Global Mean Temperature ([Finale]: 6/25/09)

[Surlethe]

More of this required as well.

Patience, my friend. School takes precedence, but I'm not done with this for good.

The good news is that we can melt down the stuff we've already used, but it's a lot more concentrated, geographically speaking, and mostly in places that are inaccessible to our fictional descendants.

Of course, even if the tools weren't buried under topsoil or giant deserts, why would they want to use it? Their cultural and social evolution does not seem to be taking them in a direction that will require more and more sophisticated tools.

[Surlethe]

14

February 14, 168240
Global Mean Temperature: 23.9° C

It had no intelligence to speak of, just the music of the spheres subtly tugging and pushing. If it had a memory, it would stretch back four and a half billion years, to the first vortices in the cosmic dust cloud slowly collapsing. Now, it had slowly been moving broadly about the star for all of that four and a half billion years, always being pulled and pushed by omnipresent Jupiter, the subtler harmonies of Saturn and Mars, and the even further influence of the outer gas giants and the inner rocky planets.

Then, a half million years ago -- the blink of an eye, if it had had eyes -- there had been a change, and it had coasted in toward the sun, slowly picking up speed. It sailed past Mars, the red dot ballooning into a disk and then shrinking behind. Its orbit took it down closer to the sun than Mercury ever went, and if it had had nerves it would have felt itself heat heat up as it sped past.

Then it was back into the relative cool as bright Venus went by, never more than a large dot off to the left (if it had had hands, it would have known what that meant). Ahead in the distance, a single blue spark gleamed a little brighter every passing day, as the four million ton asteroid would have known, if it had had a brain.

[PeZook]

Yeah. Nature seems to really hate us in this story

[The Vortex Empire]

Oh, come on! We get reduced to stone age tech by global warming, and then an asteroid hits us?! Fuck you, Mother Nature. Fuck you.

[Alferd Packer]

Oh, come on! We get reduced to stone age tech by global warming, and then an asteroid hits us?! Fuck you, Mother Nature. Fuck you.

"We" don't exist anymore. This story is now about our descendants, who speciated some thousands of years ago.

[phongn]

Oh, come on! We get reduced to stone age tech by global warming, and then an asteroid hits us?! Fuck you, Mother Nature. Fuck you.

OTOH, if we survive, the temperature might drop to something more conducive to to civilization.

[Johonebesus]

Would speciation occur this quickly? Humans haven't changed much from the neck down in over a million years. My impression has always been that creatures with long generations, and even a mere dozen years is pretty long, would take a long, long time to evolve into new species. 165,000 years doesn't seem that long in evolutionary terms. Human intelligence, even in these brutal conditions, could allow people to adapt without necessitating gross physical change. I could see modest change, as described in Packer's story, but this seems just a bit extreme given the timespan. Or maybe I just don't understand evolutionary processes very well.

[Alferd Packer]

Would speciation occur this quickly? Humans haven't changed much from the neck down in over a million years. My impression has always been that creatures with long generations, and even a mere dozen years is pretty long, would take a long, long time to evolve into new species. 165,000 years doesn't seem that long in evolutionary terms. Human intelligence, even in these brutal conditions, could allow people to adapt without necessitating gross physical change. I could see modest change, as described in Packer's story, but this seems just a bit extreme given the timespan. Or maybe I just don't understand evolutionary processes very well.

Well, Surlethe flat-out states in one of the last couple of vignettes that the characters are now a different species, so that's what I was going off of. To expand a bit, though, there is a phenomonon which is known as genetic drift. Genetic drift is the change in the frequency of alleles in a population. When a population is low, drift is high, because any change in alleles is much more pronounced. This means that alleles can reach fixation (occurring in 100% or 0% of the population) extremely quickly in small breeding populations. When alleles reach fixation, the trait they govern either becomes a permanent feature of the population, or it is lost forever.

Further, when a large population rapidly contracts (as had occurred in the early part of this story), genetic drift can result in some pretty drastic changes in allele frequency, even eliminating otherwise beneficial traits independent of selection.

