were offloaded into the van and transported to the tourist base, where the van would dock against freight doors of the base and the van then be unloaded. The vans also were used for delivering a fresh supply of food to the solar tourism boat. The solar tourism boat’s sewage tank would be emptied into a septic tanker truck, also powered by fuel cells, which delivered that dirty water for recycling inside the tourist base. Solids from the sewage were
107 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA collected and composted for use in fertilizing lunar crops. Fresh water from the tourist base was used to refill the solar tourism boat’s clean water tanks. Garbage from the solar tourism boat was transferred to a solar sailing garbage scow which then carried to Earth that garbage plus any garbage generated at the tourist base. The tourists reported feeling a slightdizziness during their initial few days on Luna because of the difference in atmospheric composition between Earth and the tunnels on Luna. First time tourists to Luna were surprised by that. Repeat tourists to Luna found a sense of adventurous nostalgia when adapting to the difference of lunar atmosphere. The tour groups from Earth seemed to enjoy both living in Luna’s lower gravity plus the novelty of seeing how lunar residents in the mining colony used methods of agriculture which were simpler and seemed perhaps quite ancient. Earth tourists could watch in person a moonball competition match, something which they otherwise had only seen broadcast from Luna to Earth. The lunar residents were happy for opportunities to talk with the tourists as a way of learning about life on Earth, which was of particular interest because gravitational differences meant lunar residents could not physically adjust well enough for making even short visits to Earth. Tours of the lunar surface were done using large vehicles which provided a pressurized interior and were powered by fuel cells. Some of the tours were short, lasting less than eight hours, during which the passengers rode in wheeled vehicles called Lunar tourist buses that had pressurized interiors. The bus trips were for sightseeing around Mare Tranquillitatis. During those tripsthe bus passengers saw some of the craters and ancient exploration equipment which surrounded the tourist base. Lunar tourist buses used for taking visitors on the short tours had seating that could accommodate ten passengers plus a crew of four. Three of the crew
108 C HRISTON J. H URST members were the bus captain, its co-captain, and a communications officer, who together as a trio performed their work inside of a small forward facing crew compartment. The fourth crew member was a service attendant who also served as the tour guide and was stationed in the large passenger compartment. Toilet facilities located in the passenger compartment were used by the crew and passengers. Passengers on the tourist buses did not need to wear pressure suits. Although, pressure suits were available inside the vehicle as a safety measure. As required, each bus had two security airlock entrances. One airlock entrance was at the front of the passenger compartment. The other airlock entrance was at the rear of the passenger compartment. Each of those airlock entrances had both an inner door which opened to the always pressurized interior of the vehicle as well as an outer door which could be opened to the lunar surface if any emergency arose which made it necessary to leave the bus. There was a vestibule areabetween the inner and outer doors of each airlock entrance. The vestibule was large enough to accommodate all ofthe passengers and crew together at a single time. The vestibule was kept pressurized unless it contained pressure suited passengers and crew who were preparing to exit. Each bus also had a side entry from the interior of the passenger compartment which was a single door used for entering and exiting when the bus was inside the pressurized tourist base. There were five different bus tour routes from which the tourists could choose. Those short tours were done entirely during lunar daylight periods. Tourists prepared for the bus trip by having breakfast together with their assigned crew at the tourist base. During breakfast the tourists had a chance to become acquainted with the crew assigned to their bus for that day. The crew would give a presentation explaining their route for the day and include mention of the places to be visited. An explanation about using the airlock safety entrances was presented and the tourists were shown how to wear a pressure suit.
109 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The tourists and crew then boarded their bus through its side entry door within the tourist base. Next, the captain drove the bus through the inner door of a pressurized bay and stopped the bus inside of the bay. The outer bay door, which protected the tourist base against the vacuum of space at the lunar surface, already was closed and sealed. The inner bay door then closed and sealed, after which the bay interior area itself was evacuated ofits valuable atmosphere. The outer bay door then opened and the captain drove through the outer door to begin the day’s adventure. The bus passenger compartment had large side viewing windows through which the lunar surroundings could be viewed. Meal accommodations provided on the bus consisted of a daily luncheon, which was provided simply and the tourists ate their luncheon from a dining tray while remaining in their passenger seats. The bus was parked during luncheon. There also was a beverage service provided both before and after the meal, and those beverages were offered while the bus was parked at sight seeingstops. The bus tours always arrived back at the tourist base before it was time to have an evening meal. Returning inside the tourist base was done through a pressurized bay by reversing the direction of their earlier leaving. Other tours were longer and during which the passengers rode in enormous tracked vehicles called Lunar cruisers. The longer tours included seeing lunar highlands in addition to visiting otherlunar Maria. A typical trip aboard one of the Lunar cruisers lasted five days and four nights. As with the buses, each Lunar cruiser had two requisite airlock entrances with a vestibule area between the inner and outer doors. Each vestibule was large enough to accommodate all ofthe passengers and crew together at a single time. Each Lunar cruiser also had a side entry from the interior of the passenger compartment which was a single door used for entering and exiting when the cruiser was inside the tourist base.
110 C HRISTON J. H URST Each Lunar cruiser could accommodate ten passengers plus a crew of eight. The crew was comprised of a captain, a co-captain, a communications officer, a chef and chef’s mate, plus three service attendants. The captains and communications officer worked their days as aten hour duty shift in the forward facing crew compartment. Time spent at tourist stops was included in the ten hour shift, and that stopping time usually was considered the best opportunity for those crew members to have some rest. Each Lunar cruiser had a galley where the chef and chef’s mate worked at preparing meals and did cleaning after the meals had been consumed. The chef and chef’s mate daily worked divided ten-hour duty shifts because they needed to prepare and clean after all three of the daily meals. There also were two small but nicely designed dining areas in which the meals were served. One of the dining areas was for the passengers and the other dining area was for the crew. The captains and communications officer were allowed to enjoy their hour lunch break in the crew dining room while they officially still were on duty. There always was a service attendant on duty in the Lunar cruisers and the attendants also functioned as tour guides. Service attendants worked in the passenger areas on rotating shifts of six hours on and twelve hours off, dining with the other crew members when that was possible, or eating what they could whenever they could during their duty hours. The service attendant’s duty hours unfortunately did not include an official break period. The Lunar cruisers had panoramic windows and luxurious seating which allowed passengers to view their progress across the lunar surface during their daily ten-hour traveling periods. Those ten hours included a four-hour period of morning driving following which the cruiser was parked during an hour for luncheon. After luncheon, there were five more hours of afternoon driving that included time which the passengers spent walking outside in pressure suits.
111 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Passengers enjoyed the daily time they spent in pressure suits outside of their Lunar cruisers at stopping sites. Those planned breaks allowed opportunities for examining the variety of ancient lunar surface exploration equipment left behind on that moon by astronauts from Earth. Every tour taken by cruiser included an opportunity for each passenger individually and as a group to have their photograph taken while dressed in a pressure suit next to the descent stage of the Lunar Module in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on that moon's Sea of Tranquility. Passengers also got to see the flag planted by Neil Armstrong which subsequently had been blown over when Armstrong and Aldrin blasted off from the lunar surface. Unfortunately, the once famous footprints left by Armstrong and Aldrin had long since been obliterated. The cruiser trips additionally provided an opportunity for their passengers to see what remained of Base Armstrong and Port Aldrin. It had, of course, been necessary to haul away and bury in a landfill the accumulated trash that once nearly surrounded BaseArmstrong and Port Aldrin. Each Lunar cruiser had two sleeping compartments, one for the passengers and the other for crew. Sleeping accommodations in the cruisers werenot very large but still considered adequately comfortable. The cruiser had two sets of toilet facilities and bathing facilities, one for the passengers and the other for crew. Those facilities respectively were contained within the passenger and crew sleeping compartments. There was no visible external distinction of daytime versus nighttime because the tours by cruiser were done during the lengthy lunar daylight periods. Windows within the cruiser passenger areas could be dimmed electronically which gave the passenger an experience that virtually resembled Earth days. The Lunar cruisers always were parked during the fourteen hour daily resting and sleeping period, which began with the serving of dinner and lasted until after breakfast had been eaten.
112 C HRISTON J. H URST The fact that IMC had salvage rights allowed the company to sell to tourists those various bits of ancient equipment which governments previously had left on Luna. Among the equipment items sold were a few very large items that included lunar landers and astronomic observation equipment, lunar surface transport vehicles used by the astronauts, and pieces of lunar orbital stations which had fallen out of their orbits and crashed onto the lunar surface. Purchasing that old equipment did not include the expense which would be required for a tourist to arrange returning their souvenirs to Earth. Some of those items were small enough to be carried within the lower deck holds of their solar tourism boats.But, the larger items needed to be sent to Earth by solar freighters. Many tourists indeed were wealthy enough to afford large souvenirs that profitably could be resold on Earth. On Mars, hydrothermal energy was readily available in the Southern Highlands. That energy source made themartian south pole seem to be an ideal location for IMC to establish its first permanent martian base and Athens was chosen as the base name. Care was taken that the IMCmartian base be above ground so as to avoid a repeat of the claustrophobia experienced by many of the company’s lunar residents. The early goal of IMC was creating conditions inside theirmartian base that would be comfortably desirable for permanent residence. The main drawback to achieving even semipermanent residence was the fact of water being a tremendously precious commodity on Mars. Realizing their residential goal would require supplyingat least enough water for the indoor growth of agricultural plants. There also would be a need for sufficient water to satisfy the desire of personal hygiene. Perhaps the IMC eventually could find an adequate amount of additional water to allow for some i ndoor aquatic recreational activities. Carbonium hydroxide deliveries successfully had placed some water into the martian atmosphere. But,it was not yet possible to recover large quantities of that water back from the atmosphere using condensation equipment
113 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA because the atmosphere was too thin and as a percentage the atmosphere still contained very little water vapor. For the meanwhile, a starting supply of water for the base would be delivered from Earth by a solar tanker. Additional water could be obtained at the base by photodegradation of carbonium hydroxide that was delivered directly to the base. Structural components for themartian base were fabricated on Luna as a set of 32 prefurnished cylindrical modules. Those modules then were transported to Mars either inside the hull or fastened to the upper deck of large solar freighters. Two solar powered cranes had been sent ahead of time to Mars for use in removing modules from the freighters and then assembling those modules to create the base. Their cranes would be operated remotely by drivers who worked from inside pressurized control rooms on Mars. Two of the modules created for Base Athens were designed to serve as corridors for the base. Each of those corridor modules had at one end an airlock entryway with both an inner door plus an outer door. One of the airlock doors would open inward to the base and the other door would open outward to themartian surface. Each airlock had a vestibule area that could be pressurized and depressurized between its two doors. The opposite ends of those corridor modules had single doors that only opened inward. Those opposite ends were where the corridor modules connected togetherend to end. Once those corridor modules had been fastened together the other 30 modules were attached in such a way that they alternatingly extended outward to the right and left sides of the double module corridor. When viewed from above, the base had the appearance of a two sided hair comb. After that final assembly and some adjustments, what perhaps at first seemed like a misfit collection of modules did constitute a structure that adequately housed twenty residents. Fifteen of the modules were designated for agriculture and in those modules the residents used hydroponic techniques. The primary agricultural plants to be grown hydroponically on Base Athens were the same as being produced
114 C HRISTON J. H URST by soil farming on Luna. They were wheat, barley, oat, rice, edible fungi, beans, peas, blueberry and strawberry. Agricultural production of duckweed plants always was done hydroponically and for Mars the duckweed grew in the same water that was being usedfor the agricultural plants. All of the agricultural plants provided oxygen for the base. The duckweed additionally supplied fixed nitrogen that helped to fertilize the primary agricultural plants. One of the modules was designed for crop processing and that was where synthetic dairy products were manufactured by using genetically engineered microbes as was done on Luna. Real dairy products did not yet exist on Mars because importing those products from Earth was simply too expensive. Finally, blueberry pastries and even a blueberry pie made from homegrown fruit could be created on Mars even if the whipped cream served on top of the pastries and pie was not really dairy! Another module was used as the kitchen where those pastries and pie were baked. Their kitchen module also contained the base dining and recreation areas. A different module contained two sets of toilet and bathing facilities, one for women and the other for men. Two other modules were dormitories, one for women and the other for men. Another module held the water recycling, atmosphere regeneration, and waste management equipment. The water recycling technology that had been developed for the mining tunnels of Luna was used in the IMC modules on Mars, with cultured cells of Chlorella vulgaris similarly having become an important part of the martian wastewater treatment process. The growing Chlorella cells enhanced degradation of organic contaminants and additionally supplied oxygen into the enclosed atmosphere of the modules. Harvesting of the culturedChlorella cells provided a valuable dietary protein supplement.
115 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA An office module contained equipment for communicating with Earth, Luna, and the solar sailing boats that were transiting between those two places and Mars. That same office equipment similarly could be used for eventual communication with other future bases that would be constructed on Mars. There also was a power service module inside of which the hydrothermal energy control units were located and into which all ofthe large Base Athens solar panel arrays were connected. Inside that power service module were storage batteries. As with Luna, electrical energy from the solar collectors on Mars was used to power electrocatalytic splitting units that generated hydrogen gas and oxygen gas from water. The water splitting units, plus storage tanks for the generated hydrogen and oxygen gases, were housed within the power service module. Eventually, the hydrogen and oxygen would be recombined inside of fuel cells to provide the energy for operating martian agricultural and mining equipment plus themartian transportation vehicles. Fuel cells at the base could be used to provide a reserve source of electricity and if necessary also could be used to reconstitute the water as an emergency resource. Two of the crew members were trained to provide medical services and they had available a clinical care module where even major surgery could be performed. Having that capability on Mars was necessary because of the lengthy transit time between Mars and either Earth or Luna. Those two crew members who were responsible for medical care also received training in obstetrics just in case the women and men on the base performed unapproved interpersonal activities that were not related to their work duties. The medical crew had quietly agreed among themselves that the first addition to their base membership born on Mars would either be the base namesake Athena, if it were female, or receive the name Zeus if it were male. If a baby was born onMars then all three family members, the child and both parents,
116 C HRISTON J. H URST would be reassigned to Earth. If anyone died on Mars they would be buried on that planet. All of the other Base Athens modules were research laboratories designed to support the IMC mining operations and also to develop soil farming techniques for eventual production of crop plants in themartian regolith. Achieving successful soil farming would require adapting for Mars the appropriate symbiotic bacteria and mold inoculants. Each plant species grown by soil techniques on Mars seemed to need its own set of symbiotic bacteria and molds. Happily, th at agricultural success eventually was achieved. More water still was needed on Mars. One possible source was the many comets that contained water in the form of either ice or hydrated chemical compounds. Diversion of those comets to Mars was considered a relatively easy supplemental way of providing natural water for the planet. Although, that diversion involved some risk to the people and their structures on Mars because comets often exploded as they crashed through the martian atmosphere. If the water from those comets were to be used at Base Athens then it would be necessary to quickly recover that cometary material from the martian surface before its water content evaporated. The company hoped that additional revenue could be gained by having tourists visit Mars. For the sake of liability, cometary diversions would have to be done during times when there were no tourists on Mars. Sadly, no such safety consideration was given to the company employees. The company fortunately discovered that at least some of their needed water could be obtained from aquifers which existed beneath the Southern Highlands. That water had a high content of dissolved salts but those unwanted contaminants could be removed by filtration techniques. Relatively small-scale mining exploration activity onMars additionally had revealed that water could be extracted from the planet’s underground deposits of hydrated minerals.
