Global Warming Fun 5: It’s a Dry Heat

Global Warming Fun 5:

It's a Dry Heat

By

Gary J. Davies

Published by Gary J. Davies at Smashwords

Global Warming Fun 5: It's a Dry Heat

Copyright 2016 Gary J. Davies

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the only exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy.

This e-book is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you for downloading this e-book!

Contents

Forward

Chapter 1: Mary's Last Wish

Chapter 2: Leaving, On a Jet Plane

Chapter 3: LAX?

Chapter 4: Old Students

Chapter 5: The Enslaved Stone-Coat

Chapter 6: Escape to Bakersfield

Chapter 7: The Big Trees

Chapter 8: The Park

Chapter 9: Zombies!

Chapter 10: Silicon Valley

Chapter 11: San Francisco

Chapter 12: The Golden Gate

Chapter 13: Wine Country and Trees

Chapter 14: Giants on the Beach

Chapter 15: Furry Forrest Dwellers

Chapter 16: Loss and Transference

Chapter 17: A New Beginning

About Other Publications by This Author

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Forward

That's 'fun' about global warming? Very little, unfortunately, as measured in lives or dollars, but I felt that it presented challenging writing opportunities that some readers might also appreciate. As far as climate change goes, I try to stick as close as practicable to the science as it is currently imperfectly known, though I have chosen to adopt what is hopefully a worse-case scenario. It is unfortunate that reality can form such a nasty backdrop for a fictional series. However reality is a dangerous place to be; it is what it is, whether we like it or not. If you happen to not 'believe' in climate change, go for example to the NASA website for some depressingly bad news. I leave it as an exercise for the enlightened reader to discern what parts of this story reflect fact based science Vs what is science-tinted fiction Vs what is pure fantasy. The key goal here entertainment, not enlightenment.

This novel is the fifth in a planned series of approximately ten short stories and/or novellas (this particular series element inadvertently grew to novel length) that when complete will also (hopefully) at some future date be merged to comprise one seamless epic novel that will be absurdly long even when redundancy is removed. The declared general plan/writing challenge is for each story in the series to provide a glimpse of both typical and critical events amid an increasingly unstable world in which natural, technological and perhaps mythical forces are being unleashed due to climate change and other human induced problems.

The writing challenge is formidable. From a human perspective climate changes much slower than grass grows: over a period of many centuries, though from geological and evolutionary perspectives the timeframe of the event is unfortunately short. The expected world-wide impact is almost unimaginable - a train wreck in super slow motion. Even a series of stories with a plot that takes place over centuries can hardly begin to do justice to the event. But I'll do my best.

Since only completed works are permitted to be published through Smashwords, each series element must stand alone and exhibit a sense of completeness. Some redundancy is thus necessary in each series element in order to reintroduce series characters, settings and plots. Yet each element also must address a broader series plotline such that together the releases form an epic story that takes place over many centuries. Global Warming Fun 5: It's a Dry Heat can therefore be read independently as a stand-alone story, though for a better sense of the over-all plot and more insight into the characters, before reading this story ideally its prequels should be read in order.

Though more or less remaining true to its original concept as discussed most extensively in the first series volume, this series has morphed to be primarily the story of immortal telepathists Ed Rumsfeld and Jerry Green, Jerry's gene-spliced/edited sentient ants (jants; introduced in the first story), and sentient rock creatures known as Stone-Coats (stone creatures inspired by Mohawk legend; introduced in the second story). Notably there are also the med-ticks, introduced in the third story.

The progression of climate change provides the ever evolving setting for this series. This fifth story of the Global Warming Fun series takes place five years after the forth story: over forty years after the mid 2020's start of the series. In it Ed Rumsfeld takes his aging wife Mary to visit California, which has undergone radical transformation: climate-wise to a significant degree, but even more so politically and culturally. Like the other series elements this one illuminates a brief snippet in time. The sixth release in this series will take place in New York City, the last will take place on a distant human-settled Earth-like planet.

