The E Utopia Project
(Book 1 of the Planet Woes Series)
By Kudakwashe Muzira
© Copyright 2016 by Kudakwashe Muzira
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the above.
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The picture of the Earth on the cover of this book is from NASA and the NSSDC. This image from NASA and the NSSDC does not imply that the aforementioned endorse any part of this book. This book is not in any way endorsed by NASA and the NSSDC.
Warning: Although this book purports to be hard science fiction, it contains unrealistic faster-than-light travel.
To my brothers and beta readers, Tirivashe and Tapiwa
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Chapter One
Panting, Sara Cummings walked along the sidewalk, resisting the urge to put on her breathing machine. She passed a couple and their four kids. The whole family stared at her, wondering how long she would go without putting on her breathing machine. The couple recognized Sara. The man dismissed her as an attention-seeking celebrity who wanted to show off the power of her lungs. The woman thought Sara was doing an experiment to determine how long a person could go without an artificial source of oxygen.
Oxygen had become so sparse in the atmosphere that it was impossible to survive without oxygen masks, nasal cannulas or breathing machines. Oxygen masks and nasal cannulas were much cheaper and much easier to maintain than breathing machines. From the outside, the breathing machines looked like ordinary gas masks, but they had built-in vacuum ultraviolet laser plants that split carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. The oxygen was availed to the user of the machine and the carbon was dumped into the machine’s exhaust section in the form of amorphous carbon dust.
Breathing machines had two air bags, namely, the reservoir bag and the breather bag. Oxygen from the vacuum ultraviolet laser chamber was pumped into the reservoir bag before it was channeled into the breather bag. The user set the amount of time he wanted to breathe the breather bag’s air before it was replaced with oxygen from the reservoir bag. Most people set their machines to replace the breather bag’s gas after every fifteen seconds. The air from the breather bag was channeled back into the ultraviolet laser chamber. Most of the moisture in the exhaled air was absorbed by the waste carbon dust.
Breathing machines required lots of energy to generate the short-wavelength ultraviolet rays needed to split carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen, necessitating users of the machines to carry spare battery packs when they travelled. Breathing machines had two main advantages over oxygen masks and nasal cannulas. One: unlike users of oxygen masks and nasal cannulas, users of breathing machines didn’t have to carry oxygen tanks. Two: users of breathing machines got their oxygen from carbon dioxide, thereby conserving atmospheric oxygen.
Sara walked for ten more meters before she put on her breathing machine. She could have gone for another ten meters without the machine but she put it on because she didn’t want to keep on using atmospheric oxygen. There was a huge oxygen deficit in the atmosphere and people had to save all the oxygen they could.
Her white T-shirt had a life-size picture of her face on the front and back. The law obliged everyone over the age of twelve to have such pictures on their clothes for easy identification when they were wearing oxygen masks and breathing machines. The government enacted the law when criminals committed a string of robberies using breathing machines and oxygen masks as disguises.
She wiped sweat from her brow. The sun was scorching hot. Global average temperature had risen by seven degrees Celsius during the last three years. Eight percent of the ice in the Antarctica, Greenland, and mountain glaciers had melted. Sea levels had risen by about seven meters, threatening all coastal regions.
Although she had one of the latest versions of solar cars, she preferred to walk from work to home despite the sun’s inclement glare. She walked because she needed the exercise and because she hated to drive in the rush-hour traffic. She also liked to walk because she thought more clearly when she was walking. She used the daily walk to and from work to ransack her brains for the answer to the question that was troubling all mankind. What had brought about the oxygen deficit and the drastic climate changes?
Sara was the Director of the Global Environmental Management Agency (GEMA), a United Nations arm that was established after the dissolution of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In the coming month she was going to address a United Nations summit on the environmental crisis facing the world. Although this was the sixth such summit in three years, the UN was still to come up with a viable solution to the environmental disaster that was now known worldwide as El Monstruo.
Her breathing machine beeped to notify her that its exhaust section was almost full of carbon. She walked to the nearest carbon bin and took off the breathing machine. She opened the exhaust outlet and poured the carbon dust into the bin. There were carbon bins in streets and public places in most countries. Municipalities collected the carbon from the bins and packed it in sealed containers where it would not burn and consume atmospheric oxygen.
What brought about the oxygen deficit and climate change? she asked herself for the umpteenth time as she fastened her breathing machine.
When levels of atmospheric oxygen started dropping sharply, scientists initially blamed combustion. But the situation continued to deteriorate even when all countries reduced the use of combustible fuels. Hundreds of millions of people voluntarily parked their cars and used bicycles, buses and trains to commute to work. For the first time in history, global sales of electric vehicles surpassed the sales of petroleum-powered automobiles.
When scientists discovered that the decrease in the level of atmospheric oxygen was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the level of carbon dioxide, they realized that combustion wasn’t the main cause of the problem. At the same time, they also discovered that global average atmospheric pressure was decreasing, leading to the conclusion that the air density of the atmosphere was dropping. Something was apparently taking oxygen from the atmosphere without producing carbon dioxide. Either oxygen was somehow leaking from the Earth’s atmosphere, or it was reacting with something to produce a solid or liquid compound. One scientist theorized that the Earth was losing oxygen to solar winds but the scientific community scoffed at his theory. It was impossible for solar winds to blow away oxygen without also blowing away nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases.
It was common knowledge that the atmosphere scatters the sun’s rays, hence it was obvious to the scientific community that the increase in temperatures was a direct result of the thinning of the atmosphere. The thinner the atmosphere became, the easier it was for the sun’s rays to penetrate.
