Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  Thanks to this system, he didn’t receive an avalanche of news all the time, but just a few every day. But he could be assured that each one of these few was true and verifiable, like the one he was reading now:

  NOAA, May 23, 2016.

  The symbolic limit of 400 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide (CO2) was exceeded at the measuring station in the Antarctic for the first time in four million years. This limit had already been exceeded in the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, but the distance from the South Pole to the main sources of CO2 emissions in the world had delayed the increase of the same there. Although CO2 does not directly determine global temperature, it’s an important factor in its increase. “The furthest part of the southern hemisphere was the last place on Earth where CO2 hadn’t reached that mark,” commented Peter Tans, the chief scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “Global levels of CO2 will not return to levels under 400 ppm during our lifetimes, and probably for much longer afterwards...”

  He quickly read the titles of the articles that he had to read.

  “2015 was the hottest year since temperatures were registered, and the first months of 2016 have already exceeded those.”

  “The temperature of the ocean’s surface exceeds historical records.”

  “The Arctic was eight degrees above the average in April.”

  “17ºC confirmed at the Hope base in the Antarctic.”

  “Ocean levels at their highest since record-keeping began.”

  “Thirty-six consecutive years of glacier reduction.”

  “Deadly heat wave and drought in the northern hemisphere.”

  He got angrier as he read the list. All of this in one day? When he reached the end, he smacked the desk. A cup of pencils fell to the floor.

  He heard noises outside, light knocking on the door and the secretary asking, “Is everything okay, Mr. Tzedek?”

  “Of course not! Everything is wrong, that’s how it is, damn it.”

  “Everything’s fine, Violeta, something just fell. Go ahead with what you were doing.”

  The third screen showed the images from the security cameras, and he zoomed in on the one that showed the door of his office from the outside. He saw Violeta listening for a moment, then shrug and return to her desk. His secretary was not used to his fury. If she only knew what he was capable of, of what he’d done in the past, she wouldn’t have asked if everything was all right. She’d have gone running home. But of course, she didn’t know anything, and she was well paid. All of his employees were, since he had so much money it would be impossible to spend it all. He was so rich, he literally didn’t know how much money he had.

  He rested his elbows on the desk, head in hands, grasping his hair and forehead. He missed Lonia. Everything was easier when Lonia helped him.

  “Uff,” he snorted. He put his hand on the right side of his desk, which activated a mechanism that lifted a console. He pushed a button and the door locked, not with a key but with a security system worthy of a vault. Another button, and polarized armored windows showed a beautiful view from the eighth floor, the top one of the building. Finally, he clicked an intricate key and a large panel opened on the wall to the left. From the space that was now in sight, a full desktop with three screens slid out, but instead of three computer screens, these were three enormous screens five feet tall.

  He stood up to move his chair to face the new desk and sat in front of it. He pressed his hand on an unmarked space to the right of the desk and the screens lit up. A series of symbols lit up on the surface of the desk, while the screens filled with similar symbols. He pressed several sequences at high speed, both on the desktop and on the screens, observing new data chains. A map of the whole world appeared on the right-hand monitor, using the Goode projection, while the center screen showed the Earth as if it were seen from space. He pressed some symbols again, and a dozen red points lit up in both images. A label with a name appeared next to each point. The points were scattered all over the world, and no two were close to each other. He searched in Europe and pointed his finger at Spain. The globe went to the screen on the left, while on the center one an empty video screen appeared, with a message below in the same strange symbols. A few minutes passed, and the point he had pointed to turned blue and the video lit up. Tzedek reclined and closed his eyes. Suddenly he was in a white room, standing in front of a young and exuberant woman. It was a room without furniture, doors or windows, as if it were inside a white box.

  “Father,” said Althaea, except that what he heard was ‘πατέρας.’

  “Daughter, I really wish you’d come here with me.” They continued speaking in ancient Greek. “The time has come. We’ve talked about it several times, and it can’t wait any longer.”

  “Right this second? Can we at least wait five minutes?”

  “Don’t be impertinent. You know this has been going on several years, but we should have done it decades ago. Now the damage is extensive and will be irreversible for centuries,” answered Tzedek, rubbing his beard.

  Althaea sighed. “Father, can I make you change your mind?”

  “We’ve gone over this time and again. Read the news, or go out to the street and interact, or better yet...go on the internet and you’ll see a sample of human stupidity in all its splendor, Althaea. There’s no fixing it. Human imbecility exceeds any positive force. If they all killed each other, it would be sad but nothing to worry about, but you know very well that they’re destroying the planet. Our planet, Althaea. You convinced me to wait until we implemented the internet, with the hope that they’d use it to better themselves...give them the opportunity to wake up and access all the knowledge of the species.”

  “‘Who would waste the opportunity to increase their knowledge?’ you told me. Do I need to show you a social network?”

  Looking down, Althaea replied: “You’re right, Father, it’s stronger than they are, and the truth is I’m sorry. How are you thinking about doing it?”

  “There’s only one way I can think of to take care of the problem and you know what it is...”

  “We already tried that and we failed, Father.”

