The E Utopia Project (26 page)

*

The chiming
of the doorbell brought Cruz’s mind from the past to the present. Cruz pressed a
button on the head of the bed and the door opened.

A young ensign
of Polynesian origin entered and saluted. “Mr. President, Rear Admiral Sopoaga ordered
me to tell you that we’re fifteen Earth minutes away from the jump spot.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t
mention it, Mr. President.” The ensign saluted and marched out of the sleeping
cell.

Cruz sprang
from the bed and quickly groomed himself before he rushed to the ship’s bridge.
Although he had experienced many space jumps, the phenomenon still fascinated
him. He wanted to be at the bridge to see the skipper activating the jump drive.

Everyone in
the main control section saluted and stood at attention when Cruz entered.

“At ease,
officers,” Cruz said.

“Mr.
President,” Sopoaga said, “I hope you had a nice nap.”

“I hardly
slept, Sopoaga. I spent most of the time thinking.”

“Of course,
Mr. President. Your job requires a lot of planning. We’re eleven minutes away
from the jump spot. Let me talk to the other ships.”

“Do your job,
rear admiral, don’t let me disturb you.”

Sopoaga switched the ship’s
comm to inter-ship mode. “Rear Admiral Sopoaga to all captains. We’re ten minutes
away from jump spot. Get ready for the jump.”

All captains acknowledged the
rear admiral’s notification.

With puerile excitement, Cruz
listened to the generic voice shouting the jump countdown. The ship entered
into hyperspace when the generic voice finished the countdown.

“We’ve jumped, Mr.
President,” Sopoaga said when they emerged from hyperspace. “We’re now heading
for Base.”

Chapter Eight

Sara stared at the satellite
image on the screen. She knew there was something wrong with a lone cloud mass
located above the South Atlantic Ocean roughly equidistant from South America’s
East Coast and Africa’s West Coast. She looked at the cloud mass for more close
to seven minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

She punched the air when the
eureka moment finally came. “I got it!”  She had seen a cloud mass with the
same shape and size in this location two days ago.
What are the chances that
a cloud is replaced by a cloud of the same shape on the same spot?
She
printed a screengrab of the cloud mass and put it in a drawer.

The cloud mass suddenly
disappeared. One instant, it was there and the next it was gone. It didn’t break
or disappear slowly as clouds normally do; it simply vanished, as if it had been
deleted. She came to one conclusion. Someone had pasted the cloud mass to hide
something.

But why would they paste
clouds over an area with no clouds?
she wondered.
Why would they make such an amateurish attempt to hide whatever
they wanted to hide?
Pasting clouds was surely the dumbest thing to do. If
they really wanted to hide something, they would simply have pasted a cloudless
picture previously cropped from the same place. Why risk pasting clouds? This
didn’t make sense.
Perhaps someone inside wants to expose the game.

She knew a suspicious cloud
would come again in the same area in the near future. Maybe they would paste
different clouds next time but she had no doubt that they would paste another
cloud mass over roughly the same location.

She continued looking at
real-time images of oceans for the rest of the day. She was about to go home
when she noted another suspicious cloud mass, this time over the Indian Ocean.
The cloud was a hundred or so kilometers from the area over which the two space
agencies and six satellite imagery companies pasted a video clip to conceal
real-time images. The cloud mass had a different shape from the one that had
been over the South Atlantic Ocean. She took out the printout of the screengrab
and compared the two clouds.
Bingo!
Whoever had been given the job of
pasting these clouds was incompetent. It was actually the same cloud that had
been rotated. She printed a screengrab of the cloud and switched to the
European Space Agency. She wasn’t surprised to see clouds pasted on the same spot.
All six privately owned satellite imagery companies had pasted clouds on the
same spot.

She had to convince the
government to send the Navy or the Air Force to investigate. The only person
who could put her case through to the President of the United States was Zachary
Jeffery, the Deputy Administrator of USEPA.

She quickly took out his
phone and dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hi Zack.”

“How are you doing, Sara?” Zachary’s
voice rasped from the phone.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry your critics are
making fun of you. I read several articles in which commentators poked fun at
you. They’ve a right to disagree with your theory but they’ve got no right to
insult you.”

“Don’t worry about me, Zack.
I’ve grown a thick skin.”

