The Day The Oil Stopped Burning, Chapter 4: D.C. Shit hits the fan

CHAPTER 4: D.C. Shit hits the fan

 

 “Any luck” Ron asked Sam the instant he appeared at the office door. “Afraid not..He did leave an encrypted message that he had to bolt. It seems that his last meeting with some PPPEP guys really freaked him out. I don’t know if he is being paranoid, or if he’s losing it, or if someone is actually meaning to do him harm”. “Shit, this is no fucking good…No fucking good at all”. Unlike Sam who had only known Jack for eight months, Ron had known Jack for six years. They had tackled some of the hardest and at times hairiest assignments Ron had ever known, together, and Ron had unmitigated confidence in Jacks abilities. “If something has got Jack freaked out, then it’s defiantly not good”! “How do we find him” Ron asked. “Not sure, I left him a message, but so far, no response. He has his personal brain wave frequency disabled, and we have absolutely no location data on him”. “That’s probably a plus…..If somebody is after Jack and we have location data, than, they will most likely have location data and if he’s in trouble, it’s best that no one have location data. Dam, I wonder what the fuck he’s gotten into”. “Must have something to do with the GECA, I mean what else could it be…..right”. Ron picked up the phone and got Dr Watson, Dr Chang, Doug Matthies, who was one of Jack’s closest partners on the Hill, and Dr J. Laura Jones who was taking lead on the GECA. The Global Energy Cooperation Act was an international treaty proposed by a dozen of the most developed (and advanced, as far as new energy technology integration and effectiveness was concerned) Nations in the U.N. The gist of the treaty was that it would outlaw all burning of fossil fuels once and for all. It would also serve to provide a global commission for the monitoring of any Co2 emission and empower said commission with the authority to implement sanctions and other punitive action against violators. Those opposing this treaty (including certain elements of the U.S. Government) were mostly motivated by a desire to reconstitute various fossil fuels and use them for various nefarious purposes. Primary among these were of a military nature.   

 

The immediate impact of the 2016 visit from the eggheads that bestowed the most incredibility advanced energy technology that saved our atmosphere and later rendered fossil fuels noncombustible from a National Government Defense perspective was disaster. All the most powerful, most sophisticated, largest militaries in the world were extremely concerned due to the fact that a large percentage of their weapons of war relied on fossil fuel consumption. While it was not a complete start over (many weapons such as basic infantry, artillery, nuclear powered naval vessels were still perfectly operable) it did serve to level the playing field for a moment and give nations with a lesser military foot print the opportunity to expand that footprint substantially if they harbored a desire to do so. A new style of arms race had become one of the unintended consequences of the benevolent actions taken on humanities behalf by the eggheads. Part of this arms race, particularly with under developed countries, was the desire and continued attempt to reconfigure the molecular structure and reconstitute Carbon based fossil fuels in order to utilize decommissioned military hardware. This global race to reboot militaries and reconstitute oil had been going on in one way or another for the past sixteen years and was certainly not new news, however the GECA which served to increase greatly the negative consequences of engaging in this race had put a new light on an old situation.

 

“Charlie, Linh, Laura grab Doug and anybody else you see who’s been working with Jack on this GECA thing and get to the conference ASAP”. Ron hung up and turned to Sam “what do you think”? “well sir, I have been working pretty close with Jack recently” Sam started “and as far as I know the GECA has to pass through the legislature and get approval to proceed to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations for our support of the measure in the U.N. Security council. If we can get support in the Security Council, which is expected to exist, then we can move to the General Assembly for ultimate approval. If this all goes through, it will most assuredly be a net positive and every interest we represent is hoping that we can pull it off. Now, that being said, it’s not like we don’t have any head winds. First, the People for Proper and Peaceful Energy Production or PPPEP, which is basically just a bull shit front for a bunch of old petroleum industry types, and a coalition of extreme conservative Trads, have mounted an extensive opposition to the passage of this legislation. While Jack has expressed some frustration with regard to these folks, I don’t think he has ever really regarded them as a viable threat. President Kelly has been pushing hard for passage and a majority of the Democratic Republicans, and the Democratic Socialists are on board. Before he left, Jack had a bunch of meetings with various committee chairs to garner support”. Sam went on to explain that Congressman Derrick Bahley, who had won in Michigan’s 1^st district in 2014 and had worked his way to Chairmanship of Ways and Means and was a staunch ally, had assured Jack of passage in the House. Senator Evin Bayh of Indiana who had left the Senate in 2008 in total frustration and come out of retirement in 2020 and was now majority leader in the Senate had basically promised the same. “So, I don’t see any real danger coming from any of those angles. I mean, Jack saw a lot of those guys as a pain in the ass, but defiantly not dangerous”. “So, who has the most to gain from this Legislation getting killed” Ron asked. “It’s probably not an interest in the U.S…..unless it’s some kind of clandestine undercover shit. I mean it could be a conspiracy of some kind but I can’t really see who stands to benefit….at least not enough to justify the risk and certainly not enough to kill people. Of course it could be an international thing; there are quite a few nations that could benefit from a military and/or economical point of view from the ability to burn a little oil and be able to use any weaponry or machinery that’s just sitting around collecting dust”. “Did Jack ever mention anything like that….anything that indicated he was aware of some kind of dirty work going on” Ron quizzed. “He might not have even realized it was a clue” he added, suddenly realizing he was talking about Jack Saffell who with his superior intuition, never let a clue go by unrealized. “I don’t think so sir. Let’s face it, this is Jack we’re talking about”. “Yea, Yea I know…..forget that last question. Come on, you’re coming with me to the conference room. We are meeting with the wiz team and trying to get to the bottom of this”.

 

By the time Ron and Sam got to the conference room of the Environmental Alliance Group the rest of the team had already assembled and were busy discussing exactly what was bugging Ron enough to call this meeting. “Ok guys, here is what’s going on. Sam is going to bring everyone up to speed then we are going to develop an action plan and see if we can get to the bottom of this shit. Sam, you’re up”. Sam went through the same details he had spelled out for Ron, answered several dozen questions to the best of his ability and turned the floor back over to Ron. For a guy just out of grad school who was just serving as an intern for the past eight months, Sam was really surprised at the fact that he was being included in an upper level meeting at EAG with guys who were arguably some of the smartest guys in the world. “What countries do you think might be involved” asked Dr Watson. Holy shit thought Sam; these guys are taking this seriously. “I have a hot list on file; here I’ll pull it up for you”. A projected data screen with various lists and spread sheets appeared in the middle of the conference table. Sam reached over and moved some of the data groups around, added another screen and organized while mumbling to himself for a minute. When he was finished he turned back to face the group and said “this list here, are the most likely to be involved in any energy conversion activities for a variety of reasons; this list represents priorities from a military stand point; this list is of outward or known hostiles and this final list is comprised of any known groups, state sponsored or not, that have economic or idealistic interest in ether energy conversion or “new tech” disruption.” “Good work Sam” said Dr Watson, “hey Doug, you see any patterns here”? “Laura, what about you, anything jump out at you”? “OK” Laura said “let’s try this”. She quickly wrote an algorithm and plugged in the data. As images on the midair transparent data screen flashed across she said “I just asked for a probability study based on the info we have plus a probable hierarchy of priorities. I used a bit of speculation and placed Power and/or enormous financial gain as top priority. After that we have Religious ideology, Nationalism, and so on down the line”. “Also I interfaced every entity, organization, or country that anyone who met with Jack in the last two months is associated with”. What filtered out on the data screen was a list of possible culprits and when cross referenced with those who had contact with Jack, it made for a decent starting point for investigation. “Good start guys” Ron said, “now, let’s figure out who or what is after Jack and why.

Then we figure out what their overriding agenda is and everyone who is involved. Than we figure out just how to proceed to stop it without causing a shit storm or getting anybody killed; not to mention trying to avoid an atmospheric melt down and/or world war three”. “Ok, here is the action plan for now: Sam, you track down everybody who Jack had contact with in the last two weeks. Cross reference with Laura’s probability schedule and report back at our next meeting at 7:30 AM tomorrow. Charley, can you get the exact status of this GECA legislation from a House, Senate, Special interest, and Executive point of view. I want to know the name of every ass hole that ever even uttered the phrase Global Energy cooperation Act. Call in every favor that’s owed you, or me for that matter and find out just exactly who stands to gain and who stands to lose from this shit”…..”Got it”? “Yes, I got it Ron” Dr Watson said. “Linh, you take the international front. Do a total comb of our global data access and cross reference with Laura’s data. I want the data to be fluid with Laura taking command central and interning the data and adjusting the algorithms as we filter the information. In twenty four hours I want to know just what the fuck is going on. Dougy, you go find Jack, take a couple guys from security and don’t take chances. If Jack contacts anybody patch him to me right fucking now. If you can’t patch him to me, you tell him to stay secure and wait for Doug to provide backup”. Ron finished up be asking “Anybody got anything to add”? Doug requested an update of Jacks meeting schedule from Sam and they planned to do a brief strategy session in Doug’s office. Doug also asked Jane Keen if she could contact Max Cunningham and Tom Rum in the EAG security division. Dr.s Watson, Chang and Jones spent a few minutes hashing out a few details and after everybody was ready Ron said “Ok let’s hit it”.

