The E Utopia Project

by Kudakwashe Muzira

  The Executive Council of the IGM invited Yamaha and fourteen members of the Sendai branch of the Green Party of Japan to the IGM’s headquarters in New York. Yamaha and his comrades had a long meeting with the Executive Council.

  Of the fifteen members of the Sendai branch of the Green Party of Japan, only three refused to enter what Sam Cruz called the most decisive stage of the war to save the world’s flora and fauna from mankind’s selfishness and carelessness. The thirteen who remained, were taken to space and shown the space view of the Earth. They were immediately sent to E Utopia for training and orientation.

  Rupeni Cokanauto, the ship’s astrogator, came from Fiji. His people did not use surnames but he had given himself the surname Cokanauto because having a surname was the norm in the westernized world. He joined the Front for the Salvation of the Pacific Islands when his eight-year-old brother drowned after he was swept away by a monstrous king tide the size of which had never been seen before. When the incident happened, Cokanauto was on vacation from the Fijian capital, Suva, where he worked as an electrician. One second, Cokanauto was watching his young brother kick a ball and the next, the little boy had been swallowed by the king tide. The boy had been playing on land that had previously been demarcated as safe ground. Cokanauto dove into the sea in search of his brother, but after five minutes of blindly swimming against the tide, he realized he was fighting a losing battle. The little boy’s body was never found.

  The king tides advanced into the village. People had to leave their homes in boats and those without boats had to build rafts. The village had to move further inland because sea water had rendered the land too salty for growing crops. Cokanauto’s village became one of the first villages in the world to permanently relocate because of rising sea levels.

  The world had caused the climate change that had killed his brother and destroyed the livelihoods of his people. Cokanauto knew that sooner or later the rising ocean would reach his village’s new home. Now he had an opportunity to create a better world for his family and to punish the people of the world for killing his brother and threatening his homeland with inundation.

  “Sir,” Commander Nuate called out to Captain Sopoaga. “We’ll be entering the jump zone in the next one thousand seconds.”

  Sopoaga switched on his gravity shoes and dropped to the floor. He scampered to the bridge and hailed the captains of the ships of the first squadron of Harvesting Fleet 4.

  “We’ll be entering the jump zone in the next nine hundred and forty-eight seconds,” he announced. “Get your jump drives ready.”

  All captains acknowledged receiving the order.

  “Get our jump drive ready,” Sopoaga ordered Nuate.

  “Yes, sir,” Commander Nuate said before she began flipping switches on the jump drive’s interface.

  “We’re now hundred seconds from the jump,” Sopoaga announced to all the captains.

  The ships jump countdown timers were synchronized with that of the flagship. When the timers reached zero, their jump drives were automatically activated. The five ships synchronously jumped.

  The jump always reminded Sopoaga of the underground bridge that he passed on his way to aviation school in Australia. One moment the bus would be travelling in an open road and the next it would be travelling in a dark tunnel. The drive under the tunnel lasted just over two minutes, whereas the jump took more than thirty minutes. There were shops and apartment blocks on one side of the underground bridge and on the other side of the bridge was a green open space, which made Sopoaga feel as if the underground bridge had magically transported him into another world. The jump made him feel the same. When they came out of hyperspace, they were welcomed by the sight of many stars which looked like fireworks that had been frozen in time. They could see more stars when they were in the Luz Cruz system than they could when they were in the Solar System. They emerged from hyperspace four hundred thousand kilometers away from an extrasolar gas giant that they called Fuel Ball because its atmosphere was rich in the heavy hydrogen which they used as fuel. The base was located in high orbit of Fuel Ball.

  Sopoaga looked at the multi-function display and saw the other four ships behind the flagship.

  “Check the fuel levels,” he ordered his engineer.

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Yamaha said, rushing to the secondary bridge. He switched on the fuel console and checked the fuel in the ship’s six engines.

  “The fuel level is at nineteen point eight percent. More than enough to take us to Base.”

