The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans

by David A. Ross

  As Sister Dorothy Stang lay silenced, the rainforest wept for its fallen heroine, and the world gasped for breath. Just as I gasp relating this story to you… And now, it is time for my friends and me to search for our old friend Omar Paquero, if indeed he still walks the terrain of Virtual Life. I wonder if we’ll ever find him. I fear something essential has been lost. Buenas noches, mis amigos. Respira profundamente!

  Air—the medium from which we draw life.

  (Fire)

  The place is the ancient Roman City of Misenum; the NL date is 24 August, 79 AD; and my host is Pliny the Younger. Pliny is a lawyer and an author; his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was a renouned naturalist of his time, a prolific author, a Roman senator and the commander of a Roman naval fleet. Just prior to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in NL 79 AD, Pliny the Elder had embarked on a sea crossing to the Italian mainland. Though he was invited, Pliny the Younger chose to remain at his uncle’s villa in Misenum, a decision that not only saved his life but haunted him for the rest of his years.

  “Your story is one that has survived the Ages,” I tell Pliny. “And I will republish your writings, as well as your uncle’s, and place them in the Open Books VL vault.”

  “It is a violent and a tragic tale,” he laments. “And I thank you for your archive.”

  “You saw it happen with your own eyes,” I acknowledge. “Only you can tell this tale authentically.”

  “Yes, I watched thousands die that day, including my beloved uncle,” he confirms.

  From where we stand at Pliny the Elder’s opulent villa in Misenum, we can easily see the Italian mainland across the Bay of Naples. We cannot only see the city of Naples itself but also Mount Vesuvius looming in the background.

  “The volcano is a mere eleven miles from Naples, which today is one of the most densely populated cities in Europe,” Pliny tells me. “If the mountain were again to explode, as it did that fateful day my uncle set off for Stabiae, then surely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would die.”

  “It must have been horrible to watch,” I say.

  “It rained fire and rock for days,” he relates. “The sky turned black as night, and the temperature dropped as if it were winter. And we were powerless to intercede.” Pliny gazes into the distance, into history itself, and his emotions are obvious on his face. A tear falls from his eye for the many who died the day fire and poison gas had enveloped all the cities and villages on the skirt of Mount Vesuvius.

  “It must have been terrifying,” I say.

  “Like nothing you can imagine,” he tells me. “The fire at the center of the earth is malevolent, merciless and all-consuming. I will share my story with you, Fizzy Oceans, so that you might warn those living in PL who scoff at the idea of another eruption of Vesuvio!”

  Pliny and I sit upon a low garden wall where we can plainly see the site of the historical disaster.

  “The day began as any other,” he relates, “except that my uncle, who was a well respected naturalist, statesman and soldier, had left from Misenum for the mainland with a detail of friends and sailors. Then, in the afternoon, Mount Vesuvius erupted violently and without warning. So it is for my dear uncle, Pliny the Elder, that I give this account of the circumstances of his death, and of the deaths of the good citizens of Pompeii, Herculeneum and Stabiae.

  “My uncle perished in a devastation of the loveliest of lands, in a memorable disaster shared by peoples and cities, but this will be a kind of eternal life for him. Although he wrote a great number of enduring works, the imperishable nature of your writings will add a great deal to his memory and legacy. Happy are they, in my opinion, to whom it is given either to do something worth writing about, or to write something worth reading; most happy, of course, those who do both. With his own books and yours, my uncle will be counted among the latter. It is therefore with great pleasure that I take up, or rather take upon myself, the task to which you entreat me.

  “He was at Misenum (where we stand today in Virtual Life, whereas on that fateful day we moved in the light and grace of Natural Life) in his capacity as commander of the fleet on the 24th of August, 79 AD, when between two and three in the afternoon my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had had a sunbath, then a cold bath, and was reclining after dinner with his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to where he could get the best view of the phenomenon. The cloud was rising from a mountain—at such a distance we couldn't tell which, but afterwards learned that it was Vesuvius. I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. The cloud rose into the sky on a very long ‘trunk’ from which spread some ‘branches’. I imagined that it had been raised by a sudden blast, which then weakened, leaving the cloud unsupported so that its own weight caused it to spread sideways. Some of the cloud was white; in other parts there were dark patches of dirt and ash. The sight of it made the scientist in my uncle determined to see it from closer at hand.