 

“Jane, get me the president’s chief of staff ASAP” Ron shouted to Jane Keen, his personal assistant. “Ms Meng is on the line Ron” Jane said with the mix of respect, sarcasm, affection, and wise assness that so totally became her. Grace Meng was President Dr. Sarah Jane Kelly’s chief of staff. Ron thought of her as one smart, shrewd, babe. She was fifty seven years old, had been elected to the House in 2012 representing the 6^th district of New York. She was a Chinese American from Queens Y.N. and landed a seat of the foreign affairs committee in her first term. After a third term she lost a bid for the NY senate seat vacated by Senator Kristen Gillibrand. This was in 2018 and the midterm election during President Santorum’s single term. The general trend had been toward the right and several long held democratic seats were lost in the transition. Of course this was two years before the Party break up and rearrangement to the new three party statuses.

 

“Hey Grace its Ron, you got a minute”. “Sure Ron, what’s on your mind”? “You know how we’ve been lobbying for this GECA that your boss is all hot on”. “Yes Ron, you know how happy we are to have your guys support”. “Well, my main guy on the hill Jack Saffell seems to have run into some mysterious goings on”. Oh yea, I know Jack, what’s he say is the problem”? “That’s the problem, he can’t say because he seems to be missing. His aid Sam Marky says he got spooked by ether something he found out while pushing for GECA support or somebody that may have paid him a visit for the intended purpose of scaring him into bolting. We both suspect the latter and I’m just wondering if you can shed any light on this for me”? “I can talk to the boys at National security, and check with CIA. Let me do some digging and get back with you. Do you have any suspicions yet”? “Not really, we just developed and action plan and have the data bases filtering stuff right now. We have run a couple algorithms but so far we are just guessing that somebody has a big reason to kill the GECA and Jack must have stumbled on to something they would rather he not know”. “So Ron, you want us in at this point”? “Yea, I think so. We don’t have anything at all concrete, but, you know, if there is something going on, at least the NSA should poke around. What do you think Grace”? “I agree, when is your next briefing”? “7:30 AM tomorrow morning, here, at the EAG conference room”. “I’ll send Peter Miller over to attend; will you bring him up to speed”? We’ll do”. In the mean time I will see what’s up on our end, CIA might have some info, let’s coordinate tomorrow”. Sounds good, Thanks Grace”. Ron said. “Jane, get me Dougy will ya”? “Yes boss, he’s on”. “Hey Doug what’s up”? “I got Max and Tom meeting me in an hour at the airport. I have the pilots ready; we are taking the Bombardier 260 and should be in Traverse City two and a half hours from now. We ran a few software samples and his old cottage on Lake Leelanau is a high probability for where he’s gone. We are getting continuous data updates from Laura and are feeding back anything we find. Hopefully he’s there and we can scoop him up. Then all we’ll have to worry about is if there is monkey business going on, Which is a hell of a lot better than worrying about the safety of one of our own”. “I hear you there Dougy, good luck and be careful”.

 

Dr J. Laura Jones was a genius with a 200 plus IQ as well as being a drop dead beauty. She was not the kind of Alpha female that needed to be in charge. In fact she possessed the kind of inner confidence and utter serenity that she could solve the most complex of problem without anyone noticing and not give it a second thought. She liked Jack and was impressed with his intellect and his dry and quite sense of humor. She was seated in her office at EAG headquarters and had five different screens projected in the air. She was using voice activation and typing at the same time. With her IQ and super connected Neocortex Laura was actually able to perform up to five activities at a single time…at least from a brain activity stand point. She was also communicating with Dr Watson, Sam, Doug, Ron, Jane and Dr Chang along with at least a dozen others on a pretty much continual basis. She could do this just by thinking about the proper connection protocol and talking; conferencing in as many people as she wanted was no problem. She chuckled when she thought about the days when one needed to hold a box to ones ear to communicate. As she was speeding through screen after screen of data and information she suddenly froze. Humm....this is interesting she said to herself.

 

Since 2016 the nations of the world engaged in a lot of jockeying for position on the world stage. Some countries were much quicker to embrace new technology as it became available.

Others, slower to switch from traditional petroleum based industry, energy, transportation and military, had to play catch up in order to maintain their status in the world economic order. Pre 2016 saw the U.S. as the world's largest economy followed by China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Italy, India, Russia, Canada, Australia, Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, Netherlands, and Turkey. As a result of the rapid building of new infrastructure and adoption of new and advanced technologies, the world economic ladder had changed a lot. The U.S. and China remained the largest since the U.S. was just so much larger than the rest of the world to begin with and China by nature of its raw size of population and strong upward trend for the previous two decades. Turkey moved into third, India forth, Canada and Australia, fifth and sixth. Japan, once the second largest economy in the world, moved to seventh.

 

 

Turkey was on the cutting edge of the new technology implementation right out of the gate. The Turks had way more motivation to establish new energy technologies than just about any other country on the planet. The Turkish government being the only secular, free, parliamentary democracy in the area, had always been a bit nervous about being surrounded by mostly wacked out dictators, monarchy's, tribal war lords, war torn fragile states, and out and out anarchy. Since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern secular Republic of Turkey in 1923, It had found itself smack in the middle of some of the most bizarre and deadly regional conflicts in history. Turkey had once been the cradle of civilization and the Fertile Crescent where by most every measure civilization had begun. It was the first society to grow crops and domesticate beasts of burden to perform tasks, and provide dairy, eggs, and meat. The first society to be free from the all consuming hunt for food and have time to develop government, artisans, and philosophy. The Ottoman empire of Turkey lasted for 623 years, from July 27, 1299 to November 1, 1922 and influenced much of the western world; longer than the Roman Empire; longer than the British Empire; longer by far than the U.S. had been the predominate influence in world power and economics. By far the most overriding reason for Turkey's immediate and fully fledged adoption of all the new advancements and technology was that for sixty six years they had been the only Middle East country without substantial oil reserves. For sixty six years Turkey had been surrounded by oil rich, hostile neighbors, who they depended on for their energy needs, but who generally ran completely counter to Turkey's philosophy of secular democracy. The government and people of Turkey had grown tired of being both nervous and pissed off about living next to countries like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and a bunch of other ass hole countries that wanted to fry there asses. Since all the surrounding Petro- Dictators had little more going for them than an abundance of oil and a really bad attitude, Turkey was just itching to tell its neighbors where they could stick their oil and exercise a little ass kicking.

 

Within the first year following the Alien visit which promised to advance human civilization beyond measure, the Turks went into full production of all readily available new- tech energy production facilities. They geared up research and devoted every resource they could muster toward furthering all the technological advancements that the eggheads had granted to humanity. Along with total revamping of their energy infrastructure - and selling this perfected technology to other nations- re-powering their military, implementing nationwide healthcare using new technology and greatly enhancing their artificial intelligence capabilities and Internet, they also utilized new-tech desalination and turned what had become an arid desert back into the Fertile Crescent it had once been. By the year 2032 Turkey had become a net exporter of food, computers (which were now implantable into just about anything due to nano tech) automobiles, and assorted other forms of transportation. A dozen companies in five different countries had experimented with and produced a variety of "flying cars" that could hover to at least a hundred meters and travel at one hundred miles an hour without terrestrial constraints; however they posed a whole additional problem of infrastructure and regulating traffic flows. The biggest problem was the development of integrated computer software so people didn't fly around crashing into each other. Besides this was just in its infancy and not legalized for personal use.

 

Most of the area known as the Middle East had fallen into utter chaos in the decade following 2016. After a decade of anarchy and confusion most of the former countries of the Middle East had been annexed to ether Turkey, Israel, or India. Both Israel and India, along with neighboring Pakistan had followed the path of Turkey. India and Pakistan, once arch enemies had signed a treaty of cooperation sharing technology and military to establish order and end the conflict between tribal war-lords which erupted and continued throughout the decade following 2016. It turns out, that the ideological hatred between citizens of India and Pakistan had little basis after humanity had learned that all of their individual ideas of religion were mistaken. While differences in religious ideology had been taken out of the picture as a reason for conflict; it’s not to say that self interest no longer existed....because it did at every level of society just as it always had. The global balance of power had indeed shifted, but there remained no lack of national interest around the globe. Russia, being an oil rich nation and having once provided over one third of Europe's natural gas was now a waste land. Their corrupt government that was still controlled by Vladimir Putin in 2016 was simply to ineffective to implement any kind of efficient sweeping change. Once fossil fuels became non-computable, Russia started down the tubes and after only a few years they had become the vagrant, homeless, crack-head, drunken, bum of countries. The fact that the United States had managed to finally get its collective shit together and maintain its position as a global economic and military leader was nothing short of miraculous. After four years of social bickering and political blundering under President Santorum, it found itself playing catch up. Were it not for its previous power and economic strength, along with lots of tech help from its ally's Australia, Great Britain, the E.U. and Canada the U.S. might well have found itself in Russia's shoes and been the beggars of the world. Brazil had lost some traction, but regained its status due largely to its generous mineral deposits. Eggheads had given humanity the ability to synthesize whatever was necessary to achieve energy without fossil fuels, however it was discovered that many of the requisite materials could be extracted from the earth thus saving the time and expense of synthesizing. Brazil and the lower half of the African continent were found to be rich in such minerals. Of course no one bothered to recognize that we had previously behaved in exactly the same way regarding oil and should have learned a lesson after aliens showed how to get along without it. Ah but such was the nature of human behavior and even though the eggheads had granted mankind a few tricks on how to survive, they probably didn't intend to force humanity to save itself.

