The End of the Beginning

At dinner that night, William and John had another chair filled at their table. Despite his irregularities, mishaps, and sometimes hard to understand stutter, Lieutenant Jeon sat at their side.

“I like this guy,” John said while Seong was up getting another plate of food.

“Why is that?” William said with a smile.

“He reminds me of you,” John replied happily.

“He does?” William chuckled. “How so? I don’t really see it.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right Will,” John grinned. “A man who fought in the war and is a little rough around the edges with a splash of social awkwardness thrown in on the side? Doesn’t sound like you at all. What was I thinking?”

“Shut up,” said William, throwing down his fork and laughing.

“He’s also someone else for you to talk to beside me all the time. It’s good you discover one of the other eight billion people on the planet to converse with once in awhile.”

“Why’s that, Doc? Getting tired of me? You don’t want me talking to you?” William smirked.

“No, it means you’re starting to trust others again.”

William looked down at his plate, smiling.

Before bed, William was reviewing his class notes while trying to finish some homework assignments. The television was on in the bedroom while he was in his little box-like kitchen, cutting an apple, taking a break, when he heard a news bulletin that brought him rushing over. A story was breaking on the eleven o’clock hour from southern England and UNIRO was at the center of it. Sitting around a flashy red news desk was an old news anchor, who was wearing too much makeup over his bald head, and three so-called experts in the subjects of both UNIRO and geoengineering. Once the anchor introduced himself and his guests, he introduced the story and handed it over to a field reporter in Dover, England.

Facing east towards the European mainland, the white cliffs of Dover were a symbol of strength and fortitude to the British people, standing watch over the English Channel’s narrowest section for invaders through wars of past centuries. Patches of green grass and shrubs speckled the cliff faces, like green sugar sprinkled atop a white frosted cake, covering the tops of the cliffs and back inland for miles under stubby forest and farmland, hay bales and villages. They were high, well over 300 feet in some places, and owed their outstanding white color to soft chalk formed from sediment build-up from the remains of coccoliths, plates of calcium carbonate formed by coccolithophores, microscopic single-celled planktonic algae whose fossilized skeletal remains sank to the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago.

Trying to stand on the bow of a boat bobbing up and down in the English Channel, just off the coast of Dover was the field reporter, attempting to deliver his story, his face a pale, sickly green. William was trying to see what was behind the reporter: a huge piece of machinery that looked like it was from a mine.

It was taller than the cliffs, and its eight massive crawler tracks, in four sets of two, held a tower section with cables extending from its coastal facing side. These cables looked to be supporting a boom with an operating room and offices and at the end a cutting wheel that was just off the cliff face about halfway up the tower.

Atop the tower were spinning vertical axis wind turbines. On the other side of the tower, to compensate for the boom’s weight, was an enormous counterweight made from rectangular concrete blocks stacked on top of each other about a quarter way up the towers height, being held in place by more cables. To fit the crawling tower, the narrow rocky beach had been extended a half-mile out into the channel with a cofferdam, enclosing the new land to protect it from common storms.

A number of white shipping container buildings were also on this extended beach on the eastern side of the tower structure that branded the UNIRO symbol and what looked like an oil refinery that had pipes running from its many tanks into the black channel waters. Dredging ships were widening the beaches to the north and south of the crawling tower and refinery for at least four miles in either direction, with open water being fenced in by a continued cofferdam that awaited land to hold in. The reporter tried to speak but became too sick. He quickly had his camera crew play his previously recorded story.

“Today the British prime minister met for the first time with the United Nations International Rescue Organization’s Director-General, Roque Ferrer, to commemorate and discuss the overall completion of a major milestone in one of UNIRO’s first famed geoengineering projects.”

So that was the man in charge of everything, the leader of all that was UNIRO. Ferrer looked like he knew how to get what he wanted, with his young Latin appearance, smart suit, and smug smile. Reporters took pictures of him and the prime minister hand in hand in front of the completed superstructure.

“Rising high over the world-renowned white cliffs of Dover, the 132-meter high Coastalscraper is one of the largest land vehicles in the world, weighing just under 13,000 tons. It is so large and requires so much power that it has its own off-site solar farm six kilometers away that produces ten megawatts of power. This project has been designed to help with ocean acidification, a growing problem that has seen the world’s oceans become more acidic over the last few decades as more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.” Footage taken from a helicopter panned over the project, showing its scale.

“The problem could lead to a collapse of global fisheries by midcentury with the oceans covered by massive dead zones where little to no life can exist from low oxygen counts,” the reporter continued as William cringed at the prediction.

“With this five billion dollar project now almost complete, UNIRO hopes to reduce ocean acidification by excavating and refining the white chalk in the cliffs of South Forland and then pump the powdered chalk out into the Azores and Portugal Currents where it will travel using ocean currents until it dissolves.” “Cool…” whispered William.

“Each of the chalk sprayers, located on the seafloor, holds sensing equipment that will relay ocean environmental data to the UNIRO base Eripio that is in charge of this operation in Algeciras, Spain. Oceanographers believe that over the long term, this chalk will counteract some of the effects of ocean acidification and contribute to an overall decrease in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, killing two birds with one stone.

“Critics of the project believe it is just trading one disaster for another. Thousands have had to relocate as homes and businesses are being bulldozed to make way for the disappearing coastline. It is estimated that over a billion tons of chalk will be excavated every two years from the cliffs. Several countrywide protests have already been held by locals, environmental and cultural preservation groups, and government conservatives. The chalk deposits extend from Kent to as far west as Sussex, a region that is expected to dramatically transform into a new coastal region filled with bays, coves, and harbors. The prime minister justifies the project, saying it has added over 5,000 construction jobs to the British economy and is expected to sustain 2,000 permanent jobs following its full activation in June. She also says it shows her government’s commitment to pursuing environmental and forward thinking. Designed by architect Gary Kellet and German multinational corporation ThyssenKrupp, in collaboration with workers and engineering teams from all over the UK and UNIRO Engineering Corps, construction on the project will have taken two years once activated. Time will tell if the project will pan out. Many scientists are hopeful while others are just waiting to say “I told you so” to what could be the world’s biggest greenwashing stunt.” Feelings of astonishment and uncertainty made William look away from the television. For the first time, he questioned some of UNIRO’s actions after seeing how much political authority the organization now held, especially with someone like Roque Ferrer at its head. It was a whole political faction unto itself with a significant following and ability to sway international policy. William suddenly saw that UNIRO, for all the friends and alliances it had made so far, could make enemies. Underneath is seemingly noble, even divine power over the world; it was still politically mortal and therefore, fallible. UNIRO would have to be careful or else the whole organization could backfire.