In addition to cheerfully and patiently waiting for unknown ages to see how this lengthy series unfolds and finally ends, you may wish in the meantime to read an already completed full-length novel. (What a novel idea!) See the 'About Other Publications by This Author' section at the end of this e-book for a brief description of other E-books published by this author, including a brief description of each of the previous releases of the Global Warming Fun series.

I am indebted to numerous information sources, most found on the internet (including Wiki and Edge websites) for knowledge about the Mohawk, climate change, and many other concepts used in this series. As always I thank my wife and daughters for putting up with all this writing nonsense, Bill Gates for his useful Word spell-checker that makes even physics-trained engineers passable spellers, and my favorite author James P. Blaylock for his early inspiringly silly fabulist fantasy writings. Please bring back the elves, James!

I wish also to thank the makers of Paint-dot-NET, the freeware which supports my awkwardly challenging but enjoyable creation of what are (hopefully) nifty little e-book covers. The covers of my books, like the writing and editing, are mine/my fault. My KISS philosophy with regard to covers remains to as much as possible design them to be simple, illuminating, legible, amusing, and attention getting even though these little eye-charts are usually displayed at only three to six centimeters high.

Happy reading to all!

****

Global Warming Fun 5:

It's a Dry Heat

Chapter 1

Mary's Last Wish

Wake up, Ed, Mary Rumsfeld coaxed, as she gently shook her husband's shoulder.

What is it? Ed asked in alarm, as he struggled to gather his wits. Are you alright? The dimly glowing walls and ceiling allowed him to see that she was sitting atop the covers next to him on their bed, and that she was fully dressed for daytime activities. It must be morning already, he deduced, and as usual, she was up and about long before him. Most important: she looked alright! Old, wrinkled, and gray but alert. Her sparkling eyes were full of morning energy and confidence. She was even smiling!

Calm down; its morning and I'm as well as can be expected, given that I'm at death's door, she replied.

She had been making many such remarks lately, Ed noted. She was of course referring to the fact that she was in her mid-seventies and rapidly weakening, in ever greater contrast with his own apparently immortal body that persistently appeared to be thirty-five years old. He hadn't aged in over forty years. It was unfair. Weren't women supposed to live longer than men, especially nowadays?

GIVE US THE USUAL GRADUAL INCREASE IN LIGHT, Ed projected silently via his recent brain implant for the Stone-Coats of the surrounding cave to 'hear'. OH, AND GOOD MORNING EVERYONE! he added, using both telepathic and implant voices.

Ed's Stone-Coat manufactured brain implant functioned perfectly, translating his English language-framed thoughts into digitized raw signals and broadcasting those at kilohertz -range frequencies to the Stone-Coat infused granite walls, celling, and floor of the cave. There Stone-Coat developed imbedded metallic wire segments of suitable lengths for resonance captured analog signals that were soon re-digitized and sent via nanotube circuitry to the banks of individual Stone-Coat computing elements that comprised much of Giants' Rest Mountain. The human thought patterns were finally known and understood by them. The whole process of translation and comprehension was concluded within a few milliseconds.

The already dimly glowing cave walls, ceiling, and floor began to gradually glow brighter, though it would take a couple of minutes for the bedroom to reach full daylight levels. Wall hangings gradually became illuminated. Most of these were exceptionally fine examples of Mohawk art, clothing, and weapons: relics of bygone centuries entrusted to Ed as a current Tribe Chief. Such human relics meant almost nothing to the Stone-Coats, but were incredibly priceless to the Tribe.

The term 'Stone-Coat' seemed a somewhat arbitrary one to use for life forms that were mostly solid stone throughout and could assume many shapes and functions, but it was the name for them traditionally used by the local Mohawk Tribe for over ten thousand years to describe them, and the term was now applied to them by most humans world-wide.

No Stone-Coat 'technology' could yet directly sense telepathic signals communicated by some humans and other animals, but with the advent of the implants thoughts formed within the human brain could be sensed. Now humans with implants and Stone-Coats with radio-wave sensing abilities could directly communicate, even if one or both of the parties lacked vocal and/or hearing apparatus and/or telepathic ability. Using them wasn't natural biological mind-to-mind telepathy, only a crudely mimicked imitation, but it worked well.