 

 

Dr. Nisen Berfin Hamarat was in her lab at the Istanbul headquarters of the EAG. She had been with the organization for sixteen years now and was responsible for much of the data they had banked regarding human migration since 2016. There had been a sizable refugee migration overland in search for food early on, but irrigation technology combined with desalination had food production in places like sub Saharan Africa possable, and global famine was quickly becoming a thing of the past. The U.S. along with a host of developed countries had eventually adopted open immigration policies that prompted large movements of humanity in a rather short person of time. This sort of modern migration had obvious environmental and economic impact and the EAG was keen to study and record the effects.

Dr. Hamarat or Fin as she was known by her friends and associates was a profession of Human Geography. She had studied human migration from the time humans first started to migrate out of central Africa and populate the globe. She was intrigued by the movement of people; where they moved, when they moved and why. She had once explained to Ron Smith and Dr Watson that if you take a model of the earth or any part of it and pour a fluid, say water, over it; the water will simply follow the laws of physics so if you know these laws than the flow of the water will be easy to predict. Now, if on the other hand you were to replace the water with people.....well then you have an infinite number of variables to weigh and consider. In some instances the people may simply follow the flow of the water, that is to say "follow the path of least resistance" just as every molecule will do according to the laws of physics, however it is equally possible that they take a different path; one with more resistance thus defying the laws of physics. "People are funny that way" was a favorite saying of hers. "What motivates a people to take the path of more resistance" she asked? "Is it food, water, shelter or more comfortable climate...sure...is it chance, luck, human curiosity, or something more....who knows". One thing that Dr Watson and Ron Smith knew for sure was that Fin knew more about this stuff than anybody else on the planet and that this information was useful stuff to have. Fin had every major human migration (major meaning over one hundred thousand people moving in five years or less) committed to memory and what she didn't have in her head, she had in a data base that had taken her ten years to compile.

 

“Hey Fin, This is Laura”. “Hi Laura…here let me pull you up on visual”. “Oh god no” said Laura “whoever thought it was a good idea to actually see each other while talking from miles away was a dick head”. Laura had been working nonstop in her office for the last sixteen hours and felt like shit. She was convinced that she looked like shit too, even though it would take a lot more than a sixteen hour work bee to make her look anything less than stunning. “I hear ya sister” fin replied “I use to work from home all day long in my cozy pajamas and goofy animal slippers and talk with people all over the world until we started using visual calling. I once had an emergency conversation with the Prime Minister of Sweden and his staff for two hours in my PJs and the hoody I use to paint in….now I have to get all dressed up for a freaking phone call”. “Technology… got to love it”. “Ok Laura, I guess I wouldn’t want to trade getting dressed for a business call, for say Polio or Small Pox or any of those stupid diseases that we have cured and people use to die from.”….”but I still like to conduct business in my cozy PJs”. “Now that we have solved the world’s most pressing problems like video conferencing and proper at home business attire, what else is there for us to conquer”. “I want you to run some analysis on some migration that’s going on in all the countries north of a line from Turkey running east to China including the north coast of the Caspian Sea”. “So, you are talking about Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan right”? “That’s right”. “Well you know Laura that there has been a fourteen year general migration to the south in all those areas due largely to the continually degenerating conditions in Russia. Lots of folks out in the boonies got cut off when the fossil fuel stopped working. I’ve tracked this stuff for a while and it appears mostly like folks moving south in search of food, shelter and a warmer climate”. “Yea, I’m with you on that, but I noticed a more recent and much larger move and that’s what I’m interested in. Of course I have got nowhere near the kind of data that you have and that’s why I’m wondering if you can check it out for me. I want to know if it’s real, and if it is….why”. “Hey Laura, that’s no problem but……..what the heck is going on”? “It’s kind of need-to-know stuff but I can tell you that Jack Saffell is missing and I think the GECA has something to do with it”. “Missing?? What the fuck do you mean missing”? “I mean that nobody has been able to get in contact with him for three days and he left Sam a message that something or somebody had spooked him so he was going to bolt and hide out for a while. I’m pretty sure he’s ok, but we want to make sure and Ron wants to know just what the heck is happening. It could just be that Jack is just being paranoid and silly, but then it could be some kind of covert shit that had something to do with the GECA. We’re not unaware of the fact that if that treaty goes into effect that some people stand to lose. Now I would argue that they are generally the bad guys and we want them to lost, but I’m sure that if there is something to all this that those guys will feel differently than me”. “What do you think the area we’re talking about has to do with this”. “I really have no clue, just following up on any little thing I notice that’s different”. “Well, you got it sister, I sure hope Jacks ok. Maybe he’s just hanging out fishing and drinking, you know he’s been known to do that from time to time”. “I hope so to Fin, I’ll keep you posted. Send me that data as soon as you can, Ok”. “Right, talk to you soon”.

 

“Humm, I wonder what’s going on” Fin uttered to herself….”let me see”….She moved a few screens around, sent a few more commands with the keyboard, made a few more adjustments with voice command that said “Ok, run this one” After a few minutes of filtering she found herself staring at a screen of data that surprised the shit out of her. In the last one and a half years eight million, seven hundred and sixty two thousand and five hundred, plus or minus two hundred people had migrated south to an area within one hundred kilometers of the southern borders of all the countries of the list Laura had given her. This was an area about fifteen hundred kilometers long, so and area of about one hundred and fifty thousand sq. kilometers. “What the hell” she thought “what the hell are a eight million people doing moving into an area of only a hundred and fifty thousand sq. kliks”? “Hey missy (her name for her artificial intelligence or computer as people use to call them) better get a hold of Laura again”.

 

That was quick". "I just ran a preliminary algorithm and it looks like a lot of people are moving south. It's sure a lot more than you average refugee migration......and I really don't think that's what it is". "Any military"? "Don't know.....but I doubt it". "Ok, can you get demographics"? "Maybe...at least an overview". "Good, if we got a bunch of twenty something's that could spell trouble". "Let's just see, if it's propagated by need, we'll see a pretty diverse age range, but I can't imagine anything that the area north of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan has to offer in the way of relief". "I don't see it as offering much in the way of anything"."I gotta agree with ya there Laura.....I'll get on it now". "Start with Sat images". "Just what are we looking for" Fin asked. "Im not sure, but when half the number of people that moved into the U.S. last year, move into an area that's basically inhospitable for no perticular reason.....it makes me wonder". "It's got my curiosity working, that's for sure". "Thanks Fin, I'll talk to you in a few".

 

The Day The Oil Stopped Burning, Chapter 3: Garden Peninsulia. Hiding out

CHAPTER 3: GARDEN PENINSULIA. Hiding out  

 

The wind had remained constant out of the North and built to twenty knots during the night. By zero six hundred hours the Leading Lady had cleared Poverty Island Passage (appropriately named for the Garden Peninsula in Michigan's U.P). Jack was at the helm and had to harden up to 315 degrees which was as hard on the wind as she could sail. " Hey guys, we are coming into Green Bay, why doesn't somebody start some coffee. We are gonna have to start tacking up Big Bay De Noc in an hour or so". Annie G stuck her head through the companion way, "hi ya there big boy" she said " you doing ok"? "I'm driving a sail boats so what do you think". "Guess that answers my question". "You still love me"? "I worship the ground you walk on baby". "Yea, would you eat the forbidden fruit for me". "As long as its fermented..... Speaking of which, why don't you throw a shot of Baileys in that coffee". "coming right up sweetheart". Annie G poured a couple cups of coffee, both with a hefty shot of Baileys Irish Cream and went up to the cockpit to join Jack. "Here's your coffee sweetie, how long you been up". "I came up and relieved Geno at about o three hundred, it was an awesome night sail". "Any northern lights" she asked. "No, but I would love see them again, it's been at least six years. Remember that night we were anchored on South Manitou Island and they were dancing across the horizon in those huge waves"? "Sure do, I remember the awesome colors too. The usual green and blue, but I remember yellow and red....more like pink.....and violet, I'd sure as hell never seen pink and violet northern lights before....haven't since ether". "Maybe we'll get lucky and get a good show on this trip". "Hope so, I did see a pretty cool meteor shower. At least a dozen in two hours, a couple tailers that hung for several seconds". Jack was relaxed and feeling the first bit of serenity in years. Annie G could sense the difference in just two days. His tension was starting to unwind and his night watch on the boat had been the first three hour stretch that his thoughts hadn't drifted to the storm clouds that were brewing around our nations Capitol. "Should I wake Geno up"? Annie G asked. "Na, let him sleep, he was on watch from sunset till o three hundred. Besides, I know him, he'll be awake automatically when we need him". "I'll take another Baileys and coffee please". "Got it babe".

