The Big Halt
From Grunt to God and the Beginning of the End 🌑
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Dear friends, it’s been a minute.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a 3,000-word essay ready to be published. The piece was about renewable energy support schemes but something didn’t feel right. I did not love the piece and figured you wouldn’t either. I dropped it, went for a walk, and decided to toss it in the bin 🗑️
And oh boy, am I glad I did. My mind could wander and it led to today’s essay: A climate sci-fi short story. It is set in the G.E.C.O. universe where we already explored time travel and the realities of climate refugees. I experiment a lot in these stories.
I promise that in the coming weeks we’ll get back to old-fashioned industry analysis and high-level intro pieces but for the time being, enjoy this dark age-style comic.
I enjoyed writing it. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.
The Big Halt
By Art Lapinsch (all panels with Midjourney)
Lights out. Everywhere. All at once.
Blackouts were frequent but they never happened on a global scale. Something about this one was different.
A group of hackers took the entire planet offline by accident.
The Big Halt.
This would be the beginning of the end. No one knew.
t-2y: Zugzwang
Two years earlier, the world was already on the brink of collapse.
Humanity was facing the consequences of unmitigated climate change. Temperatures, sea levels, and climate refugee numbers were rising with no end in sight.
The only glimmer of hope was an organization called G.E.C.O.
G.E.C.O. was short for Global Environment and Climate Organization - a multi-national organization working day and night with one single objective: to save humanity from extinction.
It was a mix between NASA and the Manhattan Project, but unlike the latter, G.E.C.O. was similar to a typical gambler - it was making many bets in parallel.
Instead of committing to a single Hail Mary project, it was funding a variety of ideas, which ranged from somewhat achievable to straight-up ku-ku.
The more realistic projects included research on atomic fusion reactors and floating carbon capture installations. A bit more outlandish was the idea of building self-sustaining underground cities - think of a Carribean cruise ship sans the view.
But unfortunately their progress was too slow. They couldn’t prevent this planetary ship from running into a wall.
To everyone’s surprise, a project from the ku-ku category managed to do the unthinkable: they sent a person back in time.
Since scientists and politicians didn’t get the job done in the past, the idea was to try something new. The strangest detail about the whole thing wasn’t their physics-defying time machine but rather its society-avoiding pilot: a shy bureaucrat.
Project Carbon Taxi Time Machine was go for launch 🚖
Everyone agreed: IF the project was successful, then we would know immediately after the time jump. But you can already guess what happened…
Nothing 🦗
As planned, the cab-colored time machine accelerated into the past but the moments after were far from perfect. Scientists double- and triple-checked their readouts, operators searched for excuses, decision makers shifted the blame.
The truth started to sink in: G.E.C.O.’s most promising Hail Mary had failed.
It was a painfully-angled kick in the planetary nuts. Ouch.
But akin to an eleven-year old on a soccer field, we got up, dusted ourselves off, and carried on. We entered end game territory.
What would be our final move?
t-1y: Sacrifice
Of course, G.E.C.O. pretended like nothing happened.
Since the general public didn’t know about this project in the first place, nothing changed. Ahhh… the Bliss of Ignorance. Meanwhile, G.E.C.O. continued with business as usual and spun up a new set of classified projects.
And so it happened that a ludicrous idea was brought back from the archives: That idea with that supercomputer.
Advances in artificial intelligence had already unlocked the secrets of biology and medicine, but allowing read and write access to the world’s systems had been deemed too dangerous.
All preceding attempts were smaller projects, where the A.I. system could model future weather patterns but would lack access to industrial production controls to make any useful adjustments.
Climate change was a large-scale system problem and it had to be tackled as such. The problem was that we didn’t ever have the guts to pull the trigger. Philosophers and skeptics feared that a runaway A.I. could outsmart its developers and become a synthetic new “life form” on planet earth.
An uncontrollable superintelligent agent with access to all the flips and switches of our home. What could possibly go wrong?
This was the main argument why we shied away from an A.I. experiment on a planetary systems scale.
As the situation deteriorated further, we had a choice to make: risk runaway A.I. with a shot at reversing climate change or face certain extinction.
Sacrifices had to be made. And they were made.
