Global Warming Fun 6: Ice Giants Make Manhattan

Global Warming Fun 6:

Ice Giants Make Manhattan

By

Gary J. Davies

Published by Gary J. Davies at Smashwords

Global Warming Fun 6: Ice Giants Make Manhattan

Copyright 2017 Gary J. Davies

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the only exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy.

This e-book is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you again for downloading this e-book!

Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 - Marys and Trouble in the Big City

CHAPTER 2 - Zombie Cop

CHAPTER 3 - Dumbing Down

CHAPTER 4 - The Crazies

CHAPTER 5 - The Worriers and the Ostriches

CHAPTER 6 - Science or Bust

CHAPTER 7 - The Zombie Bar

CHAPTER 8 - Growth Fails

CHAPTER 9 - Disasters Natural and Unnatural

CHAPTER 10 - Aliens, Stone-Coats, and Jants

CHAPTER 11 - Battle for New York City

About Other Publications by This Author

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Foreword

It is indeed an inconvenient truth (with over 95% certitude - see for example the NASA website) that climate change/global warming is real and it is nearly as certain that it is human-caused. Yet from a positive/cup-half-full perspective it does provide a convenient backdrop and underlying crisis for this planned ten-book Global Warming Fun series. The 'fun' aspect is of course in the writing of it and hopefully also in the reading of it. 'Fun With Global Warming' would have been slightly better as a series description but that would have made all book titles of the series even more awkwardly long.

Aside from providing entertainment (my number-one intent), my goal in this series is to provide enlightenment by pointing out some of the serious issues/problems that humans face in our emerging future, including but not limited to climate change. That's serious business for a writer that prefers creating pure escapism! Happily my fictional books outside of this series are generally not thus burdened. See a brief description of my other books in the 'About' section located at the end of this book.

'Watching' global warming actually happen is a bit like watching grass grow, except climate change happens much slower. Yes, weather happens every glorious day, but each year seems much like the last, and climate change deceptively sneaks up on us slowly, over decades and centuries, while as 'now' focused ephemeral humans we typically busy ourselves with the many pressing details of the moment rather than dwelling on the weather.

But eventually even we take notice. (Didn't there used to be a glacier here? Didn't our first snow used to come a month earlier? Why are those once flourishing coral reefs dead? Why did our crops dry out while other folks are getting unusual floods? Does it seem to you that many more really hot summer days happen? Why is there so much rebellion and human migration in much of the world? Why are those nifty white bears having such a tough time?)

I have added some characters and situations to spice up the drama a bit (chiefly sentient telepathic ants called jants and living stone creatures called Stone-Coats that include Ice Giants), but reality will doubtlessly be a much worse and more complex experience than my fiction suggests. Nature will reveal nasty surprises, and humans will likely find ways to make things worse than they need be, while also hopefully occasionally behaving heroically and wisely.

Even though this series is primarily science FICTION and fantasy and certainly not written to provide proof for or defense of climate change science theory, or an accurate description of what will happen and when, some critics may still object to presenting climate change as a 'given' even in a fictional context! Such science/fact denialism is one of the very human problems that is actually pointed out in this particular volume!

Like it or not according to current science climate change is happening and is likely human-caused. If your epistemology is slanted towards reality/facts then you already have considerable confidence in science - the most successful approach yet devised by mankind for making sense of reality. You with some confidence daily make use of science-based technological applications such as electricity, computers, medicine, planes, trains, airplanes, etc. You therefore realize that writing a story of our future that DIDN'T include climate change would have been slanted much more towards fantasy.

Not that I object to fantasy: most of my books including this series include definite fantasy elements that are not provided solid scientific or even pseudo-science explanations. But to be plausible a story set in this universe/reality/timeframe should begin with current fact-based science as part of its world view. For this series I have chosen to assume the 95% certain science view of human-caused climate change. Perhaps sometime in the future I will write a less plausible more fantasy-slanted no-climate-change story that for the sake of entertainment takes the more challenging 5% route.

This particular story takes place in New York City. Like all books in this series it may be enjoyed separately but is best understood in the context of the preceding five books of the series. Each book provides in chronological order a brief look at Earth as global warming progresses through several centuries. See the first book for further insights on the beginnings of this project.

Book six takes place roughly seventy-seven years in the future (relative to the original publication date of this book), when most of us are long dead and gone, but our descendants hopefully remain to struggle on. At this point climate change is well along (following what is perhaps a worse-case scenario, including New England cooling that is hopefully far more radical than likely), and humans have become somewhat accustomed to sharing Earth with two other sentient creatures discovered over the course of this series: the sentient ants called jants (introduced in book one of this series) recently gene-altered into existence, and the ancient Mohawk-discovered Stone-Coats/Ice Giants (introduced in book two and further developed in books four and five).

