What might have turned Lani Kopek, a renowned scientist and trusted member of Thorea's elite, into a mass murderer? It's an interesting story which those of us now living under progressively more authoritarian regimes can relate to. Unlike most people, however, Kopek was presented with a singular opportunity to change the course of his world's history, and he may well have decided to take it. Yet, it's not the 'How?' which is so interesting, it's the 'Why?'.
Kopek had married well! Cathrina, his companion of twenty years, came from the same elite he now called, 'friends'. She was wealthy, thanks to the legacies of her deceased parents, independent of spirit and a political anarchist. Quite why she would want to rebel against the class which had conferred such blessings upon her, Kopek could never understand. His diary recorded numerous occasions in the early years of their relationship, during which he and she had almost come to blows about some new bureaucratic excess or that; but that he loved her was never in doubt. The project he was working on had consumed him, to the exclusion of everything else, for teh last sixteen years. He had drifted away from her. Their communications had become trivial, and they no longer argued over politics. He accepted the change in their relationship without the slightest suspicion that she'd become convinced that their communications were being monitored by the very people he worked for. Even had he known, it's doubtful he would have said or done anything about it!
To be fair, Lani Kopek's rise to prominence was largely due to his own efforts. In truth, he had little in common with the ruling oligarchy, who's claim to society's 'high ground' derived more from their entering the world through the right birth canal than possessing any real talent. He was the chief designer of Thorea's planetary defense system. It was not a weapon of war. It had been constructed to protect against the possibility of a collision with a rogue asteroid.
Thorea is the second planet from the star we know as Procyon - a binary star. Procyon A is spectral type 'F5', is 1.4 times the mass, twice the diameter and 7.5 times more luminous than Earth's sun. Procyon B is a white dwarf. Procyon A is bright for its spectral class, suggesting it's a sub-giant (Click to see the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram) which has completely fused its core hydrogen into helium, and begun to expand. In time - ten to one hundred million years - it will grow to encompass Thorea. Far more threatening was the vast asteroid belt from which a chunk of interplanetary rock was launched every once in a while.
After a meteor, the size of a Winnebago, had destroyed several hundred blocks in one of Thorea's largest cities - Kalsa - two decades earlier,the government had finally embraced Kopek's proposal for the construction of an early warning outpost on a desolate planetoid called Kasta Gufa [this phrase translates as 'Intercept One']. Under his proposal, if an 
asteroid was found to be moving on a collision course with Thorea, ships stationed on 'Intercept One' would convey Ion drives and solid propellant engines (SPE's) to it. Depending on the rotation of the asteroid, about its center of gravity, one or more of these SPE's, mounted on gimbals, would be attached to the asteroid's surface. When fired, their thrust, directed in the opposite direction to the existing rotation of the asteroid, would arrest its spin [see Fig. 1]. Of course, this feat was not as simple as the original project proposal had claimed it would be. Asteroids do not behave like a perfectly thrown football - rotating at ninety degrees to their direction of travel. Collisions with other asteroids remove large flakes of rock, changing their center of gravity. Even a glancing blow can impart a violent combination of roll, pitch and yaw to their motion, as well as deflecting them from their original trajectory. On the plus side, a true 'Planet Killer' tends to rotate slowly - even though that rotation might still be chaotic - since its greater mass renders it less likely to be perturbed by brushes with less massive asteroids. In every case, however, it was time consuming to position the ships close enough to attach the SPE's, without risking collision, and many adjustments would have to made, in all probabilty, to gradually stabilize the asteroid. Once this was achieved, one or more SPE's would be fired, again, long enough to induce a spin at right angles to the trajectory the asteroid had assumed once it was stable. This was done to make the asteroid easier to control. The Ion drives attached to the front or rear of the asteroid would now be started. By applying additional control thrusts from the SPE's as needed, a deflection of a degree per day could be achieved, while the Ion drives increased or decreased the asteroid's velocity. This might seem strange, at first glance - making it move faster. Surely, it would be better just to slow it down? Not so! Celestial mechanics is a lot more complicated!
