I am inclined to thank Pliny the Younger for his detailed account of the destruction of Pompeii, Herculeneum and Stabiae, but before I can utter a single word, the ground beneath us begins to tremble and shake (we are at the convergence of two tectonic plates), and by a means which I have never before encountered, and one that I am at a loss to explain, we are suddenly transported from Virtual Life into another dimension altogether—Future Life.
Whoosh
…
“What’s this? What’s going on? Where are we?” I ask in alarm.
“Oh, no!” Pliny exclaims. “It’s happening again!”
“You mean…”
“Yes, it’s Vesuvius!”
“What should we do?”
Pliny shakes his head in resignation. “There is nothing we
can
do, except watch the horror unfold,” he says.
Within minutes we see a towering cloud of smoke and ash rising into the sky. Lightning flashes over the distant mountain. Thunder rolls over the landscape and out to sea. The light of day turns gradually into the black of night. We are safe here at Misenum, but the basin in which the City of Naples sits is directly in the path of destruction. For more than a million inhabitants there is no escape.
As time moves forward, or in reverse, or inside out, it becomes apparent to me that Pliny and I are experiencing an event not particular only to NL, but that we exist, as it were, in several dimensions at once—NL (or Natural Life) the source from which Vesuvius draws its strength and power; PL (or physical Life) where the doomed residents of Naples and its surrounding megalopolis will suffer their fate; VL (or Virtual Life) where we are able to create and recreate at will our visions and alternate realities; and finally FL (or Future Life) an existence that supersedes all three previous worlds, and where emulations are our primary vehicles, and from where we can experience multiple realities and/or existences.
Fire—the force from which cataclysmic change emanates.
High in the Andes Mountains, glaciers feeding Lake Titicaca, the water source for La Paz, Bolivia (population 2,350,000), have receded by ninety-five percent; the massive lake has all but gone dry, and the people of La Paz are feeling a little dehydrated.
It’s no joke! In PL, we need water. Our bodies are mainly composed of it. Without water, we die. Plain and simple. But here in La Paz, they’ve all but run out of this vital life resource. People are leaving in droves. But some cannot leave. They are crushingly poor, and moving somewhere else is simply out of the question. So they take whatever water they can get and conserve it. They have become experts in recycling earth’s most elemental liquid.
Here, recycling mostly means multiple use. Water used for bathing is collected and used to water gardens; water used for cooking vegetables becomes the stock of tomorrow’s soup; toilets are flushed only after several uses. Drinking water has become a commodity valued more than gold. And it’s not going to get any easier for these people. Not ever…
To compound the problem of volume, the water in the world’s highest lake has been shamelessly polluted with the garbage of the very people who depend on it for sustenance. Apu Qullana Auki, the god who (according to local legend) created the universe, also created Lake Titicaca by means of the Great Flood. Talk about irony…
I have to admit that high in the Andes at twelve thousand, five hundred feet, I’m feeling a little parched. What to do?
“
Buenos dias, Señorita
!”
The voice I hear from behind me is a familiar one. I turn round to see…
OMG! It’s Omar Paquero!
“Omar! I thought you were dead,” I say, exuberant in the fact that my supposition is obviously in error.
“
No, no estoy muerto. Bolivia es mi patria
.”
“But everybody thought that in PL you were Sister Dorothy…”
“
Una mujer noble. Su muerte es una pérdida para la humanidad
.”
“Hmmm...” Then maybe in PL, Omar really is a ten-year-old kid from Bolivia. Or maybe he is someone else altogether...
“
Puedo ofrecerle un vaso de agua de mi cantina
?”
Now that’s an offer I’m not going to pass up. I take a long drink from Omar’s canteen. No longer parched, I ask, “What’s the deal here?”
“
No hay agua más limpia
.”
“How will the people of La Paz go on living?” I ask.
