I found myself, awoke, face upon my laptop’s keyboard, in my upstairs office, in my home in Houston, TX after a rather hallucinatory sleep. It was an unsettled and unsettling slumber. Immediately, I noticed the waning orange light of late afternoon. And then I remembered what I was doing before succumbing, before experiencing what I was convinced was not a dream, but was, instead, a very real journey.
I was writing a report for a client in San Francisco, CA. Someone I met by chance – a young man with a degree of some sort from UCLA who was – and still is, the CEO of a technology “Start-Up” who was considering relocating to the East Coast. I mentioned that I had some connections and knowledge regarding the business implications of the dwindling Energy Sphere, as I referred to it. He decided to send some money my way and contracted my services to write a report on the advantages of relocating to a small college town called Plymouth, NH.
The decision to at least consider the benefits and drawbacks of a wholesale relocation, and to a place so distant from the sunny and economically overheated Bay Area was spurred – to use a Texan term – by a strike, by his overcompensated employees. There had been a walk out and it was still in effect, until such time as their demands were met.
Planet of the Humans
The CEO (who shall remain anonymous) and I discussed the movie Planet of the Humans in a trendy SOMA bar in San Francisco, relevant for its honesty regarding the shortcomings of renewable, or as I like to refer to it, alternative energy. I have provided a link below. I did not mention to my new client, an attractive, fair-haired tennis player, my experience with time travel. Nor did I allude to my insights regarding the true nature of the space-time continuum: how the past, present, and future are mere constructs offered by the human mind, to name just one example.
The client was impressed with my elevator-ride length presentation on the definition of embodied energy, the energy necessary to manufacture, and transport, say, a windmill used for the generation of electricity. The proposed new location of his corporation should be a place that was relatively untouched by the vicissitudes of urban sprawl. I mentioned the books of James Howard Kunstler – The Geography of Nowhere, as well as The Long Emergency. Unlike most high-tech careerists in the Bay Area he seemed to take peak oil seriously: recognizing its very serious implications for what is still very much a fossil-fuel powered society.