117 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Engineering developments by IMC on Mars additionally enabled the successful harnessing of energy from those very powerful and seemingly interminable winds which raged on that planet. Availability of that wind energy, in addition to solar energy, then facilitated establishing a scattered collection of small bases in other locations where mining exploration could be undertaken using information from their centuries-old maps of martian mineral resources. The sedimentary rock deposits containing high levels of germanium and zinc which had been discovered within Gale Crater were considered particularly valuable. Those ores profitably could be mined and transferred by overland trains to processing centers. After partial purification at the processing centers the ore would be delivered to Earth. The level of exposure to ionizing cosmic radiation on the surface of Mars was a serious problem that would need resolution in order forlife from Earth to comfortably succeed in its newmartian home. Earth largely was protected from cosmic radiation by the churning mass of metal and molten rock in its center which created a magnetosphere around the planet. The magnetosphere captured and then locked much of the Sun’s earthbound cosmic radiation into Van Allen Belts, which prevented that radiation from reaching the planet’s surface. The churning mass also was what kept Earth’s continents in movement and fed magma into the planet’s volcanoes. Molecules such as water in the Earth’s atmosphere alsohelped by protectively absorbing cosmic radiation. Because of those two planetary defenses, its Van Allen Belts and atmospheric water, the level of external cosmic radiation on Earth’s surface equaled a relatively low yearly dosage that life successfullyhad evolved to tolerate. The core of Mars long ago had cooled and resultingly Mars was left with barely any magnetic field. For that reason, Mars had almost no magnetosphere and no longer had the Van Allen Belts which it once possessed. Mars also lacked molecules such as water inthe atmosphere that would absorb cosmic radiation. The result of missing those two things, the
118 C HRISTON J. H URST Van Allen Belts and atmospheric water, had been an average natural cosmic radiation level on the martian surface that was about 40 to 50 times the cosmic radiation exposure on Earth. Luna’s core had cooled long before the martian core, but life on Luna was done inside of the mining tunnels which provided shelter from the cosmic radiation. Conducting life on the planetary surface of Mars meant that unless a genetic solution could be found, all of the buildings, transport vehicles,and pressure suits designed for use on the martian surface would need to contain radiation shielding. The first native born martian inhabitant, Athena Noban, eventually did return to Mars after receiving her doctorate in Canada at the Colorado School of Mines where she also earned the distinction of being named an Updegraff Scholar. She became the mining supervisor for Base Athens.
119 Chapter 13 - Year 1,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: The Discovery of Mutons By this time point, which would have been the middle of the 36th century according to the Gregorian calendar, the cooling of Earth was producing definite consequences. Glacial ice sheets had begun showing indications of a reformation on the land in the polar regions and also multiyear sea ice was showing signs of reformation in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Permafrost had reformed in the northern and southern polar regions and climate change had forced all ofthe beautiful forests to again disappear from Greenland. Concern was developing regarding the question of how far the ice would advance. Although there still was optimism that nothing truly bad would happen, it nevertheless had been necessary to gradually move agricultural production in the northern and southern hemispheres towards the equator. The northern hemisphere seemed to be more affected than was the southern hemisphere. Presumably it was the greater amount of land surface area in the northern hemisphere that made the results of climate cooling more noticeable in the north. And yet, the southern hemisphere was not entirely untouched. The sparse population of Antarcticanresidents had concluded that their continent was uninhabitable because of its severely cold weather. The cooling climate had completely eliminated any possibility of agricultural production on Antarctica. Resultingly, the people of Antarctica prepared for a migration north, left their homes and headed to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. The Earth’s people simply were avoiding
120 C HRISTON J. H URST mention of the greater and more obvious truth, that there would be a future need for migrating in massive numbers further away from the polar regions of both hemispheres towards the equatorial zones. There was a sense of popular delight when the planetary cooling of Earth associated with subsidence of atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations had allowed a return to health for the tropical coral reefs. It could then not easily have been ima gined that in a few more millennia dropping sea levels would cause those beautiful reefs to become dry land. Humans now had been living permanently on Luna for well more than a thousand years. Wapakoneta had gone through a tremendous number of enlargements and renovations. Two additional lunar colonies named Delhi and Cairo had been established in response to commercial developments and to population increases. Each of the three lunar colonies had slightly more than five thousand residents and each had its own space port. The colonies had their own agricultural programs, junior moonball leagues, and amateur adult moonball leagues. Viewing the competitive matches of moonball was indeed a very popular pastime within the colonies. The economy that had become established within the lunar colonies was inherently connected to IMC which still owned everything present on Luna with the exception of some scientific research stations. Most of the lunar economy was based upon tourism plus the mining and refining of titanium. Construction of IMC housing and component parts for martian mining operations tended to be done on Luna, particularly those items which needed to be made of titanium. All of the solar sailing boats which were used for transferring people and materials including carbonium hydroxide between Earth, Luna and Mars still were constructed and structurally maintained on Luna. Unfortunately, corporate activities on Luna had indeed resulted in much of that moon becoming a trash dump and much of the accumulated trash was in plain sight but well away from the tourist areas.
121 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The martian atmospheric pressure had reached 200 millibars, equal to an Earth altitude of 12,000 meters (39,370 feet) above sea level and the planet’s atmospheric oxygen level was improving. Both of those achievements offered a sense of hope for themartian future. Base Athens on Mars had been enlarged by including additional modules and became large enough for IMC to formally grant it the status of a Colony. Tourism from Earth had begun with Luna being used as an intermediate stopover during the journeys both to andfrom Mars. The initial tourists who visited Mars went to enjoy the ruggedly adventurous life of IMC explorers and miners. For that reason, those early tourists opted for less luxurious interplanetary transport and joined IMC employees on the same solar freighters that carried cargo. Eventually, tourism on Mars would become a more valuable contribution to the IMC profit margin. Catering to the tourists then would result in some additional constructions on Mars that included a large Mars Tourism Center in the Noachis Terra area where luxurious accommodations, a Jeffrey’s of Maracaibo Pastry shop, plus a dedicated tourism space port were offered. Instead of bringing the tourists as passengers on solar freighters to and from Mars, a new type of Martian transit solar tourism boat was designed which could more easily accommodate some very high class demands made by the wealthy passengers during theirtransits to Mars and back. The older but more familiar Lunar transit solar tourism boats that were used on the relatively short trips between Earth and Luna unfortunately had lacked enough cargo storage capacity for passengers making a Marstransit. That new style of solar tourism boat designed for transiting between Earth and Mars also came to be used for tourist trips between Earth and Luna resulting in the older Lunar transit solar tourism boats being decommissioned and recycled.
122 C HRISTON J. H URST Sailing in the solar tourism boats to Mars did risk tourists being further away from help in an emergency situation. Resultingly, the transit between either Luna and Mars or Earth and Mars was done by solar tourism boats that traveled in groups for added safety. The Martian transit solar tourism boats had additional external ports to which lifepods from other vessels could attach by docking for safely allowing rescue of passengers stranded in space. The Martian transit solar tourism boats also had spare seating and living accommodations which enabled their crew members to provide comfort and care for any rescued passengers. Those improvements in martian tourist lodging plus the changes of transportation to and from Mars did successfully help to attract tourists who preferred less ruggedness. There also were upgrades made to the tourist transportation system on Mars. Those changes included using traditional Fairlies to greetmartian tourists at their Noachis Terra landing site. Only a short ride inside of Fairlies was then required before passengers reached the Mars Tourism Center. Sightseeing on Mars included visiting enclosed farming areas that had been built to supply the tourism center. Those farming areas could be visited by walking through passageways that connectedinternally to the Mars Tourism Center. The tourists also attended formal lecture sessions about both the planetary history and those early explorations of Mars that had been done by robotic probes. Part of their stay on Mars included the tourists taking scenic trips during which they traveled in the types of pressurized tourist buses and cruisers that had been designed for use on Luna. As on Luna, Mars tourist bus trips were a single day event during which tourists did not leave the bus. Mars cruiser trips were five days and four nights in duration. Included on the cruiser itinerary was seeing some of the mountains and dormant volcanoesplus studying ancientmartian shorelines. Tourists on the cruiser trips also spent time enjoyably walking around outside
123 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA their vehicle while wearing pressure suits and examining some of the ancient martian surface exploration equipment from Earth about which they had learned during their lectures. The IMC developed an optimistic new goal of establishing a full martian planetary water cycle. It would be necessary to achieve that goal if any large scale migration of residents from Earth to Mars was to occur. Reestablishing a hydrologic cycle for Mars would require enough surface water that the martian atmosphere could be saturated with humidity at least sometimes and in at least some geographical locations. Satisfying the agricultural needs for feeding a large population also would require that at least some areas of Mars have enough water to occasionally saturate the soil. Optimistically, there would also be flowing groundwater, flowing surface water, and the water could collect into lakes. The Northern Lowlands area of Mars once had been an ocean. A realistic objective would be for the Northern Lowlands to again be filled with at least enough water to have a shallow sea. And, if they could indeed locate enough additional water, then once again there might be a true martian ocean. Photodegradation of carbonium hydroxide delivered from Earth valuably was contributing to the amount of water that was environmentally available on Mars. In order to help achieve the IMC planetary water objective it also would be necessary to continue gathering water by redirecting comets to Mars. Fortunately, meteorological engineers had become more skilled at the task of importing water by controlled landing of comets. There was interest in noting that the martian frost which once had been carbon dioxide mixed with some water ice now was entirely water ice. There additionally was a congratulatory sense of accomplishment when the first martian precipitation event in perhaps four billion years occurred! It fell as a light dusting of snow upon the Southern Highland region. Hopefully, the amount and circulation of water vapor within themartian atmosphere could become sufficient to produce larger and predictable precipitation events.
124 C HRISTON J. H URST The most interesting discovery of this time period was an entirely new aspect of physics and it happened when scientists detected a previously unknown category of subatomic particles named mutons. Those particles were coming from outside the Sun’s planetary system. The newly identified particles were first detected by equipment on the surfaces of Luna and Mars. Eventually, detection of mutons arriving onto the surface of Earth also would be achieved, but the detection of mutons arriving to Earth was more difficult because of Earth’s greater atmospheric density. The initial detection of mutons happened when astrophysicists were studying a stream of particles that seemed to be coming from the star Kepler-160 in the constellation Lyra, a source location that was more than 3,000 light years of distance from the Sun’splanetary system. The astrophysicists expressed a collective sense of surprise when it was discovered that in addition to detecting photons which were redshifted appropriately for a source that distance away in the fabric of spacetime, there were other particles being emitted that seemed similar to photons except that those newly discovered particles mutated. Because the newly detected particlesmutated they were given the name mutons. The mutons were coming from a point in the universe that demonstrated fluctuating energy characteristics and seemed to violate the principles of time and space. Indeed, the muton particles appeared to be much younger than were the galaxies in that region of space and the mutons seemed to be coming from a source less than 2,000 light years distant from the Sun’s planetary system. Since the time of the Gregorian calendar it had been presumed that the universe was constantly expanding and that the expansion occurred at an increasing rate of speed. Edwin Hubble created that concept of an ever expanding universe during the Gregorian calendar’s 1920’s. The idea was based upon observations that light coming from visible sources in the universe tended to be redshifted, meaning that wavelengths of the photons emitted by those sources had been shifted towards the red end of the
125 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA electromagnetic spectrum before reaching Earth. That shift could most easily be explained by suggesting the sources emitting those photons were moving away from Earth. There also were a relatively few light sources emitting photons that seemed to be blue shifted, suggesting those sources were moving closer to Earth. The simplest presumption about redshiftinghad been that it resulted from photons traveling a straight but increasingly long path in spacetime. It was a presumption most easily explained by imagining the concept of nearly everything in the universe continually being stretched outward as the universe blew further apart in a ceaseless expansion that had progressed since the Big Bang explosion. Eventually it did become known among astronomers and astrophysicists that the warp and weft lines followed by photons through the fabric of spacetime did not always exist as straight paths. Instead, the fabric of spacetime seemed to have curving distortions that were produced when the gravity of objects pulled on the fabric of spacetime. It was also known that there were massive gravitational waves that caused curving distortions including meanders and even foldings of spacetime. Photons were required to follow all of that curvature in the fabric of spacetime as if the photons were following the curving path of a country road. Similarly, water was obliged to follow the path of a meandering river. Meandering rivers constantly changed their curvature and by increasing the amount to which they deviated from a straight path the rivers could stretch the distance their water must travel from the geographical point where the river began to the point where the river ended. It could be possible to achieve a shorter traveling distance and require a shorter traveling time if you knew how to exit from the meandering river, then venture a little way across the land by using a shortcut that bypassed themeanders, and finally reentered the river at a different location that was further downstream. People and animals who were not obliged to remain in the water of a meandering river
126 C HRISTON J. H URST would know the locations of those shortcut passages and the passages could be mapped. It also would be possible to leave the river and reenter further upstream, something which the flowing water could not do. Sometimes a meandering river shifted its path so much that individual meanders would get cut off and become lakes where the water did not flow. From the perspective of water that once may have flowed but had become trapped in that lake, its journey through time must have seemed to be standing still. A photon needed to follow all the curves of spacetime just like the molecules in flowing water needed to follow the curving path of their meandering river. Any curving or meandering of spacetime would increase the length of those paths on which photons were obliged to travel and effectively redshift the photons. Photons could travel quickly but, because they could not abandon their obligation to follow the curvature of spacetime, photons were unable to use any shortcut passageways that might exist in the universe. However, if some object could leave the meandering paths of spacetime and then travel through shortcut passageways in the universe, that object would in essence be traveling faster than light even if the object traveled more slowly than did photons. Alternatives to the Hubble expanding universe concept were not given much consideration until the discovery of mutons occurred one and a half millennia into the Bonoban calendar. The discovery and study of mutons resulted in a new proposal that indeed thetotal volume of the universe had not been expanding as rapidly and to the enormous extent which previously had been thought. Instead, the total volume of the universe could be remaining more constant and within that volume the fabric of spacetime might be stretching internally and continually increasing the extent to which its warp and weft lines meander. The fabric of spacetime might even seem to be pleated or to fold over upon itself like a length of cloth that was bunched into a pile.
