The E Utopia Project (2 page)

After walking for more than thirty-five
minutes, Sara finally entered her street. There were a few electric cars and petroleum-powered
cars parked in the street. Most of the petroleum-powered vehicles were dusty, having
been dumped in favor of electric cars. Sara’s dog Snoopy met her at the gate.
He was a brown Labrador whom she found in the street and rescued from certain
starvation and possible suffocation when he was a week old. He looked like a
bionic animal with his breathing machine.

“Snoopy,” she said, crouching
to check the dog’s breathing machine. The machine’s battery pack was fifty-nine
percent full and the exhaust was more than fifty percent full. She took off the
dog’s breathing machine from the dog’s head, and the battery pack from the canine’s
back, before she emptied the machine’s exhaust compartment into a carbon bin on
the porch. Snoopy’s mouth watered. Sara usually took off his breathing machine
when she wanted to feed him.

When she got inside the
air-conditioned house, she felt like she had entered another world.  The air
felt so cool that she remained still for almost a minute, closing her eyes,
feeling it soothing her skin. She took off her breathing machine when she
remembered that she didn’t need it inside the house. In addition to controlling
the temperature and moisture of the air in the house, the air-conditioner also controlled
the oxygen level. She led the dog to the kitchen and fed it some soya chunks
and leftover rice. Foodstuffs were so expensive that most people couldn’t
afford to keep pets during El Monstruo. Sara had no human dependents since the
passing on of her mother and she earned a good salary as the head of GEMA,
making her one of the few people in the world who could afford to look after a
dog.

Spurred by thirst, she sped
to the condenser. One of the condenser’s receptacles was full of cold water and
the second receptacle was almost full. Because of the drought, most homes now
relied on condensers for water. Authorities encouraged the use of condensers to
reduce strain on dams and water reservoirs. A condenser was simply a
refrigeration unit that took in air and cooled it till most of the moisture in
the air condensed.

She quailed when she imagined
how people in drier parts of the world were faring. If a region with a humid
climate like Washington was experiencing drought, what was the situtation in
traditionally dry regions like the Sahara which experienced little or no winter
precipitation?

“May God bless the
International Green Movement,” she said to herself when she thought about the
non-governmental organization that had donated twenty thousand condenser units
to people who lived in traditionally dry Third World countries. She knew it
would take a condenser more time to produce a liter of water in these dry
regions. The upside was that the heavy sunshine found in these regions would provide
plenty of solar energy for powering the condensers. She hoped the condenser units
would benefit the targeted people rather than the ruling class and the
politically connected.

There are many
billionaires and many super-rich corporations in the world,
Sara thought.
Why aren’t they doing the
philanthropic work that the International Green Movement
is doing?
She
donated fifty percent of her earnings to the UN’s Environmental fund and she
didn’t see why rich companies couldn’t donate substantial amounts toward the fight
against
El Monstruo
.

She tossed a big tablet into a
glass and filled the glass with water. Her mouth watered as she watched the
tablet dissolve with a sparkle, turning the water into a yellowish liquid. The
tablet contained mineral salts and vitamins. Fruits were hard to come by these
days and most people relied on tablets for their vitamins. She emptied the
glass with two big gulps and rested for a couple of minutes before she boiled
some water in an electric kettle. She poured the steaming water into a pressure
cooker. Then she poured a cup of rice into the pressure cooker and put it on
the stove. It was now difficult to cook without a pressure cooker because the
drop in atmospheric pressure had reduced the boiling point of water. If you
wanted to heat water to hundred degrees, you had to use a pressure cooker.

When the rice was done, she
scooped it into a plate and raided the fridge for leftover beans. Even before El
Monstruo, Sara never threw away food. She hated wasting things, a trait that
had made her passionate about saving the environment. As she ate the rice and
beans, she wished she had a joint of roasted beef or a chicken breast. Now the
majority of people on Earth hardly ate meat. Most governments had banned animal
husbandry in accordance with a UN resolution that encouraged mankind to stop producing
meat, eggs and milk. El Monstruo had diminished food production and there was
no food to waste feeding livestock. Livestock that can feed one person is reared
with stock feeds that can feed six people. Mankind simply couldn’t afford the
luxury of rearing livestock.

The beans didn’t taste bad.
They had been genetically modified to produce essential amino acids normally
found in animal protein. Her tongue missed the taste of meat but her body
didn’t miss meat. There was adequate protein in the genetically modified
vegetarian food. Sara was against genetically modifying organisms but she knew that
genetically modifying crops to produce animal protein was the only way the
world could avoid protein deficiency. A year ago, fish used to be available on
the market but overfishing and low oxygen levels in fresh water and sea water
had wiped out fish populations. Oceans became warmer because of El Monstruo,
reducing the solubility of oxygen in sea water. The drought had also dried the
habitats of fresh water fish. Many fish species had disappeared altogether. Even
when fish was still available on the market, Sara didn’t eat fish because she
didn’t want to promote overfishing.

Thoughtfully, she ate her
food, trying without success to shake off thoughts about El Monstruo. She
wanted to relax and enjoy her time home but she couldn’t stop worrying about
the environment. She could take her body away from her office but she couldn’t
take her mind away from her work. She felt it was incumbent upon her to rescue
the world from El Monstruo.

After two hours of racking
her brains for ways to tackle El Monstruo, she seamlessly drifted from thoughts
to dreams.

* * *

Sara woke up before the alarm
rang and took a quick shower. The water from the shower came from a tank perched
on top of the house. The tank was fed by a big condenser installed on the roof.
Most homes used one huge condenser for their water but Sara preferred to have a
separate smaller condenser for her drinking water. That way she avoided running
the risk of using up all her water supply on laundry and toilette.  

