Before me stood not only a chair but also a small table on which a laptop sat, turned so that I could see the screen. A grainy, low-pixel movie of me played on it: I crouched in the field station, connecting a small ten-liter aluminum barrel to a high-pressure water line feeding the test drill.
I visualized the room, to picture where the camera had sat. On a shelf of equipment, I decided. I could have looked right at the camera there on the shelf and not have noticed it, or if I had noticed it I would have assumed it was some surplus hardware and surely not on, surely not transmitting.
"We have footage of you doing it.” He whispered. “Look at that. Look."
* * * *
"Look at that,” my father said. “Look."
It was my fifteenth birthday, and my father took me to a small bistro in Manhattan that served Tuscan food. I ordered tortellini and after the waiter left, menus in hand, my father pointed out the windows.
"There. Do you see that guy?"
Across the street a heavy man in a wrinkled pinstriped suit stood a little to the left of the entrance of a shining glass financial building, smoking a cigarette.
"Yes."
"Why do you think he smokes? Why doesn't he quit?"
I shrugged. “He doesn't really believe that it'll kill him."
"Oh, come now. That building houses derivative traders. That man's probably a quant jock there. A mathematician. No, he understands statistics."
"But he doesn't keep it in mind. He doesn't worry about it."
"Good.” My father rapped the marble-topped table with his knuckles, punctuating his approval. “Now we're getting closer to the truth of the matter. But why? Why doesn't he worry about it?"
"It's inconvenient to do so?"
My father shook his head. “Okay. Try this. A thought experiment. Imagine I walked over there and handed him a revolver, and convinced him that Russian roulette was as pleasurable as smoking. Would he play?"
I looked back at the man. He eyed the traffic and scuffed his feet self-consciously as he dragged hard on his cigarette.
"No,” I said. “Of course not."
"He would fear the roulette?"
"Yes."
"What's the difference? The odds are the same. Or we could make them the same."
"The time."
"The time. To that man, the future is an abstraction. He can't bring himself to care about it because deep down, in his gut, in the limbic core of his brain, it's not real to him. What happens in the future is too far away to matter. Economists even have a name for this phenomenon: exponential discounting."
I looked back at my father. He was staring at me intensely. He leaned forward slightly, and his voice dropped.
"That's the difference between us and them.” He waved his hand at all the passing traffic, at all of Manhattan, to make it clear that ‘them’ referred to everyone out there. “To us the future is a real place. A real world. We care about it."
I took these words to refer to our family—to mean, you and I are especially thoughtful folks. I cultivated a bit of ignorance in this. For a while.
"You think we're better people?” I asked, with teenage pique.
"Oh, no. Not better. Not kinder, not smarter, not more selfless, not more empathetic. Nothing like that. Nothing so noble. Just this: we care about the future—what they would call the distant future. And they don't care about it. They can't.” He leaned back. “And so, what we see as a clear and immediate danger, like playing Russian roulette, they see as a gossamer shadow of a threat, like smoke."
Across the street, the man threw his butt on the ground, stepped on it, and went back through the glass doors. My father snorted, “Of course he's a polluter, too. The future is also a place where his garbage will disappear."
* * * *
"What is that garbage you're putting in there?"
The video played of me attaching the cables, again and again. With my arms hoisted behind me, I could not turn to look at my tormenter. My own shoulders were in the way. I turned my head the little I could.
"What?"
The stick slammed across my lower back. Crystal sheets of sharp pain broke through me.
"Oh, god, don't do that,” I wept. “Please. Please."
He came up close behind me. I smelled his heavy cologne and felt his body heat and the warmth of his breath on my shoulder as he said, “You instructed your crew to pump cool water into the test well for two days. Then this."
"I was testing for potential infection. Everyone is testing now. Before this, we were pumping down boiling water.” I swallowed. “The water we use to drive the tarry oil out—that would kill any bacteria in the area.... You have to inject cold water. That—” I pushed my face toward the screen, trying to point with my chin. “That's a formula meant to feed hydrogen-generating bacteria. To increase the local population, so we can test it."
There was a long pause in which I waited for the stick to hit me. Nothing happened. I heard a faint, distant buzzing. I realized, suddenly, that the man was listening to another voice. Over an earpiece or headset.
Finally, he said, “No one else uses such a procedure."
"It's my own,” I said in a rush. “My own. No one has been able to test for the bacteria before. As you said, it seemed to come out of nowhere. I had a theory that maybe the usual test procedures killed the bacteria in the area of the drill. So when we tested we missed the infection—the samples came up sterile because we sterilized them. Maybe the bacteria wasn't new—we had just failed to test correctly before."
Another long pause. I watched the looping video of me: I attach the line. I check it. Attach the line. Check it. Attach the line. Check it....
Two hands came forward quickly, into my view. Tan skin, rough-edged nails, short fingers. And, in a flash: the small finger on the right hand ended at the second joint. The tip of it was missing. But I saw this only for a moment, fast enough that I could not be certain, as the hands pulled the black bag over my head.
"You're lying again,” he said.
And then he shouted out, “Bring the board!"