  “He ordered a boat made ready. He offered me the opportunity of going along, but I preferred to study—he himself happened to have given me a writing exercise. As he was leaving the house he was brought a letter from Tascius’ wife Rectina, who was terrified by the looming danger. Her villa lay at the foot of Vesuvius, and there was no way out except by boat. She begged him to get her out. He changed his plans. The expedition that started out as a quest for knowledge now called for courage. He launched the quadriremes and embarked himself, a source of aid for more people than just Rectina, for that delightful shore was a populous one. He hurried to a place from which others were fleeing, and held his course directly into danger. Was he afraid? It seems not, as he kept continuous observation of the various movements and shapes of the evil cloud, dictating what he saw.

  “Ash was falling onto the ships now, darker and denser the closer they went. Now it was bits of pumice, and rocks that were blackened and burned and shattered by the fire. Now the sea is shoal; debris from the mountain blocks the shore. He paused a moment, wondering whether to turn back as the helmsman urged him. “Fortune helps the brave,” he said. “Head for Pomponianus!”

  At Stabiae, on the other side of the bay formed by the gradually curving shore, Pomponianus had loaded up his ships even before the danger arrived, though it was visible and indeed extremely close, once it intensified. He planned to put out as soon as the contrary wind let up. That very wind carried my uncle right in, and he embraced the frightened man and gave him comfort and courage. In order to lessen the other’s fear by showing his own unconcern, he asked to be taken to the baths. He bathed and dined, carefree, or at least appearing so (which is equally impressive). Meanwhile, broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were all the more vivid for the darkness of night. To alleviate people’s fears my uncle claimed that the flames came from the deserted homes of farmers who had left in a panic with the hearth fires still alight. Then he rested, and gave every indication of actually sleeping; people who passed by his door heard his snores, which were rather resonant since he was a heavy man. The ground outside his room rose so high with the mixture of ash and stones that if he had spent any more time there, escape would have been impossible. He got up and came out, restoring himself to Pomponianus and the others who had been unable to sleep. They discussed what to do, whether to remain under cover or to try the open air. The buildings were being rocked by a series of strong tremors, and appeared to have come loose from their foundations and to be sliding this way and that. Outside, however, there was danger from the rocks that were coming down, light and fire-consumed as these bits of pumice were. Weighing the relative dangers, they chose the outdoors; in my uncle’s case it was a rational decision; others just chose the alternative that frightened them the least.

  “They tied pillows on top of their heads as protection against the shower of rock. It was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night. But they had torches and other lights. They decided to go
down to the shore, to see from close up if anything was possible by sea. But it remained as rough as before. Resting in the shade of a sail, he drank once or twice from the cold water he had asked for. Then came the smell of sulfur, announcing the flames, and the flames themselves, sending others into flight. Supported by two slaves he stood up then immediately collapsed. As I understand it, the dust-laden air obstructed his breathing; and his innards, which had never been strong, and often blocked or upset, simply shut down. When daylight came again two days after he died, his body was found untouched, unharmed. He looked more asleep than dead.

  “Meanwhile at Misenum, my mother and I—oh, but this has nothing to do with history, and you asked only for information about his death, so I’ll stop here then… But I will say one more thing; namely, that I have written out everything that I did and heard at the time while memories were still fresh. You will use the important bits, for it is one thing to write a letter, another to write history; one thing to write to a friend, another to write for posterity.”

  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.

  (Water)

  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 H2O. 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.

  PART IV:

  A CHICKEN IS ONE EGG'S WAY OF BECOMING OTHER EGGS

  CHAPTER 13

  Legacy (Or Welcome To Future Life)

  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.