This is a special holiday issue of the AXIS Advisory available only to our e-mail subscribers and web browsers. We wanted to give you a vision of what the Millennium might bring, not so much a prediction as a possibility, if we are vigilant about our choices. I felt the best way to explain how we envision trends coming together was to let you experience this future through fiction. But almost every technology and practice described in the "future" portion of this story is either already in use somewhere in the world or is approaching the threshold of being marketable. With all the doom and gloom in the news, we wanted to give you a positive note on which to move into the 21st Century. It's going to be an exciting time! Happy holidays. --Darcy and Marsha
by Darcy Hitchcock. Copyright 1999 AXIS Performance Advisors.
Ebon Ezer set his alarm clock for 4:45 am to leave on a business trip. He chewed on some Tums to ward off the aftereffects of a hectic dinner where 3-year-old Emily let loose with a "screw you," yet another lovely phrase picked up from daycare, and little Willy acted out a particularly inappropriate scene from Harry Potter. Ebon slipped under the covers, putting his arm around his wife's waist. She patted it perfunctorily. They both accepted that sex was out of the question; work and the kids took every joule of energy they had. Ebon just hoped that at least tonight, sleep would come quickly, despite the adrenaline still coursing through his body from a no-worse-than-normal crazy day at work and a wicked two hour commute. This was just the price of getting ahead, he always told Alicia. He rolled over, turning his back on his wife and slowly slipped into a fitful sleep.
*******
In his dream, someone was standing by his bed. "Sir, Sir! Get up, Mr. Ezer."
Ebon opened his eyes to see a pale man standing as stiffly upright as his crew cut. He wore a black suit with wide lapels. "Who are you?" Ebon asked.
"I am the Ghost of Corporate Past."
Musta been something I ate, Ebon mused. "Yeah, sure. Then where's Tiny Tim?"
"Oh, he's not in your dream, Sir. But I do need you to get up, Sir. We don't have much time." The man held out Ebon's bathrobe so he wouldn't have to go around town in just his T-shirt and boxers.
In the next instant, they were standing outside a sooty factory belching black smoke. The ghost looked over at Ebon. "Do you know where you are?"
"Sure, it's the B-B gun factory Pop worked at in West Virginia." A pipe spewed oily green slime into the creek.
"Can I see him?" Ebon asked expectantly.
"Yes, but remember, he can't see you."
The air inside the factory was even worse than outside. Ebon's eyes burned from the fumes in the dingy, cold space. After walking past forty or more men on the assembly line, all doing the same task over and over in robotic oblivion, they found his dad. Being an immigrant, he was a packer, the lowest paying job on the line. Ebon fought back the torrent of emotions: love for his dad, anger about the accepted discrimination, horror at the surroundings.
"So why have you brought me here? I never worked in this place."
"Do you remember what happened to this factory?"
Ebon recalled how the layoffs decimated the town. "They shut it down."
"Why?"
"Probably Nader, I don't know. But someone decided that too many kids were being hurt."
"Blinded, mostly."
Ebon glared at the ghost. "I still don't know why I'm here."
"Think about it, Mr. Ezer. Your father toiled for 18 years, packing products that blinded kids in a factory that spewed toxic chemicals into the air and water."
Ebon felt defensive." But people didn't know any better then, and Pop was just trying to care for his family." He paused. "Are you trying to tell me Pop went to Hell for working here?"
The ghost checked his watch, the wind-up kind. "I wouldn't know, Sir. We're non-denominational. But I doubt it. I think you have to be intentional..."
They were interrupted by an equally pale girl in Dockers with a ring in her eyebrow. "Hey, geek, time's up. We gotta go."
"Wait, let me guess," said Ebon sarcastically. "You must be the Ghost of Corporate Present."
"You got it, Bone."
"It's Ebon."
"Whatever."
Suddenly they were in Ebon's office. It was bizarre watching a re-run of yesterday's meeting. The only difference was that he could hear what people were thinking.
"Hey, I know you all have been working hard," Ebon had said as Beth nodded, thinking, Glad you finally noticed! "But it's just not enough." Beth's face fell. "We have to get our e-commerce toy site up and running before Thanksgiving or Amazon will eat our lunch."
So let them, thought Kim, who'd been with the company since the inception two years ago. Then maybe I can have dinner with my family once in a while.
"This is the last push till our IPO," Ebon continued.
IPO around here means Intense Personal Oppression, Maria decided.
Kim poked Maria. "Wait, here comes the Gates Bait," he whispered.
Unaware of the cynical undercurrents, Ebon forged on. "Remember how many Microsoft millionaires there are." Kim shot Maria a knowing glance. It even sounded hollow to Ebon. "Peter, I need you to get on a plane tomorrow to work out this problem with China."
