Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  “Dad...”

  “What, daughter?”

  “What’s thablation?”

  Juan Carlos was shell-shocked for a second, and then couldn’t help but smile over his daughter’s confusion.

  “It’s ‘ablation’ and it means, that since Mom isn’t using them anymore, they will take out some of her organs that still work, like her eyes or her kidneys, and they’ll use them to save the life of another person, who is sick and their organs don’t work.”

  Sofía made her mouth into a big O.

  “You mean that there are people who use dead people’s parts?”

  “Yes, but the organs they use aren’t dead. Mom died because her brain, what is ‘her,’ died, but some of her body parts can still save other people. But to do that, they have to take them out right away, before they die, too.”

  “I understand,” Sofía said. “So, really, part of Mom is still alive...can we see the people who will have parts of Mom?”

  “For me, it’s enough to know that even in death she saved other lives, but if it’s important to you, I’ll find out if it’s possible.”

  Sofía sighed and hugged him again.

  “I’m going to miss her so much.”

  “Of course. Me, too.”

  “Are you going to get married again? Some of my friends, and in the movies, when a mom dies, the dad gets another one.”

  Juan Carlos looked at her and seeing her pursed lips, supposed that Sofía was jealous.

  “A mom isn’t something you buy at the supermarket, Sofía. Though you don’t understand it now, I don’t think I could fall in love again. At least, not for now,” he answered. Then they started picking up Raquel’s things that were left in the room.

  His cell phone vibrated. He looked and saw there was a text from his half-brother. It was a long message, and with a quick glance he saw that it included words like ‘he died,’ ‘selfish,’ ‘loser,’ and ‘son of a bitch.’ He didn’t bother reading it. He archived it and turned off the phone. “There are still a lot of formalities ahead,” thought Juan Carlos, and remembering his father and his wife, sighed. Now he was alone and he had a daughter. As a first step, he had to arrange things in order to work at home. Being a programmer, he shouldn’t have any problems being able to do that.

  MEETING

  Buenos Aires, October 29, 2021. 2:00 p.m.

  Tzedek watched the screen while little by little the points on the map turned from red to blue. In a little less than ten minutes all but one had turned blue. Finally, Althaea’s changed to blue, too. He gestured, and the three screens divided into four parts, each screen showing a different person, and he could see himself in the first one. Each of the others had a similar set up and could see it at their end, together with all the others. Finally, he sat down, closed his eyes, and found himself in the white room in a circle with the others.

  “Thank you for coming,” said Tzedek, in ancient Greek.

  “You know we don’t have much choice, so save yourself the hypocrisy and get down to business, I have a lot to do,” Halius protested.

  “Halius, please, can we go even one minute without one of your stupid fights?” Damaris interjected.

  “You can call it hypocrisy if you want. For my part the feeling is sincere and you know it, Halius. This wasn’t a courtesy call, I’ve called this meeting because you must prepare yourselves and I don’t want to repeat it ten times. We’ve already discussed it, and the time has come.”

  “Please, Tzedek, how many times have we gone over this? It didn’t work before, I don’t see how it’s going to work now,” objected Nikaia.

  “If I’m remembering right, it was Nogah who assured me that helping them develop technology wasn’t going to end in disaster. And nevertheless, here we are. But this time it isn’t a continent in danger but the entire planet. Do I need to remind you after so many years what our objective is?”

  “Tzedek, many of them are as intelligent and sensitive as we are, despite their limitations. Are we going to throw all that away?” Nogah argued.

  “My intention is to leave those who are worthwhile unharmed. We know how to do it. And if my plan is carried out, we’ll have more than enough time to do it. We know that they’re destroying our planet. And the advances being achieved no longer justify what we’re losing.”

  The others looked at each other.

  “They’ve been violently destroying it for more than two hundred years, why act right now? You say we’re not even close to our goals, but renewable energy, particle accelerators, genetic engineering and space exploration are converging right where we want to go,” Halius questioned.

  “That’s true, but you know very well that there are only a few thousand of our elements against billions of...parasites. The planet doesn’t have that many years. What’s more, if you’d been looking at the climate studies, you would have noticed we’ve already passed several irreversible thresholds, and even acting right now, it’s too late to reverse most of the climate change and water pollution. All we can hope is to save the best and try not to lose what we’ve achieved so far. Our planet will be very different in the coming years, and we will have to look for special places to survive,” insisted Tzedek.

  “But Father, they’re making huge efforts, what about the electric cars, solar panels, wind engines, and all that progress?”

  “What the hell good are thousands of electric cars with hundreds of millions of gas burning ones? The plan was that they would run out of oil fifty years ago to force them to develop sustainable systems, but they continued to discover deposits and refining their extraction techniques!” shouted Tzedek, gesturing towards Althaea. His hand went through her arm. “Yes, it’s true, some humans have a conscience—they are exactly the ones we need to save. The others are a burden, a cancer on the planet and for us.”

  “And how are we going to do that, exactly?” asked Ponteus, intrigued.