  “You know very well that our technology had deteriorated from being so old. Now we can use the new technology that we got them to develop and use it to our benefit.”

  Althaea sighed again.

  “As you wish, Father. What should I do?”

  “Contact the others. Tell them what we’ve discussed several times now. First of all, we need to confirm my experiments.”

  “I’ll do it,” Althaea said, looking sad.

  “Contact me directly when you’ve talked to everyone,” ordered Tzedek, and with a gesture interrupted the connection.

  Althaea stared at the empty space: “See you soon, Father.”

  Tzedek sat up and paced the room. He rubbed his beard again, a habit he had when he got nervous. He stopped suddenly when he realized it. Maybe he should cut it off. He went to the console and communicated with CERN.

  “How much do you think we still need?” Tzedek inquired once his technical contact was on the screen.

  “In the last test, we got to 14 TeV. For 200 MTeV, we’d need decades and many modifications, assuming everything goes well, that there are no accidents or sabotage, and that it’s possible.”

  “And at the local level?”

  “It works perfectly. We can’t do too many tests, but we transferred more animals and they arrived fine. This is going to revolutionize the world,” the technician exclaimed.

  “No, it won’t. Nobody is going to transport a package from one place to another in the world if they have to pay the equivalent of the electricity consumption for a complete nuclear power plant for months,” said Tzedek, though he knew he was lying. The military would kill for equipment like that. To be able to transport troops, soldiers, ammunition and supplies, whatever, from one side of the world to the other, instantly? It was the dream of every general, and every demented terrorist. That
was a double-edged sword. Few applications, and most of them dangerous.

  “Maybe we’ll find a way to use less energy,” speculated the technician.

  “Maybe. But theory suggests not,” opined Tzedek, and hung up.

  He paced the room once again. This more or less confirmed what he already knew, so there was no danger. On the one hand, he was disappointed, but at the same time he felt a great relief. They were still far from being able to create an interstellar portal. It seemed an impossible task, but he knew that it was not.

  TRAGEDY

  Buenos Aires, October 28, 2021, 2:00 p.m.

  “Doctor...Raquel Navarro?” the nurse asked.

  Raquel nodded slowly. She was in a hospital bed, in an intensive care room. Her husband Juan Carlos was seated at her side.

  “Sign here, please. It’s the form to authorize organ donation.”

  Raquel looked at the pages, took the pen with difficulty, and signed the last page.

  “Thank you,” said the nurse, and then turned to Juan Carlos. “Can you come with me for a moment?”

  In the hallway, the nurse advised him: “It would be best if you speak with your wife to... say good-bye to your daughter. She has only a few hours left. The medication is at maximum now.”

  Juan Carlos nodded, and thanked the nurse. When he returned to the room, he looked at his wife for a moment, whose eyes were closed. Her face was cadaverous. A tube was in her nose to carry food to her stomach and a mask provided her with oxygen. A tube in her arm hydrated her and gave her the strongest analgesics there were, while several cables connected her to different monitors.

  Juan Carlos was emaciated, too, but from tiredness. Hours spent by his wife, doing paperwork, taking care of his little daughter Sofía, almost eight years old, working. They’d been preparing for this for weeks, since they found out that the treatments weren’t working. Right now their daughter was at home, alone. At least they could leave her alone and not worry, since she was a very responsible little girl and able to take care of herself. He sat next to Raquel and rubbed her head gently, without waking her. It was hard to think that only six months ago, she’d had a mane of brown hair (the same color as his own hair) that reached her waist. After Sofía’s birth, she’d got weaker very slowly, so slowly that they hadn’t paid attention to it. They attributed it to lack of sleep, stress, anything but the real culprit. When she started having more serious symptoms, it was already too late. Everything had happened so fast that he still couldn’t believe it.

  His cell phone vibrated, and he saw that it was a call from Pedro, his half-brother on his father’s side. He stood up, walked a few steps away so he wouldn’t bother his wife, and answered. After the usual greetings, Pedro told him:

  “Dad isn’t well. He won’t eat food any more. The doctor says his organs are failing and he has only a few hours left.”

  “Dad is ninety years old. The last time I saw him, he didn’t know who I was. I’m sorry but Raquel...her death is imminent, they say she won’t last the day, and I have to go get my daughter,” said Juan Carlos, with a lump in his throat.

  “Juan Carlos, it’s Dad. You exist because of him, you can’t not come.”

  At that moment, he noticed a peculiar scent and he noticed that a very tall female doctor had come in, who woke up his wife and started talking to her in a low voice, but he got distracted by his phone call again.

  “Raquel needs me now, and this is the family I chose, not one I got without asking for it. I’m not going to abandon my wife right now when she’s about to die. And my daughter is a little girl who needs me now more than ever. I hope you understand.”

  “Dad remembered you today. He asked me where you were. Come over because in a few hours you won’t be able to see him again and you’ll regret it.”

  “Really? He’s awake? Can you put me on with him?” Juan Carlos hesitated.

  He heard Pedro cover the phone, but he still hear him say:

  “Dad, Juan Carlos wants to talk to you,” and then heard the answer clearly.