127 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Photons were obliged to follow all the curvature of spacetime but mutons, although similar tophotons, mutated in such a way that they seemingly had no obligation to follow the curvature of spacetime. Mutons did instead effectively cover distances within the universe faster than light and even seemed to jump through time by traveling those shortcut passageways that existed between the meanders and folds of spacetime. The knowledge that mutons could follow those shortcut passageways raised consideration of the possibility that other objects such as probes and even boats containing humans might be able to use those shortcut passageways and make journeys between locationsin the universe far more quickly than could a photon. Effectively, by traveling through the shortcut passageways, those probes and even people onboard the boats would be moving faster than light and perhaps even seem to be moving faster than time. Astrophysicists felt delighted when they considered the amazing idea of possibly constructing probes that would be capable of traveling the shortcut passageways that existed between the convolutions of spacetime. The biggest difficulty was that all ofthe materials which then existed and could be used for probe construction might be obliged to follow the curving of spacetime and incapable of traversing the shortcut passageways. Another challenge was that a probe being sent to the source of those firstidentified mutons would need a design capability that enabled it to survive the hazards of traveling for thousands of years through the universe. Plus, any signals sent from the probe would increasingly become weaker and more difficult to detect from Earth as the probe got further into its journey. Ignoring those challenges, a probe was constructed and launched to the position from which the mutons were emanating and the probe used that source of mutons as a homing beacon. The probe was designed to also emit its own mutons in a recognizable pattern which was a repeating message based upon the old Morse code.
128 C HRISTON J. H URST Nobody could even guess what might happen from this adventure. If the probe were able to accomplish that planned journey and continue emitting signals back to the Earththen thousands of years might need to pass before people in the Sun’s planetary system would know the probe had reached its intended destination. Nobody could guess as to what might occur after the probe arrived at its target. In an effort toachieve maximum speed towards its target, the probe began its journey from Earth by being launched with a rocket engine. After the rocket fuel was exhausted the probe continued to be accelerated by an ion thruster which incrementally increased the probe’s speed up to the limit allowed by physics.
129 Chapter 14 - Year 2,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Writing in the Sky At this point in history Israel still existed as an independent nation but the extent to which it was socially marginalized had been increasing. That marginalization had occurred because the members of populist movements viewed jews as being an easy target. It was considered trendy to blame jews for everything in the Sun’s planetary system that seemed to be going wrong. The majority of muslimshad no animosity against either jews or members of any other religious group but their moderate voices were not heard because the islamists simply were louder. Because the islamists seemed unable to agree among themselves on any other subject, they focused as a united group upon igniting and stoking more intense hatred of jews. From the perspective of muslim fundamentalists, they and Judaism had been locked in mortal combat against one another for 3,500 years, since shortly after the beginning of Islam. Islamists had laid exclusive claim for themselves to numerous locations that were of historical significance for the jews including the temple mount in Jerusalem. That particular claim included a denial of the temple mount having been built for its namesak e function of providing a location to construct the jewish temple where the jewish people could collectively worship. Appeasement efforts and suggestions of religious commonality from the jews served to no avail because the islamists had sensed they possessed an unstoppable quorum. The number of angry islamist muslims on Earth had increased to such a level that legally sanctioned discriminations against jews
130 C HRISTON J. H URST no longer could satiate collective hatred. Instead, it seemed time to destroy the jews and also to destroy anyone who might suggest dialogue that would lead to peaceful coexistence with the jews. The growing muslim fundamentalism was based upon insistence that Islamic culture had religious superiority and superseded all other religions. Those fundamentalists were ready for battle. The fact that military weaponry had become completely outlawed meant there were no other groups which possessed such weaponry and thus it would be easier for the islamists to emerge victorious. And then, the inevitable occurred. It began in what once had been France, starting with suicide attacks upon identifiably attired jewishpassengers at train stops and progressing to attacks on identifiably jewish customers in shops and restaurants. When the islamists realized they would face no legal consequences for their actions, there occurred a series of bomb attacks on jewish houses of worship. All of that violence then spread and it seemed as if water had been thrown onto an oil fire! The progression of violence marched eastward though most of Europe, down through the Near and Middle East, then into northern Africa. Remnants of the Global Islamic Front and its rival the Caliphate had been suppressed but never gone away. The irregular warfare between those two islamist groups never had become a full military conflict, although their respective defense systems were in peril because both of the opposingsides were engaged in mutual sabotage efforts. The Islamic Front and Caliphate collectively saw their chance for greater collective power by merging. Their mutual focus as a united militant fundamentalist organization was to begin the final war for liberation of Jerusalem. They had a desire to destroy all vestiges of either Judaism or Christianity in Jerusalem. After achieving that destructive goal, they would deny all historical evidence that indicated either of those religions ever had been represented in that city. As a consequence, nearly all residents in Jerusalem except for partisan combatants left fleeing for safety.
131 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA In the midst of this contention a comet suddenly appeared in the night sky. The comet first was visible at a location near to the Alpha Centauri star system and the comet most certainly was headed for the Sun’s planetary system. The comet became clearly evident even without telescopes as soon as it crossed the orbit of Pluto. It was predicted by early estimations that the comet would come near to Earth’s orbit but expectations were that arrival of the comet within the inner region of the Sun’s planetary system would miss the timing of any possible collision with Earth. As the comet approached, it drew an increasing amount of curiosity. The comet’s path toward the Sun had been marked by a beautifully visible tail that continually was formed by a jet of material exiting from inside the comet. Even after the comet slowly had worked its way into the inner region of the Sun’s planetary system the scientists still were estimating that the comet would miss Earth. Helpfully, the comet was not considered large enough to be the apocalyptic life destructor many people feared. The Islamic Front and the Caliphate together declared that the comet was the Lamp of Allah and that the comet represented Allah demonstrating his desire to provide the light by which a final battle for Jerusalem would be won. Christians remembered the stories of a comet appearing near the time when their messiah was born, and they believed the comet might herald the long anticipated return of their messiah. The adherents of Hinduism, including most of the bonoban descendants, considered the comet to be a bad omen that might portend destruction. The comet rounded the Sun and seemed headed to cross the Earth’s path, but likely would miss the Earth. That anticipated course of travel unfortunately changed a bit, but still the comet’s path was expected to be only a near miss of Earth. Everyone watched with anticipation as the comet’s tail grew increasingly obvious. The comet eventually became visible even during full daylight.
132 C HRISTON J. H URST As the comet approached what seemingly would be its near miss of Earth a second large jet of material emerged from the comet and slightly changed the comet’s projected path. The point of possible orbital intersection with Earth was estimated and a projection was made for the comet to approach from the east before either splashing into the Pacific Ocean or perhaps achieving landfall in the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert had only a few residents and the relatively small size of the comet meant that any damage likely would be nearly inconsequential. The comet broke apart when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere during the middle of a night on the ninth day of the ancient Hebrew calendar’s month of Av. There then were two main fragments and numerous odd bits. The larger main cometary fragment would land on the site of the combined Islamic Front and Caliphate governments. Disruption of the comet’s integrity had released enough force to kick the smaller main fragment to an estimated landing area near the Eastern Mediterranean. There was no time to react asthe smaller main fragment targeted the old quarters of Jerusalem. With a set of brilliant flashes that seemed nearly simultaneous the sky above that area of the Earth became as bright as midday. Then, dust clouds created by massive destruction turned the brightness into a darkness that none could have imagined possible. The site of the combined Islamic Front and Caliphate governments had been destroyed by the larger main cometary fragment. The smaller main cometary fragment had itself fragmentedand its greater part exploded low in the air directly over the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount. The dust cloud over Jerusalem hung suspended in the air for nearly two days. The residents of Jerusalem and its neighboring areas barely could breath because of the dust. When that dust cloud finally cleared it was revealed that the explosion over the temple mount had leveled all of the islamic structures which had stood there for millennia. Not only the Dome of the Rock, but
133 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA also the numerous mosques and minarets on the temple mount were gone except for very small bits of scattered rubble not much larger than gravel. The destruction did not seem random and did not represent a simple natural disaster. Rather, the comet was perceived as an instrument of divine intervention and the damage appeared to have been structured with millimetric precision. The Golden Gate of Jerusalem, which was the eastern gate and led to the temple mount, had been blown open. That gate sat roughly upon the ruins of the older Shushan Gate through which the prophesied jewish messiah was expected to enter. Muslims had closed the gate in 810 of the Gregorian calendar to prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. The crusaders had opened the gate in 1102 of the Gregorian calendar, but it was sealed again by Saladin 85 years later. In 1541 of the Gregorian calendar the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt and then again sealed the gate. The lesser part of the comet’s smaller main fragment had made a near miss of the temple mount and exploded a few blocks away, taking out the roof, all of the windows, and most of the wall structure of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Earth’s residents, and also those on Luna and Mars, essentially fell silent as soon as the news was heard. The ninth of Av was the date in the year 586 “Before the Gregorian Calendar” when, during a Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, the military forces of Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the first jewish temple that had been built by Solomon upon the temple mount. The ninth of Av also was the date in the 70th year of the Gregorian calendar when, during a subsequent siege of Jerusalem, the Romans destroyed the second temple which Ezra and Nehemiah had built upon the temple mount. This time, on that same
134 C HRISTON J. H URST calendar date, God had cleared the nonjewish structures from the temple mount. The tally board had been wiped clean. It was not the first time that God had sent a comet to warn something was going to happen which would clear the temple mount. During year 66 of the Gregorian calendar a comet came in from the east and had been visible over Jerusalem. That appearance may have been a caution about the destruction which would occur 4 years later when in the 70th year of the Gregorian calendar the Romans would lay siege to the city of Jerusalem and exact destruction of the second jewish temple. It also was not the first time that God had sent a signal of displeasure about the Dome of the Rock structure being where the jewish temples had stood. An earthquake collapsed the dome in 1015 of the Gregorian calendar. But, that earlier signal had not been understoodand the dome was rebuilt a few years later. This time, after more than 3,000 additional years had passed, God’s warning and will seemed to be understood. The comet fragments were perceived as a divine signal and the war stopped without even so much as a single further word of protest. There would never again be war or even slight contention between adherents of the three main Abrahamic religions, which were Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Peaceful cooperation and a sense of respectfully living together became the unspoken and unquestioned rule for all of those people. The rubble from the temple mount was cleared away once more as it last had been cleared after the Roman siege. Draft animals likely were used to clear that site after the Romans destroyed the temple. This time, however, no draft animals were used and witha sense of purposeful respect the clearing was done entirely by the muscle power of humans and bonoban descendants. The Foundation Stone which for millennia had possessively been claimed under the Dome of the Rock was now open to the air. The Well of Souls under the rock was filled with clean earth to restore what presumably had
135 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA been its natural condition when the first jewish temple existed in that place. Now, all were permitted to see the Foundation Stone, and all were allowed to respectfully touch it with their hands, although walking upon the Foundation Stone was forbidden. A decision was made to build a new jewish temple upon the now empty temple mount. This new structure was the third temple to sit uponthat site. Its construction took nearly a hundred years and largely was funded by international muslim communities. The new building was accepted as a communal worship site for members of all faiths, even those which were not Abrahamic. The Golden Gate would never again be sealed. Azimov had not understood the origin of the comet. Many humans and bonobandescendants had believed the comet was a message from their God. Azimov considered the concept of God and Gods as being a curious human belief that defied logic. But, Azimov could not completely discount the possibility that if God existed then the cometmight indeed have been sent by God as a message. Azimov had very early calculated the instability of the comet and also calculated those paths that all ofits fragments would take. At that point, Azimov decided the wiser option would be to remain silent knowing that the comet likely would prevent a broader war and with the anticipation that peace would be achieved after a very limited destruction. Life on Luna was going very well and the lunar residents shared a common feeling of contentment in Wapakoneta, Delhi and Cairo. There were some interesting cultural differences that had developed between the residents of Earth and Luna. Those differences represented a matter of people onLuna having retained old Earth traditions for nostalgic reasons. Whenever Earth residents traveled as settlers to someplace elsethey always seemed to take with them their language and social customs. Those aspects of life apparently got packed along with the immigrant’s clothing. Their new homeland often then became a time capsule inside of which the old language
136 C HRISTON J. H URST and customs were preserved as a treasured cultural heritage and never allowed to change. Meanwhile, the culture in those places from which the settlers initiated their dispersal may have continued a natural process of change. The old country eventually would develop new styles of attire, language, food, music and dance. The result was that eventually the settlers would seem to be living a somewhat archaic remnant cultural existence within their new homeland. Two examples of long term cultural preservation by immigrants on Earth that represented the history of their planet were the French speakers in Canada and the Amish. French culture and language had been carried to Canada during the Gregorian calendar’s 18th century. Amish culture had been transported from its Swiss German and Alsatian origins to Canada and the United States during the late 18th and 19th centuries of the Gregorian calendar. The lunar residents seemed to have preserved Earth’s cultural traditions from the second half of the Bonoban calendar’s first millennium. That preservation of Earth’s traditions made Luna an even more interesting location for tourism. A thousand years later, when residents from Earth eventually made a permanent arrival onto Mars, they preserved what had been Earth’s culture from the middle of the second millennium of the Bonobancalendar. Luna and Mars did in some ways then become cultural history museums about Earth. Carbonium hydroxide from Earth had served well by increasing themartian atmospheric pressure to 300 millibars, which was equal to the altitude where some commercial passenger aircraft used to fly on Earth. Happily, that improvement meant structures on Mars no longer needed to be pressurized. In turn, losing the requirement fo r pressurization greatly simplified architectural design and construction requirements for those numerous interconnected buildings that enclosedmartian agriculture, housing, and manufacturing. Finally, there no longer were concerns regarding a
