Gaia Uprising

Prologue

The old calendar date would have read, November 17th, 3112. Exactly one thousand years had passed since the occurrence of the ‘The Great Cataclysm’. It had been a near extinction event similar to the many end times preceding it in the multi-billion year history of Earth. The ‘Pre-Cat’ world faded into distant memory the way many civilizations had vanished into the mists of time. The mythical past survived in the secretive minds of self-styled ‘Bureaucrats’ and earthbound mystics who sought release from all knowledge of power. What was remembered of the ‘Pre-Cat’? Little survived the planetary destruction and following age of chaos. In the ensuing millennium, knowledge of the previous civilization became a closely guarded secret and as important as worship or was abandoned as useless and unwelcome. The isolated world of men divided into experimental populations unaware of each other.

Unknown to the survivors who re-established themselves along the lines of instinctual reflex and tribal groups who raced fate for survival of the fittest, their days were numbered. The genetic elements of dominant chromosomes that had raised mankind to the forefront of evolution and mastery over the earth, the pantheon of life, had ended. The conditions for survival no longer demanded might at the apex of the pyramid.

Chaos reigned in the universe after a tear in the fabric of space exposed matter from one dimension to the anti-matter of another. The Big Bang creation moment happened when the quark-gluon soup condensed into hadrons. The particles made up the newest universe. Life found a way to exist in the midst of chaos and it took hold vigorously.

The milli-seconds before the Big Bang creation, an imbalance occurred in favor of matter over anti-matter. If there had not been this disparity, matter and anti-matter would simply have reacted to create a universe of pure energy. As if by way of celebrating its own birth, the genetic memory of that milli-second where life had snatched its existence from the void was woven into the fabric of life. Each atom possessed the memory of that birth and wove it into the molecular structure of every particle. Life would continue to exist regardless of the circumstances of failure. Matter became eternal.

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Chapter 1- The Gaia Uprising

Book One

London

Food rioting in 2112 raged like wild fire. Uncontrolled violent looting left entire cities burning. The secret could no longer be contained. Inside the closet of information occupied by the highest politicians and their closest advisors a countdown had begun. Only weeks before audited reports of the collapse of food and water supplies reached a critical inflection point, indicating an immanent disaster. When there were nine days of supply left the politicians panicked. They dispatched a massive and brutal military presence into the streets obstensively to quell unrest that was grew exponentially around the world. At three days supply remaining, all hell broke loose. Police forces retreated and began looting for the sake of their own survival. A massive cull of ‘unproductive mouths’ was ordered by the central governors. The murderous rampage by security forces was bloody, systematic and ruthlessly human.

European Council leader Gordon Gold sat in his palatial London offices surrounded by the trappings of wealth and power. He watched the Holo-Com images coming in on the CCTV networks. He saw what was happening globally in real time. His dark eyes belied any emotion. His only apparent reaction to what he was seeing was an uncontrolled tic in the corner of his right eye, as if a gnat was pestering him. Each screen showed flames and unbridled chaos. Screaming men and women ran in the street, some with their synthetic rags burning like candle wicks. Everywhere he looked bodies were incinerated or bullet ridden. In the poorer tropical countries, the blood that pooled around the corpses rippled with flies.

What are we doing to stop the lootings in Paris?

Gold was distracted by another image that drew his attention away from the horrors of India.

His general comment went out to anyone in close proximity enough to hear him. A group of toadies lined the walls of his majestic office suite like shadows cast by the drapery. Each one cringed wringing their hands at his voice echoing around the silent room. A skeletal Chinese woman popped up beside him as if she had been sitting at his feet.

Nothing Sir, she said in a scratchy voice that sounded more like the mewling of a cat than a woman.

The Paris station stopped reporting yesterday.

She gripped an oblong multi-channel controller in her shaking hand and stabbed at the numerical keypad until a picture of the warehouse distribution hub for Western Europe came into focus. A shocking image came into view turning the gnarled leaders face into an angry grimace. He sucked in his lips until his teeth showed through the skin.

Shit he muttered.