With the use of Stone-Coat intermediaries and the implants Ed and Mary could even communicate with each other soundlessly, despite Mary's total lack of natural telepathic ability. It took some practice and concentration to pull it off satisfactorily however, just as real telepathy did, in order to ensure that only intended thoughts were communicated and not half-baked, extraneous, or private ones. After only two initially awkward months however, Ed and Mary had become highly proficient at implant use. Currently they had the only two such implants in existence, but Ed had already decided that he was going to recommend that implants such as theirs be made widely available to others.

The telepathic ants known as jants that lived nearby in the Jant Clan Longhouse Cave where Ed and Mary also lived 'heard' Ed's telepathic morning greeting and responded in kind. GOOD MORNING, JANT CLAN LEADER ED RUMSFELD, they answered. Their thoughts were those of a hive mind that consisted of a million tiny ant minds focused into a single reverberating 'voice' that seemed almost human to Ed.

Meanwhile they physically for the most part did what ants had always done: driven by evolution-honed chemistry and primitive neural circuitry they performed the simple necessary life sustaining chores that ants had evolved to do for over a hundred million years. Only now they each also hosted complex brain matter that comprised ten percent of their tiny bodies, telepathically forming a conscious hive mind that could in turn link into the telepathic network of other jant hive minds that were established throughout the world wherever jants lived.

Overtly jants always seemed to be respectful of humans, but Ed sometimes caught bits and pieces of their internal chatter that provided disturbing: hints that they sometimes told humans one thing but told each other something quite different. Their capability and predilection for deception made them more human-like than Ed was comfortable with. Even Jerry Green, the gene-splicing/editing creator of Jerry's ants, the jants, had on several occasions hinted to Ed that he didn't fully understand or trust his tiny creations.

Several other telepathic Mohawk Tribe members could also understand some of the jant internal chatter and were similarly suspicious of hidden jant motives and intensions. Despite that, the dominant presence and increasing influence of jants throughout most of the land portions of the Earth's ecosphere could not be denied. Throughout the world jants were rapidly replacing other competitive ant and non-ant species.

With Ed's help the Tribe had adjusted to jants. Like the Stone-Coats, jants had been granted Clan status by the Tribe several decades earlier. And Ed, willing sucker that he was and the second human being to ever communicate telepathically with a sentient insect species, was made the Jant Clan Leader of the Tribe. It became his never ending duty to help manage the jant/Tribe relationship, along with sharing Tribe Chief duties with Running Bear, the aging Tribe adopted Mohican hero who was also the Stone-Coat Clan Leader.

Good morning, Chief Ed, spoke the wall via the vibrating graphene chords and membranes of a small cavity in the wall/Stone-Coat nearby. Like Ed and Mary, the Stone-Coats also seemed to prefer communication with humans using sound, even though they started doing so only a few years earlier. Ed sometimes wondered if Stone-Coats did that to keep jants from listening in. The tiny jants could sometimes sense voices as deep vibrations, but not well enough to distinguish words. Jants were essentially deaf with respect to sound, while Stone-Coats and most humans were telepathically deaf. Between humans, jants, Stone-Coats and their various combinations of natural abilities, inabilities, and technologies, communications within and between each of Earth's three dominant species was a complicated issue.

Ed was glad that neither the Stone-Coats nor the jants immediately reported any status information to him. That meant that there were no urgent issues pending that they felt compelled to tell him about despite the fact that it was not his turn this month to be Chief of the Giants' Rest Mohawk Tribe humans. That was fine as far as Ed was concerned. Let John Running Bear as the current on-duty Chief deal with any issues!

But something urgent was definitely up with Mary. Upon inquiry Ed's internalized implant informed him that it was only eight AM. Mary usually let him sleep-in much later when he was not tasked to be Chief. Something is really bothering you, he said. Even though they had become comfortable using their implants Ed and Mary also preferred using voice communications with Stone-Coats and with each other. Despite my apparent youth I'm a grown boy; let me have it.

