Moondust Daydreams

 

From B. D. Grover's "Devil's Dictionary," 2nd Edition: A "conspiracy theory" is a truth that is widely discredited and officially denied. Once exposed, it is widely acknowledged as self-evident and officially discussed in the passive voice.

 Imagine you are a Spanish conquistador in the 1500s.

You are sent to the so-called New World to initiate trade with the natives, who aren't really there, because it's a "new world," right?  Anyway, they this stuff called tobacco and something called chocolate, which will likely find a huge market in the Old World.

You've got sacks full of gold pieces of eight, with which to buy these amazing new products.  But the natives don't want gold.  Turns out they have piles of the stuff, and while it makes some pretty art, it's not all that useful to these "new" folks.  How do you find a convenient currency that both sides find valuable, and with which you can buy all those nifty "new" products?

If you're a conquistador, the solution is easy.  You hack and slay the locals and just take the goodies, and while you're at you, you squat on their land and take over the place.

Now let's say two wildly different cultures, say Earthlings and Orionids, want to trade with each other.  Both sides have goodies the other wants, but other than hauling ships full of commodities back and forth, there's no mutually agreeable currency that both sides can use...They have no use for our paper when they trade with the Pleidians, and the Pleidians are allergic to paper.  Conversely, whatever the Orionids and Pleidians use for currency, we have no interest in it.  Besides, one Orionid Flurb is worth one trillion US dollars, due to hypergalactic inflation.

So how do we trade if there's nothing they have that we want, and nothing we have that they want?

Except energy.

Turns out everyone uses electricity in some form or another, generated by some means or another.  So the Orionids suggest we create a currency out of electrical Watts, since they have a measurement very similar to that.  They suggest we call it Blips, since that means "wealth" in Orionian.

So industrious little humans (the Orionids are HUGE, you see) set about writing code that turns raw electricity into Blips, based on a certain amount of physical work (Watts) that each unit will perform.  Earhlings, being used to physical currencies, decide to call these units Blip coins, even though they don't have any physical structure.  As it happens, not have physical structure makes them idea for moving around the galaxy, too, because there is no mass to accelerate or decelerate.   Just little packets of Watts zipping hither and yon.

At first, the Earthlings are dubious.  How can little packets of Watts have any value?  You can't hold one or put it in your pocket.  In fact, you can't even see a Blip unless it's registered by another bit of code they all decided to call wallets, because that's how they used to store paper.

Quickly, the Earthlings realized that these Blipcoins made trading with the off-planet colonies simple and easy.  Instead of converting amounts into and out of Moonbux or Marsbux, they just zapped Blipcoins to each other across the interplanetary exonet.  Suddenly, business boomed and cargo ships could add more cargo in the space that was once consumed by paper.  And just like the old paper, when things got really rotten, you could burn the Blipcoins for lighting and heat

The moral of this story is: have you checked the price of Blipcoins lately?

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The Jungle Judgeth Not

DATELINE - Deep in the Jungles of Borneo - It is still before dawn here in the jungle.  The silence is palpable and crushing.  I can hear the leaves turning eastward in anticipation of the sun's appearance.  The darkness is so thick I break of a piece and stash it in my pack for shade at midday.  The tribe is still asleep.  Monkey dreams stir minds and catch the breath.

I am the only electron junkie in the village.  I am not yet ready to cut my ties with the unbalanced world.  I tell myself that I need to track the storm front, but in knowing where it is, it knows where I am.  It is a curse.  The vegetable drapes and vegetable walls of my enclosure flicker with the dangers of toying around in the slime pits of civilization.

A blip on the radar: Singapore will start registering and licensing blogs critical of the government.  I update my lexicon so that all mentions of Singapore will be replaced with the word "Spaghetti", "law" will be replaced with "sausage" and "fascism" will become "sauce".  Problem averted...at least until 'spaghetti' becomes hate speach against Italians.  Until then, looks like Spaghetti's sausage is spreading the sauce again.

I perform the classic mental exercise: am I paranoid if they really are out to get me?

And who, exactly, is "they"?

The answers to those questions will solve the world's energy crisis.  Except there is no energy crisis here in the jungle.  All is fine.  Life is sweet and melts like cotton candy in a rain storm.  There are no problems in the jungle.  I drop my last handful of coins in the satellite uplink vending machine.

Pale pink corpuscles of light begin to stream across the sky.  Soon, another day of heavy leisure will be upon us.  I brace myself.

The top of the volcano explodes with Moses fire while the rest of the world lies in edible night.  A bird starts reporting the night's events, then another and another.  Soon my reverie is taken down with a full Nelson to the count of monkey snorts.  One more day in paradise, damn it!

The problem with government is that it creates a need and then steps in to fill it.  Here in the jungle, the law is expediency.  There is no need to regulate paint when there are no stripes on the road, nor road to stripe.  They will tell us we need hospitals but everyone is healthy until the civilization tsunami crashes on our heads.  Neuroses are created, not made.

The cat stalks dream vapors as they slide through the underbrush in search of beetle eggs in which to gestate.  Time here does not pass, it eddies like a child's finger through warm chocolate batter.  The cracking of tree bones is deafening as they strain to drink the warm starlight creeping down the mountainside.  The birds cacophonate as they await the conductor to finish his 3-minute egg and tea.

The world of sickness seems so far away from this place.  Here in the living world, it is as hard to find suffering as it is to find concrete, and just as much use for it.  Hurry is watching the snails race down at the river.  Stress is finding the right bamboo shoot to chew.

The darkness is receding fast now.  It is only pools among the trees, like drying puddles after a storm.  I check my pack to ensure my dark is still there before it is gone completely.  The Moses fire has spread from the mountain top to the tree tops and is slithering down the trunks toward the dream commuters.  Soon the train will arrive and the crowds disembark.  My silence will be broken but not irreparable.  The monkey music has begun.

That other world has lost its magic, and with it goes sanity.  Here in the living world, all is magic, and magic is the only cure for madness.

The day has begun.