# Mother of Hydrogen (part 3 of 11)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [148], part 3 of 11. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (Text), 2012-11 (from the career record), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Contains Harappa, the target design for mass relocation, expressed as fiction.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Mother of Hydrogen (2012): Novel drawing on the shelter, meditation and pandemic work.
  - In a Page (2010): A series of one-page papers, mostly from spring 2010, each putting one argument on a single sheet. (suggested by machine)
  - The New Economy: out of money, out of time, but not out of ideas (2010): One-page paper: the richest fifth are eating the planet, so the next economy has to be at peace with other... (suggested by machine)
  - The Big Deal (2011): Four-essay blog series arguing that government has hit hard limits, so civil society, working with... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction.
  - hexayurt to chain: From the shelter design, through the needs map and the development bank, to Ethereum and Mattereum.
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - goat rodeo to warlords: The goat rodeo idea, from a 2010 blog post to a 2011 one-page paper to the opening chapter of Warlords, Inc. (2015). (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Ideas whose earliest source in this archive is this one: Harappa
- Ideas developed here: Hexayurt
- Topics: Fiction-led: Mother of Hydrogen — peter, harry, cadets (71%); Fiction-led: Mother of Hydrogen — harry, yevish, president (17%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Harappa (14 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); Mother of Hydrogen (7 here; 5 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); real assets (2 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); camping gear (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); early warning (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); NaNoWriMo (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); refugees (7 here; 84 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 3 undated); social order (1 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); India (7 here; 88 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); citizens (5 here; 63 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): real assets; Harappa; social order; camping gear; early warning
- Importance: core-text score 1.00 (1.00 is the top), number 1 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [108] [User:Vinay Gupta/The Unplugged (2006)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/108.md): The Unplugged (2006): the earlier statement of the same long-term vision
  - [224] [The Unplugged: The Videos - Shareable (2010)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/224.md): The Unplugged (2006): the earlier statement of the same long-term vision
  - [822] [Mother of Hydrogen, a novel (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/822.md): same career work: Mother of Hydrogen
  - [235] [The Perimeter: Mythos as Science Fiction and other works (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/235.md): close in content (cosine 0.92)
- On the same works, just before: [725] [Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.md); [395] Open Data Ireland 25 October inaugeral meeting (2012); [396] [Transparency International launch event, Dublin (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/396.md)
- On the same works, just after: [391] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (4) (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/391.md); [393] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (2) (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/393.md); [394] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/394.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Mother of Hydrogen, document, 2012-11, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [148], https://guptaoption.com/texts/148.md.

## Passages, part 3 of 11
[passage 29](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) bag of food, we could walk to the sea in ten days, we could fish and build a hut, or come to my home, or her home, or... She turns around and says "we better be going." Or we could go back to camp, pretending to be teenage cadets, not little flakes of the absolute in the perfect night, dancing with the old gods. We hold hands for about a hundred yards, then she retracts into her pockets, feigning a shivver, and we have one last brief kiss and part ways. Next camp is a few months, and I guess... no, not now, not time to think. I guess I'll see her again tomorrow I think as she tramps down the muddy path, and I skirt around the woods planning to emerge besides one of the other big tents, where I'll spend the last half hour before it's curfew and back to our respective school groups. I make my way into the large, sparcely occupied tent, and sit down on a bench. The tent has a bit less than 20 people in it, unfortunately including the Colonel, who's mid-way through a story about meeting the President a few years ago, but he doesn't pay any attention to my entry. ===== The cadet who comes in is carrying a bag stuffed with gear. He's extremely watchful and nervous. The bag is parked with forced casualness, usually that's alcohol (as long as they don't have religious parents, that's usually not an issue) but the bag is mysteriously light. That means sleeping bags, which means nocturnal manoevers. Which is also, as long as nobody's been caught, a non-issue. Hypothesis formed: this can be ignored. I'd have let it go there, but for the ease with which the cadet smoothly insinuates himself into the group, and glibly lies about having spent the last couple of hours talking by the fires. He fleshes out a semi-convincing history as naturally as if he's discussing his hairstyle. Curious, I sit a couple of places up from him on the opposite bench, and interact a little. A gentle probe of the story, quickly met with more plausiby deniable "facts." Fast infill and backfill of the story. Fluid. He's very smooth, very calm, very convincing while (child, child) clearly lying, not that his new friends would notice. Kids are so transparent. But he's an experiened liar, good at putting up a front with a facile ease which speaks of experience, and he's quietly burying a couple of stolen hours. So what's in the bag? A little irritated, I make a quick excuse to check on something, because for all I know he's been rifling through other cadet's posessions grabbing untagged property. I pull a remote out of my pocket, surrupticiously capture a picture of his face, and run his backpath. The remotes reconstruct his last few hours from passive nodes scattered on the site for security, and sure enough Cadet (M) Harry Vine and Cadet (F) Emma Bowen make

