A Sea Like Glass
by BrianScottPauls

I stand up from my workstation, rubbing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to wipe away the after-images of my final report. We've done it, after five years of unrelenting work. We beat GreenPower into production with weeks to spare before their plant goes online.

How do you celebrate your first leave in five years? By meeting your partner at the best bar in town!

I hoof it to the helipad. Normally I would go by boat like all the other specialists, but our CO has given the whole team flight passes as a reward for finishing ahead of schedule. There are just two Chinooks left on the pad when an MP flags me to a halt. I wait impatiently while he queries my ident, finally waving me through as the first 'copter takes off. I get to the second, hustle up the ramp, and strap into one of the few remaining seats. Two minutes later the door closes, the rotors roar to life, and we're airborne.

Something flashes in my vision--a message from Mercado, gloating that he's already well into his first drink at Al's. Damn it! He flew over to the rig early in the morning to continue working on the endless problems with the treatment plant. I tell him I'll buy if he slows down until I get there.

My seat happens to be near one of the few windows. I crane my head around to get a good look at the Array on the way over. Borgschulte Base is on the outer edge of Module 68. The Array is comprised of nearly a hundred such artificial floating islands, loosely connected in an hexagonal arrangement that covers well over a square kilometer. I can see the myriad rows of solar panels spread out below us, a panoply of dark mirrors dimly reflecting the sunlight.

Kohlestadt takes up all of Module 1, in the very center of the Array. Unlike the other modules, it's a massive refining platform--like the old oil rigs, but much larger. From a distance, all you see is a byzantine assemblage of electrolysis and electrodialysis facilities, pumping stations, and bulky methanol staging tanks looming over the rest of the Array. Kohlestadt, however, is home to nearly 10,000 refinery workers, chemical and electrical engineers, oceanographers, project managers, executives, and the service businesses to support them. That's about the population density of Tokyo or Beijing, so Kohlestadt is pretty much hustle-and-bustle 24-7. It's the best sort of place to disappear for a week or four, and Al's is the best place to start.

Tucked away beneath a high-traffic catwalk, in the shadow of a catalytic tower on the east side of town, Al's Ethanol Emporium is a Kohlestadt institution. The owner (who isn't named Al, but everyone calls him that anyway) was one of the first entrepreneurs to move onto Module 1 nearly five years ago. There are a ton of watering holes in Kohlestadt, but when their bartenders have a night off, they go to Al's.

When I arrive, the place is already packed. Merc has grabbed a wobbly high-top close to the door and waves me over. I take one of the stools next to him and look around for a server, preferably male. I know it's not fair to use my sex to shortcut the system, but I hate waiting in bars and restaurants. I see a young man--maybe 19--a couple of tables away. He finishes taking an order and turns in my direction. I flash him my best smile, hoping he's not more interested in Mercado's type than mine. This time, the odds work in my favor. He responds with a smile of his own and walks over.

"Hello!" The crowd is so noisy, he almost shouts in his thick Scandinavian accent. "I'm Aksel. What can I get you?"

"This place is a madhouse tonight." I really am shouting.

"Worse than usual! Everyone is so happy the Array is finished."

"That's why we're here!" I turn toward Mercado so he will hear me over the noise. "Your glass is empty! What do you want?"

Cupping his hands around his mouth to make a megaphone, Merc projects across the table at Aksel: "Blindsider!"

I ask Aksel to get me a raksi, which I have to spell because he doesn't think they have it. I patiently explain that they do—Al learned to distill it just for me. I somehow manage to get this across without going completely hoarse. When Aksel leaves to get the drinks, Merc and I switch to corneals so we won't have to shout to be understood.

Aksel returns in a few minutes with two drinks on a tray. He places one in front of each of us, then bustles off into the crowd. I raise my glass to Merc and he does the same to me.

"To a long project finally completed, and to work well done," I say.

"Si," he responds, as our glasses clink.

