Geoengineering

It was a busy day for the Christ Church Cathedral. Sun penetrated the rayonnant windows as usual and cast colourful dots onto the veiny marble floor. Some of the tiles cracked, but the majority of them had holes in them.

Some benches were removed, but nobody seemed to notice it.

The spiders had gone, but there were more webs than before. Flying over the altar, dancing around the columns, the new net hovered over the holy place. They were plastic clad and electric charged.

A thin, light cloth hanging on the dangling cables quietly sliced the space within the cathedral into two parts. The nave and the transept.

The nave was the medical factory that mixed sulfide and sodium. The earth was having a fever, so they made Panadol.

Half of the benches were taken out to make space for the operating table and the rest became the bases for heavy machines. Chemists moved around between them.

Once they have a finished product, the painkiller that won’t last very long, they would pass it to the sides of the nave, ready to be stored.

Racks filled up the aisle as if the century-old stones and bricks were going to fall off and thus scaffolded.

Handwritten labels were taped to the steel piles so they don’t need to label each jar. Resources were very limited and prized here.

The liturgy had stopped a long time ago. Guys in white replaced people who came to pray in the transept. Computer and switching hubs took over the demolished benches. Display screens bounced the sacred lights back to the ruined Cathedral.

The clever intellectuals didn’t leave the vast space above them unnoticed and unused. Using the materials from the removed benches and whatever the chemical department had left, they built another skeleton to saturate the space with pierced steel planking and steel pile ladders. They won’t have the luxury to use a solid plank for flooring or stairs.

Computers screen flashed inside the dense complex, like the colony of ants in Africa that glows.

52 Church St, Newcastle NSW 2300

The make-shift command centre plus factory for the Geoengineering project.

Wearing Hi-Vis vet, a group of guys in neon orange moved inside the sanctuary. They carried bags of chemicals that they just received from the guys in white who fiddled with tubes, beakers and scales.

“The sun is too bright. It’s time to wear shades.” commented one of them.

Bending over to avoid hitting the low ceiling and the supporting rods, they have to watch out for the snack-like cable coiling on the aisle. They exited from the broken window of the facade of the transept since the door beneath was consumed by the scaffold.

Entering through the window had another benefit, that they can better protect themselves from intruders that somehow made their way to Church Island.

The guys in orange didn’t travel for too long before they arrived at their destination. For the sea was licking the foot of the hill where the church stood.

Ships equipped with giant fans were waiting for the chemical. Soon they would be off to the ocean, applying the medicine that brighten the clouds above the sea. To increase the reflectivity of the clouds in hope of bouncing back the heat from the sun.

They were putting the shades on.

Human has long abandoned their imaginary friends.

They prayed and prayed again. Till they finally realised that for thousands of years the fiction figures and fairy tales were nothing but lies.

They’ve chosen technology. A more reliable friend that won’t provide illusionary but facts. It never asks anything in return, as well. So humanity replaced divinity.

To put it in other words, they tried to play gods.

However, no technology could save the geoengineering project when foreign countries who disagree with it stop conducting their part of the geoengineering.

When the aircraft that was spraying particles into the air was shot down by force, not only the political world heated up, but also the entire world.

In a few days, the ice sheet at the two poles collapsed and dissolved dramatically, sending tsunamis across the globe.

Despite all the efforts to fortify the harbour, Newcastle had fallen. For the enemies cannot be taken down by cannons and bullets.

The catastrophic flood completely altered the landscape of this coastal city. Large chunks of the city were wiped out, leaving a chain of islands behind.

The Newcastle Mainland. Middle Island. Church Island. Lighthouse Island.