In the middle of the 21st century the world’s oil
reserves finally ran out. Although feeble attempts were made to use Solar
energy, Wind power and Hydroelectricity (though theoretically sound) due to the
half hearted efforts of politicians these proved too late and soon the world
turned dark. Many years ago (in 2008) when the price of oil went up by 10
percent there were riots in many countries as
prices of every item including food went soaring up. Now there was no
oil anywhere and there was utter chaos. Without oil there was no electricity
and all production stopped. When fertilizer and pesticide production was
hampered, food production fell, even the little that was produced could not be
transported or even preserved. Soon trawlers stopped going to the sea. The
production of medicines was drastically reduced and soon diseases which were
once under control or even rare became common. Any remedial action by
governments was hampered as roads became frightening places where hungry mobs
roamed looking for any remaining food. Incredibly poor agricultural economies
that depended on ancient methods of agriculture were the least affected.
In the year 2054 the United States split into eight, being a land
of machines there was utter chaos when the machines stopped moving. Due to the
unbearable winter most people in Canada moved south and the people already
there faced untold hardships. The Antarctic was abandoned and Alaska seemed
lost for ever. In the Arctic Eskimos who had forgotten their old ways of living
were trapped. Most people in northern latitudes faced unbearable winters and
many tried to move south. There was starvation everywhere. Oil had fueled the
population boom and now people had forgotten how to live without it.
My uncle who was once a world famous biologist was now almost
unknown in his own country of Sri-Lanka. Many people considered him a joke, but a joke worth
leaving alone. Being an agricultural economy situated near the equator we were
not as badly hit as Europe and America but things were getting steadily worse
due to malaria and other reemerging diseases. The big Pharmaceutical companies
of the west had stopped producing miracle drugs and vaccines for poor
countries. If only my uncle had been young, as it was he was just about
useless, he was now 92 years and his eccentric acts like the day he built a
tree house in a major highway so that he could go to the university quickly,
and the day he landed his small aircraft in town hall when the mayor was giving
a speech, because he had to use the washroom had made him the joke of the
Island.
My mother had given me the responsibility of looking after him so
that he didn’t do any more eccentric things and harm himself. I do not know
when I stopped calling him uncle and started calling him Collins (he was named
after Michael Collins of the Lunar expedition) but it is something I did on
purpose to get the upper hand. His earlier success as a scientist and the
patents he held had made him rich and he lived in a big house with an enormous
garden full of genetically modified fruit trees which seemed to have more
fruits than leaves. “How are you Collins” I asked trying to sound as firm as
possible, “Oh I am fine” answered my uncle in a cheerful way. “You see Alvin”
my uncle began “I was wondering what happened to the United States, it’s not
united anymore and it’s worse than the middle ages there, you know they have
all become savages, and things in Europe aren’t much better either, and
according to my calculations soon things are going to be much worse here, so I
have a plan to solve the energy problem of this world, and I have already
started it.
“Be sensible Collins” said I trying to control my anger, “ You are
a biologist, not a physicist, and anyway your days as a scientist are over,
many great minds have tried to solve this problem but the scale of it is such
that it has been a dismal failure, don’t break your head over things that are
beyond your capability to solve, in fact did you read in the news paper that
Professor Southerling has called you the biggest joke this side of the equator
for your theory of solving the energy problem by splitting water” .“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that” said my
uncle coolly “Southerling is a politician not a scientist, but enough of that
Alvin let’s go to the beach.”
We did not have to walk far for my uncle had always lived near the
sea. The waves were breaking in the shore and the noonday sun was as bright as
ever as we walked towards a boat. We got into the boat and I was shocked by
what I saw for the boat had a large fishlike tail extending from behind it, and
as this long black tail flapped the boat propelled at an incredible speed
through the water. “What the hell is that Collins” said I almost jumping
overboard. “That’s just the wave powered propulsion system” replied my uncle “I
transferred the vertical up and down motion of the waves to the horizontal
flapping motion of the tail, there are pods floating just below the surface all
around the boat, and every time a pod is moved up and down there is a clever
mechanism which transfers this to the flapping movement of the tail, even the
smallest ripple is transferred to the tail, that’s why it moves so fast.” “But Collins there is some law in science
like the perpetual machine, or the conservation of energy which prevents such a
machine from operating, are you sure that there isn’t a motor attached to the
tail?” to which my uncle replied “ The perpetual machine is where the machines movement itself provides energy
to move the machine further, so it creates energy from nothing and so cannot
exist, but here the waves provide energy for the boat to move. “That’s clever”
said I trying to behave like I understood what he meant” “But how can it solve
the energy problem”. There was no answer for he was sitting on the boat with
his hand touching the water and reciting an old poem that he himself wrote
As I walked along a lonely beach
heard the echo of a jungle tree
Or was it a parrot that tried to scream
Or the unknown shadows of a long dead beach
Was there a jungle left of me
Or just dead tree trunks that tried to flee
The sun was duller than it used to be
When I where can I now be
Suddenly I saw a large Ferris wheel in the beach, ten times larger
than the largest that had ever been built. Though we were far it cut a large
visual image over the horizon. “Good heavens, what in gods name is that” said
I. “That is the solution to the energy problem, you see Alvin there are large
hollow metal structures floating in different parts of the sea each weighing
hundreds of tons, but these are attached to the sea bed and every time they are
moved up and down by a wave, this generates an enormous amount of energy, which
is transferred by an hydraulic system to turn the Ferris wheel. Imagine the
amount of energy needed to lift a 150,000 Ton structure one feet, how many
1000Kg lifts can you operate by that single wave, and there are countless such
structures in different parts of the sea. Why a Ferris wheel you may ask, the
answer is it provides a central point where all this energy can be channeled,
and also the slow movement of a big wheel transfers into the fast movement of a
small wheel, and attached to this huge Ferris wheel are countless small
generators, each able to power a million homes and an enormous number of
electric powered motor vehicles. This wheel would be more than enough to power
all the energy needs of this country” replied my uncle.
“That’s stupendous” said I, “but if so why haven’t we still got
electricity?” To which he replied
“That’s because after years of non use most sub stations, transformers and
other equipment has been damaged, but within a month all this would be repaired
and the whole country will have electricity”.
Within fifteen years every country on earth had electricity, and
because wave power does not pollute the environment, the 21st
century saw the beginning of finding solutions to the great environmental
problems like global warming, water pollution, and the pollution of the
atmosphere and ozone layer depletion. I dare say that the 21st
century was better than the previous century due to a clever idea my uncle once
had.
Written by: RJX
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