I close my eyes, bring the raksi to my nose, and inhale deeply with a sigh of perfect contentment. Opening my eyes, I see Merc finishing his Blindsider in one long swig.

I drop my glass to my lips to emulate him, when my vision explodes with both pulsing red and scrolling text. I give a startled grunt as I spill raksi all over my hand. Setting my glass on the table, I begin reading the message. I'm vaguely aware that Merc is doing the same.

"What the hell?" he asks himself as much as me.

"I don't know," I respond, "but I'm for sure not gonna get to finish this drink."

###

With a few quick eye movements, I clear the alert, call up our tab, pay, and close it. Then I head for the door with Merc at my heels.

The traffic outside Al's is the usual press of pedestrians jockeying for position as they bustle up and down the walkway running in front of the bar. Merc steps out ahead to clear a path as we push our way across traffic toward a connector to the outer causeway.

Module 1's main level is circumnavigated by a dual-use traffic-way—inner lanes of vehicles separated from foot-traffic on the outside. The connecting walkway we're on emerges between two buildings and runs out over the vehicle lanes. At the end, an open framework of metal stairs provides access to the pedestrian lane on the outer edge of the platform and then continues down out of sight.

Merc and I hit the stairs at a fast clip, pounding downward past the pedestrian landing toward the waterline. One of the four-seat power boats we use as water shuttles on the Array is idling at a small jetty. Hearing feet on the metal steps, Topasna glances up to make sure it's us and hops out to cast off as soon as we're aboard. Merc reaches the boat before I do. Topasna holds it steady as he clambers aboard; I'm right behind him. In a few seconds Topasna unties us, pushes the boat away from the dock, jumps aboard, and takes his seat at the controls, steering us out into the channel.

The channels are the open water between modules. Seen from above, the Array is an hexagonal grid of these waterways, outlining the many solar collection modules with Kohlestadt at the center. Other than by helicopter, the only practical means of getting around the Array is by boat.

Our destination is on the opposite the side of the rig from Al's. Once we're out in the middle of the channel and clear of any other boat traffic, Topasna opens up the throttle and takes us on an exhilarating ride around three sides of the city.

I glance over at Merc and force myself not to smile. His jaws are clamped tightly shut; his hands clench the back of the seat in front of him; his eyes are focused straight ahead. For some reason, his motion sickness never bothers him when we fly—but he sure hates power boats! Fortunately, with Topasna leaning on the throttle, the trip doesn't take long. I notice Merc relax slightly as the far side of the rig comes into view and Topasna throttles back, guiding us toward a jetty similar to the one where we boarded.

Immediately, I can see the problem that forced us to bail on a perfectly good drinking binge. Up and down this part of the rig, on both the near and far sides of the jetty, bright green scum covers the surface of the water out to a distance of about 25 meters. It also extends maybe half a meter up the side of the rig itself. On the jetty, all along the waterline, exposed rebar peers out amidst crumbling concrete, everything covered by the same green film.

Topasna guides the boat through the sludge, bringing us alongside the jetty, where Sergeant Albaz is waiting. The pilot tosses the rope to Albaz, who ties us off and reaches out to help first me, then the still shaky Merc onto the platform.

"What's going on here, Sarge?" asks Merc, after taking a second to collect himself. "What's up with the jetty?"

"You tell me," responds Albaz. "The harbor-master reported the problem this morning. Says a couple of his guys used it yesterday and no one noticed anything wrong. Today..." he gestures toward the waterline.

While they're talking, I lean over the edge to examine the damage. It's not unusual to find cyanobacteria--blue-green algae to non-biologists--on the parts of the Array in constant contact with seawater. The Timor sea has its share--mostly Trichodesmium and Lyngbya. Both typically appear more greenish-brown or brown than what I'm seeing now. Also, Trichodesmium smells fairly pleasant--like freshly mown hay--while Lyngbya tends to smell like rotten eggs. Neither smell like vinegar.

"Hey Sarge," I shout with my head still over the side. "Why's this jetty made out of concrete anyway? All the others are metal."