I want to go to California, she finally blurted out. Very soon. Mostly to see the big trees and the Pacific Ocean.

California? That's right, we never did get out there together, did we! said Ed. More than forty years ago they had had talked about taking a month-long vacation in California. That was a lifetime ago, when he still taught seventh to ninth-grade history in Virginia and had long idyllic summers off. In Virginia, Mary had a little antique shop that she still spoke of longingly, even though she had hardly made any money with it. Ed hung out with her in her shop in the idyllic Virginia summers, until the changes came.

Back then despite summer and winter weather perhaps getting nastier and the findings of thousands of climate scientists world-wide, many Americans still denied that climate change was even happening or that it had anything to do with the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that humans had released into the atmosphere. But climate change was unfortunately very real and not a mere construct of religion or politics. The fact that to fast-paced humans it seemed to take hold so gradually simply made it more insidious and subject to denialism.

Summers were just a bit longer and hotter, and winter though a touch warmer packed a wallop with bigger snowstorms. Mother Nature took notice. All too soon the beloved Virginia where Ed and Mary lived was subjected to invading giant snakes and birds, man eating insects, and other invasive animals, plants, and microbes.

Evolution had also become tinged with Lamarckism, accelerating genetic changes slightly. Quirky invading species were often even more quirky than expected. Jerry might have also been responsible for that, he once admitted to Ed, due to work he did back in his early years of experimentation with virus transmission of genes. Scientists world-wide were still trying to determine if the Lamarckian incidence of traits of individuals being fed-back into their genetic makeup was significant enough to be a far greater danger to life on Earth than any of the radical climate changes that had occurred over billions of years due to things like asteroid strikes, volcanism, and changes in solar activity.

Not at first noticed because of inherent political instability to begin with, there was also climate change-caused world-wide sociopolitical upheaval to deal with. In response to historically unprecedented storms, floods, land-slides, droughts, fires, heat waves, cold waves, crop failures, and other events directly related to climate, the incidence of rebellions, wars, terrorism, human and non-human migrations, plague, and anarchy gradually increased, with tens of thousands of humans dying daily in hundreds of on-going conflicts and other calamities world-wide. Already strained governments and public services struggled and collapsed, leading to further chaos and suffering. A much stronger United Nations worked worldwide towards survival and peace despite destruction and chaos, but its internationally focused resources were limited as every nation also struggled internally to address its own pressing local problems.

From the beginning there was no doubt that humans should in principle be able to survive the massive inconvenience of relatively modest climate change - unless they did something stupid. Unfortunately humans always did many things stupid. Ever since they had achieved world dominance as a species thousands of years earlier, humans had been their own worst enemy, and that situation wasn't going to be altered by climate change.

The term 'climate change' became more popular than 'global warming' as it became more clear that there was much more to what was happening than a simple straight-forward uniform warming of a few degrees, including consequences such as drought and flooding that seemed obvious outcomes to climate savvy scientists but mysterious to most other people. A very few regions on Earth were even for a time becoming colder instead of warmer. Eastern Canada and the North Eastern United States including upper New York State, where some of the Tribe still lived at Giants' Rest Mountain, was one of those colder regions.

There were very notable cyclic changes to the nuclear fusion driven weather of the sun also, and these also influenced Earth climate significantly. Two decades of solar dimming had temporarily stalled Earth's carbon dioxide induced global warming until the middle of the twenty-first century, but had accelerated cooling in the North East. Meanwhile Ed and Mary retreated north from steaming hot Virginia to live with the reclusive Giants' Rest Mountain Mohawk Tribe of the New York Adirondack Mountains.

In warming Virginia, while innocently cutting his grass Ed had been attacked and nearly killed by invading mutant army ants. He was saved by his neighbor Jerry Green and Jerry's gene-spliced/edited ants - the jants - but at a price. Ed became telepathic and apparently immortal due to the chemical cocktail that his biochemist neighbor had concocted and injected that day into both himself and Ed.

