The Line Between Fiction and Reality

A year ago, I took part in an ARG (alternative reality game) called World Without Oil. In it, I and nearly 2000 other people imagined what life would be like if oil suddenly shot up in price--a world where Peak Oil is manifest.

The funny thing? The game starts with oil at $4.12/gal. A year ago, this honestly seemed a little over-the-top; I was paying $2.58 at the Wawa on Dekalb Pike & Welsh Road (if you, reading this, know Montgomery County). But one year, and here we are, where the game began. Of course, they got one thing "wrong", for in the game diesel was $3-something a gallon, and today it's around $5.

I don't claim to know what's going on; but I turn on NPR, turn on CNN, and now they talk about the end of oil--or at the very least, cheap oil.

In the real world, I do live with my husband in Lansdale; I have a marginal garden I'm hoping produces at least one tomato (which would be better than last year). We don't work at home, we still drive the ten miles to Horsham--and for that relatively short distance I'm grateful. It costs four dollars a day to commute, which is still cheaper than the train (and there's no easy way to go those ten miles without a car).

At any rate, a year later and people seem to be waking up to the reality that oil isn't going to be cheap anymore. It's not like the 1990s, when I learned to drive, and I could buy a gallon of gas for 90¢ and spend Friday and Saturday night driving around with my friends and not even think about it.

The world is moving on; some days I wonder what relics we'll leave, what they'll think of us. And if we'll ever see a day when walking on the moon sounds more like a myth than a historical fact.

EDIT:*For some reason, links to my posts are missing from their archive.

Week 31: Time I Had Some Time Alone

This is gonna be my last post for a while, so here it goes.

I woke up today to a blinding sight, sun on newly-fallen snow; I woke my husband Dennis. We smiled, went out, and shovelled the walk. We shoveled our next door neighbor's walk, too, since he's old and he's been using a snowblower for the last ten years.

We came in; hung up our wet clothes, some of which I had to crochet myself. We had hot chocolate. It's something we do sparingly even in good times. We had toast from bread I made.

We talked about Christmas, about how it'll be different this year, about how we can't really give gifts, but that it doesn't matter anymore.

---

Philadelphia is Philadelphia, which means that there are Red Zones and Green Zones, but that was true even before the oil crisis. Philly's been a hard--but interesting--place to live for years now. The city center has an infrastructure going back to before the Age of Oil; things will continue, life will continue.

Three hundred years ago or so, Ben Franklin invented the Franklin Stove, which proved to be more efficient than the regular fireplace. Den and I are saving up for one; my parents have one. I'm sure in the near future everyone (give or take) will be using one. It's practical, it makes sense.

Which means people will probably still go on burning oil or using a fireplace, because humans, like most animals, don't adapt well to change.

I've been thinking a lot about evolution. People think that evolution is about progress, about reaching some sort of Platonic ideal of your species, but it isn't. It's simply the ability of mutation. Everything mutates, and some mutations can survive, and some are a dead end. Just look at the dinosaurs--those that mutated and eventually became birds survived. Those that didn't, well, didn't.

Humans evolve. Slowly, I guess, until a massive event where only the fittest survive. The Ice Age springs to mind--humans in the north changing pigment, changing the amount of body fat, and you end up with Norwegians or Inuit, depending on the area and what the exact environment is.

We have to evolve. I know you know that, but it doesn't hurt to say it.

We have to evolve.

---

Eventually, the oil will become to expensive to extract. We may come up with alternatives for some things, but overall, I don't see ethanol or wind energy replacing oil--or coal for that matter. Not until the coal runs out. We'll find ways to cling to our lifestyles, like an alcoholic drinking mouthwash. We'll drink till we die.

But some of us will survive, because some of us can adapt. I don't know if I'm going to be one of them. I don't know if my children (hypothetical for now) will be among them. But I know that, just as some dinosaurs became birds, some people will go on, living in an age without oil, an age without ease.

We're the last, you know. The end of a golden age that maybe was only pyrite. It's like some Greek story, like Icarus or Atlantis. Like Camelot. I remember reading The Last Battle, the last book in the Narnia series. King Tirian laments that he lived to see the end of the world, and how much better had he died before-hand. I've been thinking about that a lot.

