“I can write you a good
speech,” Nzue offered.
“Nzue, I know you’re good at
writing nice, politically correct speeches, but this isn’t the time for such
speeches. I want to tell world leaders something that can actually help them
fight El Monstruo.”
“That’s easier said than
done.”
“Okay, Nzue. Go to your
office and draft one of your politically correct speeches. Maybe I’ll get one
or two ideas from your draft.”
Nzue gave Sara a mock salute.
“Yes, ma’am.” He clicked his heels in theatrical fashion and rushed to his
office.
Sara’s deputy, Lee Wong
entered three minutes later. He was a little Chinese with spectacles that gave
him a professorial look.
“Good morning, Sara,” he said
with a slight, almost imperceptible, Cantonese accent.
“Morning, Wong. There is
nothing good about it.”
“You’re right,” Wong said,
tilting his head. “Each morning is a sad reminder that another day passed
without any progress. Time is ticking away fast. We still haven’t drafted your
UN speech.”
“Time is ticking not just for
the summit but for our survival as a planet.” Sara sighed and rubbed her hands
on her desk. “In the past, they used to say that time is money, now we say time
is life. We’re all sitting on a time bomb. Do you have any new ideas, Wong?”
The Chinese shook his round
head. “Nope.”
“Me too. I’ve nothing new to
tell world leaders except my theory about an extraterrestrial cause of El
Monstruo.”
Wong sighed. “I gave your
theory much thought.”
“And?”
“I don’t think it holds
water. I just find it unlikely that the Solar System changed as you
hypothesized. How did the Solar System change and what do you think could have
triggered such a change? Are you suggesting that the Earth’s orbit around the
Sun changed? What exactly do you mean when you say that the Solar System
changed?”
Sara threw her arms up. “I
don’t know. But I believe that El Monstruo has little to do with human activity
here on Earth. I’m sure that the root cause of the problem lies out of the
planet. A change in the Solar System was the best I could come up with.”
“I give you kudos for trying
to come up with new ideas but I find your theory preposterous.” Wong folded his
arms and simpered. “The Solar System has been in existence for millions of
years without any drastic changes. Why now? If you are right, then there is
nothing we can do to save ourselves. If the Solar System changed enough in
three years to bring such drastic changes in temperature and rainfall, imagine
what will happen in the next ten or twenty years.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” Sara said
somberly.
“You’re wrong. A change in
the Earth’s position relative to the sun would affect temperatures but it would
not cause loss of oxygen from the atmosphere.”
“You’re right,” Sara
relented. “My theory doesn’t hold water.”
“Let’s concentrate on
administration, Sara. Leave the formulation of scientific theories to the
scientific community.”
“I need something to tell world
leaders at the summit. I feel helpless. As GEMA, we should help the world fight
El Monstruo but I feel we are going nowhere.”
“We’re doing our best, Sara.”
Wong finally sat down. “World leaders followed our recommendations and their
governments are now building standalone UVL plants throughout the world.
Although we can’t see the results yet, I believe we’re on the right track.”
“Some force out there is
taking our oxygen,” Sara mused. “It could be aliens. Maybe some aliens with
more advanced technology than us want our oxygen for industrial use.”
“Aliens,” Wong scoffed.
“Don’t let your frustration get the better of you, Sara. We’ll find something
new for you to tell world leaders at the summit. Don’t tell them about aliens for
God’s sake. They’ll all think you have gone nuts. The answer to the problem
lies here on Earth. I believe that if we look hard enough, we’ll find it.”
“Wong, we can’t leave
anything to chance. The countries of the world have to create a space force to
protect our atmosphere against possible alien activity.”
Wong snickered. “A space
force?”
“Yes,” Sara said with unflinching
conviction.
“Sara, I hope you don’t plan
to tell that to world leaders.”
“That is going to be one of
my recommendations to the world leaders at the summit,” she declared.
“They will scoff at you. The world’s
governments need money to build dams, sand reduction plants and UVL plants. I don’t
think they can spare money for a space force, not without tangible proof of
alien intrusion.”
“So what do you suggest I
tell world leaders?” Sara demanded.
“Tell them to speed up the
construction of dams, SR plants and UVL plants. To minimize water loss through
evaporation, they must build dams with retractable roofs that automatically
open when it’s raining and close when it’s not raining.”
“Building dams with retractable
roofs is a great idea,” Sara agreed.
“You see? We can come up with
good ideas without resorting to alien tales.”
“I believe that some
extraterrestrial force is taking oxygen from our atmosphere,” Sara said
adamantly.
Wong’s face broke into a
sardonic grin. “Volcanic lava is reacting with oxygen.”
“Why hasn’t it happened
before?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it
happened before in prehistoric times. Who knows? Maybe the atmosphere had more
oxygen than nitrogen and volcanoes absorbed some of the oxygen.”
“All volcanic lava comes from
the Earth’s magma,” Sara reasoned. “What makes lava from one volcano react with
oxygen and lava from another volcano unreactive toward oxygen?”
“When the lava from these
particular volcanoes rises, it passes along sediments of a reducing agent which
evaporates or melts in the lava. When the magma rises and comes in contact with
air, the reducing agent reacts with oxygen. That is clearly explained in Doctor
Hitchcook’s theory.”
“I still go with my theory
about an extraterrestrial cause.”
“There is no extraterrestrial
cause,” Wong said with exasperation.
“Give us a better theory,”
Sara challenged.
“The better theory is the volcano
theory.”
“The axiom about
oxygen-sucking volcanoes hasn’t been proven yet. And that makes it as good as
my theory. Unless we come up with a better theory, I shall tell the world
leaders about my extraterrestrial theory.”
