There once was a man from Kalamazoo, Michigan, a Mr. Bernard T. Whippinpool. He was by all accounts a decent man, the one blot on his record notwithstanding. Okay, to be totally truthful, he had at one time been given a ticket for "failure to yield," a charge he should have vociferously rebutted, but being a "decent man," he simply paid the fine and checked to see if his insurance premium increased. It didn't.

Bernard was in a different world. He was a native Kalamazooer, Kalamoozen, uh native of Kalamazoo, having been born in the pediatric ward of Bronson Methodist. His growing years were spent in nameless schools, generally in the same part of town, generally alongside many of the same people in his age group. All was mundane and somewhat normal until college.

Bernard always liked math. Michigan State looked good, but he really had his sights a bit higher. His dad Vernon loved business and consistently suggested that Bernard check out the Eli Broad School of Business at State. Which Bernard obediently did, even though it seemed an odd fascination in that his father never owned a business, working most of his life as just one of the plumbers in plumbing companies.

But you see, Bernard loved science. He kept taking math and chemistry and physics and then advanced courses after passing the basics. He bored everyone he knew with his constant relating what he loved about science.

Mostly he was caught by the symmetry. The foundational elements of digits, data, theorems and the unknown. There was a balance to it all, an equilibrium, and it was memory dependent because essentially one layered on the other and memory seemed to be a critical pivot point that unified it all.

Business, eh, Bernard didn't mind it, in fact he could see a clean intersection between science and business. It just wasn't his first love. It was simply one application of it.

So instead of going to MSU he went to Rensselaer, in Troy, NY. The drive from Kalamazoo to Troy is about 700 miles. Vernon, his dad whom, dear reader, Bernard never called Vernon, was okay with driving his son to Troy, but he was quietly disappointed in several dimensions, one of which was that the drive to Michigan State is a much shorter drive, under 80 miles and a little over 1 hour drive from Kalamazoo to Lansing, plus it was the home of Vernon's beloved Spartans football team and the even more revered and storied Spartans basketball team.

Vernon was often and easily disappointed. Fortunately, he never passed that bent or history on to his son, his only progeny.

After making the transition from Kalamazoo to life in Troy, Bernard breezed through Rensselaer with reasonable but not exceptional grades. After getting his degree, he applied for graduate school pursuing a major in data capture and capitalization, a new MS post-graduate degree program that seemed a bit fascinating. The major promised him that we would "master" how to get data for any effort or endeavor and then how to exploit it for gain - financial, emotional, intellectual or other tangible metric.

His application was accepted, he was in.

In what seemed like an almost divinely directed way, during his undergrad and grad school years he worked on a farm outside of Kalamazoo, part of a small crew of college students that signed on every summer to help with a large-scale agricultural enterprise. Bernard's job was to look at all the data sources that were critical to success, determine which aspects of their data to capture, and then determine how to best apply that data for evolutionary improvement of the farm. It was a big enterprise and this was an interesting and important summer job.

Three freshmen college students worked together at the farm each summer for three years, joined by another group of freshmen in the fourth year. That was the year that one of their group dropped out and joined a ska band. "A bit of a silly distraction," thought Bernard, but he was too busy with farm data and utilization to give it much more than that passing assessment.

And so it continued. In his fifth year as a grad student Bernard was given greater responsibilities at the farm. He was no longer just providing counsel and input to the process, he was now the team leader, his freshman data employees now feeding him ideas and strategies for improving the process. Coupled with his own intellect and training, he had learned that multiple sources of data are quite important in forming the best plans, but what was hard to grasp is that not science, but the study of science, has deviations. Science is the accumulation and interpretation of data, facts, but there are divergent schools of thought in many areas of the field of study, particularly in the research, which is what students feed on.

His sixth and last year was the most fun he had at the farm, and also at Rensselaer. His research and doctoral thesis was on the application of science coupled with the variations in opinion and their relative likelihood of being accurate.

The results of hard-won wisdom were dramatic. His study and conclusions gave him the ability to play a winning hand at almost every venture. This was the beginning of what would become a lifetime of learning, application, measurement and new and better learning.

