The E Utopia Project Read online

  “Asshole?” George exclaimed with rage. “I risk my life to save you and you call me an asshole?”

  Before Sara could say anything, he pulled her down. She tried to push him away but he pinned her to the ground with all his might. She gave up her struggle when she realized he was too strong for her. Weeping, she surrendered herself to his will. There was nothing that he could do now that could hurt her more than what he did three years ago.

  He rolled away from her when he realized she was weeping.

  “Sara, this isn’t the time to cry?” He looked up, his eyes scanning the sky. “You have to be strong for us to get through this.”

  Sara looked at the sky and her gaze followed his till she spotted an aircraft.

  “What’s that?’ she asked, sobbing.

  “It’s a drone,” George said. “I think it’s looking for us. We have to lie low.”

  “Is that why you pinned me to the ground?” she asked.

  “Of course. Why do you think I did it?”

  “I thought... I thought... I thought you wanted to...”

  “Jesus!” George exclaimed with horror. “Did you actually think I wanted to rape you?”

  “I’m sorry, George. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “I risk my life to save you and this is the way you thank me?”

  “Please forgive me, George.”

  “As Director of GEMA you have so much gotten used to being around prominent people that you think that all ordinary folks like me are scum.”

  “George, I said I’m sorry.”

  “Before the rape accusation you called me an asshole if I remember correctly.”

  “I’m sorry for calling you an asshole. I overreacted.”

  “Overreacted! That’s an outrageous understatement.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “That was totally uncalled-for.”

  George took off the breathing machine and handed it to her. She grabbed it and hastily put it on. She needed the breathing machine more as a mask to hide her blushing face than as a source of oxygen.

  If anyone had told her that she would one day ask George for forgiveness, she would have told him that he was nuts. She was sorry for her wrong assumption about why he pinned her to the ground, and she was grateful to him for saving her life, but that didn’t mean that he was back in that special place that he used to occupy in her heart. No matter what he did for her, he would never occupy that place again. Never, a voice shouted in her ears.

  The drone made circles above them for two minutes before it left.

  “Let’s move,” George ordered, springing to her feet. “I think the drone is searching the area on the other side of the road. We’ve gone far enough in the woods not to be seen from the road. Now we turn and go parallel to the road. The Interstate 90 is not far away from here. If we walk fast we will get to it in minutes.”

  She sprang to her feet and followed him like a little girl who was trying to catch up with her dad.

  “It’s my turn now!”

  She took off the breathing machine and handed it to him.

  “What did you do to the gunman?” He asked, putting on the machine. “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

  “I finished with boyfriends when you broke up with me,” Sara said, breathing fast.

  “Broke up with you? Sara, you broke up with me. You simply shut me out.”

  “I didn’t break up with you.”

  “This isn’t the time for us to do a postmortem of our relationship,” George said, increasing his pace. “If we don’t get out of here fast, some medical examiner would soon be doing a postmortem of us.”

  They walked in silence for more than half a kilometer, exchanging the breathing machine after every fifty meters or so.

  “Sara, they are looking for you with drones. What did you get yourself into? Whose toes did you step on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” His eyes searched the sky for the drone. “Someone shot at you, chased at you and sent a drone after you and you tell me you don’t know.”

  She stumbled on a tree root and staggered. She had to hug a tree trunk to avoid falling. “I don’t know why someone wants to kill me. This is absurd.”

  He took off the breathing machine and handed it to her.

  “Think hard, Sara.” He crossed a small dry stream and stood akimbo, his eyes searching the sky, waiting for her to cross the dry stream. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. My duties as GEMA Director include saving the world from El Monstruo and that is supposed to make me everyone’s friend.”

  “Perhaps someone doesn’t want the Earth to be saved.”

  “We will all die if the world ends? Why would anyone want to stop me from contributing to the fight against El Monstruo?”

  “Maybe they want the world to be saved by someone else. Maybe they fear you’ll get too powerful. If you save the world, your popularity will rise. You could become the next US President.”

  “I’m not a politician, George.”

  “Maybe someone doesn’t believe that.” He poked her. “Get down!”

  Sara quickly took cover behind a tree trunk and hugged her knees to make herself small. George did the same two meters away from her. Looking up, Sara saw the drone going in the direction opposite where she and George were going.

  They resumed walking when the drone disappeared from their view.

  “My turn to breathe,” George said.

  She gave him the breathing machine but he returned it to her after only twenty seconds when he noted the shortness of her breath. Looking at him, she remembered a time when she had a picnic with him in the woods in a place that looked just like this one. She closed her eyes for a moment and let the pictures of the picnic flash through her mind. She opened her eyes and pushed the pictures from her mind. Those memories were from another life.

  “I don’t think they have just one drone. Maybe they have two or three drones looking for us.”

  “We should phone the police,” Sara said.

  “From the looks of it, some kind of mafia wants to take you out. The mafia often has moles in the police. We can’t risk phoning the police.”

  They walked at a steady pace through the dense woods, avoiding places that had no trees. After walking for more than ten minutes they came to the interstate.

