“Hey Zack, I’ve found another suspicious cloud.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Over the South Atlantic Ocean, on a location equidistant from Uruguay and Cape Town. Oh, they made the same mistake again!”
“What?”
“The picture of the clouds that they pasted over the South Atlantic is actually the same picture that they pasted over the Indian Ocean. They just rotated it and squashed it.”
“Let me see,” Zack said.
Sara kept her fingers crossed, waiting for Zack to respond.
“You’re right, Sara,” Zack shouted after a minute.
“If you keep looking at the clouds, you’ll see them vanish. I’m sure the cloud above the Indian Ocean will vanish first since it appeared first.”
“I won’t take my eyes off the cloud.”
Zack phoned half an hour later. “You’re onto something, Sara,” he said breathlessly. “The cloud that was above the Indian Ocean disappeared at the blink of an eye like you said it would. We’re still waiting for the second cloud to disappear. This is all so surreal. Sara, can you please tell me what’s happening?”
“I’m not sure yet but I’m positive that there are no clouds in that area.”
“So this is a cover up of some sort?”
“Yes. I believe it is somehow linked to EL Monstruo.”
“I can feel a chill running down my spine.”
“Zack, please keep this from the press.”
“I won’t breathe a word to anyone. The administrator wants to talk to you.”
“Give him the phone.”
“Hello, Doctor Cummings,” a hoarse voice said.
“Mr. Durie.”
“This is all bizarre,” the Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency said. “I’ve never seen anything like this all my life. We looked at three other satellite imagery stations and they’re all showing the strange clouds. Doctor Cummings, what the hell is happening?”
“Sir, I think you should inform the President about this. This strange occurrence is taking place in two locations in international airspace or international waters. The President must send the Navy or the Air Force to investigate.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Sir, I understand that your post is of Cabinet rank, but I advise you not to speak to the President about this in Cabinet.”
“Why?” Durie asked.
“The people whom we’re investigating have compromised NASA and several privately owned satellite imagery companies. If they’ve influence over an agency like NASA, then it’s very possible that they’ve got influence over other government departments and possibly members of the Cabinet. We don’t know who’s on our side, sir.”
“Why do you think I’m on your side, Doctor Cummings?” the EPA Administrator asked.
Sara felt her lips twitch nervously. “I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling. Plus Zack said he trusts you.”
“You can trust me, Doctor Cummings.”
“You can call me, Sara.”
“Sara, I’ll make an appointment with the President. He’s a busy man and it might take time for me to see him outside Cabinet.”
“Do something, Mr. Durie. The future of the world might very well depend on this.”
“You can call me Tim.”
“Please, Tim, talk to the President.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Sara.”
“For what?”
“When I heard your speech at the UN summit, I laughed at you and called you names.”
“That wasn’t personal, Tim. You didn’t laugh at me. You laughed at my theory. Please keep this away from the press until we figure out exactly what is happening.”
“Okay. Holy crap!”
“What?”
“The other cloud just vanished as you predicted!” Tim Durie squeaked. “I’m making an appointment with the President right away.”
Sara punched the air with joy. Tim Durie was a respected environmentalist who had served as Administrator of EPA under two administrations. If anyone could convince the President to order an inquiry into the matter, it was Durie.
She placed her hands on her belly, remembering that there was a new life inside her. A new innocent life that had not asked to be brought into this harsh environment. She opened a document that had the data about silicon dumps. She couldn’t afford to sit idle. She had to fight to make the world a better place for her unborn child.
* * *
“We’ve come a long way, Hitchcook,” Cruz said. “You’ve been doing a pretty good job in my absence.”
“I’m just doing my part for the green cause, sir,” Hitchcook said humbly.
They were sitting on the porch of the Planet House, the palace that the E Utopian pioneers had built for the President of the planet. Its brown color came from the color of its bricks. Although it had no plaster or paint, Planet House was exquisite. The solar-powered electric lamps that surrounded the palace turned the night into day. The grounds around Planet House would have looked much better with lawns, hedges and trees. The only plants that were in the palace’s gardens were mosses and lichens. These plants originated from high altitude areas with little oxygen. They were the only plants that the pioneers had planted outside the biomes.
“E Utopia will be a great place to raise a family,” Cruz said. Although he had dated many women, he had never seriously considered settling down. But now he was in charge of a new planet that he was going to protect from pollution. He wanted his descendants to continue his legacy.
“You’re right, Mr. President,” Hitchcook said, looking at one of the riflemen guarding the palace. “This is a good place to raise kids. I think I’ll remarry in the near future when we have completed the oxygenation of E Utopian atmosphere.” His face hardened and he gritted his teeth when he recalled how he caught his ex-wife cheating on him. She had been everything to him and he did everything for her but she thanked him by fucking some punk. His face softened and he smiled when he imagined her slowly dying of hyperthermia in Earth’s increasingly hot weather. The earthly world would soon end for non-E Utopians. His ex-wife had excluded herself from his list of chosen ones. He wished there was a way to let her know that he had the power to save her but had chosen not to.
