"If that doesn't make sense to you, fine, don't worry about it. I'm not totally sure if I have the right set of multiverses selected here, I'm pretty sure I do, but if you speak Dutch or Swahili, well, maybe you can get someone to translate. My image should be over a high school, my high school, where I attended as a kid, though really not that one because I'm in a different multiverse shard-range than you are."
"If you're hearing this, I have good news and bad news. I'll try to be quick. The bad news is, the last humans will go extinct on your planet in about 27 years. There's three causes, all reinforcing each other. I've selected universes, multiverse-shards, where humans go extinct, rewound the clock 27 years, and that's who I'm broadcasting to, so it's not an accident you all die."
"Now, that's the bad news. The good news is, it doesn't have to happen, but it's going to take a HUGE effort on your part to prevent it. The 3 causes are as follows; One, runaway greenhouse effect. You're putting too much carbon dioxide into your air. This will melt permafrost in Siberia and Canada and release more methane, and that will melt Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets, and then, ecosystems collapse, no more animals, no more fish, everybody's dead."
"Second reason, pandemics, mostly caused by weakened humanity having dwindling food supplies, so people started eating absolutely everything. Some of those animals have diseases that then combine with your diseases and then you all get sick and die."
"Third, and I can't emphasize this enough, all the fish die. You're killing all the fish in the ocean. It's really damned stupid. You're doing industrial scale murder on everything edible swimming around, letting most of it die, and then returning to port with 10% that you do want to sell."
"Incredibly Stupid!"
"So, you don't want to die? Here's some clues. Pay attention. Photovoltaic cells, that is, pure 99.999% pure silicon - 5 nines - makes voltage when put in sunlight. Make lots of panels full of them, make your electric power from that. To make PV cells, put quartz sand in a sealed container with carbon, heat the fuck out of it, and boom, carbon dioxide - a little - and pure silicon come out. Let it solidify, pull a voltage across the hunk of it, all the ions go to either end, pure silicon in the middle. There's other ways, but that's the simplest. About 100 miles by 100 miles of PV cells will make power for your entire country."
"Next, make LOTS of wind turbines, like 50,000 of them. 100+ meters tall, 3 blades. Store power using lithium iron phosphate batteries, or lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide, whatever, lots of tech there, save the power for nighttime."
"Absolutely stop, tomorrow morning stop, burning coal, anywhere. Burn methane - CH4 gas - for power if you need to, until you can get the PV and wind going. Gasoline - petrol - stop that. Use battery electric for your cars, no more chemical fuels. Oh, and the nuclear stuff, uranium or thorium reactors, that's so incredibly dangerous and expensive you should already know to stop that."
"Right. That's one. Greenhouse gases. Protect your ecosystems, worldwide. Important there. Make sure everyone, worldwide, knows not to eat wild animals. Get everyone enough food, from farms. Everyone should have their own garden, if they can, and save the seeds from year to year."
"As an aside, it's pretty crucial to put up some colonies in outer space - methane and liquid oxygen rockets, land the rockets, fully reusable, get some self-sufficient colonies out there that are over 1 year travel from Earth. That'll help prevent the spread of disease.
"Third, declare at least half, yes HALF, of all ocean area, all the way to the bottom, to be marine reserves, where fish can grow forever. Never catch or kill anything in an ocean larger than a person. Protect sharks, dolphins, rays, whales, corals, everything. In those areas, add military-level barriers - explosives, net-cutter structures, whatever, make it impossible to catch fish in each of those, say, giant one-eighth of an ocean areas."
"That's all the vital stuff. Do that, you have a chance."
"One more chance. The reason I'm speaking to you, and not someone else. My genetics. In two separate pandemics, all of my kids - and I had 8 of them, I married twice - survived. This is statistically nearly impossible. The genetics of my kids were well studied, and yes, there's something special there. I can't tell you what it is, most of those experts died, but they created a good set of vaccines based on my genetic... my kids' genetic code.