"Remember that tanker collision six months ago?" Albaz asks. "Captain who was drinking on duty? Crumpled the original jetty like a tin can. Easiest way to replace it was to build a rebar frame, dunk it in the ocean, and charge it up. Grew the whole platform out of calcium carbonate concrete, like the solar modules, then secured it in place. Presto! New jetty."

I pull my head up, flip over on my back to rest on my elbows, and nod over my shoulder to the channel behind me. "How fast would you say that bloom is spreading?"

Albaz chews his lip for a moment and looks thoughtful. "Damn fast. Maybe a meter an hour. Never seen anything like it."

It's my turn to pause briefly. "The waterway's about 100 meters across. Unless this stuff slows down, we've got a little over three days until it starts eating into the concrete of that module." I use my head to indicate the other side of the channel. "Eventually the platform will start to take on water, and then it will sink--along with several million dollars of brand-new equipment."

I let that hang there a moment.

"And I hope this stuff--whatever it is--does slow down. If it doesn't, it could spread through all the channels, to all the modules. It could send the entire Array to the bottom of the sea.

###

The Timor Sea has a reputation for being quiet and still, like a pane of turquoise-colored glass. With an average depth of 450 meters, and the islands of Indonesia to shelter it from the swells of both the Pacific to the north and the Indian Ocean to the west, the Timor Sea is calm and peaceful much of the time.

Live here year-round, however, and you'll see the Timor in all her moods. If you're not paying attention, you could be caught unaware by a storm you didn't know was brewing.

That's how I feel. I've secured samples of the cyanobacteria and the surrounding water in several test tubes and plastic bags Albaz gave me. I dread what we're going to find when we get to the lab.

The United Nations Climate Corps was established to constrain global temperature increase. We're organized as a military force because it was most expedient to justify our mission under Article 43 of the U.N. Charter, including the obligation of member states to provide "armed forces, assistance, and facilities" as needed. We represent the first standing force in U.N. history.

Through a series of competitive bounties and targeted R&D grants, the UNCC finally arrived at a proven design for what became the North Australian Array. Nearly a hundred solar collection modules power the extraction of carbon dioxide from seawater and its conversion into methanol, which is then shipped off the Array as a carbon-neutral fuel. The carbon released when the methanol is burned eventually gets reabsorbed by the ocean, and the cycle repeats.

Some parties disagree such a massive and expensive project should be undertaken by an international organization. GreenPower is a joint endeavor formed by the largest of these mostly private interests—green business at scale.

Generally, the relationship between GreenPower and the UNCC has been a friendly rivalry, but it has heated up on occasion—particularly when the UNCC tried to incorporate a certain biotechnology into our photovoltaic panels to make them more efficient. GreenPower claimed the upgraded panels violated one of their key patents—on "the genetic modification of cyanobacteria for the purpose of generating electric current from sunlight." In other words, the core of GreenPower's business model is gene-splicing blue-green algae to produce solar power. Now a strain of blue-green algae unlike anything I've ever heard of threatens our solar power plant—right when we are about to seize the initiative in the market. In this case, my gut tells me "coincidence" means "we don't have all the facts."

Albaz has summoned a Jeep, which we meet on the shoulder of the traffic-way above. He climbs in the front, Merc and I in the back, then we're on the road and headed for the lab.

"What do you think?" Merc asks.

I frown. "You were an oceanographer before you became an engineer to join the project. Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"I published a paper on cyanobacteria. What we saw at the jetty should be impossible. Some strains of filamentous blue-green algae will bore into and erode concrete--but not overnight."

"You recognized the vinegar smell?

"Acetic acid—there are species that produce it as a byproduct." Mercado's brows knit together. "But how could it have done so much damage so quickly?"

As Albaz mentioned, the concrete used to construct the jetty is mostly calcium carbonate, precipitated out of sea water by electrolysis using a submerged and charged steel frame. Acetic acid will dissolve calcium carbonate, but what we saw would require immersing the concrete in a vat of the stuff. I have no answer for Merc.

