Whee-hah

John Rinkley won a small fortune in the state lottery, after following a whim that he should trust in luck for once in his life and not what he alone was able to produce, which after a few years of this philosophy was producing some ugly wood carvings and horribly skewed paintings.

And with this small bit of money, he did what he used to consider the flagstone of an evil morality: he invested the money, into an engineering company specializing in theoretical designs for electric car engines.  His reasoning for this choice was fairly straight-forward.  Petroleum is a limited resource, is due to run out eventually and much of it rests in the hands of peoples and nations not entirely well-disposed to his country of origin.

John wasn't alone in this thinking.  It was just dumb luck that the people that did have his viewpoints tended to be the type that wanted to regress away from petroleum-based fuels (which John supported whole-heartedly) but they also wanted to regress even further than that, back back back to an agrarian society, living from the land, riding about on horses and singing around campfires.  It all looked good on paper, and in acoustic guitar songs, and on giant placards seen around city-hall, presidental conventions and other potentially political outlets.  Too bad no one mentioned the downside to this way of life.  A city can hold more people than a tribe of nomads can, and to effect this plan meant killing off people, millions and millions.  That, or neuter a considerable portion of them, to bring reproduction to a screeching halt. (Who chooses the testicles in that scenario?)  Or, like some partically vile people suggest, spreading disease and denying vaccinations, letting nature take its ugly and bibical course.

And, when the oil did run out in one of the larger oil-producing countries sooner than expected, the company John chose to invest in already had two working prototypes for electric engines; one for economy cars and one for large trucking vehicles.  The company sold the patents and made a tidy fortune, a good portion going to investors like John.  The company executives, being the sleazy bastards they are bred to be, didn't sell the expertise along with the patent and made an even bigger fortune as a consulting firm.  They sold their knowledge at an excruciating price to the car manufacturer (you know the one, really massive, makes shitty cars, proud to originate from a certain country.)

John wasn't happy with this, though.  Every electric engine the company produced was either sub-par compared to the two originals, or showy and innovated nothing new.  So John sold his stock and headed off into a different direction.

By this time, electric cars made up 75% of all new car sales.  A few still sold gas-engines, being faster and louder, but the harsh prices of gasoline forced many people to switch.  Electric companies raked in the cash, hand over fist, and expanded with new plants and renovations for old plants.  But they still burned fossil fuels to produce this electricy.  Not much of a change, thought John.  The coal industry also experienced a renewal, with wild-catting all over West Virgina as the new phenomenon and cool thing to do.  But coal runs out eventually, thought John.

One day, while being painfully rich on a beach accumulating skin cancer, John read an article about nuclear power plants running at full capacity for the first time in 40 years.  Nuclear, eh?

There are some very large downsides to nuclear power plants.  One being the rare occurence of blowing up.  Two being the very radioactive nature of the fuel source.  Three being them being wholly unpopular with the same group that advocated a return to agrarian ways.  At this time in history, agrarians constituted an unseemly portion of said country.  Most of whom lived in cities for some reason.

Still, John rode his reason like a horse to a possible outcome to all of this.  The agrarians will collapse under their own philosophy eventually and people will have become dependant on their electric vehicles, cars truck and trains (plane engines still gas-fueled, despite the half-assed attempts at the once rebel upstart engineering company / consulting firm).  Gas is falling short, coal won't last forever and the asthetically pleasing windmills are pureeing too many birds.  Pressures will create a need for cheap power and nuclear power plants can fill that need.

In the course of two years, John both lost his tan and sparked a movement to build the first nuclear power plant in the country in over 60 years.  All thanks to a small, hungry advertising company and a host of clever spin doctors and TV friendly specialists.  (Incidentally, said small, hungry advertising company took the same route as the upstart engineering firm, straight into the den of stagnation and navel-gazing.  This troubled John for many years.)

And ten years after that, a nuclear power plant went up in a certain desert state, 10 miles from a certain power-hungry and obsenely wealthy state.  John was the primary investor.  The money John made embarassed him, despited being cynical to the marrow about wealth and opulence.

A sub-par photo-magazine named him Man of the Year for his efforts in keeping said country self-sustaining and the second nuclear power plant to be established in the country was named after him, much to his chagrin.  John never named anything after himself, in case the named object collected a tarnished reputation.  ("Potential headline," he mused, "'John Rinkley' Meltdown!")

By this time, John was nearly 60 years old and sick to death of the nuclear business.  The scientists in charge of the plants and one older scientists that sat on the board (at his insistence) were typical scientists.  They were great at what they did, but they all struck him as fusspots and detail-obsessed.

And one day, back on a beach trying to reclaim lost skin cancer cells, noticed space for the first time and wondered what it took to get a vehicle into orbit.