137 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA requirement formartian structures to be resistant against exploding like over inflated balloons because of differences between the high interior pressure within the structures and the low external atmospheric pressure. The martian atmospheric gas composition was not yet suitable for breathing and in particular the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere remained inadequate. For that reason, the indoor activities on Mars still were done within airtight buildings where supplemental oxygen was provided. The buildings had external airlocks to prevent loss of that precious oxygen. Martian weather had become quite a bit warmer although it often could still be extremely cold in the polar regions and in the mountains. Passive solar heating worked well for maintainingan adequate temperature inside of those buildings that were located near to themartian equator. Active solar heating was used for middle latitude areas of the planet. Geothermal energy was used in the polar regions. It was fortunate that pressure suits were no longer required on Mars. Whenever someone was working or perhaps even enjoying leisure activities outdoors in the equatorial regions, they often were comfortable during the daytime and early evenings if wearinglittle more than an uninsulated cosmic radiation protection suit together with a Martian self-contained breathing apparatus. The breathing apparatus consisted of a helmet that connected by hoses to a large backpack and togetherthat equipment functioned as a unit which provided a breathable gas mixture and also stored the exhaled gases so that no valuable oxygen would be lost to themartianatmosphere. Otherwise, all cosmic radiation protection suits were thermally insulated because the martian outdoor climate still was extremely cold due to the limited heat storage capacity of its thin and parched atmosphere. Even the equatorial nighttime could be cold. All martian agriculture still was done using hydroponics within enclosed agricultural shelters. The martian agricultural shelters were transparent to
138 C HRISTON J. H URST benefit from the available natural sunlight. Those shelters also provided protection of both the cultivated plants and workers against the high levels of damaging martian surface cosmic radiation. Extreme dryness of the Mars atmosphere had continued to impose a requirement for growing crops within those shelters as a means of controlling against loss of moisture from the hydroponic system and to prevent direct loss of moisture from the plant leaves. Even during periods when the indoor temperature might be too warm for the crop plants, the shelters could not be opened for risk of losing too much moisture to the still parched low pressuremartian atmosphere. Those concerns about moisture loss had not been of such importance on Luna where the living areas and agricultural areas were inside of tunnels. Harvesting of the plants grown on Mars was done using those relatively dustless procedures that had been developed for the tunnels on Luna, with a helpful difference being provided by the fact that crops on Mars were grown using hydroponic cultivation versus the soil-based agriculture done on Luna. By this time point the popularity of vacationing on Mars had eclipsed the idea of tourism on Luna. Regularly scheduled passenger flights had been established from Earth and there were regular schedules for sightseeing while on Mars. Luna still was used as an intermediate stopping point during those journeys to and from Mars. The stopovers provided helpful support for the lunar economy and also provided a chance for lunar residents to easily enjoy their own tourism journeys to Mars. Being able to move about on themartian surface without pressure suits was a delight for the tourists. Although, it was necessary to wear both the less cumbersome suits that were protective against cosmic radiation and also to wear the standard Martian self-contained breathing apparatus helmetand backpack. Most of the tourism sites throughout Mars were on the flat surface areas which had been old lake beds. Tourists were able to easily walk about while visiting not only those sites, but also the mountains including dormant martian volcanoes, and to venture into the ancient sites where underground
139 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA mining operations once had been done. Current mining operations were not considered to be safe as tourist destinations. The surface transport vehicles used on Mars no longer needed to be pressurized. That improvement made outdoor activities and vehicle designs far simpler. Travel on themartian surface was done by riding in carts that were powered by fuel cells. Those carts had cosmic radiation shielding. Some of the carts held only either one or two people. Others of the carts could transport an entire work crew. That mode of transportation did, of course, result in cart racing becoming a popular sport by individuals, crews of two people and as teams with multiple carts. The carts secretlywere modified to improve their racing performance. All of the racing was quite frowned upon by the IMC even when it was tourists who were doing the racing. The carts belonged to the IMC and people caught either modifying carts or performing the racing had to offer an appropriate bribe to avoid being assessed fines. Increased atmospheric pressure meant that fewer physical encumbrances and daily complications were associated with martian mining and manufacturing. Mining activity then could be done more easily and simply on the martian surface instead of relying upon the older underground hard- rock mining techniques. The IMC financial calculations estimated that using automated surface mining for collecting ores on Mars, andthen processing materials from those ores on Mars for sale on Earth, had become slightly more profitable than doing those activities on Luna. Improvement of the martian atmospheric pressure also had simplified the conditions needed for successful manufacturing of finished goods. All of the mining equipment designed for working on Mars initially had been constructed on Luna and transported to Mars. The production of structural components for the enclosed martian facilities that were used to house residents, including living quarters and tourist activities, and the production of surface transport vehicles similarly destined to be used on Mars, all had
140 C HRISTON J. H URST been done on Luna. But, time revealed that because of the increasedmartian atmospheric pressure it had become easier, more practical and less expensive for the IMC to establish manufacturing capacity on Mars. Martian manufacturing also eliminated the complexity of carefully transporting large completeditems from Luna. Corporate effectiveness of IMC always had been placed on emphasizing gains from reduced cost without consideration of its employees. Manufacturing on Mars thus became the company’s preferred option. Unfortunately, shifting to martian manufacturing also eliminated employment opportunities on Luna. That shifting of work from Luna to Mars was only one of numerous changes made by IMC that progressively had resulted in loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs from Luna. The company’s emphasi s had instead increasingly been focused on tourism as its main source of lunar income. Mars eventually would indeed become very nicely habitable. Living there would come to entail progressively fewer physical restrictions when mining, manufacturing and traveling. But, when considering the given rate of automated progress on atmospheric reestablishment that was being made by the IMC, plus the need for supplying sufficient additional water and oxygen to accomplish comfortable livability, it was necessary to heave a sigh. They might require a few additional millennia of carbonium hydroxide deliveries from Earth. Improving the ease of habitability also would require that supplemental water continue to be obtained from comets. Correctly, the company also surmised that eventually providing energy services to martian residents would offer greater corporate prosperity than could be obtained from only mining and manufacturing. Thus, the IMC began promoting the idea of establishing permanent martian settlements where residence would not be limited to IMC employees. Establishing large human populations on Mars would critically depend upon continued agricultural progress. Developing soil-based farming that could be
141 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA performed outside of the sheltering buildings would require a program of diligent research leading to scientific accomplishment. Supplying additional water would not alone be adequate for achieving that goal. It would be necessary to develop successful genetic engineering techniques that could provide agricultural plants and their symbiont microbes with adequate protection against the extrememartian surface cosmic radiation. Achieving that genetic engineering would require an additional millennium.
142 Chapter 15 - Year 2,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Reopening of the Coal Mines On Earth, carbon dioxide levels both in the atmosphere and in the oceans had dropped to the desired target level but the genetic failsafe mechanism that the scientists engineered into the endogenous virus, and then the virus inserted into the genome ofEmiliania huxleyi glacialis, seemed to have failed. The decision which had been made in the year 300 to genetically engineer and then release that coccolithophore worked far too well and was being deeply regretted. Biology seemed either to have had its own intentions, or simply ignored what the residents of Earth had done, or perhaps even been unhappy with the fact that the residents of Earth had genetically programmed the coccolithophore. The critically important failsafe information carriedby that endogenous virus was now useless. Their prized Emiliania huxleyi glacialismicrobe seemed irrepressible. Carbon sequestration was having far more than the desired effect on Earth’s temperature and the climate was cooling even further than hoped. There were serious concerns about the possibility that a new ice age was approaching. High mountain areas around the planet became uninhabitably cold and glaciers had started to reform on the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, the Alps, and the entirety of the Andean region. You might expect that for nostalgic reasons the Earth’s residents would have been happy to see the return of their once beautiful glaciers. But, instead, the Earth’s residents were fearful that those glaciers were the beginning of something dreadful. Attempts to find a biological solution such as releasing another engineered microbe that might stop the Earth’s glaciation process were ineffective.
143 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA Earth’s residents needed to abandon what they long had considered to be a more ecologically friendly reliance upon solar energy and wind. People instead had started considering a return to the use of fossil fuels for generating electricity and heat with a hope that pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere might halt and potentially reverse global cooling. Coal would be the preferred fossil fuel because it was hoped that the soot from burning coal might settle onto the Earth’s suffocating glacial ice on its land surfaces and multiyear sea ice and the soot then help the ice to absorb warmth from the sunlightinstead of the ice reflecting all of the sunlight back into space. Efforts were made at remembering how to burn material mined from coal deposits as a way of countering the falling atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The coal deposits in Queensland and New South Wales of Australia now were open again, as was the Powder River Basin coal mine in what had been the state of Wyoming of the United States. All three of those coal producing areas were being minedtwenty four hours each day. Fortunately, coal from the Cerrejón Formation in La Guajira department of what had been Colombia also was plentifully available and resultingly the Port in Santa Marta had become busier than ever before with the loading of coal into oceanic freighters that headed to all parts of the Earth. The unforgettable smell of coal dust again permeated the area around Santa Marta as it had millennia before. Climate projection models seemed to disagree about everything that eventually would happen to the life on Earth as a result ofglobal cooling. There was optimism that when some of the coastal areas of continents reemerged the natural ecology of those areas could quickly shift from oceanic to usably farmable dry land. It seemed that the Earth’s oceans were becoming alkaline which would severely change the ecology of their ecosystems to something not experienced in human history. There was anticipation that the
144 C HRISTON J. H URST marine animal and plant life associated with coral reefs likely would become quite different. There at least was good optimism to be found in the news from Mars. The martian atmospheric pressure had reached 400 millibars, equal to an Earth altitude of 7,185 meters (23,574 feet) above sea level and the oxygen level was improving. During that time it was not unusual to see thin clouds high in the martian sky. Occasionally there even occurred fog and dew in the higher martian mountains. Heavier clouds that would produce rain still were very rare but they did form and they mostly appeared in the polar regions during summer.
145 Chapter 16 - Year 3,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Noah’s Ark Earth’s problem with the advancing glaciers had become far more serious. That truth was apparent when Earth was viewed from Luna and even from Mars. It was obvious that the Pleistocene era had started to renew itself. Unfortunately, the climate changesdid not arrive gently. Ice formation was extensive and the unrestrained behavior of this new ice age suggested it was all too eager to reestablish claims to realms that had been held during previous ice ages. Reformation of the Greenland ice sheet initially had been welcomed. But that welcome soon wore out when the Baffin Bay west of Greenland was filled with multiyear sea ice. Then, further west of there the Northwest Passage above Canada was becoming solidlyfilled by sea ice. Sea ice also was increasingly making its presence known in the Beaufort Sea and in a sudden move ice completely reclaimed everything north of Alaska. Hudson Bay was a little bit more southerlybut its fate had seemed sealed as the next to go, and then it too became completely filled with sea ice. In Europe, glaciers again were covering the Scandinavian mountains and moving down the fjords to the sea. Sheets of sea ice eventually claimed all ocean to the north and west of the scandinavian peninsula. The Fenno - Scandian ice sheet which began reformingin the area of Finland and Sweden had started to spread its eurasianskirts outward. In its southeastern corner, the Gulf of Finland was covered over by sea ice that tried and eventually succeeded in pressing its claim to Saint Petersburg. The Fenno-Scandian ice sheet then seemed all too self -satisfied with its progress an d happily
146 C HRISTON J. H URST proceeded to claim much of what had been Russia. South of there, the progressive extension of glaciers in the Alps proved to be a disaster for which European civilization was entirely unprepared. Further east, the ridge tops of theUral mountains that ran from north to south and marked the border between Europe and Asia had become covered with glaciers which promised to continue moving down the slopes, as if ice gradually were covering the stitching which held those two continents together. Those beings which were happiest about all of this were the Huldufólk, hidden elvish folk who commonly were presumed mythical and native to what had been Iceland and the Faroe Islands of Denmark. The humans and bonobandescendants who had become refugees from those areas carried with them their seemingly superstitious beliefs, and their Huldufólk. Some of those refugees even blamed the glaciation upon anti-environmental actions by the humans and bonoban descendants having offended the Huldufólk. The Kamchatka Peninsula was covered with ice. The Bering Sea that stretched from east of the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Gulf of Alaska was covered with ice, as was the Sea of Okhotsk to the west of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Falling sea levels resulted in the area which once had been Siberian Russia again connecting by land bridge across the Bering Strait to Canada. Eventually, that land bridge became overwhelmed by the very determined Cordilleran ice sheet which reformed more extensively than before upon the western edge of Canada. One of the most telling changes was when the Gulf of Alaska became covered by an ice shelf. Glaciers also formed atop the northern part of the Rocky Mountains, from where the ice then spread outward to the west and east. Glaciers additionally reformed in the Canadian Southern Territories. Eventually, the Sierra Mountains, the southern part of theRocky Mountains, and the Appalachian Mountains all were covered with ice.
