The E Utopia Project (36 page)
The Executive Council of E
Utopia and the top brass of the E Utopian space force sat in Planet House’s
situation room. For the first time, all members of the Executive Council were
on E Utopia. The Executive Council was made up of the following: Sam Cruz, Ronald
Hitchcook, Tyler Gibbs, formerly Director of Special Operations, Matt Spencer,
formerly Director of Columbus Spaceport, William Fenton, formerly Director of
the Bolivian Spaceport, Brian Nutwell, formerly Director of the Congolese
spaceport, and Ryan Ford, formerly Director of Recruitment and Species Collection.
Representing the space force were Fleet Admiral Charles Eawo, Admiral Chief of Operations
Gyozo Geza and Vice Admiral Andrew Frankson. These were the most powerful men
on E Utopia.
“Gentlemen, as you have all
heard, earthlings have found out about our milking operation and they’ve
adjourned an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council,” Cruz said. “It’s a
good thing we evacuated the chosen ones before this happened. From the
information that we garnered from the drones we sent into the Solar System to
eavesdrop on data satellites, Interpol rounded up all the staff of the space
agencies and satellite imagery companies who were working with us and they’re
interrogating them as we speak.”
“I think those guys sold us,”
Nutwell said angrily. “We should execute their loved ones in our prison.”
“That, I’m afraid, won’t
serve anything,” Cruz said. “Who knows? In future we might need the prisoners
as bargaining chips. Besides, there’s a lot of work to be done here and the
prisoners will provide cheap labor.”
“That is a point, Mr.
President,” William Fenton said. “But we must make sure that the prisoners
don’t mix with the chosen ones.”
“We’ll make sure that the
prisoners will be separated from the populace at all times,” Cruz said. “The chosen
ones will turn against us if they find out that we’re the cause of El
Monstruo.”
“Have the people on Earth
found out our identities?” Hitchcook asked.
“Not yet but they’ll soon
find out,” Cruz replied.
“They won’t be able to do
anything to us even if they find out our identities,” Matt Spencer boasted. “Without
jump drives, they can’t come here.”
“Even if they had ships
capable of travelling at FTL speeds, it would take them time to find E Utopia,”
Cruz said smugly.
“It looks like we won’t be
going back to Earth anytime soon,” Peter Ford drawled.
Admiral Eawo looked at Cruz. “Mr.
President, does this mean the end of the oxygen harvesting operation?”
“Yes,” Cruz agreed. “We’re
going to get the rest of our oxygen from Venus’ carbon dioxide.”
“May I speak, please, Mr.
President?” Admiral Geza broke his silence.
“Feel free, admiral.”
“The people on Earth don’t
have jump drives on their spaceships but we must not relax. Maybe they’ll
discover jump drives in the future. Since we’ll be getting the rest of our
oxygen from the Solar System, albeit on another planet, there’s the remote possibility
that earthlings might capture one of our ships and reverse engineer it. I think
we should place many defensive missile batteries into E Utopia orbit and these
batteries must be programmed to shoot any ship that approaches our planet
without access codes.”
“That is a good idea,
admiral,” Cruz said, raising his hand. “Raise your hand if you agree with
Admiral Geza.”
Everyone raised hands.
“The missile batteries must
be manufactured right away and launched into orbit as soon as possible,” Cruz
said.
“We’ll do that, Mr.
President,” Fleet Admiral Eawo promised.
“Have we abandoned our plan
to wipe out polluters and take over Earth?” Hitchcook asked.
Cruz leaned forward and
banged the table with his fist. “We cannot leave the Earth in the hands of
polluters.”
“They haven’t yet discovered
the nuclear launchers that we put in Earth orbit,” Hitchcook said fervently.
“Let’s strike them now before they discover the nuclear weapons.”
“Yes,” Gibbs agreed. “Let’s
strike them now before they create a strong space force. Mr. President, I
believe that now is the best time to strike.”
“If we nuke the Earth, we’ll
destroy the environment beyond repair,” Cruz said. “We need to come up with a
plan that deletes the polluters without permanently destroying the environment.
