The Revolution of Rising Expectations-a sociological phenomenon brought on by the scientific-technological advances of the previous two centuries-which caused the majority of primates to claim they had the right to a decent standard of living;
The failure of the Revolution of Lowered Expectations, after the smarter primates realized that lowered expectations meant starvation for the majority of the planet;
The Hunger Project started by a circuit-five primate named Erhard, who encouraged people to believe starvation could be eliminated;
The continuous influence of a circuit-six primate named R. Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller, who insisted the primate brain was designed "for total success in Universe";
And, finally, the debacle of terrestrial-based nuclear energy plants, which continually caused havoc in their environments, and which eventually prompted some of the primates to remember that a science-fiction writer, Robert Anson Heinlein, had foreseen all this in a 1940s story, "Blow-ups Happen," and provided the solution- moving the nuclear plants into space.
By 1984 over a third of Terra's industrial plants had been moved, as O'Neill foresaw, into the L5 area-Legrange point 5, where the gravity fields of earth and moon are balanced. The colonists even had a theme song, invented by another science-fiction writer, Robert Anson Wilson, in a book called The Universe Next Door. The song was "HOMEs on Legrange."
A VISITOR FROM FAIRY LAND
"Participation" is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics; it strikes down the term "observer" of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind a thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. That can't be done, quantum mechanics says.
–wheeler, misner, amp; thorne, Gravitation
MAY 1, 1934:
"They call it liberalism and socialism, the bastards, but really it's their own brand of highway robbery. They been after me and Henry Ford and every independent in the country for a hell of a long time. You remember all this, son; you remember what your father told you. It's a big fortune the Crane holdings and they're going to be trying to take it away from you, just like they're trying to take it away from me. I earned every penny of it, when I invented ORGASMOR, and I don't aim to let them take it away from me or from you. You just remember why all the bankers are Rosenfelt liberals, son; you remember who your real enemies are and don't think it's those idiot socialists and other cranks like Townsend, with his thirty dollars every Thursday. It's those kike bankers who want the whole pie and are just using Rosenfelt as a pawn."
That was old Crane, Tom Crane, the man who invented ORGASMOR, talking to his son, Hugh, in Central Park, where sweet birds sang. Tom Crane was more dinosaur than primate: a tough, unsentimental reptile whose wealth was based on a swindle, pure and simple. He never explicitly claimed in any advertisement that ORGASMOR created more orgasms-just that it was "deliciously enticing" and "stimulating to all body cells and tissues" and the PDA never succeeded in proving that his agents had planted the popular mythology attributing lubricity to a product not very different in chemical content from Coca-Cola. A strict constructionist would certainly say that Crane's customers were being defrauded.
"It doesn't poison anybody," old Crane always answered such nitpickers.
In fact, Hugh Crane-who was only ten in 1934 and would reach twelve before he discovered that the actual pronunciation of the President's name was Roosevelt-was only partially listening to his father's rambling diatribe. He had heard all of it before, many times, and besides, the Mysterious Tramp was much more interesting.
The Mysterious Tramp, perhaps a visitor from fairy land, was stopping each person who passed and asking them something. They all shook their heads and walked by rapidly. This was puzzling to little Hugh: If the answer was negative, why did the Tramp keep asking the question? Didn't he believe the people who had already answered? Was he offering a chance to cross the boundary into magic space and were they all too timid to try?
"You see, son, Rosenfelt and the Rhodes scholars have it all sliced up and they have to get rid of people like me…" Tom Crane was still rambling along his own paranoid yellow-brick road when they finally came abreast of the Tramp. Hugh listened eagerly to catch the Mystery Question.
"Hey mister could you spare a dime I haven't eaten in three days mister hey listen mister…"
"Get a job," said old Crane, walking faster. "You see, son, that's the kind of good-for-nothing loafer who's destroying this country."
But the boy who was to become Cagliostro the Escape Artist looked back and saw the Mysterious Tramp falling to the ground very slowly like a tree he had seen fall slowly after being chopped by the caretaker at the Crane country home out on Long Island, and just like the tree, when he finally reached the sidewalk, the Tramp didn't move at all, not one bit, and even seemed to get stiff like the tree did, only faster.
SPOCK? SPOCK? SPOCK?
DECEMBER 23, 1983
While Dr. Dashwood was worrying about the sinister Ezra Pound in San Francisco and Mary Margaret Wilde-blood was preparing for her party in New York, a black giant named "Rosey" Stuart was struggling with a vacation memo in the Pussycat office in Chicago.
"This is the worst piece of idiocy I've ever seen," he complained to his secretary. "It looks like it was written by a computer having a nervous breakdown. Listen to this gibberish: 'Haifa man-day shall not be equal to half a day unless the man is actually in the office for the full day, or half of a full day, as the case may be. (This also applies to female employees.)' What the ring-tailed rambling hell does that mean?"
"Do you want me to call Personnel and ask somebody to explain it?" asked the secretary, Marlene Murphy, a pert little redhead who could neither type nor take dictation well, but held her job because she fit the Pussycat image.
"Besides," Stuart went on grumbling, "it contradicts the vacation memo we got last week."
"That one was a hoax," Marlene explained patiently. "Some crank got in at night and ran it off on a Xerox machine as some kind of practical joke."
"Well, Jesus on a wubber cwutch," Stuart complained, imitating Elmer Fudd, "it made more sense than this one."
Marlene shrugged sympathetically. "This is the one we've got to live with."
Stuart shook his head wearily. "What kind of world is it where the reality is weirder than the satire?"
There was no obvious answer to that. "Do you want me to call Personnel?" Marlene repeated.
"Hell, no!" Stuart exclaimed. "Don't agitate that pit of ding-dongs. Just put me down for the first three weeks in July, and if they tell me I can't have it, I'll go over their heads and talk to Sput." Stan Sputnik was the founder of the Pussycat empire and still acted as both Managing Editor and Publisher, as well as embodying the Pussycat image in all his highly publicized acts and deeds.
Stuart crumbled the vacation memo and threw it in the wastebasket.
"What's next?" he asked.
"Dr. Dashwood. About the interview."
"Oh, yes," Stuart said, turning his chair to look out the window. "Call his secretary and see if he's in."
While Marlene went outside to her desk to place the call, Stuart looked out over Chicago thinking of his rapid rise in the Pussycat empire. Born in Chicago's South Side ghetto-his full name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt Stuart-he had originally followed the usual predatory life-script of impoverished alpha males. But his second prison term had thrown him into contact with a most peculiar cell mate-a self-proclaimed Sufi and master of all forms of Persian magick. "Rosey" Stuart came out of prison convinced he could do anything, acquired a degree in literature from Harvard in record time, and started the Great Novel about the Black Experience in America.