io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Carbon Zero” by D. Thomas Minton. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on LIGHTSPEED’s website. Enjoy!
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Carbon Zero
“Is there a problem, officer?”
“We’re not the police.” My partner, Enrico, places his palm against the door, ready to test the old man’s resolve.
I tap my finger against my thumb and SNAPbeam the warrant to the old man’s synaptic cache. “We’re EPF.”
“Oh,” the old man whispers, as if his voice has been snatched away.
No one likes the police showing up on their porch, but they would rather the police come knocking than the EPF. Years of aggressive action against climate violators has given the Environmental Protection Force its well-earned reputation.
We give him a moment to review the warrant, signed, sealed, and legally enforceable in any jurisdiction on Earth.
“Give me a second to tidy—”
Enrico doesn’t let the door close. “We don’t care if you haven’t dusted, Mr. Costa.”
Being no match for two young, modded investigators, Costa retreats. “Close the door,” he says. “You’re letting in the smoke.”
Spurred by the early arrival of the annual heatdome and the decades-long drought, the Agalhor Creek fire has been raging for weeks and recently combined with three smaller blazes to produce the season’s first mega-inferno event.
It’s going to be a bad fire year, and the UNEP has already issued warnings that our suppression systems might not protect key population centers. Indeed, Agalhor Creek is spitting off dozens of fire whirls, and the turbulence was so bad, our hydro-cell skimmer nearly diverted during our final approach to the drop zone at the end of the old man’s driveway.
Costa stands thin-lipped, arms crossed in defiance. My IR lenses clearly register depressed skin temperatures due to heavy sweating.
With the windows’ thermal screens in place, the modest living room is cool and dim. A threadbare couch. A small dining table. One of those plug-in atomizers gently hisses, contributing to the room’s oddly-cloying odor intended, one would assume, to mask the smell of the fire.
“Check his spongees,” Enrico says, unclipping his analyzer from the belt ring next to his holster.
Costa raises his hands. “You have no right to touch me.”
“International bylaw seven-seven-three gives me the authority.” I SNAPbeam the relevant regulation to him, and without waiting, press my thumb to Costa’s forehead. In a blink, I download his BIO-log to a secure evidence partition on my synaptic cache.
“I think you’ll find everything in order,” Costa says.
“I’m sure we will,” Enrico mumbles as he follows his analyzer around the room’s perimeter.
A day ago, Enrico had arrived from the Barcelona Office to assist our unit, which had been hard hit by the recent Lygma-13 outbreak among the rank-and-file investigators. Even I had been called back to the field. For the last eighteen months, I’ve been jockeying paperwork in the processing office because it afforded me the flexibility to be with my wife, Elena, during her chemo treatments.
I scan through Costa’s data. His metallo-organic corpuscles and chloroplast implants are functioning within operational ranges. Costa’s CO2 emissions are below detectable levels as the bio-engineered MOCs in his lungs capture the carbon dioxide from his exhalations and shunt it to the photosynthetic nodules on the back of his hands for metabolic processing.
“What are you looking for?” Costa asks. His thermal signature tells me he’s scared, although anyone hearing the tightness in the voice would already know that.
“It’s in the warrant,” Enrico says.
“I’m a historian, not a lawyer.”
I almost hear the disdain in Enrico’s eyebrow rise.
“Well, well. What have we here?” Enrico pushes open what should have been a bedroom door. He tosses the light switch, and several spots come alive. According to my lenses, they aren’t standard LEDs, but full-spectrum lamps more typical of a greenhouse than a residence.
“That’s just a hobby,” Costa says.
Enrico extends his arm to stop the old man from entering the room.
“Let me guess,” I say, coming over to the doorway. “Six vats?”
Erico hands me his analyzer. “Close. I count seven.”
The small room has been converted into an algae-growing facility. Seven one-hundred-litre containers have been hastily plumbed with water circulators and temperature modulators. Tucked among the vats is a portable air pump whose intake hose snakes over to the door. All but one of the tanks has murky, blackish water in them. If not for the air freshener in the other room, the whole house might have smelled sweetly of decay.
Enrico dips his finger into the one tank that has a skin of green algae on its surface. He holds it up in front of his left eye, and his lens magnifiers click as they cycle into place. “Chlorella,” he says.
“I—I’m growing my own protein supplement,” Costa says, again trying to enter the doorway.
“Stay over there.” I point across the room, and reluctantly, Costa retreats.
“What was it?” Enrico asks, stepping out of the grow room. “A sudden bloom and then a die-off? Chlorella can be tricky that way, especially if you don’t harvest it regularly. It takes a lot of know-how to get the growing medium balanced just right.”
Costa is sweating heavily again, his eyes fixed on me as I raise the analyzer and resume the search pattern Enrico had started.
“But tell me,” Enrico continues, “why seven vats for just the two of you? That’s a lot of protein—”
Costa’s eyes flick in Enrico’s direction.
“Oh, yeah; there’s supposed to be two of you here. You and your wife. What’s her name? Susan or . . .”