  “What do we do now?” Sara asked.

  “Let’s walk along the interstate and look for a ride before it gets dark. I have a feeling that when it gets dark, the people looking for you will send a whole battalion in search of us.”

  Sara nodded. She trusted his judgment. He was a soldier who had survived Taliban attacks in the Afghan campaign. He knew how to deal with this kind of situation.

  “It’s my turn to breathe,” he said.

  She gave him the machine.

  “Are we going to go to your place?” she asked.

  “No. It’s possible that the assassins now know that I’m the one who’s helping you. But one thing is for sure; there is no way they will know about my uncle, Martin.”

  Sara’s face broke into a grin. “Is Uncle Martin still around?”

  “Yes, he’s as strong as ever. He will be delighted to see you.”

  “I will be delighted to see him too. It’s been ages since I last saw Uncle Martin.”

  “Why didn’t you visit him, Sara?” George rebuked. “Uncle Martin loves you. Breaking up with me shouldn’t mean breaking up with my uncle.”

  Sara wanted to shout that it was George who broke up with her, but she shut her mouth when she realized she was too tired to argue. Now she had to focus all her energy on escaping the predators who wanted to kill her.

  “Your turn,” he said, taking off the breathing machine. “I almost forgot that I’m supposed to share the machine with you. I hope you won’t accuse me of trying to suffocate you. You’re in a hell of an accusatory mood today.”

  They remained five meters inside the
woods and walked parallel to the interstate.

  “A truck is coming,” George said. “Take off the machine and ask the driver to stop. They usually stop for beautiful ladies.”

  Sara blushed. It was a long time since George called her beautiful. He always kissed her after calling her beautiful. Thinking of his kisses, her mouth watered.

  Tearing off the breathing machine, she ran out of the woods and he jogged after her. The driver of the truck pulled the brakes when he saw her but he hesitated when he saw George. He drove past them and stopped thirty meters away when he saw their desperation in the view mirror.

  They ran to the truck.

  The driver popped his head out through the window and looked at them for seconds before he said, “Where are you heading?”

  “Sprague, sir.”

  “Get in. I’m going all the way to the West Coast.”

  He opened the door. Sara was the first to get in. George lazily followed her in, careful not to scare the driver.

  “Captain Donald to his unauthorized passengers,” the driver said with a laugh. “Fasten your seat belts. We’re taking off.”

  George and Sara politely laughed. The driver laughed, pleased with his wit.

  “Is everything okay with you guys?” he asked when he saw how deeply George breathed. “I can see you just have one breathing machine.”

  “Mine malfunctioned and I threw it away. I’ll buy one when I get to the nearest shops.”

  “That’s about ten kilometers away. Since we now have three pairs of lungs in here, I guess I’ve to adjust the air conditioner.”

  * * *

  One of the three launching sites at the Columbus commercial spaceport in New Mexico’s Desert was a hive of activity. Unlike most privately owned spaceports in the United States, the Columbus Spaceport had not been developed from former NASA or former military installations. Cruz & Sons Inc bought land from the federal government in New Mexico’s desert and immediately began construction. After getting license from the Federal Aviation Administration, Cruz & Sons Inc wasted no time setting up a vertical launch system capable of launching medium class rockets. Now this eleven square kilometer stretch of land that had been deemed useless by the government now boasted of two vertical launch systems and two runways for airplanes and horizontal-takeoff spacecraft. It was by far the busiest privately owned spaceport in the country. Unlike most spaceports, whose activities were restricted to space tourism, the Columbus Spaceport’s main function was carrying equipment and supplies to Cruz’s space station, Eureka. Most privately owned space companies showed no interest in non-lucrative scientific space expeditions, preferring to concentrate solely on space tourism. Many people wondered why Cruz & Sons wasted so much money building Eureka Research Space Station. Critics of Cruz & Sons pointed to the fact that the corporation hadn’t made a single important discovery since its subsidiary, Eureka Space Company, began its space scientific expeditions a decade ago.

  This lack of judgment on the part of Cruz & Sons didn’t surprise many in the business world. Sam Cruz, the president of the corporation wasn’t known for his business acumen. He was more interested in enhancing his public image than in making money. Sam Cruz made more donations than anyone else in the corporate world and he supported conservationist movements which mostly consisted of people who became environmental activists for the sole purpose of getting funding from him. It was now known throughout the world that if you made noise about preserving the natural environment, you stood a big chance of getting funding from Sam Cruz’s International Green Movement.

  This penchant for playing the philanthropist and environmentalist had seen Sam Cruz slide down the Forbes list. His business advisors had tried their best to make him see sense but it was to no avail. When he inherited Cruz & Sons Inc, he owned eighty percent of the corporation but now he owned hundred percent after distraught minority shareholders gladly sold him their shares.