[passage 30](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) I know he's been rifling through other cadet's posessions grabbing untagged property. I pull a remote out of my pocket, surrupticiously capture a picture of his face, and run his backpath. The remotes reconstruct his last few hours from passive nodes scattered on the site for security, and sure enough Cadet (M) Harry Vine and Cadet (F) Emma Bowen make their way into the woods, deploy a cosy little lover's nest (good equipment! shows up on IR like a beacon) and share a few moments. I think to myself, as I put the remote away, that it doesn't really matter, but there's something about the manner of the kid, the careful covering of tracks, the planned rendevouz, which bothers me. He's just too precisely charming, a subtle, well-practiced front. Something not quite right. Family of crooks? I pull the file, just a quick scan. Father was Armour, he's an army brat, old man is now State dept. still on drones. A family history of tradecraft. Colonel John Gibbons stretches out a little and has a satisfied moment. Good kid. Operator. Flag and file. ===== The next day, everybody's busy. So many things to do. Discussions, lectures, exercises, a display of marksmanship, a long run and inspection. Harry and Emma manage to slip away among strangers for dinner, but it's not the same - not wrong, but there's no time, no space, and when they talk it's all unspoken context and neighbouring seats trying to make conversation. He knows they'll talk on vid soon, and in private and... 200 miles isn't that far, maybe we can cook up a pretext. Then she gives him The Smile, and he knows it's all fine. Ok. Later, at her tent, in the privacy of her sleeping bag, she looks at pictures of him and, yes, not bad, not bad at all. She feels warm, and has a little romantic moment, soon cast off. Too young, we're too young. But cute. 200 miles. There is a romance to it, though. Something fine! John Gibbons sends everybody home with a rousing hurrah, another generation of sheep, goats and wolves bounced around, flagged, tagged and monitored. Three more camps, they'll be full-time in dorms for the last quarter, and then Induction. Mr Sneaky's a bit of a star, thinks John, having made an opportunity to interact some more with the young fellow, and resolves to keep him in the programme if reasonably possible. Armour's not really a place for a guy with a face like that. Hearts and minds, front line material. A face made for military PR, maybe? If they can keep him. Late at night, as John updates a handful of files who had some signficant outcome from the camp, he flags Mr. Sneaky's file: "Promising. Prioritize for territorial?" It's not a big deal, just makes sure that the locals don't harsh the kid's mellow for not shining his boots right. John still isn't quite settled about it, but he soon forgets. There are over

[passage 31](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) as John updates a handful of files who had some signficant outcome from the camp, he flags Mr. Sneaky's file: "Promising. Prioritize for territorial?" It's not a big deal, just makes sure that the locals don't harsh the kid's mellow for not shining his boots right. John still isn't quite settled about it, but he soon forgets. There are over ten thousand cadets in his patch. If you asked him about it a month later, he'd be unable to put a face to the name, although he'd remember the story. Files. ===== We are standing in identical pods, 24 cadets, in the lab. The pods are about a metre across, a black metal mesh grid to stand on, and a sculpted black frame rising half a meter above our heads to an enclosing canopy. Inside of each pod are suspended goggles, gloves and a body harness. We're being instructed on how to suit up. First the body harness is put on, with some vital signs sensors and actuators for impact. Then the harness is clipped to the frame by some actuator cables which can pull you back and forth a bit. Then the gloves and goggles go on. The helmets have a system that electromagnetically stimulates the inner ear's balance systems, so you can feel things like falling or sloped ground. One thing we can't do is run: full motion systems are extremely expensive and it's fairly easy to break a leg without proper training. Commonly used, but not by us. About half of us have done this before at home for games, sims or movies, although without the enclosure, so it's familiar, but those from poorer or religious families are being talked through the equipment by the instructing cadet. Some people just don't let their kids out of the "real world." My dad's gloves were full force-feedback, like the body harness, but in full six degrees of freedom motion. That's what you use for driving war machines. These are haptic, they give sensation for grip, for pressure, but not for force. I put on the goggles, and they show the world around me more or less exactly as it was, a slight shift in perspective, the colours slightly off, but as I turn my head, they keep track flawlessly. It's almost as if I'm not wearing goggles at all. They start insertion. The body harness tenses, and I'm fixed in space. The goggles shift, fading to white, then they show a simple room, about the size of a gymansium. We walk around, looking at the virtual bodies of the other cadets. Each of us has a model which is taken straight from a scan of our physical bodies, so the models are as accurate as our baseline medical data. If you look closely at each-other's faces you can see that fine surface detail is not three dimensional, and lips are always wrong, they don't fully articulate during speech. But it's good enough that unless you're deliberately looking for problems,

