Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]

“Blah blah blah,” T.R. said, as another round of applause swept across the computer-generated crowd below. The simulation faded, the drones gained altitude, the glass bubbles undarkened. The swarm was climbing straight up, fast enough to make Saskia’s ears pop. T.R. went on, “The gist of it is, there’s a data point for y’all. Two hundred years ago. One million dollars. In today’s money that’s more like thirty million.”

The boost in altitude was broadening the view to include much of Houston. Several miles east of Allen’s Landing, the bayou spilled into a vast bay extending far to the south, where it was sealed off from the Gulf of Mexico by a barrier island. Much of that waterfront was dominated by industrial complexes and shipping facilities on a scale that would be impressive if you had never seen Rotterdam. Directly south was the downtown high-rise district, lodged in the center of a spiderweb of freeways. Any one of those freeways, traced outward, supported its own chain of sub-metropolises. “I’m not gonna insult y’all’s intelligence by explaining compound interest,” T.R. said. “The value of the real estate in greater Houston today is one point seven five trillion dollars. Big number. But it’s just six percent annual interest compounded for two hundred years from that starting point. Now just stash that number in your short-term memory for a spell while we go look at some other unique exhibits.”

The swarm had begun to shed altitude while tracking gradually northwest. They flew, at an altitude of maybe a hundred meters, up the incredibly wide freeway Saskia had seen from ground level yesterday. It was really a system of freeways at multiple levels, interlaced with ramps and crossed over, or under, by lesser freeways that would have been considered important in the Netherlands. It was bracketed between ground-level frontage roads, each many lanes wide and capable of carrying huge flows of traffic were they not partly underwater. “Interstates 10 and 45 combined is what you’re seeing,” T.R. said. “I-10 connects L.A. to Florida; 45 runs up to Dallas and connects to points north. In the other direction it’s our connection to the Gulf.” Presently those two roads parted ways and T.R. chose the left fork, veering onto a westerly course above 10, or the Katy Freeway as locals called it. “See, just looking at them on a map can’t do these constructs the justice that they are due,” he remarked, then surprised them all by swooping down and taking the swarm for a roller-coaster ride beneath the many lanes of the 10, which marched across sodden ground on reinforced concrete pillars. “And people talk about Rome and what they built,” T.R. muttered.

“T.R., what do you mean ‘the justice that they are due’?” Saskia asked.

“The size of it. The sheer amount of steel in the ground. The engineering. The presence, Your Majesty, the physical mass and reality of it. Every strand of rebar was drawn out in a steel mill. Where’d the heat come from? Burning things. The cement was produced in kilns, biggest things you ever seen. How do we keep the kilns hot? Burning things. We put the steel and the concrete together to make these things, these freeway interchanges, just so cars can run on ’em. How do we keep the cars moving? Burning things.”

“Putting CO2 into the atmosphere,” Saskia said.

“Oh yes.”

“It is not sustainable.”

“With all due respect, Your Majesty, it is as sustainable, or as unsustainable, as your whole country. Later we can talk about how to sustain what matters to us. Now, hang on a sec, this calls for focus.”

What he focused on next was slaloming his drone through the huge pillars he’d just been describing, cutting under ramps and looping through cloverleafs. Finally he pulled out into the open and swooped them up to an altitude where they could look down on the Katy Freeway skimming beneath them. It had become even wider, if such a thing were possible. “Twenty-six lanes,” T.R. said, as if reading her mind.

Right now those lanes were only spattered with vehicles, as many businesses, schools, and activities had been shut down because of the hurricane. But Saskia noticed the bubble of her drone getting dark again, signaling another AR sequence about to start. “Not much going on today,” T.R. remarked, “so I’m gonna take you on a little trip down memory lane. This is the same day of the year, same stretch of freeway, as it was back in 2019.”