The Newcomers: a novel of global invasion , human resilience, and the wild places of the planet

by Pamela Jekel

  One student asked, “Not God, Sister?”

  “Of course, God,” she frowned. Sister Rachel tolerated no division of science and faith in her class. Evolution did not answer the question of the origin of life, she was always pointing out. “Who do you suppose made the algae in the first place? When God made blue-green algae, He provided the tool that turned Earth’s atmosphere from nitrogen and carbon dioxide to oxygen and water. When He said, ‘Let there be light’, He added the final element, solar power, to make this miracle happen. After working for about five-hundred million years, blue-green algae transformed our planet into a true Eden, where all that oxygen and water could support life as we know it. And it is very possible that blue-green algae can save this planet again, cleaning our water and air and providing us energy that will turn the world back into God’s Eden once more. Chase, show us what you have today.”

  Chase stood before the class and showed his small bottle of distilled ethanol, his drawings from the Internet on how to build the system, and explained how they had constructed the troughs and collected the condensed runoff. “But it won’t run the generator yet.” He turned to Sister Rachel. “I thought maybe you could analyze it and see if it’s right chemically.”

  “We can do that. Do you see what is possible here, class? You will not have to wait for the petrol to flow from foreign sources to your automobiles and your generators. You will be able to make your own fuel. Chase, leave this sample with me, and I’ll discuss it tomorrow in class.”

  That evening, Chase walked out to the troughs to stir them, as he did frequently with a long paddle, turning the green sludge over and over, moving the bottom layer up to reach the sunlight. The algae were already being colonized by insects and small seeds that blew in under the plastic roofs. The water flushed through the system and fed the algae, the sun provided the energy, and the magic little green things did the rest. He supposed eventually, they would have to pull some of the algae out of the tanks. Perhaps they could dry it on the roof of the barn and feed the horses with it.

  Jomo was coming across the field, and Chase turned to watch him come. Asha and Jomo still seemed to have the energy of younger people. Maybe it was the African sun. He was grinning and holding up something in his hand.

  “A letter from America!” he called to Chase.

  Chase put down his paddle and braced himself. The news could hardly be good. From what he’d heard on the radio and from his refugee classmates, pockets of America were wastelands patrolled by scavaging bands, and food was scarce, even in those areas controlled by the military. Los Angeles was swiftly going back to desert, now that the Colorado River was running free to Mexico. Miami was rampant with malaria and dengue and yellow fevers, and a flu epidemic had killed off thousands along the East Coast. Military bases were the only safe places. Boston and New York refugees were streaming south to escape the cold and a cholera epidemic, and armed guards protected the crops in the central farmlands. The fires from Pittsburg and Baltimore could be seen more than a hundred miles away, he heard, and Florida was one big open-air cemetery; too many old people, too little farmland. Pirates controlled some of the coastline, despite Navy vessels hunting them down. Mexican soldiers were fighting skirmishes with refugees from Arizona and California who were trying to cross into the Baja.

  State borders were long gone, and national borders were dissolving. The dollar was worthless; the only currencies were food, water, alcohol, ammunition, and drugs. One Chinese student told him that he felt sorry for people who had bought gold as a hedge against disaster. “A full ounce gold coin will buy a new Cadillac. Maybe a dozen cows. But it’s not much good if what you need is a .22 and ammo. Not like anybody’s going to make change.”

  The Voice of America still could be heard over the radio occasionally, but the broadcasts gave scant details of the worst of the regions. “Do you think they’d actually tell you the truth?” a boy from India asked Chase. “They’re not going to tell you that America is history, dude.” Chase tried to believe, however, that America was probably better off than China, India, and Europe, where no military force had been strong enough to control the populations. One announcer had said that it was estimated it would be more than twenty years before gas would be for sale to private citizens. Chase thought you could double that. The same announcer said it was estimated twenty-five percent of Americans had died. Chase feared you could double that, too.