The Jeep finally pulls up to a blocky building with small windows. Merc and I are out of the vehicle and halfway up the ramp to the entrance while Albaz is still talking with the driver. The two of us share a lab on the second floor. Merc heads for the bio station with the water samples and some of the cyanobacteria. I take the rest to the DNA sequencer.

While Merc runs tests, I prepare my samples for sequencing. At some point during this process I'm aware Albaz has come into the lab, but he stays quiet and lets us work. After a few minutes I hear the door open and close as he wanders off.

Finally, I push back from the sequencer and check the time. A little over two hours since we pulled up outside. I glance over at the bio station. Empty.

I stand up, stretch until my back pops, then make my way out of the lab and down the hall to the break room. Merc is sitting at one of the small four-person tables, nursing a coffee with Albaz.

The two of them look up as I arrive. "Everything up and running?," Merc asks.

"Yes. We should have results in a few hours. What did you find?"

"I checked all our databases. There's no known organism that dissolves calcium carbonate at the rate this stuff apparently dissolved our jetty. Under the microscope, our beastie looks quite peculiar—finer, more numerous boring filaments than I've seen before, with a crazy-efficient calcium transport mechanism. You already know it excretes unreasonable amounts of acetic acid." He smiles grimly "It's almost as if it were custom-designed to penetrate and dissolve concrete." A brief pause. "Oh, and the water samples show elevated levels of methanol. Highly elevated."

"We have a leak?"

"Evidently—but does it have anything to do with our critter?" He shrugs, then gestures at Albaz with his coffee cup. "Sarge and I have a theory."

"GreenPower." It's not a question.

"Exactly." He pauses briefly. "If they did this to slow us down, we'll never be able to prove it. They're not careless. Everyone will know, but no one will have any evidence."

"The genome..."

"Oh yeah," he interrupts. "It will be obvious the genome was hacked, but gene editing is cheap. GreenPower could be the culprit, but so could the Re-Earthers, or any other ecoterrorist group that wants to save the world, just not our way. Come on, Dahal, we make methanol."

He's right. Renewable Earth are fanatics. To them, using carbon fuels for anything is an unforgivable sin, no matter how carefully you explain the carbon cycle.

It's the perfect sabotage, with no way to hold the perpetrators accountable.

My corneal flashes.

"Well," I respond after checking the alert, "we can decide later how to make GreenPower pay. Right now, we better figure out how to stop an algal bloom. Topasna just messaged me that the growth rate is speeding up.

###

The truth is you don't stop an algal bloom so much as endure it. Under just the right environmental conditions, cyanobacteria experience explosive growth. As long as those conditions pertain, there's not much you can do. Once they change, the microorganism tends to return to equilibrium with its surroundings.

There have been many attempts to control harmful blooms—containing them with physical barriers, dusting the surface of the water with clay particles that lump together with the bacteria and carry them to the bottom, even spraying toxic chemicals. These methods are expensive and only partially effective. What seems to work best is to deprive the bloom of nutrients.

What do cyanobacteria eat? That's an interesting question, and if you can answer it definitively, there's a Nobel Prize waiting for you. The best scientific estimates put the number of species at over 6000, and we don't know everything we should, even about the most common. Marine cyanobacteria get energy from photosynthesis, which requires mainly sunlight and carbon dioxide—but some species can also use carbonates like limestone or organic solvents such as ethanol or methanol as carbon sources. In addition, there are species that eat other bacteria. Cyanobacteria have been on Earth for three-and-a-half billion years--longer than any other living organism. They've learned some tricks.

I'm sitting with my head in my hands, elbows on my desk, heels of my palms pressed into my eyes. It's been hours since Topasna's alert.

