The E Utopia Project (27 page)

She fell asleep thinking
about the people whom the space agencies and satellite imagery companies were
covering up for.

“This is a goodbye kiss,”
George told her in the morning after breakfast. “This is goodbye to the fiancé.
I’m now the bodyguard.”

“I like the body penetrator
more than the bodyguard,” she said seductively, adjusting his collar.

George smiled and put his
hands on her hips. “The penetrator is a nocturnal animal. I can guarantee you
that he will be back tonight.”

“I wish we could go out and
have fun like we used to,” she mumbled.

“We can go out this evening,
darling.”

She shook her head. “No. Not
with a bunch of bodyguards following us. We’ll go out when all this is over.”

They went into the sitting
room were Agent Kane was watching the news on TV.

“Time to go, huh?” the FBI
agent said.

“Yes, it’s time to go,”
George said.

Sara wanted to walk to the
door but Kane stopped her.

“Let—”

“Oh I get it,” Sara said.
“Ladies last.”

“Ladies last,” Kane echoed
before he opened the door and led her to one of the three cars waiting outside.

They entered the car, which
was full of cigarette smoke.

“Sorry for the smoke, ma’am,”
the man behind the wheel said. “I’ve just been taking my morning cigarette.”

Sara felt like punching the
smoker in the face. She thought it was selfish of him to pollute the air just
to nurse his addiction. “Take me to the Federal Triangle,” she snapped. “I want
to visit the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“We’re going to the HQ of EPA
at the Federal Triangle,” Kane spoke into his sleeve.

The lead car of Sara’s motorcade
drove into the street and the car that was carrying Sara followed. At a snail’s
pace, they drove under the cloudless sky, through the rush-hour traffic for
almost half an hour before they reached the Federal Triangle.

Only George, Kane and Sara’s
driver accompanied her into the complex. The rest of the bodyguards remained in
the cars. She led the three men to the headquarters of the Environmental
Protection Agency.

Zachary was waiting for her
in his office, looking immaculate as ever in his blue suit. He was reading
something from his computer when she entered.

“Zack, you look great,” Sara
said with a fond smile. She liked this man and she knew the feeling was mutual.
Perhaps if they weren’t so professional when she was his deputy, they could
have become more than just friends. “I can see you did away with your specs.
Did you get a miracle cure for your eyes?”

“I switched to contact
lenses,” Zachary said.

“Good for you, Zack,” she
said, taking the chair opposite him. “Contacts make you look less like a stern
professor.”

“Did I look like a stern professor?”

“Come on, Zack, I’m kidding.”

“Where’s the new evidence you
want to show me?”

“Zack, have you given any
thought to my theory?” she asked, looking into his eyes.

“Are you talking about your
assumption that an extraterrestrial entity is taking oxygen from the
atmosphere?”

“Yes,” she replied, searching
his face for a hint of derision.

He put his hands on his
temples to reach for his glasses and laughed at himself when he remembered that
he wasn’t wearing glasses.

“Are you laughing at me,
Zack?” Sara asked with unmasked pain. She didn’t care when the whole world
mocked her, but it hurt to see Zack laughing at her. He was her friend and professional
soul mate.

“I’m not laughing at you,
Sara. I’m laughing at myself. It’s two months since I started using contact
lenses yet I still put my hands on my face to adjust my glasses.”

She pushed her head toward
him. “You didn’t answer my question. What do you think of my theory?”

“It’s an interesting theory,
Sara. I don’t subscribe to it but I give you credit for thinking outside the
box. Everyone else is working on the assumption that some volcanoes are sucking
oxygen from the atmosphere but nobody has even the slightest proof that such a
thing is happening. Nobody has any idea where these volcanoes are.”

She leaned backwards and
crossed her legs. “If I give you proof, will you help me investigate my
findings?”

“Depends on the proof.”

