Peregrinus Orior Read online

  Copyright @ 2019 John Robertson

  Published by Iguana Books

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 303

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5S 2R4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Publisher: Meghan Behse

  Editor: Holly Elizabeth Warren

  Interior illustrations: Ann Sanderson

  Front cover illustration: Ann Sanderson

  Cover design: Daniella Postavsky

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  978-1-77180-325-0 Hardcover

  978-1-77180-324-3 Paperback

  978-1-77180-326-7 epub

  978-1-77180-327-4 Kindle

  This is the original electronic edition of Peregrinus Orior.

  Peregrinus Orior

  By the latter half of the third decade of the twenty-first century AD, ten years after the Paris Agreement on climate change, humankind has begun to make meaningful progress in curtailing its greenhouse gas emissions. Will it be enough to hold global warming to the agreed limit of 2.0 degrees Celsius, and ideally the more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees? Despite significant technological advancements and investment in sustainable energy production, it appears that more radical measures may be required to prevent the ever-expanding energy demands of the developing countries from countering the progress of the developed countries. As scientists and policymakers consider this dilemma, some are beginning to fear that an even more immediate and greater danger — insufficient fresh water — may overshadow the risk of global warming. Then, an unusual object approaches the Earth from the far reaches of the solar system, and there is yet a third candidate for the greatest threat that humankind faces, and one which in no way stems from either our own activities or our ever-increasing multitudes.

  Acknowledgements

  I have had a lot of help in creating Peregrinus Orior, for which I am thankful. My wife, Cathy, has been a patient and able typist. I doubt that anyone else would have put up with my barely legible low-tech penciled scribblings with copious marginal insertions and insertions within insertions. Then there was the time she left three chapters of the untyped manuscript, pages neither attached nor numbered, sitting on our bed below an open window, the day of a massive thunderstorm.

  My daughter Hayleigh, who is an author herself and an English teacher, has given me several pointers along the way on the art of writing a fictional novel and has recommended useful resources on the subject.

  My sister’s partner, Colin Bantin, retired professor of physics at the University of Toronto, has been a great help with the mathematics of orbital mechanics, a key component of the science in the novel. I have drawn on many other published works for other aspects of the science, which I acknowledge in my list of references.

  You will see with a quick page flip that the book is extensively illustrated, an aspect I feel is important both to supplement the reader’s imagination of some of the awe-inspiring scenes and to clarify some of the complexities. I am thankful to my graphical artist, Ann Sanderson, and my map builder Daniella Postavsky, for their patience in working with me to transfer the images from my own mind into the story.

  John Robertson

  Foreword

  Researching the scientific background of this novel has given me the opportunity to further explore several areas of interest and to clarify details of areas that I had some knowledge of, which has been an enjoyable process.

  In addition, I’ve had an agenda while writing this book. This agenda arose from frustration with the polarized and politicized debate over the last two decades on the subject of climate change.

  On one extreme of the debate are those who believe, almost religiously, that either the climate has not and is not changing, or if it is changing it is not as a result of human activity to any significant degree. Even some who accept that global warming exists and is due to human activity believe that climate change is too difficult to do anything about and the consequences aren’t serious enough for us to make the effort.

  At the other extreme are those equally intransigent believers that climate change consequences are so severe that they justify the immediate curtailment of fossil fuel consumption. They believe that it is easy to do so by moving to renewable sources of energy without significant impact on economic activity and quality of life, including the aspirations of the developing countries of the world, but that if economic sacrifices are required then they should be imposed on the rest of us for the sake of the climate. Some are prepared to take this to the extremes of engaging in falsification of information and other unlawful actions, even to the point of sabotage of energy infrastructure.

  My agenda is simple: I want to bring a little more balance and context to this topic. I have tried to do this in part by putting climate change into the broader contexts of climate history, socioeconomic and demographic considerations, and other challenging and potentially more serious global issues like fresh water availability and political adventurism. I’m also positioning the issue in the broader context of the solar system and galaxy within which we deal with climate change. I have explored these topics through the fictional stories of individuals dealing with the subject as it affects their lives, rather than through an academic paper, letter to the editor, or other piece of nonfiction. My hope is that I have developed a sufficiently interesting array of characters and plotline to draw the reader through some of the more technical material.

  My target audience is firstly myself, to more thoroughly ground my own views on climate change, and secondly my family and friends, to help them develop their own understanding and views. If that’s as far as this ever goes, I will be satisfied. If, however, it is found worthy of broader publication and distribution, I will be pleased.

  My family and friends will not be surprised that Peregrinus Orior is a work of science fiction, since my recreational reading has always been predominately in this genre. The type of science fiction that I have most enjoyed stays entirely within the boundaries of actual scientific knowledge except for one small tweak, and then builds the story upon the extrapolation of that tweak. I have attempted to do the same.