By book six many humans have largely come to terms with med-ticks (introduced in book three) and jant/med-tick controlled human zombies (which play a role in book five). And of course as with most books of this series, the apparently immortal telepathist Ed Rumsfeld (introduced in book one) is the lead character.

This book takes place roughly twenty-seven years after the drought-driven California adventure of book five. It is the last near-future book in the series; to get to the full impact of global warming, after this book the stories will necessarily tend to take place centuries instead of mere decades apart. I will likely have to remove the tin-foil skull-cap that normally protects me from alien mind control and malicious spirits and make even greater use of my crystal ball in order to write them.

The stated 'plan' of this Global Warming Fun series is to outline human history over the next few centuries in response to problems faced by Earth and humanity including but not limited to climate change. Yes, unfortunately as has likely not escaped the notice of my more astute readers, climate change is definitely not the only oncoming threat or crisis. Some serious difficulties such as climate change happen in slow-motion, while other disasters could essentially wipe out humanity almost overnight. The universe is a very dangerous place, with humanity ourselves typically providing most of the perils. (Who would have thought that we'd even mess up the climate!) We have generally been very lucky so far, but as we advance our technologies we increase the risks we pose to ourselves, even though we also introduce tantalizingly exciting positive opportunities.

Many of the 'concerns'/issues highlighted here in book six, including concepts, terms, and phrases, appear in the 153 essays of What Should We Be Worried About ? edited by John Brockman, the excellent 2014 Edge Foundation Incorporated/Harper Perennial book that chronicles answers to that title/Edge-dot-org question of 2013 asked of the Edge intelligentsia blogosphere. Readers are urged to consult those sources and others for more faithful, comprehensive, in depth, and up-to-date discussions of many of the worrisome issues only briefly mentioned herein. Unfortunately even as I write this book many of the potential problems/issues mentioned are becoming reality. As is often the case, reality can be more F-ed up than fiction.

Particularly for this specific book in the series, a key writing issue/challenge for the author was how to fit mention of so many of the non-fiction issues we face into a fictional action/adventure story line without totally ruining the story or coming off as too preachy. Sort of like Beethoven trying to combine orchestra and chorus in his monumental ninth symphony, or perhaps more aptly like eating a spoon full of yummy sugar to help the nasty tasting medicine go down. Did I succeed? That's for the reader to judge. But at least I had a challenging and fun time writing it! What better hobby is there for a physics-trained engineer to pursue in his retirement?

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Global Warming Fun 6:

Ice Giants Make Manhattan

CHAPTER 1

Marys and Trouble in the Big City

Your daughter and our great-great-grand-daughter have been kidnaped, said the voice, jarring Ed Rumsfeld from comfortable much appreciated sleep.

Under his nice soft sheets Ed stretched his limbs and struggled to gather his wits. A hauntingly familiar voice had awoken him, though the words hadn't quite registered. He noted that the impossibly soft bed sheets surrounding his body were obviously a weave of carbon Nano tubing finer than silk, not the old-fashioned much courser hand-woven natural plant-based fabrics of his adopted Tribe the Mohawk that he preferred.

So then, he clearly wasn't at his beloved Mohawk Reservation home in the frozen Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State. He was obviously waking in the king-plus-sized bed of his Greenpoint neighborhood Brooklyn apartment. He recalled that he had recently returned to New York City to watch the kids while his wife Ann Richards was off on yet another United Nations business trip trying to save the world one messy issue at a time.

Watch the kids? Amend that. Their three 'kids' that shared the apartment with them were now young independent-minded adults, and they were watching after him every bit as much as he was watching after them, in this crowded, bustling, big-city environment that was much more their natural habitat than his own. Over his century-long lifetime he had come a very long way from his rural Virginia birthplace. Too far, he sometimes thought.

He recalled that he was also in the City because he had been asked by his Tribe to help settle a City issue that involved them. For roughly three decades Mohawk tribesmen, already long famous for their work in constructing the high steel-framed skyscrapers of Manhattan, had helped coordinate the construction work of Stone-Coats across all of New York City. Now as a part-time Tribe Chief and Stone-Coat expert, Ed had been asked by the Brooklyn Mohawk Tribe members for his help to settle some sort of issue involving the Stone-Coats: something about their rebuilding of the City over the next few centuries as the ocean levels rose. He was supposed to lead a Tribe meeting about it that evening, along with Ann and her close companion and friend: Talking Stone the Stone-Coat.

Ann was due home later this morning from her latest trip to disaster-plagued Europe. At least like the Americas, disaster-plagued Europe was in much better shape than most of disaster-plagued Africa and Asia, and Ann's visits to Europe were less depressing and dangerous. Still Ed would feel much better when she had safely returned home to relatively stable and prosperous New York City.

According to his Stone-Coat developed brain implant however, it was only 9:47 AM, and Ann hadn't even landed at La Guardia yet. So who was rudely waking him up and what were they yammering about? He couldn't quite remember the words that had woken him, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the voice.