  Sopoaga switched the ship’s communication system to inter-ship mode. “Captain First Grade Sopoaga to all captains. If anyone of you has insufficient fuel to reach Base, let me know and I’ll ask Base to send us a fuel tanker.”

  All captains reported that they had enough fuel to get to the base.

  Sopoaga went to his sleeping cell, leaving Nuate in charge of OH64. He trusted Nuate to safely con the flagship on the three-hour journey to Base. He lay on his bed, wishing he could bring Nuate with him to the bed. He was bored and wanted something to spice his life. Bedding the sexy Nigerian was the only thing he could think of. There were very few women among the E Utopia pioneers. The Council had promised to bring more women when E Utopia became habitable. Sopoaga and his fleet had been involved in oxygen-harvesting for almost four years and he didn’t know how many more trips it would take to harvest enough oxygen to make E Utopia habitable. Now there were over forty fleets of Oxygen Harvesters and every day, at least six fleets harvested oxygen from the Earth’s atmosphere. The Council and the admiralty preferred to use small fleets of Oxygen Harvesters to reduce the risk of detection by earthlings.

  The base was located in high orbit of Fuel Ball. Nuate asked for and was granted clearance to dock at the base. When the fleet of five ships arrived at Base, Commander Nuate rang an alarm to wake Captain Sopoaga. The Polynesian immediately woke up and walked to the bridge.

  “Thanks, Nuate,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  “It was my pleasure, sir.”

  He switched the comm system to inter-ship mode and addressed the four captains of the ships in his fleet. “Congratulations for a successful milking trip. You’re dismissed upon docking. Be ready to come to work on short notice.”

  All the ships docked. The dock was cut off from the base’s air supply, so the crew had to put on their spacesuits before they got out of the ships.

  Sopoaga looked at Nuate’s bulging breasts for one last time before he went to his bunker and put on his spacesuit. All the crew quickly put on their spacesuits and entered the ship’s airlock. They waited for the ship’s compressors to suck back into the ship the air that had escaped into the airlock when the internal hatch was opened. Apart from minimizing air loss, the process of depressurizing the airlock compartment helped the crew to acclimatize to space conditions, preventing decompression sickness when the crew walked out of the airlock. When the ship’s main computer determined that there was no air left in the airlock, the airlock’s external hatches opened and the crew walked onto the dock.

  The men and women of Harvesting Fleet 4 walked to one of the many airlocks doors on the base and the scanners on the doors scanned their irises and finger prints before the doors opened and admitted them into the airlock. Inside the airlock, they underwent DNA scans before they were admitted inside the base. Anyone who failed the DNA scan would be locked in the airlock.

  The dispatch team immediately began transferring liquid oxygen from the Oxygen Harvesters to a supertanker that would transport it to E Utopia. Supertankers were probably the largest spaceships ever made. Each supertanker had the capacity to carry cargo offloaded from ten Oxygen Harvesters.

  Sopoaga took off his spacesuit and scooted straight to the base commander’s office for a debriefing. On the way he exchanged salutes with several junior officers. The majority of the people at the base were engineers and Oxygen Harvester crews. Only around three thousand five hundred people could be at the base at a time because of the base
’s limited air supply. Air management was critical and the admiralty tightly controlled traffic to and from the base in order to regulate the base’s population.

  The base was more or less an elliptical prism whose bottom surface was roughly the size of forty football pitches. The oxygen levels and the composition of the air at the base were controlled by a life support system that comprised several oxygenators. The food that nourished the base came from E Utopia and when the bodies of the base’s inhabitants burnt the food, they used up the base’s oxygen, producing carbon dioxide and water. To maintain the equilibrium, the life support system at the base split the carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. The carbon and the excess water were shipped back to E Utopia. The life support system also removed acetone and ammonium, which people and animals produce in minute quantities.

