The E Utopia Project Read online

  “How long do you think we’ll go on with our milk runs before E Utopia becomes fit for human habitation?” Sopoaga asked his XO.

  “I have no idea, sir,” Commander Lebia Nuate replied with a heavy Nigerian accent.

  “I don’t think even the Council and the admiralty know when the milk runs will end,” Sopoaga drawled.

  Captain Sopoaga tried without success to take his eyes from Nuate’s breasts. Although Commander Nuate had a beautiful face, Captain Sopoaga preferred to look at her full breasts that bulged out of her jumpsuit. For the umpteenth time in the last two hours, he wished he and Nuate were the only people manning the ship. Making love to Nuate in zero gravity was one of Sopoaga’s greatest fantasies. She was darker and taller than most women Sopoaga knew. In fact, she was a good four inches taller than his six feet. But her size and darkness didn’t diminish her femininity. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. And when he was full of lust for her like he was right now, he believed she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “Con the ship, Nuate,” Captain Sopoaga said, visualizing himself holding her tight, their naked bodies slowly drifting about the ship in zero gravity.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They exchanged seats and Commander Nuate took the ship’s controls on the main bridge.

  “It will probably take two years of milk runs to make E Utopia ideal for habitation,” Captain Sopoaga said, more to himself than to Commander Nuate. He hoped his estimation was wrong. Two years was a long time. He was tired of the milk runs and he missed his family.

  Sopoaga saw Nuate’s lips move, but he couldn’t process what she said because he was busy imagining himself milking her breasts. It was a long time since he last held a woman in his arms and Nuate would be the perfect woman to end his sex drought.

  When the pressure of the oxygen tanks had reached the maximum pressure achievable by the pumps, the oxygen was liquefied and stored in tanks. Each ship had twelve tanks to store liquid oxygen and the process continued until all the tanks were full of liquid oxygen.

  “Sir, the milkmaid is full,” Nuate said after thirty-three minutes of milking.

  Captain Sopoaga switched the communication system to inter-ship mode. “Flagship is full, over,” he announced. “Respond and notify me of your status.”

  The captains of OH05, OH03, OH17 and OH20 notified Sopoaga that their ships were full.

  “Take us out of here, Nuate,” Sopoaga ordered.

  Commander Nuate steered OH64 to higher altitude and the four ships behind the flagship followed suit. The five ships powered out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Although Commander Nuate was below the rank of captain, she had more responsibilities than some of the captains of the fleet’s ships. As the XO of the flagship, she sometimes led the fleet when Captain First Grade Sopoaga was resting.

  The squadron ascended and entered orbit in just over six minutes. The spaceships accelerated till they broke free of the Earth’s gravity.

  “Sir, we have left orbit,” Commander Nuate said.

  Sopoaga woke up from his sexual fantasies. “Thanks, commander. Let me con the ship.”

  They exchanged seats. This girl has a hot ass, he thought when he felt Nuate’s heat on the command seat.

  Two minutes after leaving orbit, Sopoaga switched on his long-range communications. He switched his comm to inter-ship mode and ordered the other ships to switch on all their communication and navigation systems. Four ships immediately appeared on the bridge’s monitor.

  “Congratulations for a successful milking, comrades. Let’s head back to Base.”

  Five more ships appeared on Sopoaga’s multi-function display. “Captain First Grade Sopoaga to Captain Hyvönen. Did your squadron have a successful milking?”

  “Yes, sir. We had a good milking.”

  “Good. Let’s take our milkmaids to the jump zone. See you at Base, Hyvönen.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Hyvönen said.

  Although the spaceships had broken free of Earth’s gravity, they were still in orbit around the Sun and were under the Sun’s gravitational pull. When the ships left Earth orbit, they used a simple gyroscope-based navigation system to get to the jump zone. Their gyrocompasses, like all gyroscopes, always pointed at the same distant star. To get to the jump zone, the ships travelled at maximum speed for five thousand two hundred and eight-three seconds with their axis parallel to the needles of their gyrocompasses. The jump zone was roughly a sphere of space the size of the Earth.

  Now that the thrill of the milking was over, the crew felt bored. The journey back to Base was long and uneventful. This was the time when crew members thought about their families and loved ones back on Earth and wondered how they were doing.

  Sopoaga switched off his gravity shoes and glided in zero gravity, his thoughts alternating between his family and his XO’s full breasts.

  Like the crew of all the ships in HF4, the crew of OH64 was made up of people from diverse backgrounds who were bonded by their fanatic conservationism.

  Captain Sopoaga came from the Pacific Isles of Tuvalu. He was educated in Fiji and trained as a pilot in Australia. He worked for Fiji Airlines for two years before he resigned and found a job as a Science teacher in Funafuti, the capital city of Tuvalu. Before El Monstruo began, Tuvalu had only been four point five meters above sea level and faced the risk of being wiped off the map by the rise in sea levels. The only way to save Tuvalu was for the world to reduce global warming. When Sopoaga was a pilot, he was irked by the realization that he was contributing to global warming by operating a flying machine that emitted lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He sold his car soon after resigning from Fiji Airlines. The fight to reduce global warming began with him. He had to do his part to save his homeland.

