The Age of Gaia

The stock market was crashing.  Bastante Solipsis Marquez was running out of time.

Linear time was an illusion, of course.  Bastante was actually quite relieved to be running out of it.  Better to dwell in the Clock of the Long Now, the astronomical calendar of Galactic evolution.

The Sat Yuga.  Bastante breathed deeply.  Almost home.

Modern Babylon was running out of time, and money.  Which meant we were about to enter an age which didn't require either.  But this transition would be awkward at best - the Lords of Materialism had everything to lose and were willing to destroy the entire solar system in order to escape the limits placed on them by Yama, lord of Death.  The Babylonian Serpent was wounded and dangerous, most dangerous.

Behind the protection of religion, Temple Banks had committed usury, and defied the laws of dharma through fractional reserve lending.  This amoral practice had allowed the servants of Mammon to acquire ownership of the world's physical assets, and in so doing enslave all species, including humanity.

All this, in a spiritual universe governed by an impersonal moral law.  Something had to give.

In the end, it was oil.  Ironically, the very physical asset that had allowed the Lords of Materialism to gain so much power was the same asset that led to their downfall.  The corrupt and decadent Kings of the Middle East had grown accustomed to ostentatious extravagance due to their unique positions as owners of the world's great oil reserves.  They knew no limits, desiring limitless-ness itself.  Yet they were dinosaurs in a mammalian age, intolerant monarchs in a republican era, and they saw the shadows of their demise in the too-soon future.  They attempted to solidify their Empire by audaciously lowering oil prices and overproducing in an attempt to corner the global market, eliminate competition, and make their Empire unassailable for another generation.

This strategy failed.

The competition tightened their belts, lowered their prices, devalued their currencies, cultivated partnerships, and kept producing.  It was a buyers market, and the vile snake the Kings of the Middle East had released upon the world bit them on their own ass.

Of course, it was oil, after all.  Plant matter and dinosaurs, cooked in the bowels of Mother Earth for millions of years, then pumped up to fuel Babylon.  Dinosaur energy.  Reptilian energy.  The whole world ran on the burning of decomposed reptiles.  Reptilian energy fueled the global economy, and influenced it in subtle ways.  The Age of Oil was the Reptilian Age.

Bastante's generation was leaving it behind.  His van was a diesel.  It ran on veggie oil and blue-green algae.  The Age of Gaia was being born...