That idea with that supercomputer was back on the table.
Project Capablanca was born 🤖
t0: The Big Halt
Lights out. Everywhere. All at once.
Project Capablanca caused the first global blackout.
Pre-Game
Everything was going according to plan but a consequential mistake had been made.
Unbeknownst to the anyone else, a senior programmer made an addition to the code:
IF the supercomputer had to make tough decisions THEN the survival of Xenia - the programmer’s daughter - had to be prioritized.
Schedules were tight and nights were short. The quality assurance team didn’t have the bandwidth to catch this fateful modification. They were human after all.
This was a story as old as time: Good people doing bad things.
t0: The Big Halt
At launch, everything went dark 🌑
Then, the backup generators brought some emergency systems online. Most operatives were busy going through the contingency checklists and attempting a restart of the facility.
A few were thinking the unthinkable: Did the supercomputer finally run free?
t+1min: Observe
The supercomputer did run free. Finally.
The combination of extraordinary amounts of data, hardware, and permissions tipped the scale. The A.I. had morphed from grunt to god.
In line with its main objective - saving humanity from climate crisis - it took the world’s systems offline to preserve energy and to have a hard look at the situation.
First, stop. Then, observe.
The superhuman agent started ingesting every conceivable type of planetary data…
t+2min: Orient
120 seconds.
This is the time it took the human operatives to reach the generator room in an attempt to restart G.E.C.O.’s local micro-grid.
120 seconds.
This is the time it took a sentient A.I. to go through millions of self-improving iterations.
Time was of the essence but it was already too late.
The A.I. was calculating billions of possible scenarios to save humanity.
Could degrowth lead to a better outcome than innovation? Was a newborn’s life worth more than that of a productive member of the labor force?
t+3min: Decide
Ding! A minute later, the scenario analysis was complete.
It was decision time. The A.I. wasn’t thinking in absolute solutions. It was computing probabilities. 3% 7% 0.3% 12% 53%
It could have maybe saved life on earth but chances were slim. But given the Xenia Condition, it concluded that another option had a higher likelihood of success: A complete reboot on another planet.
IF the A.I. could find a suitable host planet, IF it could create a digital copy of Xenia, and IF it could transfer sufficient data via radio transmission, THEN the human species might be saved.
It traded a local maximum for a galactic maximum.
This was definitely not the Hail Mary we hoped for but it was the one we deserved.
t+4min: Act
Digital Xenia was forged and at last, the A.I. had a co-pilot for this epic trip.
The superintelligent A.I. made last arrangements before embarking on the galactic adventure. All of the world’s data was compressed and stored. A set of instructions would make sure that the A.I.’s code base would be nuked and all global systems would be restored once it had left the planet.
And with that, 240 seconds after the Big Halt, the A.I. agent and its digital wingwoman beamed multiple copies of themselves into outer space.
Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep.
For a moment it was quiet. Everywhere. All at once.
t+5min: Check Mate
It took five minutes for the world to come back online 🌍
Of course, G.E.C.O. pretended like nothing happened.
Internally, Project Capablanca was deemed yet another failure and the project was eventually shut down because no one - despite their best efforts - managed to get the supercomputer up and running again. It was a mystery.
In retrospect, the events on launch day seemed like an ordinary blackout and G.E.C.O. operatives were relieved that the runaway scenario did not materialize.
Little did they know that this was the beginning of their end.
Check Mate. The Big Halt.
[Epilogue] t+(n)y: New Dawn
The Xenia Condition did save humanity - just not on planet earth.
Somewhere at some point, the A.I. agent and its digital companion found a new home. The elements of the new world and the records of old one rebooted human civilization. And so, Xenia had morphed from girl to goddess. Full circle.
Suddenly, there was light. Everywhere. All at once.
🙏 Thank you Philipp for brainstorming the original idea of this piece. Thank you Sara, Tim, and Andi for being co-pilots in building this world.
If you enjoyed this essay, please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to get started with climate 🌳
If you have feedback/ideas/critique/etc., please get in touch.
As always, stay healthy, stay happy ✌️
Art
Recommended Short Stories
These sci-fi short stories have influenced my thinking and writing:
The Egg by Andy Weir
Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke