Chapter 2

So many possibilities. Where were the Austin’s in ... oh ... say... 1100 AD? Or, maybe... 1100BC? How about Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand years ago?

The Road to Homo Sapiens, is an illustration that presents 25 million years of human evolution. TIME LIFE commissioned the illustration in 1965 for Early Man, a coffee table magazine. 1950/1970 was a period for that kind of publication ... pseudo intelligence. Something to impress folks of like education, affluence and influence. Thirty something ... college educated and in debt to their brows ... suburbanites. They are neighbors ... because they want their children to marry into like families.

Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand years ago, (315,000 yo) plus or minus a few thousand, the Austin’s progenitors were in incubators. The word incubator doesn’t fit ... not really ... Stasis Chamber? Maybe. Resident in the mind of a Super Artificial Intelligence? Yeah ... that’s more like it.

Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand is an important number. Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand years ago is when homo sapiens appeared as a worldwide species.

Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand is when the object the Super Artificial Intelligence was aboard passed through the general vicinity of the nondescript nearby satellite of an nondescript ongoing nuclear reaction.

(Nondescript: never before seen by intelligence intelligent enough to know that particular spatial object had never been seen and named and recorded it.)

The Super Artificial Intelligence thought the resident thought was ready. The thought was pushed to the blue green satellite.

“This should be fun. If it doesn’t pan out ... the nuclear reaction will eventually wear out and that will be that.”

Three Hundred Fifteen Thousand years ago ... the thought ripped through the satellite ... the change had begun.

Some inhabitants were exposed to the thought. Others were sheltering out of the ... rain ... heat ... cold ... wind ... storm. For those out of shelter the thought did just that ... promoted thought ... a 680 cc brain expanded to 690. Not much ... but it set in motion a growth ... that however slow ... made Cradle 29 just a bit different.

Eventually ... she would grow faster ... just a little. Smarter ... not much. More than average.

At first glance, she was just another pretty girl. There must be fifty thousand pretty girls in line for tickets. Why did she keep drawing his eye?

When the dates for their third World Tour Concert were set there was an uproar ... single tickets only ... no scalpers ... no bulk buys ... no phone orders, radio contests or complimentary giveaways ... must be present to purchase. And the price was a third of the Second Tour. No Major venues either ... no London, Paris, Moscow ... if the city had more than a million people ... they weren’t playing there.

How did they do it? Simple ... their contract ran out and they refused to sign another. No agent getting 30 percent ... no recording company getting 51 percent of each disc. No huge expense for special effects. The music would be enough. It had taken six years of servitude to men in suits.

The entire band agreed ... without the bass player they would have been just another garage band.

They had advertised in the university scandal sheet:

The Band National Toads is looking for
A singer.
A Bass Player
A Poet
Auditions
MAY 10 1966
SUB RM 301.

It was a disaster. Two Hundred students showed up.

He came with a friend who was trying out for singer.

“Oh Hell, Dave. You’ve got to come. I need someone on my side.”

“Bill ... you sing for shit.”

“Yeah, but they’re looking for something different.”

“You are that ... for sure. What are you going to ... and I use the term loosely ... sing.”

“I thought I’d sing the ones you been singing.”

Oh Shit!

“Get in the car, Dave,” Bill said.

Sure.

Sigh