The results of the genetic sequencing came through 30 minutes ago. As we suspected, the genome shows clear signs of manipulation. The cyanobacteria is a chimera of multiple species, including Gloeocapsa magma, Mastigocoleus testarum, and Scenedesmus obliques. The last is a strain exhibiting increased reproductive activity when exposed to high levels of methanol—explaining the bloom's accelerating growth rate. Our extensive environmental controls appear to be failing us, but there is no sign of how or where—no spills, no leaks, nothing anyone can find. Meanwhile, the bloom keeps creeping closer to the next module.

The solar power platforms are hollow concrete structures designed to displace enough water to float. If the bloom dissolves the outer wall of the module, it will flood and sink—perhaps the first of many.

I've dispatched Topasna and dozens of others to locations around Module 1, checking every processing facility, storage reservoir, and tanker. The CO has alerted everyone on the rig and cancelled all leave, to make sure people are sober enough to know a problem if they see, hear, or smell it.

Nothing so far.

I knot my fingers in my hair and pull it tight in frustration. This is worse than a bloom in the wild. Typically you can identify the cause, even if there's nothing you can do about it--agricultural runoff from a megafarm with the money and clout to buck the rules, overflowing sewage from a city's aging treatment plant built for half the current population, seasonal flooding in--

Treatment plant.

I glance over at Merc, immersed in his corneal display. I pick up a stylus from my desk and flip it in his direction, bouncing it off his head. He starts, then slowly focuses as he pauses his data stream.

"What the hell? I'm trying to work!"

"Any luck?"

His face falls. "No, not yet. I haven't found any potential sources we haven't checked already."

"The treatment plant."

"What?" He looks confused.

"The treatment plant. Your second home? The one facility on this whole rig that turned out to be a lemon. No one has been there."

"They process raw sewage. The plant's not part of the refining network—it doesn't produce methanol."

"The last treatment step is denitrification, right? They use methanol as a carbon source for that process. The whole issue blew up online when I first got here. People upset because we pipe our treated outflow directly into the sea, and you can still detect methanol in the effluent."

"Sure. Given the amount of methanol we produce, it's the only thing that makes sense. It's so diluted once it gets into the water, studies show it has no measurable effect."

"I'm measuring the effect at well over two meters per hour in the direction of the first solar array module."

"Well, all right. I'll flash Albaz an alert." A moment later: "In case this doesn't pan out, I don't want to lose what I'm working on. Sending you a copy."

It's an old habit—ever since he lost a big report his first week on the Array, Merc has flashed me copies of his important work. I nod in acknowledgement as I'm rising to my feet and heading for the door.

"And I'll flash Topasna."

If you walk, it's ten minutes from the lab to the treatment plan. We make it in five. Topasna is already there, talking earnestly with the harried-looking plant chief, who glances up as we approach.

"What's going on?" Chief Meyer looks past me, at Merc.

"Greta!" He responds. I glance back to see him smiling. "We're trying to track down a methanol leak. It's pretty elusive."

"I've been telling Private Topasna, everything is green here. No issues since you got us all sorted out this morning, and we've never had problems with the methanol levels."

Merc sighs. "It's probably another wild goose chase. Mind if we take a look?"

The woman shrugs. "Help yourself. You probably know our systems better than any of us at this point."

As we're talking, Albaz arrives. He takes Topasna to check the methanol inflow valve while Merc walks the pipes, looking for leaks. I follow Meyer to the open denitrification tanks located in the yard behind the plant building. We've no sooner stepped outside, than I'm nearly overwhelmed by the smell of vinegar.

"It really hits you, doesn't it?" asks the chief. "We're having a problem with the outflow valve in Tank 2, so we weren't able to flush that one. Fortunately we have extra capacity, so it didn't affect operations."

I glance in the direction she's gesturing. One of the four open-topped tanks is covered with a layer of bright green scum.

"You had this same problem with the other three tanks?"

"Yes. You should have smelled it then! Good thing we only had one stuck valve. We were able to flush and scrub the other three and get them back into operation before we fell behind on processing. We couldn't have done it without your partner."

