occurring beyond this generational horizon creates an imbalance that undermines long-term cooperation. In short, we as a species are motivated to betray our own descendants. In my view, the only possible solution is the institution of harsh and immediate punishments for those who would be unfaithful to the future.
It has been subsequently theorized that our species’ seeming inability to focus on long-term existential threats will inexorably lead to the destruction of our environment, overpopulation, and resource exhaustion. It is therefore not an uncommon belief among economists that this inborn deficit represents a sort of built-in timer for the self-destruction of human civilization.
Sadly, all the evidence of world history supports this theory.
And thus, despite well-known deadly high stakes, Project Eternal Vigilance suffered from endemic human shortsightedness. Over the years, the operational capacity of the program had been deferred, discounted, and diminished. And on this particular rainy morning, the project was on its last legs, barely functioning … but still viable.
At 16:24:32 UTC Colonel Hopper was seen on internal video, sitting at her desk with perfect posture. Her half-empty thermos of coffee rested atop a pile of equipment requisition forms that she must have known would be denied, and yet had forced herself to complete anyway.
A call came through.
Sliding on her headset, Hopper punched a button on her comm line, her monitors erupting into life.
“Vigilance One. Go ahead,” she said, speaking in the clipped tones of a lifelong data analyst.
The voice she heard had a distinct American accent, and she recognized it from her dwindling team of field operatives.
“This is Brasiliero. I’ve got something you’ll want to see.”
“Private channel is open, pending certificates.”
“Pushing through now.”
Tapping keys, Hopper granted the request.
All at once, the bank of four flat-panel monitors lining the front wall flared with data. Each monitor showed a discrete overhead view of the Amazon jungle: a basic unenhanced digital camera image; a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) map; an enhanced-color hyperspectral view of the canopy; and the minutely detailed gray-scale topography of synthetic aperture radar.
The drone footage was live, being generated in real time.
One by one, the eight analysts looked up at the front screens, pushing their chairs away from desks and murmuring to one another. Personalized workstations began to blink with ancillary data, information flowing to specialists according to their domain of control. Colonel Hopper stood.
In the dead center of every image stood something unexplainable.
It appeared to be a featureless block, curved slightly. It rose above the steaming expanse of jungle, laid directly across a river tributary. At its base, sluggish water flowed from underneath. Behind it, the blocked river had pooled into what looked like a giant mud puddle, flooding the surrounding jungle. The nearby trees and vegetation that hadn’t been swamped seemed frail and bent, dying.
“The anomaly is located on the descent trajectory of Heavenly Palace,” said Brasiliero, over the room speakers. “The Tiangong-1 space station was directly above—”
“Roger that, Brasiliero. That will be all for now,” replied Hopper, putting the connection on hold.
With a glance, Hopper checked the latitude and longitude. The anomaly was perfectly equatorial, with a line of zero degrees latitude to seven decimal points—a precision of approximately one yard. She added this observation to the incident notes. It was an odd detail, seemingly important, and yet catastrophically misleading.
Dale Sugarman, the senior signals intelligence analyst, stood up and turned to face Colonel Hopper, his headphones dangling around his neck. In five years, she had never seen the huge man demonstrate excitement about anything other than video games. Now, the senior airman’s shaky voice echoed sharply through the all-room speaker loop: “This data is impossible, ma’am. There are no roads, no airstrip, no way to build anything out there. Sensor error. I advise overhauling the drone. Send in—”
“‘Impossible’ is the wrong word, Airman,” said Hopper crisply, crossing her arms. A conviction crept into her voice as she continued, “What we are seeing is not impossible. It is simply an ultra-low-probability event.”
The room fell silent as the analysts considered her words.
There exists a certain class of event that can technically occur, yet is so incredibly unlikely that most laymen would consider it impossible. This false assumption is based on a rule of thumb called Borel’s fallacy: “Phenomena with extremely low probabilities effectively never happen in real life.”
Of course, the mathematician Émile Borel never said such a thing. Instead, he proposed a law of large numbers, demonstrating that given a universe of infinite size, every event with nonzero probability will eventually occur. Or put another way—with enough chances, anything that can happen will happen.
For the rare patient ones among us, the data-driven, those who are not afraid to delay gratification and save their dessert for last—these low-probability events aren’t inconceivable; they are inevitable.
Colonel Hopper was supremely patient, and as the world accelerated faster, she seemed to move more slowly. Indeed, she had been carefully selected by her predecessors for this particular ability.[fn1]
Fifteen years of toiling without reward or the promise of one, without encouragement, and often without even the respect of her colleagues—and Hopper had never once wavered in her commitment to the job.
And in this crucial moment, her persistence paid off in spectacular fashion.
COLONEL HOPPER FISHED out a thick binder from her top drawer and thumped it onto the desk. She was determined to make sure the rest of this encounter unfolded according to protocol. Using an old-fashioned letter opener, she tore through several seals to access the classified, laminated pages within. Although most emergency procedures were now automated, these instructions had been set down decades ago, and they called for a trained and capable human being to be in the loop every step of the way.
Pulling the headset mike closer to her lips, Hopper began issuing orders rapid-fire, with the certainty of an air-traffic controller.
“Brasiliero. Establish a thirty-mile circular quarantine zone with an epicenter at the anomaly. Pull that drone out of range immediately and land it at the perimeter. Once it’s down, don’t let anyone go near it.”
“Roger that, Vigilance One.”
Advanced computer models of the original Piedmont incident had indicated thirty miles as a minimum safe distance for airborne exposure. On screen, the real-time video shuddered and jerked as the Abutre-rei drone wheeled around and sped away in the other direction. After several seconds, the low-hanging nose camera had turned itself back one hundred and eighty degrees, and the anomaly reappeared on-screen, shrinking into the distance.
“Colonel, what does this thing have to do with us?” asked Sugarman in a quiet voice, his eyeglasses winking blue light from his workstation.
Hopper paused, then decided not to answer directly. Brasiliero’s earlier mention of the code name Heavenly Palace already represented a possible breach of classified information. Instead of responding, she moved to confirm the piece of information of most interest to Eternal Vigilance.
“Can you reconfirm that equatorial location?”
“It’s confirmed,” said Sugarman, hunching over his desk. “The anomaly is located on the exact equator, ma’am. Down to the centimeter, it looks like.”
Hopper took a deep, controlled breath. Aside from muted static, the room was utterly quiet. When Sugarman spoke, his voice was surprisingly loud.
“Why would an equatorial location matter?”
Hopper’s