Cobb Lecture Hall, University of Chicago, Chicago Illinois.
September 15th 2021
Announcing a startling new discovery regarding the drastic thinning of the atmosphere across the globe.
Lecture to begin promptly at 5:30 PM
World-renowned Microbiologist, Dr. Esra Dahteste, to give a first of its kind lecture running concurrently with sixty different experts ranging from climatologists, biologists, and just about every other representation of the life sciences.
Dr. Dahteste started her undergraduate studies here at The University of Chicago and received her Master’s in Biology, and Doctorate in Microbiology from Harvard. Returning to the University of Chicago in 2018 to the Microbiology department to expand her research into microbes in large freshwater bodies.
…
Into the silence of the packed auditorium steps a petite form wearing khaki shorts, a comfortable t-shirt with an unbuttoned flannel top. Deep viridescent, lustrous, black hair with the kind of shine that only comes from a well-balanced diet with an ample amount of omega 3 fatty acids. It’s drawn back in a broad long braid that sways across her back like the sword of Damocles, ending just below the backs of her knees. She looks more at home in a coffee shop than giving a lecture in front of a gaggle of reporters representing news agencies from all over the world, campus students and faculty, as well as concerned local citizens.
Flanking her on both her left and right are two giant screen TVs with a title screen showing a presentation slide. The background of the slide has light and softened photo of the Ivy coated entrance to Cobb lecture hall faded into the background to not overly distract from the content of the slide. The University of Chicago logo on the top left corner and on the right, the NOAHH (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) logo bracketing the lecture title.
OUR THINNING ATMOSPHERE: Breakthrough.
With her she carries a small, slightly battered, thrift store attaché. She places the case gently on the podium as if it was as fragile as the silence that surrounds her. A soft click breaks the stillness as the satchel opens, from which she removes a similarly worn and tattered book. Her breath quickens while her hand lightly caresses the binding. Gently, she begins to open the withered tome. Only she can see the cover and the single word imprinted in a long-forgotten script. Only she can read the word written in the first language. It translates to Gaia. She belongs to it.
She clears her throat then looks up to meet the sea of faces looking to her. “We are dying,” Dr. Dahteste begins her lecture, “Not in the poetic, metaphorical sense. We are literally dying with every breath. Some of you may have noticed it was a bit more difficult to breathe after climbing short flight of stairs. Others may notice it as a mild but persistent headache,” her voice clear, concise, and controlled. “These are the beginning effects of oxygen deprivation,” she pauses for effect. Focusing on a tall but rail thin military man in the second row, a Colonel if she has not mistaken the silver eagles on the shoulders of his immaculately pressed jacket. Her eyes flit from the officer and light on an older gentleman in the second row. He wears bib overalls and a flannel shirt. His face rough, stern, and craggy as Otter cliffs on the coast of Maine.
“According to studies by NOAA and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, between 1992 and 2019 the O2 levels in our atmosphere have dropped less than three thousandths of a percent and is all easily accounted for with modern industrialization,” She recites verbatim, without looking to her notes. “Seems trivial, and it is, when in comparison the environmental toxins being released into our lands, rivers, oceans and most importantly, our atmosphere. “Her words come forth rhythmically, akin to slow driving drum beat from the aboriginal tribes who were driven from this land, following a cadence that draws you into her words. “There are over eighty toxins released into our environment daily, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulfur Dioxide, and Carbon Monoxide to name a few.” she continues at a rapid, but measured pace, looking down only briefly to consult her notes, the book, the word.
The pandemic had looked like it was making a turn, the Delta variant of Covid 19 had not made headway yet. Amidst all the other concerns no one had really had the mental space to deal with yet another crisis. The effects people were experiencing were attributed to the anxiety of a global pandemic and becoming virtual shut-ins overnight for over a year. It wasn’t until the first couple of rounds of the vaccine were distributed that people had the capacity to analyze that the malaise they had been feeling might be something other than the persistent existential dread they had been feeling for the last year. Slowly, other news started to percolate through the haze of viral panic.