Thorea moves along its orbital path at around 96,256.3 kilometers per hour [Earth's orbital velocity is 107,000 km/h]. Its diameter is 11,987.62 kilometers [Earth's is 12,756.32]. It moves a distance of one planetary diameter along its orbit in 7.472 earth minutes [Earth travels one planetary diameter in 7.15 minutes]. If the orbital position of Thorea and the approaching asteroid were on the same side of Procyon [Fig. 2], all that would be required to prevent a collision - should one be likely, given the present trajectory of the asteroid - would be to make the asteroid intersect Thorea's orbit, say, a day later [roughly 1,320 earth minutes] than it would have done if left to its own devices. By that time, Thorea would have moved 2.117 million kilometers further along its orbital path. A comfortable miss! The minimum safe distance, at which the asteroid's passing would have little or no effect on Thorea's atmosphere and magnetosphere, had been calculated at thirty thousand kilometers! Therefore, the asteroid would really only need to be delayed by less than 30 earth minutes over a period of eighteen months or more, which was the time it would take for the asteroid to travel from the asteroid belt to Thorea's orbit.
If, on the other hand, the asteroid 
was on one side of Procyon and Thorea on the opposite side [Fig. 3], it would be reasonable not to attempt to delay the asteroid's arrival at Thorea's orbit.
Once it was clear that a collision would not occur - or no longer occur - the asteroid would be steered above or below Thorea's ecliptic plane, ensuring that it would leave the solar system altogether. Of course, there were many other possible scenarios: for instance, where Thorea and the asteroid were on the same side of Procyon, but Thorea was trailing the asteroid, it might be prudent to accelerate the asteroid, while steering it clear of Thorea's ecliptic plane.
Whatever the chosen solution, Kopek's team were engaged in a game of 'celestial' snooker, where both balls were in high speed, but predictable, motion and the object of the exercise was to simply prevent one ball from hitting the other. It's just the stakes were higher if they miscalculated!
To provide total protection, Kopek pushed for three more observation platforms, to be placed in orbit around Procyon at the same distance from Thorea as was 'Intercept One'. The government agreed to build two more. They were to be unmanned, because of budget constraints. These outposts were designated 'Watcher' 'One' and 'Two' [see Fig. 4]. 
Under the revised plan, each of the three bases would be responsible for monitoring one third of the asteroid belt as they, themselves, slowly orbited 'Procyon', while the ships needed to transport the Ion drives and SPE's would travel from 'Intercept One' to wherever the asteroid happened to be. Kopek's concerns were dismissed by his superiors and many of his peers, who insisted that, since an approaching asteroid would take more than a year and a half to reach Thorea's orbit after having been initially detected - assuming it was approaching from the same side of Thorea's orbit as Thorea was presently on - the protection afforded by the system was 'good enough'.
There was, however, one serious problem with such a configuration: because the three bases would orbit Procyon at one hundred and twenty degrees from each other, one or other of them would be obscured, occasionally, by Thorea, Rea, the first planet, and Procyon's corona [which is why Kopek had suggested 'four']. Additional satellites had to be placed in orbit between 'Intercept One' and the 'Watchers' [Fig. 4] so the obscured outpost could continue to maintain communications with the other two. This added complication meant that the re-designed communications network had proved to be more difficult to establish than originally anticipated. It was while this work was being completed that Kopek, who regularly spoke with Cathrina while he was away, lost contact with her when the video link between Thorea and 'Intercept One' failed after a massive solar flare erupted. When the disturbance had passed and communications were restored, Kopek was puzzled to find that Cathrina was no longer returning his calls.
Back on Thorea, several weeks later, he let himself in through the security cordon surrounding his home and opened the front door. The house had a musty smell. Dirty dishes in the sink had grown mold colonies, food had spoiled in the cooler, the furniture in the main room had been pushed aside or was lying on its side and the beds were unmade. He noticed the 'messages' light on the call answering machine was flashing. He played the messages. They were all from him.