  The scientific facts in the novel are accurate — at least as accurate as I can accomplish by cross-referencing various sources — and they are unbiased; that is, I haven’t gone looking for facts to support a particular point of view. The analyses supporting the story are also all accurate based on the applicable branch of scientific knowledge, whether it is orbital mechanics or variations of the Stefan-Boltzmann law for estimating the effective temperature of a solar system body subject to changes in its surface albedo and atmospheric greenhouse gas density. The plotline of the story will likely not come to pass in reality, but based on scientific data, it certainly could.

  All the characters in the novel are fictional, but I have modeled some on individuals I know or know of, and people who know me may recognize a bit of me in one character.

  All the locations in the stories are real. In one case only I’ve created a composite of two places to create the story’s setting. In several cases, I have visited and am quite familiar with the locations I write about; in others, I have carefully researched the places to ensure accuracy. Forgive me for running you along my jogging path on the banks of the Charles River between the Harvard and MIT campuses.

  At one time I thought about undertaking the or
bital mechanics calculations that are required to maintain accuracy in the story line. The mathematics and computer science involved are similar to those employed in my own doctoral thesis. Fortunately, however, before I started working on these elements I made a new acquaintance with someone who had much more currency with the math and physics than me and who had recently retired and had the time to fiddle with a few scenarios. In the story, these calculations are undertaken by a young mathematician at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory using an orbital mechanics program named Cruncher IV, which is what I called the nonlinear optimization algorithm I developed as part of my thesis many years ago. Although there are numerous orbital mechanics programs in existence, none actually go by such a name.

  Lastly, of course those who know me know that John Robertson is not my real name but rather a nom de plume. You may be curious as to why. Of course, for this first edition it doesn’t matter and never will if there is no further edition. I am not a well-known person in most circles, though I am in a few. I would rather that the general reader, if there ever is one, not start with any preconceived notions stemming from knowledge of who they think I am. The rest of you can’t help but carry some of that with you, but that’s okay and unavoidable in any case.

  Enjoy! (I hope.)

  John Robertson

  Chapter 1

  Early June 2027

  Canadian Rocky Mountains, near Golden, British Columbia

  It was cold! Tom lay in his sleeping bag with just his head poking out as he opened his eyes. Even inside the tent he could see his breath. He knew it would be colder still outside the tent, with quite probably a thin skim of ice along the shoreline of the pristine mountain lake that lay just feet away.

  He quietly slipped out of the warmth of the bag and into his clothes, being careful not to awaken the eleven-year-old boy whose tousled head slept on beside him. This was quite a feat as Arthur had snuggled up tight during the night, trying to capture a few degrees of warmth from his dad, which reminded Tom of Trish, the boy’s mother.

  Tom extracted himself from the tiny two-person tent and briefly surveyed the splendor of his surroundings: the cobalt blue of the lake, still as glass except for faint ripples from a pair of loons gliding along the far shore; the craggy mountains climbing high above him to the southeast, still snow covered almost down to the level of the lake.

  Although it was only five in the morning, there was already ample light outside. That was one of the things he loved about this part of the world in spring and summer, with long days starting early in the morning and lasting until almost midnight. Tom loved the peacefulness of the early morning, especially when, as with this weekend, he could hike up into the upper bowls and ridges and enjoy the sunrise from near the top of the world.

  Yes, Tom thought, there were a great many things he had to be thankful for. He was making a good living as an electrician in Golden, which, together with Trish’s income as a part-time nurse at the local clinic, gave them all they needed with a decent amount left over for savings. They had three great kids, Arthur and his two younger sisters, Susan and Sigrid.

  Golden was a quiet little town nestled in the Canadian Rockies, well connected to the outside world by the Trans-Canada highway and the Canadian National Railway, but providing Tom with almost instant access to thousands of square miles of mountain wilderness with all the skiing, hiking, fishing and hunting one could ever want. In addition to a comfortable home in town they had a tiny cabin on a small lake they shared with a few others on the benchland, plus the high camp at Shadow Lake, a six-mile hike three thousand feet above the cabin. Shadow Lake and its surroundings were crown land open to anyone, but, with no established access trail, Tom had never seen another soul there and felt like it was his own private temple.

  He and Trish regularly attended St. Paul’s, the local Anglican church. Though not dogmatic, they both believed in a power and a plan behind the creation of the universe, and a creator whose prime commandments called for love between all people. So, it was quite natural for Tom, as he stood in the frigid mountain air beside the serene yet icy lake, to raise a brief prayer of thanks to God and to seek a blessing on and the safekeeping of his young family.

  As he finished his prayer, Tom caught a small movement out of the corner of his eye, a few feet away from the tent. A massive shaggy form rose from the ground with a gaping mouth big enough to crush a man’s leg.