[passage 32](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) taken straight from a scan of our physical bodies, so the models are as accurate as our baseline medical data. If you look closely at each-other's faces you can see that fine surface detail is not three dimensional, and lips are always wrong, they don't fully articulate during speech. But it's good enough that unless you're deliberately looking for problems, it works. You just get in the habit of not looking at people too closely if you're standing right beside them, and the illusion becomes pretty much perfect. Dad taught me a quick check for any point where you're confused: "Try and bite your finger: if you hit glove, you're still inside." It sounds like a joke, but when you drive robots for a living, particularly under stress, sometimes the man dreams he's a butterfly, and sometimes the butterfly dreams he's a man. Today, all we do is learn the gestures for walking, for running, for jumping and various other gross body movements which you can't do in the simulator with your physical legs. Some of the lads know advanced stuff from games, and are rolling, tumbling, spring-kicking and otherwise demonstrating physical mastery well beyond their real-world capabilities. Alice, one of the two girls in our group, has some kind of trick for gliding, it looks almost like she's ice-skating. I can't tell if that's some kind of bug in the system, or if she's got a ton of sim experience. Either way, we're all out in fifteen minutes for a quick walk around in the real world, goggles perched on our foreheads, still in harness, just to let the noobs acclimatize a minute, and then we're back in for the rest of the day. Basic drills. This goes on for weeks, getting everybody up to basic simulator competence, before combat training starts. Of course, a lot of us are already well trained by games, we're sleek, efficient fire teams and we have been since ten or eleven. I've spent so long flying sims on dad's rig that I could probably qualify for a trainee license. But there's always that little bit of lag, little bit of hesitation in my simulation activities. I don't know what it is, I'm always just a bit outside of myself, don't fully enter into the reality of the situations, so I'm precise, but I'm not fast. In fact, I'm slow. My mind makes me that way. I found with games that I have to stay back and try to be strategic, because if I head round the corners first, I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I get pinned down by enemy fire or simply blown away. It's the one thing I'm well under-average at, and I'm not convinced that's something I can learn my way around. It doesn't affect my over-all performance much, I play a strategic role inside, hang back, pick off snipers, man the heavy weapons, cast the spells, whatever. I can keep up, I'm not a