I need you, gentlemen, to brainstorm. Let me know if you come up with a plan
that can wipe away polluters without filling the Earth with nuclear radiation.”
“Mr. President,” Fleet
Admiral Eawo said. “We do not have the manpower to sustain a long war against
the Earth’s powers. Our orbital nuclear weapons are our only chance of
achieving victory.”
Cruz sighed. “Let’s shelf
that for the moment, Admiral Eawo. We’ll consider nuking the Earth if we fail
to come up with a better plan.” He cleared his throat. “Now let’s talk about
the environment here. At what stage is the tree planting, the revival of cryopreserved
plant cells, and the implantation of frozen embryos?”
“It is progressing well, Mr.
President,” Hitchcook said. “The plants are growing well. E Utopia will soon be
a green planet. The implantation of frozen embryos has been satisfactory so far.
We’ve successfully implanted three tiger embryos in one female leopard and four
lion embryos in another female leopard.”
Cruz shook with delight. “Are
you kidding me? I can’t wait to see big cats roaming the plains of E Utopia.”
“We’ve also implanted African
buffalos and bison in Asian bantengs. Believe it or not, we successfully
revived a frozen killer whale embryo and implanted it in a dolphin. When the
embryo gets too big for the dolphin, we shall take it out and put it in an
artificial womb. The embryo is female and if it survives, we’ll use it as the
surrogate mother of other whale species. We plan to do the same with shark
embryos, which we plan to implant in smaller
viviparous
cartilaginous
fish before we transfer them to artificial wombs. We also managed to revive cryopreserved
eggs of several species of oviparous fish.”
“I’m glad we’re making
progress in the reproduction of our planet’s biota. How is the astronomy front
going? Did our astronomers discover any other planet in the star system apart
from Fuel Ball?”
Hitchcook shook his head.
“No, Mr. President. They only discovered one asteroid with a radius of one
hundred and ten kilometers.”
“We must push the astronomers,
Hitchcook. We want to learn more about this star system.”
“I’ll push them, Mr.
President. I think we should launch a number of space probes to speed up the
discovery of new planets in this system.”
“Talk to our technicians and
build the space probes, Hitchcook. I want them launched into space as soon as
possible.”
“Yes, sir,” Hitchcook said.
Cruz cleared his throat. “Since
we’re all here, it’s time for us to form our Cabinet. Hitchcook, from now on,
you shall be Secretary for Education, Science and Technology. Admiral Eawo
retains the Defense and Interplanetary Transport portfolio and will be
deputized by Admiral Geza like before. Secretary Gibbs shall be in charge of
Interior, Security, Law and Order. Secretary Nutwell shall be in charge of
Forests, Wildlife, Agriculture and Natural Resources. Secretary Ford shall be
in charge of Local Transport, Communications, Energy and Mining. Secretary
Spencer shall be in charge of Finance and Economic Planning. Secretary Fenton
will be in charge of Public Works and Housing. I hope that you gentlemen shall
faithfully serve E Utopia, its people and its biota.”
All members of Cabinet said statements
to the effect that they would faithfully serve the planet.
“We need to have a calendar
of some sort here,” Cruz said. “Have you finally determined how long our year
is? Did you notice any seasonal patterns?”
“We discovered that there are
cold and hot seasons,” Hitchcook said. “But the length of the day doesn’t
change much during the seasons, suggesting that E Utopia undergoes little or no
axial tilt as it travels around the Luz Cruz. The seasons, I suspect, are more
due to the shape of its orbit than to the tilting of its spin axis. It seems
that E Utopia’s orbit around the Luz Cruz is more elliptical than the Earth’s
orbit around the Sun.”
“So we have a winter and
summer like on Earth?” Cruz asked.
“If my assumption is correct,
we have two winters when the planet is on the elliptical orbit’s furthest arcs from
the star and two summers when the planet is on the orbit’s nearest arcs to the
star.”
