Chain Story C
1 Portugal – 2 Estonia - 3 Ireland –4 Italy - 5 Turkey - 6 Germany
PORTUGAL – PART 1
Written by Henrique
Come quickly to France, specifically to Paris. Urgent. We will expect you in Eiffel Tower. Then we will explain in more detail the reasons! All the countries were reluctant to this unexpected message. Why would they want something with us? Most of us was around 53 years old, already parents of children and nearly grandparents of the children of our children . What would they want with people over half a century? Would it be a kind of meeting? The most curious ones decided to leave in search of something exciting, an adventure as when we were young and the sky was no limit to anyone. The trip was stressful, especially for the group from Turkey. About 3600 km were tiring indeed... but decades ago. Now Europe, in this decade, was all occupied by railways, airports and more motorways, no country was any longer peripheral, everything was interconnected. Finally Turkey was part of the European Union. It accomplished all the membership criteria. Passports and visas were no longer needed. A subsequent big achievement was the free movement of people and trade, which was another step for globalization. We came all at once to the airport, except Germany and Italy, which, by chance, came earlier, due to the underground high-speed trains. They decided it because of the proximity to the country. These Germany-France high-speed trains took about 20 minutes and the Italy-France ones only a little more. They were right next to the airport. Now it was so easy to travel! We met everyone in the bus stop, and there were tears and hugs, lots of excitement. We had created such strong ties in such a short period... we made friendships that, to our surprise, were so deeply rooted in our hearts that it seemed we had never been apart from one another. The land airbus stopped. This new transport, which started working only 12 years ago, was a large train-like vehicle that straddled roadways; it had wheels on the sides of the road, allowing regular cars to freely pass underneath it. Despite of not causing traffic jams, the land airbus was environmentally-friendly, because it just needed biofuels. We went upstairs and we tried to sit close to the windows to admire the landscape. Years ago, when we were sightseeing a city, we just saw buildings and buildings and only a few green spaces. However, after the Third World War, caused by the oil crisis in 2029, our politicians decided to start over, from the zero. They idealized a utopic world that eventually became a reality. We were living in a sustainable world now. We started to move to the destiny: Eiffel Tower. Some members of the group remembered their last visit to that beautiful, amazing city – Paris - but of course it was different. They were stunned. Now it was all mixed, countryside and skyscrapers, green spaces and grey buildings. There were gardens everywhere. The sidewalks had lots of wind trees and light bottles along them. All the houses had solar panels. Now all the cars were hybrid and electric, but they just worked with the help of the ''new oil'': lithium. If one country disrespected the criteria of the environmental global policy, that country would be banned from the ''Green Land'' (the name of the organization which all the countries, states and continents belonged to). In that way, the country in question would not be able to negotiate and be in contact with the others. Taking into account that the world was in harmony in social and economic terms, a country couldn't grow on its own, otherwise it would be isolated and in misery. So no country dared to take that risk...
PART 2 ESTONIA
As we gathered next to the Eiffel Tower, we had some free time. One 'boy' from Portugal had taken an old photo album with him and we started to look at old photos taken from the time when we participated in Erasmus+ project.
„Everyone has changed so much!“ said Merilin. It was true – the last time we met was 35 years ago. Everyone was dressed in a fashionable way now and everyone owned very modern technology (phones, etc.) Our clothes were made using recycled materials. Only Darragh hadn’t changed his environmental views, he wore expensive and exclusive suits, as he was a famous actor now. Marta, the blond girl from Estonia, had dyed her hair pink. She used to wear normal clothes but now she was dressed all in pink. The Irish teacher was here, too. He was still very sprightly and still sporty, although in his 80s. Kati came with her grandchild, who was super adorable. Kati was married to Tiarnan. They lived in Germany, so that they would have equal distance to their homelands Ireland and Estonia.
But we all noticed that when we were young there were a lot of elderly people with grey hair and wrinkles, but nowadays no one could tell the difference between young and elderly people. Today 80-year-olds look like 40-year-oldw without any wrinkles. For example Grace from Ireland was still very skinny and well groomed. You wouldn’t be able to say that she was over 50 now. The reason was that the air was much cleaner and the technology had developed, so people could easily take procedures to improve their appearance.
But then again, the years had gone by, we all have changed and got older, but some things never change – our friendship. We felt that special connection as we all were together under the Eiffel Tower. We felt happiness and wouldn't like to be apart again. We had so much to talk about.
As we were sharing our emotions and talking about our lives we suddenly remembered that we had a problem to solve...
Part 3 - Written by Irish students
Everyone looked at each other with the same question, why had we been called to Paris and what was the urgent situation that required their presence. People looked around enquiring who had called the meeting and why, the presumption was that it was one the individuals there but that was not the case, as people asked everones smart device alerted them to an incoming message,
“Welcome, my name is Euaims, I am the European Union Artificial Inteligence Monitoring Station and you have been selected from our data base as individuals with the skills and insight to solve an impending crisis that will result in the end of humanity as we know it if not rectified.”
