Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Before we get into a morass of negativity, I want to emphasize the positives: I had a great time in Seattle last week. To celebrate a friend’s graduation from a nursing program, Ariele and I drove up some 200 miles in our Chevy Bolt, and four days later returned home in safety and smiles. It was the longest journey I’d ever made behind the wheel of an electric car, and while keeping its battery charged was not quite as simple as pulling into a gas station and pumping a tank full of liquid hydrocarbons, the infrastructure to charge up was sufficiently present and the required electricity was reasonably priced.

It should also be said, we didn’t need to make this trip by car. If it weren’t for the fact that I was planning to take a relatively large piece of computer equipment off my friend’s hands, I would have been inclined to ride a train instead. There is a perfectly good railroad between there and here, and I like to be conveyed in comfort as much as any man. But we made the trip by car, and of necessity we learned the ins and outs of recharging away from the house—including the amount of time it takes to recharge a nearly empty battery in the wild. At the approximate half-way point of our journey, and once again upon reaching our destination, we found that what would once have been a ten-minutes-or-less pit stop was now an enforced hiatus of one to two hours, depending on the desired percentage to be attained.

This brings us, dear friends, to the aforementioned morass. As I fumbled with my cell phone in the rain, downloading via QR code the app by which I would pay for the electricity (because the screen on the credit card reader was scratched and unreadable, and there was nobody to take my cash), I was confronted with a terrible realization: under such conditions, how was I supposed to go on the lam?

Time was, a criminal man of action could pull off a daring caper, or perhaps a heist, before speeding off for incredible distances on the great American highway. If he should manage to evade the initial police pursuit, he could remain one step ahead of the authorities by making quick stops and paying in cash for fuel and other necessities, until he reached whatever safe house he aimed for. Fresh off a big score or a prison break, a sufficiently cunning rogue could move across the country like a ghost, leaving nothing but broken hearts and legends in his wake.

But a vagabond with a vehicle tied to a stationary battery for over an hour, having just alerted God and Uncle Sam to his precise location by scanning a QR code with his cell phone? It doesn’t matter how stealthy that silent motor is: they’re going to catch that guy! With the wider adoption of electric vehicles, we may gain some toehold of an advantage in the ongoing struggle against climate change, but when the internal combustion engine has faded from the scene, so too shall fade the credibility of cinematic depictions of the motorized flight of outlaws and fugitives in action films, thrillers, and neo-westerns.

What alternatives would there be, should conventional automobiles disappear into obsolescence? Unless the speed of a full battery recharge should significantly decline through the advent of marvelous technical improvements, your best bet for a rapid getaway may lie in that staple of the paleo-western genre: the horse, a strong animal which moves pretty darn quick, and can subsist on local vegetation. Alas, within most settings in this tragic century, a sturdy mustang or palomino may be even more conspicuous than a car, and they typically come with much less storage space.

Now, I am loathe to predict the future under an increasingly totalitarian government, but I will admit that I do not at this time have any particular need to go on the lam. I pay my taxes, I have few debts and fewer enemies, and I spend most of my free time engaged in harmless, nerdish pursuits at home. Perhaps I have not lost much in my transition to greener personal transit after all. Perhaps what has truly been lost is only a fantasy, one more instance of a dream of liberty without consequence, of the type that has led America down a tragically self-destructive path; but goodness, what a dream!

There is no doubt, of course, but that the crooks and highwaymen of this great nation will adapt to whatever changes may overtake our systems of transportation and commerce, discovering endless variations in the timeless art of outrunning and outfoxing the law on the borders of civilization. They will overcome the difficulties of this technological moment in the interest of those great American ideals of freedom and treasure. I wish them… well, I don’t wish them well, exactly. What I do is applaud their ingenuity, for its own sake and insofar as it may be to the advantage of the freedom fighters who will strive hardest against the authoritarian yoke, as well as a mercy for screenwriters who will find their cherished mythology of the new-old-west has a brand new lease on life.

In the meantime, there is little doubt that the conventional gasoline-powered car remains the personal vehicle of choice for America’s bank robbers, human traffickers, and domestic terrorists. As for members of those classes who are still interested in reducing their carbon footprint, perhaps the humble train deserves a fresh look?

(For the purpose of covering my ass, I wish to state that the above post was written in jest, and not as an endorsement of criminality, insurrection, or other anti-social behaviors. You would think it would go without saying, but one must consider the times when making such jokes.)