Savior of Humanity
by Jim Veary
Homer Stapleton was short, thin, unmarried and unnoticed, not the sort of man one would think of as savior of his race, nor would you picture him as the most reviled of mankind's villains. But he was both. He began as one and ended as the other.
Homer was a microbiologist working for the federalgovernment on a grant to find a solution to the encroaching problem of global warming. The world was heating up at an alarming rate. Ice caps were melting. Oceans were rising. Shorelines were disappearing and a globaldrought was a real possibility. A solution had to be found, and found now!
While the world focused on the big picture, Homer took a more myopic view. Homer worked with bugs. Very tiny bugs called cynobacteria, a microscopic blob of protoplasm that ate carbon dioxide and pooped out oxygen.In a perfect world it would have been a perfect bug. But it was inefficient and lazy and that was what Homer was trying to change through genetic engineering.
It was a warm afternoon when batch 2009-85 caught his attention. "Marge!" Homer exclaimed, "Come here and look at this!"
Marge Pickens wandered over and peered through the microscope. "What?" she muttered. "There's nothing there."
"Exactly!" Homer crowed in triumph. "Ten minutes ago that specimen container was crowded with cyno. Now - nothing. But where did it go?" He wore a huge grin and almost strutted like the father of a newborn baby.
"I don't see…"
"No! You don't! Pull the focal point back on thescope."
Marge slowly turned the controls, pulling her view off the bottom of the dish. "Oh My!" She exclaimed. "They'refloating!"
"Yes! Yes! And look at the reproductive cycle. It's way up. Those little flying bugs are breeding like demented bunnies!"
"So? You nowhave flying microscopic rabbits. I don'tsee where that gets us."
"Margaret! Margaret! A little observation will show you that those 'flying rabbits' as you call them, have over three times the surface area of normal cynobacteria. Yet!" He pointed a finger into the air as if lecturing. "The additional volume is not filled with protoplasm. It is filled with a gas and the organism is neutrally buoyant. They are not so much flying about in that container as they are simply floating free."
A little drool formed at the corners of his mouth as he became excited.
"But the application, doctor Stapleton?" Marge said, backing away slightly as if he were about to slather her with a saliva storm.
"Doctor Pickens!" Homer crowed in triumph. "That container was filled with carbon dioxide to encourage growth." Hepointed exultantly at the instrument read-outs.
Marge's hand flew to her mouth and she mumbled a shocked, "Oh my God!"
Months of testing confirmed Homer's wildest hopes. His little bugs were now prolific floating oxygen factories, busily separating oxygen from the CO2. The oxygen was a waste product and was dumped back into the atmosphere. The carbon was used to build more HomerCynos, as they were now called. It was a perfect system that ate the greenhouse gas CO2 and enriched the world's supply of oxygen. It was the answer to Global warming.
The news of the discovery broke just as evacuations were beginning along the coastal areas of the Untied States, and all America clamored for an end to the building heat that was drowning New York and San Francisco beneath a constantly rising sea. Homer became a celebrity and an overnight sensation, heralded as the savior of the planet. He received endless proposals of marriage, appeared on the Tonight show and Jay Leno and was a guest judge on American Idol. A grateful world paid him the homage of a rock star.
Huge culture factories, breeding the genetically modified HomerCynos were rushed into operation. In six months the starter supply of bacteria was ready for deployment. It was none too soon, as Wall Street was now under two feet of water. Homer had the honor of pressing the big red button that got the ball rolling. A signal launched 30 converted ICBM's into the Stratosphere from 30 different locations on the earth. At apogee, the missiles ejected their payload, a thick cloud of cynobacteria. The bugs floated free, spreading out in a wide band and happily consuming all the CO2 they could get their grubby little membranes on.
The HomerCyno, spread slowly across the sky, concentratingmostly over the equator, but tingeing the heavens everywhere a subtlegreen. Fed by enormous volumes of theearth's waste CO2 and powered by the unrelenting ultraviolet of the sun, thebacteria multiplied at an exponential rate… and mutated.
The earth's atmosphere was 78% nitrogen and only 3%CO2. The HomerCyno's did their jobsuperbly, virtually running out of CO2 in only six months. Then they started eating the nitrogen.
*******
"Yes, mister President." Homer sputtered into the phone. "I suppose that further testing would have been a wise approach. But I will remind you that it was your administration that pushed this thing forward at an accelerated pace." He paced about the chamber in exasperation.
"Mister President. Once the bacteria started metabolizing the nitrogen it no longer created oxygen as a byproduct. The nitrogen compounds are what's turning the sky brown." He paused and listened."yes, that's correct. The most prevalent products are nitrous oxide and ammonia."
The phone screamed in his ear and he pulled it away for a moment.
"Mister President, language like that will get us nowhere. It's true that these compounds are precipitating out and falling to earth. Yes! Yes, ammonia is the primary component of guano and, as you say, we are now under a constant shitstorm. But you have a bigger problem onyour plate. The ammonia is falling but the nitrous oxide is remaining in the stratosphere. Nitrous oxide is a major greenhouse gas. It has 298 times more impact per unit weight than carbon dioxide. It's gonna get hotter!"
The phone squeaked and sputtered in his ear and he shut it off. "Guard! Guard!" heshouted. When the prison guard appeared Homer Stapleton, the savior of humanity, handed the phone out through the bars and went back to his fold-down bunk to stew in his own sweat and the stench that had become his gift to the world, a gift that would never stop giving.
I am a retired Fire Chief from Bridgeport Connecticut, now living in Lake Havasu City, Arizona,far from snowy New England. I am also a licensed pilot, and build and flyradio-controlled airplanes as a hobby. Ihave been previously published in “Kidz-N-Maine,” a magazine for families andchildren, as well as Long Story Short (numerous 2010-2011), and “The Oasis”, a short story anthology (March 2010, November 2011).
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