* * * *
"Should I bring my board?"
My uncle hesitated. “If you like."
I pulled my surfboard out of the sand and started down the beach. Tall waves broke on the Baja coast, and a sharp, warm wind pelted us with fine golden sand. My uncle took off his shoes, stuffed his socks in them, and tossed them back toward the beach house. Then he jogged to catch up.
Uncle David was tall and had hard arms and moved like a cat. When he used to visit me at the Marrion home, I had loved it that other students looked at him sideways, slightly frightened. But I wasn't scared of him: he was Uncle David.
But that was then. Now I was a college student, out on my own, trying to enjoy a break. I had split the weeklong rental of the beach house with Steve, a nice boy from the math department. Steve stood where the surf just touched his feet. He watched us walk away, holding his own surfboard but frowning thoughtfully.
"He doesn't understand,” I said petulantly, making it clear to my uncle that I blamed him for the discord. “You know, other college kids don't have their uncles arrive for a private meeting during their spring break."
"You are not other college kids."
I hissed disapproval through my teeth.
"When I was your age,” he said, pointing down the beach, “there was a lot more sand. The seawater rise has stolen much of the beach. Looks like Florida now."
"It'll get worse,” I told him.
He nodded. We trudged through the hot sand a while longer before he said, “You will graduate cum laude, I understand. That's an accomplishment for Stanford, and for a double major."
"Everybody gets an A at Stanford."
"Not in math and geology."
"Even in math and geology."
He smiled. “You're self-deprecating like your father. He could never take a compliment."
"I'm more like my mother."
"You have Janet's painfu
lly acute sense of fair play. That I grant.” He looked over his shoulder with a smirk. “And she would approve of a sensitive-looking kid like that Steve there.... But someday you'll agree with me that you're more like your father."
He looked around. We were alone. “Let's sit."
I planted my board and we sat side by side, staring at the waves breaking on the sand. The salt sea air smell was still new and fresh to me. I twisted my heavy gold bracelet around my wrist, waiting.
"You still have that.” He smiled.
I nodded. “Why are you here, Uncle?"
"I wish I could say it was only to see you."
"But your virtue is honesty."
He laughed.
"I'm heading to the Valley for some business."
"Business for my father?"
"I don't do any other kind. But I came here because I wanted to see you alone, without others knowing. I can be seen at Stanford."
"Why?"
"Let's say, I want you to tell me about the oil ecosystem."
"What?"
He brushed sand off his pants. “Humor me a moment."
I stared into his eyes, trying to understand why he would ask me something so odd, trying to judge if he was joking in some way.
I had come to realize, after I left the strangely sheltered world of the Marrion School and was studying at Stanford, that this uncle of mine was an enigma. I had Googled him many times and found that he had long ago been a famous activist and even once a poet. But in the last twenty years, he had evaporated: there was not a reference to him that didn't reach back in time. There were dead stay-at-home moms with a more dynamic web presence. I had no idea what he did, no idea why he flew about in suits looking ominous, no idea why I called him uncle.
"Humor me,” he repeated. “Tell me about these methosomething bacteria and the hydrowhatevers."
I grabbed a handful of sand and threw it on my feet. “There is a whole ecosystem of microorganisms deep underground. In the oil deposits. Many different kinds of bacteria, which live on oil or on other organisms that live on oil."
"And they ruin it?"
I shrugged. “That's how an oil company would put it. The bacteria tend to make the oil more dense and viscous, less suitable for extracting and refining."
"And there are two kinds of bacteria."
"Many kinds. But two important groups. The methanogenics eat oil and excrete methane. The most successful of these are hydrogenotrophics. They eat oil but they also use hydrogen to make methane. This hydrogen comes from bacteria that eat the oil and excrete hydrogen—hydrogenes or hydrogen-generating bacteria."
Uncle David reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a long aluminum cylinder. It shined in the sunlight, announcing clearly a very high-tech manufacturing. Only the thinnest line near one end revealed the presence of a kind of cap.
"Suppose,” my uncle said, “that this cylinder contained several strains of bacteriophages, of viruses that attack specific bacteria—extremely virulent—that would kill the methanogenic bacteria, including the hydrogenotrophic methanogenes. Suppose someone injected it into an oil well. What would happen?"
I shook my head. “I'm not sure. If it really worked, and if it could survive down there, then you would significantly reduce the methane generation. Slow the biodegradation of the oil. But the oil companies are trying that. No one has succeeded."
"They have not succeeded.” He pulled another cylinder out of his jacket. “Suppose instead that this cylinder contained a new strain of hydrogen-generating bacteria. Very aggressive, very successful at eating all different qualities of oil. What would happen if you inserted this into the same well after?"
The cylinder flashed, blinding, as he turned it over. I reached out and took both cylinders, one in each fist. They were warm from resting by his heart. They felt almost like something alive. And they were light: empty. Only here for illustrative purposes. Or here because he came to see me before, not after, he made his more important stops on the West coast.
"If you injected this after you killed the methanogens? Wiped out the competition?"
He nodded.