Like Jerry, Ed could suddenly communicate telepathically with the jants, and became allied with them. But even with jants to protect them it had become too hot and dangerous in Virginia to suit Ed and Mary. When Mary was nearly eaten by a forty-foot mutant python in her own kitchen, that was the last straw. Through Mary's Uncle Jack, Ed found another teaching job in upper New York State where the increasing cold offered some protection from the heat and from tropical invasive species. In the growing cold of the Adirondacks Ed and Mary successfully escaped giant pythons, condors, and most other invasive flora and fauna by living with the Mohawk Tribe of Giants' Rest Mountain.

There they soon became far too busy to think of California vacations. Although Ed had thought that the reclusive Mohawk Tribe was hiring him to school them about white-man history, they really wanted him to use his newfound telepathic skills to try to detect the waking Atenenyarhu - the Stone-Coat Ice Giants of Giants' Rest Mountain. Ed and Mary were soon adopted by the Tribe and Ed eventually even became a Chief.

The Stone-Coats of ancient Mohawk legend turned out to be very real, and the stone creatures in the form of massive Ice Giants became more active as winters lengthened and caused permanent ice-sheets to form in the USA North East and much of South-Eastern Canada. The Stone-Coats fortunately turned out to be rational and mostly indifferent to humans rather than being enemies. Gradually the rock creatures bonded with Tribe humans. With the help of the Stone-Coats part of the Tribe remained at Giants' Rest and preserved some of their long Stone-Coat dominated heritage, but it hadn't been easy.

The last five years had been particularly trying ones for all of humanity. While humans worldwide increasingly struggled with the consequences of climate change including mass human migrations and armed conflicts, they also had to adapt to the reality of Stone-Coat Ice Giants existing on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Only a few decades earlier the jants had presented a similar shocking blow to human egos. Now humans were forced to face the humbling fact that they shared the Earth with both insects and rocks that were more intelligent than themselves. The jants were new and a human creation, but the Stone-Coats were ancient beyond comprehension, possibly pre-dating multicellular biological life. Not since the advent of the sciences of astronomy and evolution had fragile human egos been so traumatized!

Meanwhile the formerly secretive telepathically gifted Mohawk Tribe was struggling with sudden world-wide fame due to their long and increasingly close relationship with the Stone-Coats. The Stone-Coats were essentially immortal and would probably survive billions of years longer until the sun expanded to engulf the Earth. Not so the Tribe. Ageless Ed Rumsfeld bore witness as tribal culture and traditions long under assault by outside influences now rapidly faded into history. And his beloved Mary too was rapidly disappearing before his own eyes, one age-driven infirmity at a time.

I have to go on that California vacation very soon, Ed, continued Mary, before I become a complete invalid.

Has something happened to cause this sudden urge to visit the Golden State? Ed asked. It's because the kids have gone back home to Brooklyn, isn't it!

Their daughter Mira and their son Craig and the grandkids had recently visited Giants' Rest for three wonderful weeks, but had finally returned to their homes in Brooklyn for the start of the new school year and for Mira and Craig to resume helping the Stone-Coats gain acceptance in the City. Mary and Ed always felt a little down when the kids returned to their homes in Brooklyn. She and Ed could have of course accepted their invitations to move to the Tribe Brooklyn enclave in Green Point in order to be near them. That would have made a lot of sense, especially for Mary.

They had five grandchildren now, little time capsules that would carry forth human genes and a few memories of their odd grandparents to future generations. Especially when in league with Mary, the mischievous grandkids were more fun than a barrel of monkeys. However Mira and Craig as well as Mary all seemed to be unusually upset this time when they parted, Ed noticed. Something unusual seemed to be bothering them all, but Ed chocked it up to the increasing chaos throughout the world and the refusal of himself and Mary to move to Brooklyn to be with the kids.

Ed and Mary both hated cities but the growing Mohawk community and jant and Stone-Coat presence in Brooklyn would make them feel at home, the kids had argued. Though most of the Mohawks had moved south into Appellation Mountain forests, Mohawks had a long history of helping to build skyscrapers in the city of New York. Now they were helping Stone-Coats and New Yorkers adapt to each other. But Ed and Mary were fully dedicated to the Giants' Rest Mountain Reservation now. They refused to leave the Mountain nowadays except for short visits to Brooklyn.

