Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

He hit on the idea of bringing his trailer up here. From the looks of it, New Marble Mine Road would be good enough, if he took it easy. Because of the cell tower, he was getting five bars on his phone. Obviously there were no utilities beyond that. But he could fetch gas for his generator and water to put in the trailer’s tank. Getting rid of sewage would be an inconvenience, but he could manage it. And Tatum had said anywhere .

So the next day Rufus towed his trailer up New Marble Mine Road and parked it just outside the mine entrance. In the shady space just inside, he set up a camp table and chairs. This area was largely bug-free and comfortable for much of the day, but sunlight bouncing in from the canyon walls made it bright enough to read and work. He got busy upgrading his drones with the transponders that had been supplied to him by Black Hat.

He had been on the ranch for about a week when Tatum sent him a little follow-up message stating that if Rufus really wanted to make a positive contribution to the overall security of the ranch, it would be a good thing if he could get himself squared away and his equipment up and running “before the shit hits the fan geopolitically.”

Rufus roger-wilcoed him right back, as soldiers did. But in fact he had no idea what Tatum was talking about.

The next morning he got his computer on the Internet, using his phone as a hot spot, and went to a video site and set it playing videos about Pina2bo while he spread out his tools and drone parts on the folding table. During the first half hour or so, he had a disconcerting feeling that he had got way behind on current events in the world. A week ago, when he’d driven his truck through the ranch gate, T.R.’s project had still been pretty much secret. People had figured out that he was building something big in the desert—that much was obvious just from satellite photos—but they could only speculate as to what it was or when it would become operational. Rufus’s arrival had roughly coincided with the moment when the gun had been “brought up,” meaning that the whole system had gone into operation, and it hadn’t stopped since. During that time he hadn’t left the ranch and had paid no attention at all to news feeds. So he was taken aback by the sheer volume of Internet traffic that had come into existence concerning T.R.’s project while he had been unaware.

So much of this was flat-out wrong, though, that it put him back on his heels for a little while. His confidence began to bounce back a little as he realized how much better informed he was than everyone else. T.R.’s staff had released explanatory videos presenting the facts, and a few nerds had found those and then released videos of their own that seemed credible enough, but for each of those there were twenty more that were just crazy talk. Official news outlets had done stories about it, but all they wanted to talk about was how people felt about climate change, and what a wacky dude T.R. McHooligan was in his old videos. Even more highbrow sites couldn’t get off the mentality of what the political repercussions were going to be, who was for it and who was against it, and so on. It was difficult to connect any of this with Tatum’s reference to the geopolitical shit hitting the fan.

So he called Alastair. They’d stayed in touch, sending occasional texts and pictures back and forth. Alastair didn’t pick up right away, but a minute later he called back. “Sorry,” he said, “I was inside flagging down the barkeep, didn’t hear you.”

The scene that now completely filled the screen of Rufus’s laptop was a curious through-the-looking-glass inversion of Rufus’s situation. Rufus was at the head of a box canyon, one of whose walls was in shade, the other lit by the morning sun. Alastair was standing at an outdoor table on the sidewalk of a dead-end street in London. The buildings on one side of it were lit up by the evening sun. There were a couple of parked cars in view, but the whole street was monopolized by people on foot. Apparently he was right outside a pub. A pint glass of something caramel-colored accounted for much of the screen real estate. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, open collar, no tie. The same was true of many visible in the background. There was some variation in the darkness and color of the suits, and the same could be said of the contents of their pint glasses. There were some women and they looked quite confident and well put together. They were all being extremely sociable.

Rufus understood that it must be quitting time in London. This must be the City that Alastair had alluded to, the part of it that was run by that guy Bob, the lord mayor. Even though Alastair was out of doors, the roar of conversation around him was such that he had to fish out headphones and put them on before he showed signs of being able to really hear what Rufus was saying.

“Looks like a very pleasant afternoon where you are.”

“It’s been filthy hot until yesterday. More like Spain. This is a little more like it.”

“Maybe Pina2bo is doing its job.”

“That is exactly the joke that is going around! Not thirty seconds ago people were raising pints to T.R. McHooligan.”

“ Is it a joke?” Rufus asked. “I mean, could it be having an effect?”

“Not here. Too soon. However, coincidentally or not, it’s been cooler in East Texas the last couple of days. As you may be aware.”

“I was not.”

“Where the hell are you? I see your trailer behind you but—”

A sonic boom sounded, and the user interface on the videoconference indicated that Alastair’s audio feed had been silenced in favor of the overwhelmingly louder signal from Rufus’s microphone. Alastair looked confused and astonished and made efforts to say something, but the sonic boom continued to echo for a few moments off the canyon walls and so Rufus could only see his lips moving.

“Was that what I think it was!?” he finally said, after he had got audio back. His eyes darted from side to side as if he’d just been let in on a delicious secret.

“Yup.”

“You’re there !?”

“A few miles away. Found a good place to set up.”

From the bemused way that Alastair looked around, Rufus got the idea that he was thinking If only these people knew that I was talking to someone who is right there!

“So people are talking about it, I guess,” Rufus prompted him.

“Oh, yes. Biggest news story of the year to date, I’d say.”

“What are they saying?”

“Too early to know, really. It was such a surprise. People have talked for decades about doing this.”

“Putting sulfur into the stratosphere.”

“Yes. And almost from the moment it was first mentioned, the idea was loathed by Greens. Just anathematized. To the point where you couldn’t even really talk about it in public or you’d get canceled. So in general I would say that the Greens were like—” Alasdair released his grip on his pint long enough to whisk the palms of his hands together.

Rufus understood the gesture and nodded.

“We’ve put paid to that nonsense,” Alastair said, “no need to concern ourselves with it any more, let’s move along to the real program of, as T.R. puts it—”

“Getting China and India to stop burning shit.”

“Exactly. Which somehow hasn’t worked,” Alastair said, deadpan. Then he continued, “So I would say that the chattering classes, who live in that sort of bubble, were knocked off balance quite badly and are still having a hard time believing it’s real. Even I, who’ve seen it . . .” Alastair shook his head and took a swallow. “That’s why I reacted as I did when I heard the sonic boom just now. Had this mad impulse to turn my phone around and show everyone in the pub.”