The Ghosts of a Chilling Future Come at Night

I had that dream again. You know the one. The whole city is in darkness except for patches of light on the hilltops where the wealthy live. They’re the only ones who can afford power.

It’s sometime in the future. Through a series of governmental compromises and restructurings and tricky things little people don’t understand, the cost of electricity has soared beyond the reach of the multitudes.

When God said, “Let there be light,” he wasn’t thinking of deregulation, energy shortages and competitive costs. So he just made half of the day light and left the rest to us.

Confronted with the secular problem, the governor blinked and said no one had told him the prices had gone up. His lights were on, and he assumed everyone else’s were too. “Oh, me,” he said unhappily, “oh, my.” And he did nothing, or at least very little, and whatever he did was wrong.

Later he was heard to whisper, “Let them use candles.”

The darkness deepens in my dream, and that isn’t all. Oil companies, encouraged by the apathy of the people, begin raising gasoline prices beyond the range of the working person. So everyone stops using cars. Public transportation, inadequate in reality, remains inadequate in my dark vision of the future. So the people stay home.

Families retreat to their cold, dark houses, eventually forming tribes for security. Food is scarce but, thanks to the new god Nra, guns are plentiful to protect against food thieves . . . or to help a guy become a food thief when necessary, and to kill and eat the last of the remaining animals that prowl the cheerless night.

As time passes, houses fall into disrepair; their wood is salvaged for fire, and the people, one by one--dressed in skins and furs--find shelter in caves. And the dream ends as history begins anew. . . .

*

I awoke in a sweat, thrashing in emotional anguish. It awakened my wife. “I’m getting a little tired of the kinetic nature of your erotic dreams,” she said with no small degree of annoyance.

“It wasn’t erotic,” I said, my voice trembling. “It was a nightmare about . . . “ (pause) “power rate increases.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You poor dear.”

I went downstairs and opened the third drawer on the left side of the second cabinet in the hall. It’s where we keep our bills. There on top was the monthly statement from Southern California Edison/Commonwealth Energy Corp. Commonwealth provides the power, Edison gets it to our house. I studied the bill by flashlight. It was for $333.53.

This was reality. I slumped in a chair. The bill fluttered to the floor. We live in an all-electric house. Both Edison and Commonwealth warn us that our bill will increase by at least 40% a month. The $333.53 will become $467.

Don’t tell us to conserve. By doing so over the years, we have reduced our monthly bill from about $800 to where it is. We have energy-saving everything. While I am not exactly on a minimum-wage scale, neither am I the CEO of Walt Disney Productions. If we conserve any more, we’ll be cooking in the fireplace by the light of a camping lantern.

Once, in the late 1960s, power companies were chanting the benefits of all-electric houses. They were called Gold Medallion Homes. “Live Better Electrically,” they sang. So about 100,000 of the Golden homes were built in L.A.

The energy companies smiled. And the rates began to climb, even back then. And they’re climbing again.

When the PUC approved an increase of up to 46%, Gov. Gray Davis gasped and said he hadn’t known they were going to do that! He’d been busy raising money for his reelection campaign, you see, and things just got away from him. Bummer.

And now that he’s on top of the situation again, we learn that a pending deal between Davis and Edison would commit us to putting the company back on its feet at the expense of another rate increase--in addition to the record hike we just got.

It’s not a done deal, we’re told, but five will get you 10 that however it comes out, we’re the ones who’ll get screwed again. Gang-banged is more like it.

*

So I keep having the dream that eventually greed and stupidity will drive us back to a Stone Age existence, but maybe that won’t be so bad after all, considering where progress has led us.

At least there won’t be bottom-line companies to cheat us blind, and politicians whose only goal is self-perpetuation, and medical facilities to gouge the sick, and governments to make war, and mighty industries to pollute the sky and the sea and the rivers that flow by our door.

Maybe by going backward, we can go forward again--starting all over and doing it right next time. I returned to bed thinking about this and fell asleep dreaming that everyone was smart and everyone was honest and what a wonderful shiny new world it was.

And I smiled.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He is at al.martinez@latimes.com.