4. Uranus
It is a winter wonderland on Uranus!
For several months, The Scientist and The Magician have been hard at work terraforming the planet into a place worthy of its nickname “The Ice Giant.”
Initially, The Magician had been thrilled about visiting the coldest planet in the solar system; winter was his favourite season. He imagined dunes of glaciers, endless snowfalls, and exotic frozen structures.
But when they got there, all he saw was a boring, hazy planet with a featureless atmosphere. There was not a shard of ice in sight.
“Where’s all the ice… and the snow?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not the kind of ice you’re thinking of. It’s actually a hot slush-like fluid in the center of the planet called the mantle. It’s made of water, ammonia, and methane. We call these heavier molecules ice in astrophysics.”
“Oh… Is there snow at least?”
“It’s possible, but it would be methane snow, not like the snow we had on earth.”
“It’s better than nothing. So where is it?”
“Hmmm…. I’ve heard theories that the atmosphere of Uranus is too sluggish to circulate condensation. Instead, most of the icy methane is forming the haze which gives the planet its iconic pale blue colour. Doesn’t it look cool though?”
The Magician stared blankly at the anemic blue haze covering the planet. He went to his room and did not come out. The disappointment made him sink into depression. He barely left his room for the next few days (except for mealtimes).
Hoping to make her friend smile again, The Scientist set out on the most ambitious project of her life: The terraformation of Uranus.
She recalled everything she knew about the planet and wrote up an abstract: The reason Uranus is so cold is that most of its heat is trapped in its mantle. The mantle is made of immiscible layers that refuse to mix (like water and oil). These layers prevent thermal convection, thereby trapping heat in the mantle and preventing it from reaching the atmosphere. If convection could occur, heat flow from the mantle would cause more vertical activity in the atmosphere, disrupting the existing temperature gradients. This could potentially churn the atmosphere and even cause methane snowfalls by carrying methane-rich air into the upper layers. Ironically, the key to bringing winter on Uranus was making it warmer.
That was her theory at least. But The Scientist was willing to risk the fate of this strange planet on a theory, if it meant that there was even a tiny chance it could make The Magician smile. His insanity had rubbed off on her. Besides, warming up the atmosphere would help them explore the planet and search for The Garden.
To free the heat trapped in the mantle of the planet, that was the core question. It didn’t take so long to figure out the solution. One day she brought a cup of coffee to The Magician, hoping it would get him out of bed. He took one sip of the hot liquid and recoiled.
“Hey! Are you trying to burn my tongue off? Didn’t you hear that story about the lady who sued McDonalds? She won nearly $3 million, you know!”
The Scientist rolled her eyes and took the cup back. Instinctively, she started stirring the cup.
Eureka! That was it, stirring cools the liquid by speeding up convection: The heat from the liquid was simply being transferred to the air above it. The same effect could be achieved on a planetary scale.
So all they needed to do was stir the mantle of Uranus. How to go about stirring a planet?
Surprisingly, it was The Magician who gave her the answer one day. She was hunched over in front of a whiteboard where she had written “How to Stir Uranus” and started brainstorming half-baked ideas underneath. The Magician saw the board, chuckled to himself, and asked an astute question, “What stirs the oceans on earth?”
“The moon! You’re a genius,” she responded.
With that, The Scientist put on her engineer’s hat and got straight to work. She set up a station in the ship’s laboratory and gathered all the scrap material she could find: old electronics, salvage metal, and even any utensils she could spare from the kitchen.
One day the two were eating oatmeal for lunch. The Scientist looked at The Magician and put her index fingers together.
“Can I borrow your spoon?” she asked.
“What happened to yours?”
“I’m using it for a science experiment,” responded The Scientist, sticking her tongue out playfully.
The Magician sighed and handed her his spoon. She thanked him and started to eat. He watched her, his expression of stern patience slowly melting into incredulous restlessness.
“You eat so slowly. It’s crazy.”
Once she was done, The Scientist returned to her lab and continued on her project. Days went by and she barely left the lab. The Magician dropped by every couple of hours, bringing her coffee and teasing her by making silly figurines with the scraps of metal on her desk. One day, after weeks of blueprinting, wiring, hammering, and sawing she was ready to unveil her fantastic invention: The Moon-Maker 3000.
