I'm Clarence Watson, Anthony Callas' right hand man, his idea man. In hindsight I regret pushing him into politics. Tony told me to keep a running account of his political career. He gave me his diary to help me along. I think he envisioned a long career and legacy. I'm afraid it didn't turn out that way. I guess you'd say Tony had a short, bombastic, political career. When this began we were both energy engineers working at Northeastern power, Dover, Delaware.

The beginning-this is the way Tony described it in his diary. Tony lay paralytic on his king sized waterbed. Fierce images in his brain held him suspended between the dream and waking world. The 3-D camera running in his mind was out of focus, saving him the pain of seeing the clear ugliness of his dream. The sound track, "all wrong, all wrong," beat like a drum, somehow matching the jigsaw patterns of fuzz that threatened to explode into view. Tony fought to wake up. Whatever he was about to see, the previews had been quite enough. He could feel the wet bedding and wet shorts as though it were raining. But the unseen projectionist would not stop turning the focus knob and in spite of his moaning protests, the blurry scene burst clearly into view.

A black sphere-was it the earth? A circular horizon of clouds held him like a net. He must be up high, very high. He felt suspended in midair. He could neither fall nor rise and felt deprived of both will and mind. He had become a floating eye, still equipped with enough nerve tails to register repulsion, terror and the angst of floating in a sea of nothingness. As far as the eye could see was a forest of black, steel oil derricks-all pumping madly. Not a slow, regular beat but pumps gone berserk. Out of body, he surveyed the scene of mechanical madness. A giant crack began to split the earth's crust. The crack grew lips, mountain ranges pushed up to form a mouth, the beginning of a sneer. Continents rearranged to form eyes, nose-the face of a bloodless monster. Tony felt he was staring straight into the abyss of his own mutilated soul.

The giant chasm began to yawn, wider and wider. All the derricks had stopped pumping and receded to become mere pimples on the globe's face. The yawn stretched from horizon to horizon and then with a cough, a billion, billion barrels of oil belched out of the earth's gut, spitting a black lizards tongue toward Tony. The mind screen shattered. Tony found himself wide awake, stuck with sweat to the bed, drenched in the after image of his dream.
The alarm buzzer was sounding but Tony made no move to silence it. He was thankful for a familiar sound that told him he was safe back on earth. The scarring image had hardened in his head as though his brain were made of clay. He felt as though he had gotten a warning message. Mother earth, Gaia, was fed up with being used like a big titted cow. She had belched out an ocean of oil in displeasure. Tony felt the emptiness of that oil-drained globe. The feeling would not go away.

At last he flipped the buzzing alarm off and the dream began to fade. He would take a shower, get to work. It was Monday morning and his desk would be piled high with delayed, overdue work orders from companies begging for more power.

My loud rapping must have been a welcome intrusion.
"Who is it!" he yelled.
"Watson! My goddamn car won't start. I need a fucking ride."

I heard the door lock snap and pushed open the door. Tony looked like hell, ten years older than his thirty five years. "My God! What happened to you?"
"Come in. I'm OK, Watson. Come in," Tony seemed anxious for company.
"OK? OK, you're OK. Sit down, I'll get the coffee," I offered.

I led Tony to the couch and pushed him down. I kept sneaking glances at him, trying to figure out if he had a gal in the bedroom.

"So you had a big night. I've got to hand it to you, Tony. Whatever you got, the chicks think its buttered popcorn."
"I can't make it in today, Watson. I think I need a head shrink. I'm cracking up," Tony began mumbling.
"Yah, know how you feel. That fucking job. We're wasting our talents, Tony. We should be designing proton exchange fuel cells. I got a great idea. A carbon nanotube chip controls the cut off. That could double the mileage." I spooned in the freeze dried flakes and handed Tony the black caffeine.

Tony just stared at the cup idiotically. "Drink it up, Tony. We've got to get our sweet asses down to that paper factory."
"Fuck that job! I've got to do something with my goddamn life or I'm gonna flip out," slowly he took a sip of coffee, half realizing that he was already out of control.
"Well, fine. Whatever. How about your keys then if your playing hooky. I'll come by at lunch and see how you're doing. Maybe you'll feel like putting in a half day."
"Take 'em, Watson. They're in the bedroom. You go do that fucking job. I'm through with it. You go deal out the last of the world's energy."

I checked out the closet to see if he'd stashed some titty. The bed looked like he'd wet it. I came out swinging the keys, knowing he'd tell me about last night when he was ready.
"Thanks, old buddy. I don't know what's wrong with my car," I complained.
"It's probably out of gas, dumb shit. Only a dumb shit would keep working at that shit factory," Tony sneered.