So, remember when we said that Bernard was in a different world? Let's face it, the merger of science, business and agriculture may turn out to be a match made in heaven, but it was still dependent on three somewhat different disciplines. Bernard, I must say, was at the crux of the three - the pivot point, the lens that focused the trio into one searing, piercing slice of coherent light. A generational pinnacle.

That changed everything.

His last year at Zendyr Agricultural was the year that he realized what he now could command. The moment he heard the bell going off in his head accompanied by a blinking light that said, "Holy crap," he stopped doing anything more than the cursory work of pointing things at problems. And he continued to practice, learn, try, adapt, modify, test, measure. Learn.

During that final year he also was asked by the chairman of his degree committee to meet with another young grad student who also seemed to be on a higher level than other students.

The result of that fortuitous meeting ultimately forged Whippinpool-Ostrom Labs, a for-hire consulting firm that promised to deliver incredible crop yield for a percentage. That potential seemed like a very bold promise.

Bernard and his grad student protege, Steve Ostrom, made a list of the top prospect agricultural clients and then proceeded to meet with those 16 different corporations before two almost simultaneously agreed to their terms. The reality was, both operations that signed on with WOL were struggling and had barely been hanging on by their fingernails for a few years. For them, this concept was certainly a "Hail Mary." A last, hard, but desperately needed experiment.

The two ambitious young partners went to work, and while that isn't really the thrust of this story, they succeeded in helping both clients and ended up with a tidy sum, their percentage by contract.

Having established this later point in the trajectory, let's go back to just after their first clients. Within a few years the WOL firm in Kalamazoo grew and even opened a branch office in Albany, NY, practically next door to Rensselaer. Now with offices in two states, and two partners, the logical thing to do was to have a partner in each office. This is often a risky proposition because generally one office will do better than another, and jealousy and ambition will collide. The result is, more often than not, a not-so-friendly competition and an eventual split into two separate companies, again not the thrust of this story.

For Whippinpool's intro we go to Lindsey McCarthy of Albany. Lindsey?

"Bernard Whippinpool arrived at his new office in Albany to supervise its structure and growth, leaving the identical task to Steve Ostrom in the company's Kalamazoo office. One of Whippinpool's first tasks was to hire an assistant, a person who could tackle the less technical aspects of his responsibility, broadening his reach and impact. That assistant, after 12 interviews, was Koala Tare, a 24-year-old, fresh faced, eager person just two years out of her BS degree. What happened is the real story today."

Koala was looking forward to the interview. She had today off, calling in sick this morning when what she really wanted to do was call in sick permanently. She got the news about this WOL company from a friend of hers in the state employment security office. Yes, it was the same friend that she had a fling with just after graduating. They were still friends, although just that.

Jinx said that one of the company founders is coming to open this new office, and the company is an up-and-coming firm in the field of corporate agriculture. Koala was intrigued. She had grown up on a small farm that her parents, lifelong hippies, owned outside of Albany. She didn't much like agriculture, but her toes were used to dirt and there was something about it that she found calming.

The interview was with an employment agent who asked pretty silly questions and didn't seem to know what to do. She aced the interview and was one of two candidates to be moved forward to a meeting with the co-owner, a Mr. Bernard Whippinpool.

Long story short, she aced that, handily crushing her opposition, a person named Lengthy Domin. "No accounting for some people's taste in names," she thought before remembering that her own parents called themselves Lantern and Light Flambeau. Side note: their real legal names were Darren and Sharie Conklin (nee Fargel).

Second side note: After college Koala had scraped together enough money to file a petition to legally change her last name from Conklin to Tare. Koala Conklin wasn't bad, but wasn't rad, either. Koala Tare, now there's a name. And it did seem to fit.

She started work at the new WOL office on the Monday after telling her current employer that she had to move to Nebraska to take care of her ailing mother and she was so sorry but this was all the notice she could give because, "well as I told you, my mother needs me to take care of her."

