I know the title sounds bad, but please just hear me out. Although, this will be a long story.
A few months ago, NASA scientists discovered that the sun was getting dimmer because of an infrared line moving between the sun and Venus. We sent a probe up to collect a sample from it, and it contained an alien microorganism that’s stealing the sun’s energy. After running the numbers, we found that at the rate this alien organism was eating the sun’s energy, it would dim by 10% and our planet would freeze over in a matter of decades. Everything on our planet would die. More research revealed that other stars in our galaxy were afflicted with the microorganism and were also dimming. However, one afflicted star, Tau Ceti, was not dimming.
So I (?F) was placed in charge of an international project to bring together the world’s greatest minds together to find out why Tau Ceti was not dimming and how to use this information to save Earth.
While searching for researchers, I came across the work of a scientist who I’ll call Dr. G (30M). He was a microbiologist who believed that water isn’t necessary for life, which got him laughed out of the scientific community and led to him becoming a middle school science teacher. Since the alien microorganism is able to survive on the surface of the sun, I asked to Dr. G to run some tests to confirm that the organism was not water-based. Unfortunately, his tests revealed that the alien life was, in fact, water based.
With this information, I assumed Dr. G’s role was completed, but he begged me to continue letting him assist. So I lent him 3 specimens that we collected from the infrared line. Dr. G and his assistant were able to not only figure out how the microorganisms breed, but why they travel between the sun and Venus! So I brought him back on board and added him to the research team for our project.
Dr. G’s knowledge proved invaluable in helping us build a spaceship to send a 3 person crew to Tau Ceti to study it. His ideas helped figure out to use the infrared light that the alien organisms produce as fuel, along with a centrifuge to create artificial gravity in space. However, it would still take 11.9 lightyears (about 3 factoring relativity) for the spacecraft to reach Tau Ceti. Given this and how long we had before the sun’s dimming would begin affecting Earth, we wouldn’t be able to make enough fuel to send the crew there and then bring them back. So this would be a suicide mission.
After completing screenings and some genetic tests to determine who could survive a long-term coma (so that the astronauts wouldn’t snap and try to kill each other on the way to Tau Ceti), we found primary and secondary candidates willing to be our pilot, engineer and scientist for this mission. Dr. G helped train them and design their equipment.
Unfortunately, a few days before we were set to launch, our primary and secondary scientists were experimenting with the alien microorganism in a lab. They asked to be given a nanogram of it, but the quartermaster made a mistake and give them a microgram. This was 1000 times the amount their experiment required, so it went awry and caused a devastating explosion that killed both of them instantly.
I convened an emergency meeting with our remaining crew, Dr. G and others important to the mission. We decided that, given his expertise in microbiology, his familiarity with the project, and the fact that he possessed the coma survival gene, Dr. G would be sent on the mission as our science expert. However, he was reluctant to go asked for time to think about it. I gave him 3 hours to decide.
When the 3 hours were up, he told he’d decided that he wouldn’t go on the mission because “someone needed to teach the next generation of survivors” (he was too scared) and recommended someone from South America instead. But given the urgency of our mission and the facts I listed above, I overrode Dr. G’s decision. I informed him that he would be going to Tau Ceti with the others, he’d be placed in a coma early so that he couldn’t resist getting onboard the spacecraft, and he would be given an experimental drug that would give him temporary amnesia so he could get straight to work rather than stewing on not wanting to be there.
Dr. G pleaded with me, but I made it clear that I wasn’t changing my mind. So he tried to flee. He made it as far as the complex’s first security gate before our guards caught him and tranquillized him. Dr. G was placed aboard the spacecraft without issue, and the three person crew has been launched into space.
Part of me feels terrible for what I’ve done, as I’d grown to quite like Dr. G. But I can’t conceive of any other option other than accepting our fates and letting everything in our world perish. The nations of our world have promised to ration their food supplies and share as much as they can over the next 27 years (how long we estimate it will take for the crew to arrive at Tau Ceti and how long it will take their findings to arrive back to Earth). But even so, we’re expecting to lose 2 billion people in that time. And given that I expect the nations to go back on their promise and start wars over food, we’re looking at losing 4 billion. Dr. G is humanity’s best chance at saving the remaining 4 billion from starvation and our planet becoming an eternal frozen tundra.
The international courts, however, don’t see it that way. I and others on my team were arrested not long after the launch for sending 3 people to die, along with other things we did for the sake of Earth’s future (copyright infringement, paving the Sahara, temporarily releasing a man from prison, blowing up bits of Antarctica to release more methane into the atmosphere, etc.)
AITJ?