Omar only shrugs, and I can’t help wondering how Cateret Rose, soaked to the proverbial gills, is faring on her Pacific island home. I wonder if she’s still there. Or if she has left. Or drowned…
“And what about you, Omar? Do you have enough water? What is to be done?”
Omar lowers the brim of his hat to almost cover his eyes as he ponders my question. “
Qué es bedone? Cuando la situación se vuelve crítica, hacemos otra inundación.”
“Can you do that?” I ask incredulously.
“
Tal vez
...
Posiblemente
...”
Nobody’s talking. That’s right, nobody’s talking about what happened in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil platform exploded, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the water, and after the so-called clean-up.
Apparently Texe Marrs, the guy I heard late one night on a talk radio show, was right. The toxins from the oil spill itself, but more so from the chemical dispersants, have killed virtually all marine life in the Gulf. It is now a dead sea, and we’re not talking Jordan here!
What’s more, nobody’s talking about the resultant human migration. The Gulf states have now lost more than a million people, and they are likely to lose millions more. Some have left because their livelihood was destroyed, and others have left for fear of poisoning. Some who remain will eventually die prematurely of cancer or other diseases due to their exposure to toxins; others who do leave will die prematurely for the same reason.
It has now been determined—but nobody’s talking about it—that it is raining Corexit three hundred miles inland in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Even Texas, the great oil producing state, is not totally spared. Dolphins, sharks, shrimp; marlins, sailfish, snapper: marine creatures of every variety—gone.
So I guess that frees the area for more drilling... Right?
More drilling, that is, if cartels demand it... If the crude really does run low some time in the PL twenty-second century. Ha! I wonder if we’ll even be around in PL by the year 2100. Some in VL don’t think so. Cousteau doesn’t think so—at least not as we are today. Iggy is building an Ark. Cateret Rose is probably swimming for her life. Omar is handing out drinks from his canteen. We can’t drink oil, you know. Or can we?
Meanwhile, the moon rules the tides. Water from the Gulf is moving inexorably northward along the Atlantic Conveyor, and it’s carrying with it...you-know-what. In PL Norway, they’re bracing themselves for impact. Hey! Look! There’s water in the oil! So... How to separate the black gold from the H
2
O. There must be a chemical. What d’ya think?
What I think is that we’d all better pack our bags. Just like the millions of scared people leaving the Gulf States. All aboard the VL express! Got to cut and run. It’s always sunny in VL (Hey! That’s a lie!), and transportation is corbon free (and that’s not a lie). Yep, there’s water in the oil—their oil—and you can be sure that separation will be accomplished one way or another. That’s my bet, anyway. So I’ll be taking my chances elsewhere, where the sun always shines (Ha!) and the water is crystal clear.
Water—the medium from which our diversity comes.
KIZ AND I are at Samantha’s Music Bar because we are hoping to meet up with Filo Farmer (aka Theo Ola, founder and CEO of Seedbed Studios and Virtual Life). I’ve heard he hangs out here sometimes, so Kiz and I have taken seats at a corner table and we’re trying to look inconspicuous. We sip our drinks—mine a glowing red concoction, hers a blue one—and try to act cool and detached. Though if truth were told, I’ve not felt detached since the first day I signed on to Virtual Life.
I know the odds of finding Filo here are a thousand to one, yet it’s common knowledge in VL that his emulation turns up here from time to time, and that he’s really a nice guy, and quite approachable, too. So, why not try? I’d love to talk to him—EM-to-EM—about Virtual Life, and about PL, too. I have a gazillion questions I’d like to ask him, and I know he’d have insights and visions I’ve never even thought about. Am I overestimating his contribution to modern culture through technology? Maybe… But for me, meeting Theo would be like meeting Socrates, or Galileo, or Thomas Edison.
