The E Utopia Project

by Kudakwashe Muzira

  “But her parents did come later when they received her invitation. I’m sure they told her what happened.”

  “Of course they told her what happened,” she said as impassively as she could. “That’s why she’s saying she’s sorry. I can’t forgive her. I left out my own relatives to accomodate her parents but she called me a mean bitch.”

  “Swallow your pride, Jennifer,” Shirley said. “I know you need Teresa. She said she’s sorry. Go talk to her.”

  “Even if I wanted to, it’s impossible for me to talk to her. Sam doesn’t allow me to travel without bodyguards. If I go to Teresa’s residence in a motorcade, she’ll think I’m trying to show off.”

  “You can ask her to come here. I saw her yesterday and she said she’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow. She’s been assigned to a spaceship”

  “Do you think she’ll come if I invite her here?” Jennifer crooned.

  “She’ll come. Let me talk to her.”

  “Thanks, mom.”

  * * *

  She was crouching, talking to her twins.

  “Mommy!” they chorused. “We can’t breathe.”

  She checked their breathing machines. The batteries of the machines were full. She also began to feel breathless, but when she checked her machine, she found out that it had enough power. Then why were they suffocating? Before she could do anything, her twins collapsed.

  “No!” she screamed.

  “Sara!” George said with alarm. “Are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes. Her heart was thumping and she was panting as though she had been sprinting. “I’m fine. Just a bad dream about El Monstruo. What time is it?”

  George took his phone from the dressing table. “The nightmare beat the alarm by just over an hour,” he said. “It’s twenty-one minutes to six.”

  “Let me catch some more sleep,” she said groggily.

  “And let me bath and make you some breakfast.”

  “That’s music to my ears. Don’t forget that I’m three-in-one. I’ll need to take some of your delicious cooking to work.”

  “How can I forget that there are four of us now?”

  When he left the bedroom, she looked at the ceiling, willing sleep to take her. The dream had upset her so much that she couldn’t fall asleep even though her eyes were heavy with sleep. How would the world be like when she birthed her twins? She had advocated for population control as a means to reduce the strain on the world’s natural resources and her detractors would surely call her a hypocrite when they saw her twins. However, she wasn’t overly concerned about being called a hypocrite. The mockery that she received when she publicized her extraterrestrial theory had made her skin thick. She was worried about the consequences of losing the battle against El Monstruo. If the world failed to find a way to end the disaster, her children would never know what it is like to live in a normal world. They would never know what it is like to breathe fresh air.

  When the alarm rang she got out of bed and went to the bathroom for a quick shower. She returned to the bedroom and put on fresh clothes. Her mouth watered in anticipation of the breakfast that awaited her in the kitchen. George was a great cook. He could make tasty meals even with the limited ingredients that were currently available on the market. He had a dozen ways to cook tofu and now that in vitro meat was now available on the market, George could come up with hundreds of recipes. The thought of tasting today’s breakfast recipe temporarily took her mind away from her worries.

  “What’s on the menu today?”

  “I made some chicken pork pies,” he said.

  “Chicken pork pies?”

  “Yes. With the available ingredients, that’s the closest we can get to eggs and bacon.”

  Sara tasted the chicken pork pie, which George had made from in vitro chicken and in vitro beef. Like everything that George cooked, it tasted great.

  “You should open a restaurant, honey,” Sara mumbled through a mouthful of pie.

  “That has always been my dream. Maybe I’ll open one when all this is over.”

  Sara’s phone rang. One look at the phone’s LCD sent her heart racing.

  “Tim, I hope you’ve got good news for me.”

  “I think I do. Sara, this is big. They trained the NRO’s satellites on those two locations and they captured pictures of fleets of spaceships entering the atmosphere and gliding in circles like vultures for over half an hour. It’s not clear whether these ships belong to humans or aliens but they come from outer space.”