[passage 33](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) by enemy fire or simply blown away. It's the one thing I'm well under-average at, and I'm not convinced that's something I can learn my way around. It doesn't affect my over-all performance much, I play a strategic role inside, hang back, pick off snipers, man the heavy weapons, cast the spells, whatever. I can keep up, I'm not a drag on the party. I'm just not the simulation king. ===== *SIMWAR* I'm doing dad's old job. We're lumbering around in three ton powersuits, cadets clanging enormous metal feet off the simulated deck, feeling the room shake a little. I'm waiting to get started. We've spent long enough inside on a regular basis that we're fully comfortable with the haptic and the vestibular drivers, it's pretty much "strap in and go" these days. I've improved my speed and sense of presence a bit, I'm starting to understand that it's my distance from the simulation, telling myself that it isn't real, that's impeding my reactions. I also wonder if it's family history, that this is, in some sense, my dad's job, my dad's world, and I don't want to compare myself to him. We've played games together and even if he doesn't really follow the whole scenario because he's just dipping in and out, he's deadly. Completely smooth and fluid, total awareness of the environment, no gap between thought and action. It's a performance, he doesn't do it for fun. Sims are work. But he's proud of his skills: first line expeditionary Armour and, as he says, he was about as good at it as anybody he ever met who hadn't been surgically modified for direct interface. DN jocks are our equivalent of superheros, the ultra-elite. You don't do that if you want to have a family life. I don't know if he ever applied for selection. We're about to get going. The scenery's changed from the drone bay to a desert town. We're under a camo net canopy, surrounded by military vehicles. I can't hear anything, they haven't started properly yet, so there's occasional comments as people line up and form rows, but no sound from the environment. Sim is go. The first thing we hear are sirens, and an over-the-radio "scramble and disperse" order. Seconds later a massive explosion sends us flying, taking out a couple of laggards who were fussing when the sim started. I flick my wrist to stand upright and run for the protective wall of a building, massive steel feed crunching into the dusty square. The town is yellow mud brick, with canopies out front of the stores keeping the desert sun off rows of identical apples on perfectly rectangular trays. Simvilians are completely absent. We're not quite sure what the scenario is yet, but that's part of the scenario. Radio commands come into the battle computers, maps appear on the head-up displays, ghostly outlines of the cities projected in our peripheral vision, tracks indicating our ideal positioning and formations, health dots for the battle

[passage 34](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) identical apples on perfectly rectangular trays. Simvilians are completely absent. We're not quite sure what the scenario is yet, but that's part of the scenario. Radio commands come into the battle computers, maps appear on the head-up displays, ghostly outlines of the cities projected in our peripheral vision, tracks indicating our ideal positioning and formations, health dots for the battle group. Cross town, two kilometers, take a fortified building. Vehicle-mounted opposition. The main difference between game environments and this one is that there's very tight synchoronization between the unit. We play with people from all over the country, and it's not that common to play with the same crew for more than a few hours. There are tens of millions of games out there, entire artificial worlds sitting around waiting for paying customers to come by. Crowds flow in and out. Here, same kids, over and over. You get to know how people play. I decide I'm going to do something different - run up a side street, parallel to the main group, provide protection to the main force. I don't really understand the line between initiative and disobedience, relative to the computer's suggested force positioning, and that's probably something they're trying to teach us. Half a kilometer up the street, passing parked cars and trucks, I see the opposition for the first time. A group of four vehicles passes ahead of me, right to left. Armoured cars, the unmistakable bulbous curves of composite armour panels, arrays of rockets on top. The last of them has a microwave dish, almost two meters square. That means a beam weapon: trouble. They're past me in half a second, I have to review footage to know exactly what I've seen. I radio in to the group. They also saw them. Somebody lofts a drone - we should have done that earlier - and a live map update shows us two dozen vehicles, some with heavy weapons, between us and our objective. Some are behind us. Alice is TBC - Tactical Battle Coordinator - our "combat chairman." For small group ops we don't have a Sargeant or a Captain - rank is entirely notional in operational space. We maintain that stuff in the class room because it's the bureaucratic form of the organization, but it's not how anybody fights. Computers don't work that way, and so neither do soldiers. Alice, indeed, has a ton of sim experience, she's been a competitive sports nut for years, and she's adapted to war very nicely. She's grown confident of her skills in command, and very pointedly said to a bossy cadet "the reason for women on the battlefield is so that the men don't stand around talking about who's in charge all day." Noted. We don't have an extraction on this sim, presumably it'll terminate when we take the objective, so Alice decides we don't need a way out. Ignore the vehicles behind us unless they get into weapons range, maintain sensor coverage, maintain one group but