Gold saw the distribution complex he had opened with great fanfare five years ago was now awash in flame and billowing smoke out of every window. Entire squads of elite Euro-Zone Guards were lying dead like scattered bits of trash. The bodies looked like they’d been torn apart by wild dogs. These soldiers had been the public face of the food and water ration-enforcement campaign and he knew they were hated by the people they had governed at gun point. The Councilor shuddered thinking what would happen if the mobs ever broke through the central defenses of the government’s central administration complex here in London. In the Paris suburb the perimeter barbed wire fences had been flattened and the mile long buildings were crawling with looters. It looked like a horde of ants were filling the screen. Gold’s assistant panned the camera back to get an overview; the lens was full at every magnification. Millions of starving Parisians had descended on the food stores.

Gunfire was raining down into the complex. It sounded like a frozen hail of spent bullets fired into the air as ‘victory shots’ had come raining back onto the roof tiles. The finely tuned microphone picked up the sound of the metal rain.

Turn it off he waved his hand in disgust.

It was too much to think about on a day when his world was crumbling.

I thought the French would stand and fight if it came to this he muttered, remembering the personal assurances of the French leadership.

France is dead sir was the reply from his assistant.

The French President and his staff left for New York three hour ago, she read flatly from a text message off one of the PDA devices she juggled in her hands.

Shit Gold said taking stock of the few people he would be taking with him into the security bunker.

His personal assistant ‘Lily Lung’ had come to the same conclusion hours ago. She flipped e-pages over on the PDA constantly, rolling the dial around, making it look like she had something else to do other than what she wanted to do which was start running for shelter. London was burning from the outside in.

The ubiquitous Holo-Com images showed Outer London mobs on the move. The boroughs of Basking and Bexley, Croydon and Hounslow, Redbridge and Greenwich burned out of control. The local councils had been hanged from the CCTV camera stantions as a sign of the cynicism amongst the people who had tired of the brutal governance. A flotilla of barges commandeered by rebels was coming down the Thames in large connected rafts. Local policemen and other officials had been tied to iron beams affixed as forecastle netting and had been set alight to the delight of the crowds who lined the shore.

Obviously that they’ll come ashore at Westminster and sack the Parliament buildings, Gold assumed.

That’s what a mob would do.

The ancient Parliament buildings had become a hated symbol of the government’s power and repression. From the Westminister Bridge a mob could be in the center and burning Big Ben within minutes. Gordon kicked a chair sending the plastic seat flying across the room. British tradition and history were going to be lost on his watch.

Damn, Damn, Damn he shouted.

He still had time he thought.

There were still things he could do.

If they could react in time, perhaps they could turn back the publics revenge long enough to buy some time.

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Chapter 2 - The Gaia Uprising

The situation was deteriorating faster than he’d thought it could. The rough-hewn photogenic man had spent a lifetime of cynical machinations becoming master of the political universe. He suddenly felt hemmed in by forces beyond his control. Gordon was accustomed to wiley negotiating and back room dealing but he had lost that opportunity. This fact he accepted as he had options, but it frustrated him to the point of inner turmoil; he noticed his bleeding finger nails. Stress was unconsciously present as it had been when he was a child. He thought of how he looked today. His head was too big for his body but it made him look imposing on television. His physical features in real life were angular and awkward, he rarely made public appearances. His public image had been crafted through speechwriters on television into one of common eloquence by his adept handlers.

A ragged nail had scratched his forehead above his right eye as he tried to keep an effeminate lock of a hair from falling across his face. A trickle of blood escaped underneath his makeup. His flustered makeup artist chastised him for his lack of care as he was made up and coiffed for his meeting. He could hear the mob of media and paparazzi waiting in the hall. Gordon looked at himself in the mirror and decided that he looked clownish. A paper bib around his neck kept his shirt collar from staining; the pancake makeup brought back memories of a performer he’d seen as a child who wore a ghostly white face above a frilly lace collar. The contradiction of images had scared him. He’d begun to hate clowns, they frightened him. He hated being afraid though he had no physical courage and went around afraid most of the time. The other children had constantly made fun of his unusual looks.