  “I think the space agencies and satellite imagery companies that have been covering up for these ships have an idea about the identity of the ships’ owners.” The natural reaction would have been for Sara to be happy that she had been proven right. But the vindication of her theory gave her no joy. The world was probably facing an alien invasion and she was going to bring her twins right into the middle of a human-alien war. “So what’s the plan from the Pentagon?”

  “They have stationed aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic.”

  “Do they plan to attack these ships?” Sara asked with horror.

  “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me what they plan to do. Some of the spaceships were carrying missiles. Most of the ships were massive and the Pentagon thinks they’re bombers. The Pentagon thinks the ships are simulating an attack on Earth. We’re on the brink of war.”

  “We’re already in the middle of a war, Tim,” Sara said somberly. “They started the war a long time ago when they began stealing our oxygen. So what’s going to happen to the people who have been covering up for these spaceships?”

  “I don’t know. Remember this is all classified.”

  “Don’t worry, Tim. I won’t do anything to jeopardize the operation.”

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  “Thanks for the heads up, Tim.”

  “Sara, what’s happening?” George asked.

  “They discovered spaceships circling in the atmosphere right in the zones that the space agencies and satellite picture companies are blocking from public view.”

  “Shit! You were right about aliens.”

  “I wish I was wrong. We don’t know what technology those people or aliens have. Maybe they’re powerful enough to wipe out the entire human race.” She put her hands on her tummy. “Maybe they’ll turn us into slaves.”

  George clenched his fists. “I won’t let them do that to us. We’ll fight for our freedom and for the freedom of our children.” He held Sara’s hand. “It will be okay, Sah. We, humans, will find a way out. We’re not cut out for extinction.”

  * * *

  Jennifer’s phone rang. A look at the screen told her that the call was from Planet House security.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Ma’am, there’s a lady at the gate. Her name’s Teresa and she says you’re expecting her.”

  “Let her in.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jennifer looked at the CCTV and saw Teresa being escorted to the door by an armed soldier. When Teresa and the soldier reached the front door, Jennifer pressed a button and the door opened.

  Teresa hesitantly entered the house. Her feet echoed as she walked in the expansive reception room.

  “Welcome, ma’am,” a maid said to her. “Please sit down. The First Lady will see you in a moment.”

  “Thank you.”

  Teresa sat on one of the many seats in the room.

  “Teresa!”

  “Jennifer!”

  The two women embraced. In spite of herself, Jennifer could not hide her joy at seeing her best friend. It was more than two months since she had last spoken to Teresa.

  “Jennifer, the guards frisked me and scanned me for bugs,” Teresa said. “Three months ago, if somebody told me that one day I’d have to be frisked to see my own best friend, I’d have told them that they had lost their marbles.”

  “Frisking you wasn’t my idea, Teresa. It’s a routine security procedure.”
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  “I know.”

  Jennifer looked in Teresa’s eyes. “Mom said we should talk and I think she’s right.”

  “Yeah, she’s right. I’m sorry, Jennifer. I don’t know what got into me. I had no right to insult you. The first time I saw your parents on this planet, I freaked out. I hated you for saving your parents and leaving mine on doomed Earth. I said things I shouldn’t have said. My parents told me everything that happened. Please forgive me, Jennifer.”

  “Teresa, you’re like my own sister. That’s behind us now. I’m glad your parents finally made it to E Utopia.”

  Teresa sobbed. “But Don refused to come. He couldn’t leave his parents.”

  “You should have included his parents on your list.”

  “I did. I included his parents and his young brother. But his father refused to come because he couldn’t leave his parents. The invitations had already been sent out and I couldn’t make a place for Don’s grandparents. In the end all of his family refused to come.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I can’t imagine a life without Don. He was my everything. Without him I’m lost.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jennifer said. “Don is a good guy. It’s not your fault. You tried your best to bring him here.”

  “I wish I could return to Earth to save him.”