Fearing someone had broken into the house, a frantic Kopek broke every speed limit on his way to the local security building, after his call to them had solicited no response. The desk officer was deliberately unhelpful - at least, Kopek thought so - answering each question with a 'Yes' or a 'No' as Kopek posed them. 'No, Cathrina hadn't been reported as missing. No, she hadn't been admitted to a hospital. No, she hadn't used her credit cards, recently, to buy food, pay bills, or book a vacation'. Though Cathrina's personal file in the vast database the government had set up to hold every fact on every citizen flagged her as having been arrested, for some reason best known to himself the officer omitted to inform Kopek of this fact.
Confused and hurt, Kopek's first thought was that his companion had left him for a secret lover. He upbraided himself for being so distant; for putting his work before his relationship. How could he imagine she'd be content with sitting quietly at home, waiting for him to return? A week later, he learned the truth. He learned it in the worst possible way! The report of her arrest was included in a weekly Newscast his home recorder had been programmed to capture - by him, as it happened - which he'd used in the past to catch up with world events after he'd returned from one of his trips.
The news anchor - a sneering, sycophantic little toad of a man - reported that Cathrina had been arrested and placed in a holding camp to await trial. Kopek's hands shook as he selected the next news broadcast from the play list. The same reporter announced that she'd been tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The timestamp of both of these reports coincided with the week long communications 'blackout' between Thorea and 'Intercept One'. Her crime? She'd published the minutes of a meeting held at the Office of Interior Management [Bureau of Land Management] on the Thorea equivalent of the Internet. They contained clear evidence that the Chief Minister [President], using a combination of blackmail and fraud, now owned half of the ore rich lands on the entire planet. The report did not censure the Chief Minister. It merely protested the fact that he'd not seen fit to share his 'good fortune' with the other members of his cabinet.
Kopek was beside himself! He vowed he would take revenge on the entire government, but he knew in his heart he was too scared of it to actually do anything! Somehow, over the coming days, he managed to put this act of betrayal to the back of his mind. In the weeks and months to come, he would smile at official dinner parties, exchange pleasantries with ministers and their aids, and even accept an invitation to vacation on a yacht belonging to the Head of the Science Directorate. A year after Cathrina's death, he was nominated to receive the highest honor the government could bestow on him. The entire time he stood at the podium, thanking the very people who had killed his companion for their generosity and support, he'd wanted to scream her name out loud! He'd wanted to shame them before the entire world. But he hadn't. He'd turned his rage inwards and thrown himself into his work. A month after the presentation of the award, he was on 'Intercept One' supervising the system test which marked the final phase of the project. The testing went well, and Kopek returned to Thorea a few days later to complete his 'signoff' report.
Time hung heavy for Lani Kopek. Absent the constant calls the project had made on his time, he became morose and even more introverted. He'd had few friends before he and Cathrina had moved in together. Over the last decade and a half, he'd lost track of almost all of them. Those he could locate were in permanent relationships, themselves. He agreed to visit one friend and his companion for a few days, but found the experience too much to cope with. Their deep affection for one another caused the pain of his loss to re-surface. Feeling like an intruder, as he caught them smiling at one another, or stealing the occasional kiss, he'd left the day after he'd arrived. Months later, he received a call from the Department of Education. A teaching post had opened up at one of Thorea's state owned, state run universities. Kopek reluctantly accepted the position.
He proved to be an adequate teacher, was well respected by the faculty and revered by many of his students. Over the next several years, many of them would go on to replace members of the original 'Intercept One' crew. For his part, Kopek, now in his middle years, had resigned himself to being alone for the rest of his life and achieving, upon his death, historical obscurity. To be forgotten over time was not to be his reward alone. The Chief Minister had died long ago, mourned only by those he'd enriched through his fraudulent schemes. The Minister of Justice, who'd overseen Cathrina's trial and subsequent execution, had died shortly after. Kopek's hatred of them, and all they'd stood for, should have passed with them, yet, he felt no easing of his pain; nor could he take comfort from the fact that her death had achieved anything. Fresh faces occupied the highest levels of the government, but their 'new and innovative' policies were proving to be, as expected, little more than minor cosmetic changes to the long standing, totalitarian tradition they had inherited.