[passage 35](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) battlefield is so that the men don't stand around talking about who's in charge all day." Noted. We don't have an extraction on this sim, presumably it'll terminate when we take the objective, so Alice decides we don't need a way out. Ignore the vehicles behind us unless they get into weapons range, maintain sensor coverage, maintain one group but keep a few meter's distance between us. She doesn't order me back into the herd, so I continue to run parallel, just to see. 500 meters from objective, an enormous explosion takes out the front row, three units down. Smoke obscures vision, and IR isn't much use because of the fires. Withering machine gun fire comes down the street from armoured cars speeding towards the main group. I continue to advance another hundred yards or so, tee up a rocket, and wait for them to enter my field of view on the side street. The main group have taken shelter in buildings and are returning fire, but humanoid form robots lose in firepower what they gain in mobility. Legs carry a lot less weight than wheels. The front vehicle is another bulbous plastic tank, a dozen interlocking domes forming a smooth light green carapace. It will have a similar internal structure, around an armoured crew compartment. My rocket catches it squarely in the front quadrant, blowing it most of the way across the road, steaming wreckage. The vehicle behind it speeds past, and the next I pepper with machine gun fire. I run down the street looking to catch them from behind as the front vehicle unloads down the street with a cannon, smashing buildings to rubble searching for us. I am getting better at this. The map shows four more vehicles up the street approaching fast, and more distant units swarming in. We've got about 60 seconds before more forces arrive, and it's clearly about to turn into a proper fight. I'm too forward and too exposed, so I back up the street, isolated from the group, wondering if I can hit the next tank as I did the last one. I get into position and wait for the converging dots on the map. My "hand" is enormous metal spade studded with nozzels and protruding firepower, articulated by hydraulics, driven by an internal battrey recharged from a tiny onboard reactor. Six hours of combat-level motion to 18 hours of recharge, a 25% duty cycle. Fresh batteries are the size of refrigerators, they load and unload from the back. We've done drills of reloading each-other's power. This model has mostly chemical-drive weapons: guns and rockets, rather than beam weapons. It doesn't actually exist, but even so, it doesn't take long for us to think about hardware we've never seen as completely real. These virtual suits are rough, simplified approximations of the real thing. No hydraulic pressure gages, no internal system monitoring, no food, water, wetware functions. An abstraction. So this is a game, not a real military trainer, but I

[passage 36](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) doesn't actually exist, but even so, it doesn't take long for us to think about hardware we've never seen as completely real. These virtual suits are rough, simplified approximations of the real thing. No hydraulic pressure gages, no internal system monitoring, no food, water, wetware functions. An abstraction. So this is a game, not a real military trainer, but I begin to understand why people love armour, what the drone jockeys see in the business for. The sensation of power is, frankly, amazing. But it's still basically in my imagination. I can feel the mask on my face, feel the edges of the harness. I'm know I'm in school. But if I was DN - direct neural - nano-electrodes in my head, I would experience this all as completely real, there would be zero sense of a "real world" and a "simulated world" because the limbic system is tied in to the simulation. A DN's own body won't let them perceive two worlds, a "body world" and a "mind world. The limbic system knows for a fact there's exactly one world, and you're looking at it. No abstration, on reification, just a flat physical terrain. What you see is real. The limbic system is the part of us that cannot help but be convinced by our dreams. Pixels, or atoms, the limic system doesn't care: one real word. Dad says that DNs don't age well. They get to forty or fifty, their bodies start to age, but the machines get better and faster and more powerful every few years. They want to be more and more in the machine, and less and less caged in flesh. Sixty hours a month you can leap small buildings in a single bound, fly, raze a city block in fifteen seconds, throw a boulder the size of a car and survive getting flamethrowered. Then you get out of the life support box, and you walk slowly. Your body's heavy, your joints ache when you run. It gets to them. They don't age well. Sort of a horror story. I make a decision, and run back down the street, lie prone, and fire a mess of weapons towards the incoming vehicles, which reply with heavy machine gun fire. They're almost on top of me already, but that means they're closing a bit fast for accurate cannon on a prone target, and the round lands just behind me, cratering the road. My rockets hit the vehicle too high to stop its forwards motion, and it is not deterred by the grenades (against a tank!) or gunfire, and I feel the massive impact as it runs right over the suit on the way to the main group, the following vehicles swerving round me. With a hand gesture, I roll out of the street and sit up. Sensors indicate the street is clear towards the target, so I pick up and run up the street, leaving the main engagement behind me. Vehicles are criss-crossing the street grid unloading