  “Don’t lose hope. Maybe you’ll see him again. Two of my chosen ones refused to come. I wasn’t very close to them but they were family. The space force is carrying out the last of the evacuations. I’ll arrange for Don’s grandparents to fill the two unoccupied places on my list of chosen ones.”

  “Will you do that for me?”

  “Teresa, you’re like a sister to me. I’ll do anything for you. Let me look for a video camera and together we can make a new invitation video for Don.”

  Teresa hugged Jennifer. “Thank you so much, Jennifer. Don likes you a lot. I’m sure he’ll be swayed if he sees both of us in the invitation video.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Rear Admiral Sopoaga felt nervous. He had been jittery since the arming of his fleet. When the E Utopia Project began, the Oxygen Harvesters could fill their tanks after milking the Earth’s atmosphere for less than fifteen minutes. With the current oxygen content in the atmosphere, they now needed at least thirty-five minutes to fill their tanks, which increased the risk of detection by the Earth’s powers. The last thing Sopoaga wanted was an all-out war with Earth.

  Sopoaga knew that the rate at which earthlings were making oxygen from their oxygenation plants was increasing. Soon the amount of oxygen that earthlings made would equal the amount of oxygen that E Utopians took from the Earth’s atmosphere. It was now difficult to substantially reduce the level of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere and it would take a long time to achieve the admiralty’s goal of wiping out earthlings by El Monstruo.

  If it was up to him, the E Utopians would stop the oxygen harvesting operation and accept that they had failed to wipe out Earth’s polluters. The families of the pioneers had been safely evacuated to E Utopia, and it was better for E Utopians to forget about Earth and concentrate instead on their new planet. E Utopia’s atmosphere now needed little oxygen to become ideal for human survival, and they could get that oxygen safer and faster from Venus’ carbon dioxide.

  Although he was incensed at the decision to continue extracting oxygen from Earth’s atmosphere, Sopoaga remained fiercely loyal to his superiors. They had delivered on their promise to evacuate his loved ones from Earth and he would be forever grateful for that. As a senior officer of the space force, his superiors had promised him a hundred hectare farm on E Utopia. When the oxygen havesting was over, he was going to spend the rest of his life farming in peace without having to worry whether the next king tide would cover his home with sea water.

  Sopoaga gave his charges routine last minute instructions before they entered Earth orbit. The ships slowed down when they entered orbit and the Earth’s gravity pulled them toward the ground. The fleet split into two when it reached an altitude of forty-three thousand feet above the Earth’s sea level. The two halves of the fleet circled the air, extracting its scanty oxygen.

  *

  “The aerospaceships are in position, sir,” Captain Brad Burns of the US Navy said, looking at the images coming from one of the large displays in the operations room of the USS Ronald Reagan supercarrier. “They’re roughly at an altitude of forty thousand feet.”

  Rear Admiral Pat Griffin looked at the display for seconds before he barked, “Get me the pilots on the double.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Burns said.

  “On the double” turned out to be two minutes.

  “The spaceships are in this position,” the rear admiral said to the two pilots, pointing at the display. “The ships are at an altitude of about forty thousand feet. With the oxygen content in the air, you can only fly to about twenty thousand feet. Fly towards them. When your birds begin to stall, release the drones and return.”

  “Any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Wish you good luck, captain.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Captain Huggins and Second Lt Holloway saluted and scooted to the deck.

  Two fighter jets were already in position on two of the aircraft carrier’s four catapults, attached to shuttle slots. Each jet had a small space drone attached to its belly. The two pilots jumped into the planes and prepared themselves for takeoff. The flight deck crew attached the holdbacks and raised the jet blast defectors behind the planes. When they were satisfied that everything was in order, the catapult officer activated the catapults from the catapult control system above the flight deck. Steam valves opened, filling the catapult cylinders with high-pressure steam from the aircraft carrier’s reactors. When the pressure of the steam had reached the level required for producing the optimum weight to thrust ratio, the pilots blasted the engines of the jets. The catapult officer released the pistons, forcing the holdbacks to release. Steam pressure catapulted the planes forward and within two seconds, the planes accelerated from zero to two hundred and sixty-six meters per second.