"Hey, Tony, what the hell did I do? I'm the one got us to send resumes to Photofuel Tech. I'm the one saw this fucking job as a dead end."
"Ok, I didn't mean it, Watson. But don't mention Photofuel. You know Black Gold Oil owns that fucking outfit. They're sitting on a dozen patents now that would make hybrid solar fuel cells work. Think up something new, will you?"

"I'm thinking, every day." I opened the door to get away from this nasty man's mood.
"What I need is a seat in the Senate. I'd stop this shit in its tracks. We both know what's going on. Congress is fixing to set damn quotas, rationing. Every company is running up their consumption rates before the ax falls. It's a fucking rat race."
"I know, and I'm behind you a hundred ten percent," was my exit line. I had enough abuse.
"Drop by at lunch. By then I'll have this thing thought out. OK, Watson."
"OK, boss, whatever you say."

Tony finished three more cups of coffee, spiking them with brandy. He flipped on his computer, sat and began to type: "There is only one issue now-It's Energy-stupid! As your next Senator I'll offer you the experience and know how to end reliance on shrinking oil supplies. The time for surveys and paperwork is past. I'll see to it that this country will not go to hell in an empty oil barrel. Rising ocean water from the greenhouse effect has sunk enough Polynesian Islands beneath the sea. I have the experience to pioneer new non fossil energy sources."

Tony pulled a can of malt liquor from the fridge. He already felt like a new man. His old job was over, a new career had begun. When I showed up just after noon, I saw a made over Tony. He handed me his print out.

"This is great, Tony. I'll be your campaign manager. You've said it all right here. It'll be liking handing out chocolate eggs on Easter"
"Great, Watson. We'll hit up all those investors who turned down your proton fuel cell idea. We'll build a prototype hybrid, solar and fuel cell pickup and use it for a campaign platform. This is just what I needed. I've been burying my head in the thighs of a pack of randy women. My head's on straight now."

"Yah, that Suzy must have kept you up all night by the looks of you this morning."
"Watson, did I ever tell you you've got a dirty mind? Suzy was out of here before ten last night."
"You mean there was another one?" I was hoping for details.
"Watson, if we're going to work together, you're going to have to stop prying into my love life."
"Sure, Tony. I was just trying to figure out why your bed looked like the sprinkler system had gone off."

"I'll tell, Watson, but I never want it mentioned again. OK? I had a fucking nightmare that scared holy shit out of me. It was like tactile, man, lucid. I was floating somewhere up in space. I could see the globe below covered with thousands of pumping oil wells. Then they all stopped at once-a huge gaping mouth appeared, like it was yawning. The earth puked out all its oil, into space. It became a lifeless ball of dirt. That's all you get."

"Goddamn, Tony, that must have been quite some dream. You looked like like your ticker had stopped. First I thought you had a couple of nymphos stashed in the bedroom closet; when I found it empty I didn't know what to think."

So Anthony Callas, electrical engineer, age 35, BS Syracuse University, launched his campaign for Senator, State of Delaware. We had no trouble at all raising money for the prototype model of a hybrid vehicle, a pickup with solar panels and proton exchange fuel cell. We argued back and forth about the party name, finally Tony settled on the RAINBOW PARTY. He liked all those colors. Tony liked the logo I drew up; simple, a gas burning car, black smoke pouring from the tailpipes, inside the traditional crossed out, red circle. Another TV, internet ad we ran showed the shark toothed hood of a gas guzzling car crunching down on a rainbow and blue sky. Tony labeled the combustion engine as a cancer eating up the dwindling energy supplies. He told everyone the production of the new fuel cell vehicles would also end the economic stagnation.

We headed up I-13 from Dover toward Wilmington, Delaware, pulling off at every major exit. A crowd gathered at every shopping mall where we would pass out bumper stickers and free tickets, all splashing the rainbow colors. One I came up with read, "Roast, Toast, Be Breezy - Tomorrow We Freezy." A colorful rainbow decorated slot machine was mounted on the lowered tailgate. A printer we connected to the solar panels spit out a stream of rainbow colored tickets reading:

"ADMIT ONE VOTER TO BENEFIT/ OF 2 MILLION GALLONS OF GAS/
PER MINUTE. TO VALIDATE/ VOTE FOR TONY CALLAS."

People gathered to see what was printed on the free tickets that I passed out and to pull the old fashioned looking slot machine which also spit out tickets. Tony would climb atop the vehicle and make his pitch.
"I'm urging you folks to elect me, Tony Callas, to the Senate. We need new blood to stop this dreadful energy waste. This solar paneled pickup is no gimmick. All these devices you see run entirely from the sun's solar energy.