Her first morning at WOL was uneventful, mainly consisting of finding her way around the small office, familiarizing herself with the technology and finding out about nearby places to eat lunch.

Actually, the first whole week was uneventful. You know, it takes at least a week or two to figure out some of this stuff so you can finally be reasonably productive.

The second week started with Mr.Whippinpool coming into the office promptly at 7:57 am. Koala was already there, as were the other two staff members. He hurriedly called a meeting with Koala in his office and when asked later about the rest of what happened, she was not quite sure of the answer. All she could remember is the beginning of the conversation about the log function and its application to the predictability of specific crop matrices growing exponentially.

Many years later when pressed gently, Koala conjured that the room seemed to start spinning and accelerating and it felt like she was watching a whirlwind swirl around her.

Apparently, she wasn't seen for six days. No one saw her leave and no one saw her come back. She was just gone. And then six days later she was back.

Whippinpool ignored any questions during Koala's absence, deflecting inquiries with a shrug and a throw-away-statement, "maybe she had some personal business to attend to." No one questioned either his responses or possible motives. Koala had disappeared and now she was back, and the boss wasn't concerned so any conjecture just naturally dropped.

What had actually happened was that Bernard Whippinpool had discovered a fascinating new adjunct to the theorems that had sparked the company's existence and propelled its growth. It was the simple fact that through certain mathematics you could actually manipulate natural science, not the study but the actual physics, into quantum mechanics and then into metaphysics, thus allowing a human to actually become a part of the actual science matrix and then work from within that matrix to produce a desired outcome.

It was a powerful discovery and a leap beyond what anyone imagined. Of more concern was there seemed to be little practical application to the work of WOL, which meant that Whippinpool could not yet share this amazing discovery with his partner.

Koala Tare had been a quick study and within a week she had traveled into the metaverse and returned. Her physical clock said that she was only gone for seconds. The atomic clock said she was gone for six days. She was both exhilarated and terrified because her experience during those seconds when she had ventured into the metaverse expanded her mind in directions she had never dreamed of.

The day she reappeared in the office she was first seen simply walking into the main office area as nonchalantly as though she had just gone for a cup of coffee. The two other employees were curious and politely asked her where she had gone, but all she would say was she had to run an errand for Mr. Whippinpool.

Things trended really strange in the fourth week of Koala's employ when she and Bernard went into his office for a meeting and neither of them came back out. For one whole month. When the two employees opened the office door out of curiosity, there was no one in Bernard's office and nothing had been disturbed. The two went about their business and their wages appeared in their accounts so they were interested but not alarmed by the lengthy disappearance.

When Bernard and Koala emerged from the office exactly one month after their apparent disappearance the two employees were not just curious, but suspicious. What was going on here and why did they disappear again for such a long time?

The truth was never found out, dear reader, but that truth is that both Whippinpool and Tare were actually messing with science from the inside. They became owners and captains of the nature of things, manipulating the building blocks of the universe in responsible but specifically beneficial ways for their clients. The results were astonishingly powerful.

The main client of the Albany office was a medium-sized, but somewhat wobbly agricultural enterprise just outside of town, named Agrilux. They had retained WOL as a last gasp desperation move to save their company from eminent demise and as luck had it, they employed WOL as Bernard was just putting the final pieces of his theorem into place.

Max Totor was the controlling partner in Agrilux after making a small fortune at electronic gaming. Agrilux was his next venture, Max figuring that he had the Midas touch and so could be successful at whatever he put his attention toward.

Sadly, Totor had simply been lucky in his gaming enterprise and he was particularly inept at coming up with new business ideas. His small fortune grew progressively smaller as he employed one consultant after another, bought geo-computerized machines to do the work and engaged a large agricultural chemical company for nutrients and planning. What he failed to recognize was that he was doing exactly what all of his competitors were doing, but they were far more skilled at the business end of agriculture than he was.

When Agrilux was showing the signs of pending demise, Totor made one fateful move. He heard of WOL, contacted Bernard and signed the company on before the WOL office in Albany was even open.