  Some of E Utopia’s scientists had argued that it was better to split the excess water into hydrogen and oxygen using solar-powered electrolysis plants and then combine the hydrogen and waste carbon to make methane, which could then be dumped into space. The scientists argued that transporting carbon and excess water back to E Utopia was a waste of ship space. The Executive Council did not agree with this school of thought. If the excess water and carbon waste were not returned back to E Utopia the amount of water and carbon on the planet would diminish, which was tantamount to going against the Executive Council’s principles. The Executive Council was so obsessed with conservation that even the human waste was incinerated and returned to E Utopia.

  The base commander’s office was located at the centre of the base. Sopoaga knocked and the base commander answered. He entered the four-meter-by-four-meter office, saluted and stood at attention.

  “Sit down, Sopoaga,” said the base commander, Vice Admiral Andrew Frankson, a stocky Negro ex-marine, with a face that always had a hint of a frown.

  “Thank you, sir,” Sopoaga said, taking a chair opposite the base commander. Sopoaga’s chair was much lower than the vice admiral’s chair. It was obvious that the differences in the height of the chairs served to remind those who sat on the lower chair that the vice admiral was in charge.

  “How was your milking trip?”

  “Perfect, sir. Everything went on smoothly.”

  “You and your men have earned yourselves a two-day leave.” Although they were far away from Earth, they measured their time in Earth days, seconds, hours and minutes. “Report for work the day after tomorrow at seven a.m. Base time. You are dismissed, Captain First Grade Sopoaga.”

  “Thank you, sir. Can I ask something, sir?”

  “Yes, Sopoaga. At ease.”

  Sopoaga relaxed. “How long do you think we’ll continue with oxygen-harvesting before E Utopia becomes fully habitable?”

  “The Council thinks it will take at least a year.”

  “The longer we take the greater the danger of the Earth’s powers finding out what is happening.”

  “You’re right about that, Sopoaga. The Council is cognizant of that fact. The President ordered an increase in the rate of manufacture of Oxygen Harvesters to speed up the process.” Andrew Frankson sighed, looking at Sopoaga. The base commander was grateful for the conversation. His job was a lonely job. He lived at the base with junior officers who were too awed to have small talk with him. “We have been entering the Earth’s atmosphere without resistance from the Earth’s powers and we want it to continue that way until we finish our mission.”

  “Sir, what do you think will happen first, the end of life on Earth or the attainment of an optimum atmosphere on E Utopia,” Sopoaga said, thinking about his friends and family on Earth. The Council had promised every E Utopia pioneer free passage to E Utopia of one hundred relatives and friends. Sopoaga, like all his comrades in the E Utopia pioneer force, had already made a list of those he was going to save.

  Frankson bit his lip, thinking about his beloved ones on Earth. “E Utopia is slightly bigger than Earth, which means that we need to milk Earth’s atmosphere for as long as oxygen concentrations there are high enough for our milkmaids to fill their tanks within a reasonable amount of time. I think life on Earth will end before we can have an optimal atmosphere on E Utopia.”

  “I heard that they’re constructing more oxygenation plants on Earth. Won’t the plants prolong life on Earth?” Sopoaga asked.

  The base commander shook his shining bald head. “They won’t build the plants fast enough to replace the oxygen we’re taking. You know how Earth’s governments are. They’ve got too much bureaucracy even in times of crisis. Besides, El Monstruo caused a worldwide recession. Most governments are cash-strapped.”

  “Are there enough ships to evacuate the loved ones of pioneers to E Utopia?” Sopoaga whispered, thinking about his parents, brothers and sister, the five people at the top of the hundred people he wanted evacuated to E Utopia.

  “There are enough ships. We’ll begin the evacuation before the situation becomes critical. Your family and friends will be safe, Sopoaga.”

  “Thanks for the assurance, sir. I can’t wait to see my loved ones breathing E Utopian fresh air.” Sopoaga sighed. “You know, sir, when the Council first briefed me about The E Utopia Project, I was skeptical. I didn’t believe that we could suffocate Earth.”

