The Meltese Dodo

I was just getting into what should have been the cooling down side of one of those 100,000 year cycles. You know: Every year, you tilt your head a little farther away from the sun and feel that tingle as the ice inches down your neck, like a conspiracy of twelve-toed Plutonian creep-frogs.

It's okay. You start off as a fiery swirl of gas, and it seems like you barely cool down to molten rock before they bury you under ice. Then you get smacked with this heavy, humid tropical heat that makes you wish one of those dinosaurs or pterodactyls would hurry up and invent lemonade or iced coffee. Then it's another ice age.

You gotta have a split personality to do this job. It never quits, and there's nothing to be done about it. You spin on your axis, wobbling a little in my case (old Big Bang injury). Every now and then, you need a change, you reverse your magnetic polarity.

Then Evie rings through.

“There's a Homo sapiens here to see you.”

“A what? A customer?” I say, sighing.

“I think so,” she says, “but you'd want to see it, anyway. Nice-looking, know what I mean?”

“Well, all right, show 'em in.” I haven't been feeling great lately, think I may have a little fever. Wouldn't mind a day with a good book and my feet up on the desk. (I'm in the middle of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon – for the third time.) But I listen to everyone. Sometimes there's something that needs fixing and you happen to be the one that's meant to fix it.

So this species ambles in. And suddenly it's four degrees than it was a minute ago. (Or is that just me?) Holds out its hand. Opposable thumb. Ape family. But balancing on its hind legs, no tail and not much hair. Looks vaguely familiar. And yet, somehow, like something I've never seen before.

Introduces itself: Homo sapiens. One of those smoky voices: the kind of smoke you get when a field of night-blooming orchid cactus (Epiphyllum) catches fire at midnight on a new moon, or when a perfume factory burns down on the dark side of Venus.

Homo sapiens. The name echoes through my memory like a half-forgotten song that maybe brought a tear or a smile back in the day. Homo sapiens. Can't place it. But, look, when you're 4.6 billion years old, you're happy if you can remember what direction to orbit in.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

“I hope so.”

It's a long story, but the gist of it is this: There's this evil genius psycho mass serial killer – calls himself The Environment – who strikes out of nowhere, eventually murders 99.9% of all species with tsunamis, tidal waves, typhoons, diseases, droughts, famine, floods, heat waves, cold snaps, hurricanes, dust storms; and always eludes capture.

“Yeah. I know him. Masterminded that big hurricane down south. Rough customer.”

“Well, The Environment is back,” says HS. “Someone's been putting the heat on him, and he's coming after me for it.” And the species launches into this long string of “natural” disasters, homicidal weather, and freak occurrences that should happen once every million years or something, and now we're seeing them every other weekend, like clueless in-laws. And every time, coincidentally, Homo sapiens gets jacked up one way or another.

“Yeah? Well, that's the way the baby bounces.”

“You think I’m crazy. I thought I was going crazy, too. Then I got this note.”

Hands me something that looks like it's etched in stone, carved in wood, worn away by oceans, rivers and rains of untold ancient time:

I have the Meltese Dodo. Do not attempt to separate it from me. TE.

“So? What do you want me to do about it?”

“I need to get something on The Environment. Something that'll give me the upper hand.”

And I'm thinking – This one smells ... “You want to go up against The Environment?” … like methane meandering through melting Alaskan tundra. “And you want my help?”

“I have nowhere else to turn,” it begs, its eyes glistening.

Like a flaming flock of Mercurian mudslappers feasting on ringtailed rot-rats.

“Please!” it sobs.

Enough to curl your nose hairs into a bow-tie.

“You've got to help me.”

“All right, all right. Enough with the waterworks.”

“Thank you! Thank you! But, uh ... do you work alone?”

I can tell it's worried I can't handle this by myself, so I say, “No, I got a partner.”

“Because, The Environment is big. Real big.”

“Don't I know it. But my partner, they call him The Extinctor. You want to talk about coming out of nowhere? When this guy gets through with you, you'll have to hike a hundred light years just to get back to nowhere. We been working together since I could remember. Not a big talker. But a big doer.”

And all this time, I'm hearing a little voice – Watch yourself. This one could blow back on you like a Saturnian night special semi-automatic with a dirty slider and over-sized ammo jammed in backwards.

Then Homo sapiens reaches into its pocketbook and lays all this green on me.

“You going to call your partner?” it says.

“Gotta do some leg work first. Talk to some species.”

“Like ...?”

“Reliable sources. Life forms I've known for millions of years. On the down and dirty. Bacteria. Yeasts. Molds. Guys like that.”

It looks at me like I'm nuts.

“Perhaps,” I say, “you're not familiar with the work of Bonnie Bassler, the scientist who showed not only that almost all bacteria can communicate, but that they do, all the time? Real quiet, of course.”

“Really? But do they live long enough to actually have anything to talk about?”

“In Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, these dormant bacteria (Chryseobacterium greenlandensis) hauled up from two miles down in 120,000 year old ice have been revived. And bacteria can live in my permafrost for half a million years, and in my sediments, amber, and halite for millions of years.”

“I guess you would know.”

“I guess I would. Talk about an itch. Man! Now give me a couple centuries. I'll get back to you.”

“I don't think I have centuries,” it says, rubbing its jaw nervously.

I just look at it. I work on my schedule. Nobody hurries me.

“I've already let this go too long. Fifty years. We have to turn it around now. That's what the wise guys say. Otherwise ... I'm toast.”

I shove the green back at it. I'm pretty sure it's not going to pick it up.

It just looks at me. “See what you can do. Please.”

Big, sparkling, sad, intelligent eyes. Full of imagination, love, poetry. The kind of species you'd hate to lose. (Then again, I miss them big, bumbling, nutty brontosauruses, too.)

“Well ...”

“Please.”

And I'm thinking – Maybe that smell is just sweat. It's got plenty to sweat about.

“I'll come with you. I'll help.”

"I really appreciate that ..." like a swift kick in the South Pole ... “But, nah. Too dangerous. Besides, you’d just be in the way. Don't worry, though. I'll pound some pavement, see if I can kick up any dirt.”

===============

The Meltese Dodo follows our hardboiled hero through the history of global warming science, as told by an international cast of characters, including several different kinds of friendly bacteria, a yeast, a dust mite, a mold, a river, a gang of algae, a water flea, the sun and several planets.

As the gripping, gritty mystery unfolds, the reader learns about:

Joseph Fourier, who in the early 1800's first realized that it is the atmosphere that keeps the earth warm
William Herschel, who discovered infrared light
James Watt, who made improvements to the steam engine that helped trigger the Industrial Revolution
John Tyndall, who discovered the heat trapping properties of various gases, including carbon dioxide
Svante Arrhenius, who, in the late 1800's, first suggested that humans, by adding these gases to the atmosphere, could affect the climate
Guy Callendar, who, starting in the 1930's, fought for the disfavored idea that humans were affecting the climate by emitting carbon dioxide
Roger Revelle, who explained why the oceans would not absorb most of the carbon dioxide created by human activity

Right up to the stunning climax, revealing beyond a reasonable doubt who the culprit really is!