Chapter 468 The Citizens Need Answers
468 The Citizens Need Answers
As people’s attention was split between the media’s reports on the growing economy and the progress of the Three Percenters receiving their blessings, a breaking news story intruded into the public consciousness via a link on everyone’s devices and a special report on every television screen and radio station. Following the link took people to a report about a bright light discovered in space headed toward Earth at an almost unimaginable speed.
Located a few days before by a member of Australia’s Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales’ Siding Spring Observatory, it had at first been dismissed as a scanning artifact caused by a glitch in their system, or perhaps even a smudge on the telescope’s lenses. After taking the telescope offline and cleaning the lenses, they scanned again, only to make the alarming discovery that a meteor of unconscionable size was rapidly approaching Earth. But Australians being Australians, the discovery was met with a resounding “meh” and they simply sat down to identify the meteor before publishing what they claimed “will perhaps be the last scientific article ever published by a member of the human race”. n0velBIn
And to their surprise, the meteor was identified within a matter of hours. The only confusing thing was why would 1 Ceres suddenly break its stable orbit and approach Earth with what appeared to be a stable acceleration?
The Anglo-Australian Observatory astronomer who wrote the report skyrocketed to immediate fame when the media company interns that had assigned their AI assistants to constantly scan new entries to the Akashic Record for newsworthy events frantically pushed the report up their chains of command, leading to the broadcast. But by that point, when the newsrooms’ fact checkers verified the information on the Akashic Record, they saw that Ceres was decelerating and would reach Earth within a day.
Then, the old habit of “selling fear” raised its ugly head again and the news anchors broke in with a breaking story about how Earth was doomed to be destroyed when a rogue meteor impacted it.
He waved his hand and a map of the solar system as seen from above the elliptic appeared over his right shoulder, with markers and labels showing the position of the nine sortie bases currently under construction.
“Though they are currently the only line of defense We are building, as Our defense and fortification plan progresses, the main asteroid belt will become Our last line of defense. Thus, it needs to be the strongest shield and tallest wall that humanity can build, so it was started even before the formation of the Terran Empire, giving it the longest possible lead time for construction and reinforcement. We will not speak more on that, as the Akashic Record is available to any who wish to know more, saving only critical details that are still classified.
“But there was a different plan for the largest object in the main asteroid belt, 1 Ceres.” The display over Aron’s shoulder changed from a top-down view of the solar system to a close-up image of Ceres, with detailed information about it directly next to it.
(Ed note: If you’ve ever played Mass Effect 2, it looks like the planet information screen that shows up when you’re scanning planets for resources.)
“Ceres is a dwarf planet and the first of them to have been visited by humankind. It has an average diameter of 590 miles and is made up primarily of water ice, rock, organic compounds, and various metal and other mineral resources. The size and makeup of it made it perfect, both as a resource gathering point and as the endpoint of the first space elevator built by humanity.”
A timelapse video of the proposed construction replaced the Ceres fact sheet displayed over his shoulder. It showed the dwarf planet being moved into stable geosynchronous orbit, then a line of woven carbon nanotubes extending from it to a currently unnamed island in the Eden-Esparian Archipelago, where it would be anchored deep within the Earth’s crust.
“This is one of the many plans that have been put into place in order to reach the target goal of fifty percent readiness within Our promised timeline. Assuming that everything goes to plan, humanity’s defense should reach that readiness goal long before the five-year period that We promised approaches.”
His gaze swept across the reporters in the audience again, much of his anger finally restrained. “Any questions?”