"What has brought us to the brink of a depression? The drain of American dollars to pay for foreign oil. We can, you and I, together, put an end to the internal combustion engine. This vehicle is a PEM, proton exchange membrane fuel cell, with no combustion. Hydrogen and oxygen fuel this cell and the only exhaust is water. Elect me to get rid of the oil eating monsters. Oil guzzling polluters on the roadway are blackening your lungs and killing the forests. Aren't you tired of global flooding and economic bankruptcy?

"A vote for Anthony Callas will cost you nothing-nothing but the end to this recession-nothing but the end to unemployment. A vote for me will put America back on the roads with this clean solar PEM fuel cell. Yes, just like the one I'm using as my platform. What do we want? Full E-M-P-L-O-Y-M-E-N-T."

His rah, rah, spelling gig worked. By the time he started spelling the word the second time the whole crowd was spelling with him. Tony had more charisma than a nude cheerleader at a football game. The crowd was invited to skim their fingers over the rainbow colored solar cells covering the roof, hood and rear steel canopy. Tony made believers out of them.
On election day Tony won, but the victory was close. Anthony Callas had gotten his foot in the door of the august chambers of the U. S. Senate building. That was just a start. He carried on his fervent campaign among his new colleagues who, with the media, began to love him. Within six months fuel cell fever swept the country like a tidal wave. One year after Tony's election the Fuel Cell Vehicle Act was passed and signed into law. The Act phased out the internal combustion engine over a four year period. During the four years disincentive taxes on gasoline, propane, and diesel fuel were steadily increased. As Tony had predicted, within the first two years eighty percent of the old autos had been junked. Producing the new vehicles accounted for an economic boom with unemployment ranging near two percent.

Three new companies, Victor, West and Zeus turned out the new vehicles, all with metallic looking plastic bodies. The V-Cells, the most economical, had only a front row of seats. The W-Cell came with two or three rows of seats and could be made to order. Z-Cells were the heavy duty models, used as trucks, tractors for pulling trailers, pickups, vans and buses.

During Tony's second year Senator Callas introduced the thirtieth amendment to the Constitution which created a new, popularly elected federal official, The Energy Secretary. The ENSEC, as the media dubbed the office, would be a two year term with elections held every other odd year. This was an attempt to keep the office free of party politics. The short term was designed to give the voters the opportunity to quickly terminate an errant office holder. Another provision provided only a two month campaign by ENSEC candidates. The ENSEC would allocate all existing fuel, another term for rationing. This new office was also responsible for developing new forms of energy. By levying use fees on all energy allocated, the Energy Department paid for itself and was free both from the purse strings of Congress and veto power of the President. In the ever accelerating political climate and economic recession it took only a year for the necessary three quarters of the States to ratify. In fact, only the six largest oil producing States tried to ax the amendment.

No bets were lost when Tony resigned his Senate seat and became the first candidate to file for this ENSEC office. Tony's campaign could best be described as overkill. I was Tony's idea man. To reduce freeway congestion I came up with the speed ramp. The eight feet wide belts would be made of carbon nanotubes. The development of this new material, a hundred times the strength of steel and one sixtieth the weight, made the speed ramps feasible. Pressed out sections of the carbon nanotubes could be stretched between points as far apart as fifty miles, allowing a vehicle to piggyback a ride at 150 mph. The speed ramps would supplement existing freeways, not replace them. Built parallel to existing freeways they utilized existing space and right of ways. Added lanes leading to existing on and off ramps would save millions of construction dollars. Super magnets cradled the vehicles steel axles, hooking the fuel cell vehicle solidly in place. When the driver reached the desired exit ramp, pressing a remote button demagnetized the holding device, allowing the vehicle to slide off the belt unto first a fifty mph belt and then to an off ramp. Tony and I had a fifty foot model of a speed ramp that we carried on the trailer of an eighteen wheeler to every metro area. Pointing at the empty but moving speed ramp, Tony would promise the crowds completion of such ramps for their city within a year. The temptation of escaping the freeway dead crawl was too much for the millions of paper shufflers and mouse clickers in the suburbs.

During the whirlwind campaign, I tried to get Tony to ease back, but he was on a mission. The only other candidate of merit was Senator, Mark Tolstoy. As a black, former astronaut who had made the flight and walked on the surface of Mars a decade before, his name was a household word. In fact, he did tally thirty percent of the vote to Tony's sixty. Our polls indicated that Tolstoy's voters didn't believe in his plan to shuttle unmanned space tankers full of liquid methane back from the planet, Jupiter. Rather, they voted for Tolstoy because they saw Callas as too aggressive and potentially powerful. Like I kept telling Tony, he was just moving too fast for most people. One of the poll questions was, "Would you buy a used car from Anthony Callas?" Fifty percent said no. But Tony had solved that problem, he wasn't offering used cars but brand spanking new ones.