“First, let me say that I
came up with the extraterrestrial theory before I noticed the suspicious behavior
of the space agencies and satellite imagery companies. The suspicious behavior
only added weight to my theory.” She took out two A4 sheets of recycled paper
from her handbag and placed them on his desk.

“What is this?”

“This is your proof, Zack.
These are screengrabs I took from yesterday’s real-time satellite images. You
see those clouds marked with a red pen? They were pasted onto the satellite
image to cover up something.”

“How do you know that?”

She told him everything.

“But why would they paste
clouds? They could simply paste a picture cropped hours before they do their
thing.”

“I thought about that too,”
Sara said. “Maybe one of them wants to expose the whole thing.”

“I want to see this for
myself.”

“No problem, Zack. Seeing is
believing. I’ll phone you when they paste clouds again and you’ll see for
yourself what I’m talking about.”

“Even if I see this for
myself and become a believer, I won’t be of much help to you, Sara.”

“Zack, you’re the only person
who can help me. We need the government’s help to fully investigate this. This
is an environmental issue and your agency can easily take it to the President.”

“What do you want the President
to do?”

“We need the government to
find out what’s happening in that area. They must send Navy ships or even
submarines to this area. When the fake cloud appears on the satellite images,
the servicemen in the ships can look at the sky and see if there are any clouds
in the area.”

Zack shrugged. “I’m only a deputy
administrator
, Sara. Only the
Administrator
of EPA can take this matter to the President.”

“I know, Zack. If you see for
yourself what I’m talking about, please talk to the administrator.”

“I’ll do more than that,
Sara. I’ll talk to the administrator today and when the companies paste the
clouds, I’ll see them together with him.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Yes. Why?”

“The people we’re investigating
have compromised NASA. Maybe they’ve compromised your agency as well.”

“I trust him.”

“If you trust him, I trust
him. Talk to him. Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

“Show me the proof first,
Sara.”

“Your proof will come real
soon.” She sighed. “See you soon.”

“Goodbye, Sara.”

She walked out of the office
and was immediately shadowed by her bodyguards.

* * *

It was morning when Cruz landed
on E Utopia’s only spaceport. The E Utopian sun was shining brightly in the
partly cloudy sky. He was welcomed by Doctor Hitchcook, Secretary of Interior
and Works, Fleet Admiral Charles Eawo, Secretary of Defense and Transport, and
his deputy, Admiral Chief of Operations Gyozo Geza. Hitchcook warmly shook
Cruz’s hand and offered him a breathing machine whilst Eawo and Geza stood at
attention.

“At ease gentle man,” Cruz
said, putting on the breathing machine.

The two military chiefs
greeted Cruz before the public address system began blaring the Green Hymn. Hitchcook
and the two admirals followed Cruz as he inspected a guard of honor that
comprised men and women from tanker crews and dozens of ensigns who had just
graduated from the space force academy.

Cruz went beside himself with
joy when he noted that two of the servicemen in the guard of honor had no
breathing machines. The last time he was here, the oxygen in the air could
hardly sustain animals that originated from Earth’s high-altitude environments.
Now these two men were breathing E Utopian air unaided. He was going to make
sure that this air remained clean. He was going to do everything in his power
to protect E Utopian air from needless pollution.

When the Green Hymn was over,
Cruz, Hitchcook and two bodyguards entered an electric limousine and the two
admirals entered a much smaller electric car.

“Mr. President, do you want
to go to your residence or your office first?” Hitchcook asked.

“To my office.”

“We’re taking the President
to his office,” Hitchcook told the driver.

“Okay, Mr. Secretary,” the
driver said before he spoke into his sleeve. “We’re driving the President to
his office.”

Cruz’s six-car motorcade
drove out of the spaceport and entered a dust road. Cruz looked at the identical
houses on the left side of the road. The number of the houses had grown since
he was last here. Dozens of houses were under construction. The houses were
part of the space force barracks.