“Do you still have bodyguards?”

“Yes.”

“It gives me peace of mind to
know that you’re safe.”

“Zack, I hate being shadowed
by bodyguards. I can’t believe politicians put so much effort campaigning for
positions that require them to live with bodyguards.”

“I know how you feel, Sara,
but you need those bodyguards.”

“I know. Can I see you
tomorrow, in your office, Zack? I want to show you something that might increase
my need for bodyguards.”

“Is something wrong, Sara?
Are you in danger?”

“You told me to contact you
if I found evidence to support my theory. I think I’ve found the evidence.”

“What did you find?”

“I can’t discuss this over
the phone. I’ll come to your office tomorrow.”

“Okay. At what time can I
expect you in my office?”

“First thing in the morning.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Till tomorrow, Zack.”

* * *

“Harvesting Fleet 4 is
seeking permission to land at Base.”

“Permission granted, sir,”
said a female voice with a West African accent.

“Please notify Base commander
that I have the President aboard my ship.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the
traffic controller.

Cruz looked out of the
viewport at Fuel Ball. Although the planet was a gas giant, it looked pretty
solid from here.

The fleet docked and Sopoaga
quickly led Cruz into the base where he was welcomed by Vice Admiral Frankson.

“Welcome to Base, Mr.
President,” Frankson said with a salute.

“It’s good to see you,
Frankson.”

Sopoaga and Frankson exchanged
salutes and walked behind Cruz. The President inspected a hastily assembled
guard of honor amid the blaring of the Green Hymn from the public address
system. The guard of honor comprised men and women from Harvesting Fleet 1. Cruz
enjoyed every second of the guard of honor. Now he had his own army, the Green
Army, a disciplined army that was going to turn E Utopia and Earth into gardens
of Eden.

After inspecting the guard of
honor, he walked to his office, shadowed by Frankson, Sopoaga and five officers
from Base Security.
He put his hands on the security pad and the pad quickly
scanned his DNA and fingerprints before it prompted the door to open.
He entered the office for the first time in six months
and sat behind his desk. Only Frankson and Sopoaga entered. The security
officers remained outside.

“Sopoaga, you are dismissed,”
Cruz said. “The Vice Admiral can debrief you later.”

Sopoaga saluted and left the
office.

“Please sit down, Frankson.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“How is everything here?”

“Everything is running
smoothly, Mr. President.”

“Keep up the good work,
Frankson. We’re almost there. Soon, we will be evacuating your families from
Earth.”

“When can that happen, Mr.
President?”

“We’ll start the evacuations soon,
Frankson. I’m going to E Utopia too see whether the planet is ready to take in
the chosen ones. If it is ready, I’ll return to Earth and kick-start the
evacuation of the chosen ones.”

“I heard we had a scare on
Earth,” Frankson said, to keep the conversation going.

“The Director of GEMA caused
a minor scare but it’s nothing to worry about. Only one member state of the
United Nations bought her story and that member state isn’t in the Security
Council.”

“How are the oxygen levels in
Earth’s atmosphere?”

“They aren’t as low as we
want them to be. The sand reduction plants are slowing us down a little.”

“What will we do if E Utopia
gets fully oxygenated before Earth’s atmospheric levels fall to the desired
level?”

“We have plan B, Frankson. If
that happens, we’ll stop taking oxygen from Earth and take carbon dioxide
instead.”

“How will that help, Mr.
President?”

“Green plants need carbon
dioxide to make food,” Cruz explained. “Without it, they will die and the
people on Earth will starve.”

“But that will take more time
than suffocation.”

“The people on Earth use
breathing machines and we can’t suffocate them. Only two things can wipe them
out; the rising temperatures caused by the thinning of the atmosphere and
starvation caused by the death of crops. Milking carbon dioxide is a sure way
of wiping out plants from Earth. It would prove to be much easier than milking
oxygen. Now carbon dioxide makes about 0.056 percent of Earth’s atmosphere and
their standalone UVL plants are breaking it down as we speak. If we design a
good carbon-dioxide-harvesting system, it’ll take us a short time to wipe
Earth’s carbon dioxide.”

“Won’t they start making
carbon dioxide like they are making oxygen right now?”

