The E Utopia Project

by Kudakwashe Muzira

  She put on her breathing machine, fitted her dog with its breathing machine and led the animal to the porch. Cuddling the dog, she crawled on the floor, looking at the moon and the stars. When she was a little girl, she used to think that God lived on the moon and when she looked at the moon, she thought she saw a monochrome image of God sitting on His throne. The moon and the stars looked exactly the same as they did when she was a little girl. They appeared indifferent to the disaster that was facing the Earth and its inhabitants. Sara wondered whether the moon was also experiencing temperature changes. She watched the stars till she fell asleep.

  She woke up in the middle of the night, shivering. Snoopy was curled up close to her. Temperatures plummeted during the night. It seemed as if the cold nights and the hot days belonged to two different seasons.

  Rubbing her goose-pimpled arms, she led the dog back into the house and took off their breathing machines. The dog curled up in his basket and she went to bed.

  Sleep recaptured Sara when she began to feel warm.

  She woke up to the chime of the alarm and mechanically went about her toilette. After feeding her dog, she had a cup of tea with leftovers from dinner. She savored her tea, knowing that tea would soon be a thing of the past. The UN, following recommendations from the Food and Agriculture Organization, had passed a resolution encouraging member states to ban the cultivation of non-food crops like tobacco and food crops with little nutritional value like tea and coffee. The world was facing a severe food crisis and people couldn’t afford to waste resources growing crops that only satisfied tastes.

  After putting on a white pair of trousers and a white T-shirt, she took Snoopy outside and fitted him with his breathing machine.

  “Bye, Snoopy,” she said with a wave of her left hand.

  She walked for ten meters before she put on her breathing machine. She had only walked for four hundred meters when she came across two policemen. Both cops had nasal cannulas.

  “Ma’am, can you please take off your breather?” one of the patrolmen asked.

  Sara took off her breathing machine and the policemen looked at her face and compared it to the pictures on the front and back of her T-shirt. The police made random roadblocks, arresting those without ID pictures on their clothes and fining those whose ID pictures were smaller than life-size.

  “Oh my God,” one of the officers said, his face breaking into a grin. “My wife won’t believe this! It’s you, Doctor Sara Cummings, the Director of GEMA! It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Sorry for stopping you. This is just a routine check. You should use cannulas to avoid the inconvenience of being stopped by cops.”

  “Cannulas make me feel uncomfortable,” she said with a shudder. She had tried nasal cannulas and they had made her nose bleed.

  “Miss Cummings!” the other officer shrieked like a groupie. “Thank you for everything that you’re doing to save the world.”

  “We’re all trying to save the world, sir,” Sara said, feeling the burden of responsibility increasing on her shoulders. These two cops, like millions of people around the world, had faith in her but she didn’t have the slightest idea how the world could be saved from El Monstruo.

  She put on her breathing machine and left the mesmerized cops. The machine did not only provide her with oxygen but also covered her face from the public. Without the breathing machine, she wouldn’t have been able to walk in the streets without being mobbed by fans and reporters. Now that environmental stories were making more headlines than military confrontations, Sara’s face was just as recognizable as that of the UN Secretary-General.

  She looked at her watch and purposefully strode to her office. Although she knew she would most likely spend her working day in vain attempts to end El Monstruo, she liked to arrive at work on time.

  She met Nzue at the entrance. The Gabonese looked excited.

  “Good morning, Sara.”

  “Morning, Nzue,” Sara replied. She had long stopped using the word good when she greeted people. Good mornings, good afternoons, good evenings and good nights were a thing of the past. Now the days and nights were all blighted by El Monstruo. Each passing second drew the world closer to a catastrophic end.

  “Do you know that as we speak, rain is falling outside the equatorial belt in three different continents?” Nzue asked.

  “Now I know,” Sara said blandly, reluctant to share Nzue’s delight. “When did the rain start?”

  They entered an elevator and Nzue pressed button number seven.