It was the day after Kopek's fifty-second birthday that a small blip on 'Intercept One's' long range detector caught the eye of one of the operators. The target had recently moved clear of the asteroid belt, having been kicked free by a collision with another asteroid, in all probability. The system had flagged it as a possible rogue. Its track suggested an eventual intersect with Thorea's orbit. No one panicked. No one thought it necessary to inform the government. There was sound reasoning behind this decision. There had been several false alarms over the years. The government, which had promptly instituted price controls and widespread curfews, had looked incompetent. Their actions had precipitated a widespread panic among the population. The scientists involved had found themselves transferred to a polar research base, never to be heard of again. And, so, the operators checked the display each day, ran a track projection, and logged it. The asteroid was, by this time, three months away from the imaginary line in the sand which had been called, by popular vote, the 'Kopek Line'. Once the asteroid crossed that line, it would be slightly more than eight months away from intersecting Thorea's orbit.
A full survey was ordered to establish its exact size, mass and composition. The projection of its trajectory confirmed that it would intersect Thorea's orbit, but would pass, harmlessly, more than fifty-one planetary diameters [or 611,368.62 kilometers] behind the planet. It was decided to treat this event as an exercise. As a courtesy, the Minister of Science offered Kopek the chance to watch the event unfold from 'Intercept One'. Kopek knew in his heart that the privilege being accorded him was nothing but an all too transparent attempt by the new rulers to establish their right to govern by acknowledging the instigator of one of the few, universally supported initiatives ever implemented by their predecessors.
The sun was shinning brightly as Kopek was 'wheeled out' in front of a large crowd of cheering citizens. The anthem was played. Speeches were given - some of them lasting an hour, or more. The crowd cheered, mindlessly bearing witness as the reins of power were passed from one generation of 'Devine Leaders' to the next.
Several days later, Kopek arrived, to a standing ovation, on 'Intercept One'. The current Director of Operations vacated his seat in the control center, escorted Kopek to it, and patted him on the shoulder as he sat down. According to the operational schedule, two transport ships and their engineers would be dispatched in one week's time to stabilize the asteroid and steer it clear of the plane of the ecliptic. On the suggestion of the Director of Operations, Lani Kopek, himself, checked the program code before and after it was loaded into the SPE and Ion drive controllers. Once these units had been placed on board the ships, Kopek, arm in arm with the Director of Operations, made his way through a hastily formed 'honor guard' to seal their cargo bay hatches.
Nine weeks later, still on 'Intercept One', Kopek received confirmation from the Director of Operations that the asteroid's rotation had been arrested and the Ion drives installed. The asteroid crossed the 'Kopek Line' a week later and 'Intercept One' took over navigational control of the asteroid that very same day. Thorea was now passing through its Autumn Equinox. 'Intercept One' was communicating with the SPE and Ion drive controllers attached to the asteroid through the satellite network. As Kopek's original testing of the system had shown, this circuitous route introduced a perceptible time delay, but it was nothing the system couldn't compensate for. 'Watcher One' was relaying telemetry reports, hourly, which confirmed the asteroid, as predicted, was on track to clear the plane of the ecliptic in seven month's time. Though Thorea had never been threatened, the government declared, with considerable fanfare, that Thorea had been saved by its foresight and dedication to the wellbeing of all of Thorea. It also declared an additional public, but unpaid, holiday! Kopek's name was not mentioned.
The following week, 'Intercept One' lost contact with 'Watcher One'. The operations team worked for several days to reestablish communications, but nothing they tried worked. A meeting was convened to decide what to do. Should they dispatch a repair team from 'Intercept One' to 'Watcher One' to investigate? Perhaps a team should be sent to check the three satellites deployed between 'Intercept One' and 'Watcher One', just in case the problem lay with one of them? Both of these missions would take weeks to complete. 'Intercept One', on the other hand, would be in a position to make direct contact with the asteroid in the same time period. The last report had confirmed that all was going as planned. It was agreed that no action would be taken.