“Suzanna,” Her name barely squeezes through the constriction in Costa’s throat.
“That’s right,” Enrico says, as if he didn’t already know the answer. “She out in the garden?”
Costa winces at Enrico’s question.
I don’t like where this is going, so I clear my throat, hoping to divert my partner. We know Costa’s wife has been ill, even if her sealed medical records deny us any specifics. Costa is more than likely up to something illegal, but that doesn’t give us license to be cruel.
I turn my attention back to the climbing CO2 numbers on the analyzer. They peak near the bookcase, and then fall off as I move past it.
“Those analyzers are top of the line,” Enrico says conversationally. “Sensitive to carbon dioxide down to micromolar concentrations. It can detect a single exhale from a person without spongees.”
I’m not sure Costa heard him; his gaze is focused intently on what I am doing.
“Seven vats,” Enrico says again. “Did you know that’s almost exactly the amount of Chlorella that would be needed to scrub the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air of one person?”
I push against the bookcase and feel it wiggle.
“Please . . .” Costa says. His eyes shine wetly in the yellow light streaming in from the vat room.
My stomach tightens. I have an inkling of what I’m about to find, and I pray I am wrong. I push harder on the edge of the bookcase. Something clicks. The bookcase shifts and swings open on a set of concealed hinges.
My helmet lamp flickers on.
A scuffle breaks out as Enrico wrestles Costa against the wall and clips a neural restraint onto his forearm. The device saps the strength from Costa’s muscles, and he slumps to the floor, barely able to even sit upright.
The old man wails like a wounded animal. “Don’t hurt her! It’s not her fault!”
A woman sits on the floor pressed into the corner of what must have been a coat closet before the bookcase had been installed. Her legs, little more than skin and bones, splay awkwardly beneath her like twigs strewn onto the ground. The backs of her hands are covered with black pustules where her chloroplast nodules should have been. Her head slowly rises, and she fixes me with pitiful eyes too large for her face.
“The cancer,” Costa says. “Her body rejected the MOCs because of the cancer.”
I grip the edge of the bookcase; my head feels like it will float away. What cancer has done this? Is this a preview of Elena’s fate?
Enrico comes up next to me, his expression grim as he stares down at the husk cowering on the closet floor. “Seven-seven-three violation.”
Decades of inaction have driven atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations above five hundred parts per million. The world burns around us, caught in a positive feedback loop that threatens to run away. Net zero is no longer an option, and the direct air capture facilities cannot scrub fast enough. The Seven-seven-three mandate requires all humans to be modded to carbon zero because we have no wiggle room left between our survival and our extinction.
“Well?” Enrico asks.
I do not need to check the analyzer, but I do anyways. The readout flashes; CO2 levels in the hidden room are above the acceptable range. Clearly Enrico’s determination is correct, and yet, I hesitate, something I’ve never done before. For the first time in my career, I see, crumpled on the floor of that hidden room, something other than just a Seven-seven-three violation.
“I need your concurrence, Investigator Munich.”
The analyzer beeps as it finishes logging its evidence with Geneva.
Costa sobs against the wall behind me. Surely, he knows what my concurrence means. The mandate exists for a reason and leaves no room for compassion or exception. I can do nothing except what is required by my oath and the law.
“Yes, a Seven-seven-three.”
Before I have even finished speaking, Enrico draws his pistol.
I grab his arm and start to say something, but what case can I make?
My partner’s eyes narrow. “She’s dead anyways, and every breath she exhales is only killing the rest of us.”
“Can we just—”
Enrico fires.
My knees buckle. I stumble against the bookcase for support.
Enrico turns. “Caesar Costa, you are an accessory to the violation of International Mandate Seven-seven-three. Do you have any defense?”
Costa has stopped crying and stares blankly up at us. “I loved her.”
In my years as a field investigator, I have heard accessories offer many excuses, but none have risen to the level of a defense. I wonder now if this one should. Yet, I know it cannot. Not for Costa. Not for anyone, not even me.
I flinch as Enrico fires.
He holsters his pistol. “Our ride’s incoming.”
Enrico leaves the door open, allowing the reddish glow from the Agalhor fire to filter in through the smoke collecting in the room. The fire is only a few kilometers away, with the suppression walls the only thing left standing between this house’s survival and extinction. Even if it doesn’t burn down, will anyone want to live here after what we have done?
About the Author
D. Thomas Minton lives on the shore of a mountain lake in British Columbia, but still pines for the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. When not writing, he works as an aquatic biologist and helps communities conserve important fish habitat and the occasional coral reef. His short fiction has been published in Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and Apex Magazines, and his books can be found in most online bookstores. His idle ramblings hold court at dthomasminton.com.
Graphic: Adamant Press
Please visit LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the December 2023 issue, which also features work by Oyedotun Damilola Muees, Carlie St. George, Martin Cahill, Izzy Wasserstein, Adam-Troy Castro, A.T. Greenblatt, Andrea Kriz, and more. You can wait for this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $3.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.
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