Weeks went by and the reports from WOL were promising, meaning they were promising success that wasn't yet seen or measurable.

In desperation he sent a text to Bernard Whippinpool with the terse note that if nothing positive was seen in the next two weeks he would be forced to execute the termination clause in the contract with WOL. His text brought an immediate and correspondingly terse reply, "Breakthrough is here, results next week."

Science is a strange creature. It has vast, limitless layers to discover. What lies beneath the discovered science is a number of other layers stretching to infinity. Expanding the ability to understand and thus manipulate the physical world was where Whippinpool's mind and amazing combination of knowledge and experiments had made a breakthrough.

For most of the age of the world, the harnessing of the physical world had been the result of mankind's incessant and consistent leverage of the known into the unknown. Change was incremental and almost never exponential. Making improvements on what was known was the name of the game.

Whippinpool had stepped across the threshold into exponential, a whole new way of looking at science from an applied theoretical slant. And the first application was at Agrilux.

The first foray into the exponential was when Bernard tested the theory by himself. He returned to the physical world astonished, having witnessed something no other human had ever seen. After a few more tries he was ready to see if this was a transferrable principle, and that was where Koala Tare entered the picture. When he brought her into his confidence and demonstrated to her what could be done, she immediately volunteered to try it as the next participant. That was her first disappearance. The second time, the month she and Whippinpool were gone, they spent their time in the metaphysical world working to modify the science of plant growth, specifically corn, by modifying the soil. It was quite simple in this new world because the building blocks were easily manipulated, and the results immediately seen. Experimentation revealed instant results, proving or disproving each theory. Returning from their experiments they then went to the Agrilux fields to see the effect on the very small section of land in which they had experimented. Corn that had been just planted was now five feet tall, practically overnight. Buoyed by this success, they made another transit into the exponential and modified a large section of the Agrilux property.

Returning and visiting the field they saw corn plants that were tall with large ears of almost ready to pick corn on each stalk. Whippinpool called Max Totor and asked him to meet the WOL team at the field.

Totor was aghast. All he could say was, "Oh my. Oh my goodness. Holy crap. What did you do? Did you genetically modify this crop?"

To which Bernard Whippinpool assured him that no modification was made to the plants. It was the medium that had been modified scientifically with no chemicals or other alien introductions that would make the crop unsalable. In fact, Totor was encouraged to harvest this section in the next week when it would be ready.

The harvest was quick, as the Agrilux computerized machinery made quick work of it. When the corn was taken to the buyers, deals were quickly consummated as the corn was top quality. What was even more delightful to Totor, but unknown to the buyers, was that the yield was 2½ times the typical harvest for this size section of land.

Whippinpool kept secret the discoveries that he had made, and that Tare had helped him implement. Agrilux became the top yield producer of corn in the entire state, and most likely in the world.

Contracts with WOL increased as Agrilux expanded operations and bought more land. All was good until one day when Bernard got a call from Max Totor with the news that the Agrilux board of directors had decided to go in a different direction and regrettably the services of WOL were no longer needed.

It was not a shock to Bernard. In fact, he had expected that this might happen. So the news from Max was not concerning to him. His data indicated that the Agrilux crops would diminish in about two weeks once he or Koala were not tending to the fields with new data and adjustments. The decline mathematically would start small but gain strength and momentum until crops would be under-performing in both quality and yield.

Which is exactly how it played out.

Not only did crops eventually under-perform, but they also dropped below what could be expected with conventional agricultural methods. It took Max Totor six months to suck in his pride and go hat-in-hand to visit Bernard in his Albany office.

Except Bernard wasn't there. He was in Dubai at the request of a senior official in the UAE government. After which he returned with an exceptionally lucrative contract, exceptional in that it had more zeroes before the non-zeros than Bernard had ever seen.

Once back in his office in Albany, Bernard started setting up the support structure and methodical plan to take Agri Dubai to a world-class level producer of produce. They were throwing a lot of money at this effort and Bernard was confident that every technique and plan they would launch would yield the contractual requirements and more, perhaps a lot more.

