Farmboy - The Novel is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

"Do you eat?" he asked Bozo.

"Not in the sense you usually use that term?" came the not unexpected answer.

"What do you run on? What powers you?" Michael continued, not satisfied with what he was beginning to think were put-offs.

"In here," said Bozo, pointing to his midsection, "is what you would call a nuclear reactor. Fusion, cold fusion, is the most recent term your race has used for how it works."

"You run on cold fusion?" asked Michael in astonishment. He wasn't a nuclear physicist, but knew that this was indeed one of the Holy Grail's sought by Earth's scientific community. "Now there is something that will truly help to save the planet."

"Precisely." said Bozo with precision.

In the discussion that followed, it became clear that passing on the secret of the cold fusion reactor to Michael was one of the ways the star-creature intended to help him save the world. Michael became more and more excited as he listened to the details which unfolded.

Bozo would give him a list of materials to obtain in the city. Then , together, they would fabricate a prototype reactor. Most of the items on the list were readily obtainable through scientific supply houses, although some were going to be expensive. When Michael mentioned this point, Bozo produced a small ingot of what appeared to be solid gold. Hefting it in his palm, Michael estimated its weight at about a kilogram. This told him that selling it would net enough funds to purchase the required supplies.

Michael also worried that buying all this equipment would leave a suspicious trail. Bozo assured him that the trail would merely establish the "proof" that he was the inventor of the device they were going to build. This fact was essential to the plan which was gradually being revealed to him. The sale of the rights to the reactor would assure that Michael became very, very wealthy. This wealth would, in turn, be used to generate still other wondrous "inventions".

"Before we are through," said Bozo, "you will undoubtedly be the most famous being in the history of your world. This will help us to succeed, as your fellow beings will come to expect you to give them more and more secrets of the universe. You will, I assure you, be able to comply."

The cold fusion reactor itself was quite simple. It would run on deuterium, also called "heavy water". This is water composed of oxygen, like normal water, and an isotope of hydrogen which contains a neutron as well as a proton. The machine also required two rare earth metals, molybdenum and thallium, in a very small measured quantities. The machine so based was actually quite primitive compared to the one which powered him, Bozo insinuated, but it would suffice for Earth's backward society.

The reaction produced only trace amounts of radioactivity and these could be trapped by ordinary stainless steel containers. The only waste product was a small amount of helium gas. The heat generated could be used to boil ordinary water like a steam engine, or in the case of flying vehicles, it could be used to heat water as a jet propellant. Of course, the heat itself was a waste product and would, in large enough quantities, cause its own kind of pollution. But, compared to the hydrocarbon fuels currently used to power the civilization of the Earth, its effect was minuscule.

Bozo would show Michael how to produce engines small enough to power individual vehicles, like cars. He also had plans for machines large enough to run electric power plants, airplanes and space vehicles. Once human technology turned itself to producing these, which wouldn't be long, given that Bozo was turning over proven technology to him, fossil fuel use would almost vanish. The small remaining oil supply could and would be used in fertilizers and plastics.

It seemed to Michael that this single creation would go a long way toward curing the ills of humanity, but there was more, much more. Bozo informed him that one of the principal problems facing any primitive society is the cheapness of life. Michael was not to discover until much later how the star-creature had come by this knowledge. For now, it was sufficient to grasp the simple meaning of what he was being told. Living, reproducing creatures can both create and destroy large numbers of themselves in a very short time. Especially if they possess the knowledge of building weapons of mass destruction.

To illustrate this, Bozo asked Michael to imagine an Earth where total warfare had wiped out all but a few thousand of the many billions of human animals. How long would it take, he asked, before the human race had repopulated to its current numbers? A thousand years? Ten thousand? Michael grasped immediately that this amount of time was a mere eye blink in geological time spans. And it was becoming clear that Bozo thought in just such terms.

The problem was in keeping the human species from wiping itself out in its entirety. This required a motive. The easiest way would be to raise the price of every single human life. If a way could be found to both lengthen the normal life span, while at the same time drastically lowering the normal birth rate, the required conditions would be provided. Fortunately, on Bozo's home planet, exactly the right stimulus was available.

It existed in the form of a virus-like substance that, when introduced into animal bodies, tricked their systems into behaving like perpetual juveniles. That is, some of the animal's systems, like the immune system, were drastically shored up and improved. Resistance to disease and tumor production, as in cancers, was enormously expanded. At the same time, some of the subsystems responsible for healing and growth which normally function only during the adolescence of the organism, were turned back on.

The substance had been engineered so as to not stimulate perpetual growth, or all creatures would become elephantine. Only aged or damaged tissue was replaced. This created a form of perpetual youth. But, it was not perfect. Nothing was, assured Bozo. But it would increase the life span of most animals on the planet by ten to twenty fold. It only worked on animals. Plants would be totally unaffected by it.

Michael was both astonished and appalled by this news. The Earth was already bursting with life, clearly overpopulated with people. How could increasing the life span of animals that much, especially of human beings, possibly help things?

The answer was simple. The micro-organism also virtually shut down the reproductive system of every being that it invaded. The probability of reproduction would be lowered by five or six orders of magnitude.

"Why that's on the order of a million to one!" exclaimed Michael.

"Precisely." said Bozo, once more with cold precision.

Now Michael began to worry about the other side of the coin. He saw immediately that reproductive rates this low were far too slow to maintain any species of animal for very long, measured in centuries, much less geological time spans.

As if anticipating this objection, Bozo interjected, "Don't worry that your species will die out. Reproducing will become much more difficult but not impossible. Earth scientists should be able to guarantee the survival of most animal species within a few hundred years. Many species will become extinct, but that would have happened in any event, given the rate at which you are destroying the environment of this planet."