  “Heavy showers have been pounding parts of China’s Guangdong Province for more than twenty minutes, light showers have been falling in Johannesburg for more than an hour and moderate showers have been drenching Buenos Ares for at least twenty-five minutes. This could mean something, Sara. This could be the turning point we have been all waiting for.”

  “I will only be delighted when there’s an increase in oxygen levels and an increase in atmospheric pressure. This global drought is only a symptom. The real problem is the decline in atmospheric oxygen levels and the resultant decline in atmospheric pressure.”

  “Still, the rain will bring some relief to humans and animals,” Nzue said, refusing to let Sara dampen his mood. “The rains will also have a positive effect on oxygen levels. Grass will grow, trees and bushes will shoot and their leaves will release oxygen during the day.”

  The elevator stopped and they walked onto the seventh floor.

  “Apart from the rains, there’s heavy cloud cover over parts of Zambia, Indonesia, Syria and Mexico.”

  “The rains are a very welcome relief,” Sara said.

  “I hope this means the beginning of the end of El Monstruo.”

  “I don’t think El Monstruo will end before oxygen levels return to normal. We’ve got to find out where our oxygen is going. I hope we won’t find out when it’s too late.”

  “We must keep on trying.”

  “Despite Wong’s skepticism, I’m still holding onto my theory about an extraterrestrial factor,” Sara said, clenching her right fist defiantly.

  “You could be right, Sara.”

  “This problem goes way beyond mankind’s pollution and degradation of the environment. I don’t buy the volcano theory one bit. I’m going to spend a lot of time looking at satellite images. I might pick up something.”

  “You never know,” Nzue said thoughtfully. “But I think that if the cause of El Monstruo could be picked up by satellites, someone would have found it already.”

  “I thought about that too, but I think we must keep on looking at satellite images. Everyone is preoccupied with reducing pollution and looking for oxygen-sucking volcanoes. Maybe no one is looking outside the Earth for solutions.”

  She went to her office and opened the document that she had named Summit 8 Speech. The blank page only stared at her for a minute before she accepted its challenge and began to type. She finished the first draft in less than twenty minutes and paged Nzue.

  The Gabonese took no time coming to Sara’s office.

  “I sent you a copy of the first draft of my speech. I want you to look at it and proof-read it. If you think there is anything that needs improvement, let me know. You can bring me your recommendations tomorrow.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Nzue, honestly speaking, what do you think of my theory about an extraterrestrial factor?”

  “It’s a revolutionary theory. I don’t know, Sara. You could be onto something. Perhaps El Monstruo is not of our own making. But if the problem is not man-made, then what is the cause?”

  “I believe a space force will provide an answer to that question,” Sara said with a sigh. “I hope I’ll be able to convince the world’s superpowers to create a space force to patrol the space above our atmosphere and look out for external breaches.”

  “Did you get anything unusual from satellite images?”

  “No,” Sara muttered, shaking her head. “For days, I’ve been going through images from satellites but I’ve pic
ked nothing unusual.”

  “The idea of aliens is a hard sell. World leaders will only believe you if you show them satellite images of UFOs entering the Earth’s atmosphere.”

  “I’ll keep on going over satellite images. With luck I might pick up something.”

  “I’ll also do the same,” Nzue offered. “Together we have a better chance of finding something.”

  Wong burst into the office, carrying his tablet in his left hand. “What’s the document you sent me?”

  “It’s the first draft of my UN speech,” Sara replied. “I want your constructive input.”

  “Here is my constructive input.” Wong cleared his throat. “Don’t make a fool of yourself. You’ll make us all look like idiots. GEMA will lose the respect of world leaders if you tell them that you believe that an alien race is stealing our oxygen. Can’t you see you’re trying to create an imaginary scapegoat? You must not distract the world with your theory. We need to be focused. We won’t solve this problem by creating make-believe extraterrestrial enemies.”

  Sara turned to Nzue. “Go to your office and send a circular ordering all our officers to look at satellite images.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nzue said on his way out.

  Wong snorted. “What satellite images?”

  “I want them to look at all available satellite images of the Earth. You never know. They might spot something.”

