11.16. UKGeoScan head office; Cambridge.
Dr Brian McLean's busy fingers typed out a series of complex instructions: Finishing, he tapped the enter key with a final emphatic jab and waited for the powerful mainframe connected with his terminal to process his commands. It didn't take long for the request to be completed and the data returned.
The results startled the geologist. Never before had he seen anything like it. On his monitor a map of south-east England was displayed, upon which was superimposed a diagonal slash running from Kent northwestward towards London; it was the well-known minor intraplate fault underlying the area which produced weak earthquakes from time to time. Rendered in a scale of vivid colours it showed the electrical potential of the ground as measured by a newly installed experimental array of deeply buried resistivity sensors.
To a lay person the data would be meaningless, but to McLean what he saw shocked him - no, scared him shitless. If the readings were correct, and he hoped they were wrong, the piezoelectrical signals indicated the tectonic forces were building rapidly again along the underground fissure; the squeezing of the fault being reflected in the increased potential. Put simply, the risk of a significant earthquake was growing.
But it wasn't only the strain building on the known feature which alarmed him, Mclean suspected pressure was being transferred to the fault from a deeper rift laying far below the Kentish fracture, beyond the detector array's range. Just as a champagne cork contained the carbonated gases held within a shaken bottle, so a triggering of the upper fault would remove the restraint preventing a far greater force from being loosed. And just as uncorking a gaseous bottle, the energy would be released abruptly.
Brian felt impelled to act on these findings, but first he needed to absolutely sure of his facts; he ran the programme again, only this time changing a few of the variables and excluding some of the more spurious measurements. Then he conducted a further series of calibration and diagnostic exercises. Despite some expected differences in the detail, the results came back much the same as before.
McClean called over to his colleague Michael Wilson, who was also in the office.
"Hey Mike, can you take a look at this please?"
"What's up?" replied Wilson, walking over to the terminal.
Quickly Brian summarised his observations and hypothesis. Michael pondered for a moment.
"I'm not convinced." he said. "There could be any number of reasons for what we're seeing; the most obvious being the electroseismic aftereffects of the previous tremor there. Or it might be a case of electrical earthing into the soil; don't forget there's quite a lot of construction and ground disturbance activity going on in the area, not to mention those exploratory fracking drillings, any one of those factors could explain it."
"Well explain this!" McLean retorted, his swift keystrokes and mouse clicks bringing up another image. "This was the same area a week before the last 'quake; this the day before, and this nine hours prior to the event.
"Yes, but it's easy to spot things in retrospect..."
"Now let's run the model into the future. What do you see now?"
Wilson watched as new branches of false coloured stress began radiating from the fault; the branchlike tendrils spreading into the Kent Downs and as far as St Mary's Bay on the coast.
"Whoa there!" Wilson exclaimed. "You know as well as I that correlation does not equal causation. At a guess, and this is a pure gut reaction, I'd say you were dealing with a model artifact. It can't cope with the data because its not had a long enough baseline to work with. The algorithms are extrapolating an incomplete dataset and presenting outliers as the mean. They're adding two and two together but coming up with five, or in this case several thousand. That or it's being swamped with too much poor quality data as a result of the event and can't discriminate what's real from the background noise. If you were to aggregate everything you'd be bound to arrive at an apocalyptic outcome."
"And if you're wrong?..." McLean asked. "We might be ignoring an early warning of a future disaster."
"No Brian, I don't think so. The Deep Scan network we were able to install recently was only half of what we originally asked for so we're nowhere near getting the resolution we wanted, and it being so new we're still working through the teething problems. No one's going to take you seriously based on what you have at the moment; let alone if you go running around shouting the sky is about to fall in on us. There's nothing you can do with this at present, so let things settle down for a while; take a longer term view of it and see where it leads. When our Deep Focus programme gets underway in a few months we'll have a far clearer idea of the underlying structure of the area and then see if your theory about there being a hidden thrust fault lying deeper below the one we can detect holds any water."
"And in the meantime?" sighed McLean. "What if there is a blind fault there which causes a major mass casualty 'quake soon? Or what if the Deep Focus budget is cut again, as I fear it might be. What do we do then?"
"You show the world the data you've saved in the meantime and shout loudly you told them so; then smugly collect any panic grants they throw at the problem."
"But that won't help the victims; it'll be too late for them by then."
"You won't be doing them, yourself, your career, or your family any favours by running off half-cocked." countered Wilson. "Frankly I think you'd be better off lying low for a while; particularly given the attention you've been attracting."
"News travels quickly, eh?"
"Yes. Peter Currie is seething you sent your paper to the Cabinet Office; even if it was done in your own name and not under the aegis of GeoScan. It's a good thing we're completely detached from the government now or the Director would have been leaned on to dismiss you. As it was he got a call from Downing Street that made his ears burn. He wasn't best pleased..."
"I know; he personally told me so."
"And if it hadn't been for all hands being needed on deck to process the data from yesterday's 'quake you'd have been starting an enforced leave - sabbatical - call it what you want while they worked out what to do with you. Thank your lucky stars that we can't do without you at the moment! I know you haven't actually done anything wrong, but there are conventions - ways of behaviour - which should be followed. For God's sake stop ruffling feathers; especially when you're dealing with a vindictive wanker like Stuart Pullman; he's bad news which will only get worse if he ever becomes Prime Minister. Just let it be for now; if you're right you'll be vindicated in due course. Hopefully Pullman will forget about you in a few days and go picking on another disadvantaged group instead."
"OK! I get the message! As usual you're making a lot of sense. Thanks Mike."
As Wilson drifted away to tend a large scale printer creating yet another chart of the previous quake's effects. McLean pondered what he should do. These days to step out of line or blow the whistle was to take an enormous risk; one which could have serious implications for his future career and his family's financial security: Such a decision was not to be taken lightly.
In the meantime Brian copied the data to his personal cloud service, as well as the keychain memory device he always kept with him. If his worst fears were proved to be correct and the event he dreaded actually occurred, he would most likely be set up to be the fall guy, for it is easier to shoot the messenger rather than take heed of their bad tidings. But Brian McLean had no intention of being cast as anyone's scapegoat.
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14.36. UKGeoScan.
By mid afternoon Brian McLean had run the most recent sets of ground resistivity data through his predictive computer model. With each new analysis the outcome became visibly worse in terms of certainty an event would occur, its likely magnitude, and timing now no longer reckoned in years or months in advance, but days at the most.
Brian felt a gnawing sense of dread and impending doom, along with the growing conviction he couldn't keep this knowledge to himself. The public had the right to know, but how could he warn them without ruining his career in the process? After some consideration an idea came to him: There might be a way which entailed relatively little risk on his part and would be certain to get the word out. After checking no nearby inquiring colleagues were overlooking his activity, McLean began composing an email.
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and then Add to home screen.