Project Aspire

Chapter 2 - Amanda (Written by Taran Matharu)

(DON'T FORGET TO VOTE :D)

The brothers gathered the first men and showed them many things,

On the first day they brought them fire, and the first men had light and warmth,

On the second day they brought them the axe, and the first men could shape and divide,

On the third day they brought the spear, and the first men could hunt and eat of lesser creatures,

On the fourth day they brought them furs, and the first men were no longer naked and cold.

These were the gifts the brothers gave to the first men.

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The buzz of insects greeted me as I slipped the gentle embrace of slumber. It was warm and wet, but I would have it no other way. England’s cool bedsheets were a distant memory after living so long in the Amazon.

Soon Amanye would bring me my breakfast; feki fruit and banana from the jungle, fresh from the branches outside of her hut. It always seemed so strange to me that the banana tree was such a huge part of the amazonian diet, yet the plant was not native to the rainforest. Even the leaves were used in hundreds of ways by almost every tribe I had encountered in my many years of study; roof tiling, fishing lines, shoes, even wrapping their food with the thick waxy leaves and baking it in the fire pit.

Despite the great respect that the Ayoreo tribe held for me, they were yet to be convinced that the plant only arrived in Brazil in the 1500’s and had actually started its journey in a distant land, brought by the Portuguese conquistadors when they came for gold and conquest. Six hundred years later and a new set of conquistadors had come, ready to seize the Ayore homeland.

The disastrous global oxygen offsetting law had allowed India to replace every kilometre of forest they harvested with their oxygen farms, pumping out artificial air in the southern plains of Andhra Pradesh. Having destroyed their own rainforest, Indian prospectors turned their eyes to the Amazon. With Brazil in their worst recession since the oil crisis of 2089, their government had done a deal with the devil, selling the Amazon in its entirety to settle their debts to Indo- China. That was when I had to take a stand.

Celebrity was something I had never wanted. Yet the only way to fight these faceless corporations was to become a face myself. So I became Amanda Shepherd, protector of the Amazon, celebrity anthropologist. The film crews came and went, my satelite video diary became the new reality television of the masses, streamed live to every device on the planet. My silhouette was on t-shirts, newscasters flew in by helicopter just to speak to me.

Just to see the smiles of the native children was worth it. But after five of the best years of my life, we had lost. My star was waning. The lobbies and the protests had failed. The harvesters were lining up on the edges of the forest. To be honest we had been lucky to last as long as we did.

Then the offer came. The preservation of ten thousand acres of rainforest in exchange for joining the test crew in Lagrange from their mysterious benefactor, presented by a poker faced representative sweating in his monkey suit outside my hut. It took a long time to convince me it was real. Why would they want an anthropologist, in space? Was my fame being used as a publicity stunt?  It  did not matter. When the papers were offered to me I signed and...wait.

I was not in Amanye’s hut. The buzzing of insect wings was too deep and loud. The howler monkeys were not sounding their morning warnings. I remembered...falling. I opened my eyes.