As 'Intercept One' moved around its orbit to a position where it could communicate with the asteroid directly, it became clear that, far from deflecting the asteroid from its original track and pushing it clear of the ecliptic, the Ion drives and SPE's had steered it onto a path which would result in a direct hit on Thorea. The operators reviewed the data from 'Watcher One'. It seemed to be in order and the hash counts were correct - indicating the transmissions had been free of errors. Meetings were held, many of which turned into shouting matches, presided over by a strangely distant Kopek. Ships were sent from 'Intercept One' to the asteroid, but it was a pointless exercise. By the time they reached it, there was insufficient time remaining to deflect it from its path and too few spare Ion drives available to slow it down. [Technical Note: Ion drives do not produce explosive thrust. They provide a gradual acceleration over a long time period. Their principal advantages are their low fuel consumption and an ability to operate for a long period.] One of the crewmen who'd served with Kopek during the initial project build was heard to bemoan the fact that the Chief Minister who'd rejected Kopek's proposal - that each of the bases be equipped with transport ships and engineers to man them - was not there to see the results of his niggardly decision.
Even though it was still many months away, nothing short of a miracle could save Thorea from the impending Extinction Level Event. 'Intercept One' and the 'Kopek Line' had been its only defense. There were no missiles to be launched against the asteroid, because the government did not possess any. Its sovereignty was global. There had been no opposition to it, worthy of the name, for almost a century. Communications between Thorea and 'Intercept One' were shut down the moment the news was sent to the Science Directorate. A security lockdown was imposed to prevent the crew from leaving. The government invoked a long standing and well concealed survival plan when the asteroid was a few weeks out, relocating themselves, together with their families and thousands of their wealthy cronies, to several well stocked underground bunkers. The crew on 'Intercept One' eventually persuaded the security personal to disregard their orders. All of them returned to Thorea to be with their loved ones until the end came. Planet-wide panic erupted shortly after they arrived back on Thorea.
Lani Kopek was alone on 'Intercept One' when the thirty kilometer wide asteroid impacted Thorea's southern hemisphere. He watched, impassively, as his world was reduced to ashes.
Extract from Lani Kopek's Diary: "... My eyes have been opened. There is nothing to see. We live our lives in darkness. The simple joys of living have been denied to us. Our world has been raped and disfigured. Our people have been poisoned. Our humanity has been crushed. Greed has become the highest quality we can aspire to. Violence and brutality are its protectors. Hypocrisy and lies have greater currency than honesty and truth. A person may claim to love his family while he murders the families of others, and no one will challenge him. He may claim to prize honor above all while he engages in dishonorable actions, and no one will challenge him. He may pray to the Creator, in the Temple, while he serves 'Evil' outside the Temple, yet he will go unchallenged. How can the Creator ignore these things? How can He bear to watch the people suffer and do nothing? How can He do nothing while that which He created is destroyed? We have been abandoned."
[There is a break lasting fifteen seconds, during which Kopek can be heard weeping.]
"Can a lifetime of good thoughts and deeds expunge a single act of evil? Perhaps, the Creator is not so easily fooled? Millions who are about to die are innocent, yet my spirit cares not. It cries out for revenge..."
[Long pause, during which the terror-stricken voice of someone on Thorea (possibly one of the former crew members) can be heard trying to contact the base.]
"From the deep void, the Creator has dispatched an emissary of death. The time of judgment approaches for me.... For us all."
[End of recording.]
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Conclusions: It is not possible, from the contents of Lani Kopek's diary, to establish whether or not he loaded a modified program code into the SPE and Ion drive controllers prior to their being placed on board the transport ships: a code designed to steer the asteroid towards a collision with Thorea, while reporting to 'Watcher One' that everything was normal. It is not possible to ascertain whether the program code running in the computers on 'Watcher One' was changed in some way, so it failed to report the asteroid's deviation from its intended path, perhaps by embedding an update in the session keep alive messages 'Intercept One' sent to them, every five seconds, to ensure the communication pathway remained open. It is not possible to conclude whether or not, when it came down to it, Kopek's design was simply flawed. Whatever the true cause of the disaster, there can be no doubt that Lani Kopek's final diary entry contained the last words spoken by any living Thorean. If it wasn't an accident, we hope his Creator can forgive him.
Postscript: Kopek's diary was recovered six centuries after the impact by a group of Norvezine scientists, who had traveled to Procyon to investigate the cause of a sudden and violent change in the star's spectral and gravitational profile. Thorea is, only now, beginning to emerge from its 'nuclear winter'. We do not know if life, of any kind, survived.