Peter's lips tightened. But it's Bobby's third birthday. Lisa is going to kill me if I miss another one. "Sure, I'll get right on it," he responded, twisting his lips into an obliging smile.
Ebon turned to the ghost, shocked. "I had no idea it was his son's birthday. Peter never said a word." The Ghost of Corporate Present just scrunched her face into a mask of disbelief. "Hey, you look awfully young to be a ghost."
She nodded. "School shooting," was her response.
As if those two words together explained anything, Ebon thought. Uncomfortable and unsure of what to say, he changed the subject. "Back to the meeting. So what's your point in showing me this anyway? We all make sacrifices. The world isn't fair. Competition is fierce, and if we don't grow, we'll go out of business."
The Ghost applauded weakly. Imitating a game show host, she said, "Come on down! You get the prize for the longest string of trite platitudes. Let me give you another interpretation, Ezer-Geezer."
This teeny bopper was really getting on Ebon's nerves. Is this what I have to look forward to with my kids, he wondered.
"You sell toys, right?" Ebon nodded impatiently. "And the competition is so great because there's an oversupply, right?" He nodded again. "So you have this zero sum game going on where all the toy catalog merchants and retailers are fighting to get a greater share of the kiddie market."
Finally the snot-nosed kid was where he wanted her. "Maybe they didn't teach you economics in high school. Actually you're wrong. The toy manufacturers are always coming up with new products and they advertise to stimulate demand." Ebon thought he had her now.
"But then you're just going after a larger share of the household income. It's still a zero sum game. And, I might add," she said sounding much older than her years, counting the infractions off on her blanched fingers, "you're running your staff ragged so you can sell all these plastic items made from fossil fuels, contributing to global warming, products made by poor people in developing countries who make $2 a day in unsafe conditions while their factories pour their chemicals directly into rivers that their communities use for drinking water." Finally she had run out of fingers and breath.
Now Ebon was really steamed. "Hey, we don't do any of that. We don't manufacture anything."
"No, but you sell the stuff."
Ebon lost it. "Well, Miss Smartypants, exactly what do you expect me to do about all this? My company employs 150 people, many from the poor neighborhoods. And at least the people in the Asian factories have a job. Not to mention our toys put a smile on children's faces."
Ebon heard a tisk-tisk behind him. "My, my." Both of them turned toward the disapproving voice with a thick 'Loosiana' drawl. "This is the worst tangle I've heard since my dog caught a possum." The Ghost of Corporate Future glared at the younger ghost and then turned her attention to Ebon. "You'll have to excuse the Ghost of Corporate Present. She's young and still gets preachy, if you know what I mean. If she'd lived, she probably would have been president of Greenpeace or something." Smiling, the ghost held out her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Ebon Ezer."
Ebon was still too stirred up to be polite. "Oh, great. Now you're going to show me grizzly scenes from the future, I suppose. Skin cancers, rising water levels, famine."
"My word, no. Dickens was so dour, don't you think. And what good would that do anyway? You want to do the right thing." Ebon shot an accusing glance at the younger, pimply ghost. "But you just don't know how. So touch my caftan and I'll show you one possible future. What you do then is up to you."
They were in Ebon's and Alicia's bedroom now. Ebon glanced at the clock, horrified. It was just before 7 am. "Wake up, Alicia. You'll be late for work! The alarm must not have gone off."
The Ghost shushed him. "Remember, she can't hear you."
"Even if the power goes off, the furnace usually wakes us up. The thermostat runs on batteries."
"Ah, but you don't have a furnace anymore. With the extra insulation and superwindows, you don't need one. Even the north facing windows get solar gain." At exactly 7 am, the clock chimed. Ebon watched as the couple snuggled in bed, clearly in no hurry. Finally they rose.
"I'm going to go pick some strawberries," Alicia said. "Why don't you go wake the kids."
The Ghost suggested, "Let's follow Alicia." They walked up a flight of stairs that Ebon had never seen before, which led to the roof of their townhouse. As Alicia opened the door, Ebon had a moment of vertigo because he thought he was going out onto the street level. The roofs of all the townhouses were covered with communal gardens, native plants and a greenhouse, a verdant landscape all but for the sloping South facing overhangs that were covered in solar tiles.
The ghost explained, "The buildings collect rainwater for this and other uses and every time you flush your new water-free toilets, a plant smiles." They watched as Alicia chatted with old Betty Woodworth who supplemented her retirement by putting her green thumb to good use for the neighborhood. Alicia picked a quart of strawberries from a cold frame before descending back into their home for a leisurely breakfast with the family.
Ebon figured it must be about five years into the future, because Emily was wearing earrings and Willy, now insisting on being called Bill, was wearing a whisker.