[Johonebesus]

Well, Surlethe flat-out states in one of the last couple of vignettes that the characters are now a different species, so that's what I was going off of. To expand a bit, though, there is a phenomonon which is known as genetic drift. Genetic drift is the change in the frequency of alleles in a population. When a population is low, drift is high, because any change in alleles is much more pronounced. This means that alleles can reach fixation (occurring in 100% or 0% of the population) extremely quickly in small breeding populations. When alleles reach fixation, the trait they govern either becomes a permanent feature of the population, or it is lost forever.

Further, when a large population rapidly contracts (as had occurred in the early part of this story), genetic drift can result in some pretty drastic changes in allele frequency, even eliminating otherwise beneficial traits independent of selection.

But what he's describing seems to be highly adaptive changes, not just random genetic drift. Modest changes in hair growth, height, nail thickness, even perhaps adaptation to our digestion and fat distribution, these I could buy. However, I have a hard time envisioning humans growing tails, paddle like feet, huge ears, or other gross physical changes in such a short time.

It just seems odd that the South Americans would develop such strong aquatic traits so quickly, or that the Canadians would evolve very strong olfactory senses, which is not a typical primate trait, and the beginnings of a tail. I have no problem with descendants being noticeably different but still very clearly humans, as you described, but the aquatic population especially seems awfully fast evolution.

[Mayabird]

Selection pressures HAVE been extremely strong on these hominids, but...yeah, it does seem a bit fast to me, too. Especially with the other species evolving so rapidly, too. This story seems to be taking place in a Permian Extinction Redux world, and the first time it took 30 million years for the world's ecosystems to recover. A few generalist species were able to spread out and dominate for millions of years, such as Lystrosaurus, but there wasn't much in the way of speciation for a long time. Granted, it's hard to tell these things with fossils, but having megabirds and giant ground squirrels only 150,000 years in seems to be pushing it. I've been mentally adding a 0 to the end of the years in the last couple posts.

While I'm here, the google link below lists a National Geographic special titled "Six Degrees Could Change the World."

[Surlethe]

Okay, I'm going to take a step back and write some serious background for this. So far, it's been almost entirely off-the-cuff, and I agree with the sentiments: things are moving far too quickly. So instead of putting off writing the next vignette (and don't worry, I'll get back to them; this story is definitely not done), you'll know when I don't post that I'm putting off writing the background. Thanks for the feedback and comments, guys.

[Mayabird]

No worries, my good man.

I've actually thought that birds would handle a Permian-level extinction event much better than mammals. If the methane hydrates are going to come up, catch on fire, and burn out a good percentage of the atmospheric oxygen (one of the events that's theorized to have happened then - the O2 levels at any rate went below 15%) birds would survive more readily because of their much more efficient lungs. It's how they can migrate over the Himalayas while flying, which is a very energy intensive process. Even if you're not planning on that, there's also the whole issue with mobility. They can fly up to small islands to nest and migrate away during the long winter. Heck, they could reach habitable islands on high mountains (if there are any) that mammals couldn't reach. And with most of the large predators gone, there's still plenty of room for flightless predators.

So, yeah, my suggestion is to have more strange bird species evolving. I'd be glad to offer ideas. I used to doodle bird evolution sketches on my notes when I got bored. Things like how to get flightless birds to have horns, and making hands out of bird wings (weird but functional claws from modified wristbones - given a few dozen million years, it's possible, I say! )

[Darth Fanboy]

I'd love to see some weird sea life, especially if any of the larger sharks or cetaceans have survived.

[Johonebesus]

There actually was one species of "terror bird" that had arms with claws instead of wings.

Isn't the avian lung a proposed explanation for why the dinosaurs won out over mammals in the Triassic?

[CypherLH]

There actually was one species of "terror bird" that had arms with claws instead of wings.

Isn't the avian lung a proposed explanation for why the dinosaurs won out over mammals in the Triassic?

Was this story going to be continued? I was enjoying it immensely.


Bobby

[Master of Cards]

God damn you fucking newbies, stop bumping old stories and getting us all worked up about an update. Just PM the author if you love it so much.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

There actually was one species of "terror bird" that had arms with claws instead of wings.

Isn't the avian lung a proposed explanation for why the dinosaurs won out over mammals in the Triassic?

Bobby

Fuck you, ass. We have a no-necro rule for a reason. No, I'm not a mod, just a concerned (and annoyed) citizen.

