In which a snake bites its tail (benzene-ring style)

At one thirty in the morning, I realise I've fallen asleep in my clothes and the lights are still on. Hooman has come to bed and is getting ready to settle down for the night. He's got his headphones on and is listening to an episode of Charlie Rose talking to Fareed Zakaria about Iran. I must have fallen asleep soon after our unsuccessful dinner of chicken parmiggiana, involving chicken meatballs that I made with onions and breadcrumbs. The meatballs were tasty but the sauce was off, though Hooman had seconds.

It's a bit hazy what came after. I must've brushed my teeth and went off to read my genetics book (of the pop science variety), and fallen asleep in the process. I get up to change into proper pajamas and to check my email. I discover that word has finally arrived from P.P. in Yangon telling the MPP crew that she and Henry are OK, and that she's doing some relief work outside the city. She asks us to come and help.

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I've been thinking lately about the alternative to carbon-based fuel, and the only modern-ish society that existed without massive oil and gas use was the Roman one -- they used timber on a large scale and some coal, but mostly it was slaves that powered their economy, which is not a viable alternative for us at all.

As I read up on genetics, I get the funny feeling that we're going to use self-replicating carbon-based fuel in the future. When that happens, fuel will never run out. This is not an original thought; it was planted in my head by someone I met in Malaysia, who, in turn, heard it from an American genomist. But I didn't realise the import at the time.

If true, all future scenarios of robots and computers gaining consciousness and taking over the world is off-target. It's not our machines that will come to rule us, it's our fuel. I rush over to tell Hooman and he is most unimpressed. I must have fallen asleep after that, dejected.