Their returning to Brooklyn isn't the problem, Ed, Mary claimed. I have simply come to realize that for me our dream trip to California is now or never. It's very different for you, Ed. You visited there before we met. You've told me about it many times longingly. I want so see those places too, especially the live big trees and the Pacific Ocean.

Mary was a huge tree fan, but locally most trees were dead and buried under more than ten meters of ice. There were small pockets of wonderful live trees atop nearby mountains that they visited in the summer, but nothing to compare to the last great stands of forest giants in the West.

She also wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and its coastline. The oceans and their deep secrets fascinated her. As a youngster she had even imagined becoming an oceanographer and exploring the oceans herself. The eastern coastline she had occasionally experienced in New Jersey and Virginia was flat, peaceful, and bland compared to the western one, she reckoned, and most traditional Eastern coastline towns had been recently ravaged by raising sea levels and raging storms, somewhat tarnishing the romantic allure of the Atlantic for her.

And since you don't age you could probably visit California again sometime in your distant future, continued Mary. But someday very soon I'll be spending all my time in bathrooms and beds and with bed-pans and won't really be able to go anywhere, if I live even that long. Besides, after all these years of work you need a break also, Ed. You work too damned hard!

But California is a real mess now, Ed protested. I vacationed there as a young man over fifty years ago, before the big droughts and the social disorder set in, and before we met. It's even more F-ed up there than here in New York State. I'm not even sure that California is a state anymore. Besides, there are few if any commercial airline flights to most parts of California, including Los Angeles. The railways and the interstate highway system hasn't yet been fully restored by the Stone-Coats so we couldn't easily get there via land either. Ships might be our best bet, but that would take weeks, what with the Panama Canal shut down for Stone-Coat upgrade and repair. To get to the West Coast ships have to travel all the way around through either Arctic or Antarctic waters! So how would we even get to California? We simply can't get there from here!

I talked to our old neighbor Jerry Green about that. He says that he still has strong influence over some parts of California and that he can fly us to even Southern California on a Stone-Coat maintained military airplane. He has also set us up with an expert guide that will manage our entire trip! Jerry just has a few minor things that he wants us to do for him during our visit.

Swell; that figures! said Ed. Ed didn't know exactly how he had managed it, but Jerry was now the shadowy leader of the entire United States Federal Government. If anyone on Earth could get them to California it was Jerry. If Jerry arranged it I suppose it will be alright. After all, what could possibly go wrong with him backing us? But our dream trip through much of California would take weeks! I can't leave the Tribe for that long, Mary! What about my Tribe Chief duties?

I already talked to Chief John and Talking Owl about that, said Mary. They both agree that we should go now while we can.

Yes, Ed had no doubt that the Tribe could get along quite well without him. After all, he had been telling them that for many years though they still insisted that he be their Chief half of the time. But that wasn't his greatest concern. I honestly don't think that you're strong enough for such an adventure, Mary!

Well I'm not going to get any stronger, Ed, countered Mary. Not in this lifetime, anyway. It's now or never, Ed, and I say it's now. Call it my dying wish.

Ed fervently wished that she would stop talking about dying. Damn but you're bossy! OK, I'll work on the arrangements.

They've already been made by me through Jerry Green. We leave for Los Angeles first thing tomorrow morning.

So soon? Crap! I'll have to pack my duffel bag!

I've already done that. Today we're mostly saying our farewells to our Tribe friends.

Ann is getting back today too, Ed noted. She'll want to let us know how things are going at the UN. I'd sort of like to know myself.

She got in already a couple of hours ago. I've already had breakfast with her. Things are generally going alright with the UN and the outside world, or at least things aren't any worse than usual. Ann will get by perfectly fine without your advice for a few weeks.

That was probably true, Ed realized. Since joining the Tribe five years earlier the ex-news reporter Ann Richards had become the world-recognized expert on the problem of peacefully and productively integrating Stone-Coat and jant interests with those of humanity.