  He read about a movement called the Front for the Salvation of the Pacific Islands, which had been formed by intellectuals from Polynesian islands with the aim to educate the world about the danger of global warming to low-lying islands. He joined the movement and campaigned online for the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols. Using his own funds, he travelled to Australia, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and the United States and, with the help of green movements from these countries, he organized demonstrations, urging the governments of these industrialized nations to take measures to reduce pollution. Although his efforts were met with mockery and denial from the governments of all the countries that he visited, Sopoaga never gave up.

  His noise reached the ears of the International Green Movement (IGM), which offered to sponsor the Front for the Salvation of the Pacific Islands. With IGM sponsorship, Sopoaga and members of his Polynesian movement were able to travel extensively, entreating the people of the world to reduce carbon emissions in order to save the Pacific islands from the effects of climate change. Wherever they went, they were met with indifference at best. Mockery and denial was the order of the day. In recognition of his zeal, Sopoaga was elected chairman of the Front for the Salvation of the Pacific Islands.

  He watched helplessly when Tuvalu was hit by the worst ever cyclone in living memory, which washed monstrous waves over the atolls, destroying buildings with 350mph winds. The disaster gave Tuvaluans a glimpse of the apocalypse that could wipe away their nation in the not-so-distant future if nothing was done to reverse the effects of global warming.

  Sopoaga globe-trotted with renewed zeal but his impassioned pleas were met with the same indifference and ridicule. Six months after the cyclone, the leadership of Sopoaga’s Polynesian movement was invited to New York to meet the Executive Council of the International Green Movement.

  “Gentlemen, I admire your commitment to saving not just the Pacific Islands but the whole world from mankind’s greed and negligence,” Sam Cruz, the president of the IGM, told the Polynesian delegation. Cruz was a billionaire who had inherited his wealth from his father. He was currently ranked as the world’s seventh richest man. Unlike his father, Jim Cruz, an out-and-ou
t capitalist whose sole goal in life was to make money, Sam was passionate about the environment. When he inherited his father’s estate, he was the world’s richest man, but he fell down the rich list when he opted out of businesses which he thought were against his conservationist principles.

  Sam Cruz told Sopoaga and his fellow Pacific Islanders that the IGM no longer believed it could save the world by political means. It had come up with a new strategy that required the most dedicated conservationists. “Saving the Pacific Islands means saving the world. If people reduce greenhouse emissions, they do not only save the Pacific Islands, but they also save the world.” Cruz’s eyes scanned the Polynesian delegation, which comprised one Tuvaluan, four Fijians, two Kiribatians and two Marshallese. “But the bottom line is that the people of the world do not give a damn about reducing pollution or about using natural resources more sustainably. They’re only interested in making profits and finding employment. I tell you, if Tuvalu or Kiribati was to be swallowed by the ocean today, it will be business as usual throughout the world.

  “Yes, some governments might send helicopters to rescue your people. Do you know why the Aussies and other do-gooders send those rescue choppers and relief aid to your islands when you are hit by cyclones? They do it to look good in the eyes of the world. They don’t give a damn about your islands. If they did, they would implement measures to reduce global warming.” Cruz was delighted to see anger registered in the faces of the islanders. “They won’t stop what they’re doing no matter how much we campaign against unnecessary pollution and unsustainable use of natural resources. Politics won’t change the status quo. We have to act to save the world. The people of the world will never vote green parties into power because they believe that our policies will reduce industrial development and employment. The ordinary man in the street only cares about getting a job. He doesn’t give a damn about conserving the environment. The people of the world will always vote for political parties that promise to create jobs and improve the economy at the expense of the environment. We will never achieve our goals through political means.

  “We, the International Green Movement, have come up with a new strategy, the only strategy that can save the world and its living species from man’s greed. This strategy requires total commitment to the cause. There will be no time for sentimentalism. We called you here because we believe you’re all totally committed to the cause... if we are wrong about your commitment now is the time for you to say so. If you think your commitment to the cause will be clouded by sentimentalism or religion, this is the time for you to leave.”

  None of the Polynesians left.

  “I believe your silence means you’re with us in our new approach. With this approach, we’re going to take two, three, four or even five steps backwards in order to take a hundred steps forwards. Think of our new strategy as an environmental homeopathy. Right now we’re in the process of losing our world to negligence and greed but I promise you that when we finish implementing our plan, we shall have two worlds which we shall rule by strict environmental law.”

  The nine Polynesians were sworn to secrecy. Before the Executive Council told them how the new strategy worked, Sam Cruz took them on a trip into space just above the Karman Line. He owned a Space Exploration and Tourism company with a growing fleet of spaceships.

  Up in space, the men were awed by the beauty of the Earth. The home planet looked like a jewel with its green forests, oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and mountains.

  “Look how beautiful it is,” Sam Cruz told Sopoaga and his eight companions. “Will you let mankind’s greed destroy such a beautiful thing?”

  Sopoaga shook his head. “No, I won’t. I will do whatever it takes to save the world.”