Alicia addressed her husband at the table. "Honey, I'll be here all morning, but I'm going to have lunch with Evelyn and Chris at noon. We thought we'd meet at Brottard Station where the Yellow and Blue line cross, figured that was the closest node to all of us. We wanted to check out the shops and I hear they've got a new Italian restaurant opening up. I have a business meeting there in one of their rental conference rooms and then I'm going to catch the tube to Emily's class. It's my day to volunteer. But I should be home by 3:30 or 4:00. If I'm not here when you get home, I'm just going on a walk around the lake."
"What lake?" Ebon asked the Ghost. "There's no lake around here."
"She's referring to the waste treatment facility. It's gorgeous, geese sashaying through the water, street vendors, and the..."
Ebon wasn't in the mood for her Chamber of Commerce commercial and cut her off. "All you ghosts take me places that I don't get. I thought you were the Ghosts of Corporate Whatever, so what are we doing at my house, anyway?"
"That is the point, Ebon. The point of it all is to have a life." Since his expression didn't change, she added, "But don't worry, I'll get you to work."
When Ebon turned back to look at the breakfast table he found himself instead seated behind a grayer version of himself in the car as they backed out of the driveway. The clock on the dash said 7:45. "He'll never make it to work on time."
The Ghost just nodded knowingly but he wasn't sure whether she did it to agree or disagree. "Why doesn't he pass the bus?" he fussed.
"The buses control the stop lights. Think of it like following an ambulance."
In a few minutes, they merged onto the freeway, going 60 miles an hour. And all Ebon could hear was the wind rushing by. "It's like being in a glider, hardly any road noise. And I don't hear an engine at all."
"It's a hypercar. Runs on fuel cells. Passes water vapor out the tail pipe instead of greenhouse gases."
Ebon twisted to look out the rear window. "But where's all the traffic?"
"Oh, most people telecommute for part of the week. They get a lot more done that way. They can meet via VRC (that's virtual reality conference) with anyone in the world...only difference is you can't shake their hand, but they're working on that right now. Equipment can be run and monitored remotely. No more using people like machines the way your dad worked. When people need to get together in person, their computers identify the closest mass transit node, usually only 10-15 minutes away, and they rent a conference room at the station. The Brottard one your wife is going to looks a lot like a European plaza. Families still have two cars but most people prefer to leave at least one at home hooked up to the grid so that the power company owes them money at the end of the month instead of vice versa."
At a few minutes before 8:00, they arrived at an office building Ebon didn't recognize. "Your company was doing so well, you moved into this office building," the Ghost explained. Ebon couldn't believe it. The entrance was an atrium filled with plants, chirping birds and a trickling brook that wound through the offices. Someone was picking a banana off a tree. "The experts discovered that putting people in a natural surrounding increased productivity and creativity by several percentage points." A light breeze ruffled her caftan. "Everyone has individual control over the natural light and fresh air too. "
They followed the older Ebon into a room furnished like a living room as he greeted the employees. "Are Sao Paulo, Bern and Beijing on-line?" he asked. Kim, not looking any older except for reading glasses, nodded, handed everyone a pair of goggles and pressed a button on the coffee table. Instantly, five more people were present in the room. The next best thing to being there, thought Peter, grateful for having spent yesterday afternoon in a kayak with his son instead of in the air.
"Thank you for coming," Ebon said. "As you all know, we are planning to help you all launch a new line of toys." A holographic screen appeared in the room, listing Ebon's key points, readable from all directions. "We were the first to phase out all persistent toxic chemicals and use only plant-based plastics. But now the other toy manufacturers are following suit.
"So our new products must also achieve these criteria...." Ebon pointed to each line on the screen. "It must be able to be manufactured within 1000 miles of the original customer base to reduce transportation. Production must be zero waste meaning any waste streams must be recycled back into production, sold as a raw material to a nearby facility, or resold through our distribution system to one of our other suppliers. The plants must run on solar energy or other renewables. The toys must be durable enough to be resold three times in our Hand-Me-Down Distribution System. And once it is worn out, it must be designed for disassembly so that everything, and I mean everything, must be reusable, recyclable or compostable. And, of course, the toy must be a hoot to play with." Everyone in the room nodded. Maria thought, Now that's something I can finally be proud of!
Kim jumped in. "Our trade-mark is 4-Local: toys for local kids, made in their own communities, employing local labor, using local materials. Siphoning off resources from developing countries into the industrial world was 20th Century. Now we want to build sustainable economies and be able to thrill children everywhere." Everyone burst into applause.
*******
There was a rude, quick bee-bee-bee-beep, bee-bee-bee-beep and Ebon woke with a jolt. It was 4:45. He almost thought he heard a woman say, "Now it's up to y'all" but shook it off. He only had one hour to get to the airport.