Get your lazy ass out of bed, Ed, said the voice. It was indeed a very familiar voice using an all too familiar phrase that Ed hadn't heard in twenty-seven years! He opened his eyes to see standing over him in the dim light none other than Mary, his previous wife for nearly half a century! She looked impossibly young, no more than twenty-five, Ed estimated, her age when he first met her, though the real flesh-and-blood Mary would like him be a century old by now, if she was still alive.

But Mary wasn't alive! The human Mary had died twenty-seven years ago, so this obviously wasn't the original Mary and it certainly wasn't her ghost. But of course! This could only be a Stone-Coat Mary replicate, Ed assured himself. No big deal. There were many thousands of Stone-Coat Marys, though he had never heard of one that chose to also physically resemble the original Mary.

Which Mary are you? he asked the Stone-Coat standing over him. Not Mary-One, of course!

I am Mary 11,123, said the Stone-Coat.

Her lips didn't move, Ed noticed, but then why should they? The voice likely came from some-sort of speaker located in the mouth cavity that had nothing to do with human lips, tongue, vocal cords, or lungs. Real humans had dozens of nifty face-shaping muscles. This Stone-Coat's face including her lips were probably made mostly of solid diamond or some other equally inflexible gem material, and her lips formed a permanent smile.

You are doubtless well aware that Mary-One remains in the Pacific Ocean, pursuing her marine biologist conservation goals, said the Stone-Coat Mary. Besides, she weighs hundreds of tons and wouldn't very well fit into this tiny New York apartment that you have arbitrarily named Fred.

Mary-One had shaped herself as most mobile Stone-Coats had done for millions of years: as a massive vaguely bear-like giant with diamond scales that looked like ice. Ice Giants, some humans traditionally called them, because while looking a bit like they were made of ice, they also preferred cold weather that supported their use of hydraulics driven by water's expansion when it transitioned from the liquid to the solid state.

From a human perspective this Mary appeared to be nicely proportioned under a gray pants-suit, likely a multi-layer pants-suit constructed from carbon Nano-tubing that she had generated herself. The material when structured in multiple layers conveniently provided excellent thermal insulation and was a hundred times as strong as steel. Generating one's own clothing had to be a handy thing to be able to do! The original Mary would have very much liked being able to do that!

MORE LIGHT GRADUALLY! he silently requested of the apartment building Stone-Coat known as Fred.

I haven't met with Mary-One in person for nearly five years, Ed noted aloud, but I monitor her status every chance that I get and we exchange old-fashioned emails and so-forth. How did you get in here past Bob and Fred? They're not supposed to allow even Stone-Coats to enter without the approval of me, Ann, or one of the kids.

For a jant-controlled zombie Bob isn't too swift, said the mobile Mary. The modest-sized jant colony supporting his sentience is clearly over-burdened intellectually, though for insects I suppose they do quite well. Bob relied mostly on Fred's excellent assessment of my low hazard index to admit me. You really should get yourself better security. An important human such as you shouldn't be so physically accessible.

Ed watched her stiffly and sluggishly step back and away from the bed then agonizingly slowly sit herself down gently in her wheelchair. Despite what was doubtlessly insulating clothing designed to help keep her cool when inside buildings or vehicles, the Mary was apparently warming up quickly, and might already be using steam for hydraulic locomotion instead of ice, Ed suspected.

The wheelchair didn't surprise him. Stone-Coats of human size were excruciatingly slow and weak compared to most Stone-Coats. Chiefly to minimize the radiation danger to carbon/water-based life forms such as humans, small Stone-Coats harbored only tiny amounts of radioactive material to power their pathetically weak hydraulics, electric motors, electro-magnets, and thought processes. Getting around using only legs was so inefficient that the design of small individuals usually somehow included wheels: an invention originally discovered by Stone-Coats hundreds of millions of years ago but rarely used until human-times and the advent of roads and other hard flat human-made surfaces. Mobility in the usually more rugged terrain of Earth much favored the most common form of mobile Stone-Coats: the bipedal Ice Giant.

The wheelchair that the Mary sat in looked much like an old-fashioned human model, but Ed knew it was actually part of the Stone-Coat's body that was connected to the Mary-shaped-part chiefly via radio communications. Through his Stone-Coat manufactured brain implant that sensed electromagnetic radio frequencies he could sense the constant information exchange occurring between the woman-shaped and wheelchair-shaped portions of this mobile Mary.

Towards the end of her life the aged real Mary needed a wheelchair to get around, Ed recalled painfully. That was a Stone-Coat wheelchair also. Seeing a Mary in a wheelchair now brought back haunting memories to Ed of Mary Zero's last days in California.

Fred had not yet caused the room to reach full daytime lighting levels but even so it was by now becoming much more obvious to Ed that his visitor was certainly a Stone-Coat and not a human. Though tinted