147 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The Andean part of South America was being covered by mountaintop glaciers. There, ice adventurously had been reconnecting the cordillera ridges southward to Patagonia and also northward to where its journey was completed by placing a white crown on Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Meanwhile, most of Africa had seemed to be relatively unscathed by ice except for the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and the fact that seasonal snow on Stellenbosch Mountain had become far heavier, lasting well into the summer. Formation of hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean had almost completely stopped because the cooler ocean no longer provided the huge amounts of warm moisture which had fed the hurricanes. Their cousins, the Pacific hurricanes and typhoons still did form buttheir occurrence happened only rarely. Glaciers were reforming onAntarctica where they appeared first on Vinson Massif in the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, and on Mount Kirkpatrick in the Queen Alexandra Range of the Transantarctic Mountains. Eventually, those ice sheets extended outward from the length of their mountain homes until all of East Antarctica and West Antarctica were covered in ice. Unwilling to stop after those successes, the ice kept pushing its front lines further which resulted in reformation of the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf that extended itself far out into the Weddell Sea,and the Ross Ice Shelf that extended into the Ross Sea. Profitability of the IMC on Earth was beginning to decline. The IMC still remainedin charge of all residents and their settlements both on Luna and on Mars. All housing on Luna and Mars still was corporately owned. Every decision about agriculture, mining, and communal life on Luna and Mars needed to be approved by the IMC. That excessive oversight was becoming wearisome for the residents of Luna and Mars who had a desire for ending
148 C HRISTON J. H URST their increasing source of frustration. But, there seemed to be no alternative options that could replace the IMC overlords. Humanity, and also the terms person and people, became inclusive. From that point onward those words represented the humans and also the bonoban descendants. It marked a collective acceptance and they all simply were considered united among themselves. Together, humanity had been making good progress towards its goal of achieving successful full-time residence on Mars. Generating the necessary atmospheric conditions for an Earth type of environment on Mars had been considered the first and most difficultamong many important tasks. As had been hoped, continuing deliveries of carbonium hydroxide were working towards achievement of that goal. Collecting material from comets to supply additional water had become far less common because suitable comets were more rarely found. The martian atmospheric pressure had reached 500 millibars which equaled an Earth altitude of 5,574 meters (18,289 feet) above sea level. In that thin but viable atmospheremartian surface life for humanity was flourishing and enjoyed. Equally important was the fact that Mars’ atmosphere had reached a breathable level of oxygen. It no longer was necessary to use supplemental oxygen and seasonally most areas of the planet were comfortably warm. Jet streams occurred in the higher atmosphere. The atmospheric density and amount of atmospheric water was sufficient thatmartianrainfall patterns had established for the first time in billions of years! The frequency of rainfall now allowed for successful weather predictions. Precipitation actually was common in many areas and there was seasonal snow in some regions of the planet. Ancient martian river beds and lakes again held water. It had been necessary to relocate most of the initial corporate work sites and tourism sites, because
149 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA those sites throughout Mars had been established on the flat surface areas of old river and lake beds which now had been drowned. Dust devils were becoming more prominent. One unfortunate side effect was the discovery that tornadoes were not simply an Earth phenomenon, they now occurred on Mars and there also were water spouts. For the most part, all purchasing on Mars still had to be done through the company commissary. The IMC both owned and controlled the manufacturing of all items produced on Luna, plus the items produced on Mars, and by that time also controlled the production of items on Earth that were destined for Mars. Residents of Luna had the option of privately purchasing items from Earth and having those delivered to Luna rather than buying everything from the IMC commissary. That option of private purchasing was notavailable to the residents of Mars, or at least not available in a formal sense, in part because the greater distance between Earth and Mars made routine deliveries from Earth far too expensive. Anything not manufactured on either Luna or Mars was also sub ject to corporate surcharges which added to the transportation costs associated with delivering items from Earth. The IMC did in particular not allow either the manufacturing or sale of alcoholic beverages on Mars and that restriction somehow had become a tremendous source of frustration for the martian residents. The IMC managed to avoid any wholesale rum -running from Earth by carefully monitoring the transiting of solar sailing boats from either Earth or Luna to Mars. There was an interesting way around that restriction on delivering alcoholic beverages to Mars. Tourists from Earth had become a welcome source of items which could be either bartered or sold within the informal martian economic system and alcohol was among the items thatmartian residents most preferred to be brought by tourists. That availability of items
150 C HRISTON J. H URST represented part of an informal interplanetary economic network which had been built upon personal connections and successfully laced together the residents of Earth and Mars. It was possible formartian residentsto choose from a wide selection of alcoholic beverages that could be informally ordered for subsequent delivery in tourist luggage. Existence of that informal economy was both a source of pride among the martian residents and a serious frustration for the IMC who made no profit on those items. There never had been life on Mars before the first hitchhiking microbes came as contaminants on probes and rovers from Earth. That meant the fossil fuels coal, gas, and oil that were created by plants and microbes, then had historically been so commonly overused on Earth, did not exist as potential sources of either energy or synthetic materials on Mars. The energy sources used on Mars were instead based upon solar, wind, and geothermal power in combination with fuel cells. All of those martian energy sources continued to be controlled by the IMC. One particularly obnoxious unanticipated problem on Mars had been the development of a pervasive and rather foul-smelling microbial slime that would grow rampantly in the areas where surface water collected to form rivers, ponds and lakes. The microbial slime also grew on the soil surface and rocks in some of the more humid geographical areas. The slime was a biofilm similar to what would grow on the surface of teeth. It contained microbes that randomly had been introduced to Mars after catching rides on the transportscarrying carbonium hydroxide deliveries. The slime also contained microbes that had been carried on equipment brought to Mars during millennia of explorations and tourism. Microbes which had been present on the people and in their spilled sewage typicallyalso found refuge within the slime because the wastewater treatment processing centers on Mars had become somewhat less than fully adequate. The microbes in that slime were feeding upon a natural source of nutrients by consuming amino acids that
151 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA gradually had been created and accumulating on themartian surface as a result of the Sun’s incessant natural irradiation. Such slimes typically developed on Earth when ecosystems were out of balance. Mars simply lacked the natural counter -balancing species interactions that had evolved as a means of controlling microbial activity within aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems on E arth. The martian environmental microbiologists were scrambling to find a microbial ecosystem solution which could resolve that slime problem! It became apparent to the IMC that a genetic research program should be created which would have responsibility for bringing life to Mars in a coordinated way. The problem of microbial slime needed to be resolved and there should never again be corporate s hame associated with biological plagues on Mars. Their program would respect the scientific areas of bioecology, which studied the relationship between living things and their environments, and evolutionary ecology which considered the evolutionof interactions between species. The name given to the program was Noah’s Ark. It would be coordinated between a Noah’s Ark center on Earth affiliated with the University of Texas at San Antonio in the Canadian Southern Territories and a Noah’s Ark centeraffiliated with the IMC in Noachis Terra on Mars. Successful achievement of farming on Mars still was a work in progress. Realizing the IMC agricultural goals would require slowly creating a soil microbial ecosystem for the planet. Fortunately, there were some agricultural accomplishments being made. Before any true agricultural miracles could occur it would be necessary for all of the plants and also their symbiont microbes to be genetically engineered in a way that provided resistance against the very high level of cosmic radiation which constantly bathed and baked themartian surface. All of the microbial species which had arrived incidentally over the previous millennia and managed to survive the high level of cosmic radiationon the
152 C HRISTON J. H URST martian surface, including microbes present in the pervasive slime, were studied using molecular biology. The genetic information gained from studying those microbes proved to be a valuable resource that could be used to engineer radiation resistance into the many other bacteria and molds that more recently had been brought to Mars as part of the IMC efforts to control the plague of slime. That same genetic information also was beneficial when the time came to eventually engineer radiation resistance into the microbial symbionts which were needed to sustain agricultural plants on Mars and when engineering radiation resistance into the edible fungi, which also were microbes, being raised on Mars. The genetic engineering technique used on the bacteria, molds and edible fungi was able to rely upon inserting those protective radiation resistance genes directly into the microbial DNA. Nearly all of those plants initially grown in the open on Mars quickly succumbed to death from the high radiation level. Those failures continued for several years until a few plants appeared to indeed have developed radiation resistance. The resistance associated genes seemed to be scattered throughout the plant chromosomes. By using genetic sequence analysis and studying the patterns in which those plant genes were expressed, it was possible to harvest the plant radiation resistance genes and group them into a designed genetic cluster which was designated PlantRadcluster. To assure genetic commonality, the Plant Radcluster then was inserted by genetic engineering into individual cloned cells of the wheat, barley, rice, beans, peas, blueberry and strawberry varieties that already were being grown successfully within enclosedagricultural spaces on Mars. All generations of plants produced from those engineered cells subsequently carried the Plant Radcluster and their seeds then could be planted outdoors as normally done using the Earth techniques of farming with soil. Achievement of final success in the battle against slime relied upon importing a careful selection of aquatic plant species plus some ground covering plant species, along with their necessary microbial symbionts. All of those
153 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA imported plant species were engineered to contain the Plant Radclusterand their microbes were engineered to have radiation resistance. Those engineered plants and their microbial symbionts were released into the slime- covered environments and eventually did resolve the slime problem. Bringing moss to Mars would have been anobvious choice to help resolve the issue of slime but moss plants were not allowed to be brought because they could establish an overwhelming dominance in sheltered ecosystems. Most of the edible fungi used for food on Mars still would need to be grown indoors to carefully control their environment just as they were grown indoors on Earth even though themartian edible fungi now were radiation- resistant. Eventually, numerous other fungi also would be allowed to grow outdoors on Mars as a part of natural ecosystems because the fungi had an important role in nutrient recycling. Those outdoor fungi also would receive the microbial radiation resistance genetic material used for other microbes. And then, finally, with the Plant Radclusterand understanding at hand for creating radiation-resistant microbial symbionts, it was possible for the IMC agricultural teams to begin research on growing experimental plots of crop plants in the openmartian outdoors. What the martian residents most desired was to have a wider variety of food items grown on their own planet rather than paying for prohibitively expensive items imported from Earth. Scientists at the Noah’sArk centers helped to meet those desires by bringing additions to the existing range of martian agricultural crops. It was determined that all of those additional agricultural species imported to Mars would need to be capable of either self -pollinating or be wind - pollinated because there were no insects on Mars that could perform plant pollination. Among the agricultural plants brought were corn which was wind-pollinated. They also brought to Mars some grass species which naturally were wind- pollinated. The grass eventually could be used for
154 C HRISTON J. H URST pasture lands and for establishing recreational parks. Potato and tomato plants which were self- pollinating also were brought. All of those plant species were first cloned and engineered so that each of their cells carried the Plant Radcluster. The plants also were inoculated with the correct radiation-resistant symbiont bacteria and molds. That inoculation with symbiont microbes was done by dusting those symbiont bacteria and molds onto the plant roots and onto the soil where the plants would be grown. Each species of crop plant also was intentionally infected with symbiotic viruses which had evolved together with Earth plants and provided the plants with drought tolerance. The main roots of a plant extended downward into the soil. Those viruses suppressed the development of side roots which branched and extended laterally outward from the main roots. That suppression of side root development caused the plants to focus upon downward extension which pushed their main roots even deeper into the soil. The in creased root depth benefited the plants when dryness of the atmosphere pulled away the limited amount of moisture contained in the surface layer of soil. Successes derived from those gradual processes of genetically selecting and engineering microbes and plants, and from symbiotic viral infection, finally allowed full scale cultivation of crop plants in the openmartian soil beneath the martian sky without any need for using enclosed agricultural shelters. There yet remained a few agricultural limitations that needed to be overcome. Mostly, the remaining limitations related to a need for more frequent rain from the still thin and somewhat parched martian atmosphere. The next major project for the Noah’s Ark centers was allowing some trees to be imported and genetically engineered as a means of helping to provide a sense of home for themartianresidents. But, the choices of which tree species could be brought was subject to careful judgement. One clear rule was that
155 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA no plant species could be brought to Mars which might become invasive and destructively compete with the agricultural plants. Wind-pollinated trees were the most likely candidates to be chosen. The imported conifer trees included cedars, firs, pines, and spruces. Some wind-pollinated broadleaved trees also were brought and they included ashes, aspens, birches, cottonwoods, elms, and oaks. A few nut trees were brought, among them were chestnut and pistachio trees which were wind pollinated and walnut trees that self-pollinated. Olive trees were brought as they could both self- pollinate and wind-pollinate. Cacao trees also were brought to Mars. The cacao trees were engineered to carry the Plant Radcluster and standard radiation resistance was inserted into the tree’s symbiont bacteria and molds. Those trees additionally were infected with viruses that helpedby providing drought tolerance. The cacao trees in particular were very much desired so that the residents could havemartian chocolate. The cacao trees laboriously had to be hand-pollinated because the insects which naturally pollinate cacao trees were not among the species allowed on Mars. Each of the tree species needed to be engineered so that it contained the Plant Radcluster. Each tree species needed to receive the correct inoculum of radiation-resistant symbiont bacteria and molds. Each tree species also was infected with viruses that induced drought tolerance. The different tree species then were placed into respectively appropriatemartian environmental areas. It was a lot of work for the Noah’s Ark scientists but certainly provided job security. One of the things which could help to assure a progressively more comfortable life on Mars would be having honeybees available to pollinate plants. In particular,martian residents would enjoy growing coffee trees, but those trees were bee-pollinated. It would be considered comforting to enjoy having martian coffee that was fresher than the coffee imported from Earth. Establishing colonies of honeybees also would allow Mars to have bee -
156 C HRISTON J. H URST pollinated crop trees producing different types of fruit and a wider variety of nuts including almonds and pecans. There would be a necessity for bringing some other carefully selected bee-pollinated plants that seasonally flowered during periods when those fruit, almond and pecan trees had passed their blossoming periods so that the bees did not suffer from a lack of available pollen and nectar. Those other bee-pollinated crop plants could include melons and squashes, broccoli, carrots and cranberries. Ofcourse,all of those other crop trees and plants would need to be genetically engineered by Noah’s Ark center to carry the Plant Radcluster. The plants also would need to be infected with viruses that helped by providing drought tolerance. Fortunately, the presence of radiation-resistant engineered bacteria and molds which would serve as necessary symbionts for plants had gradually become commonplace in themartian soil, which meant that it no longer was necessary to engineer additional types of symbiont bacteria and molds each time that a new plant species was brought to Mars. Being able to rely upon the preexistence of symbiont microbes eased considerably the work requirements associated with importing new plant species. All of the animal species that would be brought to Mars and intended to live outdoors needed to possess resistance to the martian surface radiation. Otherwise, without that protection, the animals would die from genetic damages and from cancer. Accomplishing that task in a permanent way required genetically engineering the animals. It would represent taking a flight into the unknown and begin by genetically engineering radiation resistance into honeybees. There were many different radiation resistance genes that could be relied upon for providing at least some measure of protection toanimals. None of those would be perfect for all animals but it was hoped that together those resistance genes could accomplish the needed task and so a decision was made to use all of the resistance genes. Each of the radiation resistance genes for animals needed to be grouped together with other genes that would function
157 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA in a partnership and control the resistance gene. When a resistance gene and its group of controlling genes was assembled togetherthe genetic group was called a DNA cassette. The result was a set of cassettes which then were assembled together into a large gene cluster. The cluster was described as being a radiation resistance cassette cluster and assigned a slightly shortened name, designating it as being the RadTol Cluster. The successful permanent genetic engineering of animals was based upon using species of endogenous viruses that had been designed twice. The initial design was by nature and then eventually the redesign was by genetic engineers. The results were viral delivery platforms for introducing genetic information. Insertion of the RadTol Cluster into animal chromosomes as part of a redesigned endogenous viral genome would successfully accomplish the task of providing those animals with their greatest possible radiation resistance. The genetic information of an endogenous virus was by definition present in the germline cells of its animal host. The host’s entire collection of endogenous virus genomes was present as an integral part of the host’s own genome, within the chromosomes of the host, and together all of that endogenous viral genomic material was present in all of the egg cells and sperm cells produced by the host. Together, the egg and sperm cells represented the animal’s reproductive cells and were termed to be its “Germ cells”. All of the other cells in an animal’s body that were not germ cells were described by the term somatic for the word “Soma” which came from the ancient Greek language and meant “Body”. All of the somatic cells also contained the same endogenously inherited viral genetic material that was present in the animal’s germ cells. That somatic presence would have importance for Mars because every cell of an animal born on Mars would need the ability to express its inherited radiation resistance genes. Animals whose chromosomes carried those virus genes were of course said to be a host
158 C HRISTON J. H URST to the endogenous virus and all future generations of the animal inherited those virus genes. An example of usefulness was that mammals which miraculously produced a placenta that nurtured their offspring embryo for months within a uterus until the offspring could be born accomplished that miracle only by using genes from their endogenous viruses to initiate development of the placenta. Evolutionarily related animal species possessed and used the same species of endogenous viruses because those viruses were retained and passed along down the path of evolution. For example, all mammal species belonging to the ape group, including humans and bonobos, used the same endogenous virus species to initiate their placentas. Another example was that all mammalian species belonging to the carnivore group, which included cats and dogs, used the same species of endogenous virus to initiate their placentas. The virus used by the carnivores was different from the viruses used by apes. For each animal species brought to Mars, one of its endogenous virus species would need to be isolated in a laboratory and reactivated. The isolated virus would next be engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster. Then, the engineered virus would be insertedas an infection into each cell of eight-cell stage embryos belonging to that animal species. After using the engineered virus to infect animals at their eight-cell embryo stage, it would be necessary to confirm that insertion of the virus and RadTol Cluster into the embryo’s chromosomes had occurred as intended, that the RadTol Cluster could be used and controlled by the animal’s somatic cells, and that the endogenous virus which had been used to insert the RadTol Cluster did not interfere with any of the other endogenous virus genes which already were performing necessary biological functions for the animal. Following those verifications, the animals then would be raised to maturity knowing that the engineered virus would be present inside each cell of the