As the oxygen decline continued to baffle the world, scientists came up with several theories. One scientist came up with a plausible theory that was universally accepted. His name was Ronald Hitchcook, and he worked for the International Green Movement, a non-governmental organization that championed the protection of the environment. Doctor Ron
ald Hitchcook said that atmospheric oxygen could be reacting with a component of volcanic lava. He theorized that some volcanoes had probably exposed a powerful reducing agent that had hitherto been unexposed to air in recorded history. If that was the case, the only solution would be to identify the volcanoes and block their oxygen-binding lava from making contact with atmospheric oxygen.
Scientists studied all known volcanoes on land and found none of them to be sucking in oxygen. If such a volcano existed, its surroundings would have the lowest oxygen content on Earth. The intake of oxygen by the lava would create a pressure gradient that would result in constant winds flowing into the volcano’s vent. Since the majority of the world’s volcanoes are under the sea, all those who believed Hitchcook’s theory came to the conclusion that the oxygen-sapping volcanoes were submarine. If the volcanoes that were supposedly causing El Monstruo were oceanic, then their lava was reacting with oxygen dissolved in sea water, or it was reacting with the sea water itself to produce hydrogen, which in turn reacted with atmospheric oxygen. Located at the bottom of the ocean, such volcanoes would be difficult to find. Even if these volcanoes were to be found, it would be impossible to block sea water from entering their vents.
So what could be done to replace the oxygen that the hypothetical volcanoes were taking from the atmosphere?
A scientist by the name John Moyo came with a simple answer. The only solution, he said, was to decompose naturally occurring compounds of oxygen. The simplest one to decompose would be water, which could be easily decomposed by electrolysis. The oxygen produced would be released into the air, and the hydrogen could be transported from Earth by space shuttle and dumped into space. Doctor Moyo, however, argued that decomposing huge amounts of water could negatively affect the water cycle, resulting in undesirable climate changes. He also pointed to the obvious fact that this method was not viable because plenty of oxygen would be used by the rocket engines of the space shuttles that would transport hydrogen to space. Carbon dioxide was only a tiny component of air. Therefore, decomposing huge amounts of carbon dioxide to redress the oxygen deficit would exhaust atmospheric carbon dioxide, resulting in the extinction of green plants which need carbon dioxide to carry out life-giving photosynthesis.
So Doctor Moyo proposed the extraction of oxygen from sand. Earth has an abundant supply of sand, which could be broken down into oxygen and silicon. Since silicon is not very reactive at low temperatures, there was no risk of silicon waste combining with atmospheric oxygen upon exposure to air.
All countries accepted the idea of using sand to make oxygen and they immediately began building processing plants that reduced sand with carbon to produce silicon and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide was then passed into vacuum ultraviolet laser plants similar to the ones found in breathing machines. Because the reduction of sand with carbon requires temperatures of up to two thousand degrees Celsius, lots of fossil fuels had to be burnt to heat sand and coke in blast furnaces. To cater for the oxygen consumed during this process, the exhaust gases from the blast furnaces were also passed through vacuum ultraviolet laser plants. The UVL plants were mostly powered by solar energy harnessed by gigantic solar panels. The sun’s rays now reached the Earth with greater intensity than before due to the thinning of the atmosphere, providing enough solar energy to power the UVL plants. The generation of electricity by hydroelectric power stations had been greatly reduced by the drought, making solar energy the world’s principal source of electricity.
Sara clenched her jaw and increased her pace when she entered the park. Gone were the green lawns and the flowers that adorned the park years ago. Her heart sank when she recalled how she played in a similar park when she was a child. Some of her fondest memories of her childhood had their setting in the park. She knew that the park she frequented during her childhood was just as parched as the park where she was right now. There was no water to waste watering parks in the midst of this devastating drought. Her eyes moved to a park bench near a dry pond. Six times she had sat on this bench with her then boyfriend, throwing bread crumbs to ducks. The ducks and her ex-boyfriend now seemed like figments of her imagination. The sight of the park always jarred her nerves. In her eyes, the state of the park symbolized the disaster that devastated the world. Like the park, the Earth was losing its vegetation and animals. She had been an environmental activist since high school and the sight of the Earth’s scars pained her. Most people were now participating in rehabilitation of the environment because they didn’t want to suffocate, starve or get roasted by the increasingly powerful rays of the sun, but Sara did so because she loved Mother Nature.
When she got out of the park, she came to a huge vacuum ultraviolet laser plant that covered an area equal to a football pitch. Twenty-four hours a day, the UVL plant took in carbon dioxide from the air and split it into carbon and oxygen, releasing the oxygen straight into the atmosphere, leaving the carbon to be packed in sealed containers.
Eight months ago, The United Nations, following a recommendation from the Global Environmental Management Agency (GEMA) had passed a resolution to work towards having at least one standalone UVL plant in every city. As head of GEMA, Sara had traveled in cities across the world for three months, encouraging governments to comply with the UN resolution. Most governments seemed to be complying.
Atmospheric oxygen levels continued to fall despite all the artificial production of oxygen. In the past five months, governments had set up dozens of standalone UVL plants and dozens more were under construction. Although Sara had recommended the construction of the plants, she now believed that UVL plants and sand reduction plants were not the answer to the atmosphere’s oxygen deficit. She believed that the plants, also known as oxygenators, could only slow the rate of the decline of the atmosphere’s oxygen levels. To solve the problem, earthlings had to first find out where oxygen was going. The oxygenators also provided the challenge of the disposal of carbon and silicon waste. Mountains of silicon waste were growing and the number of sealed containers of carbon was increasing by the day. For now, they were dumping carbon containers in disused mine shafts. They couldn’t dump them in the sea for fear of raising sea levels. In some parts of the world, people were now using sealed carbon containers as bricks in dam construction.
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.
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