“So how many days does our
year have?”
“We’re not certain, but we
think our year has between five hundred and eleven and five hundred and thirteen
days.”
“I hope that this uniformity in
the lengths of days and nights throughout the seasons won’t have a negative
effect on photoperiodic flowering plants,” Ryan Ford mused.
“You’re right, Ford,”
Hitchcook said. “We’ll experience problems with photoperiodic flowering plants,
especially qualitative short-day and qualitative long-day plants. We’ll monitor
our photoperiodic flowering plants and come up with the best ways to induce
flowering.”
“We need all our plants to
flourish,” Cruz said somberly. “We’ll have to come up with ways to create
artificial long days and artificial short days for our qualitative
photoperiodic plants.”
“Creating artificial long days
will be much easier than creating artificial short days,” Nutwell said. “To
create long days, we’ll just have to install floodlights in sections of our
forests.”
“Creating short days will be
tricky,” Spencer entered. “We’ll have to cover sections of our forests with
retractable
roofs
.”
“We’ll do it,” Cruz declared.
“No price is too high to pay for the survival of our plants. We have to create
a monetary system as soon as possible to facilitate the growth of our economy.”
“Yes, sir. We need a monetary
system to facilitate trade,” Fenton said.
“The Cabinet has to meet at
regular intervals. Since we haven’t yet established a calendar, we’ll meet
after every ten days.”
* * *
The whole world was in shock.
Everyone from heads of states to the common man was equally shocked. Some executives
and directors of the implicated space agencies and satellite imagery companies
had confessed to taking part in the theft of Earth’s oxygen. At first it wasn’t
clear whether they were human collaborators in an alien attempt to end life on
Earth, but it soon became clear that there was no alien involvement.
In several countries
throughout the world, people who had declined invitations to E Utopia told the
authorities about the invitations. It was apparent that a group of people had
found a new world somewhere in the Universe and had robbed oxygen from Earth.
Investigators discovered that all the reported invitations to an
extraterrestrial world had come from people involved in environmental activism.
People accused governments of
allowing the theft of oxygen to take place. How could the world’s powers, with
all their technology and military hardware, let a small group of psychopaths
destroy the world? People accused the world’s powers of being too obsessed with
their rivalries at the expense of protecting the Earth. All countries were only
preoccupied with protecting their territories from attack by other countries,
leaving international airspace at the mercy of people like Sam Cruz. People
held demonstrations worldwide, calling for the creation of a unified Earth
defense system. Everyone praised Sara Cummings for saving the world. The term
of office of the UN Secretary-General was going to expire in four months and many
political commentators said that Sara Cummings should succeed him as UN chief.
Sam Cruz was the only known green
activist who owned an aerospace company, making him the number one suspect. As the
world’s best-known environmental activist, he was conspicuous by his absence.
Many expected Sam Cruz to lead the outcry against the oxygen theft and his
silence raised eyebrows throughout the world. It was clear that he was the
mastermind behind the oxygen heist. The FBI tried without success to locate
him. They didn’t find anyone when they went to his spaceport. The rest of his
companies were running but his spaceport and aerospace industries were shut. It
was the same case with his Bolivian and Congolese spaceports. All of the
International Green Movement’s Executive Council had simply vanished. People
couldn’t understand why a man who professed so much love for Mother Nature had
decided to destroy Earth’s natural environment.
Takehiko Hatsu, a prominent
member of the Green Party of Japan, made a revelation that helped the world
understand the rationale behind the oxygen theft. In an interview on Japanese
national TV, Takehiko related how he and fifteen Japanese green activists were
invited to the United States to meet the Executive Council of the International
Green Movement. Sam Cruz told Takehiko and his compatriots that he was
frustrated by the world’s inability to reduce environmental degradation and had
decided to employ a new strategy to save the Earth’s biota from man’s greed.
Takehiko said he refused to take part in the new strategy because he had a gut
feeling that it involved some kind of dirty play. He said he last saw thirteen
of his fellow Japanese green activists at the meeting.