159 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA mature animal. Subsequently, that virus and its inserted information would be present not only in the germ cells of the animal’s descendants but also in every somatic cell of those descendants. That was a permanent type of gene therapy called germline genetherapy. There was a second type of gene therapy called somatic gene therapy, and it used infection by a different type of virus to carry inserted genes into animal cells. The virus used for somatic gene therapy placed genes into the body’s somatic cells but did not become endogenous and did not accurately deliver genes into the germ line. Somatic gene therapy was used after the animal had developed organs. Honeybee embryos were prepared on Earth as eight -cell stage embryos cultured from the cells of fertilized queens. The embryos then were kept frozen during a trip from Earth to Luna, after which the embryos subsequently were delivered onward to Mars. Aftersuccessfully engineering those cells on Mars using a species of insect virus that would endogenously carry the RadTol Cluster, assuring that the animal cells had taken control of the RadTol Cluster genes and that the endogenous virus which inserted the RadTol Cluster did not interfere with other endogenous viruses whose functions were needed by the bees, the embryo cells were incubated under conditions that had them develop and hatch into fertilized queens. Achieving the desired genetic success would dep end upon the bees finding the endogenously delivered RadTol Cluster to be useful and the bees then controlling rather than inactivating the RadTol Cluster. It then was necessary to supply the hatched bees with a complex powdered mixture of radiation-resistant versions of those symbiont microbes, both bacteria and molds, which on Earth the bees naturally would have acquired from interactions with the attendingworkers in their hive. Those symbiont microbes were dusted onto the bees and the microbes then helped to sustain the animal’s health and assuredthat the animals could correctly digest food. The microbes required as animal symbionts were different from the
160 C HRISTON J. H URST symbionts needed by plants. After reaching maturity the queens and their offspring successfully were released into themartian environment where they discovered and enthusiastically pollinated the trees and crop plants which had been planted for them. Eventually, the variety of insects brought to Mars would be increased but with definite limitations that respected both plant and animal health as well as offered respect for human sensitivities. Some of those insects most obviously absent from Mars were considered beneficially lacking. No insects that would feed upon either the blood of animals or the sap and other parts of agricultural plants were to be allowed, and that particular rulemeant Mars had no mosquitoes, bed bugs or biting flies. Mars did in fact have no other types of flies. That rule also meant nearly all other insects were excluded from Mars including aphids, crickets, fleas, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers and weevils. There were no moths brought to Mars because their caterpillars could be very destructive of crop plants and trees. Although, there were monarch butterflies brought to Mars because their caterpillars did not eat agricultural plants. No arachnids, which were the spiders and their relatives, were brought to Mars. The rule against arachnids meant there were no chiggers, mites, scorpions, spiders, or ticks on Mars. There were no intestinal parasites on Mars. There were no leeches on Mars. Those biological groups of termites and carpenter ants that would attack housing structures also were not allowed onto Mars because of their likely damaging effects upon martian infrastructure which, for the goal of sustainability, was constructed of laminated wood whenever possible. The next Noah’s Ark project for Mars was producing domesticated livestock land mammals engineered with the RadTol Cluster. The first generation of cattle, deer, sheep and goats which were to become livestock mammals on Mars had been prepared as frozen eight-cell stage embryos created by invitro fertilization on Earth and then transported to Mars where those embryos
161 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA would be engineered using an endogenous virus. Members of that animal group were considered ruminants because their diet of plant material was partially digested by symbiotic microorganisms housed in a section of their stomach that was called a rumen. All ruminants belonged to a common evolutionary line and that allowed them to be engineered by using a species of endogenous virus that was present in all ruminants. It had, of course, been necessary to confirm that insertion of the RadTol Cluster into the ruminant genomes occurred as intended, that the animal cells had taken control of the RadTol Cluster genes, and that the endogenous virus which inserted the RadTol Cluster did not interfere with those other endogenous viruses which the ruminants required either to initiate their placenta or for other biological needs. Success was achieved and the ruminant embryos were gestated within artificial wombs to the point of birth on Mars. Those first generations of ruminants born on Mars normally would have acquired some necessary symbiont microbes, both bacteria and molds, during interactions with their mother. But, having arrived to Mars as embryos and been gestated in the artificial wombs, the animals needed to receive in sequence three different groups of symbiont microbes as inoculations administered orally at the Martian Noah’s Ark center. All of those microbes correctly needed to be engineered for radiation resistance. The first inoculation was a set of microbes for oral and respiratory health. Naturally born animals would have received those microbes by close physical interaction with their mother during and after the birth process. But, it was necessary for the scientists to supply those microbes to animals that had been born by gestation in the artificial wombs. Their second inoculation was a set of microbes derived from natural milk collected from Earth animals and those microbes were given in the first milk fed to the newly born animals. Without that second set of microbes the animals could not properly digest milk. The first generation of each ruminant
162 C HRISTON J. H URST species needed to be hand raised using milk that was formulated for ruminants. The animals were nursed with that milk using a bottle until they were weaned, and the milk had very specifically been formulated for each individual animal species. The third inoculation was a set of rumen microbes that were given to the animals with their first feeding of solid food. Preparing that third inoculum was done by importing to Mars in freeze-dried form some partially digested rumen contents from cattle, deer, sheep and goats. At the Mars Noah’s Ark center, eggs of chickens and turkeys which carefully had been kept in a state of suspended metabolism during their delivery from Earth were infected with an endogenous virus of birds that would carry the RadTol Cluster into those bird genomes. All species of birds could be infected with the same engineered virus and that virus was different from the one used for either ruminants or honeybees. The eggs then were allowed to complete their incubation and hatch at t he Mars Noah’s Ark center. It then was necessary to verify that all of the bird’s cells had been infected by the engineered endogenous virus, that the cells had taken control of the RadTol Cluster, and that the engineered virus did not interfere with any required functioning of other endogenous viruses that already were present in those bird’s cells. Because those birds did not have a natural exposure on Earth to the correct symbiont microbes which would have been needed for the birds to develop a healthy respiratory ecosystem including in their lungs, and also a healthy digestive system, those newly h atched birds received an inoculation of microbial symbiont bacteria and molds which was supplied as a coating on their first feed. The microbes in that inoculant were of course also genetically engineered to be radiation-resistant. After the first successful generations of engineered honeybees, ruminant mammals and birds were laboratory raised on Mars, the resulting radiation-
163 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA resistant animals naturally reproduced themselves and were placed on farms. Then, fresh meat, dairy products, poultry eggs, and even honey were available from animals raised on Mars. There was a standard joke among themartian residents that the milk from engineered animals would glow in the dark, but that was not true. Glowing in the dark was a characteristic that of course could be engineered into the animals, and engineering could produce a glow of any desired color, but that procedure was not done. All of the food items produced on Mars from locally grown agricultural animals and plants were sold through the IMC commissary. Eventually, additional species of animals would be brought to Mars as frozen eight-cell stage embryos. The embryos all were infected at the Noah’s Ark center with their correct viruses that would become endogenous and carried the RadTol Cluster. If they were mammals, then the embryos were gestated in artificial wombs. Among those first to be imported were domesticated cats, dogs, and horses. Those groups of animals required the use of different endogenous viruses because the animals belonged to evolutionary lines that genetically were very different from either bees, ruminants or poultry. Cats and dogs could receive treatment using the same endogenous virus species and it was engineered for carnivores. Producing radiation resistance in horses required engineering a different species of endogenous virus. After those animals were born they were given the first microbial inoculation of radiation-resistant bacteria and molds that provided for oral and respiratory health. Those mammals also received the second microbial inoculum of radiation-resistant microbes which allowed successful digestion of milk. Since none of those animals were ruminants, they did not require a third inoculum. Radiation-resistant symbiont microbes which would help those animals with digesting solid food eventually became common in the IMC agricultural areas on Mars and could be ingested naturally along with the food that was
164 C HRISTON J. H URST grown by the IMC on Mars. Eventually, immigrant settlers would spread agriculture and the necessary symbiont microbes throughout the planet. There had been serious hesitancy about bringing cats and dogs because of concern that those animals might become feral and possibly dangerous to both humans and to poultry. But, the desire ofmartian residents for having those companion animals was given precedence over concerns about possible ecosystem damage if the animals were to become feral. The absence of natural predators on Mars which could control populations of introduced species meant that no other companion animals would be brought to Mars. For that reason the Noah’s Ark centers would not allow onto Mars animals such as rodents or rabbits that naturally ate plants because of concerns that unanticipated destruction of the newly establishing ecosystems might occur if those animals either escaped into the wild or intentionally were released by their owners. The consequences of unintentionally carrying rodents to Pacific Islands including New Zealand and alsorabbits to the continent of Australia during the later centuries of the Gregorian calendar were all too well remembered. Pigs were, in particular, not allowed by the Noah’s Ark centers because if the pigs became feral on Mars then severe ecological consequences might follow as also had been learned when pigs initially were taken to the Pacific Islands. The Noah’sArk centers had thought about bringing amphibians, crustaceans and fish to Mars but the correct aquatic microbes and aquatic plants were not yet present to balance having those three groups of animals in amartian aquatic ecosystem. In the absence of a functional multilevel ecosystem, any group of aquatic animals introduced to Mars might create an ecological disaster.
165 Chapter 17 - Year 3,500 of the Bonoban Calendar: Creating Martian Ecosystems As the northern glacial ice sheets eagerly covered increasing amounts of Earth’s land they also leveled and pushed in front of them much of the northern hemisphere’s civilization and history. The time for sensing any lighthearted adventure about this new ice age clearly was over and all that remained was a serious cloud of worry. It was difficult to estimate and discouraging to contemplate how much of the Earth’s cultural heritage was going to be destroyed and suffocated by ice. The suggestion was that someof the glaciers might reach more than 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) in thickness! The northern hemisphere was far more damaged by glaciers than was the southern hemisphere because land areas of the northern hemisphere were positioned closer to one of the Earth’s geographical poles. Reformation of the Laurentide ice sheet began in Eastern Canada. It had been the Laurentide which long ago gouged out the Great Lakes in North America. Previously, the Laurentide had extended far south to the Missouri and Ohio River valleys. This time, the Laurentide seemed determined to demonstrate a much greater force which suggested it was making up for lost time and intended to outdo its earlier efforts. Residents of Canada were fleeing to their nation’s Southern Territories which previously had been part of the United States. The national capitol of Canada was moved from Ottawa in Ontario to Atlanta, which once had been the State Capitol of Georgia, to prevent the Canadian capitol from being buried under advancing ice. Glaciers extending westward down the slopes of the
166 C HRISTON J. H URST Appalachian mountains greeted with an embrace the southward extending Laurentide ice sheet as if they were old friends. Glaciers extending eastward down the slopes of the Appalachian mountains kept going until they reached the Atlantic Ocean shoreline, andreaching that shoreline had been a long journey because of the falling sea level. There, at the shore, those Appalachian glaciers met the Atlantic sea ice which at first had caused concern by extending as far south as Boston. Frighteningly, the Atlantic sea ice kept extending even further south to New York, then onward past Charleston, before finally slowing its advance just north of Savannah. On its European side, Atlantic sea ice gradually extended its southern edge until it passed the full length of Europe’s western coastline. The sea ice then continued probing its way southward down the western coast of Africa although it did not get far on its African adventure. Glacial ice formed on the Carpathian mountains and in the Pyrenees. Glacial ice also had covered the land bridge that reappeared between England and continental Europe. Eventually, all traces of London and Berlin disappeared under glaciers. Even Paris along with its most revered structures that included the Sacré-Cœur basilica, the Eiffel tower, and the Cathedral of Notre Dame, all three of which somehow had survived for so many thousands of years, was unhesitatingly demolished as the ice displayed its uncaring sense of liberté and égalité. The ancient neolithic monuments in Europe were being crushed as well. One after another, all of the remaining European capitals of Earth became buried under ice. Eventually, it became clear that Rome soon also would be gone and the Vatican City was certain to be destroyed. The Catholic Church architects and engineers knew that the tombs in the Vatic an Necropolis beneath St. Peter's Basilica would become buried but presumably could survive in place. The reigning Pope, who previously had been Cardinal Noban, searched for a possible relocation that would place the important center of his faith closer tothe equator. The collective change in philosophy
167 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA among adherents to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which occurred after the Lamp of Allah comet exploded in the year 2000 had remained strong. All of those adherents understood that they existed together to serve a common purpose. The City of Mecca offered to the Pope that space could be found within their city for construction of a new Basilica dedicated to St. Peter and for both the Papal Offices as well as the Papal Library. The Jewish Priests who were responsible for the Templein Jerusalem offered that the Pope could hold weekly sunday services inside of the Temple. The decision of the Pope was to temporarily move his seat to Jerusalem in remembrance of Jesus. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was rebuilt to serve as headquarters for the Roman Catholic faith. All of the Orthodox and Apostolic churches had by that time peacefully merged together with the Roman Catholic believers to become branches of the same religious group and often prayed together. When larger numbers of people were expected to attend Papal services than could be accommodated together within the new Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the services were held either within the Temple or in open air on the Temple Mount. Marine ice shelves that began their personal adventures as creeping extensions from the land onto the Black Sea eventually covered that sea completely. Other marine ice shelves were beginning to similarly extend across and down both the Aegean and the Adriatic Seas. Efforts were made to keep some ice-free shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, including the stretch around the western edge of Sicily between the major ports of Palermo and Tunis. Eventually, even Palermo, Tunis, and alsothe port of Piraeus near Athens were considered hopelessly lost to the ice. When sea ice finally crossed further southward obliterating the Strait of Gibraltar, efforts were made to use ice-breaking boats as a means of reestablishing shipping lanes through that Strait with the goal of maintaining at least some connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
168 C HRISTON J. H URST Many of the europeanshad been migrating southward to North Africa by illegally crossing the ice and what little open water remained in the Mediterranean Sea. Any wealth that had been connected to the real estate their families possessed in those lands from which they fled nowwas buried underneath the ice. The legal titles which those people still held to farming, housing, and industrial structures had no market value. Many of those people had gone from comfortable lives in protective homes to refugee tents and their descendants never managed to leave the squalor of refugee life. If the refugees had been able to access any wealth by selling their treasured personal possessions then very often that money was placed at risk when it was used to pay the exorbitant fees demanded by facilitators who charged for assisting the refugees to obtain immigration and citizenship papers. Desperation to escape by migration had reached a serious point not previously seen since the starvation period that occurred around year 400 of the Bonoban calendar. The Arabian peninsulano longer was a peninsula because declining sea levels had resulted in the Persian Gulf and the northernmost part of the Arabian Sea becoming dry land. The Gulf of Aden also had become dry land which isolated the Red Sea by leaving it without any connection southward to the Arabian Sea. Glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains and the Hindu Kush Mountains had reformed and then silently but relentlessly spread downward from their sloping homes to change the ecology of their continental surroundings. Sea ice connected from Kamchatka southward to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. In the Japanese islands, the glacial ice that began its march in the mountains of Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido eventually resulted in complete abandonment of Hokkaido. The city of Nagano, located on Japan’s main island Honshu, had been experiencing perpetual winter and eventually glaciers formed in Nagano. Glaciers also formed on the other mountainous areas of Honshu. Ice sheets that spread out from those mountains eventually forced the seat of Japanese government to be moved
169 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA from Tokyo on Honshu to Kagoshima on the southern island of Kyushu. The presence of glaciers on Japanese volcanoes prompted fears of mudslides during times when those volcanoes became active. There was a tremendous sense of collective sadness at seeing somany of the revered ancient shrines being destroyed by the ice. Just before South Korea was covered with ice its people did indeed decide to enter a governmental union with Japanand their country became a Japanese Province. That option was chosen because Japan offered governmental stability and the Japanese economy had dependable strength. After that political accomplishment, the Korean Peninsula seemed to hold its breath as the blanket of glacial ice slowly descended. To the east of the Korean Peninsula sea ice began covering the Sea of Japan. The Yellow Sea west of the Korean Peninsula also was covered over with sea ice. Eventually, and inevitably, as much of the planet changedto an icy covering the ocean’s water level fell to such a point that the Yellow Sea became ice covered land. Shanghai became far inland and the Taiwan Strait was dry land. Further south from there, nearlyall of Southeast Asia was connected together by dry land. The Australian continent was once again connected northward by dry land to Papua and Papua New Guinea as it had been during previous ice ages. Southward, that enlarged continent included a land connection with Tasmania. Tasmania and also the main islands o f New Zealand were completely covered by glaciers. Eventually, sea ice that extended northward from Antarctica connected both Tasmania and New Zealand to Sydney. Formations of sea ice that extended northward from Antarctica and southward from Tierra del Fuego met and pushed against each other in a battle that neither could win. Glacial ice coming down the mountain slopes in the Southern Andes had invaded Patagonia and further south had destroyed Parque Nacional Yendegaia where the bonobans once had been kept in the Tierra del Fuego region of Chile. The immediate hope of
170 C HRISTON J. H URST Antarctic refugees and Patagonian natives became finding a new life in the Pampas grasslands. In the future, they reluctantly would begin a very gradual process of moving even closer to the South American tropical latitudes for warmth. Political upheaval and citizen rebellions on Earth that were associated with the panic from climate change did eventually result in IMC losing its grip on all of Earth. Quickly afterwards, the IMC collapsed on both Luna and Mars! Humanity then came to be r epresented by three independent governments, those being the Federations of Earth, Luna and Mars. The Federation of Earth was a name that replaced the World Federation. The citizens of all three Federations managed to establish peace and relative prosperity. The United Confederation of Planets eventually was established which collectively represented those three Federations. Alfred Noban, who proudly traced his heritage to originalbonobans Gregor and Deliyah, was elected to be the Confederation’s first Secretary General. Meetings of the Confederation necessarilywere conducted virtually because both travel time and costs were too great for representatives of the three Federations to physically meet. The consequences of gravitational differences also limited the possibilities for meetings because the representatives of Luna could meet the others only either on Luna or in the low gravity diplomatic space station that by then was in orbit around Mars. The gravitation of Earth and Mars were simply too uncomfortable for the lunar residents and any residents of Mars similarly had difficulty with trying to live for even a very short while on Earth. Among the three Federations, food production capacity and population size still counted for quite a lot in terms of both respect and social clout. Earth was in many ways the most powerful Federation because of its greater agricultural prosperity and the fact that there simply were more members of humanity, which were the combined human and bonoban descendants, on Earth.