Bernard now managed offices in Dubai and Albany, while his partner was also doing well in Kalamazoo, even opening a branch office outside of Dallas-Fort Worth. Needless to say, Bernard's offices were doing much better than the more conventional offices of his partner.

Agrilux was finally welcomed back as a contractee in the WOL stable, which by that time now included governments in various other countries in addition to UAE. At the return to the WOL client base, Max Totor was noticeably contrite.

WOL offices soon opened in several European countries, South Africa and Uganda, Japan and South Korea, Philippines. Within 10 years the WOL team practically dominated the ranks of the most productive and profitable agricultural corporate ventures. Whippinpool was rubbing elbows with truly the most powerful people on the planet as governments sought WOL's expertise.

Bernard became immensely wealthy, as senior partner of the WOL enterprise, there being still only two partners. Steve Ostrom also became wealthy. Both of them tended toward the same kinds of battles. Where Bernard was intelligent but not glib, Steve was intelligent enough but his main talent was presentation, presence. Between the two of them they were an absolutely brilliant combo.

As the wealth of both increased, so did Koala's. Maybe not on the scale of Bernard and Steve, but certainly trending in the same direction. She mastered the expertise and the abilities to manage large projects and clients.

Ostrom handled most of the major clients with annual meetings and discussions of contracts. Whippinpool managed the science and implementation and data and training. Koala led the client teams, while also managing several clients.

What none of them realized in the zenith of their careers is that China was working feverishly to duplicate their results, as was India. Both were racing to compete on the global market and also satisfy the increasing demand on food in their own countries, built-in markets to support trials and experimentation.

Koala was very involved in her craft and discovered both programs while searching scientific papers for any new breaking learnings, methods or technologies. She told the partners and they devised a plan. The plan was to brand their process, introduce it to their markets, to build a strong and defensible bond between their markets and their brand.

In the midst of this, an old friend of Bernard's from grad school found out that he had an office in Albany, and stopped by to say hello. Hello turned into a relationship that lasted six months, when the old friend decided that she really wasn't interested in an absentee relationship and said goodbye.

Bernard was a bit hurt by this. He had some girlfriends in school, but this one was at a more mature age and the romance part was very much to his liking. He couldn't imagine why he wasn't more interested in females when he was younger, except he was pretty driven by science and so his girlfriends were rather platonic relationships with an occasional passionate opportunity just because everyone was young and wanted to experiment a bit to see what it was like.

Koala had a string of boyfriends, but never took any of them seriously. Her relationships growing up hadn't been that good and she didn't really like the idea of a close relationship. Her belief was that friends are good, but beyond that it just gets messy. She did have a brief romantic encounter with a client, something she instantly regretted but which seemed so honest and natural at the time. She had no motive other than physical companionship, and he was such a nice and attractive person. It just happened.

Bernard was a different sort. In physical form he was a rather average specimen, about average height, average looks, average weight. Somewhat nondescript but engaging. He was quiet, confident, and almost, but not quite, self-effacing. He was neither a philosopher or a dreamer, his language held no flourishes of style. In conversations he could be entertaining, but always with the sharp, factual manner of a person embracing science. When he was into a topic of his interest his visage took on an energetic appearance with eyes wide open, a smile on his face, and the occasional brush of his chin with the back of one hand. He was engaging.

Growing up he was an average kid. He held some athletic abilities but sports were not his interest. What he really liked was debate. He was a meticulous researcher, dredging up details that escaped the average view, correlating them to the topic, and then expertly using them to build a strong, systematic case for his argument. Teachers would often smile broadly when witnessing his didactic abilities at work.

