Falling Stars, Rising Hopes

Debating a Revelation

                                                                                        Chapter 11  

  Tanya saw more of George over those next two weeks than she had in the last month. Adira was fascinated by their story, and wanted to hear all the details. “Two strangers meet at a meteor shower gone wrong, exchange watch numbers, go to the same base, and become close friends. Interesting,” Tanya heard her mutter two days later. “Very interesting.” Then she addressed them directly. “This base has the most research potential I’ve seen in a long time, and you’re the most interesting case here.”

    “Thank you?” George asked. Adira laughed.

    “Yes, it is a compliment.”

    “More interesting than…the other thing?” Tanya asked.

    “Are you ever going to be allowed to tell me what that is?” he asked. Tanya counted the days in her head. Phase 1 was starting tomorrow, so that made it five days until the reveal.

    “You’ll find out on Wednesday,” she finally told him.

    At 10:00 A.M. on May 17, 2165, everyone in the base gathered in the common room to see a debate between Dr. Daniels and Dr. Hill. Dr. Daniels wandered around the base sometimes, so people were somewhat familiar with him. But no one knew Dr. Hill, except that he had been CNPS’s lead scientist. The debate was taking place in the North Atlantic Midrange, or NAMR, Hydrodome for safety reasons, mainly that the rats couldn’t swim. At 10:17, a hush fell over the room. The debate was starting, and no one wanted to miss it.

    All the screens around the room showed the same image. Dr. Daniels and Dr. Hill stood behind podiums on a stage. It looked so normal, almost like it was taking place before. Dr. Daniels began the debate.

    “We need to kill those giant rats.”

    “Of course. What do you intend to do about it?” Dr. Hill retorted.

    “In my opinion, we should make cats big enough to kill them.” Tanya grinned to herself. Dr. Daniels had never been the kind of person to beat around the bush.

    “So, we'd have cats the size of elephants to deal with instead. Would that really be an improvement? I say we should just use bullets on the rats. Machine guns should do the trick.”

    “We'd have to use cannons. Those rats are eight feet tall, literally weigh a ton, and can run over twenty miles an hour. No bullet is going to stop that, and cannons are too slow to aim. We need something that's alive. We need cats. They're natural predators of rodents, designed for it. We'd just have to make them bigger.”

    “We could find out where the rats’ nest is and drop a bomb in. Nice big ten-thousand-pound bomb or two should work nicely. Or we could use a tank on them. That would be better than cannons.”

    “Most rats nest underground, so the best way to kill them with a bomb would be to put the bomb underground, which might cause an earthquake. And how many rats would escape from the bombs? Ten? Twenty? There would be no way to know for sure if we killed them all, unless we somehow managed to identify differences in them all. If we could do that, we would be close enough to kill them anyway. Everyone who is alive right now would always be wondering if the rats would come back. This generation would live in fear, and who knows what that would do to us psychologically.”

    “Everyone is already psychologically scarred. The best thing to do would be to end this as quickly as possible, and a bomb would do that. People need to think that we're getting something done instead of sitting in reinforced concrete bunkers arguing about what to do,” Dr. Hill interrupted. How could he be so callous? His attitude reminded Tanya of Mr. Valencia. Was he going to make a dramatic speech too?

     “And the rats can fit into smaller spaces than tanks. Not to mention that they would be able to see and hear the tank long before they were in range. If we tried a tank, we might never see them to kill them. Cats are the only way to do it. They don't have to be proportional to the rats, that would be hard to do, but we need cats,” Dr. Daniels finished. “I’ve heard that some people are pushing to leave Earth entirely, saying that we could go to the moon, then send a signal back to Earth that would set off every single bomb in the world. Do you agree with them?” he asked, changing the subject. Tanya wondered why. The moon didn’t seem to have anything to do with the scouts.

    “To put it frankly, that is a terrible idea. There is a chance the Earth might explode, putting us at risk of having giant chunks of rock falling on our colony. The blast might knock the moon out of orbit if it were strong enough. That being said, we have the technology to live on the moon, there just hasn't been any reason to do so. If we did, though, the only option would be to leave Earth to the rats and hope they die out or starve. If necessary, we can live permanently on the moon, and possibly spread to Mars.”

    “Exactly. You’ve proven my point. Leaving the planet would mean that we could never return. In all likelihood, if we leave and just hope the rats will die out, by the time they do, if they do, the human race will have forgotten Earth was anything more that a planet we lived on once upon a time. We have to find a way to kill them that won't endanger humans, or force us to leave our home. The cats would fulfill those requirements.” Ah, so that’s how they were connected. Clever.

    “Unless they start hunting people, and you can't be sure they won't.”

    “Hold on a minute. I never said how big these giant cats would be. What if they were larger than average cats that had camouflage, so the rats wouldn't see them? Would that work?” Dr. Daniels leaned forwards, putting his crossed arms on the back of the podium. Tanya grinned to herself again. Now they were getting somewhere.

    “That depends. What do you have in mind?” Dr. Hill asked reluctantly.

    “They would weigh about forty pounds and be about three and a half feet long without the tail. They would be able to change colors to blend in with their surroundings as well, and hopefully they would also be as intelligent as humans and able to speak, which would reduce the risk of an attack.” Tanya leaned forward, curious to see how Dr. Hill would respond.

    “Would it really? Humans are perfectly willing to attack each other, and if a human attacked a cat, the cat would defend itself, and when it got in the news, the reporters would say that the cat attacked the human and the human was just defending themselves,” the older man pointed out.

    “Some form of that would happen no matter what form of defense we chose. Besides, cats can be very hard to steal, and if we used guns on the rats, someone would end up stealing one and shooting other people with it. Besides, the cat could tell the reporters what happened. That might solve the problem.”

    “And, if this were true, how would you suggest making these cats? This project would take maybe a decade to complete, and we don't have that much time.”

    “My team is working on them as we speak. We even have one that fulfills all the requirements. And it only took three years, including testing,” he added proudly.

    “Do you? Then how do you know this whole thing will work?” Dr. Hill was grasping for straws at this point, and everyone could tell.

    “Jasper, would you please come show this gentleman what you've been doing for the past few days?” Dr. Daniels asked. The head of a rat emerged from the side of the stage and bounced along until it was in front of the scientists. It was tilted so that one, slightly damp, ear was the highest point on the head, and a corner of that ear seemed to be missing.

    “What's happening?” Dr. Hill demanded, subtly trying to get as far away from the head as he could. His face paled. “Stop that right now!”

    “Come on, Jasper. The suspense has been dragged far enough.” The air purred smugly. A gray cat appeared, holding the rat's ear between his teeth. Jasper dropped the head to the ground with a dramatic shudder that rippled across his body, all the way to the tip of his tail. Tanya’s smile grew wider. He’d always had a flair for the dramatic, even as Popcorn.

    “Not as far as that disgusting head. Do you know how long it's going to take me to get the taste out of my mouth? Worse than Dr. Daniels’ sweaty socks.” The voice could not have come from anyone but the cat.

    "How do you know what my socks taste like?" Dr. Daniels asked.

    "I don't have to. Sometimes, they smell so bad I can taste it." Jasper wrinkled his nose. Dr. Hill was speechless, vainly to stammer out something somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of being coherent.

    “Cat got your tongue?”the scout asked, curling his tail neatly around his paws.