“Explain yourself,” Tighe said again to Roberts. “Fast.”
“That wasn’t Dave’s files,” said Roberts, rubbing his forehead gingerly. “It was another subprogram I wrote to protect the files. Whoever downloaded them will never be able to access them, not without jamming his own computer.”
Tighe shot a look at Nutt, who was glaring at the technician.
“Say that again,” Tighe commanded Roberts.
“I wrote in a bug that’s programmed to be triggered by an unauthorized download. When somebody tries to access the stolen files, his monitor will fill with I AM A THIEF in big yellow characters and the bug will replicate itself in his computer.”
Tighe suddenly grabbed Roberts by the front of his coveralls.
“Can you delete that program?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t tell me what you think.” Tighe wedged one foot into a floor loop and shook Roberts as if he were made of straw. “Yes or no? Can you delete it without starting the bug?”
“Yeah….Yes!”
“Do it. Top priority. And when you’re finished, find that disk and break it into little pieces. If we’re fast enough and lucky enough, we just might get through this alive.”
Tighe pulled himself into a tuck and shot like a torpedo through the hatchway.
“Am I missing something?” said Roberts.
“You fucking idiot!” screamed Nutt. “The computer terminals are all tied into the station’s mainframe! If whoever downloaded the file tries to access them here, that bug will worm its way into life support and kill us all!”
15 AUGUST 1998
— FLORIDA
The Earth is dying. The human race is rushing headlong toward extinction.
The problem is not for our grandchildren, or our children. The problem is ours. It is happening now. The dying has already begun.
We are killing ourselves. Smog chokes our cities. Farmlands are becoming barren while megatons of chemical fertilizers poison groundwater. Deserts are expanding, and rain forests are rapidly being destroyed. The ozone layer is being eaten away by pollution. Global temperatures are rising toward the greenhouse level.
Worst of all, the oceans—the great embracing mother seas that are the foundation of all life on our planet—the oceans are being fouled so thoroughly that all life will die off in a few short years.
We do not have a century to clean up the environment. We do not even have decades. The oceans are already beginning to die. We are in a race against our own extinction.
And while the Earth dies, most people go about their daily lives as if nothing is happening. Unthinking, uncaring, they are helping to kill the Earth, murdering their own world, committing mass suicide.
A few persons are aware of the danger. Very few. Some try to get their fellow humans to pay attention, to stop fouling the Earth. Some even blame our modern technology for polluting our air and water to the point where the entire environment is beginning to collapse around us.
They are almost right.
The basic problem is that human habits change slowly, so slowly. A hundred thousand years ago, what did it matter to a Stone Age hunter that his campfire sent smoke into the air, or that he urinated into a clear mountain brook? But today, with six billion humans burning and urinating, life on Earth cannot survive much longer.
There are those who say we must stop all technology and return to a simpler way of life. How can that be done without killing most of the people on Earth? We depend on our technology to produce food for us, to give us heat and light, to protect us against disease. To stop our technology would mean allowing billions to starve and freeze and die.
Instead of stopping technology, we must invent new technologies, clean and efficient ways to do all that our old technologies have done for us—without polluting our world to death.
And we must invent a means to clean up the filth that is choking our air and our water, destroying the atmosphere and the oceans. We need that now, if we are to survive the next few years.
That is why I created Trikon. To save the world. To save the human race.
But salvation means change, and most people fear change more than anything else. To save the Earth means that we must engage in genetic research. There is no other way. Only by developing new forms of life, creating microbes that can eat up our pollutants and convert them into harmless biodegradable waste matter, can we hope to cleanse the Earth quickly enough to avert our own destruction.