“Don’t make a fool of
yourself in front of the world.”
“Don’t worry about me, Wong. Worry
about the world.”
“I’m worrying about the world.
The world will be in greater danger if you send the world’s policymakers on a
wild goose chase.”
“Wong, I’m going to include
my theory in my speech,” Sara said with finality. “I’ll send you my first draft
when I finish it.”
Wong shook his head. “Suit
yourself. Tell world leaders about your outlandish theory.”
Wong left the director’s
office. She returned her eyes to her computer and the blank page stared at her.
She took turns between staring at the blank page and browsing the internet. She
hadn’t managed to write anything under the subheading by the time she left her
office.
As she drove home, she noted that
there were thin clouds in the sky. The clouds used to give her hope, but now
she knew they didn’t signal an end to the drought. She went straight home as
always.
Her social life ended the day
she broke up with her boyfriend, George, three years ago. Her two best friends
had married and moved on. She wasn’t good at making new friends and she avoided
men because she didn’t want her heart to be broken again. She last went out to
have fun when she was still with George. He was an outgoing, fun-loving guy
whom she now loved to hate.
Snoopy welcomed her with his
front paws when she got out of the car. The dog happily followed her into the
house where he knew he could stay without the burdensome breathing machine.
Sara obliged the dog by taking off its breathing machine. She fed the dog
before she fixed herself a dinner of tofu with fried rice.
Although she was now home,
her mind was as much engrossed in her work as it was when she was in her office.
Sitting on the floor, she ate
her food, throwing bits of tofu at Snoopy. She switched on her laptop, hoping
the home environment would unblock her mind, but after thirty minutes of
staring at the blank page, she gave up and opened her web browser. She randomly
looked at real-time satellite images of parts of the Earth. When she was tired
of looking at the satellite images, she maximized the Word document that was
supposed to contain her UN speech. She looked at the heading
Extraterrestrial
Factors.
The heading looked back at her. She knew her assistants could
write a politically correct speech for her, but this wasn’t the time for
politicking. It was time for action. Her speech had to contain practical advice
for world leaders. She switched off her laptop with a sigh of surrender and
hauled herself to her feet.
She put on her breathing
machine, fitted her dog with its breathing machine and led the animal to the
porch. Cuddling the dog, she crawled on the floor, looking at the moon and the
stars. When she was a little girl, she used to think that God lived on the moon
and when she looked at the moon, she thought she saw a monochrome image of God
sitting on His throne. The moon and the stars looked exactly the same as they
did when she was a little girl. They appeared indifferent to the disaster that
was facing the Earth and its inhabitants. Sara wondered whether the moon was
also experiencing temperature changes. She watched the stars till she fell
asleep.
She woke up in the middle of
the night, shivering. Snoopy was curled up close to her. Temperatures plummeted
during the night. It seemed as if the cold nights and the hot days belonged to two
different seasons.
Rubbing her goose-pimpled
arms, she led the dog back into the house and took off their breathing
machines. The dog curled up in his basket and she went to bed.
Sleep recaptured Sara when
she began to feel warm.
She woke up to the chime of
the alarm and mechanically went about her toilette. After feeding her dog, she had
a cup of tea with leftovers from dinner. She savored her tea, knowing that tea
would soon be a thing of the past. The UN, following recommendations from the
Food and Agriculture Organization, had passed a resolution encouraging member
states to ban the cultivation of non-food crops like tobacco and food crops
with little nutritional value like tea and coffee. The world was facing a
severe food crisis and people couldn’t afford to waste resources growing crops
that only satisfied tastes.
After putting on a white pair
of trousers and a white T-shirt, she took Snoopy outside and fitted him with his
breathing machine.
“Bye, Snoopy,” she said with
a wave of her left hand.
She walked for ten meters
before she put on her breathing machine. She had only walked for four hundred
meters when she came across two policemen. Both cops had nasal cannulas.
“Ma’am, can you please take
off your breather?” one of the patrolmen asked.
Sara took off her breathing
machine and the policemen looked at her face and compared it to the pictures on
the front and back of her T-shirt. The police made random roadblocks, arresting
those without ID pictures on their clothes and fining those whose ID pictures
were smaller than life-size.
“Oh my God,” one of the
officers said, his face breaking into a grin. “My wife won’t believe this! It’s
you, Doctor Sara Cummings, the Director of GEMA! It’s a pleasure to meet you,
ma’am. Sorry for stopping you. This is just a routine check. You should use
cannulas to avoid the inconvenience of being stopped by cops.”
“Cannulas make me feel
uncomfortable,” she said with a shudder. She had tried nasal cannulas and they
had made her nose bleed.
“Miss Cummings!” the other
officer shrieked like a groupie. “Thank you for everything that you’re doing
to save the world.”
“We’re all trying to save the
world, sir,” Sara said, feeling the burden of responsibility increasing on her
shoulders. These two cops, like millions of people around the world, had faith
in her but she didn’t have the slightest idea how the world could be saved from
El Monstruo.
She put on her breathing
machine and left the mesmerized cops. The machine did not only provide her with
oxygen but also covered her face from the public. Without the breathing
machine, she wouldn’t have been able to walk in the streets without being
mobbed by fans and reporters. Now that environmental stories were making more
headlines than military confrontations, Sara’s face was just as recognizable as
that of the UN Secretary-General.
She looked at her watch and
purposefully strode to her office. Although she knew she would most likely
spend her working day in vain attempts to end El Monstruo, she liked to arrive
at work on time.