[passage 37](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) over the suit on the way to the main group, the following vehicles swerving round me. With a hand gesture, I roll out of the street and sit up. Sensors indicate the street is clear towards the target, so I pick up and run up the street, leaving the main engagement behind me. Vehicles are criss-crossing the street grid unloading at our dispersed force, which is trying to avoid clustering and not having much luck setting up overlapping fields of fire. They're not making much progress, but it's just a game. I find a small alleyway and jog up it towards the target. The sim designers put in funny little details - clothes on clothes lines, piles of garbage in back alleys, but no people. On impulse I force a courtyard door, stride across the paving slabs towards the house, up three low stairs then crash through a sliding glass door into a kitchen. There's a stove, with an eternally boiling pan, cupboards which don't open (they collapse to debris when I touch them, which strikes me as lazy.) I move to the next room. Inside there's a couch, a TV, some extremely generic framed pictures on the wall (clip art) and a slowly spinning ceiling fan. To the right stairs to the next floor, which won't take the weight of the suit, and to the left a bedroom. I walk to it. There's a sleeping child in a cot, completely static. No animation, no movement, a fixed rendered object like the furniture. I don't try and touch it for fear it'll die just like the cupboards disintegrated. I can't imagine what its doing there. Left over model from a simvillian-filled scenario, no code driving its behavior, possibly. Mis-tagged, perhaps the model database says "empty bed." People as furniture. On impulse, I grasp the corner of the bed carefully and turn it over. The child model remains glued in place, a static part of the frame. I put it back down. It's a bug. I check the map to discover the vehicles are gone, the group's half dead, mission aborted. "SIM EXIT!" I remove the goggles, and look at the world funny. Bugs. I hang up the gloves and unclip the harness, then remove it. We file back into a classroom and sit down. There is a debrief. Alice says "Good idea taking the flank, Harry. Nice shot on the first tank too!" The Senior Cadet nods from behind her, where he's taking notes. I guess that means it's initiative, not disobedience. Will try harder next time. Nobody asks me what I was doing in the house. Later, when I go to sleep, I dream of my father coming into my room when I was small, and slowly turning my bed over. In my dream, as he turns the bed over, I slide on to the floor and wake up crying, and he is relieved that I did not stick to the bed like the model. In the morning, at

[passage 38](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) go to sleep, I dream of my father coming into my room when I was small, and slowly turning my bed over. In my dream, as he turns the bed over, I slide on to the floor and wake up crying, and he is relieved that I did not stick to the bed like the model. In the morning, at breakfast, as I drink fresh orange juice and he butters toast, I ask him about the dream. "I'm not sure, Harry." Then he reaches over and squeezes my arm, as if to make sure that it's real. Catching his drift, we both raise our hands to our mouths, and bite our fingers. Just a dream. ===== Uncle Peter has arranged to visit us in Upstate New York. This is unusual, but not unexpected. It is, after all, Thanksgiving. So much has happened since the last time I've seen him. Emma, setting in to being a cadet, the sense of being different now. I'm eager to see what he thinks of it all. He flies, which is unusual for him, and a taxi dropps him at our house a little after nine. I imagine that he's parked the van in some long-term airport parking lot, his home just sitting there like any other car. When he comes inside he's wearing a backpack and an olive-coloured jacked with a big fuzzy hood. The girls greet him at the door, and he picks them up in turn. "Peeeeeter!" says Sally, Petra joining in on the "eeeee". They repeat this several times. Mom stands to one side of the scene, watching him. He looks up to me, says "hi sport!" and takes off the bag. Mom takes it from him, with a grunt, and places it in the coat & shoe filled mud room by the door. The girls are on their way to bed, and they draw out the scene at the door as long as Mom will let them, then she takes them upstairs. Dad and Uncle Peter retreat to the living room, and I join them both in there while Mom puts the girls to bed. They're sitting in two furry ochre arm chairs, I'm sitting on the edge of the fireplace. The stone is cold, we haven't made a fire tonight, but the room is warm. "Well?" Peter says? "So far so good!" His slight smirk means he's asking about Emma. I haven't seen her since camp, but we're talking and making plans for next weekend. Six weeks feels like three years, but the waiting's almost over. We don't get a lot of free time, not enough for a weekend trip. Cadets. "East Coast Cadet Convergence in New York City. Optional" says Dad. "But I booked them a hotel room." We'd talked about what happened at the camp. The old man seems a bit bemused I'd wind up with a girl who's so far from here rather than some "local chick" but he's tolerant enough of it. I haven't mentioned