  “I hope this isn’t going to be mankind’s first contact with some green aliens,” Captain Huggins said with a chuckle. His heart was pounding hard but as the senior officer, he had to conceal his fears.

  “I hope the same, sir,” Second Lt. Holloway said.

  In fifteen seconds the jets had reached an altitude of fourteen thousand feet. When the atmosphere still contained twenty-one percent oxygen by volume, the jets could reach an altitude of sixty thousand feet. They began to stall as they approached nineteen thousand feet.

  “Let’s release the small birds,” Captain Huggins said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Second Lt. Holloways.

  Huggins was the first to release his drone. It fell a few meters before its rocket engines went into action and propelled it up. Holloways released his drone three seconds later. Both drones were equipped with heat-seeking forward-looking infrared cameras. The FLIR cameras picked the infrared light emissions from the rocket engines of the spaceships and directed the drones toward the ships.

  When the drones were just over a kilometer away from the nearest spaceship, drones operators in the aircraft carrier overrode the infrared-homing system and began to direct the drones manually.

  “Sir,” Captain Burns said to Rear Admiral Griffin. “The ships have transmitted some radio signals but they’re encrypted. I think it’s now time for us to raise the spaceships before they undertake any hostile action.”

  The rear admiral nodded and cleared his throat.

  *

  “We’re being followed, sir!” shouted Lieutenant Commander Karariki Bakaane, the Kiribatian astrogator of OH13, looking at the TCAS display.

  Adrenaline was pumped into Captain Lebia Nuate’s veins when she looked at the multi-function display. She pressed the push-to-talk button of the short-range radio communication system that the ship used to communicate with its sister ships when the fleet wa
s in stealth mode. “Rear admiral Sopoaga, can you hear me!” she said with a heavy Nigerian accent. Her accent became more pronounced when she was angry or worried. “Rear Admiral Sopoaga, do you copy!” she echoed.

  “Roger that captain.”

  “We’re being followed. We’ve spotted two vehicles approaching us.”

  “Vehicles or missiles?” Rear Admiral Sopoaga said as calmly as he could.

  “No missile lock, sir.”

  Sopoaga’s heart skipped a bit when he looked at the multi-function display system. Although none of his ships had reported a missile lock, he knew that there was a big chance that the two objects trailing them were missiles. He pressed the PTT button and addressed his charges.

  “Rear Admiral Sopoaga to all ships. We’ve got two visitors. You must defend yourselves in case of any hostile action. We have no missile lock but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the two objects are missiles. They could be heat-seeking missiles or passive radar missiles. My guess is that they’re surveillance aircraft. Do you copy? Defend yourselves and make evasive maneuvers if necessary. Get all your gunners ready.”

  All captains acknowledged receiving the vice admiral’s message

  “With due respect, sir,” Commander Jantunen said, looking at the TCAS display. “I don’t think they’re aircraft. There’s too little oxygen in the air for aircraft to reach this altitude.”

  “You’re right commander,” Sopoaga admitted. “They’re not airplanes but they’re too slow to be missiles. All gunners get ready!”

  *

  Rear Admiral Griffin pressed the PTT button and cleared his throat. “This is Vice Admiral Griffin of the US Navy. Respond if you can hear me from your spaceships.”

  The aircraft carrier’s comm system sent an encrypted radio signal to the drones. Drone One decrypted the signal and broadcasted it in the form of an unencrypted signal with five-kilometer range.

  “This is Rear Admiral Griffin of the US Navy,” the rear admiral repeated. “We have spotted your spaceships. Can you please respond and identify yourselves?”

  The drones received another burst of encrypted signals from the ships and they relayed the signals to the aircraft carrier.