EDIT: and yes, I know about backseating, but I felt this was worth the 50dkp minus

P.S. Surlethe, we miss you!

[CypherLH]

God damn you fucking newbies, stop bumping old stories and getting us all worked up about an update. Just PM the author if you love it so much.

God damn, what the hell is your problem? I thought other people might be interested as well.

[Darth Yoshi]

We're interested in reading new chapters, not in false alarms from when people bump threads. Surlethe will finish the next chapter when he gets around to it.

[Master of Cards]

God damn you fucking newbies, stop bumping old stories and getting us all worked up about an update. Just PM the author if you love it so much.

God damn, what the hell is your problem? I thought other people might be interested as well.

Yes we are and I had a nerdgasm on the thought this story got extended, then I come in and see your whiny ass. We know its a good story, now don't necro unless your name is Surlethe and you have a new update.

[Mayabird]

Well, while the thread's here, I might as well comment.

There actually was one species of "terror bird" that had arms with claws instead of wings.

Isn't the avian lung a proposed explanation for why the dinosaurs won out over mammals in the Triassic?

Yes. It's basically the mechanism that I detailed before: with more efficient lungs, they were able to survive the drop in O2 levels much more readily than other species. They could also be more mobile because of it, even without flying; other species might be trapped in lowland areas because if they went to higher elevations (and not necessarily even really high - the partial pressure of oxygen would only get lower the higher up they got) and if they had some bad luck, oh well, but the dinosaur's ancestors could flee and survive.

Birds have been under some strong selection pressures since then because of the issues with flying, and they have a lot of really nifty adaptations to make themselves more efficient. For instance, their neurons are smaller and can be more densely packed into their brains, so they can have primate-level intelligence in a brain a fraction of the size.

[RedImperator]

God damn you fucking newbies, stop bumping old stories and getting us all worked up about an update. Just PM the author if you love it so much.

Fuck you, ass. We have a no-necro rule for a reason. No, I'm not a mod, just a concerned (and annoyed) citizen.

EDIT: and yes, I know about backseating, but I felt this was worth the 50dkp minus Very Happy

P.S. Surlethe, we miss you!

We're interested in reading new chapters, not in false alarms from when people bump threads. Surlethe will finish the next chapter when he gets around to it.

Yes we are and I had a nerdgasm on the thought this story got extended, then I come in and see your whiny ass. We know its a good story, now don't necro unless your name is Surlethe and you have a new update.

What the fuck is this shit? If you crybabies can't be bothered to check the "last updated" date in the thread title, then whatever minor inconvenience you suffered is your own stupid fault. Thread necromancy may be against the rules, but so is back-seat moderating (you, Einhander, should especially know that), and I'll give you one guess which one is the more serious offense.

You know what I see here? I see three guys who think they're big shots jumping up and down on a newbie because they can. Well guess what: I'm an actual big shot on this board, and if you want to see what real bullying looks like, I'll be happy to demonstrate.

[Surlethe]

Well, this has been sitting on my hard drive for about a year and a half, so I thought I'd better post it and wrap up this little run until I can go back and really revise the background of the story. This series has a little bit less story potential than I originally thought; there're only so many variations of "X eats/sleeps/has sex/survives natural disaster/hunts/flees from predator".

Regardless, without any further ado:

Finale

January 1, 10967452
Global Mean Temperature: 21.2° C

Ian Jorgstund was the last of his race, he suspected. It was common knowledge that disaster had befallen every attempt man had made to civilize a planet -- a string of failures stretching back into the distant foggy past.

The tremor beneath his feet, and the slight force directed upward (in his frame of reference, he reminded himself) were the only reminders that he wasn't back home in his former house. It was long-gone, he reminded himself, as well as everything else. The music of the spheres was irresistable, and there was little anyone could have done to stop it; while the rest of his people had abandoned their home for another planet, which was probably gone, too, along with them -- cosmic accidents do happen, and civilizations can kill themselves just as surely as an asteroid -- Ian had abandoned his people for a quest that had been burning in his heart for as long as he'd been alive.