[passage 39](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) trip. Cadets. "East Coast Cadet Convergence in New York City. Optional" says Dad. "But I booked them a hotel room." We'd talked about what happened at the camp. The old man seems a bit bemused I'd wind up with a girl who's so far from here rather than some "local chick" but he's tolerant enough of it. I haven't mentioned the unusual bits of that weekend, though. "Her parents aren't religious, and it's not really their business anyway" he says. Peter approves. "It's funny." I don't want to go into too much detail with Dad here, but I'm not going to wait to talk to Peter about this. This is urgent. "When we were together, there was a lot of magic - I had a couple of moments where I was in a cave, thousands of years ago, or something from those times was with me. I saw pentagrams in blue outside of the tent, and there was a moment with a whole host of beings watching." Peter clearly gets the drift. "Magician's first woman" he says sagely. "She do any practice?" says Peter. "No, nothing. But she's not a mundane, there a spark there, some kind of insight." Peter sighs. A heavy truth. "Kid, at that age, they're so hot that it's all magic. Women who'll grow up to be bear-and-cubs and wear slacks to their first daughter's first wedding were once magical faeries who could light up the world. You can't judge character until the blush is off in, hm, 10 or 15 years." He's trying to give me a wake-up call, but he's also bitter. He's alone. But I get the point. "Noted." Dad tries to lift the mood. "Looker, though! He's done well." Mom comes in and says "I bet she feels the same way." "What about you, Peter? Are we going to find you a nice second wife and settle you down?" Peter smiles, but there's an aggressive edge around him "I never found a woman that could stand me Helen. But I am not too old to have given up hope. Perhaps I'll play house somewhere nice and settle down with an old flame..." I sense a sadness in him that I never want to feel. He's travelling because there's nobody to come home to. A million strangers faces, or these places he stops in to help out, to keep an eye on things, to teach a little, but there's no roof over his head, no dog on the rug, no larder. I wish I wasn't so aware of his feelings. We are connected. Mom sits on the couch, and dad makes the symbolic gesture of throwing her a blanket, but doesn't join her. "Peter, Harry's told me about something that happened at the end of summer, some kind of minor vision he had when you were camping. Greg was there too." "Yes, I know what you're talking about. The Spear." She's not mounting an interrogation, but this is not friendly. I want to

[passage 40](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) gesture of throwing her a blanket, but doesn't join her. "Peter, Harry's told me about something that happened at the end of summer, some kind of minor vision he had when you were camping. Greg was there too." "Yes, I know what you're talking about. The Spear." She's not mounting an interrogation, but this is not friendly. I want to intervene, but know it's not time. "What does it mean?" Father answers, interrupting Peter's start. "Hon, you know that we believe in something - not science, not magic, not religion, but something beyond us, something out there..." "Yes, but the stars are not people and 'God' does not talk to us, Greg. We've raised three, bright, reasonable kids so far..." and the unsaid part "and Peter is not a third parent." But she doesn't say it, she doesn't have to. It's my time to talk. "I don't have Papa around, and Frank was gone before I was born too." Peter is all I have of Papa's stories, or at least the trade. Dad was too young to see much of Papa, alas. "I want something more than science, Mom. I don't want the Church, and I don't want our New Manifest Destiny, but I know there's something beyond this. Look at me... where did all this come from?" I gesture at my face, my head, trying to convey some sense of myself as more than skin and bone. "Honey, we all have times when we see the magic in things, some kind of greater plan, but that's how apes are made. We dream." I sense that this is going nowhere, but maybe the stalemate is good. In this instance, as long as she doesn't interfere, we're fine. I know she doesn't want me to follow Peter, but I'm not following Uncle Peter - he would have run away rather than join the service, even as a cadet. She takes a different angle. "I've seen stuff too. Your father was a lot more into all this when we first got together. I've seen it too. Bits of visions, I knew there would be two girls and I expected twins. Instead, a second pregnancy right after the first. I knew the shape the family would be." I've never heard her talk like this, she's always remained firmly outside of the circle. "I don't want you to grow up believing in nothing, Harry, but I don't want you to swallow this wholesale and go off on some kind of spiritual quest, the proto-Messiah or something either. Balance!" We all know it's final. It lands like lead. She said what had to be said, and it's resolved. Peter speaks next. "I'm not making him believe he's anything he's not, Helen. He's as bright and capable as they come, and we know there's something special about us, always has been." He's subtlying insinuating that it's in the blood, passed down from Papa, not quite her business. That's not nice, but she's also not taking it