Your usual breakfast with Tribe friends is waiting for you topside on the Deck, said Mary. I'll start up now and meet you there. This morning Ann will be explaining the UN situation to you and other leaders of the Tribe.

Situation? asked Ed. There's a UN situation?

There's always a UN situation, said Mary, as she tottered a few steps to her walker and grabbed at its handles to steady herself. I'll see you topside. You get your lazy butt out of that bed!

Hey! exclaimed Ed. Why are you all dressed up? He had finally just noticed that Mary was wearing her old formal Mohawk tribal gear: long homespun cotton and wool dress and leggings, with high leather moccasin/boots, and everything hand-dyed colorfully. Anticipating the chill of the caves and the Fall weather outside, she was topping things off now with a heavy poncho-like jacket-thing that she hadn't worn in years. Is somebody getting married this morning? Do I need to dress up in my formal Mohawk duds too?

No Ed; you should wear your normal clothes. I just felt like dressing up today.

Good, said Ed, relieved. He hated getting dressed up.

He watched Mary with dismay as she moved off far too slowly, step by step through the curtained doorway and out of their living quarters, moving the light-weight walker along with her less than a foot at a time, each laborious step an immense struggle against the unrelenting forces of gravity. It wasn't fair. He didn't age at all, but she was clearly in rapid decline. Application of jant controlled med-ticks every few months ensured that she had no serious diseases such as cancer, but that still hadn't kept her from aging. She was a shrunken, wrinkled, disintegrating shell of her former self, but she was still one hundred percent Mary, the love of his life.

The Tribe Lead Scientist Frank Gray Wolf had once explained aging to Ed as ultimately a consequence of the uncertainty aspects of quantum mechanics, without which there would be no randomized breakdowns of gene protective caps and cell reproduction chemistry that led to aging and cancer. However Frank also said that without quantum mechanics there would be no positive things such as molecules, chemistry, life, consciousness, emotion and free will. Life was wonderful but there was no free lunch, Frank had explained, as inevitably there was also aging and death.

Mostly Ed had no idea what the hell Frank was talking about, except for perhaps the no free lunch part. What he did know was that his beloved wife Mary was ever more rapidly disintegrating before his eyes and there wasn't a damn thing that anyone could do about it.

He estimated that while Mary's laborious struggle to get topside and outside to the Deck through the Tribe Caves would take her at least twenty minutes, his own effortless stroll topside would take less than five. He could also be up and dressed and out the door in five, so he still had at least ten minutes to kill so that she would get topside ahead of him. He decided that he would briefly stop in at the Stone-Coat Information Center on the way topside. He wasn't Chief this month but he still liked to stay informed, including maintaining his knowledge of Stone-Coat progress world-wide.

He first relieved himself in their suite's little bathroom and noted with satisfaction that all human excrement and toilet paper disappeared almost immediately in the black cloud-like puffy pile of Stone-Coat nanotubes that filled the toilet bowl. In seconds all water and carbon-based organics were absorbed and distributed within the Mountain to whatever nearby Stone-Coat entities needed them.

Don't say I never gave you nothing, he remarked to the toilet when he finished, not for the first time. After a couple of decades of confused but amusing replies there was no verbal Stone-Coat response via either sound or implant. Ed took it as a sign of real Stone-Coat progress towards understanding humans, including even the subtleties of his attempts at humor. Even the stationary Stone-Coats that formed his bathroom toilet, walls, and floor seemed to know when he was just messing with them.

Frank said that Stone-Coat life and thinking abilities were perhaps evidence that the chaotic behavior and ghostly quantum effects related to organic life appeared even within the comparatively ordered world of crystal-based structures. He also said that the gradual progress of Stone-Coats towards understanding human jokes once again demonstrated the lack of a 'singularity point' where it could be said that self-awareness was fully achieved by a thinking being. Ed decided that if there was also some sort of a 'singularity point' at which he would abruptly better understand what the hell Frank was talking about he hadn't reached it yet and perhaps never would.

Frank also often likened the two thousand Tribe and