The pioneers had only
explored a small part of E Utopia. Now they were concentrating on bringing
oxygen and flora and fauna to the planet. When that was over, they would
explore the rest of their new world. Most of what they knew about E Utopia came
from satellite data.

Less than a kilometer from
the barracks was an administrative complex. When the motorcade stopped in front
of the complex, Cruz and Hitchcook stepped out of the limousine and entered the
complex, surrounded by top military officials and security men. Only Fleet
Admiral Eawo and Admiral Geza followed Cruz and Hitchcook into the President’s Office.

Cruz sat on his chair and
asked the three men to take seats. They all took off their breathing machines.

“I saw that two of our men
were not wearing breathing machines,” Cruz said. “I hope you didn’t order them
not to wear breathing machines just to impress me, Admiral Eawo.”

“No, Mr. President,” Eawo
said. “They were under no such orders. Those two men are James Yobo, from my
homeland and Imata Kabua from the Marshal Islands. The two men have stronger
lungs than all of us because they were professional athletes before they joined
the green cause. James Yobo was a short distance runner and he represented
Nigeria at the Olympics. Imata Kabua is a former long distance runner and Marshallese
national champion.”

“What is the state of the
planet?” Cruz asked.

“Mr. President, everything is
going according to plan,” Hitchcook said. “The level of oxygen in our
atmosphere can now sustain life as attested by the two servicemen who can
survive without breathing machines. I think we must start thinking about taking
our plants and animals out of the biomes. On the animal side, we can start by taking
out animals that originate from Earth’s high altitude areas since they are best
adapted to surviving in environments with low oxygen.”

Cruz pouted his lips. “Do we
have enough carbon dioxide to sustain plant life?”

“Yes and no,” Hitchcook said.
“The atmosphere has just over zero point one two percent carbon dioxide by
volume, which is more than enough to support plant life for now. But I don’t
think it’ll be enough to provide the carbon needed by the organic life that’ll
fill this planet. As forests grow, they’ll absorb almost all the carbon
dioxide.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Mr. President, we’ve plenty
of hydrocarbon fuel that we brought from Earth before we began using heavy
hydrogen fuel,” Hitchcook proffered. “When carbon dioxide levels drop too low,
we can burn the fuel to make more carbon dioxide. That won’t provide all the
carbon we need, so we’ll have to get carbon dioxide from Venus.”

“I’m more in favor of taking
carbon dioxide from Earth,” Cruz said. “That will kill Earth’s green plants and
starve the polluters.”

“That can be a quick way to
win the war, Mr. President,” Hitchcook said, thinking about his family and
friends back on Earth. He couldn’t wait for the day of their evacuation to E
Utopia.

“You can go ahead and start
planting plants outside the biomes, Secretary Hitchcook,” Cruz directed.

“We shall begin tomorrow, Mr.
President.”

“What’s the average sea level
pressure?” Cruz asked.

“Six hundred and forty
millimeters, Mr. President.”

“We have to push it to 760
millimeters,” Hitchcook suggested.

“Can I say something?” Fleet
Admiral Eawo said.

Cruz nodded. “Feel free to
speak, fleet admiral.”

“I know it makes sense to set
the air pressure level and the air content to the levels that were on Earth
before we began the EU Project, but I think we should consider three things.
Number one: E Utopia is slightly bigger than Earth and its gravity is slightly
higher than that of Earth. Number two: EU has almost the same average air
temperature as Earth. When EU’s atmosphere has the same pressure as pre- El
Monstruo Earth, it will be less dense than Earth’s atmosphere was before El Monstruo.”
Fleet Admiral looked at Cruz to see whether he understood what he was telling
him. He continued with his speech when Cruz nodded. “Number three: when forests
grow, nitrogen-fixing plants and microbes will absorb nitrogen from the
atmosphere, reducing the atmospheric pressure. The absorption of carbon dioxide
by plants won’t change atmospheric pressure because it would be offset by the
oxygen released by the plants.”