I stopped, disoriented by a sudden feeling the rig was spinning. "This was the problem Mercado was working on?"

"Well, not originally. We've had all sorts of issues since the rig went live. Specialist Mercado has been here for most of them. Last week he started working on the feeder lines, but when we got in this morning, all four tanks looked like that." She indicated the green scum. "He's the one who advised us to flush and clean them."

"Specialist Mercado," I said slowly, "told you to flush this stuff through your outflow pipe—into the sea around the rig?"

"That's right. Said the water would dilute whatever it is and make it harmless. Just in time, too, or we would have had a processing backup on our hands. That wouldn't have been pretty." She chuckles.

I'm trying to decide how to respond when an alert flashes. I open it; Albaz appears in a live video feed.

"The inflow valve was wide open," he growls, "Topasna closed it—but you wouldn't have known anything was wrong unless you checked manually. Someone's jacked with the sensor. It's reporting normal levels."

"Sergeant, we have to to find Mercado."

I see Albaz's face change when hears my tone. "He's checking the pipes between here and the processing--"

"No," I interrupt. "He's trying to get off the Array."

To his credit, Albaz pauses only a moment as he assimilates this information.

"No way he'll go by boat. He'd puke his guts out before he got half-way to Darwin. Damn! The CO gave you all flight privileges, separate from your leave. Good for travel all the way to the mainland, as long as there's a 'copter available and he tells the pilot he's got orders. The nearest pad is only five minutes away.

The next thing I know, Albaz is shouting at Topasna. One calloused hand reaches toward me to retrieve his camera, then the feed cuts off.

Meyer is staring at me, trying to put together what she has understood from my half of the conversation.

I turn to her, and for reasons I can't immediately explain, I ask, "Where's the nearest jetty?"

She motions past the gate of the denitrification yard. "That walkway will take you over the traffic to the stairs."

I thank her and take off at a dead run.

I'm too late of course. There are no power boats when I arrive. Instead, lying on the platform near the discarded end of a dock line is an ovoid bladder, just large enough to fill one hand. Not wanting to pick it up, I get on my hands and knees to examine it in the dock lights. There's a bright green fluid inside. The outer layer looks like a water-soluble gelatin sheath, similar to what's used to deliver certain medications. "Or a genetically modified organism" I think grimly. Give the cyanobacteria twenty-four hours to grow in the denitrification tanks, then instruct the plant crew to flush them into the ocean. Jimmy with the methanol inflow valve and the tank outflow valves to ensure excessive methanol levels in the water around the rig, triggering a fast-growing bloom.

It's a smart plan. How long had Merc been working on it? Suddenly, everything he's done is suspect, from when he arrived five years ago right through until tonight.

I remember the file Merc made a point of sending me as we were leaving for the treatment plant. Not really wanting to know what's in it, I call it up and open it. A video window fills my vision.

"Hey Dahal--wish I didn't have to say goodbye like this. Getting trashed at the bar would have been more fun."

"Try not to be too pissed at me. I didn't betray you—I was always on the other team. Sorry I couldn't tell you the truth--about anything, really."

"The thing is, we're all supposed to be on the same side, fighting to solve the same problem. And most of the time, that's the way it works. But when push comes to shove, business is still business. Maybe our business is green, but so is the money. It's like you tell me--the sea looks calm, but it's dangerous to think it will stay that way."

"Maybe we'll meet again when this blows over, and I can buy your drinks."

Then, he gives me a playful, insincere grin.

"Renewable Earth takes full responsibility for this action." And the video is gone.

Merc is a liar, he will be branded a terrorist, and maybe he was never my friend, but he's no fanatic. The Re-Earthers aren't coordinated enough to carry out something so long-term and sophisticated. This is a shot across the bow of the United Nations, warning us not to get in the way of big green business. Whatever period of "friendly competition" there may have been is over. It's survival of the fittest now.

Looking out over the flat surface of the Timor Sea at night, I can see lightning beyond the horizon. A storm is coming.

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