  “I will do whatever it takes to save the world,” Captain First Grade Sopoaga echoed the words six years later as he swam in zero gravity in his ship, leading his fleet to the jump zone. He loved Sam Cruz’s plan. Cruz had given him the opportunity to punish the polluters who had blighted the Pacific Islands with carbon emissions. Now Sopoaga’s homeland, Tuvalu, had been swallowed by the sea and its ten thousand people had been evacuated to Fiji. Soon, the rising seas would follow them to Fiji. Although he knew that the oxygen harvesting had accelerated the sea rise that had swallowed his homeland, Sopoaga felt no remorse. The milk runs had only accelerated the inevitable. He had recruited many Tuvaluans into the E Utopian movement and they were going to survive in the new world that the E Utopian pioneers were creating. This was far better than the total genocide that Tuvaluans faced at the hands of the world’s polluters.

  Commander Nuate was also going down the memory lane. She hailed from the Ogoni tribe of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, one of the world’s most oil-polluted places. Each year, oil companies and oil pirates spilled a quarter of a million of barrels into the Niger delta, contaminating land, water and air with carcinogenic hydrocarbons. Oil companies recovered hardly any of the oil that their old pipes spilled into the world’s third largest delta. The people of the Niger Delta lost an important source of protein when fish populations were decimated by the toxic waste that oil companies dumped into the Niger River. The pollution also affected the growth of crops causing widespread malnutrition among Niger Deltans. Natural gas that comes out when the companies drilled for oil was burnt in a process called flaring, polluting the air to such an extent that rain began to fall as acid rain. People could not safely drink ground water because it was contaminated with chemicals and they could not safely drink rain water because it was acidic. The government looked the other way although the pollution was causing illness among the people and destroying the region’s diverse wetland ecosystem. Government officials were only interested in extracting bribes from oil companies.

  Nuate’s grandmother told her of a time when her people lived peacefully—cultivating their crops, rearing their livestock, fishing in the Niger River and breathing clean air—before the government allowed oil companies to come to the Niger Delta. Many people were chased off their land and those who were fortunate enough to remain on their land were exposed to constant pollution.

  Nuate and many youths from her area protested against the oil extraction but the government and most Nigerians accused them of trying to halt the country’s economic progress. Even some indigenous people from the delta, who had found employment in the companies, accused the protesters of trying to foment chaos.

  Frustrated, Nuate and her comrades decided to take up arms and sabotage the oil companies. An operative of the IGM supplied them with arms. The Nigerian Army was called in after the saboteurs attacked two offshore oil rigs.

  Some of Nuate’s comrades were captured by the army and confessed, giving the authorities the names of the ecoterrorists who were still at large. A warrant of arrest for Nuate was issued and she would have been arrested had the IGM not whisked her and four of her friends out of Nigeria.

  Hironori Yamaha, the ship’s engineer, came from Japan’s Sendai that was home to Japan’s Sendai Nuclear Plant. He had always been opposed to Japan’s nuclear energy program. He couldn’t understand why a country that had suffered the heaviest nuclear catastrophe in history risked the natural environment and the lives of its citizens by setting up nuclear plants. Japan was a country that frequently suffered Earthquakes and cyclones and Yamaha feared another Hiroshima could arise if an earthquake destroyed a nuclear reactor.

  Yamaha and his fellow conservationists campaigned against the nuclear plants but their protests fell on deaf ears. Politicians were bankrolled by business corporations who were only interested in making profits.

  When the IGM heard Yamaha’s conservationist noise, they approached him and asked him to launch a new green party in Japan. Yamaha readily agreed and with IGM funding, he recruited prominent Japanese conservationists and launched the Green Party of Japan.

  The Green Party of Japan campaigned vigorously and organized many rallies and demonstrations calling for nuclear abolition. Despite the flopping of most of the rallies and
demonstrations, Yamaha and his green comrades never gave up. They entered their first general election, and fared dismally, failing to win a single seat in Japan’s bicameral legislature.

  When the Fukushima disaster struck, the Green Party of Japan saw a window of opportunity. The government stopped all nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster but it made it clear that this was only a temporary stoppage. The Green Party of Japan campaigned with increased zeal but it failed to win a single seat in the first general election after the Fukushima disaster.

  Yamaha and his green comrades were furious when the government decided to restart the Sendai Nuclear plant. The Prime minister claimed that the reactors had passed the world’s toughest safety test but the green activists were skeptical. Proponents of nuclear energy claimed that nuclear energy was cheap and safe despite the fact that the Fukushima disaster had proven otherwise. The disaster had exposed people to radiation and billions of dollars were required to reverse the environmental damage.

  Yamaha and the Sendai branch of the Green Party of Japan campaigned vociferously against the restarting of the Sendai Nuclear Plant but their protests fell on deaf ears. They turned their frustration from the government and power companies to the electorate. It was the electorate that was letting the government get away with its dangerous policies. People only cared about freedom, getting jobs and earning a good salary, and when they elected politicians in power, they chose politicians whom they believed could improve their freedom and economic well-being. Only a tiny percentage of voters thought about the environment when they went to the ballot box. Most of the electorate didn’t give a damn about the Sendai Nuclear Plant because it was not in their neighborhood.