She sped to her bedroom and
quickly changed, itching to get to work and fight El Monstruo. She had a quick
breakfast of leftovers and gave her dog a bowl of soya chunks and rice.

By the time she finished
brushing her teeth, the dog had finished eating. She fitted the dog with its
breathing machine and led it out of the house.

“See you later, Snoopy,” she
said, walking away from the dog.

The morning was very cold, so
she decided to go by car. Shivering, she carried her breathing machine to her electric
car. Although days were sweltering, nights and early mornings were cold. The dog
followed her to her car, hoping to get a ride. Inscribed on the side of the car
in bold letters were the words:
Donated to GEMA by the International Green
Movement
.

“You’re staying home,
Snoopy,” she barked.

The dog wistfully looked at
her as she entered the car. She placed her breathing machine on the passenger
seat and drove her car for the first time in two weeks. The car, like most cars
manufactured during the past one and a half years, had an air-conditioner that
controlled oxygen levels. Although she was more than forty minutes ahead of
time she felt as if she was late. She and all mankind were behind time in the
race to save the world from El Monstruo.

The electric car transported
her to the headquarters of GEMA in twenty-six minutes, eighteen minutes more
than it took her to drive the same distance during the non-rush hours. Although
traffic had reduced considerably when people parked their diesel and petrol
cars, rush-hour traffic was still a nightmare.

She popped her head through a
car window and the security scanner on the gate scanned her eyes and recognized
the intricate patterns in the irises of her eyes, prompting the gate to automatically
open for her. Two officers from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service
manned the gate. Their uniforms and breathing machines made them look like
robots. She drove through the gate and parked in the reserved parking space.

“Good morning, Doctor
Cummings,” the guard warmly greeted her as she walked to the building’s main
entrance. “You decided to come by car today.”

Sara smiled at the guard. She
thought he smiled back but she couldn’t be sure because most of his face was covered
by his breathing machine. “Morning, Mr. Sheperton. How was the night shift?”

“Very cold. Nowadays nights
are always very cold. It’s as if daytime is stealing heat from nighttime.”

Sara felt her breathing rate
rising as she breathed the oxygen-deficient air. “Everything has changed, Mr.
Sheperton. It’s like we are living on a different planet.”

“Maybe judgment day came and
we’re now in hell,” the guard said, clasping his hands together as if in
prayer.

Sara felt a chill running
down her spine. “I hope you’re wrong, sir,” she said, realizing this was by far
the longest conversation she had ever had with the guard.

She scampered into the
air-conditioned building, her lungs screaming for oxygen-replete air. She got
into an elevator and pressed button number seven. The elevator noiselessly
transported her to the seventh floor of the GEMA headquarters. Pride always
swelled inside her each time she read the word DIRECTOR on her door. When she
was first appointed head of GEMA, the word DIRECTOR filled her with a sense of
achievement, but as the environmental crisis facing the world continued to
worsen, she felt more beleaguered by and less proud of her position at the helm
of GEMA. She was heading the United Nations agency that was tasked with fighting
El Monstruo
but she had no idea how the world could be saved from the cataclysm.

The security scanners on her
door recognized the patterns in her irises and the door automatically opened.
She stepped into the large office and sat on her chair under the portrait of
the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The burden of responsibility
became heavier when she sat behind this desk.

Before she joined GEMA she
worked as a regional administrator of the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (USEPA). She left USEPA for GEMA because she wanted to make a
difference not just nationally but globally. Earth was one globe. She didn’t
want to fight for the preservation of the Earth’s natural environment under a
national banner. When she was appointed head of GEMA, she knew she was stepping
into some really big shoes, but that was before El Monstruo reared its ugly
head. The cataclysm had increased the weight on her shoulders.  Billions of
people on Earth expected GEMA to come up with ways to tackle El Monstruo. She
and her colleagues had to do something to save the peasants in the poor parts
of the world who were starving because of the drought, the nomadic herdsmen who
had lost their herds to lack of pastures, the fishermen who had lost their
livelihoods when El Monstruo wiped fish populations.

She switched on her computer
and opened the text document that was supposed to contain the speech that she would
give to world leaders at the UN summit. She had only managed to write the
heading. She couldn’t think of anything to write that she hadn’t said during
previous UN environmental summits. She was sure that the world was bucking the
wrong tree by concentrating on raising atmospheric oxygen levels with
oxygenators but she needed proof to convince world leaders. The oxygen deficit
was just a symptom. The problem lay elsewhere. Sara understood people’s preoccupation
with raising the level of the atmosphere’s oxygen. Without oxygen, life would
end. UVL plants and sand reduction plants were the only available means of countering
the oxygen drain.

Sara now believed that El
Monstruo
was the result of an extraterrestrial force or the result of
changes in the Solar System. She couldn’t tell world leaders her theory without
facts to support it. She had told her colleagues her theory and none of them
thought it held water.

She stared at the blank page,
wondering what to write. The blank page stared back at her, daring her to fill
it with meaningful words. She typed the subheading
Extraterrestrial Factors
.
She hadn’t managed to type a word under the subheading by the time her personal
assistant, Nzue Nguema, arrived.

“Morning, Sara,” Nzue said.

“Morning, Nzue,” Sara said,
smiling at the towering, muscular, coal-black Gabonese, noting how his perfect
white teeth contrasted with the color of his skin. Sara used to tell Nzue that he
was the first real black man she had ever seen. Most black men Sara knew were
varying shades of brown, but Nzue was outright black. Sometimes Sara thought he
looked purplish, like ripe grapes. “I’m trying to write my summit speech but my
mind is as blank as the page in front of me.”