  “Me too,” Vice Admiral Frankson said. “When the Council first told me about the plan, I didn’t think it was feasible. But when Hitchcook explained to me that one liter of liquid oxygen occupies a volume of more than seven hundred and ninety-nine liters as a gas at STP, I realized that the plan could be feasible. By taking one liter of liquid oxygen, we were taking away oxygen that was found in almost four thousand liters of pre- El Monstruo air at STP.”

  “That was a very ingenious plan,” Sopoaga said, feeling much better. If the Council could orchestrate such a daring plan to steal Earth’s oxygen, he couldn’t see them failing in the simple task of evacuating his family to E Utopia. “It was nice talking to you, sir.”

  Frankson nodded.

  Sopoaga saluted and left for his quarters.

  Vice Admiral Frankson sighed wondering how this whole thing was going to end. He was a soldier and he had been involved in many dangerous operations during his time in the marines. The E Utopia Project was the most dangerous operation he had ever taken part in. Although he didn’t face any immediate danger, he knew that humanity could face extinction if the pioneers failed to carry out their plan.

  He came from Manchester, a neighborhood located in Houston’s east side, which had the unenviable distinction of being the most polluted neighborhood in the city. Capitalists had setup oil refineries right next to Manchester and they wantonly churned out smoke into the neighborhood as if the residents were pests whom they wanted to gas out of the area. The situation was so bad that most of the people had a form of sickness that could be attributed to the pollution. Many people complained of respiratory ailments, nosebleeds, sore throats, chronic headaches and skin sores. The incidence of asthma among children in Frankson’s neighborhood was much higher than in the rest of the United States.

  Frankson and his friends campaigned against the pollution but nobody listened to them save for a few journalists who were looking for stories. Those who could afford to pay rents elsewhere left the neighborhood but most of the residents simply couldn’t afford to move.

  Frankson founded the People against Pollution movement and campaigned tirelessly against the industries that were pouring carcinogens and other toxins into the neighborhood. He had joined the marines and fought for his country, he paid his taxes and he was a law-abiding citizen. He couldn’t understand why his country was treating him like that.

  At first he thought that this was purely a case of discrimination against ethnic minorities. The population of the neighborhood was predominantly Hispanic and African American. Many residents of Manchester regarded this as a case of ethnic cleansing. But the more Frankson looked at the matter was the more he began to see it less as a racial issue. Negroes and Hispanics worked in the oil compani
es even though they knew that the companies were pouring toxins into the homes of fellow Negroes and fellow Hispanics. The country even had a black president for eight years but he did nothing to help the black residents of Manchester.

  People, whether black or white, were the same. They cared more about making profits and getting jobs than they cared about the environment. The ruling class only cared about pleasing the capitalists who funded their election campaigns. Frankson found it ironic that the very same government that sent him to the Middle East to kill people for their oil didn’t care whether he was gassed to death at home in the name of oil.

  Although he knew that he and his organization were fighting a lost cause, Frankson continued campaigning. His noise reached the IGM, which offered to fund People against Pollution. But even with the support of IGM, Frankson and his comrades achieved nothing in their quest to stop smokestacks from pouring noxious gases into their neighborhood.

  After funding him for two years, IGM’s Executive Council called Frankson for a meeting.

  Chapter Three

  Sara paced about her office, mentally going through the draft of her UN speech, imagining the reaction of world leaders to her extraterrestrial theory. She walked back to her chair and resumed watching satellite images coming from NASA. She zoomed on a storm that was building over the Indian Ocean, and watched clouds whirling into a spiral. All of a sudden, the livestream stopped and showed an apparent playback. Sara logged onto the ESA site and zoomed the storm, eager to see how it was progressing. She wished the storm would move to land and ease the effects of the drought. She watched the storm for three minutes before she realized that the channel was also repeating one clip. What was happening? This was supposed to be real time. She logged onto a privately owned satellite imagery company and was astonished to note that it was also replaying a clip of the storm. She tried five more privately owned satellite imagery companies and, to her shock, they were all repeating playbacks of the storm. She logged back onto NASA. The federal agency was still playing back a clip of the storm.