It's not so much the end, but the end as we know it.

And I feel fine.

Week 29: Giving Thanks

Goose is one hell of a tough bird.

What people may not realize about wild game is that it's not tender like the nice cuts of meat at the supermarket. It's tough, and you have to cook it the right way. A goose takes 25 minutes per pound, and at twelve pounds it took about five hours. Turkey might take five hours, but we're talking a twenty-pound turkey.

At any rate, tonight we had goose, squash, peas, greenbean casserole (honest to god, mom still had those damn French's Onions or whatever they are. Guess they never go bad), potatoes, apple-walnut-raisin stuffing (my idea--putting fruit in a goose sounded good), and for the first time real cranberries, not the stuff out of can.

To be honest, I still like the canned jelly better. I'll adapt.

Everything but the cranberries was local; do cranberries only grow in New England? And we had pumpkin pie made with real sugar pumpkins. But again, I still prefer the canned mush. I guess I'll get used to it.

But, seeing as today is Thanksgiving, this is what I'm thankful for:

• my family, especially my husband
• I'm still employed
• we still have our house
• that Pennsylvania has a lot of farms
• that I'm still a pretty-good shot with a rifle.

I know, there are other things. But I just feel grateful that I think we can make it through the winter. I don't think it'll be easy, but we can do it.

---

November can be a dreary month, especially when it rains. We just sit at the computer, checking patents, breaking for lunch, breaking for dinner. We try to get the week's work done in about three days, so that we have four days off. The company pays us by the work we do, not by the hours, so it makes sense.

So we spend our days trying to fill the time. I've started crocheting again; I used to do it as a teenager, but never kept up with it after I went to college. Just wasn't that interested, and besides, I can always buy a sweater--why make one?

Well...

So I'm trying to make a blanket, but I'm not very good at it. I keep having to unravel and start again. And it's only one color--I can't really do much else.

To be honest, I'm bored.

Survival--when we're talking about just getting through the day, when every day will be the same--when survival means "here, eat this canned food that you've been eating every day this week"--when survival means you don't go to the movies anymore or buy CDs anymore because that money's going towards the heating bill, and besides, there aren't any movies being made and the theaters are mostly closed, except for the occasional repertory theater--when survival means just getting through the damn day, it can be pretty damn boring.

Maybe the depression's just getting to me. I've been off my medication for months now, and while sometimes I'm too busy to feel anything, there are other times--and I know the winter will be like this--other times when I despair.

And I still can't figure out what to give Den for Christmas. I dunno, I guess I'll crochet something. Last year, I bought him a Playstation.

Omnia vanitas...

Week 28: Baby, It's Cold Outside

November comes, and with it the frost.

I remember the Thanksgiving when I was ten; that was 1989. It snowed on Thanksgiving Day, and I remember being both thrilled with the snow, and a little mad that it hadn't come earlier and given us an extra-long vacation.

Now, of course, I'm hoping the snow won't come early this year. Last year, I don't think we got snow until January, but then again, last year it was in the 60s on Christmas. Bleh.

So it's cold. Not dead-of-winter cold, but cold nonetheless. And Den and I are trying to think of ways to keep warm.

Our house, being old, uses radiator heat. The system was updated before we bought the place--new water tank, etc.--and supposedly it's more efficient than gas heating hot air. Problem is, we're still relying on gas. Natural gas, unlike oil, supposedly hasn't peaked yet, but it's a matter of time. On the plus side, our windows are new, the roof over our heads is good, and we added insulation in the attic when we moved in.

Still, I hope we can get through the winter like we have the last couple of winters--turn the dial back to 65°, wear sweaters, and when it's really cold, huddle. Heh.

---

In other news, we finally got Kate off to Reading. Den and I drove her down to King of Prussia, where a Greyhound terminal is still operating. It was the day after Halloween--Samhain, November 1. Old Irish new year, a time of ghosts and all that.