So while they all boarded the worldship, a self-sustaining artificial hollow planetoid constructed from the remnants of a planet that had fallen too close to the sun billions of years ago, Jorgstund had bought a spaceship and a supercomputer with the last money from an exobiological research grant. The supercomputer, he used to store every last bit he could find about the history of his race; the spaceship, he outfitted for a trip longer than any that had ever been made before. A thousand years before the black hole's effects would be felt strongly on the system, two hundred until the sterilizing rays from the accretion disk became strong enough to wipe out all life, human civilization had boarded the worldship and set off, powered by hydrogen mined from the star; Jorgstund, meanwhile, had bidden all his friends goodbye and launched himself into an orbit several light-hours from the star. He then put himself into hibernation, and programmed the computer to wake him when it was done with its calculations or when one hundred fifty five years had passed, whichever came sooner.

Jorgstund was forty when he had started the trip, though the dream had been with him since he'd been a small boy sitting in elementary history classes. Curiously, he'd been asexual and very strongly introverted, and so the thirty years of no companionship on the voyage (not counting the century of hibernation) posed no problem to him save impatience. Regardless, he put that time to work on biological experiments, classifying, and computer programming -- while on a relativistic ballistic curve, the computer had nothing to do anyway, so he'd taken the passable AI in the computer at the time and programmed it into a friend with whom he could banter.

He was a biologist by trade and inclination, however, so twenty-five days out of the month, when he wasn't in his frequent periods of cold hibernation, he was experimenting and trying to draw predictions out of the tantalizingly sparse data he'd gathered before he left his home. It was on the whole frustrating, since only fragments of snippets remained from the period before the colonization of his home.

And now, he could barely contain his excitement. He'd been in a state of hardly-suppressed enthusiasm since the deceleration had begun four years ago, and now, today, it was to end. The gleaming star shone in the viewport, a yellow disk hanging unchanged. Everything from the system matched his predictions, had checked out and confirmed the calculations he'd made. And now ... now, he was going to actually land on the white-and-blue half-disk hanging above - below? - him.

A few hours later, the planet had swallowed up the viewscreen and the computer, respectful but familiar, communicated that they were in low orbit. The lander was ready. Jorgstund took a gas mask and breather and ducked into the pod, which separated from the diamond-shaped blue-gray ship he'd come so far in. The entrance into the atmosphere was signalled only by a slight bump, and then a greater force pushing him down into his seat. The computer remotely guided him, so he had to do nothing but wait; at last, he felt a smaller bump, then the engines died. It was completely silent.

The gravity was crushing. He could barely stand, despite the exercises he'd been doing faithfully for years; nonetheless, his excitement pushed him on. Hurriedly, he pulled on the gas mask, strapped it down -- the few seconds for the click-whirr signifying atmospheric integrity took a lifetime -- and then popped the door open. The atmosphere rushed out, to be replaced by the noxious fumes of the planet he'd landed on.

And as he stumbled out of the lander, he was awestruck. In the distance, a gargantuan herd of huge grazers stomped across the plain; he could see a pack of carnivores stalking them. Above him, a flock of batlike creatures winged through the blue sky, their cries swallowed up by the huge, grassy plain. At the edge of the lake, another herd of smaller semi-aqueous creatures eyed him warily, while small ground-dwellers were scattering, squeaking warnings loudly to each other.

That evening, the astronomical data from the huge telescope on the ship began filtering down to the landing capsule. Over ten thousand planets in this galaxy, and who knew how many others, were stocked with life; another fifty thousand artificial stations were home to it. None of it was human, but it was all descended from the men who had begun here on Earth. And of the other galaxies in this cluster, whose planets the ship's telescope lacked the resolution to reach, who knew if they'd been colonized or not? The galaxy ancient man would have known as Andromeda, from which Jorgstund had come these past two and a half million years, certainly had been, six million years ago.

Jorgstund shook his head in amazement at the realization: The age of humans was at an end; the age of man had just begun.

[Baughn]

Well, I guess that's about as happy an ending as we can hope for.

What was he doing there? Just wanted to look at Earth before it got swallowed?

..poor earth.

[tim31]

Finally! Closure!

The earth wasn't falling into a black hole; Jorgstund's former homeworld in the Andromeda galaxy was going to, thus the mass evacuation.