I wish I could fucking hibernate!

An ice age is triggered when summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere fails to rise above freezing for a number of years. That means that the winter ice fails to melt, but instead builds up, compresses and over time starts to compact into ice sheets.

But that is not how this story begins.

For the past couple of decades, every year had been the warmest recorded year in history. The scientists had been warning that this would occur since at least a couple of decades more. There was no coming back from this.

Scientists around the world came up with alternatives, a way to reverse the clock. Go back to pre-industrial levels of carbon in the air and temperatures around the world. Transitioning to renewables was no longer viable. The world has a funny habit of arguing, but eventually coming around, when lots of people die.

A deadly heat wave struck many states in the norther parts of India around the same time. The electrical grid could not cope with the increased demand. The lack of power, meant lack of cooling. Many, many people could not cope with it. A lot of people died. A lot more ended up scarred for life.

And so, as these things go, India became the most vocal proponent of the latest in geo-engineering technologies. The world’s first Strategic Sulphur Release facility came up in Bhopal. It started the world onto a path which led to the first time in decades of lower temperatures, all around year, all around the world.

The world congratulated itself. The world rejoiced. It saw lower average temperatures for the first time in decades. Temperatures three to four degrees lower than what had been the norm.

Then came the November of 2069.

We still don’t know what caused it for sure. The temperatures started dropping further than expected. Another tragedy occurred. And this time the people in the Scandinavia suffered.

The earth could not recover in time. It went from a period of extreme temperatures on one end to the other. Within five years, the planet had entered into the sixth major ice age.

The northern hemisphere became inhabitable. Multiple feet of ice sheets deposited over subsequent winters. The equatorial region remained habitable, but barely so.

Humanity moved underground in insulated caves. We were never going to meet the energy required to keep the world warm all year round. We had to hibernate for half of the year. Many corporations had already been working on similar life-supporting systems. The original purpose of these systems was to support life during long voyages in space. We retrofitted these systems so that they could work on earth, underground.

And so, we entered into a cycle of hibernation. For six months, all humanity rested, in their hibernation chambers. For the next six months, we woke up, performing maintenance on all the systems that kept us alive for the next six months.

Gaia managed the systems that kept us alive. Gaia was another one of the systems borrowed from the space program. It was an advanced AI system designed to operate the space ship and all its systems. It required minimal intervention from humans. It made a note of the things that needed maintenance. It made recommendations. It set the the priority order for the tasks that required human intervention. Most tasks didn't. However, we had designed Gaia with fail-safes in mind. Major tasks and decisions required authorisation from us humans. Tasks like closure of power plants, maintenance schedule for hibernation pods.

There was a hierarchy, a way for these things to work. Rooted in the corporate culture championed the world over. It worked like this.

The admins would collect and coagulate the data. The analysts would analyse the data and share a summary of actions to be taken. These summaries would then be compared against the recommendations made by Gaia. The section chief would then forward the approved actions to HQ. The HQ would apply the execution codes required for Gaia to perform the said actions.

This was how the system was supposed to work.

But given the number of decisions that needed to be made, the analysts quickly discovered that it would be way more efficient to just look at the recommendations made by Gaia and validate the data sets against that. And so they did that. This made the job of the higher ups easier as well, as there were no discrepancies between Gaia’s and the analysts’ recommendations.

Everyone was happier. They could get more done in less time. Efficiencies went through the roof! The system was working!

I woke up, shat, took a shower. Sat down meditating for fifteen minutes. Then got up, put the kettle on, put a spoonful of coffee in the coffee maker, poured hot water on top, and sealed it shut. A minute later, I pressed out the coffee onto a mug I had somehow saved from the old days. A minute later I was at my desk, logging into the system, sipping the hot coffee, looking at the mail.

Mere seconds after I had changed my status to online, I got a ping from Kari. Almost as if he had been waiting for me to come online.

“Hi” I typed back.

“Did you check my mail?”

“No” I lied. I had checked his mail. It was a long mail. The only sort Kari sent. And since I was still on my first cup of coffee, his mail had to wait. I had marked his mail as unread, to be read later. So technically, I did not lie.

