Part 3. Environment. Global Problems

Part 3. Environment. Global Problems

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Lainie was dreaming…about her own house on Caway surrounded by green gardens where the air was always fresh and full of oxygen and where the household robot quietly recycled the waste every morning. The girl remembered her school in the rainforest – a wonderful place for lessons of levitation and energy management. Once again she ran through shadowy paths among laughing children, smiling parents, great love and happiness...

 Everything ended one night when Dam, her father, was looking into the sky through his telescope. Suddenly he gave a cry of pain and ran to his room to write something down. When he came out in the morning he seemed twenty years older. His news was terrible: the Athay, their star, changed its orbit, because Caway’s factories took much of its energy, and was coming closer to the planet.

 Dam ran with his conclusions to Caway’s Council where he worked. After a careful investigation everybody understood that the planet couldn’t be saved and the only way out was space emigration. Dam and his colleagues looked day and night through the archives of CBI (Caway’s Bureau of Investigation) for the results of outer space exploration. At last they found only one planet with atmosphere and water – E-a-r-t-h – and HN (Holographic Net) gave immediate warning: the citizens are rather primitive, they don’t use soul energy and destroy their own environment. They cut down trees, use harmful aerosol sprays, pollute the air with their c-a-r-s which exhaust fumes and plants which produce smog and acid rains. And then these p-e-o-p-l-e wonder why global warming and other natural disasters happen. All the Cawayians were shocked, but they didn’t have any other choice.

 Another problem was that space voyages lasting more than twelve hours killed them. Even Dam who was considered genius №1 on Caway failed to help with this. At last everybody agreed to meet death on their home planet. But on the last day Dam suddenly woke up very excited and called his eldest son Wam to the laboratory. They came out in three hours with something like an engine in their hands. The cyberjet – they introduced the invention – a device which makes the spaceship disappear in one point of the galaxy and appear in another one. Dam rushed to HN to transfer the data to others, but it was too late: the planet was already being covered by the Athay’s deadly rays. “To the basement!”, - cried Wam and they all ran there, climbed into their family spaceship and hardly escaping the rays went to the outer space. Everybody kept silence realizing that there was fuel only for four hours of flight. Nobody noticed how Wam silently took the cyberjet and went to the ship control room…

-  Look, papa, - he said, - I made a remote control.

-  It’s great! But how will you use it? We didn’t try it. We didn’t even have time to place the cyberjet in the ship engine.

-  Somebody should go and put it there. – came Wam’s reply.

-  It’s suicide. You can only reach the engine block from outside. It’s space: minus 200 degrees means death in one minute.

-  Do we have another alternative?

-  I don’t think so. But I’ll never allow any of you to sacrifice your lives. – Dam was strong in his decision.

-  I know, daddy. You, mummy, Lainie, trio – you are the most important for me and I am very sorry…

Before somebody could prevent him, Wam clapped his hands, muttered some words and the entire family fainted. When they recovered they were shocked to see a blue planet just in front of the ship screen, but no sight of Wam. Failie, the mother, burst into hysterics, the trio (or triplet of younger sons) – Kam, Pam and Tam - cried bitterly for the first time in their lives, Dam locked himself in the control room and Lainie looked outside the window with tears streaming down her face. How could she live on this damaged planet? – she couldn’t answer even after a year had passed. Nobody on Earth had such a kind and romantic glance as her brother used to have. Only yesterday she saw something very similar in the eyes of that poor lonely boy with a funny name – J-a-c-k. Lainie continued dreaming, and rather than images of her lost planet  Jack’s young face constantly appeared before her eyes.


Speaking Minimum Words:
to recycle - переробляти
waste - відходи
rainforest - тропічні ліси
to destroy - знищувати
environment - навколишнє середовище
harmful - шкідливий
to pollute - забруднювати
exhause fumes - вихлопні гази
smog - смог
acid rain - кислотний дощ
global warming - глобальне потепління
natural disaster - природні катастрофи/катаклізми
to damage - пошкоджувати

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