  Wong snickered. “Something like aliens entering the Earth’s atmosphere to steal our oxygen? Listen to yourself, Sara. You’re beginning to sound like a very imaginative ten-year-old.”

  “I know I sound crazy.” Sara closed her eyes and sighed. “I’ve tried rational but rational isn’t working… maybe crazy will do. Maybe it’ll take one crazy idea to solve this El Monstruo mystery.”

  “Sara, do yourself a favor. Forget this nonsense about aliens and UFOs. Apart from NASA and ESA, there are six major privately owned satellite imagery companies with fleets of Earth observation satellites capable of resolving objects on the Earth as small as forty centimeters and you’re telling me that all these satellites somehow missed your aliens? The aliens will need big fleets of gigantic vessels to steal enough oxygen to cause El Monstruo.”

  “Wong, I know you’re making sense, but something tells me that we’re past the point of using common sense.”

  Wong folded his hands. “I hate to see you making a fool of yourself in front of the world.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Wong… worry about the billions of people on this planet.”

  “I’m worrying about them. We, as GEMA, should be looking for ways to save them but you, our esteemed director, want to take us on a wild goose chase.”

  “I’m not closing the door on other lines of thought, Wong. Keep brainstorming, talk to our experts and our field officers. If you come up with anything new, let me know and I’ll include it in my UN speech.”

  “Sara, please forget about—”

  “Satellite data and data from our drones indicate that all governments are complying with the UN resolution to reduce pollution and rehabilitate forests,” Sara interrupted. “The extraction and use of petroleum and coal has decreased by more than eighty percent. Tree logging has been halted. We’ve more than four hundred and eighty sand reduction plants in the world right now and many more are under construction. We’ve dozens of standalone ultraviolet laser plants worldwide and dozens are under construction. Yet all these measures haven’t arrested the decline in the atmosphere’s oxygen content. Can you give me a rational theory that can explain the incessant disappearance of oxygen from the atmosphere?”

  “A reducing agent in volcanic lava.”

  “Where’s one such volcano, Wong? The volcano theory is just as unproven as my extraterrestrial theory.”

  “Yes, nobody knows where the volcanoes are located.” Wong bent down and put his hands on Sara’s desk. “But at least we know that volcanoes do exist. There’s no evidence to prove the existence of extraterrestrial creatures. Aliens only exist in science fiction.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, both theories are unproven and deserve equal consideration.”

  Wong tutted. “There’s no clear-cut evidence to support the volcano theory. But that is not an excuse for you to destroy GEMA’s credibility by talking to world leaders about aliens. World leaders accepted all your recommendations since the crisis started. You will rise in the echelons of power if you avoid making a fool of yourself at international forums.”

  “Wong, this is not the time to think about gaining political power… this is time to think about saving the world. All politics will end when the world ends.”

  “Suit yourself, Sara,” Wong said on his way out.

  Sara opened her computer and looked at livestreams from Earth observation satellites. All satellite imagery companies with Earth observation satellites provided free interactive real-time images to GEMA. Most of the sky above the Earth was cloudless. There was heavy cloud cover over China’s Guangdong Province and over Rio de Janeiro, but the clouds in Johannesburg were clearing. There were still some belts of green at the equator but they were only a third of what they were four years ago. She had spent the better part of the last four working days looking at satellite images but she had found nothing that she could use in the fight against El Monstruo.

  Chapter Two

  A fleet of ten spaceships travelled toward Earth in V-formation. The ships were called Oxygen Harvesters but they were known to their crew as milkmaids. The fleet was called Harvesting Fleet 4 or HF4.

  In the flagship, Captain First Grade Satini Sopoaga, the fleet’s commanding officer, swum in zero gravity toward the main bridge that was located amidships. If there was one thing he liked about being a spaceman, it was zero gravity. It made him feel like a bird. When he was two meters away from the bridge, he switched on his gravity shoes and dropped to the spaceship’s floor. Gravity shoes had electromagnets and they were made in such a way that only the electromagnet of one shoe was on at one time. When the shoe with the ‘off’ electromagnet stepped onto the floor, sensors on its sole switched on its electromagnet. At that very same instant, the shoe sent an infrared impulse that switched off the electromagnet of the other shoe, enabling the user to easily lift the trailing foot from the floor. It goes without saying that the spaceship’s floor was made of an iron alloy.

