When Iggy drops into Dirty Nellie’s I am very happy to see him. That’s the way it is with old friends. And Iggy is one of my oldest and best friends here in VL. We have known one another since the beginning—at least since shortly after I arrived in VL—and we have always felt a unique connection. Not because we are alike (after all, he lives in Greenland on a melting glacier, and I live in Seattle and work at a stinking fish market) but because we see the world in a similar way. And that’s what’s really important, isn’t it?
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I tell him as he maneuvers his giant body into a seat at the table.
“You don’t say?” he smiles.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through during the past forty years…” Of course I’m referring not only to the time I spent in Pakistan but also the time I spent in the Sinai with the Jews, and in the Holy Land with Jesus, not to mention the time I spent in India with Gandhi, and with the Dalai Llama, and in Turkey with the Dervishes; then, of course, there was Gettysburg!
“In VL, time goes by in the wink of an eye,” Iggy concedes.
“Or maybe there is no such thing as time,” I offer.
“I see you’ve ordered the Guinness,” he says.
“It’s on me,” I tell him.
“Thanks.” He takes a long pull of the black beer then wipes froth from his mouth.
“How’s the Ark coming along?” I ask.
“Almost ready,” he says.
“So you’re really going to do it. You’re going to leave Greenland and sail that thing into forever…”
“Sail it right off a cliff, so to speak,” he confirms.
“Why not?” I say. “The world is going to hell anyway.”
“Or melting away, in my case.”
“Right.”
As we talk I’m looking at Iggy’s hands. They appear rough and calloused. No doubt the result of his carpentry. Similarly, all the muscles of his upper body seem even more developed than when I last saw him. In his eyes I see a far-away look, but of course Greenland is a far-away place, and Iggy has always been a dreamer.
“I got the IMs you sent from the Middle East,” he says.
“I had to share what I was going through with someone,” I tell him.
“What about Crystal and Kiz? Are they aware of your ‘travels’?”
“Yeah, they know all about it.”
“Most people I know in VL see it as a ‘future’ experience,” he relates, “but you have taken a step back in time, Fizzy. Don’t you think it’s a little risky to be walking through history?”
“Mostly, I’ve just been an observer,” I explain. “Just along for the ride, if you know what I mean.”
Iggy shrugs as he drains half a glassful of beer. “I can’t say that I—or any of us here in VL—actually have a grasp of time anymore. Who’s to say what’s past, present or future? Not me, that’s for sure.”
“There are just too many questions in my mind,” I try to explain. “Things I just have to find out. Things I feel I have to
know
…”
“Right now, my gig is the
un
known,” he admits.
“But here in VL, even the unknown can be experienced.”
“If you have the courage…”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of that. Too much, probably.”
“I know,” he says. “I was thinking about inviting you to be First Mate on the Ark.”
I smile at the suggestion. “I’m no sailor,” I beg off. “I get sea sick in my own bathtub.”
“Just a suggestion,” he says. “No worries, I have somebody else in mind for the job.”
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Are you kidding me, Fiz? You know everybody in VL.”
“Hardly,” I dismiss. “VL is a big place. And getting bigger every day.”
“No doubt thanks to enthusiasts like you. And like Crystal…” Iggy finishes off his beer and settles back in his chair. “So, what’s next for you?”
“I’ve got a few more adventures of my own planned before I settle down,” I tell him.
“You don’t say?”
“I’m just taking a little break to rest up. Then I’m back on the road,” I confirm. “I know I still have so much to see, so much to learn…”
“Where to next?” Iggy asks.
“North Africa, I think. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Please do,” he says.
“Then I think I’m off to Iowa,” I add.
“Iowa?”
“To research soil contamination,” I tell him.
Iggy smiles and shakes his head in wonderment. “You’re one of a kind, Fizzy Oceans,” he says. “Nothing will stop you here in VL.”
