OMEGA

The ongoing Climate crisis and the wars it triggered were sucking up most government money, and had wiped out most major investment funds as the middle class were burning their savings trying to maintain their lifestyles.

This was the new Heroic age of capitalism, where the only hope progress the small investor.

The Omega station was a hollow sphere. It was equipped with antimatter bombs that would destroy it should it ever cease to be a hollow sphere… because that would probably indicate that it had lost control of the black hole that was supposed to be in the center. With it’s orbital position between earth and Mars it could probably float for thousand of years as a naked black hole without posing any threat to humanity… But if it was forgotten by the powerful people with antimatter bombs it could destroy earth eventually. So Judy took comfort from the presence of the antimatter bomb that would kill her if anything went wrong. The whole point of the project was to allow human civilization to last forever so wiping out earth would be a very bad failure.

Judy floated into her office to lead the Video conference, ready to take questions after the video presentation of Joshua explaining the physics was done.

“Hawking assumed the creation of particles and Antiparticles at the edge of a black hole would evaporate the black hole due to Antiparticles canceling particles in the black hole as they fall in. Now we know this is not necessarily the case, because it follows from thermodynamics that follow from probability theory. Making unlikely things happen is what clever engineers do, and Judy is just one of the VERY clever engineers on this project . It is extremely difficult, but we can create hawking radiation while keeping the gravitational singularity stable. Energy. For all time. Always.”

“Today it seems less cost effective then fusion power… but once established it will keep generating energy, after the world has no more oil reserves for making rocket fuel or tritium to spark reactors. The world could fall into barbarism and cannibalism; and the omega station will keep pumping out electricity and sending royalty checks to your descendents”

A bunch of slick computer graphics explained how any number divided by infinity was equal to zero; and therefore zero multiplied by infinity could be any number. How you were multiplying mass by infinity when you accelerated it to the speed of light, and how thus it isn’t a logical contradiction to create something out of nothing by accelerating nothing to the speed of light. How it was possible to accelerate nothing with the help of black holes, but it would always be difficult because black holes were too dangerous to work with anywhere close to earth.

The Video ended and the potential investors asked their questions.

An african man in a hospital bed was first. “When will Omega corp start paying dividends?”

“ if everything goes right in 8 years. 10 years is more realistic in that construction projects on this scale always run into some sort of delay somewhere” Judy replied.

“So in 10 years my kids won’t be living hand to mouth, and neither will their children or their children’s children” he asked.

“That is the point. Energy forever, world without end”

The african man talked to someone outside of the Camera shot. “Do it! I consent! Hutus forever! World without end!” His feed went dead, and five shares of the new issue were purchased for the Rwassa family. A set of human organs would sell for enough to buy 4 and 6 shares on the black market. It was the Heroic age of capitalism; progress was relying on those who were prepared to sacrifice for a future they wouldn’t live to see.

Judy continued the investment information session glad none of the others forced her to see the nature of their hard choices. The capital would keep flowing.

She had to seek out Joshua after the video conference. She had faith in the project. She had hope for the future. But the greatest of the three was Love, and he was the only one on the station that could give her the love she needed that cleared her mind. Love in zero gravity was interesting…

“I feel like I’ve been sending people to their deaths for this project my whole life” Judy complained

“I sometimes wonder what makes me, me. If it’s the idea’s in my mind… I can honestly say “I” was working on this projects since before I was born because the ideas that make me up have been dancing around for a millenia or two now. That could explain why we’re both so tired” Joshua replied in the afterglow.

In 3 weeks the black hole was placed so the station had gravity. In 3 months it was producing electricity. In the 5 months they could return to earth with the rest of the human crew. And let the electricity produced pay off all the company's business loans.

On Earth, people were still stabbing each other over crusts of bread. Utopia isn’t built over night. But the electricity flowed. 

If wicked men were in a land of unlimited resources, they could still make it a misery with their wickedness. But maybe now that resources were unlimited people could learn to be good? Judy held on to Joshua tightly. They were born into a world of limited resources and bad men. They were an engineer and a physicist, not priests. She couldn’t see any way they could make people better, freeing them from scarcity had to be enough for her and Joshua, at least for this life.