SCARY THOUGHTS (C)1997 Alan M. Schwartz A recurrent theme in fantasy epics is the finite asset of magic. Wizards plied their trade by consuming an irreplaceable natural resource sometimes called "manna." When it became obvious that some severe spellbinding could blast the landscape forever manna- less, unplugging the wizard as surely as the Eveready bunny less its battery, that was also a weapon. The Old World was finally depleted of manna by selflessly feeding necessity and selfishly feeding desire. Mu and Atlantis sank beneath the waves carrying their fantastic realities with them. The loathsome unromantic scientist eventually came to the fore, complete with pocket protector, weaving spells of greater substance and obscurity. We hear New Age hind gut fermentation about unsuspected (except by fermenters and the occasional maroon cult thumbing a ride on a passing comet) powers of the Moon - untouched and therefore undrained of manna. Why the New World, South Seas islands, or the North and South Poles were not brimming with manna is left as an exercise for the alert reader. Wait, I know! Some of the last spells reached all around the planet like petroleum tankers, draining everything. The Moon and certainly Mars, however... Perhaps manna really exists but in a different, more subtle, more terrible guise. Perhaps Gaia holds a large but finite manna number of microprocessor cycles. Perhaps there is racial memory boomeranged back in time from the Great Loss, from the End of All, to the dawn of human sentience. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Arthur C. Clarke (or from a rigged demo, but I digress). What would happen to our DEC Alpha processors screaming along at 500 MHz, Intel Pentium IIs at 300 MHz, crap manufactured by IBM, etc., if slowly or suddenly we saw the bottom of the 0.18 micron architecture VLSI byte barrel? Physicists might delightedly find employment in the manner of venerable COBOL programmers looking for two digit dates in compiled legacy code at double and treble top hourly wage as the year 2000 and ultimate doom approach. "Ah, guys? We have a couple of airplane hangars in Bell, California stuffed to the rafters with Keuffel & Esser slide rules. Why don't you choose your weapons, run those differential equations by recursive numerical approximation, and figure out how to get us out of this mess?" The Manhattan Project had acres of housewives with Comptometers chugging through nuclear hydrodynamics calculations one horrible multiplication or division at a time in serial and in parallel. There may yet be Federal employment for 27 million hardcore Welfare cases in the National Manna Crisis! Lunar colonization gets quite the boost. Astronauts would finally grasp their wish: to pilot their rockets by the seats of their pants with no computer backup, finding out who really has the right stuff at 32,000 mph, hanging it over the edge and holding it suspended until the hardware sucks manna and boots. Commando botanists will have Federal approval and unlimited succor to do any naughty recombinant DNA diddle they desire toward creating a programmable computing plant. As Vatican Swiss bank accounts disappear down the digital memory manna hole all religious proscriptions against playing god with vegetable or meat will miraculously and inerrantly disappear. God has never displayed any enthusiasm for hungry priests. There will be backlash. Wearers of digital watches will be hunted for the manna fiends they are. A-to-D converters in Sony Walkmen will burn in pyres. Car tune-ups will revert to feeler gauges and dwellmeters as Environmentalist necks are stretched in celebration of a return to nature as Detroit envisioned it. Education will return to the schools as calculators and Sega Genesis become memories and then myths of the Golden Age. Bill Gates will be shining shoes under an assumed identity. Eden will have its worm. Robber barons at the turn of the 20th century - steel, oil, electricity, shipping, railroads, radio, cars, finance - will have their notoriety paled into petty triflings by interplanetary manna wars among corporations and governments, This will be diplomacy by other means: chemical, biological, and nuclear means; losers to be chained and whipped to work the fields. Off-planet manna depletion allowances will be added to IRS code, but only for the worthy. Multi-level marketing opportunities will appear for lunar ceramic manna disks. Buy two or three and your digital watch will again miraculously work. Limited time offer! Only eight disks allowed for each mailing address! Sales territories are closing! You must act now to lock in your profits! See what happens when you believe in magic?