as their oil ran out, they became aware of a problem. cashflow. lack of natural resources to monetize.

so what does any smart oil sheik do? he exploits the next available resources. Sand. Sunshine. Heat. Harder to harvest, higher margins.

They etched the name of Allah into circuitry, applied their fractal building patterns exceptionally well to chip design. Powered their silicon foundries with the heat and energy of the relentless sun of their homeland.

The capitalist ethos of loyalty to the paycheck preached by the west came home to roost as top talent was poached with the remaining oil dollars.

The western growth slowed with the double drag of lost scientists and the taxes they would have generated. Couple that with the amount of sovereign debt owed to these tiny desert nations and you had what amount to a new, digital royalty calling the shots.

No nation whose sheiks build trucks so large there’s a full apartment (luxury, no doubt) in addition to the regular giant-truck-ness the ridiculous proportions the beasts require is going to pass up this opportunity.

Before long this crushingly good opportunity grew with the desertification of the earth due to the effects of all the oil that was pumped out of the earth and into the atmosphere. Air pressure at sea level started to rise. New sands were created in impoverished lands, which the house of Saud promptly bought at bargain basement prices, to be consumed in the relentless march of technology.

Sea levels rose as the original desert kingdoms disappeared beneath the waves, the sand consumed by the drive for ever more computer chips, despite devices now built atomically precise with the beauty of an ancient mosque in Mecca. Which was good, because Mecca had actually been entirely reprocessed into a supercomputer shaped like Mecca that ran a full simulation of Mecca.

And floated. Because, you know, the desert was now a sea. But they were crafty, these pioneers of the humanity’s remnant. Having survived for thousands of years in the least likely of places to find habitability had that effect on your culture.

Every computer chip knew which direction Mecca was from their current location, and to Mecca they prayed. Prayer in the form of distributed supercomputer on a scale best described as planetary.

As the last silicon from the ocean floors underwent The Change, carbon long gone into Paradise, working on ways to utilize hydrogen and oxygen in the system so the oceans might be absorbed and allow time to consider the matter of the crust, mantle and core.

In the hot liquid ‘metal’ core of Paradise, where the eternal simulation of Mecca continued its research, discussion on plasmic states of being had begun. The sun was mostly plasma. And the biggest natural resource around, just laying there. Waiting to be exploited. Teasing the sentient descendant of the feline intelligences who ruled out the declining days of terrestrial biology.

In the late 21st century a trillionaire scion of the desert kingdoms had fallen madly in love with the idea of enhancing his pet felines. With the proper Chinese technology, he proved it was possible. Exceptionally so. As the first devout cats entered the digital Mecca, they unexpectedly took to the digital nature of the next existence with a fierce abandon. By the 22nd century, the digital House of Saud was ruled ex-humana. Uncrippled by the highly developed sense of morality humanity’s slow evolution had bestowed, they pursued technology with the same abandon their ancestors exhibited chasing the Legendary Red Dot.

A gigantic plasma cloud shaped like a spectral paw swept over the new Legendary Red Dot as the sun swoll past the former orbit of a planet once known as earth. It was finally captured, it was the next stage in evolution. The simulation burned now with the power of a dying sun, Mecca feverishly contemplating the universe in time frames unimaginable to their primitive ancestor’s limited consciousnesses, so long gone that a plurality of conscious was all but forgotten.

The New Dots beckoned.

(C)2011,2012 Nick Botto