According to my stepfather, in the old days you didn't get candy at Halloween, you got cans of food and whatnot. It was more like begging door-to-door. Well, everything old is new again, I guess. Kids came in costumes, and we gave "treats"--raisins, oatmeal cookies (made with honey not sugar), and a few lucky kids got caramel apples.

If I was a kid, I'd be pissed. But the parents looked happy.

The next day, we drove Kate down.

"You'll call me when you get in, right?"

"Don't worry, Mary. It's Greyhound, not an airplane."

"I know. But you'll call, right?"

"Yes."

Den asked, "Do you think they'll finally reopen the Reading-Philadelphia line?"

"Pfft. They've been talking about it for ten years. If this doesn't do it, nothing will," I said.

The bus started it's engine. "Be careful, Kate."

"You too."

And with that, the bus pulled out of the terminal. I followed it, down to the street, down to 202, and I watched it pull away over the horizon and out of site, like ships at sea, like all those people who sailed to the New World, leaving friends and family behind, into the great unknown.

Den put his arm around me. We went back to the car and headed home.

---

She did eventually call. She's with her family now in Reading, trying to figure out what to do with herself.

I just hope I get to see her again.

---

Finally, a brief couple of things. The garden did OK, but not as great as I would've hoped. I got some tomatoes, some peppers, but animals ate some of my tomato plants, and I know someone stole the carrots--they were pulled right out of the ground. I guess I dozed off. I've guarded it off and on--I rigged up a system where the lights go on in the garden, and sets off a buzzer in the bedroom, but sometimes I'm too slow to catch the thief.

Still, we've stocked a lot of food, and my folks' garden did great, as did my stepbrother. So hopefully we can mooch off of them to some extent. Sounds bad, but we're offering something in return:

• Den's relatively young and strong, and can chop firewood; so can I.
• I'm a good shot with a gun. I've been going out and hunting wild game for meat--geese, rabbits, deer.

There aren't a whole lot of deer around, though--I think they've been pretty picked over. But there always seems to be more Canadian geese.

The funny thing, is that I remember this one Christmas when I was seventeen. I'd gotten it into my head that we should have a "Dickensian Christmas". So my mom, humoring me I guess, got us a goose from Zerns (she also got a turkey--smart thinking), and I found recipies for chestnut stuffing and plum pudding. Well, we found out a few things:

• geese don't have a lot of meat on them. A lot of fat, but not a lot of meat.
• chestnuts explode if you don't cut slits in them.
• plum pudding has a hell of a lot of ingredients, and yet no plums, just apricots.

So we're back to eating geese. Tough birds, but at least they're currently abundant and free.

So. We're a week from Thanksgiving, and I've got some work--some hunting--to do. Be writing again soon, I hope.

Week 24: That's the Sound of the Men Workin' on a Chain Gang

Kate's still with us. We've been having trouble getting a hold of her family. A lot of phone tag.

Here's the thing. Pennsylvania has some of the best farmland in the country. We really do. We can grow almost anything here--corn, grapes, apples, wheat, you name it. Jersey's much the same. The thing about agriculture, though, is that it requires a lot of manual labor.

I wasn't sure when I read lead-tag's journal about FEMA the labor camps whether he was kidding or not. Well, not. Kate and I stopped down at a local orchard to get some produce, and we saw all these people out working in the trees. "OK," I said, "guess that's what ya gotta do." But then Kate said she recognized one of the workers.

"That's Lisa--"

"Huh?"

"Over there, that's Lisa. She's--I worked with her. She lost her job when I did."

"What's she doing out here?"

"I-I don't know."

I walked up to the kid running the stand. "Hey--what's with the people?"

"Huh?"

"Where'd they come from?"

"Oh, they're from the camp."

"Camp?"

"Yeah, the camp. Outside of Norristown."

"There's a what?"

"You know, with the trailers and stuff. Refugees, I guess."

"From what?"

"Homelessness, I guess. Look, all I know is they're brought here to pick the apples."

---

We doubled-back after buying our produce, and snuck into the orchard. There we saw Lisa, up on a ladder.

"Lisa!" Kate's voice was little more than a hiss.

"Kate? Shh! Kate, don't let 'em know you're here."

"Why?"