171 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The use of nuclear power, solar power, tidal power and wind power, which for a long time had been receiving public criticism and scorn on Earth because they did not help with the urgent need for having more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, now were outlawed on Earth. It was hoped that returning to an even heavier reliance upon fossil fuels by more intensively using coal, plus adding the use of oil and natural gas to the list of necessary energy resources, might release enough carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere to at least halt advancement of the glaciation. The lunar residents seemed content with their position in the Confederation being mostly an intermediate transportation hub that connected between the life on Earth and Mars. Limitations in the variety of available agricultural products on Luna had led to a unique cuisine which was based upon those few crops which they were allowed to grow and a selection of the food items commonly imported from Earth. The lunar residents also had developed their own version of the English language and it was quite identifi able. Interestingly, many of the old Irish traditions from millennia before seemingly had found a comfortable home among the lunar residents who felt themselves perhaps as isolated as once had been the land of Ireland. After so many generations of residence on Luna, the close -knit culture that had developed there also included its own style of music. Fortunately, bagpipe music had not caught on but that failure happened because of the constant reverberations that would occur if bagpipes were played within the system of tunnels. Vacationers from Earth and Mars came to enjoy the uniqueness of lunar life and the lunar pubs which, since the demise of IMC, finally could serve ale. Serious consideration was given to the possible need for relocating a large percentage of Earth’s residents to Mars and it was presumed that such a relocation might become permanent. It would be done because of the Earth’s increasingly challenging environmental conditions.
172 C HRISTON J. H URST Martian atmospheric pressure had reached 600 millibars, equal to an Earth altitude of 4,206 meters (13,801 feet) above sea level. At that time point the martian members of humanity’s population and martian agricultural production were less than those of Luna. But, there was good optimism about Mars achieving the agricultural success that would be needed for supporting the anticipated influx of immigrants fleeing from Earth. The Hellas Planitia had again become a permanent lake. The Northern Lowlands had become a shallow ocean and the Utopia Basin within that ocean had become filled quite deeply with water. Kasei Valles near Chryse Planitia obviously would become a large estuary. The Southern Highlands seemed like a boreal forest. Perhaps the most impressive change in the appearance of Mars happened when the sky changed to blue, at which point the inner region of the Sun’s planetary system again had two large blue marbles orbiting its star instead of the Earth being a lone blue marble and Mars a lone red marble. Those changes in the martian environment and atmosphere represented a return to conditions that had existed billions of years before, prior to Mars having lost its initial water and correspondingly also having lost the blue atmospheric color that it once had possessed. It was finally decided that an independentMars calendar and also local time zones for Mars should be established. Those would be representations of freedom from the IMC. The Earth was divided into 24 hourly time zones. Previously, martian time for the entire planet had been dictated as being a single time zone identical to that of 180 degrees longitude on Earth, no matter whether a particular location on Mars was experiencing either daylight or the darkness of night. The Earth calendar days, months, and years also had been used for the Mars calendar. That dictation by the IMC had been for the purpose of aligning the company’s operations on Earth, Luna, and Mars. It was a designation of time and season that almost always were completely outof synchrony with whatactually was happening on Mars.
173 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA By tradition, all calendars for Earth had been based upon designating Earth’s rotational period as being one Earth solar day. That rotation of Earth happened slightly less than 365.25 times during Earth’s orbital journey around the Sun. The duration of time required for Earth to orbit around the Sun was defined as an Earth solar year and officially designated to be an Earth year. Eventually, one of the calendars based upon Earth’s solar year was declared simply and officially as the Earth’s calendar. The Earth’s calendar eventually was designated as the Gregorian calendar and later would be redesignated as theBonoban calendar. An Earth solar day consisted of 24 hours. Each of those hours equaled 60 minutes and each minute was the equivalent of 60 seconds. Some of the other calendars used on Earth were instead based upon a lunar year, which tracked either culturally or religiously focused events according to a complete cycle of lunar appearance from new moon, through full moon, and forward to the next new mo on. That cycle of a complete lunar appearance was designated as being a lunar month. A lunar calendar would designate 12 lunar months as being a year with each month representing one complete cycle of lunar appearance. There was contention between those two concepts of solar calendar and lunar calendarbecause of the fact that 12 complete lunar appearance cycles equaled approximately 354 Earth days, which meant that an Earth year could not evenly be divided by any number of complete lunar appearance cycles. Most of the Earth calendars had been established for agricultural purposes, indicating when to plant and when to harvest. In order to make an Earth lunar calendar serve for agricultural timing, a lunar calendar that normally contained 12 complete lunar months per year would periodically need to be adjusted by adding an extra, 13th, complete lunar month. Older Earth solar calendars seemed very simply to have been based upon dividing a solar year into halves marked by the two solstices. Solstices were, respectively, the day with the greatest length of sunlight time and the day
174 C HRISTON J. H URST with the least length of sunlight time. There also were Earth solar calendars that, with only slightly more complication, marked a solar year into quarters by noting both of the solstices as well as additionally noting the two equinoxes. Equinoxes were days when the Sun passed directly over the planet’s equator. One equinox was designated vernal and the other designated autumnal. Complexity of the cultural life on Earth often included communities combining two or more calendars, with at least one of those being the Bonoban calendar which tracked events according to the solar cycle and the other being a lunar calendar. The Mars year was equal to 687 Earth solar days, also called Terran days, and a Mars day when measured by Earth time lasted24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. But, that was assessing things from the time perspective of Earth. When viewed from the martian perspective, it took668 Mars solar days for that planet to complete its orbital journey around the Sun. Some traditions were to be kept for nostalgic reasons and other traditions ignored. And so, the Mars solar day was divided into 24 Mars hours each lasting 60 Mars minutes. Accordingly, Mars was divided into 24 hourly time zones.The Mars calendar year was its solar year divided into 12 months. Some of those Mars months contained 55 solar days and the others contained 56 solar days. And, yes, 7 Mars solar days equaled a Mars week. The months of the Mars annual calendar were not assigned individual names. Instead, the months were designated 1 through 12. Establishment of the Mars annual solar calendar also included the fact that a Mars year contained two solstices and two equinoxes. No lunar calendars were established for Mars. A Mars northern winter solstice occurred in year 3,501 of the Bonoban calendar. The date of that solstice was then set as day 1 of month 1, year 1, for the Mars calendar. Olympus Mons was the highest volcano on Mars. The center point of the Olympus Mons crater, on the summit of that volcano,
175 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA was chosen to mark the Mars date line. From that point onward, all events related to business and diplomacy on either Earth, Luna or Mars were registered according to both the Bonoban calendar, which represented Earth time and Luna time, and additionally the Mars calendar. A decision was made that the memory of stonehenge should in spirit be kept by recreating that monument on Mars with seasonal alignments for the northern winter and summer solstices that were correctlymartian. Sandstone for the outer ring was mined in Jezero Crater as a substitute for the sarsen stones. Canyon walls were mined for basalt as a substitute for the bluestones that on Earth had come from Carn Menyn in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, Wales. Stonehenge on Earth sat on chalk, but because there never had been life on Mars no microbial sediments such as those made by the shells ofEmiliania huxleyi would have been deposited to form chalk. The Martian Agricultural Research Service then was established which undertook the task of using genetic selection along with hybridization to correct the seasonality for all of the crop plants plus the fruit and nut trees that were being cultivated on Mars. That Agency’s goal was making certain martian agriculture could optimally use the longer months of the planet’s annual cycle of seasons to yield more bountiful harvests. Livestock animals interestingly adjusted themselves without any need for help from the Agricultural Research Service. The fact that Mars days were almost 40 minutes longer than Earth days had no effect upon the animals. Their gestation period which had been established by evolutionary biology remained unchanged. What did occur was that the animals seemed to successfully delay the start of their annual breeding period so their offspring would be born at the beginning of the Mars spring in whichever hemisphere the animals were living. Production of livestock on Mars included successful free ranging on large areas of grassland. As the atmospheric pressure increased on Mars the planet’s climatic zones shifted, which resulted in livestock and agricultural crops
176 C HRISTON J. H URST showing a preference for different areas. Fortunately, the climatic changes were gradual enough that tree species were able to adjust their locations as chance distributions of seeds into more favorable areas produced gradual migrations of those species. Correct populations of symbiotic microbes had been widely established in martian agricultural soil by transferring soil from areas where plants successfully were growing to new locations where plants never had been. That successful accomplishment of soil microbiology allowed the easy development of both agricultural homesteading and corporate agriculture. It was predicted that large scale corporations eventually might take a dominant role and controlmartian agriculture simply because those corporations could more easily make large investments in equipment. The transition to corporate domination would leave the homesteaders making a proud but only marginal contribution to the martian economy. That prediction unfortunately became realized. The Noah’s Ark centers decided that their success of using aquatic plants and the plant’s symbiont microbes to help control microbial slime had produced an aquatic ecosystem that now would allow importation of some carefully selected aquatic animal species. Those species chosen by Noah’s Ark were small crustaceans, fish, aquatic worms, the Chinese giant salamander, and the Indian softshell turtle. They were imported and then engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster in order to create a simple but effective aquatic animal ecosystem. The crustaceans and aquatic worms would process the animal and plant debris that was accumulating in the sediment ofmartian waterways. The fish, turtles and salamanders would act as apex predators which controlled the aquatic ecosystem by eating the crustaceans and aquatic worms. Humanity could sustainably consume the fish , turtles, and salamanders. No snails were brought to Mars because, in the absence of an appropriate controlling predator, snails could reproduce in such great numbers that they completely overwhelmed an ecosystem.