“In 2019 the researchers noted the data began a drastic change. From July 2019 to July 2020, just a single year, the O2 level dropped across the planet, rapidly from twenty-one percent to nineteen- and one-half percent! “Her voice gaining volume, she makes eye contact with her audience. “This is over a seven percent drop in just one year!” She pauses to let the murmurs in the audience subside.
A handsome young lady wearing a smart blue dress precisely tailored to provide the appropriate amount of objectification needed to make it as a journalist in the city, but dialed back just enough to not be called the Channel 7 bimbo, pushed her microphone forward and asked in strong mellifluous voice, curated for broadcast TV, “Exactly how bad is that?”
Dr. Dahteste, her focus sitting on the reporter with disapproval; she smiles succinctly, and says, chastising, “You were asked to hold your questions until after the lecture, but since I was already about to answer, make sure you listen.”
“OSHA 29 CFR 1910.134 details atmospheric oxygen levels at less than nineteen and a half percent are considered oxygen deficient and dangerous to life or health. We surpassed that point six months ago.” Her words trail off, her composure slipping slightly. Mind stepping away to a giant green patinaed hand holding a torch aloft escaping from the sand on a rocky shore, ’You finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up!’. Charlton Heston looks by in horror at what man has wrought. ‘They had it wrong, not a bomb, and the only talking primates are idiots,’ she thinks.
Returning from her reverie she continues, “Between fifty and eighty percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere is believed to be produced in our oceans. Over twenty percent of that oxygen is produced by a single organism, the Prochlorococcus. This astounding creature, the smallest photosynthetic organism on Earth, and WAS,” giving an almost animalistic growl to the word before clearing her throat and continuing, “Was one of the most abundant photosynthetic organisms on our planet.”
’Our Mother,’ he amends to herself.
A frown trips across her face again, she quickly looks down to be sure her loss of focus doesn’t break the spell. Grasping the book, her book, the word, Gaia’s gift between both hands. She only needs to hold their attention for just a few more moments. She takes a measured breath and slowly exhales, holds back the gates, the flood, the anger.
‘Soon,’ she thinks.
Looking up again, weighing her audience, her eyes taking in the faces. “Through the human species’ actions and inactions more than half of the Prochlorococcus, have died. Those remaining have been unable to sustain a reproducing colony for the last year!” The glassy sheen of yet to shed tears beginning to well in her eyes. ‘The cruel Irony, billions upon billions of organisms that have provided the key to the rich diversity of life on this planet, to be wiped out by the one species who benefited the most from their existence,’ she thinks. ‘Well, one turn deserves another. ‘
Gently taking the book from the top of the podium, holding it close to her chest, lowering her head reverently, she closes her eyes. She takes a breath and then says, “A catalyst of sorts has recently come to the attention of the scientific community. Through my intense study of the Prochlorococcus’s rapid decline in the last two years, the highly accelerated virility of Covid 19, as well as a multitude of other environmentally catastrophic events that have taken place over a relatively short period, each has been traced back to a single point.“ Holding the book tighter, its faint glow intensifying, and pulsing…” “Fmmp Fmmp…. Fmmp Fmmp…” in time with her slowly increasing heartbeat. “Traced to a codex, with the Word…”
She thinks, ’Words have power. They can paint a picture richer than anything ever painted by the renaissance masters. A thousand words they say… Words can inspire a single person to give their life and everything they possess to helping others or can lull a country into allowing genocide. Wasn’t it Lennon who said, ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth,’ she wonders. ‘No,no, it was Lenin,’ she recalls.
Still lost in thought, ’The first Word, spoken by the World itself, Gaia, the green mother, was life in itself. It was also death, balance. ‘Or was the book, The Word, speaking to her again?
Her thoughts continue, ’It is also true, that holding an audience with your words has its own power. Once you have that focus, that attention, it can be harnessed and channeled.’ With both hands still upon the book with an almost unnoticeable upturn at the corner of her mouth the lines come to her. Imagine there’s no countries… It isn’t hard to do. Ahh…yes, that’s Lennon, ’she recalls. “It is time this begins….”