 

Just as Jack predicted, Geno popped out of the forward hatch to rig the anchor gear as they came about on the final approach to Fayette harbor. After that, he ran back to the cockpit to furl the jib. Jack continued to turn the helm to starboard as they rounded down to a broad reach with just the main sail alone. They were still cruising at seven knots and had a few hundred yards to their favorite spot to drop anchor. At twenty yards out Geno dropped the main and coasted down wind till they passed their spot at which Jack swung the helm hard to starboard, pulling a upturn into the wind. Geno ran forward and dropped the anchor. The boat drifted back, Geno payed out the anchor road, the anchor set and Geno cleated off the line when they had reached the proper scope. "All set Bubba" Geno yelled " The Eagle has landed" yelled Jack, which was their tradition whenever they came to a dock or anchorage. It was o nine hundred hours (9:00 AM, on the boat they always used military time just because that was what Geeze had taught them). "Must be noon somewhere" Geno said "let's have a cocktail". "How about a bloody"? The booze was certainly having a soothing effect on Jack's nerves along with the natural soothing effects of being on a sailboat. Of course he recognized this and had no problem with it, in fact he was totally willing to get and remain somewhat shit faced for as long as he could. "Remember to use lots of lime and lots of Tabasco".

 

After the third bloody, bacon, eggs, toast, and grapefruit Jack was climbing into the dingy with his gear to head out to the drop off north of the harbor entrance. "Think I'll see if I can go get us some lake trout for dinner". "Hang on for a second" Geno yelled "I'll go with you". Geno grabbed his gear, put nine Coronas in a cooler and climbed in the dingy. " let's go". "Remember when we caught those Brownies up north with the Geeze". " yea, that was awesome". As kids they use to catch brown trout in September in Fayette all the time. Geeze would make "trout fingers" which were simply filets cut into strips, dipped in a mixture of condensed milk and beer, breaded with drakes, breadcrumbs and cayenne pepper and fried in peanut oil. "Let's make trout fingers for dinner" suggested Jack "you got all the necessities"? "Actually...I believe I do. I'm sure I have the Drakes, and canned mike, don't go anywhere with out that stuff......gotta check on the breadcrumbs, don't have the peanut oil but I'm sure we have some chipotle olive oil that will do the trick......might not have enough beer though" he threw in just to remain the smart ass that he so enjoyed being. They trolled along the drop off where the depth went from about forty feet to two hundred. Most years it took a few weeks more for the trout and salmon to come into shallower water but it had been an extremely cold summer and autumn type weather was occurring a full month early. For the past twenty years, climate change had really made the weather patterns fickle; sometimes warmer, sometimes cooler, sometimes dry, sometimes extremely wet. The problem, it seemed, was that it was usually to an extreme one way or the other, and rarely constant. Geno said that the weather patterns these days made sailing "a real bitch" because it changed all the time and was ether ninety five degrees and no wind or fifty five and blowing stink. "Of course if it was easy, we'd have the women do it" he use to say.....because he was not yet married and could occasionally get away with being a chauvinist red neck. Of course he realized that Annie G had spent her adult life living aboard research vessels in some of the most treacherous waters in the world and could kick any mans ass on a boat of any kind........and he totally loved that about her. "So what he heck is going on in your so called professional life"? Geno finally asked when they had gotten everything set and were just coasting along the lime stone bluffs of Garden Peninsula.

"To tell you the truth buddy, I'm not exactly sure the hell is going on at the moment". "You gotta be kidding me? I mean what the fuck, you always know what's going on.....I'm the one who never knew what was going on....you're the one that always KNEW exactly what was going on". "We'll not this time buddy boy. I had a pretty good handle on things for quite a while; always a step ahead of of most of the members of Congress and most of their aids who are arguably smarter and more agile than their bosses. But for the past three months, I can't seem to get a feel on things". Geno could sense Jack's confusion and he knew it was real. For thirty two years Geno had never seen Jack be puzzled about anything. He knew that Jack was endowed with intuition that was unsurpassed and it had simply, never let him down. "So paint me the big picture, are the Trad's up to some clandestine BS again"? The Party of Traditional American Values or Trad's as they were known, had not been successful in putting a person in the White house since their inception in 2020, never the less they still held one hundred and twenty one seats in the house (28%)and seventeen seats in the senate (17%). Most of their districts were evangelical Bible Belt areas in the south, Midwest, plains states, and big coal mining states like West Virginia. The New Democratic Republican Party (DRP) or Drips as they were known held two hundred and one house seats (46%) and fifty two senate. The Democratic Socialist's held the remaining one hundred and thirteen house seats and thirty seven senate. The Drips held the obvious majority but since they were comprised of members of both formor political parties and they could swing ether way depending on the issue at hand and whether on not there was a little something in it for them. Also the President, Dr. Sarah Jane Kelly, was a socialist and the progressive liberal agenda could be pursued because enough house and and senate drips were happy to join arms with the President.

 

"As far as I'm concerned the Trad's are always up to some clandestine BS, but I can't seem to get a vibe out of anybody I talk to, I mean its weird....it's like anybody that has anything to do with the People for Peaceful and Proper Energy Production, which is a total fucking joke by the way, just doesn't even send me a clue. I ALWAYS use to be able to sense what those assholes were thinking..and even if I couldn't get a grasp on exactly what was going down at least I could sense when one of um was lying. Now I get zip, ziltch, nada, nothing....there's just nothing fucking there". "Wow man, are you losing your MoJo or something". "I don't know......maybe, but it seems to me like its just those guys...like they're blocking any kind of brain wave transmission....it's like they're god damn robots or something". "Maybe they are" Geno said jokingly "they're the Stepford wives of politics". "No kidding man, they're all like clones of Doug Netermyre from Animal House". "Yea....and you are John Baluchi". "Well, I guarandambdoubletee you that I totally plan to drink like John". "Dude...he's dead". "Exactly". " here have a Corona....oh, first, better take a hit off this bottle of Patron.....here's the lime". "That's what I love about you Geno, just like a fucking boy scout ...always prepared" Jack took a healthy swig of tequila and chased it down with a Corona and a bit of salty lime. "Do you think they are actually hiding something big" asked Geno. " Yes I do, I just don't know what the heck it is". "Holy shit I got one on" Jack announced as he pulled his rod upward and back with a swift motion setting the hook. It was a nice eight pound brown trout that Jack had inside the dingy within about three minutes. "Ah ha....dinner"!!! "Yea, for me...what are you guys having"? Was Geno's comment as he casted back out. "Guess we best be catching some more.....and I feel a ten pounder just dying to take my bait". "Ok, buddy boy, he who catches the biggest brown, get his rounds bought at Shirley's .......ALL Night". "Pretty bold bet for a dude with no money......and if I remember correctly, you still have an outstanding tab at Shirley's". "Hey...not fair to assign my poor dead old man's debt to me!! Besides.....as I recall, you were responsible for quite a bit of that tab yourself". "No way dude....you inherit his assets and his liabilities....for example, you got his boat, sooooooo you get his bar tab as well". They both laughed their asses off thinking about Geno's dad "The Geeze" and his rather uncanny ability to walk into a bar miles away from his home, without a dime in his pocket, with two teenaged boys and still get served liquor all night long and leave totally blasted. "I guess you got me there, you think Shirley remembers that"? "Are you kiddin me" Jack was shouting. "This is the Garden Peninsula ....land of game poachers, lumber jacks, and outlaws......nobody EVER forgets a bar tab". "Ok., that's it then...we're going to Shirley's .......to pay off Geeze's ten year old bar tab and catch a humongous stupor". "Sounds like a beautiful plan my man".

