Vignette

[jducoeur]

No different from any other day, the boy walked out his front door to school. Looking up, startled, he dropped his books as he saw the sky.

Hearing the howl of fear from her son, his mother dashed out the door. The fine ash on everything tipped her off immediately -- the phages had come through. She'd known this day was coming; it was impossible not to. She'd been raised on the history of the Heat, and the way the world had thrown up the Dust into the air in a desperate attempt to counteract it. Her great-grandparents had told her stories of the disasters that followed, how they barely scraped by when the ecology went to hell.

She steeled herself and set her jaw, knowing what to expect. She couldn't be surprised: the argument had been all over the net for the past couple of years -- the government saying that it was time to bring down the Dust. She'd voted against it: it had been the protection of her parents, and their parents, and it was good enough for her. But politicians never listen.

She failed to suppress a shudder as she looked up at the first blue sky in a century. Then she turned her mind away from the unnatural color, and back to her son, ushering him back inside with a reassurance that he could skip school today, and she would tell him some stories instead...

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

"Nods to Asimov"

[ripresa.livejournal.com]

Heh.

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

What color was the sky when the Dust was still up?

Regarding "the phages had come through" -- I can't reconcile that to the rest of the scene.

[jducoeur]

The dangers of minimalist SF writing: I was experimenting with trying to reduce my usual excessive wordiness, and so deliberately going to the other pole.

The offhand hypothesis is that, after you've gone and kicked all of this crap into the atmosphere, the easiest way to get it *out* again is with some sort of nanotech process that "eats" the dust and transforms it into a form that will precipitate out.

As for the color of the sky -- grey, I would guess. The theory is that, if we pass the global-warming tipping point, the best chance of survival is to reduce the amount of sunlight getting in, by kicking some relatively reflective junk into the atmosphere. Almost certain to cause ecological disasters, but probably better than roasting to death. So you wind up with a perpetual mild overcast.

This story brought to you by last night's NPR, which was discussing the recent claim from a top NASA scientist that we have about 10 years to get a handle on global warming, or the Earth is going to pass a critical tipping point. Being skeptical about our ability to do *anything* that fast, this is a musing on what happens next...

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in this article which postulates that global warming is not really human-activity related at all, but rather is the inevitable outcome of The Tunguska Event.

[jducoeur]

Interesting, but I'm skeptical -- this might explain the long-term trends, but not the short-term ones.

Honestly, at this point I'm not hearing many reputable scientists disputing the notion that carbon emissions are the principal cause of global warming, nor that the effect is real and growing. Even The Economist, which had resolutely resisted that line of thought, has largely given ground in the past couple of years because of the growing consensus on the issue, switching arguments from "is there really a problem here?" to "how can the problem be combatted without destroying the world economy?"

[dsrtao]

And now we know why "The sky... was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Which version? In a more recent novel than Neuromancer, Neil Gaiman (IIRC) used a very similar phrase to refer to a sky of clearest blue :-)

[dsrtao]

Yes, it's in Anansi Boys (I think).

But the beauty is that in Justin's vignette, it works either way.

[(Anonymous)]

The fact that NPR reported this isn't suprising.

[tall-driver.livejournal.com]

Where's the rest of it? I was willing to keep reading. :)