Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

That was the first and still obvious explanation. She kept imagining the Chinese dissident, crafty and out of reach, and with that bit of false-knowledge in hand, Adrianne wrote her next blog – a careful piece using bits of new research.

With words and tidy graphs, she reminded her readers that hydrocarbons were common, both in the world and across the universe. But being common didn’t matter. Most of the world’s oil was too expensive to lift out of the ground, and what could be lifted was often too expensive to refine, and the energy gained at the day’s end was approaching the grim fulcrum where the modern world couldn’t afford to pay its bills.

The topic was familiar. She had investigated peak oil many times. But she had more followers now, a lot of new heads to absorb her thinking, and that’s why she wrote the piece, expecting that a few of her readers would appreciate and maybe even welcome her calm logic.

Fifty-eight years of life gives a person experience with insults and curses.

But what surprised Adrianne was the intimacy of the threats – violent words coupled with images from people who didn’t simply doubt her numbers and good sense, but who wanted to come her house just so they could cut off her head, to claim it as a trophy they would nail to their truck hoods or use in ways far worse than that.

She slept badly for a week. And while awake, every stranger deserved small anxieties.

Yet nothing evil ever came to her door, and everything that was good proved to be excellent. Adrianne’s staff rallied around her. Unfit men in their thirties and forties acted as unofficial bodyguards, and without fanfare, the youngest member of her staff – a girl in her mid-twenties – broke company rules by bringing both a Taser and pepper spray into the office. That next Sunday, Adrianne published a brief, dense blog about magnetoinertial fusion engines – the best means for opening up the solar system. And inside the piece, she included schematics plucked from what looked like a NASA website.

Her followers had reached 80,000.

The rocket blog was followed by a long, complicated piece about increasing lifespans and why that was a damnable trend. Long-term environmental successes would never be possible if too many bodies were prepared to live comfortably in the increasingly overheated world.

By then, her followers’ comments had dropped by half, insults by one third, and she had the carefully plotted data to prove it.

By then, the Chinese civil war was underway, and feeling invested in that particular horror, Adrianne suggested a solution. Like an innoculate into a sick body, she proposed that one of the peripheral Chinese enclaves could supply a new paradigm. Taiwan was offered, then dismissed. Too much history. Hong Kong had its potentials, but it didn’t have the necessary freedom of motion. So instead she voted for the distant and very wealthy citystate of Singapore. Its authoritarian leaders and billionaires were Chinese by heritage. They could broker deals and supply guidance that wouldn’t end the strife today, but in another couple years, perhaps with only fifty million dead from war and famine, some new normalcy could be established. Adrianne’s final Monday at work was pleasantly forgettable. Actuarial adventures.

Lunch.

More adventures.

Plus one long meeting.

Then home and a light dinner, one drink and idle reading, and bed. On Monday, Ghawar was the greatest oil field on the Earth. But early Tuesday, Adrianne’s time, a series of prolonged earthquakes rolled across northern Saudi Arabia. By Wednesday morning, virtually every oil well in the region had seized up and died. The spot market for crude was driving towards 300 dollars. An initial explanation, full of panic and half-informed conjecture, blamed the greedy Saudis. An ocean of oil had been removed from the Ghawar field, and the strata must have been pushed too hard. Despite sound geologic evidence that this was impossible, an entire region had slumped, and the world was several million barrels short of oil today and tomorrow, and always. By Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister of Singapore was opening public talks with three of the main combatants inside China.

Thursday morning saw a news conference from France. An upstart medical firm was going to sell expensive compounds that could only be described as elixirs, and lifespans would soon triple.

But the blogger at the heart of it remained surprisingly unnoticed. Only half a dozen news crews sat on the street outside Adrianne’s home. With her phone off and drapes closed, it was possible to believe that her life hadn’t changed. Then came Friday morning, and a team of MIT engineers announced that the design for a novel rocket propulsion system, posted on a small blog, was not from any governmental database. Or commercial database. Nor any other reasonable source. Yet A. Hammer’s documents contained quite a few interesting features, some invoking the newest ideas about energy in the universe, and it might be possible to build a prototype star-drive within the next five years.

By then, the world was plunging into its Grand Depression. But those financial horrors were augmented by promises of endless life and easy commutes to the other worlds.

The raging chaos had a center – one quiet woman barely known a month ago.

Adrianne escaped her house through the back gate, taking a cab to work.

Nobody in her office was pretending to work. They watched the news together, the door left mostly closed. A manager and two security people arrived before lunch, and Adrianne was ushered into the largest conference room. Every important person in the corporation had gathered to stare at her. Several of them remembered to thank her for her long service. Then the CFO offered her a worried smile and a substantial buyout.

Everybody adored her work, but she was too much of a distraction. Twenty million followers were just the beginning. Adrianne was going to have advertising revenues flowing from her blog, and she had her buyout package, plus savings and numerous offers of cash for appearances on news networks and talk shows. With those prospects and a numbed resolve, she began the long walk back to her office and the cubicle, ready to wish her people the best before heading off into this unforeseen life.

But stepping through the door, an idea took hold.

Seven others watched the old lady make coffee for everyone. The Folgers was brewing, and she sat with her back to her desk, in a pose they had never seen before. She didn’t look regal or even particularly confident. No, nothing was special in her appearance, save for the weariness of great events, and they felt sorry for the lady, even while wondering which of them would end up in charge. She looked at each face. Then she gave the carpet a long stare. Somebody thought to pour coffee into eight mugs and everyone had their share and there was sitting and more silence, except out in the hallway where someone had slipped indoors. A supporter or an enemy: The invader’s goals were never known. Security noticed the interloper and tackled her, and when the screaming was finished, Adrianne looked up at the ceiling. Quietly, soberly, she said, “There’s no reasonable set of factors that can make this possible. What’s happening. To me and to the world. I don’t know why, but I seem to have a pipeline to things I don’t understand.”

Nobody could disagree with that assessment.

Then she surprised them, saying, “If somebody has to wield this kind of influence, why not me?”

It was the first inkling that their boss saw the potential.

“But I need a staff,” she said. “A well-paid, familiar group of people who know me well enough not to take offense when I’m lost in work.” The girl with the Taser said, “Oh. You want to hire us.”