She showed it to The Magician, her eyes flushed with joy.
“What does it do?” he asked.
“It makes moons! It roams around space collecting meteoroids and pieces them together to create bigger structures. And once they’re big enough we’ll launch them into the orbit of Uranus. The additional tidal force exerted by these synthetic moons should cause the mantle to stir and increase convection, warming up the atmosphere.”
The Magician looked confused. The Scientist decided it would be easiest to just show him. She launched Moon-Maker 3000 into space and started controlling it through the software she had programmed on the ship’s computer.
Using a touchscreen joystick she moved Moon-Maker around space like Pac Man. She saw a meteoroid and carefully guided the device to it. Using the suckers in front of the device, the Moon-Maker gathered up the space-rock. She then moved it left, eyeing a small comet nearby. The Moon-Maker sucked up this second piece and merged it with the original meteoroid.
“It’s like a little space roomba,” explained The Scientist.
“Neat! How long do you think it will take to gather enough pieces to make a moon?”
“Hmmm… At the rate we are going now, I would say 3-4 days of work.”
“That’s not too bad I guess.”
“Well, that’s just for one moon. To exert a strong enough tidal force on the planet, we would need at least 17 new moons for Uranus!”
“Whew! I guess we gotta get to work.”
The two took turns gathering up comets and meteoroids. They made a game out of it, competing to see who could gather up more pieces. The Scientist programmed a score keeper in the control system’s UI to help them keep track.
“I bet you this chocolate bar you can’t get more than 400 comets in the next 10 minutes,” said The Magician, flashing a Kit-Kat bar in front of The Scientist’s eyes.
“Where did you get that?”
“Are you in or not?”
“Well what do you get if you win?”
“I get to use the spoon first today.”
“Ok deal.”
It went like this for several weeks. The two had so much fun with the project that they sometimes didn’t even remember what they were doing all this for. In fact, days would go by when they wouldn’t even think about The Garden at all.
Then finally, the day came.
“Oh, I see a piece over there. Go… slowly…carefully!” said The Scientist.
“Slow and Steady is my middle name.”
“Two middle names?”
“Yeah, a lot of people have two middle names.”
With that, The Magician scooped up the last piece of comet to build their seventeenth moon. The UI beeped a green light, signalling that the rock was now big enough to be a moon. Their hearts racing, the two brought the final moon into orbit of Uranus. They stuck it in orbit and held their breath, waiting for a planetary revolution.
They waited for minutes but nothing happened. The Scientist looked disappointed but not surprised. She flashed a weak smile at The Magician.
“What do you think went wrong?” he asked.
“Well, nothing’s wrong, technically. It just takes a long time for the changes to take effect. I guess in all my excitement I forgot to consider whether it would be a realistic timeline.”
“How long do you think?”
The Scientist sat down and crunched some numbers on the computer quickly.
“At least 10 million years,” she said.
“That’s a long wait. I’m glad I’m in good company.”
The Magician smiled at his friend. He was unfathomably grateful to her for going through all this trouble to make him happy.
The Scientist felt tears welling in her eyes. She had no idea what she was crying about, only that it was the good kind of crying. She stood up and put her hand on the control panel where The Magician’s hands were. She inched her hand over to his.
When their hands touched, it sent an electric shock through both of them. Not painful, just exhilarating.
But what they didn’t notice was that the electric shock had also transferred through the control panel. The UI went into a fritz, static buzzing on the screen. Out in space, the Moon-Maker was tweaking out, turning back and forth like a roomba machine stuck choosing between two big, delicious pieces of dust.
“Oh no! What’s going on with Moon-Maker?” said The Magician.
Suddenly, a shockwave emanated from the device. The blue circle of electricity hit a nearby moon, pushing it off orbit. The moon flew closer to Uranus, slowly at first but then faster and faster as it got sucked in by the gravity of the massive planet. The Scientist and The Magician watched helplessly as the troublemaker moon continued on its inevitable crash path towards the planet.
“Get down!” shouted The Scientist, seconds before impact.
The two crouched to the ground. When the moon crashed into Uranus it caused a mighty impact wave that reached Pegasus 3000. The ship shook and the two dared not get up to look out the window. But they heard the noise and felt the vibrations pass through the ground and their bodies.