Bernard excelled at anything technical - math, science, physics were all favorites and his grades showed it. He was what his friends called a dweeb. But, he wasn't all bookworm-ish. He had a few girlfriends in middle school and high school, mainly girls that shared his interest in the sciences. In college and grad school he was intently focused on study, but still found time to develop relationships with a few coeds with whom he shared classes. Since his contemporaries were all young and in the experimental and discovery phase of their development, there were of course some physical relationships. One of the more interesting ones was a cheerleader that was in his advanced trig class, a brilliant girl that was also gifted with an athletic temperament and body. Their conversations in class led to one long weekend that the two spent either in bed or just laying around naked in his room. Bernard wasn't much for experimenting with drugs but when Lena brought out a joint he discovered that the sexual experience quickly became way more exciting and fun. Lena left his room on Sunday night after they had shared a pizza and a few beers, and never came back. He saw her occasionally in class and they exchanged smiles and hugs but his efforts to attract her to an Act II were for naught. She was seen in the presence of one boy after another for the rest of that year and then she transferred to a different university. They didn't keep in touch, but Bernard never forgot their time together.

Bernard dated one of the freshmen that reported to him at Zendyr Agricultural for a few months. They shared a love of late nights, pizza and beer, as well as conversations that lasted long into the night. After a few nights of this the relationship evolved into kisses and petting that naturally migrated into more energetic, mutually satisfying activities that don't need more detail.

So, when Koala and Bernard hooked up it was not an experimental phase for either one of them, but rather a mature meeting of minds and bodies.

Koala could be a bit frisky. She was coy and flirtatious, but all with an innocent look that didn’t suggest anything more than just a game. She had not flirted with Bernard because he was her boss and that juxtaposition demanded a professional relationship, one of direction and implementation. Koala became very skilled at her profession, and with her bent toward perfection she was an ideal second-in-command.

Her trip to the Middle East had been extremely demanding. The climate was challenging with unrelenting heat and the nuisance of wind and sand. The land the government had contracted WOL to develop was unsuitable for most any agricultural enterprise, but the technology that WOL had harnessed had proven successful in worse environments. Koala spent two months with the WOL survey crew, foisting off the attentions of two young Arabs that admired her form. She was very quick to see through their smiles and occasional glances and maintained a distance from both of them.

Koala's analysis of the business opportunity with this latest government client became the basis for her plan for full-scale development using two acolytes. She left the effort in their capable hands. As she departed for home she was anxious to share her discoveries with Bernard.

Two days after her return she debriefed with Bernard, sharing everything she had observed and catalogued. Of greatest interest was the actual results as the two poured over photos and data of the now blooming desert. The debrief ran into the evening with animated faces and smiles and congratulatory expressions.

Bernard finally said he was going to go get some Italian and asked Koala if she was hungry. Her reply was startling - "Yes, for you" was her answer.

They came up for air two days later, in bed together, starving, tired, happy and dreamy.

It was the beginning of their relationship, and it exemplified the heart and soul of WOL.

The mystery, dear reader, is what happened each time Bernard or Koala or Steve or their few trained acolytes departed from view for a period of time.

Of course, the truth is much better than the mystery. Bernard had discovered the ability to adjust the physical world through physical means. That meant using the math and physics and chemistry and atmospheric science and earth science within those sciences, rather than without. Most scientific experimentation is done from the outside by humans. And, as a fact, science itself is simply humankind's view of the physical universe. The great discovery attributed to Bernard Whippinpool was that if you manipulated all the elements within the elements you could make fundamental and monumental modifications that would change not only their characteristics but their malleability toward a desired end.

It first happened in a lab when Bernard was working with an array of elements, feverishly working to discover how to change them from within rather than from without. The breakthrough happened about 2 am, when, exhausted, Bernard made a novel move to get inside the elements. It was not easy, and he was unsure in his experimentation if it would be a one-way ticket or he would be able to get back out, but as luck would have it his math was correct and after he disappeared for what seemed like hours, working within the elements, he reversed the process and reappeared just minutes after his disappearance, shaken and elated.

In his second experiment Bernard was able to alter the chemistry and physics of a small sample of soil to hold water, release it slowly, and absorb nutrients from the air that offered phenomenal growth properties to the soil with no need for replenishment. This breakthrough brought Agrilux the crop yields and quality that soon made them a household name and ensured the future success of WOL.