Whether by chance or by coincidence, or by deep longing, or simply by blind luck, our purpose for being at Samantha’s Music Bar is realized when Mr. Virtual Life himself saunters into the saloon for a drink. How do we know it is Theo, the Creator? Buy his emulation’s legendary appearance, of course. Tall and lean, and wearing chaps and a cowboy hat over blonde uncombed hair, his handlebar moustache half-covering a thin-lipped, precocious smile, there is no mistaking him. Meeting the Creator is, by all accounts, the chance of a
Virtual Lifetime
. But is God really supposed to look like Billy the Kid?
Theo’s story in PL is no secret to anyone involved in Virtual Life. He was born in San Bernardino: shy as a kid, his family moved around a lot; he spent much of his time alone in his room; he was a nerdy, creative kid, a C student with a preoccupation for ‘inventions’. He spent his adolescence not playing sports or pursuing girls, but surfing the Internet. At the age of twenty-five, he founded Seedbed Studios, which embarked upon the creation of Virtual Life. Starting with only a few simulators, he grew his newly made ‘world’ into a virtual community approximately ten times the geographical size of the Silicon Valley (where Seedbed Studios is actually located) which is now powered by forty thousand simulators hosting four hundred terra-bytes. In essence, Theo has created a flea market reality in which many of us now live and communicate, work and build and love, and yes, even sometimes where we die.
Once Filo Farmer has greeted the staff, ordered his drink, and settled himself at one of the tables, I gather my courage and approach him. “Hi, Filo,” I say.
“Hello, Fizzy Oceans.” He knows my name from my ID banner.
“My friend Kizmet Aurora and I were hoping to find you here. Would you mind if we join you?”
“Pretty ladies are always welcome in my ‘world’, he quips.
I motion for Kiz to bring the drinks, and we join Filo at his table. “Filo Farmer, this is Kizmet Aurora; Kiz, Filo Farmer, Mr. Virtual Life.”
Filo stands and shakes hands with each of us. “The pleasure is mine,” he says.
We take seats at the table and endure a moment of awkward silence (it’s not every day you meet a god).
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time,” I tell him.
“Then I’m glad the opportunity has finally ‘materialized’,” he laughs.
“All kidding aside,” I say, “I have some important questions to ask you.” I pause a moment. “And a favor to ask as well. Or maybe it’s actually a suggestion…”
“Tell me, Fizzy, what’s on your mind?”
“VL, of course. I mean the nature of it. You know what I mean.”
“I could give you my standard interview description,” he offers.
“That might do for a start.”
“Okay, here goes. I started with a couple of essential questions: Is it possible to digitize a person, a human being? And if so, is it feasible—or even possible—to create a matrix, or meta-verse in which digitized people can interact? Each question, I found, led to an answer. The concept of emergence… Bit by bit, the digital atomics were created. One mega-watt runs the entire Virtual Life structure.
“Originally I thought VL would be a world full of nameless entities, but the opposite has come to pass. Because VL’s development is left to the seedlings, the greater setting has developed as those in VL project their thoughts and intentions and fantasies into the matrix. Virtual Life has become a world of vision and inspiration. What we build here in VL is the algorithmic expression of our dreams…”
“Thanks for the media blurb, Filo, but I already know all that.”
“Some do and some don’t,” he relates.
“What I’m really interested in is the convergence of PL and VL. And what comes next…”
“Why don’t you elaborate a bit?” Filo invites.
“In PL, my life isn’t so great. I used to work as a medical billing clerk (ho-hum), but when the big economic meltdown came, I lost my job. Now I work in a fish market mopping up fish guts. Most of the time I’m dead broke (although I always manage to pay my IP bill). I don’t have many friends—I guess I’m not that attractive to most people; constantly smelling of dead fish is a pretty big turn-off, obviously…
“But my life here in VL is quite different. It’s made all the difference in the ‘world’ (lol)! Especially since I became a VL greeter. I’ve met some really great people here in VL (I nod at Kiz), and I’ve really ‘bloomed’ like a flower. So I totally get the Seedbed Studios bit, and the seedlings, and all the rest. Those are pretty great metaphors, Filo. But you probably planned all that in advance. Whatever…