 

After catching two more nice brown trout, consuming three more Corona's each, accompanied by the requisite tequila shot they headed back to the Lady for a swim and dinner. "Hey fellas...looking for a good time" Annie G yelled as they approached in the dingy. "You got some more girls in there" Geno replied. "What...you think I'm not enough woman for the both of you sailor boys". "I'd never say that". "How about performing some sexual favors for two drunken sailors while we filet these fish". "How bout I just filet the fish and you two bozos go for a swim". "I don't know...do you think you're woman enough to clean these big ol fish"! "My dear, you seem to have forgotten that I have spent the last six years on a marine research vessel. I have seen, cleaned, cut open, eaten and dissected more creatures from the sea than you two boys will ever even imagine". "I suppose you boys want them cut in strips to make trout fingers"? "How did you ever guess". "I'll clean them, you cook them". "You got a deal baby". Annie G went to work filleting the trout as Jack and Geno started to climb the mast in order to dive off the second spreader which was about forty feet off the water. This had become somewhat of a ritual and usually involved a back flip at the very least. Jack pulled off a prefect backflip compelling Geno to try a one and a half which he accomplished with less than prefect precision. He got a bit of a sting from not getting around fully in the second flip. "Ouch, that really fucking hurt". "Losing you touch". "Oh, you are such a douch bag". Even though it had been a chilly summer and Fayette was well north of the forty fifth parallel, the water was still relatively warm. After their swim and a dinner of trout fingers and French bread with olive oil and crushed garlic washed down with a healthy dose of Makers Mark, they all loaded into the dingy for their planned sojourn to Shirley's. "I hope you brought that stash of cash, I know you always keep taped under the nav table for emergencies". Said Jack as they started the three mile hike to Shirley's. "So, you qualify paying off the Geeze's ten year old bar tab as an emergency". "No.....but if you can't buy me a dozen rounds, that's an emergency". "Yea, yea I brought the cash, so let's just hope Shirley doesn't charge us interest". "I suspect she'll let us slide considering the circumstances.... I'm guessing she'll be pretty bummed to hear about the Geeze". Geeze had died during the winter of 2022-23 just three and a half months after his last visit to Shirley's. He had promised to come back in May to repay his tab, but had died in an avalanche skiing the back country in British Columba ten years ago. Geno and Jack both missed him so much it hurt but they were happy that he had died doing something he loved. He was getting a bit slower in the backcountry but he was not the type to live in a retirement community and give up doing the things he loved.

 

Geeze had been traveling to the tiny town of Blue River B.C. In the North Thompson River valley at the confluence of the Blue and North Thompson Rivers smack between the Caribou and the Monashee mountain ranges, since he was twenty years old. He had done some river guide work taking rafting and fly fishing trips out of Blue River, Kamloops and Jasper. In the winter he had worked for various back country skiing outfits as a guide and eventually as a guide for a fairly large Heli- ski outfit called Mike Wiggle. When he died, he had been skiing an area called the Mud Drainage in the Monashees about twenty kilometers north east of Blue River. In spite of its rather ignominious name the Mud Drainage was an area of vast summits and breath taking beauty. He and his favorite long time ski partner Freddy had bummed a ride on one of Mike's new Bell Lab Solar Turbine Mark IV helicopters to Base Camp six otherwise known as Augerhorn Cabin. The cabin was at twenty four hundred meters on a small relatively flat area know as a bench at the bottom of the Augerhorn glacier. It was perched on a rock outcrop, ten meters above the surrounding landscape and stood a full twelve meters high with three levels of living space. It was constructed entirely out of Douglas Fur logs harvested from the surrounding area and flown to the construction site by Helicopter back in the nineteen seventies. The term "cabin" felt somewhat misleading to Geeze and Freddy since they had both logged many a night in various cabins and yurts in Utah, Montana, and the U.P. of Michigan during their lives and considered the Augerhorn Cabin akin to the Ritz. As long as you had the right selection and quantity of supply's, a stay at the Augerhorn was far from ruffling it. The foundation was poured a meter thick on solid bedrock and at four meters high had tons of room for storage of supply's, ski, climbing , and safety gear, two battery powered snowmobiles, a vault with an assortment of hunting rifles, and a nineteen sixties U.S. Army Howitzer used for avalanche control. The outer dimensions at nine by nine meters, giving slightly less than a thousand square feet per floor with three floors of living space was like a palace to Geeze. Heat was provided by a Norwegian style wood burning soapstone stove that had a radiant stone duct assemble to the upper floors and doubled as a cook stove. A solar powered heat plant had been added after 2016, as had a "smoke scrubber" which was a simple solar powered device that removed any residual Co2 molecules from the wood burning exhaust. Water was diverted from a spring fed stream that essentially ran through the cabin and was heated by the soapstone stove and pumped through the kitchen and bath rooms by hand pumps. The lower level contained the kitchen, bath rooms, and soaker tub, the second level was living and sleeping space, the third level was all bunk room with sleeping arrangements for over a dozen guests.

 

In the month of February 2023, Geeze and Freddy had intended to spend at least a month hiking, camping, and skiing in the Augerhorn Glacier and surrounding area. They had planned to take the four day ski in from Blue River, but then, Mike offered them a lift, thus saving them gallons of sweat from days of climbing with their Telemark gear and climbing skins. Geeze, unlike many of his peers, regarded the climb as a necessary evil with the decent being the reward. He just didn't see the wisdom of climbing to the top of a mountain unless you got to ski down. They had enjoyed four weeks of awesome skiing with a couple three to five day trips to some nearby peaks and three major dumps of over one and a half meters each. One of the storms was so severe that they just had to hunker down in the cabin for two days. When it finally cleared, Mike showed up in a Heli and said "I thought you guys might like to take some steep, deep, and long runs after being cooped up for two days". They spent the day making fresh tracks down some of the most extreme faces in the Monashees in the best conditions they had ever seen. Geeze had actually said "that was simply the most awesome day of skiing I have ever had.......I could die tomorrow, and be one completely satisfied and happy dude"!! It turned out to be a prophetic statement considering that he lost his life in an avalanche less than a week later.

 

It was a warm evening with the smell of "summer woods" mixed with Lake Michigan in the air as Jack, Annie G and Geno hiked to Shirley's along " 11 Lane" which was still one of the few payed roads in the bottom half of the Garden Peninsula; paved road being a relative term since the asphalt from the nineteen eighties had mostly deteriorated to what could be referred to as gravel and was only about twelve feet wide to begin with. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly on the beaten track. Jack suddenly felt a Pavlovian response when he spotted the lights of Shirley's in the distance. It was a mixed feeling combining the Oder of tequila, the warm and soothing effect that came on quickly, with the less than enjoyable effects the day after his first visit to Shirley's. There were a total of three trucks parked outside, all dating back to pre two thousand and with homemade, jury rigged conversion kits. Most "Youppers" were adamantly opposed to buying anything, much less new vehicles, so most had converted their old trucks and snowmobiles to alternate energy sources in their own garages. Geeze use to say that if there were three things you didn't need to worry over about people in the U.P. it was taking care of their trucks, snowmobiles, and guns. Shirley was a stout woman, of Scandinavian decent who took shit from no one and was typical of the area. She was in her mid seventies and had seen her share of roughness. She had been married four or five times (no one really knew) and lived by herself in a cabin about a quarter mile down a two track from the Bar surrounded by hardwoods and on the shore on Big Bay De Noc. Although she was no longer married, she did enjoy the company of gentlemen and certainly was not shy about taking home whatever straggler happened to by left at closing time, which was completely variable depending on her disposition at the time.

 