Her attention returns to the auditorium, to her audience, “You already know much of this. I’m sure I have provided a little more detail, but I don’t think you have come to hear an academic drone on.” She continues, “I am sure you have come hoping to hear what our press release hinted at.” She looks at the old, weathered Timex watch she wears on her wrist, “Right now me and sixty colleagues in each of the largest cities in the world are giving similar speeches simultaneously, to whomever cared enough to find out what is happening that is causing the highly increased natural disasters that have been punctuated with the thinning of our atmosphere to the point of imminent inhabitability.” Her pace quickens with her building anticipation as she watches the minute hand on her watch land on twelve. The almost imperceptible smile quickly flattens. “Unfortunately, the only solution that can tip the scales back fast enough requires a near total reduction in the global human population starting in the largest cities throughout the world,” her words hang in the silence until a mild rumble shakes the ground.
The smile spreads across her face like a wildfire running across an overly dry field of hay. She holds the Book, The Word, high above her head, focusing the energy of the crowd’s attention into the binding, pulling both the harnessed vitality of the crowd and the energy of The Word, the spirit of Gaia, into herself then she speaks, her voice booming, her audience flinching back, “The catalyst I had referred to is before you, in my hands. Gaia has spoken to myself and scores more chosen like me to be her, GAIA’s Herald, her voice, her hand!”
Everyone was looking, but if one asked, assuming they survived, any of them, no one would say the Dr, herself, had changed. Without alteration to her physical form, she had become, more. She had become Eternity, the Abyss. Looking at her was like looking into two mirrors facing each other…Infinity…. And she looked really pissed.
Roots burst through the marble floor at the Herald’s feet and quested, grasping out away from her. Raw energy courses from the ground into, and over the Herald, up to the book. Resounding from the auditorium walls, “The balance has tipped too far and must be restored. Humanity will be mercilessly culled, “echoed the Herald’s voice.
What had so recently been a sense of anticipation drains out of the room like a receding tide leaving the coastal wildlife naked, exposed. Reporters once fidgeting were now transfixed like fawns in oncoming headlights. The rooms lights, already dimmed in the large auditorium scurries away to find further nooks in which to take refuge; left with just a pulsing glow from atop the lectern, from the book, The Word, shining up into Dr. Dahteste’s face, making her already striking features dark and ominous. Loose hairs escape from her braid start to dance and rise on an unseen current, twisting, turning. The faint scent of ozone in the air. Distant thunder like booming becomes a persistent drone at the periphery of awareness.
“She has judged you; judged you, and found you lacking and likely unredeemable, every one of you.” The tempo of her voice rising with her ire. “You!” she rails, pointing a finger at the grizzled man in overalls. “Tons, upon ceaseless tons of ammonia, nitrates, and worse, antibiotics, that enter the water table from your farms has poisoned the land while masking as producing sustenance!” she growls. “Methane belching forth from the fetid anuses of your dairy cows, choking out the bitter rays of the jealous sun. “
“And you!” anger builds in her eyes. The crowd ducking as her finger swings like a cannon across the room to target the man dressed in khaki military garb, tailored with precision, to fit his rakish frame. “Your military complex has been a pock on the surface of her skin almost as long as you apes began to walk!” Her voice deepens in pitch, thrumming, becoming discordant, almost as if her voice continues and a second speaks down a minor third. “Democracy,” she continues, “the American way, defending us from the ‘pinko’, ‘commie’, ‘scourge’,” each word punctuated by spittle flying from her lips. “Biological agents, Agent Orange, indiscriminate destruction of acres upon acres of jungle to clear paths for your war machine! Your destruction not limited to the hundreds of thousands human lives lost directly from chemical poisoning, not limited to the half a million children born with birth defects from those who were unlucky enough to survive the aftereffects of these attacks!” The utterance issue forth like bayonet jabs, as she bears witness to the charges she sets forth in self-righteous ire. “But worse, an attack upon herself!”
A young man wearing a white t-shirt, dark circles of perspiration spread out from under his arms, the cuff of his blue jeans left pant leg partially tucked into his boot as he steps back, heading toward the nearest exit. A thunderous boom rocks the building toppling the young man backwards. Motes of dust circle into the air, dislodged from their long dormant slumber throughout the ceiling of the auditorium. Swirling through the eddies and current of energy radiating from the Doctor, from the book held tightly in her hands.