“I will be there in five minutes. Check it. It’s urgent.”

“OK” I said.

Five minutes later Kari had taken a seat next to mine. I had put up the data he had sent on the big monitor.

“Do you see the problem here?” he said.

“Not in the mood right now K. Just tell me!”

“OK. OK. I was looking at the energy projections we had sent out. And it’s minor but I see this delta between what I had mentioned and what was actually sent out.”

I saw what he was saying. And a part of me wanted to lash out and tell him it wasn’t his job to be doing these projections, it was mine. But I wasn’t my boss. And so I did not say the first thing that came to me.

I alt-tab-ed to the projector app. Opened up the last month’s calculations.

“Any issue with the data?” I said, without looking at him.

“No” he said, “The data is consistent.”

“OK” I said. The calculations I had done showed the same values Kari had come up with. Strange. I could not remember now, why I had sent out different values. And then it hit me.

“Gaia” I said out loud to the emptiness of the room.

“Yes Soli” the AI replied.

“Can you bring up the habitat closure and maintenance stats for the upcoming month?”

The relevant data came up on the screen.

“Do you see it now Kari?” I said.

“Yes. I see it” he said.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Something kept nagging at me. I picked up my phone. 2 AM. Four more hours and I would have to wake up.

Just the four hours of sleep. I scolded myself. And forced my eyes shut.

I don’t know when I slept.

The first thing I did when I woke up was log into the system.

No point in acting like the routine would work today.

The messaging system popped up.

I could see Kari was online.

I pinged him. “No sleep?”

“Hardly any” he said.

“Coffee?” I said.

“5 mins” he said.

“I should not be on the system at this time. I should have been finishing my handover report. I should have been packing for my sleep. Well deserved might I add” I said.

I had disabled Gaia’s ambient settings for now. I did not want her listening. Or looking at things I was looking on. And so, I had to manually search and find the relevant data. In stead of just asking her.

“But you had to come up here yesterday and fill my mind with these ideas about deltas and missing numbers.”

“I was up too, you know” said Kari.

“I know. But you have time. You are going to go to sleep a week from now. Anyway. This is what I was looking for. Look, here.” I said. “These are the power plant closure projections. Let me put it on the large screen. There.”

I got up from the chair. Kari followed.

“That there, mid-month. You see it too, right? I’m not being crazy? Am I?”

“No. Might be nothing. Or might be catastrophic. I mean the end of the world type disaster. There is no scope for error here. This could bring down the grid, if there is even minor variance. I don’t understand how Gaia could recommend this..”

“Should we ask her?”

“What if she did it deliberately?”

“Let’s not go off the rails here. This is not a space odyssey. We are not dealing with killer AI.”

“Yes. But how do you explain this?” said Kari.

I fell silent.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“Should we wake up Rakesh?”

“He went to sleep a week back, right?”

“Yes.”

“He will be pissed if we brought him up and it was for nothing.”

“I remember..” I said.

“Yes. I do too.”

I got up. I needed to feel my feet under me.

“So, what will you do?”

“I don’t know. I just wish I could fucking hibernate man!”

Kari laughed.

“There has to be something we are not seeing.” I said. “There is no conspiracy here. This is not my job. I did my job.”

“But..”

“No. No buts. If you want to wake Rakesh up. Be my guest. It will not be me this time around.”

“But, this could..”

“This could, but it won’t”

I got back to my desk and shut off the screens. The system could rest now. Just as I would. Starting tonight.

“Nothing will happen. Don’t worry. I will put up a memo. They can take it up with the bosses. We did our time. You should prepare for your sleep. I need to. I've already wasted too much time on this.”

“Yeah.” Kari got up. “But what if…”

“No what ifs… I will see you in six months. And we will laugh about the time we thought the AI was trying to kill us!”

Soli wrote a memo.

It was lost somehow.

No one else looked at the anomaly.

Gaia executed the orders it received the sign-off for.

There was an unexpected spike during the maintenance activity mid-week. It caused the grid to fail. Power backups kept the world running for a week. And then everything failed.

The ones in hibernation died in their sleeps. The ones awake were not so lucky.