  Jomo handed him the letter and said, “I thought perhaps you’d prefer to read it in private, lad. If you care to speak of it, come and find me in the barn. You did a tidy job on that barn door, by the by.” He patted Chase on the arm and left him alone in the twilight.

  Chase slowly sat down on the lip of the trough and opened the letter to read, “Dearest Son.” His eyes instantly welled up, and his throat thickened. His father’s voice was immediately clear, his face vivid. He turned the pages over and over in his hands and then held them to his face. There was no familiar odor about them, of course, not after so long and so many miles, but they still made him feel in the presence of his family. The pages were all different; they had saved paper as they found it. One page was the title page of a book, The Monkey Wrench Gang, whatever that was. His father had written all around the words in small print, attempting to use every bit of space.

  One page was the back of a directive of some kind about dormitory rules. It looked as though it had been creased and re-creased; Miranda had drawn small pictures of herself and her parents and her friends, with arrows to their names, all around the edges. His mother had written on that page.

  A third page was normal printer paper, and they had each taken a share of it. Chase wondered what they’d had to barter to get that paper. He began to read, going slowly so that the feeling of being close to them would last as long as possible.

  His father wrote, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but it’s mid-April, 2026. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you many times, Chase, hoping you’re well and happy. Last year, we received one letter from you written June, 2025 and one more written April, 2026, and that’s all we’ve received, but we read them and re-read them aloud often, and we know you are probably writing more, and we’re just not getting them. We write to you each time we can find paper, which is a rare commodity around here. You can see that Miranda is growing up, by her drawings. No longer the scribbles of a little girl. She is doing well, and she has adjusted better to our circumstances than we have, that’s for sure, but I’ll let her tell you that in her own words. Your mother is healthy, too, and both of us are older but thinner than we were when you saw us last. Your mom says she’ll never worry about dieting again. We miss chocolate, fats, and red meat most of all. And coffee. Coffee’s like gold used to be. You can grow tobacco, but coffee always came from South America, and there’s none to be had. We’ve been transferred about fifty-eight miles out of Atlanta, to the northwest. It’s a town called Euharlee, outside Cartersville. The Advisors have fused the Bowen Power Station there, and we’re the cleanup crew. They told us that Bowen was the largest coal-fired power station in the U.S. and the biggest emitter of sulfur dioxide in the country, or used to be. We’ve been burning and burying waste for a week. Now, we’re planting trees on the old site. If the goal in all of this is to recondition our thought processes, I don’t know if it’s working. I feel like we’ve offended some superbeings, and they’ve decided to regulate our development as they see fit. Might be God, though. First He sent angels, then prophets, and now Advisors? I’m out of room on this page, son, so I’ll stop now. We miss you and love you, Chase. I pray you are safe and growing well. Don’t forget,” and here, he had signed, “Your dad.”

  Chase read the passage again to be sure he’d missed nothing. The handwriting looked firm and legible, and he could hear his father’s voice in each word. He could feel his father’s brain working, and that special connection he always felt with him was still strong. He had felt like the chosen one, somehow, that he and his father had a secret conne
ction, that he was his father’s favorite child, the heir to his talents and beliefs. Which is why it felt like such a betrayal to be the one sent away.

  It had been almost a year since they received a letter from him. Yet he wrote at least twice a month! Where were his letters? It was May, 2027. Their letter to him had taken more than a year to get to Kenya. Probably by now, they’d already been moved again. He imagined thousands of letters to and from parents and refugee kids, crossing and re-crossing the ocean and the continents, trying to find each other like pigeons blown off course. He turned over the envelope. The address was still Emory University in Atlanta, so they must be using that central collection point and then somehow sorting the letters to go to camps where the work crews were sent.

  “Advisors”, he’d called them. Probably figured that the letter might be censored. Chase was certain that his father would have more names for the aliens than “advisors.”