  “Hello, Beast,” said Tom, breaking the morning’s silence as the 150-pound, two-year-old Tibetan Mastiff stretched and ambled over for a pat. Beast was quite comfortable sleeping in the open at thirty degrees Fahrenheit, which was one of the reasons Tom had chosen a dog from that uncommon breed as his family’s companion and protector. While Tom regularly sought God’s safekeeping for his family, he also believed that he himself was God’s first line of defense, and Beast was a key member of the family and a partner in that responsibility. In times to come Tom would be all the more thankful for his choice.

  Tom knelt beside the ring of fire stones, which, besides the built-up bed of sandy earth on which his tent stood and a tiny biffy fifty yards upslope, were the only permanent signs of human habitation that would be apparent to a casual observer of the lakeshore. Everything else Tom and Art needed for their weekend of fishing they had carried in the four rugged miles from where they had left the family GMC Suburban and would carry back out. The route was not an established trail but rather a series of headings and distances laid out many years ago by Tom across the contours of a 50,000 to 1 topographical map, but long since committed to memory.

  A few breaths brought the embers from last night’s fire back to a steady glow. Tom grabbed the kindling, which Art had been tasked to collect first thing on arrival in camp last evening, from underneath the light tarp that kept it dry from rain and dew. Soon the fire was a small blaze and Tom had a pot of tea water warming and a half dozen strips of bacon sizzling.

  He called to the tent — “Time to rise. Breakfast’s on,” — knowing that food was the only way to entice the eleven-year-old from the warmth of his sleeping bag.

  Art sleepily responded, “What is for breakfast Dad?”

  “Bacon and bushcakes.”

  Art perked up. “Bushcakes. My favorite,” he chirped.

  Bushcakes were really nothing more than pancakes cooked in a little hot oil in a frying pan over an open fire. The surface of the cakes tended to get slightly crispy from the deep-frying effect of the hot oil if it was allowed to get a little too hot — a regular outcome when cooking over an open fire. Tom had achieved the bushcake effect unintentionally some years ago on a family camping trip. When Trish had playfully commented that she had never had crispy pancakes before, Tom had defended his campfire cooking by stating that he was cooking bushcakes, not pancakes. Bushcakes had been a favorite of all the kids ever since.

  Art emerged from the tent moments later, still in his pajamas. “Dad, it’s so cold out,” he said as he sat as close to the fire as he could without getting right into it. “Can you build the fire up bigger please, much bigger? I’m freezing.”

  Tom untied his own hooded sweatshirt from his waist and put it on the boy. It came down nearly to his knees. “I can’t build the fire up while I’m cooking,” he said, “but that should keep you a little warmer.” He had to agree with Art though, it was darn cold. Cold was to be expected at this time of year, latitude and altitude, but this was a little colder even than normal. On the other hand, it had generally been a warm winter, rarely colder than zero degrees Fahrenheit at town level, and occasionally above freezing. For that matter, it seemed to Tom that the winters had all tended to be warmer of late. It seemed like the minus-twenty-degree-Fahrenheit January temperatures he recalled from his youth were pretty rare these days.

  Global warming was supposed to have added less than a degree to the world’s average temperature in his thirty-three–year life, but it seemed more noticeable than that around here. Tom hoped that all the multilateral programs to put a limit on
global warming were going to work, even if they were making a lot of things more expensive, especially fuel and power. As he looked up at the lip of the large glacier that cloaked the upper bowl to the east and fed the lake, he hoped it would still be a thing of grandeur when Art grew old enough to bring his own son here.

  As he set the bacon aside to stay warm in a small pan and poured the first dollop of batter into another hot pan, he said, “In another quarter hour the Sun is going to start to peek up above that notch between the mountains,” pointing to the southeast, “then it will start to warm up and we’ll get our rods out and catch some trout for lunch.”

  Art peered in the direction his father was pointing, seeing nothing but the long shadow cast across the lake by the easternmost twin peak. “Dad, how do you know the Sun will come right into that gap? It’s pretty narrow compared with the mountains on both sides. If the Sun stays behind the mountain it’s going to be forever till it’s warm.”

  Tom chuckled, “That’s true, but I know it will rise pretty much right at the bottom of the vee at this time of year because it has every year I have been coming here since I wasn’t much older than you. That’s where it’s always come up, and where it always will.”

  Chapter 2

  Early July 2027

  Sonoma County, near Santa Rosa, Northern California

  It was hot! Alyssa Morgan sat at her desk in a small office in a corner of the plant, finishing her weekly report to the head office. The outside temperature was climbing toward the daily high, probably about eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit at this time of year, but heat coming off the steam turbine and condenser kept the plant interior a good ten degrees warmer even with the exhaust fans fully on. The twenty-seven-year-old blond engineer had a small air conditioning unit that she could turn on. She didn’t plan to stay in long, though, and she preferred to keep her energy consumption as low as possible.