"Well I'll be dipped in batter and fried in bacon fat" she exclaimed as Jack, Annie G and Geno came in the door. "Just look at da too of you boys...ell you look all growed up and like da big shots from da city dar". "No need to worry about that Shirley, we're just the same scruffy boys you always thought of us as". "Except now, we can drink more" Geno added. "Well, dars nobody gonna be drinking nudin widoud dat od man off yours paying me dat hundred he owes me......where is da Geeze anyway"? "That's the bad news Shirley, he died in an avalanche ten years ago". "Oh shit, I'm sorry to hear dat boys, you know how I loved your od man". "Yea, and he loved you too, I'm pretty sure coming to visit you was the main reason we sailed in here all those times when we were kids". "Well, lets drink to da man, I say......what ll it be den, da legal stuff or da special stuff". It had long been the practice to distill ones own alcohol in the Garden Peninsula and Shirley had perfected the process beyond measure. She made what Geeze had referred to as "the sweetest, smoothest, strongest, sour mash whiskey in the entire fucking universe". "Oh, I am pretty sure this calls for the special stuff" Jack confirmed. "You know, I tink, I got some stuff dats over twelve years od down in da cellar dare.....I'm gonna go grab it". When Shirley returned with two dusty bottles and poured hefty shots all around, she finally said "and who's dis pretty young ding, yous two boys got wid you"? "Shirley, this is Annie G, Annie G, this is the world famous Shirley. "So what's a girl like you doing wid da likes of dees two anyway"? "Just a sucker for drunken sailors I guess" Annie G replyed. "Ohh..dat I hear loud and clear...you are a woman after my own heart. If dees guys weren't charity cases, we would even care bout dem. Day tink days smart boys but day don't know fuck all when it comes right down to it". "Shirley, you are a woman of wisdom" Annie G said as she quickly sipped down her snifter of Shirley's excellent whiskey. They sat at the bar, talking and drinking for hours. They reminisced past adventures, and Geno and Jack told Shirley what they had both been up to for the past ten years. Shirley couldn't help but detect the slight bit of tension in Jack's demeanor when at last she asked "so Jack, what da fuck is going on wid you anyway"? Jack explained that the shit had been hitting the fan back in D.C. And that somehow he felt mixed up in some sort of clandestine conspiracy. He allowed as how this was far from the first time he had been caught up in a political shit bomb, but that this time he got the feeling that somthing big was happening and whatever it was, it was defiantly not good. The real difference was that with past disasters he had pretty much been able to figure what the heck was going to happen or at least what people had in mind just from talking to them. This time, the ability to "get a feel" of the situation and let his natural instinct figure things out had eluded him. It had gotten to a point at which Jack got scared, so he had bolted, and here he was. "You know, for the first time in six years, I got freaked out and actually had the feeling that someone was after me. I had a meeting with these PPPEP reps, or at least that's who they were supposed to be, and I got this totally scary vibe...like they were defiantly not who they said they were, and that they intended to do me no good. We have been lobbying for the Global Energy Cooperation Act (GECA) for over a year now and it's had it's share of resistance and the Trad's from the PTAV have been pushing hard for an act to finish a formula they think will actually reverse the non combustability of oil and reconstitute it for use. Depending on who you talk to, they claim to ether have the formula already....or be really close. For a while, this all just seemed like the same old political/ corporate bull shit, but after that meeting, I got the distinct impression that something larger and more sinister was going on. I figured it was better for me to hide out for a while and try to enjoy myself than to end up missing, or dead, over something that I really don't understand yet. So, I leave D.C. By car so nobody can locate a record of where I'm going, I don't tell anyone that I'm leaving or anyone that I'm coming here. I contact Annie G when I get back to our old cottage on Lake Leelanau and she happens to be home and comes over, then we call Geno the next day and hop on the Leading Lady and sail across the lake and anchor in Fayette harbor early this morning.....that's about the extent of it". "Oh shit" said Shirley, bouncing the palm of her hand off her forehead. "What" said Jack. "I don't know, but da odher day, dees two guys come in..... And day don't exactly look local, if ya know what I mean....well, I don't tink any ting about dis cause I figure days just tourists or some ting. Day was drivin dis new truck which I notice when day pulls up, and days dressed a bit too fancy for dees parts ya know. Days making small talk ya know and days askin bout visitors and such. Like I says, I don't tink too much bout it, but den, I'm sure I seen dar truck cruse by again da next day or so....seemed kinna funny at da time ahh, but den I just figure days city boys looking for some solitude". "You gotta be fucking kidding me" blurted Geno as he set down his glass..."you actually have spooks tailing you"? "Let's not jump to conclusions quite yet" Jack replied "Shirley, any chance these guys were just hunters, scoping out deer hunting spots"? "Could be Jacky boy, but I seen plenty of dem guys and dees guy .........I don know...... Der was somthing different bout dem ahh". "Oh, that is just way too far fetched" announced Jack "if these guys were actually after me....how in the hell would they know to come here? I mean, I have left no trail whatsoever; I have no tracking or location info out there; my personal frequency wave is disabled; Sam and Ron are the only ones who have access to my data and there is no location data......I didn't even mention what direction I was going....for all they know I could br in Timfuckingtoo"!!!!! "Still" said Geno. "Still what? There is no fucking way some spooks could find me here". "Ok, just suppose that your feelings are accurate, and that some big thing is going to go down. Then suppose that whoever has a vested interest would naturally have substantial power, money, resources, and connections. You with me so far? Good, then, it's not much of a stretch to assume that whoever it is could do some basic research and make some educated guesses regarding where they might find you. I'm guessing that your old cottage on Lake Leelanau would be at the top of the list.....now, this place here might be a bit farther down the list but ill bet it's on there. It's fair to assume that the more motivated someone is about finding you, the farther down the list they would be willing to go.......right"? "Yea, maybe, but it still seems like a pretty big stretch to me". "I know....right? It is a big stretch, but in light of what you have just told me, it's also hard to believe these guys showing up right here right now is just total circumstance". "You boys got a gun" Shirley asked as nonchalantly as if she was asking if they wanted another round. "No" replied Geno. “We’ll have to take care of dat" she said as she poured another round of whiskey.

 

After the bar closed down and the bottle of Shirley” most excellent whiskey was fully consumed the four of them walked down the two track to Shirley’s cabin. The term “walk” being used loosely in that it was more like a stager. “You kids should probably spend da night here” Shirley announced with authority. “If those bozos really are spooks after Jack, than chances are day have spotted da boat and…….well….it’s best if you just stay here…aahh. “No argument here” Geno slurred “I gotta fine a place to land this drunken body of mine before it crashes”.

 

The Day The Oil Stopped Burning: Chapter 2, D.C. A visit from afar

Chapter 2:

Ron Smith was in the office of The Environmental Alliance Group (EAG) at the corner of K street and Capitol in Washington D.C. "Where the hell is Saffell" he yelled at ear piercing volume. "Sir, I believe he has taken a leave of absents and headed to someplace in Michigan" answered a twenty two year old intern named Sam Marley. “what the fuck, everybody around here just takes off whenever they feel like it? Gee, did it ever occur to anybody that we have a fucking emergency going on around here? I'm really, really not in the mood to singlehandedly save the whole fucking world at the moment..... Like, maybe I could use a little bit of help....would that be TOO much to ask........would it"?.." Michigan, what the hell is he doing in Michigan? I thought we were through clearing up after those shit head auto industry guys ten years ago? Don't we have all that UAW bull shit out of the way? I thought We finally got Ford, GM, and all the rust belt Japs and Korians on board with new tech years ago. I thought they were all retooled and in full swing with the no Co2 thing"? "I believe you are correct with all that sir, however, I believe Jack is nowhere near the Detroit area", Answered Marley. It had long been assumed by anyone that was not from the mid west that the term "Michigan" meant "Detroit" or at least that south east corner of the state that made up the old industrial rust belt corridor that had churned out millions of cars and trucks during the last one hundred and thirty years. It was beyond the imagination of an east or west coaster that only five percent of Michigan was an industrial waist land and that the rest of the state was really quite nice. In fact, few people realized that the northern half of the state was quite possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth.

“Well, I don't give a shit where he is....get his fucking lazy ass back here! We’ve got a disaster brewing here". "On it sir" Marley barked.

Sam Marley had actually been frantically trying to contact Jack for two days now and he had absolutely no idea how to get in touch with him. Since the turn of the century, the world had become much smaller and flatter and these days if a person wanted to, he could stay in communication just about anywhere. The problem was if someone didn't want to stay in communication they could still go incognito. A lot of the current PE (post egghead) generation as they were known, had location devices implanted as part of a total brain-nerve system enhancement along with nano sized chips for increased data storage, faster computation speed and so on. In the sixteen years since egghead technology introduction, this and other enhancement procedures had become the rage and there were big bucks to be made from the guys who got in on the ground floor. The "location feature" was a big money maker since it was old technology, dirt cheap stuff and an easy sell to parents who were getting their kids enhanced because they would always know where their kids were, and the poor kids couldn't turn it off.

Sam was glad to have avoided that particular unpleasant embarrassment of youth but figured that at the present rate of achievement by the first PE generation kids who were just turning 14, fooling one's parents was going to be child's play..... He chuckled at his own pun and pondered what things would be like in a few short years when everyone under 25 would twice as smart as everyone over 25.

He swung into the office of Jane Keen who was the office manager and always pretended to be just a receptionist and secretary, but who in reality knew more about everything that was going on in their office (and D.C. in general) than almost anyone else. "Hi Jane, know how I can get a hold of Jack". "Not unless he wants you to....boss blowing a gasket?" Jane replied. "What's that mean anyway....blowing a gasket". It occurred to Jane that at twenty two years old, he had been only six years old when the last gas powered internal combustion engine was in general commercial use and that not knowing what a gasket was did not seem that odd. "Oh, just an old fashion way of saying he's throwing a shit fit ".”We'll, if I don't get Jack Saffell back to this office, I'm going to be buried in it".

Sam caught the Metro over to Jack's D.C. Apartment. Jack had a couple of handprints programmed into the security system in case of emergency and Sam's was one of them. Sam had only been with the organization for eight months as an intern but Jack, gifted with super acute perception, found that he could trust Sam, and trust was a rare commodity in the world of politics. Sam had no sooner turned on jacks residential data systems when he sensed a message. It was personalized to Sam's brain frequency and coded so Sam touching his temple made a copy to decipher later. Neuroscience and recent reverse engineering of the human brain had reviled a certain brain wave frequency that was as unique as a human fingerprint. A nano sized microchip had been developed which was implantable into ones temple and could utilize their personal frequency as somewhat of a phone number or email address. This procedure was basically like getting ones ear pierced and was FDA approved at any AT&T, Apple or Verizon retail outlet. Also while not anything like the surgically enhanced, it did add a couple thousand gig memory and boost the regular calculations per second brain capacity by about ten times. It was possible to personalize digital messages as well as communications to someone's personal brain frequency. Basically, people now had everything a smart phone did plus a hundred times more data and storage plus a unique access code in a microscopic chip emplaned in their scull.