After nearly a minute had passed, The Magician stood up carefully and looked out the window. He tapped The Scientist on the arm, pointing towards the planet.
They could make out a faint crater near the center of Uranus. The Scientist activated the ship’s camera and zoomed in closer to the zone of impact. In fact, there was a hole in the planet where the moon had passed through. Tidal waves rippled around the impact site, as the fluid mantle responded to the force of the collision.
The two continued staring without speaking, anxious to see what the consequence of their actions would be. The Scientist drove the ship closer into the atmosphere of the planet.
Minutes, maybe even hours passed without much happening. But gradually the two started to notice changes in the atmosphere. It seemed a bit more… alive. Clouds started to form in the light blue haze, and their movement made the appearance of the planet more animated. The two felt more at ease, seeing that the changes were mostly benign, at least for now.
But their jaws dropped at what happened next. Pieces of bright white particles started falling through the atmosphere. More waxy than powdery, they looked like tiny scoops of vanilla ice cream dropping through the sky.
“Methane snow…” said The Scientist, staring at her friend.
“You did it!” said The Magician.
“The impact must have disrupted the layers in the mantle, causing maximum convection,” said The Scientist.
The two smiled at one another before turning back to the window to admire the winter they had created on Uranus. The Scientist took out the Kit-Kat bar she had won earlier and broke off a piece for her companion. Then she went on the computer and pulled up an archived recording of a fireplace. The sound of gentle crackling filled the air as the two gazed at the white drops of methane snow filling the horizon.
After a while they fell into a trance. With their vision focused on the scene of marvel, it allowed their minds to roam freely. Memories are a mysterious thing: Despite the triumphant beauty of the moment, their minds couldn’t help but stumble into some old memories that they had both tried to forget:
The Scientist was the first one to snap out of her trance. She looked over at her magical companion and noticed a shade of darkness over his eyes.
She lightly tapped his shoulders and said, “Hey, are you ok?”
The Magician turned to her suddenly but did not seem startled. He stared intently at her for several seconds. Then he smiled, got up from his chairs and stretched his arms.
“I’m fine! Just lost track of time admiring the view, that’s all,” he said.
The Scientist wondered for a moment if she should tell him about her memories but decided against it. Why ruin the beautiful moment?
After a few minutes to catch their breath the two went to the storage room and put on their space suits. The planet was now just warm enough for their suits to function without freezing.
Without speaking much the two went to the docking door and opened the gates. With a smile and a nod of agreement, they took each other's hands and jumped off the ship into the atmosphere of Uranus.
As they fell, they felt free, like children running out of school on the first day of summer break. Methane snow fell gingerly onto their visors, welcoming them to this strange cold world. The winds rocked them gently and guided them in random directions.
After a while The Magician raised his hands and made a series of motions with his fingers, unbothered by the thick, clunky spacesuit. But the Scientist noticed that he moved slower than he usually did.
It wasn’t clear at first what his spell did, but after a while The Scientist looked down and noticed an icy bridge had formed below them. The methane snow was funneling down into this magical structure, expanding it evermore in both directions. Within minutes the two landed safely on the bridge of methane ice.
The two walked on the bridge which would take them around the planet, in search of The Cosmic Garden.
Noise pollution, light pollution,
City constellations
A constant feeling of
Never being home
A revolution in disguise,
A summer day that’s gone too fast
I left you without saying goodbye
But I never thought,
It’d be the last time
Clear distortion, something lovers
Dream of to pass the time
A summit of a mountain,
Underneath the bottom sea,
A memory returning,
Entropy receding,
Time is eluding
Everything I do
Gravity is making way
To a new kind of feeling,
The kind that feels like flying,
Even as you’re sinking.
New generation, new solutions
To the same old problems
Star-crossed lovers
Bending to the whim,
Of innovation,
Takes us for a another
Loop in the viscous
Circle of isolation.
Constant motion, lost emotions,
Something I can't say,
A rebel falling head
Over heels for the queen
A heartless romantic,
A clown without a smile,
I killed 3 men,
And blamed it on the moon
Your name is written
In everything I do,
That much I know is true.