In fact, although I was part of the whole campaign, Tony was moving too fast for me. People at the bars, where I spent plenty of time, were scared shitless of Callas. The ENSEC decided how many barrels of foreign oil reached our power companies. He could open or close any plant in the country. It was Callas who allocated fuel for the airline industry and trains. Tony was a man for the times. But down at the bar people had to admit, deep in their guts, that they had turned loose the first American dictator.

The digs Congress gave the ENSEC in Washington, actually across the Potomac in Alexandria, Virginia, were spacious. I had an office forty feet by forty, right next to the Pentagon, with a distant view of Arlington Cemetery. Tony's office was ten feet longer and had a terrific, easterly view of the Potomac River. I guess I needed a big desk now. I'd put on forty pounds in the past three years since we quit with Northeastern Power. And don't think Tony didn't let me hear about it.

It was our first day on the job with our new jobs. I was sitting in Tony's huge office and we were both just smiling big shit eating grins at each other. Tony's first task was to fill the directorships of the three regional R&D offices across the country. I had scoured the scientific journals, looking for some top talent.

"Let's take the West Coast Office first," Tony suggested.
"The winners rise to the top," I quipped, pointing to the basket of resumes I had assembled on his desk.
"Febus Maximilian, fifty six? Fifty six! I thought I made it clear, we want young heads. How old was Einstein when he dumped relativity on us? Most scientists are burned out before forty," ejaculated Tony, as though he had only milliseconds to make a decision.

"Age, sagebrush," I snapped back, "Just look at that record. He's one of a kind. He sold the Senate on that two-fifty million dollar UNIRON computer. He just located that all carbon asteroid. Besides, he's a real loner, your second criterion. Most of these astronomers are, but Max is a real cheese nibbler, a lab rat. He has no political ambition."

I knew Tony. He wasn't about to promote somebody to a directorship who would squeeze him out.
"Jesus, two-fifty mill for a computer!," Tony was reading. "Where the hell was I when we approved that?"
"You should have been there. There was another young guy, Mike Lox. He wanted three billion bucks for his carbon nanotube computer. The Senators thought Max's was a real bargain when they heard that other price tag," I explained.

"And I was where?" Tony asked.
"The ski trip to Aspen, remember?" I chided, "What was her name?"
"How could I ever forget Polly? What ass, what tits! She taught me everything I ever forgot about sex. I'd play hooky for that nookie any day." Tony flipped open his electronic organizer and punched the letter P. He scribbled her number on a pad and flicked it to me. "See if she's ready for a rerun; we deserve a vacation, right Watson?"
I scooped up the slip and slid it into my shirt pocket.

"It was little old me who sat in on those computer hearing, boss, remember? Let me tell you about Max. He came on like a small town virgin, stammering, hands in pockets like he couldn't find his balls. But they loved him. Once the questions started he stopped the stuttering. The old fart strung out such a pretty line of undies their tongues couldn't stop wagging." I don't think Tony was even listening; his mind was still on Polly's tight crack. Finally I saw his eyes turn back to Maximillian's resume.

"What the shit is this Space Energy Committee Max heads up?"
"Committee? That's Max and his computer. He's holed up near that old Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park. He's got UNIRON hooked up to five networks of star trackers, radio and laser telescopes, both earth and satellite mounted. His computer has that new super conductor brain with magnetic bubble memory. He's got a tag on every planet, moon, satellite, comet, asteroid and celestial fart that's up there. That's how he found the carbon asteroid. We can work that into our next campaign, Tony. Imagine mining coal in the sky! Even Tolstoy can't top that."

"All right, Watson, I'm impressed. I see you've done your homework again. Here, notify the top three of their appointments. Each one has a budget of fifty million for starters and if they find something we can burn, the sky's the limit. And don't forget Polly, Watson. This time you're coming with me. I want to see how you operate with that skinny ass sister of hers. I never could handle threesomes."

I went back to my office, typed in the names and e-address of the three new Regional Directors of ENSEC, and the following message.

"I am pleased to announce your immediate appointment to the post of Regional Director for the United States Energy Secretary. Your budget for the first year will be fifty million dollars.

"Professor Maximilian, please start an immediate search for researchers who have promising new energy source projects and award them a generous stipend to present their papers. The West Coast Energy Source Conference will be held at Stanford University on the fifth of December, 2039. By January 3, 2040 further grants will be immediately awarded to the promising projects.

"Thank you for accepting this vital post and for your dedication to the National Security of our Country. Direct any inquiries to Clarence Watson, Assistant Energy Secretary, Washington, D.C.
"Sincerely, Anthony Callas, Energy Secretary."

 

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