The station and beanstalk were previously under the thrall of impressively high-order physics that kept them where they were supposed to be, at an altitude they should not have possibly been at, constructed in a manner that should not have sufficed. This physical legerdemain was powered literally by the earth itself, from a deep well of geothermal energy punched into the skin of the planet, which took extra effort to reach from Nairobi, situated more than a mile above sea level.

Without this nearly inexhaustible draw of power, the station reverted to life under conventional physics. This spelled doom for it, and for the beanstalk it fed on, a doom that was designed as minutely and purposefully as the station itself.

Its doom was designed to do two things. One, to protect the planet below (and, depending, space above) from falling chunks of a space station 1.8 kilometers in diameter, as well as several hundred kilometers of beanstalk. Two, to keep the secrets of the technology from falling into the hands of Earthlings. The two goals dovetailed into a single solution.

The beanstalk did not fall. It was designed not to fall. The energy formerly devoted to keeping it whole and structurally sound was rapidly and irrevocably committed to another task entirely: tearing it apart. Hundreds of kilometers above the surface of the planet, the strands of the beanstalk began to unwind at the molecular level, becoming minute particles of metallic dust. The waste heat generated expanded gases released by the process, puffing the dust into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Air patterns and turbulence in the lower reaches of the atmosphere did the same task farther down. The people of Nairobi looked up to see the beanstalk smearing itself into the sky, pushed by prevailing winds like charcoals rubbed by a frenetic artist.

It would take six hours for the beanstalk to evaporate. Its particulate matter treated East Africa to gorgeous sunsets for a week and the world to a year of temperatures one one-hundreth of a degree Celsius cooler than they would have been otherwise.

Earth Station, damaged and cut away from its power source, began the process of killing itself in an organized fashion before its rotational energy could do it chaotically. Resigned as it was to its own death, the station powered up its emergency energy sources, which would keep the now sealed-off segments of the station warm and breathable for approximately two hours, more than enough time to get the remaining people on the station to the escape pods, which now showed themselves by way of pathed lighting and an automated voice system, directing the trapped and desperate to them. On the outside of the station, panels blew off, exposing the hulls of the escape pods to space, making it easy for them to launch once they were filled.