Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

“Have you been in touch with the Dutch?” Rufus asked. He was going to say “Saskia” or “the queen” but, just as Alastair had difficulty believing that Pina2bo was real despite having seen it with his own eyes, Rufus couldn’t believe that he’d done what he’d done with certain other parts of his body.

“Just touching base, status updates. I’m to have a chat tomorrow with some of her staff. Possibly her as well. She has to go lay a wreath or something. Foam disaster. Might run late.”

“What are you actually doing for them?”

“I’m to write a report on what it all means for the Netherlands.”

“Doesn’t the Dutch government have . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Commissions and experts and so on? All very much in the bubble. Everyone already knows what those lot are going to say.”

“What are you gonna say?”

Alastair grinned. “Remember Eshma?”

“Gal from Singapore. Seemed nice.”

“She’s in charge of climate modeling for their government. Chatted with her the other day. And you know what? She can’t get instances.”

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s a cloud computing term. When you need a virtual machine in the cloud, or a whole cluster of them, you go on Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors and spin up an ‘instance.’” Alastair used air quotes. “There’s all different sorts—you literally choose the one you want from a menu, and then clone as many as you need. If you are running a computational model of the climate—which is what Eshma does for a living—there’s a particular model, a piece of software, that most in that discipline have standardized on. And it runs best if you set up a cluster, in the cloud, consisting of a particular item on that menu—one sort of instance that the model has been optimized for. So when she got back from that little junket to Pina2bo, she got busy doing exactly that.”

“Running the computer model on a bunch of instances to see what the effect of Pina2bo was going to be. On Singapore,” Rufus said, just to be sure he was following.

“Singapore yes, obviously, but because that is such a small nation-state, they need to know how it will affect China. India. Australia.”

“Because of the geopolitics of it,” Rufus said.

“Of course. And what Eshma told me was that this was all proceeding normally enough until about a week ago when Pina2bo went live. And after that—do you remember, Rufus, when COVID-19 hit, and for a few weeks you couldn’t buy toilet paper?”

“Sure do!”

“It’s the same way right now with these instances.”

“The particular ones Eshma needs to run the model. Make the predictions.”

“Yes. It’s an open market. Supply and demand. There are only so many of these instances that can be spun up at a given time. And right now, the shelves are bare, as it were. The price has skyrocketed.”

“Because Eshma’s not the only one in the game.”

“We can reasonably assume,” Alastair said, “that Eshma’s counterparts in Beijing, Delhi, and many other places are subsisting on late-night pizza delivery. Or whatever they eat in those places. No one wants to be the last to figure out what this all means.”

“Assuming it keeps going,” Rufus said.

“Do you know of any reason why it wouldn’t?” Alastair asked sharply.

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s a smooth-running machine. I haven’t noticed it go down at any point.”

“Supply lines still clear?”

“A trainload of sulfur every day. Parasails are repacked off-site in Juarez, but I guess that could be moved here if there was a problem.” Rufus checked himself for a moment now, wary of divulging information he shouldn’t. But Alastair had signed the NDA. He’d been to the ranch. And he worked for someone whom T.R. apparently hoped to enlist as an ally.

“What does T.R. want from her?” Rufus asked.

“From the person I work for?”

“Yeah.”

“If I had to read his mind—terrifying thought, that—he’s hoping that he can keep that gun running for a few weeks, perhaps months, before anyone tries to shut him down.”

“He can do that,” Rufus confirmed. “They’re building up a nice big pile of sulfur at the end of the line, just near the gun. Food, water, fuel are all stockpiled.”

“Not even the air force can shoot down a bullet in flight,” Alastair said. “And from what I hear, the descent happens in Mexican airspace.”

“Confirmed.”

“And the Mexican government officials are signaling that they are fine with it,” Alastair said. “The State of Texas has something to say about it . . . but if this spell of cool weather continues, it makes everyone downwind . . .”

“Austin, San Antonio, Houston,” Rufus said. “A few voters live there.”

“. . . feel that T.R. has done Texas a favor.”

“He’s one of them,” Rufus nodded. “Native son. Built a huge gun. Thumbed his nose at the environmentalists. They’ll go full Alamo for him.”

“So it comes down to what’s left of the United States government, and what they might do. And that can be delayed in committees and court filings for a long, long time. Long enough that the specter of termination shock enters the conversation.”

“What’s termination shock?”

“A bogeyman—to be fair, a legitimate concern—that always comes up when people debate geoengineering,” Alastair said. “It boils down to asking what the consequences might be of shutting the system off after it’s been running for a while.”

Rufus considered it. “In this case—the sulfur’s up there bouncing back the sunlight—cooling things off . . .”

“If the government intervenes—if they suddenly shut it down, might there be a disastrous snapback? More destructive than letting Pina2bo keep operating?”

“Does anyone know the answer?”

“No,” Alastair said. “Nor will they, until—”

“Toilet paper’s back on the shelves,” Rufus said. Alastair looked completely nonplussed. “Eshma can get instances,” Rufus explained.

“Yes. But to answer your question, Red, I’d guess T.R. wants allies. People who can vouch for what he’s doing. And who can support him, when the time comes, by raising the specter of termination shock and what it might do to their countries.”

“And Saskia might be one of those.”

“Perhaps. Her support would only be symbolic. But it could influence the people . . . and the people elect the States General.”

“Who doesn’t like it?” Rufus asked. “Other than folks who hate geoengineering on principle?”

Alastair shrugged. “Any country whose ox is gored by the knock-on effects.”

“When I talked to T.R. last week he said ‘some people are gonna be pissed .’ He meant what you mean,” Rufus said. “Countries who run the model like Eshma and look at the results and say, ‘Oh, shit!’”

“Years ago some people ran models to predict the effect of aerosols—sulfur, basically—being injected into the atmosphere from different parts of the world. What happens if we do it from Europe? North America? China? India? The outcomes were surprisingly different. It really matters where you do it. And it then affects each part of the world differently. But if I had to place a bet right here, right now, in this pub, based on what I’ve seen, I’d say it’s going to come down to China versus India.”

Another sonic boom sounded and shut off Alastair’s audio. Rufus signaled as much by sticking his fingers in his ears and looking up into the sky for a few moments.

“I heard you say China versus India.”

“Frequently, in these forecasts, what’s good for one is bad for the other. Monsoons, very important.”