I know that Iggy is right; I have a grander purpose to fulfill here in virtual reality. And time grows short…
Note:
It’s 4:00 a.m. in Seattle and I (Amy Birkenstock) have just finished listening to a radio interview with a guy named Texe Marrs, and he says that the BP oilrig explosion in the Gulf was no accident. (Here we go again; the Mother of all conspiracy theories.) But wait! Maybe this guy, Texe, has a point. He says that the derrick was purposely blown up to keep world oil prices artificially high. Can it be? He says that a month after President Obama took office he ordered laws to be changed to exempt BP from certain environmental regulations. Can it be? He says that in the late thirties oilrigs were purposely blown up and destroyed for all time in Azerbaijan by the then new (Communist) Russian government for the same reason. He also says that the three main entities involved in that drilling venture were the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds and the Nobel family, and that because they knew that development of what was then the world’s largest untapped oil reserve would plummet oil prices, they blew the thing to Kingdom Come. And that is what he says happened in the Gulf, too. He says that the oil field underneath the Gulf is the largest known reserve in the world. And that there’s plenty more underground beneath the Dakotas and Wyoming and Montana. And if those reserves were developed, the world would be awash in cheap oil. So why would the American government not want to exploit its own reserves? Simple, says Texe Marrs. It’s because now that the US has gained control of the Iraqi oil fields (the world’s second largest reserve already under development), they want to ensure the price set by the oil cartel because they are shipping the oil (through northern Israeli ports and southern Lebanese ports) to China, a country without any significant oil reserves. So of course they want the price of oil to remain high. And this guy, Texe Marrs, also says that an underwater explosive device—not one like was used in WWII—washed up on the beach in Alabama. Some of the BP clean-up crew found it there, and the area was immediately sealed off by security personnel. Even the TV stations could not gain access to the area to report the incident. But Texe Marrs says he has film of the thing. Imagine that! And now that the rupture has been capped, and the clean-up is nearly done, he says that the chemical used to disperse the sludgy mess, COREXIT, is so toxic that people in the Gulf States are throwing up blood, and all sorts of other unspeakable things… Can it be? He says that in New Orleans it is literally raining oil. Can it be? He has documentation that the levels of toxicity caused by COREXIT are some three thousand to five thousand times the acceptable limit established by the EPA. Can it be? And that the sludge is just sitting at the bottom of the Gulf (along with dead dolphins and whales and fish), and that it is only a matter of time before the current carries it around the tip of Florida and across the northern Atlantic all the way to the fjords of Norway. And God knows, those folks up there like their Halibut!
Whoosh???
My arrival in VL Darfur, Sudan is like touching down on another planet. Or maybe it is similar to landing on the moon, except that there are homeless, starving people everywhere, bombs are going off (or just lying around unexploded), villages have been pillaged and then burned to the ground, most of the men have gone to war, many of the women have been raped, and virtually all the children are sick—especially the babies. The first woman I encounter lives on a bundle of straw—no roof over her head, but she is alive. Her family has perished, she tells me.
By prior arrangement, I am supposed to meet a man called Dr. Deng. But how will I ever locate him? I type his name into my VL search bar, but for some reason the system cannot locate him. But I’m sure he is here somewhere. I ask several people if they know where I might find him, but I am met only with blank stares. Such expressions disarm me, because I know that they are the expression of hope’s retreat. I make my way through this camp of refugees living in huts constructed of twigs and mud. Women cook what they have (mostly bulk grains and dried beans—maybe a few onions or other roots) over pitiful open fires. Water is scarce. It never rains in this desert. The current drought has lasted forty years or so, and many believe it will be permanent. The few animals that survive—goats, sheep, chickens and dogs—are little more than skeletons. They are not worth killing for their meat. There aren’t even any birds flying overhead.
As for Dr. Deng, perhaps he is nothing more than a figment of my imagination, another merciful archetype in a world totally without mercy. Mother Theresa worked her entire life in such degraded circumstances, and she became a saint. The good doctor, if he even exists, will in all probability have a very different legacy; he will probably be executed by Janjaweed, or by Khartoum backed militias, or by the police, or by some government-sanctioned group of mercenaries. It looks as if I might be on my own here, which is not an encouraging prospect.