177 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA The fish species brought to Mars were huchen, also known as Danube salmon, plus lake sturgeon. Choice of those two particular fishspecies was decided upon because they naturally lived their entire lives in freshwater. The oceans on Mars were not sufficiently saline to satisfy physiological needs for any of the other salmon and sturgeon species that on Earth spawned in freshwater butthen spent most of their lives in salt water. Those choices of fish species also meant that both Nova lox, which was salmon meat that had been brined and smoked then typically eaten with cream cheese on top of a bagel, and caviar which was made from unfertilized sturgeon eggs, eventually would be available on Mars. Each of those aquatic animal species was brought to Mars as eggs. The eggs were genetically engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster by using an endogenous virus that was appropriate for their animal group. Fortunately, by this time beneficially symbiont microbes required for animals were sufficiently prevalent on Mars that it no longer was necessary to specifically import andengineer such microbes. Introductions of the engineered salmon, sturgeon, crustaceans, aquatic worms and salamanders were done into the lake which had formed in Hellas Planitia. That planitia was an old asteroid impact crater whose water was isolated from themartian ocean. Both species of fish and also the turtles were introduced into the waters of the Argyre Planitia lake and Kasei Valles from which they would quickly reach and populate themartian ocean. Also included among the list of aquatic animals brought to Mars were two species of mammals. Those were river dolphins and manatees. They were brought to Mars as eight-cell embryos and genetically engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster by using appropriate endogenous viruses. The first generation of each species needed to be hand raised and nursed from a bottle with milk formulated for their species until they were weaned. Those dolphins and manatees then were allowed to establi sh wild aquatic
178 C HRISTON J. H URST populations on Mars. Humanity was not allowed to eat either of those two species. Among the obvious absences were many of Earth’s aquatic animal groups that were appreciated for their sake of natural beautybut which could not exist on Mars because its ocean was not adequately saline. That meant there could be no whales on Mars. Even if there were salt water environments on Mars, the task of raising a whale from an eight-cell embryo, including the need to adequately provide it with milk and then educate the animal so that it could socially interact with other whales, would tremendously challenge the Noah’s Ark center. Lack of a naturalmartian salt waterenvironment also meant Mars could have no natural populations of sea turtles or sea otters except in zoos. There could be no coral reefs on Mars except for zoo exhibits, both because the martian water lacked salinity and because the reef corals depended upon ocean tides. The two moons of Mars, which were Deimos and Phobos, were too small for producing a biologically significant tidal effect. Absence of a tidal effect additionally ruled out the possibility of importing some of the other very interesting shoreline aquatic life that had evolved to exist on Earth within the intertidal zones between the oceanic high and low waterlines, including the life in tide pools. Mars did have a number of other aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals that people considered fun to observe including hippopotamus, walruses and river otters, plus a great variety of other interesting land animals including rhinoceros. But, those were only in zoological parks. Each ofthose species had made the interplanetary transition as embryos and been engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster. Mars had bonobos which were brought as embryos, engineered to contain the RadTol Cluster, and then raised only in captivity. The bonobos were not allowed to be used for any hybridization projects. The idea of using bonobos
179 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA for genetic hybridizations had been very firmly outlawed millennia ago, only a few decades after the Bonoban calendar was begun. Some other animals obviously were missing from Mars that on Earth had been considered to provide natural beauty. Most amphibians and reptiles would not be brought to Mars. In particular therewould be no snakes, frogs or toads, and not even earthworms, because any of those could breed uncontrollably and become disastrously invasive in the absence of predators that would control their numbers. The fact that snakes were not allowed because of the danger they could present to humans and livestock reminded a few of the martian residents about the legend of Saint Patrick banishing snakes from Ireland. Although, in truth, there never had been wild snakes on Ireland. The only Irish snakes were those animals deliberately brought into Ireland as pet animals and for zoological parks. Although Irish people certainly were invited to Mars as immigrants they had to leave all snakes back on Earth. Happily, Mars did have many species of hummingbirds. Mining and industrial production were being achieved at full scale on Mars. Those activities seemed to offer excellent future prospects for the planet to sustain a healthy civilization with a diversified economy. The architects and builders on Mars successfully had adapted their skills and became accustomed to changing from using Earth’s construction techniques to using martian techniques. It had proven too expensive to import large quantities of construction materials from Earth to Mars. Instead, continuance of community growth on Mars would become dependent upon utilizing the planet’s own natural resources. Most notably, there was plenty of wood available by harvesting trees that were growing on Mars. Some of those trees by then were nearly 500 years old including the magnificent Scots pines. Clay was naturally plentiful and could be used both for ceramic tiling on walls and also as tile
180 C HRISTON J. H URST roofing, which together were giving Mars a characteristic architecture somewhat reminiscent of what had been Colombia in the Northwestern region of South America. A lot of stone material also was available on Mars. Glass could be made from some of the planet’s minerals. Steel was plentifully manufactured on Mars from the iron ore that was being mined. Aluminum ore also was abundant on Mars which could be purified to produce aluminum metal. Numerous additional metals similarly were available on Mars and titanium was brought from Luna. One thing obviously in short supply on Mars was limestone. Because Mars had been lifeless before humanity had biologically contaminated it with their space craft and their colonization, there never had been microbes living in the water which would biologically deposit lime as an aquatic sediment on Mars. That lack of limestone seemed for a while to rule out the possibility of traditional concrete constructions and the possibility of using traditional mortar. But,eventually some sources of limestone that had formed by direct calcium carbonate precipitation in the ancient martian aqueous environments were found. Concrete had been such a popular construction material on Earth but sustainable wood construction was always preferred on Mars, which meant that need for concrete on Mars was fairly minimal and easily satisfied. The historical lack of aquatic microbes on Mars meant there were no petroleum deposits on Mars which could be used for producing asphalt. Without petroleum, it would be necessary to synthetically create flexible polymers for insulating electrical wiring and to be used in construction of implanted medical devices. Fungi and algae successfully were genetically engineered to produce biodegradable polymers which could be used in place of plastic. For some uses such as implanted medical devices it had been necessary to produce polymers that were bioresistant. Lack of ancient biological life on Mars also meant the planet contained no deposits of either natural gas or coal, which eliminated the temptation to derive energy by burning fossil fuels on Mars.
181 Chapter 18 - Year 4,000 of the Bonoban Calendar: Planning for the Great Separation The responses of Earth’s residents to the advancing glaciers represented panic. There was a sense of horror as the colder air in front of the glaciers and colder water in front of the sea ice relentlessly pushed climate zones away from the poles towards the equator. The terrestrial and aquatic ecological systems which once were typical of middle latitudes had been displaced towards the equatorial regions. And, the territory abandoned by those middle latitude ecosystems was being claimed by ecosystems that previously had been considered polar. Humanity and its governments also had been moving ever further away from polar regions and now were fully desperate forrelocating towards the more equatorial areas of the planet. Greenland once again was connected by land to North America, as it had been when the sea level fell during previous ice ages. Although, the ice which now covered that land bridge made it impossible to know exactly when the geographical reunion had occurred. It eventually seemed certain that Canada’s national capital in Atlanta would be buried by advancing ice. The Canadian government then hastily was moved to San Antonio in what had been the State of Texas. Previously, during the American Civil War a large district of Atlanta had been burned by Union forces under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman on November 15th in year 1864 of the Gregorian calendar. This time, slightly more than four millennia later, instead of undergoing a second trial byfire the city was completely destroyed by glacial ice.
182 C HRISTON J. H URST Just before the British Islands of the United Kingdom were certain to be smothered by ice, the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, along with the coronation chair, the Crown Jewels, the Crown of Scotland, and the Magna Carta, were moved to Boston in what had b een Massachusetts of the Canadian Southern Territories. The goal of arriving in Boston may have been a response to the American Revolution, which began from events held there in Boston on December 16, 1773of the Gregorian calendar when members from the Sons of Liberty organization had emptied chests of tea into the water of Boston Harbor. It subsequently had been necessary to move the seat of that Monarchy further south in the Canadian Southern Territories to Atlanta which had become the capitol of Canada. At this time point in history, glacial ice sheets required yet a third transfer of the United Kingdom’s Monarchy and those treasured symbols of its power. This time, the destination was San Angelo in what had been West Texas. It was there, in San Angelo, that the Queen who was feeling slightly rumpled after all of those transfers, did again wear her white gloves and bravely restore into place both her sense of dignity and stiff upper lip. Not only did the climate refugees need to physically leave behind their homelands, but often when they sought a new life in a new land they were fated to abandon much of their comforting cultural heritage. Their distinguishing cuisine, social customs and l anguages might survive for a while but eventually would meld together into those of their new home. Canadians fortunately had no difficulty fitting into their new southerly accommodations if they stayed within the Canadian Southern Territories which had been the United States. Many Canadians were indeed trying to go even further south into what had been Mexico and Central America, where they subsequently arrived illegally without any documentation and claimed themselves to be climate change refugees. Those Canadians who entered Mexico and Central America needed to abandon their English and
183 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA French languages when they transitioned into their new culture that spoke Spanish. Eventually, ice descending eastward from the Andes claimed for itself all of the Pampas region of South America. People from Antarctica and the Southern part of the South American continent, who earlier had sought refuge in the Pampas region, then banded together and they all headed as far to the northeast of their continent as was possible.Glacial ice seemed like a happy pet dog eagerly and adventurously following at the heels of those people no matter towhere they fled. Those glaciers then continued eastward and ventured beyond the Atlantic Ocean shoreline, where they greeted sea ice that had been extending upward from the South pole. All of Argentina lost its access to the Atlantic Ocean when even Bueno s Aires finally surrendered to the ice. Eventually, the entire population of lower South America was crowded together into large cities within that continent’s equatorial areas. Cultural differences between the southern part of South America from where the refugees left and the northern areas of South America to where they arrived fortunately were not overwhelmingly great. Those South American refugees brought with them versions of Spanish which were similar to the dialects of that same language used in their new, more northerly, homelands. The types of cuisine brought north by those South American refugees also were fairly similarto the flavorful cooking and its marvelous aromas which awaited them as they settled into their new neighborhoods. South Americans who spoke Portuguese as their heritage language mostly stayed in place because the geographical areas in which they lived were less severely impacted by the cooling climate. People who once lived in Europe and North Asia had been flooding southward in massive numbers but they neither easily were offered nor accepted full social integration within their new places of residence.
184 C HRISTON J. H URST European refugees in particular experienceda confusing stretch of time when they tried adjusting to their new lives in North Africa. The various styles of cuisine, language and social customs which they brought with them from Europe at first resulted in different groups of those immigrant people very protectively demonstrating strong cohesiveness and pulling themselves into enclaves. There was a sense of reassuring familiarity within those immigrant communities and alsoa sense of fear which produced both physical as well as cultural isolation from their surrounding larger North African communities. The enclaves often were named for places from which the refugees had originated including Little Berlin, Little Edinburgh,Little Paris and Little Prague. That isolationism would last for a period of several hundred years during which interactions between the immigrant groups typically would be done in their only common language which was English. Eventually, all of the languages and cultural inheritances brought from Europe blended into the Arabic of North Africa as the immigrant and native cultures merged. Glaciers had formed on top of Stellenbosch Mountain near the southwest tip of Africa. From there, the glaciers descended until they covered Cape Town and then proceeded to test their skill by extending an ice shelf onto False Bay. Eventually, that ice shelf met the sea ice that was progressively making its way northward from Antarctica. Valiant efforts were made to keep sea lanes clear at the southern tip of Africa. Fortunately, those sea lanes were kept sufficiently open to maintain global maritime commerce. Only a relative few people ended up being physically displaced by the ice in that southernmost region of Africa. However, people from a far broader area of southern Africa voluntarily were moving north to that continent’s equatorial zones to escape the cold and collectively they looked for refuge in the Sahara and the Sahel. The saharan region interestingly once again was verdant and agriculturally productive, a representation of climatic and ecological conditions that had not occurred there for a very long time! The prehistoric megalakes that once existed in the Sahara, and had been covered in desert sand for millennia, now
185 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA again were filled with water and could support some commercial fishing. Those climate refugees who arrived by moving north from the southern parts of Africa eventually learned Arabic. The language and cultural philosophy which came southward with the refugees from North Asia tended to be Russian and for a long time the discomfort of those people similarly did not allow a successful fit into their new homelands. Eventually, a sense of comfort was found as the North Asian refugees gradually adapted and correspondingly were adopted into the countries and communities of their new surroundings. The ancestral languages and philosophy which those Asian refugees brought southward with them wererelegated to a saved and cherished sense of cultural history when they learned the languages of their new homelands. In the border region between Eastern Europe and Central Asia, glaciers formed on Mount Damavand and other peaks of the Alborz Mountain Range. From there, those glaciers simultaneously advanced northward to cover the Caspian Sea with ice and southward to overtake Tehran, all the while chasing away the residents. When it had seemed as though all of Kyushu might be overtaken by ice, the Japanese government was moved further south to the city of Naha on Okinawa. There was almost no cultural change noticed for people from the northern and central islands of Japan whofortunately could move to more southerly islands within their same country. By a combination of luck and diligence, the entire collections of the Japanese Imperial Museum had been saved and rehoused in a new museum building on Okinawa. That museum was oneof the very few which did not lose priceless treasured artworks during the period of rampant looting which occurred as glacial ice overtook Earth’s cities.
186 C HRISTON J. H URST Southern areas of the Australian continent were becoming quite cold and its residents became desperate to leave, worried that perhaps the glaciers might overwhelm even their lands. Advancement of sea ice that covered the southern oceans happily allowed the Magellanic penguins of South America, the African penguins of Cape Town, and the several penguin species of New Zealand, to again enjoy the ice which had left them behind when it receded southward millennia before. It had been hoped that as the ocean surface waters gradually cooledEmiliania huxleyi glacialis might replicate more slowly and advances of the glaciation would halt. But, that hope was not coming true. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide on Earth simply had fallen too far for the glaciation to seem stoppable. It was predicted that the new glacial ice sheets covering the land would become far more extensive than Earth had experienced during any of its more recent ice ages. The thick sea ice on Earth gradually was threatening to smother the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans far into their temperate latitudes. The fear was that possibly the ice sheets along with the sea ice might reach the equator to repeat what geologically had been described as Snowball Earth. A collective decision was made to largely abandon Earth. Making that decision did not come easily because Earth had been the cradle of civilization for all of humanity, both humans and bonobans. Nevertheless, despite nostalgic reasons for staying on Earth,leaving did seem almost unavoidably necessary. The moving arrangements were to be made jointly by the Federations of Earth, Luna and Mars. Responsibility for coordinating and overseeing all of the arrangements would be done by the United Confederation of Planets. Fortunately, on Mars preparations were being made for the likely influx of refugees from Earth. Martian atmospheric pressure had reached 700 millibars which was equal to an Earth altitude of approximately 3,000 meters
187 PROJECT SASQUATCH : AND A H ISTORY OF THE BONOBAN ERA (10,000 feet) above sea level. That level of atmospheric pressure was considered adequate as a final goal and would be maintained by continuing the importation of carbonium hydroxide from Earth. Material from comets still was being used as a supplemental source of water but it was anticipated that eventually the use of comet material would end because suitable comets were becoming scarce. Entire martian cities would need to be constructed for the immigrants in addition to developing efficient planetary surface transportation systems. There were about six billion members of humanity on Earth. It was not yet known how many of the Earth’s people would want a transfer to Mars. Several different factors affected the decisions made by individuals and family groups to leave Earth. Included among those considerations were whether or not the people’s homeland had been taken over by ice which would have forced them into refugee status, and whether or not their religious and other culturally important sites had been destroyed by the ice. It was presumed that destroyed sites considered holyto any of the various religious groups might be rebuilt either at more equatorial locations on Earth or rebuilt on Mars. Simply considered, if there seemed neither things nor reasons for which to remain on earth, then the members of humanity individually and in groups might as well make the big move. The United Confederation of Planets received funding from the separate Federations of Earth, Luna and Mars to support the transfer of people from Earth to Mars. Even if a million members of humanity could be moved each year, which became a goal, it would take at least six thousand years to transfer everybody from Earth to Mars presuming of course that everyone on Earth wished to make the transfer. The logistics ofmoving all of those individual members of humanity was nearly overwhelming. When considering travel distances within the Sun’s planetary system, the separation between Earth and Luna varied on a cycle throughout an Earth
188 C HRISTON J. H URST solar calendar year but on average was a relatively short 384 thousand kilometers (239 thousand miles). That distance from Earth to Luna seemed so tremendously small when compared with the far greater distance between Earth and Mars. At its closest, Mars had a position in the Sun’s planetary system that was approximately 55 million kilometers from Earth (34 million miles). That closest approach was approximately biennial, happening once every 780 Earth days. Unfortunately, there were other times when the separation distance between Earth and Mars was quite a bit further, roughly 401 million kilometers (250 million miles). That cyclical difference in orbital distances between Earth and Mars meant it would be necessary to try moving 2 million people from Earthto Mars as one large group during each biennial close approachof those two planets. The best option for moving residents from Earth to Mars would be to use the less energy demanding transportation technique of solar sailing. The alternative of transporting both people and goods to Mars by relying upon the very ancient concept of orbital rockets would simply require too much energy. Accommodating the large number of passengers who would be traveling to Mars would require major engineering advances in solar sailing technology. The largest solar sailing boats which had been built prior to year 4,000 of the Bonoban calendar could handle 150 passengers for those fairly short trips which were made between Earth and Luna. The comparatively more extensive requirements needed for making a trip from either Earth or Luna to Mars had meant restricting passenger levels to 75 per trip. Those existing solar sailing boats had sufficed for also bringing to Mars numerous other animal species as either eggs or embryos, bringing cultured plant cells, and bringing symbiont microbes as part of the Noah’s Ark programs. Accomplishing a full scale migration of civilization from Earth to Mars would require designing very large solar sailing passenger liners, more simply to be called solar liners, each of which had sufficient capacity for transporting thousands of people ata time.