“To make carbon dioxide, they
will have to burn carbon, which will consume their remaining oxygen.”

“Plants need oxygen for
respiration,” Frankson mused. “Why are they not suffocating?”

“El Monstruo has killed lots
of plants and destroyed forests but that has more to do with lack of water than
lack of oxygen,” Cruz explained. “The current levels of oxygen in Earth’s
atmosphere can sustain plant life. Plants are stationary and they generally
require less oxygen than animals to burn carbohydrates. Besides, during the
day, the cells in leaves and other green parts of the plant can burn
carbohydrates in respiration using the oxygen they get from photosynthesis.”

“I see,” Frankson said,
impressed by the President’s knowledge. He could envision the bright future
that awaited E Utopia under the leadership of such a knowledgeable president.

“We shall win this war. Victory
is ours, Frankson.”

Frankson nodded. He was a
soldier and he knew a good strategy when he heard it. “Victory is ours, Mr.
President.”

“I’m not staying here any
longer than necessary, Frankson,” Cruz said. “Get me and the five new recruits a
lift to E Utopia.”

“Yes, sir.” Frankson looked
at his computer. “Two tankers are ready to depart in about twenty-five Earth minutes.
Let me raise them. I think we should reserve a spaceship for you in future, Mr.
President, so that you won’t have to hitchhike in milkmaids and tankers.”

Cruz shook his head. “We
can’t keep a ship permanently stationed here waiting for the day I pass by.
That, Frankson, will be a waste of resources. We need all ships to transport
oxygen from Earth.”

“We won’t reserve a tanker or
a milkmaid, sir. We can reserve a passenger ship like a Transgalactic.”

“Still that would be a waste
of resources, Frankson. We must guard against wasting resources because it
leads to overexploitation of natural resources.”

“Yes, Mr. President, I get
what you mean.”

Frankson raised the captains
of the two tankers and ordered them to transport the President and the five
recruits to E Utopia. When the time for the tankers to depart came, Frankson
personally escorted Cruz to the dock and handed him over to the more senior of
the two tanker captains, Captain Efemena Aruegodore, who was better known by
his first name because his surname was a tongue twister. He hailed from the
Urhobo tribe of Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

Captain Efemena saluted the President
and the vice admiral. “I will be honored if you ride in my ship, Mr.
President.”

Captain Efemena ushered Cruz
and two of the new recruits into his ship and introduced him to the crew. The
remaining three recruits went into the other tanker. Although tankers were a
dozen times bigger than Oxygen Harvesters, they had smaller cabin space than the
harvesters because they were designed to operate with a smaller crew.

Captain Efemena offered his
sleeping cell to Cruz. He rarely used the sleeping cell because the journey
from Base to E Utopia took just under an hour. To get to E Utopia, the tankers
travelled in normal space for the first twenty-three minutes, and then in hyperspace
for four minutes, before they returned to normal space, where a thirty-one
minute lap took them to low E Utopia orbit.

* * *

“Right now what are you to
me? Fiancé or bodyguard?”

George smiled. “Fiancé.”

“I like the fiancé part
better,” Sara said, swaying her hips. “Come and undress me and do to me all
those wicked things that fiancés do to their fiancées.”

George pulled her close and
slowly undressed her. When she was nude, he kissed her, his hands moving all
over her body. She closed her eyes, enjoying the soft touch of his hands.
Making love was her only escape from her worries. She opened the zipper of his
trousers and helped him undress.

“Tomorrow I’ll guard your
body. Tonight, I’ll enter it.”

She giggled. “Permission
granted.”

They made love for more than
an hour before George fell asleep.

“Bodyguard my ass,” Sara said
with a laugh when she heard his snores. “Now who is guarding who?”

She remained awake deep into
the night, asking herself many questions. Who were these people with the power
to control NASA, ESA and six companies that were owned by billionaires? Were
the activities that they were trying to conceal happening in air or water? The
two areas that the satellite imagery companies had blocked from view were in
the ocean. Why wasn’t this happening on land?

“I get it,” she said to
herself. The people whom the companies were protecting had chosen to do their
nefarious activities in international airspace and international waters because
they knew that nobody would pay attention to them. The areas over which they pasted
images were of little interest to weathermen and defense forces of the
countries of the world.