Gordon’s unease intensified as his head filled with thoughts that perhaps this was the end of his tenure. For the first time in many years he felt genuinely afraid. His stomach turned and a wisp of bile burped up into his esophagus and burned his throat. He patted his jacket and trouser pockets and remembered that he’d left his antacid tablets behind in his desk. He resisted the urge to turn and run. The reception hall he’d had especially built around him had been designed to impress.

Wasn’t he the most important man on the continent?he was thinking as he swept in with his entourage.

The room was packed with squawking voices, political dancers, intelligentsia and a horde of media. Lining the walls were giant holographic images of him striking a stately pose. They shimmered in thirty foot high representations of himself at important moments in his career. His images presented him as a giant standing with other famous and prestigious figures of British history. The technicians had built into the programming a mobility track so that it looked like he was engaging and able to strike impressive poses as a viewer walked around the screen. The technology made it look as if he was meeting the viewer’s eye no matter where they were in the room. He had ordered this to be finessed into the program because he wanted to replicate the effect of the old masters that hung in the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. Millions had been spent on special adaptive software. The projection technology showed the simulations to stunning effect.

It looked so real, he mused.

He looked at himself and saw that the grandiloquent image in the holograph seemed to smirk at him. The ‘eye to eye’ effect was suddenly disquieting to him; it seemed that his own image was laughing at him. Gordon shook off his momentary feeling of insecurity and laughed at himself for ‘being silly’.

Don’t be silly his mother had always called after him whenever he had flown into flights of fancy.

It wasn’t proper for a boy to act that way she would say to him when he had wanted to play-act for her.

She had chastised him for his inattention.

He was Gordon Gold he thought.

He regained control of himself.

Silly indeed he said.

The assistant leaned towards to catch what he had said over the noise of the crowd, but he was already walking away. As the great man strode confidently down the window lined corridor he secretly listened to the scientists bitch behind his back about what he knew to be true but couldn’t publicly admit.

His earpiece picked up their conversations as he passed by from bugging devices placed everywhere around the room.

The sunless sky and rainless clouds were conspiring to defeat his plans of world domination, he fumed.

In his mind he had already concluded that what was happening may be irreversible in the time they had left to turn things around. He winced in frustration when he heard someone refer to him by the nickname the press gallery wits had given him. ‘The Golem’ they’d dubbed him because of his humble beginnings.

He had risen through the ranks with agility and ruthlessness, taking no prisoners. He had certainly come from the mud of society’s lower classes but he was no straw man now, despite what they said.

He’d show them that he was no puppet.

He may have risen from the mud and lacked the pedigree of many notables assembled here, but he had risen in spite of it.

Food, damn it, who would have thought a food shortage, would bring us to the brink.

Gordon Gold had never taken the climate change argument seriously. It was something his scientists were working on as a means of population control. He was supposed to control the climate, not the other way around.

Mr. Chairman someone was calling over the cacophony of scurrying press that a phalanx of assistants was keeping at bay.

Can we at least have your attention?

Twelve exasperated scientists vied for his attention. He had agreed to the meeting with the scientific community as a tactic to calm the press down. His staffers were supposed to be feeding him placating sound bites for the world, not proposing open questions. Impatience in the room was palatable. Some scientists thumped loudly on the table attempting to gain the media’s attention and have the meeting begin.

For Christ’s sake, when had all this happened? Gold thought, They’re like barking dogs.

His scientists had assured him that they were years away from total climate collapse. The advisory teams of military, political and engineering corps assured him that plenty could be done by way of contingencies to wrap up any crowd control issues. The ‘cull of unproductive mouths’ had been a controversial suggestion but had in the end been accepted as prudent. The proposal had been ratified by a majority.

Forced sterilization programs hadn’t worked, there had been too much corruption amongst the leadership. Most of the allotted funding had been stolen away by corrupt officials in the most populace countries and the program had disapated into chaos. He made that point vociferously at United Nations Council meetings but had been shouted down. Systemic corruption and money scandals coming from poorer nations were too big an elephant for him to bag at this time.

Besides he’d agreed behind closed doors,What was new about corruption in the third world?