  “Who?”

  After a few sentences he couldn’t understand, he tried to get his brother’s attention on the phone.

  “Pedro. Pedro!”

  Finally he came back on the line, and before he could say anything else, Juan Carlos told him:

  “If my wife dies while I was seeing Dad, I would never forgive myself. Never. That would be something I’d regret the rest of my life. I’m sorry, but no.”

  “Always the same selfish you.”

  “Pedro...” he started to answer. He was angry, indignant over his brother’s stupidity, but it wasn’t worth spending any more time on it. He noticed that the doctor who had come in before was gone. “Good-bye,” he said, cutting him off, knowing that with that, he probably wouldn’t speak to his brother again for several years, if at all. Pedro wasn’t going to forgive him, and he couldn’t empathize with his brother’s lack of understanding. How could he expect him to leave his wife to go to his father’s death, who didn’t even know who he was? For him, his father had died a long time ago.

  He quickly went to their house and came back with their daughter. On the way, he explained that it was time and her mother was finally going to stop suffering.

  As soon as they got there, they both sat down, one on either side of Raquel. Sofía was not afraid, but took her mother’s hand and gave her a kiss on her forehead. Raquel barely smiled, but then made a gesture of pain. Juan Carlos looked at Sofía, so small and so mature at the same time. He couldn’t stand it anymore and began to cry.

  At that moment, there was a knock at the door and a priest came into the room. Speaking to Juan Carlos, he said:

  “May God bless you, in your hour of pain. I’m here to administer the last rites to your wife.”

  “Your services aren’t necessary, we aren’t Catholic,” explained Juan Carlos, a little annoyed by the interruption.

  The priest raised his hands and reported:

  “There is also a rabbi in the hospital, if you need spiritual comfort that I cannot offer you.”

  “Spiritual comfort? Please leave, Father. My wife is about to die and we don’t need spiritual comfort of any kind,” he commented angrily.

  A slight blush rose on the priest’s cheeks who announced:

  “I see. Well, I hope that when she meets her Creator very soon, at least she’ll recognize that she should have believed in Him when she had the chance.”

  “Are you crazy? Get out!” he shouted, losing his patience. “Keep your mystical threats to yourself! Jerk. Leave before I kick you out,” he continued shouting, as he stood up and went over to the priest. He was six feet tall and bulky, so the priest retreated quickly. Juan Carlos slammed the door behind him, almost hitting him with it, and went back to his daughter.

  “Dad,” Sofía said with tears in her eyes. “What if the priest is right?”

  “If there were a god who created everything, daughter, he also created the pancreatic cancer that’s killing Mom, and also the pain that she’s suffering. A priest will never admit that to you, or he’ll tell you that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ or ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ The truth is there’s no excuse for it. An all-powerful god, in my opinion, would be a sick degenerate, observing all the evil in the world without doing anything about it. But don’t worry, he doesn’t exist. They are just myths so that people aren’t afraid of death.”

  Sofía pursed her lips, but didn’t say any more.

  Raquel was conscious now, looking at Juan Carlos. Then she looked at Sofía, who came closer to her.

  “I don’t like the smell.”

  “Sofía, I’m sure Mom doesn’t like it, either, don’t be mean to her.”

  A tear slid down Raquel’s cheek. She tried to slowly bring her hand to her face, and Juan Carlos rushed to her side.

  “Do you want to talk?” he asked her. Raquel nodded, and took a deep breath, followed by a moan of pain. They looked each other in the eye.

  J
uan Carlos went to the other side again. When Raquel was able to relax a little, he lifted the mask.

  “My daughter,” Raquel said with difficulty, “I love you. I love you both. And Dad...is right. I...want...to stop suffering. Be good...with Dad,” and closed her eyes.

  One monitor sounded an alarm, and then another. Juan Carlos put the mask back on immediately, but Raquel stopped breathing.

  A nurse came running in, saw the monitors and then looked at Juan Carlos, who nodded before going back to the other side with his daughter. The nurse ran out, and he said:

  “Come on, Sofía, they’re going to take Mom for the ablation.”

  The nurse came back in with two stretcher-bearers, who transferred Raquel’s dead body to a stretcher, and they hurried away with her. The nurse took a moment to tell them:

  “My condolences. Take all the time you want, and when you’re ready, please go to Reception.”

  Juan Carlos hugged Sofía, who started crying with him. He couldn’t help but ask himself how he was going to handle raising a seven-year-old girl by himself.

  “Are you sure that Mom won’t be in heaven? When my school friend’s mom died, she said it was better because her mother was in heaven, watching her from there.”

  Juan Carlos again felt that fury that he’d repressed and tried to control himself.

  “Sofía...daughter, Mom is better because she isn’t suffering any more. Sometimes it’s better to die than suffer for no reason. And in some way, she will be alive in our memories. When you remember Mom, the love she gave you, the good and the bad things, her talents and her failures, she will be alive in your mind.”

  At that moment, he would have given everything he had and what he didn’t have, too, to be embraced by his wife and daughter, instead of just by his daughter. And that’s why he hugged her harder, while the tears fell.