Cruz looked at the sky. The night sky had the same color as Earth’s night sky and the stars shone just as stars did when seen from Earth at night. Here he could see twice as many stars at night than he could on Earth. He wondered whether one of the stars he was looking at was the Sun.
“Dinner is ready, Mr. President,” a female voice said from behind.
Cruz turned to look at a tall curvy ensign who was putting on a new space force ceremonial uniform.
“Thank you,” Cruz said. “We’ll be in the dining room in a minute.”
“Okay, sir.” The ensign saluted and returned into the palace.
“Wow!” Cruz said. “She’s a looker.”
“She’s a new recruit. She’s just finished her training and will be assigned to a ship any day from now.”
“I don’t remember seeing her before,” Cruz said. “I guess she’s from the group that received orientation from Ford and Gibbs when I was in Africa donating breathing machines.”
“Was she chosen randomly or someone specifically selected her to be my maid?” Cruz asked with a quizzical look on his face.
“I asked Admiral Eawo to provide an ensign to cook for you during your stay and she volunteered.”
Cruz raised his eyebrows. “I think someone is trying to do me a favor by assigning the most beautiful woman on the planet to be my maid. Is she the only one who volunteered?”
“The admiral asked the newly trained recruits if they could cook. Four of them said they could and the admiral asked me to choose from the four and I chose her.”
“Why her?”
“I don’t know, sir. I thought you might like her.”
“So you want to
play matchmaker now?”
“I’m sorry if I offended you, sir.”
“Offended!” Cruz laughed. “Of course not. No man would be offended at being served by such a beautiful woman. However, we must not give E Utopian pioneers the impression that we’re here to exploit women. Women are our equal partners in the green cause.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Let’s get inside and have dinner. I hope her cooking is as good as her looks.”
Cruz and Hitchcook entered the presidential palace and sat at the dining table. The table and chairs were made of metal because E Utopia had no timber. Their mouths watered as the curvy ensign served the dinner.
Cruz impatiently pulled his plate closer, forked a piece of meat and chewed it. To his surprise the meat was not the soft pulp that was made from cells grown in culture solution. It was hard fibrous meat that had no doubt came from the muscle tissues of an animal.
“Where did the meat come from?” he demanded.
Hitchcook swallowed his first bite of the meat. “From the rain forest biome.”
“From where!” Cruz thundered, shaking with rage. “Hitchcook, are you guys feasting on the animals in our biomes?”
“No, Mr. President. The number of bongo antelopes is now too high to be supported by the biome. So they culled the oldest male and—”
“Hitchcook, you should have given the bongo carcass to our leopards, wolves, hyenas or crocs.”
“We gave the carcass to the biome’s carnivores. We only spared a little steak for you, Mr. President.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Hitchcook. I’m not a hypocrite. I practice what I preach. It is such hypocrisy that led to needless degradation of Earth’s natural environment.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Alright, Hitchcook. Apology accepted. Don’t do this again.”
“I won’t, sir.”
“Okay. Let’s eat.”
Cruz’s temper cooled as he chewed the meat. The ensign knew her cooking. She cleared the table when they finished their meal and they sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Hitchcook bared farewell and left for his house.
Cruz sat at the dining table for more than fifteen E Utopian minutes, recollecting the events of the day, before he realized the ensign was standing at attention, waiting for orders.
“At ease, ensign. Come here and sit down.”
The ensign hesitantly walked to the table and sat opposite the President.
“What’s your name, ensign?”
“Jennifer Ladley,” she said.
He studied her. She was of mixed Caucasian, African, Mexican and Asian descent and she had inherited the best of each one of the races of her forebears. She had slanted blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a body that many women would readily undergo surgery for.
“Where are you from, Jennifer Ladley?”
“Houston, Manchester.”
“Are you friends with Vice Admiral Frankson?”
She rested her elbows on the table. “No, sir, but I used to see him a lot when we were demonstrating.”
“Demonstrating against the pollution of your neighborhood by oil companies?”
“Yes. Those companies were killing us.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Cruz asked.
“You can ask whatever you want, Mr. President.”
“What was your favorite perfume when you were on Earth?”
“I didn’t use perfume, sir. Perfumes and other aerosol sprays contain CFCs which pollute the air and deplete the ozone layer.”
Cruz felt a stir in his pants when he looked at Jennifer’s ample bosom. He had made love to his fair share of women, many of them as beautiful as Jennifer. He was a famous billionaire and women inevitably swarmed around him. Jennifer’s devotion to the green cause set her apart from all the good-looking women he bedded. Many of the women Cruz dated wouldn’t think twice about spraying perfume or wearing a mink coat. He had never been alone with a beautiful woman who shared his passion for Mother Nature. This could be his best chance to get himself an attractive woman who shared his values.
“Are you married?”
“No, sir.”
