Pyrolysis
Feeding nine billions of souls is not simple. Our industry, agriculture and livestock have destroyed our planet in the end of the XXI century.
That’s when the dust pyrolysis and other organic components started kidnapping carbon from the atmosphere, gripped on the agricultural plot.
Pyrolysis has saved the planet, more than wind, solar or nuclear fusion energy power together.
But, what is this pyrolysis made of?
It’s simply the burn of every organic matter, it means, things made of carbon, in high temperatures and in almost complete absence of oxygen.
This way, the harmful carbon dioxide, greenhouse effect gas, isn’t set free in the atmosphere and keeps in the waste of this burn – almost pure carbon!
Pyrolysis has also promoted a new industry on the planet: recycling, in addition to carbon mining.
Vegetables weren’t planted anymore. A prosperous food sinthesis industry and other raw materials from carbon appeared in the middle of XXII century, until it started scarcing and humanity had to discover it in other places outside Earth.
Carbon mining led researches to a more than one billion people immigration not only to moon communities in the middle of XXIII century, but also to Mars and its moons Phobos and Deimos, and Palas, Ceres and Vesta asteroids.
Earth became a federation of states called UNE – United Nations of Earth, and, for the first time in its history, a government started effectively controlling the planet.
Nevertheless, there are still nine billion people to be fed on Earth. And here, carbon has become even more rare, forcing us to import it from the communities at high prices.
Nothing would be more obvious than recycling it ad infinitum.
Due to this, nothing escapes the pyrolysis, including corpses and animal skeletons, even those ones condemned to death.
It’s about these last ones I’m talking about, because, by the way, I am one of them and next week I’ll be “pyrolysed” – that’s how everybody’s call the pyrolysis process.
* * *
- Pyrolysis on him! – the crowd screamed, while I was taken by cops, handcuffed. The policeofficers held those people so that the most heated didn’t hit me right there.
There’s no need to say I became voiceless after screaming my innocence. About that time I didn’t accept that someone would believe I could be able to perpetuate such a great barbarity.
People thought I had raped and killed a young lady in Belfast. They said they found some DNA of mine on her body. Impossible! I had never seen that young lady before! That could only be a trap from someone who wanted to be on my chair at the University. That’s normal nowadays, this kind of accusation through implanting some DNA somewhere.
Even more normal were the jobs steals. After all, almost seven billion people survived with some aids from the State, with a miserable unemployment financial support, only to make that person live in the deepest aspect of poverty.
Of course, this help didn’t bother many people. Human being is naturally lazy, many of them are, and so that help was better than begging or working.
The others, employed, besides of the low salaries, were restlessly persued by the crowd, anxious for work. The use of robots was widespread, what avoided new jobs to be created and the exportation of manufactured goods to the communities was the main goal of the industry. Death was usual among the workers.
The colonists were in a better situation, but their life wasn’t easy. But, for them, the environment was the main problem, and the importation of goods was a necessity for their survival.
* * *
My lawyer, payed by the government, was completely fool. Lazy and ignorant, he didn’t care much about my situation. I was another one in his list of prisoners.
Our criminal law isn’t unfair, it’s nonexistent. Someone who is in the hands of the legal system has only two possible destinies: a long punishment mining coal in some forgotten community in the space, or pyrolysis. Being pyrolised isn’t the worst, the problem is the person is thrown to the furnace alive! The executioners love this part.
If I look calm while I write this narrative, be sure I am. I am tired of despairing, screaming, hitting the wall with my head or pulling out my hair. During the first week I’ve been in jail, I was on hunger strike. They didn’t notice me. From the third day on, they didn’t give me anything to eat. I had to beg for it.
I am resigned to die before I am thirty. My unique pain is that I’m innocent. If I knew it would occur to me, I would have had it coming. As a teacher, many young ladies tried to have something with me. Rape and kill one of them wouldn’t let me in a situation worse than this one.
* * *
Didn’t I tell you the executions are broadcasted on television in the solar network? Yes, billions of people will watch my torture in the middle of the fire across the Earth and the communities. A nice entertainment. Deals at stake will be realized to know how fast I’ll die, if I’ll die burned or up to my neck or other sordid details. Humanity doesn’t care about a person anymore, I mean, if sometime they did. A human being is more worthless than the carbon which he’s made of.
I’ve been in jail for six months and my execution is tomorrow. Our law system is vey fast, isn’t it?
I haven’t seen my lawyer anymore after his presentation to me. As I thought, that was only a matter of form: some signs on a paper and that’s it, I was unnecessary. False “democracy” worked once more!
Be all humans cursed! What an ignoble species we became! If God really exists as many people say, what is he doing now? Can’t he see my tragedy? I can only believe I’m unnecessary just like all my corrupted race.
* * *
The guards that will escort me arrived. I asked them more five minutes alone. I finished my writings, put them in an envelope and adressed it to my father. He needed to know I’m innocent and would die about proudly. I let the envelope on the table. I’ll keep my narrative mentally.
The guards takes me through a very illuminated corridor. I can’t identify anything around me, the light dazzles me. A hundred meters after I started walking, the great pyrolysis furnace which generates energy and carbon to the prison is in front of me. Its very white and innocent structure contrasts with its use.
The door is open, a contention area avoids any heat to leave it.
I got a shot by the guards on my neck and immediately lost control of my body – a precaution about desperate condemned ones. That’s unnecessary saying that my intestinal and bladder muscles became relaxed. My excretion, fallen against the television parquet, that’s my last breathe in life. I am thrown in the furnace. The fire embraces me in an agonizing pain and my lungs burn due to the sudden absence of oxygen. I am going to die.
The last thing I notice is the envelope adressed to my father, with my narrative, being thrown in the fire over me. No-one will know about my innocence. But it doesn’t matter anymore...