Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [34]
These questions run deep into the origins and to the ends of things, true, but in the end it comes down to need, and the ability to meet the need.
We need to get this shit out of here.
So, where in the world do we put it? It’s just hard for me to think that the Mescalero’s land is the answer. The truth is, my friends, that there is no safe place on Earth for any of it. Nowhere, no matter what the technology, no matter how long we study the problem.
I must say that after watching Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II throw away hundreds of billions of dollars on SDI or “Star Wars,” a project as ill conceived as the Maginot Line, what I’m about to say shouldn’t sound all that farfetched. But first, you must be brave. You must be daring. You must expand your awareness beyond the temporal envelope of contemporary ethics, politics, and accepted degrees of plausibility. You must sit down.
Are you ready?
We must launch these dangerous radioactive materials at the Sun. That’s right. And while we’re at it, all the chemical weapons, nuclear bombs, toxic waste, and every other asinine, Earth-destroying product of man’s puny, power-mongering imagination along with it.
I know, I know, Challenger.
But so what? Even if it takes a hundred years to solve the logistical and technical problems presented by gathering up these materials and reducing them to some shape or form transportable to that great atomic recycler in the sky, take the time. These materials surely aren’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, the necessary education, the shift in priorities for the global community of nations, the resulting technological breakthroughs at such a crucial juncture in history should boost civilization to heights I would like to see reached for in my lifetime.
Remember that Alternative Universe? You know, where The Beatles stayed together and The Stones broke up? Where Jimi Hendrix grew into an old blues man reinventing a genre of music, and Jim Morrison became a crooner of time-honored romantic ballads? Where John Wellstone became the Majority Leader of the Senate? Where boredom and cynicism are not mainstream expressions of cultural futility because we can vote for progressives and reformers when the culture needs a change and be sure those votes will count? And further, that those progressives will live to fulfill their mission?
I would like to propose this addition to James J. Patterson’s Alternative Universe: we eliminate NASA and reinvent it as “The International Aeronautical Sanitation Administration.” TIASA! Sounds kind of multicultural, doesn’t it?
I recently went online with this idea. I hit a few message boards by way of conducting an informal poll. Here is a sample of the results:
“That’s the sickest idea I’ve ever heard! Now that we’ve polluted the Earth, let’s go out and pollute outer space!”
“Why not just send the stuff to China? They’re far away and they do atmospheric testing anyway.”
“We may easily fill our largest rockets with contaminants and point them at the sun for a fiery end to them and our waste disposal problems.”
“Super idea! Once we do that perhaps the galactic community will think we’re at last getting our shit together and begin to take us seriously.”
“Aim shit at the sun? What if the sun just goes out?”
I won’t deny that there’s an image problem here, perhaps even a knowledge gap. But I challenge you to come up with a better idea. In the meantime I would advise the Mescalaros to give up on this pitiful scheme. (I’m sure, by the way, there are at least a dozen nature deities who are super-pissed already.) Instead, if they really need the money, they should charge the federal government a naming rights fee to use the name Apache on their killer helicopters. Or the Mescaleros can accept the free advice given