Complicating the future of WOL was an almost constant deluge of legal issues brought on by competitive agricultural consultants and large chemical corporations. Koala Tare was vicious and combative. She took on the task of defending the company by employing a powerful law firm in Washington DC that, while expensive, was uncommonly successful. Legal wrangling became a second job to Koala, who by this time had welcomed Bernard into her spacious home outside of Albany. Living together made life a bit easier because she had invited Bernard to help design the home, so it was quite comfortable and to his liking, and they each were traveling a lot so they didn't spend much time together at the home.

Back on the legal issues, WOL prevailed against every attempt to thwart them. In one of the last lawsuits, GlobalChem had been ordered to pay $50 million to WOL in legal fees and damages for their relentless and baseless suits against the company. One-third went to the DC law firm, and the remaining two-thirds went into WOL coffers, which were already brimming with contractual fees and milestone bonuses.

At one point, before the end, Bernard, Koala and Steve were each worth several billion dollars, and commanded a sprawling empire of consultancies on every continent. WOL was the darling of the stock market. Each of the three principals were invited to parties and events and sought after by politicians on every side and their influence helped sway numerous events and initiatives.

Still, one thing eluded the WOL leaders. It was the closely guarded secret of their success that became their undoing.

Bernard was the first to notice a difference in his body. His fingers began to shrivel and bind up. A visit to doctors and specialists confirmed that he was suffering from a rare wasting disease that could be slowed but not stopped or reversed. Within six months he became a Steven Hawking-like shadow of his former, vital self.

Koala soon began exhibiting similar symptoms. Her deterioration progressed more slowly, but after a year of change she was placed in a home for 24-hour care.

Steve Ostrom contracted an accelerated case of the debilitating disease and died of a heart attack two months after Bernard was institutionalized.

The young apprentice-assistants that had proved so effective in using the WOL technologies to advance agriculture also began to show signs of physical deterioration before meeting the same fate as the others.

All WOL leaders and implementers were dead by the second year of symptoms.

For many technology and industry disrupters, the breakthrough work they do becomes a stepping stone to great advancement. Not in the case of WOL.

The work they did and the technology they discovered and harnessed, was lost for centuries. The net worth that they amassed was distributed among a hundred different research firms in accordance with the wills and trusts each person had in place.

The only thing that lasted was the name Whippinpool, which became synonymous for things that were here today, gone tomorrow.

"That was a Whippinpool," was exclaimed about flash-in-the-pan ideas for a hundred years until the phrase fell into obscurity like its namesake.

The intrigue of harnessing the physical world from within its building block structure of physics, chemistry and energy had resided in the intellect of those few people that had witnessed what it could do, but after their passing the notion and abilities would not soon resurface, leaving no documentation of their findings or processes.

Five hundred years after the death of the three pioneers, what Bernard Whippinpool had discovered and then utilized had been a natural science for a century, taught in the basic education system to young children. Of course, that was long after the earth had ceased to exist as a habitable planet, doomed by the irresponsible and unsustainable practices of one species - homo sapiens.

Fortunately, other planets in nearby solar systems did prove habitable and partially sustainable, discovered just when we desperately needed them, and as a temporary measure the destructive species, humans, and animals and vegetation of all kinds were transported to one of the planets.

As part of the regeneration of the earth process natural scientists were engineering new life support environments on the earth, a planet that humans now call "the origin."

This process will eventually restore the home planet as a habitat for the repopulation of species from the two temporary host planets. This is not a generational challenge. This is a 100-to-200 year challenge. Regeneration of planets is not quick nor easy, even with the advancement of science at its current level.

During this era most of the work functions are directed by organic intelligence systems that not only store all knowledge, but also have an interface to take critical support action steps utilizing other organic non-life forms engineered to specialize in various functions.

Of interest to readers, one of the main natural scientists is a direct descendant of Bernard T. Whippinpool, who as you may remember, started this whole mess.

I have done my best to write this down as it was told to me, but really I am just tired of trying to convince the people caring for me in this facility that this is real, that I was there and I saw things and took notes.

But tomorrow we get to use crayons again.

I like crayons.