"How is this organism or virus or whatever it is going to be introduced to the Earth?" asked Michael.

"It has already been accomplished." said Bozo simply. "As I made my way to your domicile from my spacecraft, I infected many of the creatures I came upon. Including you."

This last bit of information nearly floored Michael. If what this strange being said was true, he was going to live a thousand years. What if something happened? What if he, like Miranda, got hit by a car?

Once again, the robot seemed to be one step ahead of him. "You will, of course, not be protected from ordinary trauma. However, if you can be kept alive after serious damage, your body will heal. Your mate who is dead, for example, would most probably have survived had she been infected before her accident."

"How did you know about that?" asked Michael quickly, feeling more than a little spooked by this robot speaking to him of Miranda. Just as quickly he was hit by a jolt of regret that Bozo had not showed up a couple of years sooner.

Once again seeming to read his mind, Bozo said, "You would never have encountered me at all, were you not unencumbered by entangling alliances. It is important that I be your only companion during what is about to occur. All that I know about you was learned from the robot drones that were placed on and around your planet many centuries ago."

"How come none of these robots has ever been discovered?" wondered Michael.

"Most of them are in space, several hundred miles from the surface. Those which are required to collect detailed information are microscopic in size and are programmed to self destruct if examined by advanced instrumentation. In addition, since there is no way your species could have surmised their existence, you were certainly not looking for them."

"What do you mean, you must be my only companion." asked Michael. The thought of being married to this robot struck Michael as funny. Despite himself and his feelings about Miranda, a smile crossed his face.

"It is crucially important that the fact of my existence remain a secret. If your species discovered that they were being manipulated by an alien being, especially a being they regard as a machine, it is likely they would self destruct within a few years. It will be many millennia before your race will be able to absorb the facts about the universe."

Michael found this requirement extremely patronizing, but decided not to pursue the subject until he had thought about it more. The current situation of the world didn't give him much material with which to easily refute the argument. Still, the fact, if it was a fact, that human beings couldn't face the truth bothered him profoundly. Would he be able to face the truth? Would Bozo reveal it? What was missing?

It wasn't long after that this interchange that he was overcome with a deep drowsiness. It was late Sunday evening and he hadn't slept since Saturday morning. He informed Bozo that he, not being a robot, was required to sleep. He was so tired that he just lay down on the couch. Through the haze of impending sleep, he heard Bozo explaining, "I also need to sleep. Not as often nor as long as you, but it is necessary for all sentient beings to sleep and to dream."

As Michael passed into unconsciousness, the thought of robot's dreaming filled his mind. Once again he dreamt of alien forests. Only he was no longer seeking anyone or anything. He was home.

"The first day in the rest of my life, Bozo!" he corrected. Then added, "Damn, I feel terrible. It feels like I've been asleep for a week!"

"That is very nearly correct." said Bozo. "You have actually been unconscious for six days, nine hours, forty two min..."

"What! What are you talking about? Six days? Am I sick? What in hell is going on?" Suddenly, Michael was wide awake, but he was still terribly disoriented from the long fever he had just endured. "What just happened to me?" he asked when he regained some of his composure.

Bozo said, "I was not completely forthcoming with you when I described the virus with which you have been infected. The probability was only about point one that you would survive the first course of the infection. I did not wish to unduly upset you..."

"Unduly upset me! You put me through a rigmarole where I had a nine out of ten chance of dying and you didn't want to unduly upset me? Are you out of your fucking mind?!" exclaimed Michael, now yelling at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, he realized that he had just asked a machine if it was crazy or not. This struck him somehow as amusing, but the actual joke escaped him.

Bozo: "I apologize for whatever discomfort this knowledge causes you. I must inform you however, that there will be much more information which may cause you similar uneasiness."

"You said that I had a one in ten chance of surviving. Does that mean that I am different, or is that the probability for all humans?" asked Michael, beginning to understand what Bozo meant.

Bozo: "You would be correct in stating that the base survival rate for humans is approximately point one."

"You are telling me that ninety percent of the human race is going to die from this virus?" asked Michael quietly, terrified of the probable answer.

Bozo: "Yes, that is correct."

Michael's head fell back on his pillow. He was suddenly weak all over and possessed with the deepest melancholy he had ever felt. Even Miranda's death had not affected him this way. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what have I done..." was his last thought before he lapsed back into a coma.

Unknown to Michael, the virus was already spreading throughout the area. Many had already died from the high fever caused by the invading organism by the time he first awoke from his fever. By the time he woke for the second time, two days later, most of the people he had known in this small farm area were dead. Meanwhile, the first cases of infection were beginning to turn up in Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Des Moines in Iowa and all the countryside in between. Within a month, the living were barely able to bury the dead. Food riots, war, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves. All paled beside this new plague. Never in history had such a large proportion of living people been so swiftly destroyed. Nor did anyone escape. Since the virus was infecting and being transmitted by all animal life, birds, fish, even insects were carrying it to ever corner of the globe, however remote or isolated.

Michael's last thought had been wrong in one respect. No one was then or ever directly infected from him. Since Bozo was caring for him, he didn't come into contact with any other people until long after his infectious stage had passed. Furthermore, since he had not volunteered for the job, he could hardly have been held responsible for the epidemic in any case. But, just as everyone feels guilty at the death by accident or suicide of a friend or acquaintance, it was very, very hard for Michael not to feel guilty about the what had happened.

The second and last stage of the infection was a rebuilding phase, where the body not only repaired any damage done by the long fever, but also began to replace any tissue damaged caused by age or any other reason. Michael would emerge from this phase hungry and weak, but healthier than he had ever been in his entire life.

His dreams during his recovery, however, were inhabited by the ghosts of millions of human beings. Nor did these dreams vanish quickly afterward...

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