  Six years after setting up the Columbus Spaceport, Sam Cruz announced plans to build spaceports in Bolivia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite advice from his business advisors, who questioned the logic behind building spaceports in Third World countries when all space tourists came from the First World, Sam Cruz set up the spaceports. The governments of the two countries, which were beneficiaries of Sam Cruz’s aid under the International Green Movement’s Sustainable Development Initiative, gladly offered him land for the construction of the spaceports. The two governments were delighted that Cruz & Sons Inc wanted to invest in their countries. Naturally, the Bolivian and Congolese public praised their governments for bringing foreign investment into the two countries.

  Among Sam Cruz’s other noted white elephants were the zoos that he established to “save endangered species.” People could enter the zoos and see the animals for free, which meant that Sam Cruz didn’t get anything other than publicity from the investment. Now with El Monstruo devastating the world, the costs of running the zoos were high. Not only did Sam Cruz have to feed the animals, but he also had to cater for their oxygen needs.

  The world’s business community ridiculed Sam Cruz, but the world’s common people saw him as a superhero who fought for the preservation of the environment. If people of the world were to be asked to elect someone to become the governor of Earth, they would surely elect Sam Cruz. He was good-looking in a superheroish, square-jawed, athletic way, and his unassuming public manners were endearing. He had spent billions of dollars in the environmental cause and he and his movement had won many awards, which included a record six US Environment Leadership Awards. But in spite of that, he never bragged about his achievements, and whenever he made speeches, he spoke as if the common man in the street was his equal partner in the fight to protect the environment.

  Today Cruz himself was at Columbus Spaceport inspecting operations. Everyone, from the guards and janitors to the director, tried to look as conscientious as they could in the presence of the billionaire. The Spaceport Director walked behind Sam Cruz like a lieutenant following a general during an inspection of military barracks.

  “What’s that stuff?” Sam Cruz asked, pointing at boxes that were being offloaded from trucks.

  “Frozen embryos, sir.” replied Matt Spencer, the spaceport director. He was a bespectacled twenty-eight-year-old with a prematurely balding head. If he was an actor, his geeky appearance would have landed him numerous roles as a genius. And he was quite a genius as those who knew him would testify.

  “Did you send any live big cats into Space?”

  “We sent three female leopard cubs,” Matt said.

  “Why didn’t you send lions?” Cruz asked. Lions were his favorite cats.

  “We decided not to send live lions or live tigers because they eat more than leopards. We will only send frozen lion and tiger embryos. The female leopards will play surrogate to all our big cat embryos when the time comes.”

  Cruz nodded.

  “What about sperm banks?” Cruz asked.

  “We’re collecting sperm samples of as many animals as we can.”

  “Good.” He had ordered the creation of sperm banks to increase the gene pool of E Utopia’s fauna. “When is the next launch?”

  “We got FAA clearance to make a launch tomorrow.”

  Sam Cruz’s phone rang. He frowned when he listened to the caller. “What do you mean she escaped? If you can’t take care of a woman, how can I expect you to take care of a planet?”

  Cruz cut the call and sped to his limousine in a huff.

  * * *

  It was early morning when George and Sara arrived at Uncle Martin’s cabin on the shores of Lake Sprague. The lake had shrunk because of the drought, making the lakeside cabin appear as if it had drifted away from the lake. The peacefulness of the place had a calming effect on Sara. She felt safe here, as if the attempt on her life had taken place on another continent.

  The truck driver had enjoyed their company. Sara and George bantered with him and laughed at his jokes throughout the way. He
couldn’t help feeling sad when they disembarked, but his eyes lit when Sara gave him a hundred dollar note, which he accepted with half-hearted protest.

  The morning was very cold. Sara resisted the urge to huddle against George for warmth. There were times when huddling against him was the most natural thing in the world and those times now belonged to the dustbin of history.

  Uncle Martin’s “cabin” was actually a four-bedroomed house with two bathrooms and an attached two-car garage. The place also had a private boat launch.

  A German shepherd barked at them when they approached the cabin but its barking turned into soft whimpering sounds of delight when it recognized George. It trotted toward him and pawed him in between growling at Sara.

  “Hunter, come here my boy,” he said, putting both hands on the dog’s neck. Sara remembered her dog when she saw the breathing-machine-clad German shepherd.

  “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hands.

  “What?”

  “Snoopy is alone!”

  “Dammit, Sara. You scared me. I thought you saw someone pointing a gun at us.”

  “My dog will suffocate when the batteries of his breathing machine run out.”

  “How long do you think his batteries will last?”

  “He carries a big battery pack that can last a day and a half. His breathing machine’s exhaust automatically opens to dump carbon when it’s full. It has a solar charger but that can only help him if he stays in the sun long enough.”

  “Let’s hope he stays in the sun long enough,” George said, though he knew that with the afternoon heat, it was unlikely that the dog would bask in the sun.

  The noise woke George’s uncle. The old man peered at the visitors through the window and rushed for his breathing machine when he recognized George’s unmistakable languid gait. Fumbling with his breathing machine, he opened the door. He beamed at his nephew, the breathing machine forgotten in his hands.

  “George!” the old man said effusively. “What a surprise. Just what I needed to start my day!”