“Children?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you have a boyfriend here, a senior officer perhaps?”
“No, sir.”
“Jennifer Ladley, you’re a very attractive woman and you’re obviously used to having men chase after you. I’m a rich and famous man and I’m used to having women chase after me. So that makes us two of a kind.” He smiled when a blush reddened her face. “Jennifer Ladley, I have had many girlfriends in my life but none of them gave a damn about the environment. I don’t know you, Jennifer, but I feel like I know you. I want to raise a family here on E Utopia and I want to do so with a woman who shares my values and will pass those values on to my children. Do you want to be that woman, Jennifer Ladley? Can you be that woman?”
Jennifer’s lips twitched. She fixed her eyes on the table, unable to meet his gaze.
“Right now, I’m not speaking to you as your president or as your commander-in-chief. I’m speaking to you as a man and I want you to answer freely. I won’t punish you if you say no.”
“I don’t know what to say, sir,” she whispered.
“Please forgive me, Jennifer. I shouldn’t have asked. You’re dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.”
She rose from her chair and walked away without looking at him. She stopped and turned before she reached the middle of the room.
“Yes!” she said, walking back to him.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Cruz sprang to his feet and walked to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. When she was a little girl, she had always dreamt of marrying a rich prince. Now she was going to do more than that. She was going to marry a king who ruled an entire planet and was about to conquer a second planet.
“What if someone enters,” she said when he unbuttoned her uniform.
“Nobody has been cleared to enter,” Cruz said, working on the second button.
Cruz worked on the last two buttons in record time and unhooked her bra. Her breasts bounced out in their full majesty and his hands darted for them. As he squeezed the breasts, he felt his erectile member fighting with his pants. He undid the button of her trousers and pulled it down. When he pulled off her panties, he discovered that she applied her conservationist principles to her body. She had a thick bush that hadn’t been tampered with for a long time.
He peeled off his clothes, raring to press his naked body against hers. Unlike many of his previous lovers, she had untarnished natural beauty: no tattoos, no piercings, no makeup, no jewelry. She was a natural and as pure as Mother Nature at her best. For more than half an hour, he explored her body with his hands, lips and tongue before he finally decided to deepen his exploration. He answered her moans with his groans in a grotesque love song that went on for another half hour.
When it was over, they lay on the floor, thanking their luck. He ruled a planet and now he had found a queen who shared his beliefs. She had found the man who was going to help her bring her family and friends from devastated Earth to the E Utopian paradise. An hour ago, she had just been an ensign waiting on the President. Now she was the First Lady.
“We can’t spend the whole night on the floor,” she said when she realized he was in no hurry to get out of the dining room.
“You’re right, honey,” he said, rising from the floor. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”
They picked their clothes and, arm-in-arm, they walked to the bedroom. Jennifer’s mouth gaped when she entered the bedroom. Adorned with beautiful metal and glass furniture, it was more than four times bigger than the room which she shared with six other new recruits at the barracks.
When she lay on the bed, she felt like she was floating in zero gravity. The bed was much more comfortable than the beds at the barracks. He snuggled close to he
r. The change from the dining room’s hard floor to the soft mattress turned him on. She moaned when she felt him hardening again.
* * *
Sara looked at her phone, willing it to ring. She had spent most of the weekend praying the phone would ring. She desperately wanted to receive a call from Zack or from the Administrator of EPA.
“Relax, Sah,” George said, toying with her hair. “They’ll phone.”
“Why haven’t they phoned,” she whined. “They’re our only hope of stopping the shenanigans that are taking place above the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean. They’re our only hope of catching the people who want to kill me.”
“Maybe the EPA Administrator is still arranging a meeting with the President.”
“If the President doesn’t classify this as important, then we made a disastrous mistake when we voted for him. The man at the White House must set his priorities right. The world, the United States included, is facing an environmental disaster that has never been seen in living memory. If I was the President, I would work closely with the federal agency that fights for environmental protection and I would see the head of this agency on short notice. Maybe he’s busy talking to the NSA and the CIA about some spying program.”
George put a hand on her cheek. “Relax, babe. It won’t do you any good to worry about things that are out of your control.”
“Okay, I will stop worrying about Zack and his boss.” She smiled. “Let’s watch TV.”
They sat in front of the TV and she did a good job of pretending to enjoy his favorite comedy. It was impossible to take her mind away from the fact that she was going to bring a child into this deteriorating world. Perhaps the pregnancy test gave me a false-positive result, she thought. Maybe I’m not pregnant. “Maybe I’ve cancer,” she said to herself when she remembered reading an article that said some cancerous cells produce HCG hormone. Oh my God, I can’t believe that for a moment I actually preferred cancer to my own baby.
When she couldn’t wait anymore, she picked her cell phone and dialed Zack’s number. Zack, as always, quickly answered.
“Zack, did your boss talk to the President?”
“This is off the record, Sara,” Zack said. “My boss met the President.”
The E Utopia Project Page 23