  “The complete plans are in the computer and each of your parts in it.”

  “We saw that. Do you realize that the logistics of maintaining these cities in secret, especially when they start to become populated, will be almost impossible? What happens if they launch a missile at us?” Niobe said, worried.

  Marsan gave her a fake smile and pressed his lips together.

  “You know we have technology, money, and resources to do all we want and more, Niobe. You’re not idiots. Do what I ask. This time it has to go well. The design of the plan has been underway for five years. Everything is already thought out to the last detail. In six more years I want to see everything finished. That’s an order. Now proceed.

  They all inclined their heads, saying in unison:

  “Yes, Tzedek.”

  Tzedek gestured, the room dissolved and all the screens went out. He stayed awhile looking at the blank monitors. He was confident that he was doing the right thing, but so many things could go wrong, a chill ran down his back.

  He forced himself to remember that the most important thing was his mission, and that everything else was secondary.

  CORRUPTION

  Buenos Aires, January 2, 2026. 2:00 p.m.

  Like everyone else, Juan Carlos used web services and programs from government agencies, and he wanted to cry every time he did. Knowing that he could do much better, months ago he had applied to offer his services to the government. He’d been asked for background information, guarantees, demonstration programs, and many other things until in the end he was called for an in-person interview, to which he was now going.

  “Leave your cell phone here,” a secretary told him before sending him into the office of the systems manager, Miguel Martínez.

  Miguel was young. He had him sit down and had him waiting awhile, while he reviewed some papers. In addition, he was smoking, which was prohibited in government agencies. Juan Carlos was sure he was doing it on purpose to make him nervous. The bad thing was, it was working.

  “Well, you know. Let’s see, your proposal is to make a system employin
g fewer people and taking less time. That doesn’t benefit anyone,” Miguel said.

  “Seriously? It benefits the State, which will pay less money to have a better quality product in less time.”

  “The State is everyone. If we have to lay off hundreds of employees in the systems area, the State is harmed because they are part of it. We have more families without work, in a bad mood, and they are not going to vote for us.”

  “We could teach them to work in the new system...”

  “Teach them?” interrupted Miguel with a sarcastic laugh. “I see you’ve never worked with public employees,” he commented, looking through his papers. “No. What we must do here is incorporate their men as an external team. Of course we must discuss the guarantee, the maintenance they will get, and our part.”

  “Our part?”

  “Of course...the ‘return,’ friend. Or why do you think they should choose your work instead of any of the other hundreds of providers?”

  “Because as we demonstrate, our product is better.”

  “That’s fine, but people are obligated to use the systems. It doesn’t matter if they’re excellent or crap, if they complain there will be more of an opportunity to hire people in the complaints area. And Globalixte, our current provider, gives us 50% of what it charges to distribute among all involved,” Miguel said with a wink.

  Juan Carlos sat with his mouth open.

  “What? 50%? If I took that out of what I charged, I wouldn’t even cover my costs.”

  “Ah, then you’ve miscalculated your price. It’s not my fault if you submitted such a cheap offer.”

  Juan Carlos stopped cold.

  “Besides, I see you plan to use a little-known development language for the job,” Miguel said, shaking his head. “It has to be in a recognized Microsoft language.”

  “It’s impossible to do the work in the budgeted time in Microsoft languages, this is a code generator that is much more efficient and reliable, because it avoids...”

  Miguel interrupted him:

  “Microsoft brings us millions of pesos in support and free products...not to mention the ‘personal’ monetary aid. We can’t afford to leave them out.”

  “But...it isn’t the right tool for...”

  “Let’s do this—think about it and resubmit the offer. Keep in mind the figures I mentioned to you, and let’s move on,” Miguel finished, standing up.

  Juan Carlos understood that he was being thrown out, so he stood up. Miguel didn’t offer him his hand, so he didn’t, either, and on leaving the office, retrieved his cell phone. He realized then that they had kept it not to avoid interruptions, but to avoid possible hidden recordings.

  When he got home, Sofía was waiting with lunch already prepared. Juan Carlos dropped his things, sat down and took his cup, thoughtful. He looked at his daughter and saw that she was looking at him, so he smiled at her.

  “Hello, daughter.”

  “Hello, I was wondering if I was invisible or what. What’s up?” Sofía asked, as she came up and gave him a hug.

  “What happened was that I got a hard reality check. I thought I could make a difference, but they put me in my place.”

  “They didn’t like your system?” she asked, sitting by his side.

  “Yes, they did, but the place is, as I’d feared, a rat’s nest. They’d never let me implement my system there. They want me to do it in an inefficient language, with people who don’t know the job, and it isn’t possible under those conditions. They are going to steal millions from the budget thanks to that, and even if I get some of that, they’ll blame me when things don’t go as specified in the design, because of them, of course. On the other hand, it’s a lot of money,” he calculated, looking at his mug.

  “We need the money...are you sure it’s as bad as you think?” She got up to get her cup and plate.