[passage 41](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) and it's resolved. Peter speaks next. "I'm not making him believe he's anything he's not, Helen. He's as bright and capable as they come, and we know there's something special about us, always has been." He's subtlying insinuating that it's in the blood, passed down from Papa, not quite her business. That's not nice, but she's also not taking it at his level. "He's not ordinary." "He" is also right here, but I have to let that pass. "But he's also not going to get picked up by forces that none of us can control and used as a tool." We're in a whole new game now. The air comes alive, the slight shimmer of magic-in-the-wild. I've never seen mom like this, A Power. She's talking the kind of truth that changes things later. "I don't know what you think the men in this family are, what they carry, Peter, but I want you to know that it breeds true into the girls too. It came from Papa, but it's not just in the male heirs. The girls have their gifts as well." She sits forwards. She's thinking hard. "But Papa was 35 when he married. He forbade Frank from going to the tribe, and you maintain that to this day. You know he said "I'm not an Indian any more, I've joined you white folks". He burned those bridges, left his father and mother and sister behind. He left that family, and started a new one. And he wasn't full-blood Indian either, half at most. That probably means this is not something in the genes. The kids are a sixteenth at most. The girls are pale, blue eyed and blonde. It's probably not genetic." Dad and Peter are rapt. She's putting something together they've never quite figured out, something in the family history. "I think you have to seriously consider that Papa had something to hide, something to run from, something to leave behind in the old world . He didn't quit and start anew because he wanted to live outside of Kansas city on a farm and haul manure and cattle feed for a living, Peter. And if that's true, Peter, it's not all some great plan, it's a series of clusterfucks right at the beginning, to this day." And once she's said it, it's obviously true. We can all see the gaps in Papa's story like bad edits. Things he clearly left out, didn't choose to say. She's drawn a line through the dots, made the previous story invisible behind the clearly stated new truth. We can all see our understanding of our family history change. "I don't think he lied to us, but he clearly didn't tell us everything." "Frank didn't know enough to ask the right questions" Peter offers helpfully. She steamrollers on "and I don't want us to shape our son's life around a family mythology, even if it might be true, until we really know what we're dealing with." The gauntlet clatters on

[passage 42](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) don't think he lied to us, but he clearly didn't tell us everything." "Frank didn't know enough to ask the right questions" Peter offers helpfully. She steamrollers on "and I don't want us to shape our son's life around a family mythology, even if it might be true, until we really know what we're dealing with." The gauntlet clatters on the stone floor. A challenge has been issued. Peter declines gracefully. "This is not about Papa and Frank. This is about what we can see and feel, what we know, what is done, and what remains." But she's forcing him into the open, cutting through the myths. "What remains, Peter, is my son and his future. What does it mean if Papa was a fraud?" There's no choice now. This is going to get settled. I am secretly terrfied. The clash of the angry gods. "A lot of what I've taught Harry didn't come through Papa, Helen. It's India as much as Indian. The body culture is Chinese hermit tradition, if anything. Bits of Jack Parsons, Crowley, Moore, the others." "Books!" she flung back in his face. "No." And I see him rise to his full height, sitting right in the chair. He's suddenly a mountain. Not anger, but a total calm certainty. "There is a living tradition here, even in the West, even in America, even now, half way through the 21st century. Mouth to ear. It's alive because I did it, every step of the old work myself, and I made it anew once I understood what I had done using the traditional practices. I don't need Papa's ghostly authority to do this, and I agree that the girls have it as much as the boys, and that more of it rubbed off on you than I'd have guessed from when you and Gregory were working." She acknowledges. It's not about respect now, it's only about truth. "It's comforting to think that the old man was a sage, a wizard, a relic with a link to the long forgotten past mysteries. And he probably was, but I agree that not very much of it got through to us. It's a lossy transmission. Some of what we see in Papa, in the heritage, is just our own projection. But that doesn't mean that we're left with less that the whole truth, because each of us has to discover it anew, for ourselves. Nobody can be Awake for you." He's gathering force now, I see a nimus around him, the soft shimmering in the air as he concentrates his will. He's breaking through to something. "If you judge a free man by the standards of slaves, he'll appear rootless and incompetent. He won't collect a salary ("salt paid to Roman soldiers!"), he won't be part of a large organization, he won't have corporate or political servants at his beck-and-call, because to enslave others makes us slaves of other masters, each in turn, in cycles of bondage." "I have nothing because

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/148-4.md (part 4 of 11).
End of [148] Mother of Hydrogen, part 3 of 11. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.