Tell Texas That I Love Her

Tell Texas That I Love Her

Adrian Bradford Alexander

For my mother, who showed me countless episodes of Star Trek as I was growing up. For my father, who’s album collection is an integral part of my heart. For my older brother, who would wake me at midnight to watch The Twilight Zone when I was supposed to be sleeping. For my younger brother, with whom I fought like a Klingon yet still blessedly derived inspiration. Most of all, for my sister, who is the source of all my seeking.

Prologue

In the early 21st century there was a technological breakthrough that revolutionized how the world worked in a number of ways. Scientists devised a method of designing objects in three dimensions using a computer, then using a high-tech fabrication machine to “print” these objects into fully functional reality. Widely referred to as 3D Printing, it became an instant game-changer in the field of manufacturing as well as construction technology. Through 3D printing, manufacturers were able to significantly cut the cost of production for any number of goods while simultaneously reducing the cost of housing construction and community infrastructure.

That is, the developing technology should have tremendously reduced the cost of housing and community infrastructure. However, as is so often the case, human greed prevailed. Rather than using this new technology to provide goods at a more affordable rate, thereby making housing and necessities readily available for all, the corporations in control of manufacturing and construction (as well as the lobbyist groups that so greatly influenced the drafting of law) chose to pocket the difference, increasing the profits of the wealthiest individuals exponentially. This only served to economically stratify society further, pushing the impoverished into the mire of destitution and elevating the top earners in the global economy into the financial stratosphere of extreme opulence.

No one predicted the effect this economic stratification would have on the globe, especially as the world’s forests began to burn. Beginning in the Amazon, fires had been set by farmers in an effort to clear land to satisfy the international demand for beef. Almost immediately, these fires burned out of control and the leadership of the world did little to remedy or even acknowledge the severity of the situation. As the global temperatures continued to rise, these wildfires began to make their presence known in the tinder-dry bush of Australia as well as across the wilderness of Africa and even into what remained of the temperate rainforests of North America. In a little less than a decade, the forests that had provided the world with 20% of its breathable oxygen were rendered a smoldering ruin. The smoke and ash were a global issue, primarily affecting the warmer, poorer, and less developed countries that lie along the Earth’s equator. All over the globe individuals began to die off in mass numbers, suffering a vast array of illnesses related to smoke inhalation and to the lack of clean, breathable oxygen. Chemicals contained in the plant life of the deep jungle, compounds little known to modern science, were suddenly airborne, having been vaporized from the sheer heat of the blaze. Unknown illnesses ran rampant, new novel forms of common viruses quickly reaching pandemic proportions. Crops and livestock alike began to die off, the water soon becoming undrinkable across much of the globe. Death tolls, though never fully confirmed, were estimated anywhere from the tens to hundreds of millions. Those who managed to survive the worst of the fire’s fallout were left weak, sickly, and malnourished, their immune systems depleted to the point of delicate fragility.

The leaders of the most affluent countries on the planet saw this disaster as an economic opportunity. With the poorest populations of the most destitute countries reduced by 80% in the most extreme cases, leaving few with the resources or strength to resist, the economic leaders of the world were suddenly able to strip mine the Earth with impunity. With little thought for the future, the last of the world’s wild, untouched forests were cleared for the raising of cattle and for the prospecting of fossil fuels, precious metals, and chemical compounds for use in any number of industrial processes. What was left of the once rich, dense wilderness of the world was quickly eliminated to sate the hunger of the planet’s most opulent appetites.

In the midst of all this tragedy, an unprecedented breakthrough occurred. A team of Israeli scientists discovered the process by which organic material could be produced using the same 3D printing technology. First, they “printed” simple proteins, then they moved on to human tissue, organs for transplant, and even complete complex organisms, starting with a single sheep, next a pig, and eventually moving on to primates and great apes. Before long, humankind discovered that they could use this technology to sustainably and cost-effectively produce nutrient-rich, protein-dense food using the raw materials found in the very air over our heads and the ground beneath our feet. In essence, the ever increasing need for more and more land to raise livestock and to grow food crops was eliminated.

Like the flip of a coin, world-wide hunger and poverty were rendered obsolete overnight, as was the global economy. No longer was there a need for war over the control of resources. Clean-burning fuels were produced at the molecular level in laboratories. Safe, breathable air was synthesized in factories, and the carbon contained in the atmosphere from centuries of global industrialization was extracted as raw material for the 3D printing of food and for the production of any number of useful goods. Where carbon had once been the greatest threat to sustaining life on Earth, it was now seen as a valuable natural resource. With this breakthrough, the world’s ecosystems, jungles and forests, though irreparably and unrecognizably changed, began to slowly grow back.