Scrambling backwards, his eyes trained on the doctors back, afraid to look away, the young man attempts to continue his way toward the door. His hand blindly reaches back toward the way he fell, hoping to find the door, the wall, any surface other than the ground, his fingertips met by a writhing ropey mass. Unable to contain it, a thought piercing scream tears from his throat. He jerks his hand backward with such a violent recoil he hears an angry ripping sound in his shoulder as muscle fibers are torn apart. He pulls his arm to his chest and shuffles away from the vines undulating under the door, the pain masked by his adrenaline.
A tall, broad shouldered, woman wearing black slacks, black jacket, white button down, Windsor knotted black tie and black leather Italian dress shoes, all expensive, all custom tailored to fit her athletic form, clears her throat. Gathering what bravery she could muster and wrapping it around herself like armor, Kelsey Summers, the lead anchor for WGN Channel 9, Chicago’s Very Own, steps forward holding her microphone out like a torch in the darkness, and asks in a strong contralto voice, belying her fear, “So, Dr. Dahteste, Gaia, whoever you are, now what? Are we trapped in here? Is your intent to kill us?” Kelsey pauses, allowing a moment for the doctor to reply then goes on. “Earlier you said the solution requires an ‘Near total reduction in human life.’ Are we talking quantity or quality?” she adds adding a little snark, again to mask the brink of terror she stands upon.
Other voices, emboldened by Kelsey’s bravado chime in, “Yeah, you’re just one person, a book, and some greenery, you think you can stop all of us if we come at you?” Some of the bolder crowd members begin forming a loose circle around the doctor, paying heed to keep a distance from the tentacle like vines reaching out from beneath the doctor’s feet. The circle thickens as others lend their support. “What gives you the right to do anything? “A small woman with bush like hair sprouting out from a soft pudgy face. Others follow suit, questioning, and moving further inward.
Kelsey allows the crowd to make their verbal jabs, then follows with her own, “Dr. Dahteste, you’ve outlined serious charges, and there is no doubt of their veracity, but how do you justify what is literally, humanicide?
“Balance, retribution, penance!” booms the Herald, causing the circle surrounding her to loosen as the crowd all steps back. “I do not seek to destroy your species. For better or worse, you are as much as part of me any other living thing,” the Herald continues. “But you have become a cancer on my being that must be excised before it further metastasizes and kills me.”
With an impish grin spreading across her face, “Kelsey Summers, you misunderstand.” the Herald addresses the growing throng encircling her. “You, by your presence here, are the few chosen to go forward and start again. The culling is already completed. There are others out there, but they will be few and far between.”
A final rumble is followed by wet slurping sound as the tentacle like vines quickly pull back from under to auditorium doors pulling the doors open as they recede.
A young girl in her early twenties showing half as many piercings in her ears, nose and cheeks, as her age, steps away from the crowd toward the Herald and says, “are we to believe in just these few minutes over 7 billion people have just, up and died? “
“See for yourself,” comes from Dr. Dahteste, the multitoned voice receding and leaving only the Doctor’s. “Look outside or have someone connect a video source to the displays.”
The young man closest to the door gathers himself and steps outside, unsure what he is expecting to see. Whatever his expectation where it couldn’t match the scene that splayed out before him. Dozens of bodies within sight, motionless, inert on the grounds around him. Bodies twisted in the way of a carelessly tossed away rag doll. His gorge rising the only thing stopping him from another scream.
Simultaneously the video crews from various news teams jockey to get some kind of signal, anything, to the large monitors in the auditorium. Eventually one opens a browser and types in earthcam.com and chooses a feed from NYC Times Square. Dusk is starting to set; the only movement is ads on the screens and buildings, their glaring brightness and colorful cheer a stark counterpoint to the still silence of the bodies on the ground.
The same scene appears as they move from city to city with one at most maybe 2 people franticly moving from body to body, hoping to find someone else who lived.