65 million years ago, Earth, Tower Island
The Superlight Wave Power Station in the Tower Island region soared 180,000 kilometers into the sky. Since it was longer than the wavelength of the superlight waves, the energy it received was continuously injected deep into Tower Island's crust.
Over the decades, the Indian-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate collided and compressed against each other, raising the highest plateau and mountain peaks on Earth. The New Tethys Ocean underwent a massive marine regression, and its surface area continued to shrink.
The northern part of the Indian-Australian Plate at the southern end rose, while the land to its southeast, known as Mu Continent, slowly sank beneath the Pacific Ocean. The "pyramid" of various devices and batteries Tesla had stored on Mu Continent survived the impact intact.
With the batteries and equipment, the vast cavern on Tower Island became a workshop for Tesla, Maria, and the others. Maria crossbred algae collected from volcanic craters and the ice-crystal geysers on Europa, successfully cultivating a new generation of sulfur-resistant, barium-resistant cyanobacteria.
"Having you here is wonderful," Tesla told Maria. "Without these new cyanobacteria, Earth's oxygen would be depleted, and I'd go down in history as the sinner who destroyed the Solar System's habitable zone."
Abbott wasn't as optimistic as Tesla. "Maria, even if we can mass-produce these cyanobacteria and scatter them across every ocean on Earth, it'll probably take a long time for them to purify the water and turn the oxygen levels from a decline to an increase, won't it?"
Maria brought out the biological census data from after the impact disaster. The atmosphere had been murky for decades, the surface temperature had suddenly plummeted, and plants had died in droves. Nearly all large terrestrial vertebrates, including dinosaurs, had gone extinct.
Snakes and crocodiles, relatively small