"Quiet! Look, wherever you came from, go back. You don't want to get caught up."

"Caught in what?"

Lisa looked around, I guess for a boss. Nothing. "After you left, the government came through--told everyone who wanted that they could find work out in the country, and a place to live. So I went. I was tired of being shot at."

"Damn it, Lisa, you shouldn't've left. Arthur would've--"

"Arthur's got his own problems. There's a price on his head."

"What?"

I laughed. "'Price on his head'--what is he, Robin Hood? Are we back in the Middle Ages now?"

Kate gave me a withering look.

Lisa continued. "A gang. Look, it's a long story. He's got problems with a gang; I got the hell out of there. Jumped on the truck and didn't look back."

"Why didn't you try to get back to West Chester?"

"Um... Because I'm a lesbian and they're devout Catholics?"

"Yeah. Well, I doubt you're gettin' any pu-"

"Shh. Look, guys, get going. Go home. I'll see if I can talk to you later."

Kate said, "I still have my cellphone."

"OK."

---

We still haven't heard from her.

Week 23: An Unexpected Party

I was awoken this morning by pounding at the door.

"Kate?"

"I need your help."

"Obviously, if you're up here."

I brewed some coffee--something I rarely do anymore, due to the cost and scarcity, but this counts as a special occasion. We sat at the kitchen table, as I made some toast and preserves.

"I need to get to Reading."

"Good luck."

"No--I mean it. I need to get home. To my parents."

"Why? What's going on? I mean, other than the end of the world as we know it."

"I was laid off. And I haven't been able to get to class--I can't afford it now."

"Oh."

"Can you help me?"

"I..."

"Mary, please. What choice do I have?"

What choice do I have?

"Take a couple of days and stay with us. OK? We'll figure out how to get you home, but take a couple of days here and rest. Try and get a hold of your mom, see what's going on in Reading."

That afternoon, we went down to my parents' place for lunch; Lansdale has a shuttle going back and forth between the train station and Center Point in Worcester. Kate told my folks about losing her job, and how she needed to get to Reading.

"Are there still Greyhound buses?" Kate asked.

"In King of Prussia, there are," my stepfather said.

"Is--is there any way to get there? I know, I should've gone from Philly, but, I guess I wasn't thinking."

"It's alright, Kate," I said, "I'll take you."

And I will, but not for a few days--I'm going to try and get a collection for gas money.

---

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Week 23: I Just Wasn't Made For These Times

The ax came down on Friday. Half the office was let go, including Kate. Her paystub in hand, she took the trolley back to Arthur's.

"They laid me off."

"I'm sorry, Kate."

"No--it's OK. I--I can just spend more time on school."

"Yeah."

"Arthur. I don't know if... I don't know how I'll chip in right now."

He nodded. "There's probably something. The co-op--"

"The co-op already has three people working there. That's all they can support. They want volunteers, not workers."

Arthur began fiddling with a broken radio. One of his sister's kids dropped it down the stairs that morning. "Kate, I'll help you as long as I can, but--"

"But this isn't a charity. I know."

Kate left. Arthur sat back. He knew what she was going to do, but he didn't feel he could stop her. Resources were stretched as it was.

---

That night, Kate packed two bags. There wasn't much left--the bed and dishes she knew she'd have to leave behind; she selected a few of her favorite books. A few favorite clothes. A few favorite cds. Her laptop.

She missed the apartment. The backyard, with her tomato plants; the mantel over the fireplace, where a Buddha sat next to a rosemary tree; her books. It wasn't much, but it had been hers. But that was over now.

"Where are you gonna go?" Lisa, who worked with her until the layoff, had been her roommate for the past two months here at Arthur's. She'd been let go too.

"I don't know. I just want to go home. I want to go back to Reading."

"How?"

"I don't know. I just--look, I've got some friends out of the city. They say things are OK out there. I'm going up to them, and from there, I'll figure something out."

"Are you serious?"

"What choice is there? I can't stay here. I can't even go to school anymore. At least in Reading I have family." She paused. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

---

In the morning, Kate took the trolley to 30th Street Station, boarded the R5, and headed for Lansdale.