  “Look, the only way to know for sure is get into it and do it, but the indications I have are the system they’re running now, which is very bad, and the experience I had in the interview. The guy was so corrupt it seemed like a joke. Unfortunately, it isn’t,” Juan Carlos said thoughtfully.

  “And you don’t think you could change things once you’re working there with the people?” she asked as she came back to his side, this time with her lunch.

  “They’ll never let me talk to the people, that was pretty clear when I suggested we could make things better with training. No, and I was thinking that I’m sure that they take a cut from the salaries of those poor devils, too. There’s a reason they have so many doing so little. Moreover, it’s possible that many of them only collect a salary to give their share to these guys, and don’t know anything about systems. The only way to change that would be from within and with absolute power. A supplier will never be able to change anything, I don’t know who it would be.”

  “Wouldn’t that be the Systems Chief you talked with?” she asked, and started to finish her sandwich.

  “Maybe, but who knows how far the corruption goes? Let’s suppose that I was the Systems Chief, and I fired who needed to be fired and changed what needed to be changed. Besides that, I would surely have to face the threats and lawsuits from the unions, the press, internal sabotage, and what happens if the AFIP boss comes next and tells me that I’m crazy and forces me to undo everything? Or worse, they fire me and undo everything anyway.”

  He reflected while he drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table.

  “Dad, they can’t all be corrupt,” Sofía protested.

  “They can’t? Anyone with a little common sense knows that it doesn’t take five thousand employees to create and maintain a few programs and web pages. So the head of the division has to know what’s going on. It’s pretty clear that he gets a piece of the action, and if not, he’s totally ineffective. And the regional chief is the same. Same goes for the Central Chief, and so on up to the Minister of Economy. But the minister must have more serious things to take care of than corruption in the AFIP agencies. And besides, how would they fix it? They’d have to fire them all and send them to trial, the judiciary is just as corrupt, not to mention that a corruption trial doesn’t even reach the accusatory stage for a couple of years, and if everything is proven, which never happens, a verdict can take a decade. Then it will be appealed, and that could be favorable, given that the players will already be in other positions, with other friends, in another government...” he replied, so worked up that he got a little red in the face.

  “You’re getting me depressed, Dad. There’s nothing that can be done, then?”

  “A few years ago, before you were born, I was in a small political party, you know? I thought I could change things from the inside. We even got enough votes for a place in the legislature. It was so disillusioning.”

  Sofía sat there with her mouth open.

  “How come you never told me about that?”

  Juan Carlos thought for a moment. His face was sad.

  “It’s because I consider it a personal failure. I was young, but I wasn’t stupid, though I was very innocent. I had ideals and I thought I could improve the system. It’s impossible. Almost everyone is involved and those who aren’t cave in to the others. The honest people, the ones with consciences, may steal less or play down the illegal activities for a little while when there’s a change of government and all that, but ultimately, they support each other, collaborate and protect each other. And those who don’t do it get thrown out because it’s a very efficient machine for stealing money. A LOT of money. Democracy is a system that works well when the people are educated and informed. When the people who vote are ignorant and the only thing they do is choose the prettiest face, the one who makes the best promises or directly sell their vote...it’s a joke. The best candidate will never come to power but the one with the best publicists—in short the most money, will. Democracy today is nothing more than a popularity contest, and has been for many years.”

  “And who doesn’t like a lot of money?” asked his daughter
, finishing her sandwich and licking her fingers.

  “Wash your hands, please! For ordinary people, it isn’t the money but what they can get with it. Look at us, we don’t need that much money. With just a little more, we’d be fine. And we’re going to think of a way to get it. Politicians, on the other hand...no matter how many millions they steal, they’ll always steal more.”

  “So, government is ruled out?” she asked, going to wash her hands.

  “Yes. If I had any doubts, your questions made me face them. It isn’t worth getting dirty like that, Sofía.”

  “If you say so,” said Sofía, doubtfully.

  Juan Carlos finished his coffee and left the cup on the kitchen table.

  “How about going to the park for a while?”

  “Really? Well, sure, but it will be hot,” Sofía said, surprised.

  “I need to get some air, and we need to celebrate that we didn’t get mixed up in that rat’s nest. Let’s go have an ice cream,” smiled Juan Carlos.

  THE CITIES

  Rho, January 2, 2026. 6:10 a.m.

  Tzedek looked all around him from the panoramic floor in the Tower in the center of the city. A real show at sunrise. The built part of the city occupied a square of eight kilometers on each side, with streets every three hundred feet, and surrounded by a wall a mile and a half away from the last buildings. Situated near Argentina’s Negro River, the city was in a fertile and protected zone, but out of harm’s way.

  The monitoring consoles showed a rapid increase in total power generation as the sun lit the streets. The irrigation systems were activated for the land of the three thousand six hundred blocks that would house more than fourteen thousand families.

  The construction of the cities cost a fortune. Not only for the top technologies used, but also for bribes to officials and extra payments to builders and assemblers for their discretion. Some extremely competent engineers and builders were paid with a place in the city.