The message continued to desecribe how Euaims had been set uo to monitor the citizens that participated in projects funded by the European Union and as such, identify their skillset and use their expertise if ever required.
“When you all participated in the EU-Topia+ project” Euaims continued, “you drew up the blueprints for an ideal European Union Society as well as possible problems it might encounter, while you are not aware of this, the Eropean Union has used a lot of the concepts that you set out and adopted them to allow the Union to evolve into what we have today.”
Euaims further expalined how the High speed train network and the biofuels policy were taken directly from the project, othe aspects such as recycled clothes, wind trees, passive solar enegy all had a strong influence on the development of “Green Land”.
All this sounds great said the group and they agreed that they were very proud that their project was seen to be such a groundbreaking and influential endevour, so what was the problem?
“Look around you” said Euaims, “apart form some grey hair you all look to be a similar age, with the exception of an accident or cataclismic event, people are living well into their 130’s, this has led to overcrowding and if things continue at the current pace it will be unsustainable to maintain the Union. Unless an effective solution can be designed and implemented I will have no choice to put in place a sequence of events that will reduce the population to a more suitable level as well as put in place policies that will prevent it reoccurring…………………….. YOU HAVE 48 HOURS”
With that the message terminatted, everyone looked at each other, what would they do next? How would they solve this problem…….
Part 4 Italy
The italian team decided it was the moment to reveal their secret….
The leader of italian team stood up and said : “ We have already found a solution but we aren’t sure it’ll work.”
Silence suddenly fell upon the room after those words , so the leader of italian team continued her speech.
“In secret, we , italian guys of the Eutopian project have started to think about the solution to the problem that had moved on in the years. During these years, with the help of our government, we were able to keep this idea secret. Observing the progress of the life and the evolution of man and earth, we started to observe the planet Kepler, it was found at the beginning of 1996 and in 2015 we found out it had similar features to the Earth but not so similar to be livable. So over the years , we checked the evolution of Kepler. noting that it had evolved so much to have the same features as the Earth, so in secret after the world war three we tried to send a group of men and women to this new world,. In such a way we could see how the group would live there. We planned to send there half of world population, so that we could limit the overpopulation that in these years had increased almost in a drastic way.” Giulia said
“So, how did it go?” – Sean asked
“We were able to send them and we discovered that it's possible for people to live there. But there's another problem, how are we be able to send half the population on that planet in such a short time?"- Federico said, worried
"We could use the Teleport 2050, we have already tried it , but you can send only one person at a time.”
“Hold on…i’ve got an idea!” Jule shouted as if she had been illuminated.
Part-5
Written by the Turkish Team
‘Yes, I probably found the solution but it is too risky.’ said Jule and continued to speak:
--I am an space engineer in very secret stage of NASA. We were working on a very secret Project. This Project has begun ten years ago. We have come a long way on the Project. It’s a teleportation machine. But not like Teleport 2050. This is much better than that. We can send millions of objects at once. We teleported many objects on the earth anywhere. The results were very succesful. But; we have two problems. First; we never tried to teleport humans and I am not so sure, can we teleport humans to another planet? It is too far.’
It was big mystery. If they weren’t successfull many people could die. Would they take this kind of big risk?
‘This is too risky.’ said Giovanni.
Everybody was worried and scared about the solution. Then something happened. One of the Turkish Project partners said:
‘I volunteer for a test run. If I am succesfull, you can send many people after me.’
After that; one of the Estonian partners shouted:
-‘ I volunteer too.’ And then; from all the other countries (Ireland, Italy, Germany, Portugal) one of the partners stepped forward and said :
-‘We are volunteers too.’
It was a very brave and emotional moment. 6 brave people volunteered to sacrifice themselves to save humanity. All the volunteers hugged each other. They found their group a name. It was ‘The fellowship of the Eu-topia.’
Would they be succesfull on the mission? Or were they going to fail?
It was a big mystery...
Part 6 written by the German team
All the volunteers got ready for their trip. They were very nervous because nobody knew how it would turn out. The new teleporter had never been tested on humans before.
The NASA had a lab in Paris, close to the Eiffel Tower, where they had a teleporting machine. Jule took the volunteers to the lab and set up the machine. The volunteers were standing in a circle on a metal surface and when Jule started the machine to teleport them to Kepler, a dome of colourful laser beams formed around them. They took each others hands. And with a white, bright flash of lightning, they disappeared.
“Now we can only hope for the best. Hopefully the Italian communication technology from Kepler to Earth works, so they can let us know when they have arrived safely,” Jule said. She looked worried. Everybody looked worried.
They waited. And waited. And waited …
When the 48 hours were almost up, suddenly all their mobiles started beeping. A big thumbs up flashed across every screen and then a message: All is well, have arrived safely, beautiful planet! Tell Euaims we’ve solved the problem. See you soon on Kepler!
Everybody started to cheer and whoop and to hug each other. The world was saved, long live the Fellowship of the EU-topia!
The End