It was accepted that certain populations had to be eliminated for the good of the majority. Proposals came in from world leaders for more than two years. Initially it was obvious that politicians had angled to wipe out their opposition. In Africa it was always the same with one tribal leader wanting to wipe out another.

We might as well let them kill each other had quipped one political wit.

They’re going to do it anyway.

Certain procedural wrangling on ‘fairness’ had to be taken into consideration. All in all though, the process of a political solution was coming along rather nicely he’d thought.

Now he was watching his elite government officials and scientists grovel at the feet of a group of theoretical thinkers who only a few years ago had been pushed into the ‘fringe’ and painted publicly as alarmists, even ‘lunatics’. This subject had been the butt of many popular jokes amongst the elite and socially superior only months ago. He watched as his eminent political liaison and advisor Lily Lung cowered at the hammering fist of a skeletal scientist who was pounding on the table while pointing a laser at a PowerPoint presentation.

He had seen the powerful Ms.Lung stare down men twice her size and make her point with a sharp rapping of her stiletto heels on the polished surface of a desk. To see this pit bull at bay was concerning. Gordon felt tense when he was afraid. The feeling made his bladder act up. He knew as she did that the ring of fire around London’s perimeter was moving inexorably towards the center. The square mile of power centering on the phallic Pickle and the vast complex of the bureaucracy it encompassed became less secure as the seconds ticked away.

Chairman Gold stopped the proceedings occasionally to refresh his knowledge along with that of the senior official’s who flanked him as to the terms the older scientist was exclaiming. Rattling the dragon lady ‘Ms.Lung,’ wasn’t something he’d witnessed before. She didn’t frighten easily. The fear on the faces of his representatives was expressly palatable. The fiercely instinctive British media responded like sharks smelling blood in the water. It was embarrassing to him. He made a mental note to eliminate the Lung woman. She’d become a liability.

Excuse me Doctor he called above the roar of the undisciplined crowd. He pointed his finger at the wizened scientist who was at the center.

Can you explain this ‘Autopoiesis’ you’re talking about?

Surely, Gold interrupted before the man had spoken, You’re not telling us that you have discovered an intelligence coordinating the earth’s bio-systems? Are you saying you can prove that the earth is organizing itself?

Is that what I understand what you are saying? The councilor put on his famous scowl. He’d learned to ‘make faces’ from a famous actor and used the theatrical simulation to great effect.

Gordon watched the scientist’s body language indicate retreat. He sensed victory as the room grew began to grow silent. The suddenly self-conscious scientist, unaccustomed to the spotlight quivered at the attention focused on him. The glaring camera’s beaming down on him made him feel like an experimental subject in a petri dish. The room went dead silent awaiting his response. He felt damp with sudden perspiration. He looked uncomfortable enough that he might disappear down his white smock like a turtle into its protective shell.

An infectious laugh began with several of the military personnel sitting around the table. It began to spark around the room and finally erupted throughout the assembly in nervous relief. Gold felt good to have clawed back his self centered power over these scatterbrained bookworms. He instantly regretted his mistake. The room had quieted to a bare whisper as it became obvious the old scientist was rising out of his chair in an attitude of righteous dignity to lecture a classroom of children.

This was his subject Gold thought, and I’ve just given him a hand up onto the soap-box.

Gordon regretted baiting the professor as soon as the small mans eyes met his. The scientist had the burning eyes of a religious zealot about to launch into a fire and brimstone sermon.

Oh Christ said the Chairman,

What have I done he looked at the dozens of hungry reporters lining the perimeters of the spacious room.

This isn’t good he said out of the side of his mouth to his assistant Lily Lung.

If he’d had a gun he’d have pulled it out and shot the old bugger between his six highly magnified eyes he was thinking as the old man began to speak.

Soon he chided himself, I’ll be the only law that matters. Gordon resigned himself to what was coming. It was too late to stop it. The scientist went off like a firecracker.

* * * * *

Chapter 3 - The Gaia Uprising

Dr. Krauss and his colleague Dr. Detlief had waited months for an audience with the man they snidly referred to amongst themselves as the ‘Supreme Leader". It wasn’t a name intended to flatter the man. It was a derogatory nickname that put him in the same category as any of