Sam entered his apartment and imminently went for his data control station and downloaded Jack's message. "Hey Sammy here is the deal. I had to get outta dodge ...like now man! Sorry I couldn't fill you guys in but there was not much opportunity before I needed to vaminous. I got a visit from some PPPEP types who were not intending to take me dancing if you catch my drift. Anyway, I guess the intention was to make me nervous, but I didn't need my ESP to realize that these guys would just as soon put me in the big sleep as look at me. I figured I had better chill for a while and figure out our next move instead of ending up dead. If you are actually listening to this than the shit must be hitting the fan. Not many people know where I am but if you really have a meltdown going on than you can contact me by using my personal frequency response code and leaving a message, I'll know it's you and I will get a hold of you ASAP". Sam immediately followed Jack's instructions. "Hey Jack, it's Sam, I really need you to call me. Ron is freaking out and the shit is really hitting the fan. I'm not totally up on what's going on, above my pay grade I guess, but Ron wants you here big time."

Ron Smith was Jacks boss at The Environmental Alliance Group which was basically a Washington D.C. think tank that did environmental research and represented various environmental and scientific interests. They had always maintained a strong Government relations department and Jack with his high intelligence and keen instincts had long since proven to be their most valuable asset. Ron was a totally animated over the top kind of guy who pretty much exaggerated everything out of proportion. He also happened to be very smart and extremely good at his job, which basically consisted of making people agree with him. Jack was the antithesis of Ron being of somewhat calm demeanor and they made a killer team. They could play "good cop bad cop" on most any legislator and usually get their way......Or at least walk away with some sort of compromise situation, which was a victory in D.C. terms. Ron was seventy seven years old and had been in the political game in one form or another since he graduated from Harvard law school in 1982. Along the way he had gotten degrees in economics, political science (which he always considered oxymoronic) environmental engineering and an MBA. He had lived in D.C. Since Ronald Reagan was President and knew every single soul in the entire city. Ron was known as a straight shooter and generally played by the rules, however it was universally accepted that you did not want Ron Smith pissed off at you. Jack had accepted a job offer from EAG right out of U of M grad school mostly because of Ron. He had worked in the Reagan administration as an environmental advisor, spent four years on president Clinton's counsel of economic advisors, worked as a political lobbyist for major oil interests and started several major heavy weight D.C. Consulting firms. At the start of the new millennium Ron spent several years involved in research studying the effects of climate change. Considering that Ron's expertise included macro economic and political behavior including environmental impact, this research defiantly got his attention. The more he learned the more concerned he became until finally all his effort and resource became concentrated on the single cause of mitigating the damage he knew was happening as a result of vast carbon dioxide emission. It's not like he cared to play the blame game he just wanted to do whatever was possible to reverse, or at least lesson, the adverse consequences whether environmental, economical, or social. Up until the point that science began to recognize that a combination of burning fossil fuels, industrial scale agriculture, and global deforestation was causing a massive increase in Co2 in the atmosphere there really was no one to blame. After all, mankind had benefitted beyond imagination from the industrial revolution, and large scale agriculture. It is hard to blame a country or regional society for clearing land to produce lumber to sell and promote agriculture. The short term benefits to society in bolstering the economy and feeding it's citizens is hard to argue with, especially when weighted against some -might happen-in the future-supposed disaster- that may or may not happen due to global warming. Ron certainly understood that the blame, if you could call it that, was universal as well as immaterial. The important thing was that what was occurring now, be universal accepted, and that every measure be taken to reverse the process and mitigate the effects. This was where Ron saw plenty of blame and a vast assortment of villains. At the turn of the millennium trillions of dollars were at stake since just about every aspect of the economy of the developed world evolved around fossil fuels. Basically all our energy, transportation, industrial capacity, food production, and construction industries involved humongous consumption (burning) of fossil fuels in the form of coal, natural gas, or one of the various distillates of petroleum. Ron hardly expected these extremely powerful, very rich, and influential interests to just fold up shop and go away in the interest of averting environmental disaster sometime in the future. The irony that he once lobbied for and promoted the interests of the petroleum industry did not go unnoticed to Ron. In the next decade most conservative Republican lawmakers denied the validity of climate change and its disastrous consequences. Even in the beginning of the second decade of twenty first century the political will in the United States to effect any meaningful measures to ward off the eventual disastrous effects of continued Co2 emissions were pretty much nonexistent. In two thousand and ten Ron had formed the Environmental Alliance Group, a think tank for the research, study, and desimination of data involving all aspects of climate change. He started by funding a host of research projects and collecting data on the effects of climate change as well as exploring various alternative energy initiatives. Dr. Charles Watson PHD, a leading scientist and highly recognized expert in the field of climatology and environmental physics at MIT had been trying to increase awareness of the dangers to politicians, media, and the general public for at least ten years. He had followed the work of Ron Smith and when he learned of Ron's new organization he knew he had to be part of it. He had brought a half dozen researchers, scientists, and experts with him and in short order the EAG had become a formidable organization. Along with research and data accumulation they established a strong grass roots advocacy network and lobbying effort for climate change mitigation and other environmental interests. By 2032, The EAG was a global organization with several hundred of the absolute brightest minds in the world on its payroll. Jack had taken the job in late 2025 as a D.C. lobbyist and due to his extraordinary abilities he quickly became very close to Ron and Ron loved him like a son.

 

By the year 2016 most of the worlds scientific community accepted the fact that Co2 molecules per cubic centimeter in the atmosphere had doubled in the last hundred years and that it was causing a very real green house effect. They also realized that this global green house effect was heating up the planet. Most of the world population, including a preponderance of leaders and politicians from the developed nations agreed on these two things, but that was where the agreement ended. Most scientists believed that the increase in Co2 was man made the overwhelming evidence being polar ice core samples showing that atmospheric Co2 levels had been relatively constant for the past ten thousand years till a hundred years ago when the industrial revolution went into full swing and we burned everything in the ground to keep it going. They also seemed to agree that while no one could predict the ultimate outcome, the overall effect was going to be negative in every respect. The problem was that many political leaders were not on board with these two most important points. The reason of course, was money and lots of it. It was simply not in the U.S. industrial corporate interest to move away from the status quo and most politicians are loth to buck the system when money is involved.

 

Two thousand and sixteen was a monumental turning point in the history of the human race. On January 1, 2016 the entire world was shocked to learn that an alien intelligence had made its presents known to the leaders of the one hundred and ninety six independent countries in the world. This "first encounter" was was also experienced by the United Nations during its first ever Global Climate Change Conference. The one hundred and ninety three members of the United Nations in 2016 were all in attendance along with over a thousand of the worlds top scientists.

 

This encounter, while understandably making quite a global splash and pretty much occupying all news media for several weeks, still was not the kind of thing that had been portrayed in science fiction books and movies for years. There had not been the appearance of some "space ship", no big hub-bub over aliens landing, in fact there was very little disruption and the whole thing seemed rather anticlimactic. The "Eggheads" actually referred to themselves as ecohedanosphearic entities. They had literally outgrown their biological surroundings Trillions of years ago and were comprised of information and energy, at least that was the basic explanation within the constricts of our human understanding at the time. Their chosen method of communication with humanity was through human looking holographic entities that behaved and communicated exactly like humans but could materialize or dematerialize as needed. This in it self was an impressive trick and went a great distance in adding to the legitimacy of their message as well as validating that they were what they said they were. Hard to argue with a guy who can disappear and reappear at will. The first contact with them was experienced simultaneously throughout the world by world leaders, scientists, and all the ambassadors, staff and research teams attending the afore mentioned Global Climate Chance Conference and the message was clear.......stop burning fossil fuels! Earth had finally reached a turning point, which if passed, would be catastrophic and irreversible. Humanity had now been discussing climate change and fossil fuel consumption for twenty six years with no real substantive solution or change in behavior. The earths atmosphere simply could not withstand the continued Co2 build up and the negative consequences were creating a feed back loop that was ultamitly going to render earth uninhabitable.

Ron, Dr Watson, and half a dozen representatives from the EAG were attending the Global Climate Change Conference durning the first encounter. Unbeknownst to Ron and his team there was already a world wide freak out going on since at 0:00 GMT before the conference, the eggheads had momentarily interrupted all global government communications with a brief message announcing their intention to make contact with humanity at the afore mentioned conference and with the majority of world leaders at 12:00 GMT which was 08:00 EST in New York City, right when the GCCC was scheduled to commence. Needless to say, the pervious twelve hours had been a mixture of panic, confusion, fear, and anticipation among governments, militaries, and scientific communities around the world. Of course the major world powers, the U.S. included, were having a total, secret, massive melt down because something, somehow had hacked their most secured communication and information systems. Regardless of the message, government agencies, and especially the military, are predisposed to panic when they suspect they are under attack, so at this moment it was fair to say that the world powers were a bit on edge.

