(Painting by Sandy Lowder, Austin, Texas)

When the biosphere collapses, Earth does not die. It wakes up.

The Story

Dr. Sarah Chen exposes a failure in the metrics used to monitor planetary health. She confirms the biosphere is being artificially sustained rather than naturally functioning. Her investigation leads to Antarctica, where paleontologist Tom Bradley identifies the agent of collapse. Ancient, dormant organisms have awakened to terraform the Earth.

This transformation forces humanity into a collective consciousness. Sarah resists the merge to preserve the history of human individuality. Tom accepts the change. He disperses his consciousness into the planetary network to maintain a connection with her.

In a new reality where physics obeys mythology, Sarah and Tom reunite. They construct a sanctuary for extinct species and lost memories. They birth new entities that bridge the gap between existence and the void. Their work proves that singular love can shape a unified universe.

The Science Behind the Fiction

In Love in Eternal Gardens, Dr. Sarah Chen discovers that the Earth’s biosphere is a façade. The sensors report health, but the systems are dying. This plot point is not pure fantasy. It is based on the Biosphere Integrity Metric (BIM), a real-world framework proposed in my textbook, Biosphere Collapse, Available on Amazon.

The Broken Metric: Why Green Isn’t Enough

In the novel, the H.J. Andrews Forest appears lush and green to satellites. Yet Sarah calls it a “museum”. The plants are clones; the pollinators are drones.

This illustrates a critical flaw in current environmental monitoring. Global metrics often measure biomass (how much green stuff there is) or species counts. They do not measure function.

The textbook introduces the Trophic Integrity Index (TII) to solve this. The TII measures the efficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels—from plants to herbivores to predators. In the novel, the forest has high biomass but zero trophic integrity. The energy does not flow; the system is functionally dead. Sarah’s fictional discovery validates the theoretical need for the TII proposed in Appendix Two.

Trophic Cascades and the “Museum” Effect

The novel describes ecosystems that are “curated exhibits” rather than wild systems. This reflects the concept of Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) discussed in the textbook.

When humans co-opt too much energy (HANPP), the complex web of life unravels. The textbook argues that exceeding 35% appropriation puts us in a “high-risk zone”. Sarah’s world results from ignoring that boundary. The “museum forest” is the ultimate expression of a system where humans control the energy flow, leaving no room for natural resilience.

Chemistry of Extinction

Sarah’s dive in Singapore reveals an ocean where shells dissolve because of a “negative saturation state”. This dramatizes the threshold dynamics of Ocean Acidification described in the textbook. Real-world models show that once pH drops below specific thresholds, calcium carbonate dissolves faster than organisms can build it. The textbook warns that crossing these tipping points triggers irreversible state shifts. In the story, this shift happens overnight, turning the ocean into a “biological soup” of jellyfish and algae.

From Textbook to Novel

Biosphere Collapse provides the plan to save the living world. Love in Eternal Gardens is a simulation of what might happen if we don’t. The fiction explores the emotional reality of the data found in the textbook. Sarah Chen is the embodiment of the scientist who watches the Biosphere Integrity Metric fall to zero.

Excerpt

“Beautiful, right?” Marcus said. “Now look closer.”

Sarah knelt, examining the understory. The sword ferns were there, but wrong somehow. Too uniform. She pulled out her field scanner, running it across the fronds. The genetic diversity index flashed: 0.31.

“Clonal propagation,” she whispered. “They’re all from the same cultivar.”

“Planted in 2044 after the heat dome killed the native population. Same with the huckleberries, the Oregon grape, most of the moss species.” Marcus kicked at a log. No decomposers emerged from it. “We import soil fauna now. Release them every spring like stocking a pond with fish.”

Sarah stood, her mind racing through calculations. “But the spectral signatures would show—”

“Would show green vegetation with appropriate seasonal phenology. The satellites can’t detect that we’re manually pollinating half the flowering plants because the native bees are gone.” His voice grew harder. “Can’t see that we’re spraying pheromone analogues to maintain what’s left of the predator-prey dynamics. The BIM reads this as a functional forest. Know what we call it?”

She shook her head.

“The museum. We’re curators now, not ecologists.”

Product Details

Publisher: Coldwater Press.
Page Count: 162 pages.
ISBN: 9798275085884.

Dig Deeper: Explore the Ecology of the End

Is the science in Love in Eternal Gardens real? Download the complete novel and read the Postscript to explore the concepts of Biosphere Integrity, Trophic Cascades, and the very real proposals found in the companion textbook, Biosphere Collapse.