“Amira Nzema. Please stand.” Amira looked too slight to be a domestic terror threat. She scanned the courtroom and the jury and then fixed her gaze on the judge. The Judge read the charges back to the accused and asked the jury for its verdict.
Luna looked at the back of Amira’s head hoping she’d turn to see her and her wounded mother. Calypso, the mother who had welcomed her to their home and fed her strawberries and figs and hummus and pita and played card games with them and Luna could not make sense of the depth of Amira’s rage.
Before sentencing, Amira was offered an opportunity to address the court.
“My parents died in a flood when I was 12.”
The Judge interrupted. “This was 2082?’
“Yes, your honor. That year I was welcomed by my uncle who had come from Paris to adopt me. He was a physician, and my cousin was a medic and they were both aid workers. They took me everywhere with them. Equatorial Dead Zones. Asia. The Americas.
Then when the floods came again, they volunteered to return to my homeland to help relocate refugees. I was happy to go with them because I had many friends there. And my parents had died there. My friends were all gone or dead.
We joined a large contingent of aid groups outside of the city. By the airport. Where dirigibles were coming and going, delivering food and supplies and taking out as many refugees as they could carry. It was the summer of 2094. The famous summer of 2094. The summer of the historic heatwaves. I was 14.”
Amira began to weep. Luna whispered to her mother, “I’ve never seen her cry before.” Calypso patted and hushed Luna.
Amira stifled her tears and continued at the judge’s urging.
“I was 14. I went with them to the triage tents where incoming refugees were evaluated. I helped deliver supplies to the medical teams. Have any of you ever seen what floods and drought and famine can do to human beings? There were thousands. The walking dead we called them.
Killed by the rich countries. That’s what my uncle said.
It was hazy humid day like most, the sun the same orange glob floating overhead. By mid-morning the temperature began to rise and along with it the humidity which draped over our shoulders and wore us all down and made us sick to our stomachs. People crowded the coolers and misters in the overwhelmed shelters. My uncle said we should stop and seek shelter at that point. He had a bad feeling about the day. Others lost their minds in the heat and stripped off their clothing while others ran to the filthy grey river nearby and jumped in the water. It was no cooler than the air above.”
The Judge interrupted. “What was the high temperature where you were that day?”
“122°”
“Because of the humidity we’d reached what experts call the Wet Bulb phenomena. By noon people could no longer sweat. The people were being cooked. The aid workers were led to shelter. We sat in the dark in the shade by the cooling fans powered by our generators. It was stifling. The chorus of moans and screams drew distant and then quiet.
The next day it was our job to tally the thousands of dead.
My uncle said I didn’t need to come with them, but I insisted. I carried a large parasol to keep us in shadow while my cousin and uncle counted and photographed the dead.
The innocent dead. I’d never seen my uncle weep before. He cursed the first world. Your world.
When we returned to Paris my uncle decided to bring us here to Tucson, here in the American federation.
Again, and again my uncle and my cousin told me how the capitalist western powers of the first world allowed themselves to be bought by the super-rich fossil fuel companies for decades, buying your lobbyists, your fake scientists and your politicians.
And no one was ever punished. No one. Not one lying scientist. Not one lying public servant. Not one lying corporate executive. No one.
When my uncle heard the story of the super-rich building arks here to deliver them to the colonies on Mars he couldn’t believe it. “This could not be,” he said. He said, “We must do something. We have so many desperate needs here on earth. We must avenge the dead. We must exact justice. And so, they decided to blow up the Space Center to make a statement. I helped them write the manifesto. And I proudly helped them map the interior of the space center.
I am proud to be a Guardian of Gaea. We are everywhere. No one escapes the Guardians of Gaea.”
The slender teenaged girl was finished. She steadied herself for the verdict and sentence.
“Amira Nzema. You have been found guilty of 22 counts of murder. You are hereby sentenced to life with no chance of parole. You shall serve your sentence at the Federal Penitentiary in Springfield, Illinois, outside the nation’s capital. Take her away. Court is adjourned.”
The Court was silent save for the sound of Amira being led out of the room.
Outside of the Hall of Justice Luna collapsed in her mother Calypso’s arms. Carlos remained seated. He was distracted, reading the story on his Mind-pad about the discovery of a local mass grave “Campo Libertad site of Mass Murder Uncovered” while Mac and Maya, Sol and Mars surrounded Luna. Mars said, “Next week I’ll bring Rin to you, Luna.” Maya said, “Isn’t that when Cass is due back from the Antarctic? For the first time in a long while we’ll all be together.”
Luna was anxious to see her brother. Cass understood what it was like to want to want to leave this “Eden” in Hell. She’d told Cass everything. How she and her robo-dog were gossiped about, suspected of terrible things, hated, and despised. How alone she felt in this desert.
Luna’s family enveloped her and took her home. Sunup was coming.
Maya’s home was nearby. She asked Sol and Mars to walk home in the dark with her. “I was going through my boxes of found documents from the 2050s and I found something that might interest you, Mars.”
“Oh, really?”
“You mentioned the bones out in the desert that you and Sol saw the other night. You said something about the site being dated. Back to 2053, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you said there were no records of what had happened?”
“Yeah. We came up with nothing.”
“I found a diary. I’d never looked at it before. I have thousands of these things. Among my maps and documents and journals…This was the journal of a kid who was in the Tucson militia at the time. I stayed up all day reading it. He mentions Campo Libertad. Names, dates and everything.”
“I want to see it.”
Oh how I hope your imagination does not become reality.