Wandering amongst the displaced multitudes, I become lost. Which, in effect, renders me right at home, because here everyone is lost. And here—which indeed is nowhere—they make a home, because their homes have been lost. I am the only white-skinned person in this sea of Black humanity.
As I reach the center of the camp—at least I think it’s the center—I suddenly see my contact, Dr. Deng. He is a bald, diminutive man dressed in African clothing. He looks as if he could use a good meal, or even a cool drink of water. He is bent over an ailing child, whose bed is his mother’s lap, as he tries to treat some untreatable illness, except he has no equipment other than a stethoscope, nor medicines other than herbal concoctions.
Dr. Deng’s effort is noble, no doubt, but probably hopeless. I approach the treatment area and stand outside the circle of friends and family. I wait until he is finished with the child before approaching.
“Dr. Deng?” I inquire.
The doctor turns to me. The appearance of my white skin is apparently startling to him. “You are Miss Fizzy?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“I have been expecting you,” he says calmly.
“I didn’t know how to find you,” I tell him.
“Everyone here knows how to find me,” he says. “I am the only doctor for nearly seven thousand people.”
“I can barely believe what I’m seeing,” I say breathlessly. “I spent time in Pakistan, after the flood. I was there with a group from Doctors Without Borders. We worked round the clock. That was very bad. But this! This is something else altogether.”
“Please,” implores Dr. Deng, “don’t hyperventilate. I don’t even have a paper bag to give you.”
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “Really…”
“You’ll get used to it,” he says. “Or you won’t…”
“How can such suffering be possible?” I ask Dr. Deng.
The doctor sighs deeply. I can see frustration written all over his face. “Politics,” he says. “Stupid, racist politics!”
“I’ve read up on the political situation,” I tell him.
“So you know the western version,” he says with a bit of sarcasm in his tone.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“The story of Darfur is not as simple as they write it in the
New York Times
or the
Guardian
in London. The West has its own interests in Somalia.”
“Oil?” I ask.
Folding his arms across his chest, Dr. Deng says, “So you know about that…”
“I’ve read a little,” I tell him.
“But it’s not that simple—not like it is in Iraq. This conflict goes back hundreds of years. It is basically racial in nature. In the north you have an Arab-Muslim culture, always superior in its views of the southern African Christians. The most recent version of the Pan-Arabic philosophy came directly from Libya. The irony here, though, is that virtually the entire population is a bastard race. That’s what happens over centuries. Now, the Arabic nomads want to make slaves of the southern African farmers. The southerners, in the name of the Darfur Liberation Front and the Justice and Equality Movement, have risen in defense of themselves against the Arab-leaning government. The president, Omar el Bashir, countered with a force composed mainly of the official Sudanese military and police, as well as the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan; these tribes are mainly camel-herding nomads. The other combatants are made up of rebel groups, notably the SLM/A and the JEM, recruited primarily from the non-Arab Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups.”
“So where does the oil come in?”
“Yes, that is interesting. You see, in the western press the Americans in particular, and the Europeans to a lesser extent, are always characterized as the peacemakers, but from the point of view of the Middle Eastern world, they are in fact quite the opposite; they are perceived as conquerors, intervening in Middle Eastern countries with significant oil reserves, and which already have some degree of discord within their cultures. The greater aim of such western powers like America and Britain is seen by Arabs to be a systematic destabilization of governments and cultures, their final aim being to fracture those countries and render them more or less powerless, thereby making it impossible for the people to defend their interests in their own natural resources. When the plan works, the western governments and big multi-national businesses profit handsomely, and to make the booty all the sweeter, they have a native slave class to do much of the so-called heavy lifting. At any rate, countries such as Iraq and Sudan are more or less helpless to this kind of hegemony. These are simple people: nomads and shepherds and farmers. Ignorance and prejudice rules the situation, and the Sudanese people end up fighting one another, while the real culprit, the invisible one, waits to claim the spoils.”