  He examined Miranda’s drawings carefully, turning the page bit by bit in his hand in a circle. She had drawn in different colors, some pen, some what seemed to be colored pencil. She was eight when she drew these. Now, she was nine. Moses had been dead for almost three years. It was hard to believe it. Miranda had drawn herself smiling. Her hair was cut like a boy’s, her body was taller, and she had traced her finger, put it in some sort of ink or dye and then pressed it to the paper: a fingerprint of his sister. He covered it with his own finger. She had drawn a picture of her mother. She looked happy enough, and her hair was short. She had bangs now, and her body looked slim in the drawing. She was wearing shorts, work boots, and she carried a shovel. At least it looked like a shovel. Some sort of work tool.

  The drawing of her father said the most, Chase thought. He was pushing some sort of cart. His hair was gray, at least that’s how Miranda colored it. His face was covered in a beard. In his whole life, Chase had never seen his father anything but clean-shaven. If this is how he looks, he thought, I’d never even recognize him on the street. Not until I heard his voice, anyway. She had also drawn some pictures of her friends and labeled them with names. She had drawn a sun with radiating rays, several hearts, and a rainbow. She drew a truck colored in dark green; she drew trees. She also drew a military man with a rifle at his shoulder, and he was smiling also. Curiously, there was no drawing of the spacecraft.

  Miranda’s letter showed a girl growing up fast, but clearly whatever else she was doing, she wasn’t learning to spell. “Hi Chase,” she wrote, “I miss you so much! I’m on the blue team now, and we are in charge of the clothing comisary. We give out clothes to the citizens and shoes, and the soldiers bring it in from the outside for us to organize. Some people call it dead duds, but I say that’s dumb. People did not die IN them, after all. Would they rather go barefoot? I miss you as much as I miss music and toothpaste and hamberger! Everybody’s clothes are too big and their shoes are too small. I have a friend named Krista, and she is on the soap team. Making soap is too hot and stinky! I’m glad I am not on that team. I am almost as tall as Mom now. Are you as tall as Dad yet? Send us another picture. Do you get to see lions and tigers? I love you Chase! See you soon. Your sister, Miranda.”

  Chase turned the page over to read his mother’s letter. He had saved it for last. “My Chase, I hope you get this, honey. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. Many times, I’ve thought we made an awful mistake, sending you to Africa, but then I see what’s going on in this country, and I’m relieved you’re not here. We’re working like slaves, Chase. I’ve got almost as many muscles as your dad now. Plenty of folks have sickened and died from the work and the poor food, but we’re still doing okay. They save the best food for the children, thank God, so Miranda’s healthy. It’s now the worst breach of good manners to talk about food and what you’d eat if you could get it. Just makes people furious. I look at your picture every day. The people you’re staying with seem nice enough, and I know you’re being a good boy, but I just hate it that I missed two of your birthdays! I can’t even send you a present. You’re fourteen now as I write this. My first-born son has started high school, and I’m not there to see it. But enough of that. We do our best to keep each other’s spirits up. Often, we are separated from your sister for several weeks at a time now. She is in a work team with children her own age, in classes part of the day and on work assignments the other part. I can’t think why the Newcomers have fused two of Georgia’s power plants. How do they expect us to get back to normal without electricity? Regular people can’t use the power at all, and even the military is running generators and rationing electric use. They have also destroyed dams all over the world, we heard, but none in Georgia, thank God. You likely know more about what’s going on than we do, since we have no access to television or the Internet. I’d give anything to be able to Skype you or email you, honey! Well, try to do well in whatever you do, Chase, and know that we’ll bring you home as soon as we can. I am so proud of you, son. I love you,” and she signed it “Mom” with a small flourish, followed by X’s and O’s.

  Chase wiped his eyes, turned the pages over and over to be sure he hadn’t missed anything, and folded them carefully, inserting them again in the envelope. He would ask Asha to take his picture, so he could send it along in his next letter. Just of him, no one else, full-length against the house, so they could see how tall he was getting. He noticed that his mother didn’t mention prayer. She had always been the practical one.