  Half of the ship’s crew used gravity shoes whilst the other half preferred gravity belts. Gravity belts were electromagnetic belts that pulled their users toward the ship’s floor. Gravity belts allowed their users to walk with a more normal gait than gravity shoes. The main disadvantage of gravity shoes was the inconvenience of occasionally pulling the wrong foot. After standing for a while one forgot which shoe was on and sometimes tried to lift the foot with the ‘on’ shoe. The shoes had lights which indicated which shoe was on, but more often than not, when people took their first steps, they forgot to look at the lights. However, some astronauts preferred gravity shoes to gravity belts because the belts felt heavy and uncomfortable around their waists.

  Captain First Grade Sopoaga switched his ship’s communication system to inter-ship mode and addressed the captains of the ships of HF4. “Attention all captains. We’re now entering orbit. As soon as we enter orbit we’ll decelerate and let the Earth’s gravity drag us into the stratosphere. When we enter the stratosphere we’ll split into two squadrons. The first squadron will have me, OH05, OH03, OH17 and OH20. The other squadron will be under the command of Captain Eemeli Hyvönen.”

  All the captains of the ships acknowledged receiving the commanding officer’s message.

  The ships entered orbit, switched of their main engines and switched on their retrorockets. They slowed down till the Earth’s gravity pulled them toward the Earth. They switched off their retrorockets and descended in free fall for five seconds before they switched on the main engines. Under the thrust of their engines and the Earth’s gravitational pull, they accelerated toward the atmosphere. The thrust of the eng
ines was at an angle that increased the horizontal speed of the ships with respect to the Earth’s surface, which helped reduce the vertical speed of the ships toward the Earth, lessening the impact of entry into the atmosphere.

  The spacecraft entered the Earth’s atmosphere in international airspace above the Indian Ocean and continued their descent. They entered the stratosphere at a point roughly equidistant from the Mozambican cost and Australia’s West Coast.

  “From here we shall travel in stealth mode till we finish milking. I wish you a good milking. Sopoaga out.”

  “Copy that, sir,” the captains of all the ships said one by one.

  Sopoaga switched his ship’s comm system back to intra-ship mode. “Switch off our communications and put us in stealth mode,” he ordered the crew.

  The ship’s XO, astrogator and engineer flipped switches and moved levers, turning off the long-range communications and putting the ship into stealth mode.

  All ships turned off their long-range communications, leaving only their collision avoidance systems and an encrypted short-range radio communication that only covered a radius of seven kilometers. This short-range communication was necessary for the ships to communicate with each other when they were in stealth mode. The spaceships used their long-range cellular communication system to communicate with Eureka, their only space station in the Solar System.

  The fleet split into two squadrons. Four ships sailed behind Captain First Grade Sopoaga’s ship and the other four followed Captain Second Grade Hyvönen’s ship. Sopoaga turned his ship fifteen degrees to his right and Hyvönen turned his ship fifteen degrees to his left such that the trajectories of the two ships made a thirty-degree angle at the point of intersection.

  Sopoaga guided his ship, OH64, along a trajectory that was somewhat parallel to the Earth’s surface. The ships behind OH64 followed suit. Using only enough engine power to resist gravity and atmospheric drag, the ships sailed in circles of three-kilometer radius. As they moved, they opened air valves at two-minute intervals, taking air into inlet tanks. From the inlet tanks, the air was taken into adsorber vessels via blowers. In the adsorber vessels, oxygen was extracted from the air by vacuum swing adsorption process. The oxygen was then compressed into storage tanks that occupied more than half of the volume of the ships, and the exhaust gases were released back into the atmosphere. When they started the milking operation, they milked at an altitude of sixty thousand feet but now they milked at altitudes below forty-five thousand feet because oxygen was too sparse at higher altitudes.