So, my last clue, and if you're him, you're not going to like this, is... There's a kid in Aardmore High School. His name is Kevin Kooper. He's the younger version of me, at least your universe's version. If you want to save humanity, he has to have kids with a lot of different ... girls? Women? Whatever. I guess I'm talking then, to you girls in that high school, anyone over, what, legal age in your society? Fifteen? Eighteen? I'm speaking to so many universes, it could be anything where you are. You want to help humanity survive the coming waves of pandemic, and know that only if you have kids with Kevin will those kids live through it. At least, my universe, yours could be different. Maybe. So, Kevin, girls, like, right now, get Busy, if you know what I mean. Yesterday. As soon as possible, make lots of kids. Scientists will need time to sequence the DNA of everyone, of Kevin, of his kids, your kids, to find a vaccine that will save billions. At least, it barely worked in my reality. It was a close thing. All humans almost died."
"I can't guarantee results. Your universe may not have humans in it 27 years from now. Or, it may, with those humans on other planets, living in lush green happy cities in harmony with nature, and even eating fish from oceans that have been allowed to repopulate themselves. Ours haven't quite gotten that far back, it's still a crime here to have or eat wild fish."
"That's it, people. Stop burning coal, oil, methane, anything carbon based. Thorium nuclear reactors are safer, build those if you must, but only short-term. It's far better to make insane-huge amounts of PV panels and wind turbines."
"You won't need that military hardware. Militaries just waste resources to fight over pieces of a pie that's turning into to shit, and in the end, even the kings of the hill can't survive."
"What you need is infrastructure that can resist monster hurricanes and ensure people have outbuilding-barns for their livestock - NOT live under the same roof as them. Never live with livestock in one house. Ever. Not during monsoon season, Just. Not. Ever. Diseases spread that way. Bad shit. Don't."
"Kevin, I'm sorry to do this to you. I'm not you, you're not me, we just share the same genetics and in a set of possible timelines, you become me maybe in some of them, and then maybe you'll save other sets of universes just like I'm doing? Maybe. You never know."
"Peace be with you, humans. Stop your wars, you're about to get schooled on what real desolation looks like, and it's worse than anything you do to each other. There's no silence like the permanent silence of an extinction."
"That's all. I hope you survive, it's not assured, but now that you know this, it might be more likely."
"Dr. Kevin Kooper, out."
Running Around
Well, that was the transcript. At the time? At the mention of me, I went kind of numb. It couldn't be. This guy was me? The guy I was looking up the nose of?
I knew this wasn't a trick. October of 1987 didn't have holograms. We didn't have a lot of things. We certainly didn't have giant floating heads spouting off about how all humans were going to die.
Until... we did have that.
The floating head disappeared into thin air, like it was a TV picture being turned off - some distortion as it faded - but that was that, and the class mostly turned around and faced me.
Maybe 10 or 20 seconds later, the door flew open and the principal and the school security guard burst in.
I held up my hands in both confusion and innocence. "I didn't do it! I have no idea what's going on!"
A couple of people I knew said some things like, "It's true, he was just standing here." and all that, but I think wisely in retrospect, Mr. Connors and Alice (the security guard) motioned for me to follow them. "Safer in the front office."
To Mrs. Little (the teacher), Mr. Connors said, "Keep them in class. Have them sit and write down silently everything they observed. Every - little - thing. Details. What it said, what it looked like, what they thought of, what it seemed to imply, everything. Then, everything they know about Kevin here. Everything he's ever said, done, all of it. Not faulting you, Kevin, just good... I have a feeling some people will be here to ask questions, and it'd be good to have this down, somewhere."
I left with Mr. Connors. We jogged down hallways back to the office, where Mr. Connors got the P.A. microphone and I heard it echo all across the school.
"Attention, this is Principal Connors. Please remain in your classrooms for the moment. If anyone has a recording of that, please bring it to the office. Everyone else, please sit back down, whatever class you're in, and write down everything you remember about what just happened. Also, separately, everything you know or remember about Kevin Kooper - every interaction you've had, or seen, or heard about. Kevin should be presumed innocent here, we just need to know everything you know about him. Kevin, is this okay?"
He held up the mike to me, and I said, "Yeah, sure, I guess. No worries, just... Yeah, it's okay, I'm sooooo confused." My voice echoed from a speaker outside the office.