  Neddy, one of Jomo’s hunting dogs, came down from the house, wagging his tail and twisting his body in greeting. He was caramel-colored, almost as red as the earth, with the distinctive raised hair up his spine of the African Ridgeback hound. Chase petted him. “Did they send you down here to call me for dinner, Neddy?’

  The Ridgeback was usually a dog of dignity, but Neddy was shameless for affection, especially from Chase. The dog threw himself on his back and wriggled for belly-pats, grinning with pleasure. Chase patted him roughly, crooning nonsense to him, rubbing his belly up and down as the dog writhed and panted happily. “Okay, boy, let’s go.” Neddy was instantly up and ready for anything Chase might intend, running ahead of him and barking, taunting him to catch up. He wondered how long it had been since Miranda got to pet a dog or play with one. For the first time in two years, it occurred to him that perhaps he’d had the best end of the deal after all.

  The next afternoon, he took the sample of the ethanol back to the distillation bucket and ran it through one more time, and two days later, they tried it again in the generator. “Sister Rachel said it just had too much water in it,” he said. “She said the purity was limited to about 95% because of something called an azeotrope, so I distilled it again, and she says mix it half with diesel, and this should rock.”

  Peter poured in about a half-gallon of the newly-distilled mixture and gestured to Chase to flip the power switch. The generator coughed and burped again, stalled, and chugged to a stop.

  “Try it again,” Jomo said.

  Chase flipped the switch angrily, muttering under his breath, and to his amazement, the generator started, wheezed, and then began to run smoothly. For a solid minute, the three stood and watched it run, and their smiles grew larger as Peter turned up the output, and the generator accepted the command and kicked into high gear. “That is freaking awesome.” Chase grinned proudly.

  “Indeed,” Jomo said, patting his shoulder. “Now, we try it in the jeep.”

  “Are you sure?” Chase looked at the container which still held about two gallons. “What if it melts down the engine or something?”

  Peter laughed. “No faith, young mister.”

  “If it won’t work, Peter can drain it, and we’ll keep trying,” Jomo reassured him. “We’ll never know until we give it a shot.”

  They walked to where the jeep was sitting in the shade. “How much petrol is in it now?”

  “Almost empty, Bwana,” Peter said. “Perhaps a liter only.”

  “Pour in about half of what you’ve got there,” Jomo said.
“It’s supposed to run on hybrid fuel, so we’ll see what it does.”

  Chase poured half of his plastic container in the fuel tank and then stood way back from the vehicle.

  Laughing at him, Peter got in the driver’s seat and turned on the engine. It started quickly enough, but then it began to cough and chug, just as the generator had done. It didn’t stop, however, but kept laboring to move the fuel mixture through its pistons. Gradually, it began to idle more smoothly, and Peter put it in gear and drove slowly around the yard, while Jomo and Chase cheered him on. At the noise, Asha, Desta, and Baako came outside. “We’ve got it!” Jomo shouted at them. “Chase did it! Do you realize what this means? We can run the generator, we can run the jeep, we can sell what we don’t use, and we can show the rest of the clan how to make algae fuel as well!”

  The women clapped and shouted, and Desta ran to Chase’s side. “This is brilliant!” she said, hugging him. “If we can’t sell our py flowers, then we’ll sell your ethanol. What did you do to make it work?”

  “Ran it through the distillation process again, like Sister Rachel said. It’s just like E100, about 4% water now, like Volkswagen was using in Brazil a few years ago. I don’t know how it’ll start up in the colder months, and we need to up the percentage to diesel, but I guess we’ll figure that out.”

  “Yes, you’ll figure it out,” Asha said. “I knew you could do it!”

  “I’ll bet it will run the Escalade!” Jomo almost hopped with joy.

  Baako was standing watching the jeep as Peter drove it past again. “Good job, mate,” he said to Chase. “You need to show me how to run the system.”