"And if this stuff were resistant to the bacteriophages you put in earlier?"
"Assuming it were completely resistant to those bacteriophages."
"They'd eat the oil. Quickly. Turn it to sludge."
"And?"
"And excrete hydrogren. A lot of hydrogen."
"Which could be tapped."
"Yes. But this has been discussed, and the oil companies and the governments of the world have made it clear they consider the approach impractical, and they would never allow such a thing. It's too dangerous."
"More dangerous than burning the oil?"
I shook my head. “No. Probably not."
"The problem,” my uncle said, “is that they don't see how to make as much money off it. They are invested in their gasoline infrastructure. Their profits—I mean, their short-term profits—are larger if they don't have to build a new hydrogen infrastructure."
I nodded. “Sure. That's probably the real reason they've resisted experimenting with such approaches. It just doesn't make good sense for next quarter's profits. Never will."
"What, then, if someone else put both of these strains into the wells?"
"The oil economy would crash and we'd have to make a blitz switch to a hydrogen economy. It would cause terrible immediate economic turmoil."
"And what will waiting do? What will inaction cause?"
I had to grant the point. “Worse turmoil—the same eventual collapse of the oil economy but with greatly worse global warming. But farther in the future. Twenty, thirty years out."
He nodded. “So, if we don't discount future costs radically, then this,” he pointed at the cylinders, “would be the best course of action."
"No, a peaceful, gradual switch to alternatives would be the best course of action."
He sighed impatiently. “Don't waste our time. That is not going to happen."
"You talk as if this was something other than academic.” I'd done an internship with an oil conglomerate, at my father's request. I knew how these things worked. “But it can't happen. How would this someone ever get close? And maybe you could get it in one well, but you'd never get it into all the major reserves."
"Agreed. One person could not. You'd need someone inside of each major oil project in the world. And these people would have to put the bacteria and viruses into many different wells simultaneously."
I looked at him, unwilling to follow the steps to their conclusion. “Enough riddles. What are you saying?"
"I'm asking you to go to Harvard for the geology Ph.D. I'm asking you to get a field research position in South America with a major oil company."
The wind gusted and I squinted against the sand that blew against my face. And then it dawned on me.
"Even the Spanish,” I whispered. “Even the Spanish classes—the paid trips to Argentina, my time as an exchange student, even that was planned."
He pressed his lips together. After a long moment, he said, “I ... I hope you still believe those were valuable things for you to have done. The summers in Argentina. You wouldn't change that, would you?"
The truth was those summers had been the most painful part of my youth. I had never seen real poverty before, never hidden from crime, never eaten a meal with a family while in the distance police sirens screamed the constant death cry of a shantytown. The sun had been shrouded for months as thousands of squatting arsonists burned the last of the rainforest away, its cremation smoke rising up to clot the sky; and below those black clouds, fumes choked the long boulevards as a flood of cars and motorcycles belched oily blue smog. The hopelessness of it had overwhelmed me. There was no order, no planning, no vision for the future. And I alone seemed to recognize that we were trapped in a nakedly desperate, all-consuming now—in which everything was burned, devoured as quickly and as violently as possible—and after which we were obviously going to choke and
starve.
"This isn't normal,” I whispered. “Everything planned like this. It's not normal."
"I admit that we are planners, your father and I. But so are you.” He reached over and took the cylinders from me and slipped them into his coat, their brilliance disappearing within his dark pocket.
I stood. “This is crazy. Look at other people, they'd never put up with this, they'd get on with their lives and say the hell with this. I see how other people live. We're like a—a cult or something. You, my dad and mom, your friends—asking people to keep secrets, to plan, to change their whole lives. Half our kids going to that secretive little school together, the other half spirited away to other private schools. That's not normal. I know that now, I've seen how other people live. How can you ask this of me? How, after I've seen how other people live?"
"Because you see how other people live."
That was part of the air of danger, part of the fierceness of Uncle David. His threat was not just that, at an age near fifty, he still looked like a lithe killer and cast a cold eye on everyone who passed him. It was also that his words could surprise like a blow. They were often painful, sharp, too correct, too true.
I ran my hands through my hair.
"But why?"
"You know why. To save the world."
"That's not enough. Forcing a hydrogen economy."
"No, it'd take a lot more than that. Hundreds of people, doing hundreds of different things, for hundreds of years."
"If there were such a conspiracy, you wouldn't tell me."
"If I didn't tell you, you wouldn't help. You'll keep the secret because you'll see that you should."
"This is crazy,” I repeated. “How can you ask this of me? Other people would tell me I'm crazy if they knew the things I did just because you ask."
"Lyta, you're not like other people."
"Why do you always say that?"
He stood. “Because it's true."
"All my life you've said that. My dad too. That's why I went to the Marrion School, they told me. But I'm not special. I'm not smarter than other kids. Not faster. Not more creative. There's nothing special about me. You think I'm being humble about Stanford, but I'm not. Everyone gets an A, but you can tell who the smart ones are, and I'm not one of them. Why say I'm different?"
Analog SFF, November 2009 Page 12