005 Septic biosphere

The dire consequences of China's technological experiment, the Long Spring, that changed the perception of time to increase productivity, jolted the multitudes. Not surprisingly, the Empire of Bias, founded on the two ideological pillars of competitiveness and meritocracy, also went into existential crisis.

Paradoxically, it was the device used in the Chinese experiment, the time machine perfected in research centers, that exposed the reality of the pathology that was consuming the world.

The great Chinese rebellion that would later spread elsewhere, forever blocked the Long Spring without, however, ever turning into a full-blown revolution. But a distorted temporality remained impressed on humanity's collective mind and changed the meaning of life. At first everything seemed suspended, frozen in time, like Hopper's Nighthawks.

After the rejection of Long Spring, there was a moment of generalized shock, especially in China. We realized that time would never be the same as before.

The shock didn't last long. Forced out of paralysis, humans had to face the reality of a disintegrating web of life on Earth caused by the fulminating climatic disequilibrium. Global warming, changes in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, depletion of stratospheric and global freshwater ozone, loss of biodiversity, and many other phenomena triggered a seemingly irreversible crisis.

Not only the continuous deterioration of the biosphere seemed unstoppable. There was also a cauldron of not necessarily interconnected changes, both small and large, that individually highlighted our inability to control the planet. Even the electromagnetic waves seemed to revolt at times, so much so that, on some days even, a trivial wi-fi connection would become problematic.

In addition to the increase and intensification of traditional weather phenomena, there was a proliferation of climate-related catastrophes: cyclones reached temperate zones causing flooding and further inundation of coastal lands, all exacerbated by rising sea levels due to increasing global temperatures. Drought fueled desertification and giant wildfires, which spread for months, devastating vast areas and even cities like LA. Accelerated deforestation led to the loss of the Amazon.

Negative reactions also came from many nonhumans. unusual behavior patters popped up in more and more animals, but also in plant species. But don't fall into those fantasies about some kind of vengeful and rebellious Nature. Instead, as part of the Autonomous Sphere, it was up to us to face reality and understand the consequences of our acts on the global ecosystem.

Several disturbing phenomena manifested: in the robotic mega-stalls, cows, isolated from contact with life, were perishing en masse for unknown reasons. Another sign of resistance came from bees. Breeding in industrial hives and honey harvesting became increasingly difficult due to a series of mass suicides, swarms escaping and even aggressions against humans. These signs were interpreted as a last desperate attempt, a last form of resistance after being decimated for so long by neonicotinoids and other poisons. It was as if the animals and insects were responding to their inhumane living conditions and the destructive impact of human actions against the environment. Then these attitudes that combined mass deaths, aggression and escape multiplied and extended to different families and classes of nonhumans. In the case of other living species, which ranged from micro-organisms to plants, forms of resistance took shape. For example, bacteria developed resistance to antibiotics, weeds managed to survive glyphosates and other pesticides and continued to multiply. The attitudes of humans in the face of these undisciplined species – ecowarriors, we called them – accelerated what was already underway.

Faced with the multiplication of warnings in the Ecofin AltaSphere, it was decided to hasten the timetable of the Great Escape, using the remaining space stations in orbit as command centers. In any case, the capitalist accumulation machine continued to function on Earth, continuing its proverbial ability to adapt to ongoing changes.

There were also those who sought the key to understand our inextricable situation, hoping to somehow restore an imaginary and mythical "normality". However, the uprooting of human time had activated a complex mechanism before which technoscience became as soft as that scoundrel Dali's clocks.

Although it was now commonly recognized that the trigger for this uncontrollable dynamic had come from humans themselves, it was imperative to try to understand how it had happened, when it had started, and whether by any chance there was any remote possibility stopping it. One last ratio that many clung to.

In the Neolib world, even those planning to escape continued to discuss ambitious programs that claimed to reconcile profit with the need to address the profound ecological crisis. Multinational corporations were in the front row: whoever could find the remedy to stop the advance of climate havoc  first would have the world in their pocket. Obviously tehy never asked themselves if the situation didn't have something to do with thier very modes of production.

Nothing. They didn't do anything but make it worse, just like they had always done. One of the last examples was the calamitous management of the world's transportation and logistics system. When it came to replacing a world fleet of 1.5 billion fossil fuel vehicles, they "innovated" electric motors powered by batteries that needed exceedingly rare metals and minerals. Instead of reducing global pollution, this transition led to an overall worsening of pollutants, both because the extraction of the raw materials needed for batteries (the cause of the Rare Earth Wars) and because of the increased demand for electricity to recharge vehicles. The other three elements, didn't fare any better. Venice, even before it was finally submerged, had been scarred by the Casta Impetuosa, a 20-story-tall ocean liner that, after beaching, lay protrate in St. Mark's Square.

One could not even get a firm diagnosis as the situation got worse and worse. That is until things  suddenly came up from below...

The time machine and the complex apparatus, capable of modifying time for productivist purposes, had fallen into complete disuse when a hacker group came up with the idea of modifying it. They managed to get the original software, the heart of the system which, withthe power of a large quantum computer, and transformed the fold of time to give an ephemeral glimpse of the past. Of course, there had never been any pretense or possibility of being able to reassemble time; wearing time glasses you'd have fleeting and blurry visions of the past. But you couldn't do anything with this rudimentary system, you had to make do with its random operation and, if you were lucky, possibly infer the approximate date of what you had glimpsed for a few seconds a posteriori. So its use was fairly limited, although the few surviving archaeological scholars took advantage of this new tool. Given the rapidly deteriorating conditions of life on Earth, some hackers came up with the idea of secretly using this newly refurbished time machine from a space station. The goal would be to try to figure out how and when the biosphere had begun the rapid decline that was reducing the chances of life on Earth.

After many attempts, they eventually succeeded in miniaturizing a quantum computer on which to run the modified time machine and secretly ship it to a pirate space station (Chinese), which was not integrated with the High Frontier Project.

To the taikopirates' surprise, when wearing connected time glasses for the first time, they realized that the workings of the system were completely different  in space than on Earth. In one rotation around the globe, they could glimpse the flow of the geological eras that had alternated on Earth during the past 4.5 billion years, going back to the remote times of the planet's initial formation. You only had to fire up the time machine when one was over a continent or  an ocean to see the geomorphological history of the earth in all respects. They observed the continents breaking away from each other, shaping the oceans, and the spectacular K-T mass extinction that, in addition to the disappearance of non-flying dinosaurs, led to that of about 70-80% of living species. Although the time machine could not fix the initial moment and point of impact of the meteorite, which probably created the huge Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and brought about the mass extinction, they could see how certain territories had been devastated for exogenous reasons.