No sooner had Ron and his team taken their seats and the conference called to order than a group of three men were introduced at the protium. In hindsight Ron was surprised at how casual it all seemed. It was almost surreal that all the worlds leading diplomats and scientists were sitting and listening to aliens.....no panicking crowds running around screaming.....no utter calamities......just entities beyond our comprehension explaining the solutions to our carbon emissions problems in a calm nonchalant manner at the United Nations Global Climate Change Conference. Ron was equally surprised at his own reaction. The two major thoughts that ran through his head were ....."This is so fucking cool" ....and..."This changes EVERYTHING". The men addressed the conference for less than an hour; the message amounting to a list of bullet points that basically went like this:

 

* They are ecohedanosphearic entities; a highly evolved spices who's basic evolution started in a manner similar to that of Earth's. They have evolved over a time frame that in earth metrics would be around one hundred and twenty six trillion years.

 

* They had conducted a "project" six hundreds million years ago. Seeds of biological life as we understand it had been planted on thousands of planets throughout the universe and the resulting evolution of life on earth was one of the outcomes.

 

* Their intention, and hope was for the evolution of intelligent beings, however they did not intend to micro manage the evolutionary environment, but rather let life evolve and observe the results. , Humans had evolved to a point at which our technological evolution was becoming exponential and we were on the "fast track" to becoming one of the advanced spices and as such, we were being offered the technology required to keep from destroying ourselves.

 

* They had compiled the information necessary to provide humanity a vast variety of energy technologies and alternatives. Among these were, the abilities to harvest limitless energy from solar, natural molecular movement and spontaneous nuclear fusion with out radiation.

 

* All of this information which also included hundreds of "gifts" in the form of advancements in biotech, nano tech, chemistry, engineering, physics, biology...both terrestrial and marine (humanity still didn't know anythingabout what was below the surface of the oceans) was available to everyone in the world and was already uploaded on the World Wide Web.

 

* The final, yet extremely important, point of their message was that in one year, all fossil fuels would become non combustable and thus useless! They had used technology which was simple to them to put into effect a molecular chain reaction that would result in a molecular, irreversible change in the composition of all combustable fossil fuels. Basically, mankind had a year to get it's collective shit together, and scale up the technology that had been gifted to us.

 

"Holy shit, this is unbelievable" said Ron grasping what an understatement he had just made. "Looks as if we might have some serious work ahead of us. Charlie, what do you think"? "Well, I suppose we should start downloading this tech data and see if anything these guys have for us is in anyway compadable with stuff we have been working on. Might give us a bit of a head start if there's even the least bit of synergy with any of our concepts". Dr Linh Chang followed Dr Watson's comment. "It's possible, of course that these aliens would utilize concepts that are at least within our ability to understand and actually produce. I mean, what's the use of granting us technology that's way to far advanced for us to ever realize". "Good point Linh, sure would be cool if those alien types perfected one of the ideas we've come up with but couldn't make work". Dr Watson was drooling at the thought. Nothing gave him greater joy than validation of one of his theories. "Boy would I love to get to scale up one of our rejected ideas and shove it down the throat of that numb nuts Senator Bates and his ignorant, research wannabe minions". "I'm with you there Chuck, lets get back to the lab and see what we got". Ron was at the wheel of their battery operated suburban and turned to Dan Stout, his head government relations guy at the time and asked. "So Dan, lets suppose for a moment that what we just saw and heard was for real....and let's suppose that this technology there're giving us is the real deal ....and maybe, we can help make it all happen....right...and, well.....any chance we can crack the social conservative hard line and get some support for any of this stuff"." Yea about the time that pigs can fly outta my ass" was Dan's reply. " Well, I guess we'd best get them flying then". Ron had no illusion about the kind of negative repercussions that were about to start reverberating through the global power structure. "Of course you guys realize what the hell is going on here..I mean, this is the biggest god dam game changer in the history of humanity....and even though we all know that we might have just been given the chance to save our planet and help humanity in every conceivable way....a lot of the guys in power are not going to be happy. Lets face it...if there is a way to fuck this up....they'll find it". Dan agreed whole heartily; " Unfortunately Ron, I suspect you are right on the money. I've been working D.C., Moscow, Beijing, London, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Aiyadh, Dubai, and Mexico City for twenty years now, and at least half of the Senators, Congressmen, Administration officials, PMs, Monarchs, Princes, Diplomats, Ambassadors, and Dictators have their hand deep in the proverbial oil cookie jar. It's going to be darn near impossible pull them off that fossil fuel umbilical cord until disaster sets in.....and from what I heard today from those aliens, or whatever the fuck they are, that's just what's gonna happen if every country in the whole dam world doesn't get their shit together......now that is one scary fucking proposition". " let's just see where things are when we get back to the office.. I'm guessing its a shit storm already".

 

That was 2016, and now sixteen years later there was still a lot of shit brewing. Most of the speculation by Ron, Dan, Dr.s Watson and Chang had proven to be accurate. The Environmental Alliance Group had been useful in the research and product development arena . They also played a role in advocating for the requisite changes in Government policy. Dan Stout had been killed in a plane crash in 2022. Aviation without fossil fuel proved to be a challenge and the era of new technology did witness some negative effects. "Change ain't easy. If it was, we'd be out of a job" was what Ron always said, but losing Dan was pretty hard on him. It turned out that some of the ideas Dr. Watson had conceived in the field of solar energy capture had been amazingly close to the technology that the eggheads had given us. Had they been a bit more lucky and been able to get past proof of concept, they might have made a butt load of money just getting patients on the technology. There was no money to be made on patients since the eggheads had made all their technology universally available, but there was most assuredly money to be made by producing and selling alternative energy sources through the world. Unfortunately, everyone involved in producing energy the old way had less motive to make any change to the status quo; no matter that it be for the better.

 

Some countries faired better than others. At first the U.S. didn't prove to be too receptive and was slow to embrace the changes required....not only to thrive....but to survive. A vast number of Americans were simply scared. Suddenly realizing that we are not alone in the universe. Suddenly realizing that the higher power in the universe that people referred to as God, had just shown up and granted us a miracle. Suddenly realizing that we had to actually change our behavior and our beliefs. If there is one thing that people are afraid of...its change. It is funny how people of every different religious faith had spent three thousand years trying to convince others of the existence of a universal higher power, based on various books and stories, yet refused to accept that very higher power now that it had made an appearance. As history has shown, U.S. citizens have always been a bit fickle and the progressive majority that had elected the first African American president to his second term were no where to be found in the 2016 elections; replaced it seemed by an extreme social conservative faction who's agenda included a total and unequivocal denile of the appearance and very existence of the alien life form that had visited earth and bestowed upon us the tremendous gifts of clean renewable energy, food production, advancements in every sector of science and medicine, in fact the gift of life itself. Why a society would reject something that was clearly so beneficial is mysterious but then hindsight is twenty twenty. Politicians at every level were beholden to special interest of every kind, all of which had everything to gain from the status quo and everything to lose from progressive change. The lobbying influence of these special interest (especially energy) was overwhelming as was the influence exerted by the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Christian right and every other religious group who stood to lose power.

 

Congressman Rick Santorum and his running mate Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann had narrowly defeated Secretary Hillary Clinton and running mate Senator Al Franken. Supported by narrow majorities in both House and Senate, President Santorum and Vice President Bachmann were able to pursue their hyper conservative agenda and put the U.S. squarely behind most developed nations in the race to prefect and fully adopt the new energy technologies. At the very least, the U.S. fell four years behind and spent the insuring twelve years playing catch up. One of the eventual results of the four year debacle that best described President Santorum's term was the split of the Republican Party. The American political landscape had become even more divisive, which was hard to imagine after the dysfunctional behavior of the legislative branch of Government over the preceding dozen years. Moderate, centrist republicans and democrats were becoming more and more disenchanted with the extreme, and ideological positions of the far right and left fringes of their respective political parties. This all finally came to a head during the 2020 election when for the first time since 1854, a new viable political party was formed. Actually, it was not so much a "new party" as a division of the two parties that had shared power for one hundred and sixty six years into three parties. The new line up basically went like this: The Party of Traditional American Values (PTAV) was comprised of the neo-con, super social conservative, tea party, religious, types that had no interest in compromise or cooperation with moderate pragmatic republicans much less liberals. The New Democratic Republican Party (DRP) was comprised of members form both parties. Mostly those who thought in practical, pragmatic ways and had been thought of as centrists, which was regarded as a dirty word....like "compromise"... In the "divisive decade". The New Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) was comprised of more left wing Democrats, socialists, and even certain fringes of the Green Party. Of course the Libertarian Party, Communist, Socialist, and Green Parties still existed, but as Mark Twain once stated " there is no truly criminal class in America other than Congress" so even though there were more groups involved, they were still mostly crooks