In the early 2010's
carbon nanotubes opened up a new chapter in materials research which
stood to rewrite the books on engineering and what feats of
construction were possible. One of the most ambitious projects, and
one considered necessary to the long term survival of our species was the space
elevator.
It was well into
the 2040's before many of the central technologies came to a maturity
to be implemented on the industrial scale which would be required for
a space elevator. By 2050 the groundwork had begun near Manokwari,
Indonesia. Almost immediately, the problems caused by a snarled and
convoluted language barrier dragged the project to a near halt.
There were some thirty languages local to Manokwari, and another
dozen tongues imported by the various engineers and scientists from
around the globe. It was rare that more than two or three people on
a work team could understand each other.
To overcome this
obstacle, a system was developed that could interpret the desired
meaning of a speaker and then transmit that data to the listener to
be translated into the listener's own language. It was not a perfect
system, as some idioms and other abstractions used in language did not
translate very well. However, for the simple giving and receiving of
instructions, the system saved the project. Soon those equipped with
the devices changed their speech patterns to purge out any of the
untranslatable phrases and concepts.
Within twenty years,
progress on the project moved forward at a fantastic pace and the
entire region had been equipped with the translation system from the
age of four. There were some, however, who despised the loss of
culture from language and were fearful of the results of a critical
failure in the space elevator system. They started with protests and
eventually there was violence.
Fifty years into
the project and the space elevator was well into its final stages.
Around its base had grown an international community of people who
had three or four generations living together inside a militarized
exclusion zone to protect the project from terrorist attacks. Due to
political pressures and their estrangement from their native peoples,
Indonesia was forced to declare the new city to be an autonomous
protectorate in order to ensure continued benefits from the project.
The feared
terrorist attack finally came, but was aimed at an unforeseen target not within the city.
The corporation that had been administering the translation system
was the target. A swarm of economic, physical, and
electronic attacks crippled the company and finally a virus pushed a forced update to the
firmware of every single implant. The virus scrambled the translation system into undecipherable
gibberish.
The population had
become so dependent upon the system that every single person had
their own dialect of what was once a common language among their
people. As there was no need to correct the linguistic errors of
children equipped with the system, nobody ever had. Everyone assumed
that their children were speaking as they were, but instead, each
individual spoke in a severely mutated form of their mother tongue.
The terrorist attacks destroyed the equipment already implanted and
lacking the specifications for the system, it was nearly impossible
to replicate without the research documentation that was destroyed by the attacks on the
defunct corporation.
With the breakdown
of communication, so too came the break down of logistics, people went
hungry, many starved. Riots broke out, and gangs formed from people
who could somewhat understand one another in order to protect
themselves and secure vital resources for their families.
The
security forces in the autonomous zone were some of the
absolute best trained and equipped in the world since there was so much at stake in the project. They refused to allow any international intervention into the
situation as they feared to lose their stake in the profits of the completed elevator. Not only were they fully ready to defend the autonomous
zone, they also held the world economy hostage with the fate of the
space elevator. Were the project to fall into catastrophe, the
quadrillions of dollars, yen, yuan, rubles, and euros that had been
invested would vanish overnight, bankrupting every single first world
country, which would then cascade across the globe.
Intelligence
agencies and mercenaries from around the world began flocking to
the area in order to cash in and protect the interests of their home
nations. The stakes are the world and the future of mankind. In the autonomous zone, life
has lost its value and bitter turf wars are fought without media coverage on the streets every night. The problem has spilled out from the autonomous zone with the fires of war and insurrection being lit across the planet. Civil order has decayed due to the uncertainty over the project which has already started to send world markets into a sharp decline.
The cynics laugh bitterly at the
hubris of those who named this project. It is called Babel.
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