A massive oil rig was to be placed thirty-three miles off the island of San Clemente. The US government would foot the bill for it and in a great public-private partnership with Chevron they would begin mining the field, if they could strike oil. But then the environmentalists of California got involved and protested against the rig, which, they said, would be a great risk to marine wildlife in Southern California, not to mention how much a spill would affect their beautiful coastline. The project was delayed as the senators and the president tried to salvage the situation from the Hollywood celebrities and the Silicon Valley billionaires. In the end it was one of those same Silicon Valley billionaires who saved the project. He proposed that the drilling platform be a completely self-reliant city. The place would be a testing ground for the technology that could be used to rebuild all cities if global warming wiped them out. Most people in the media, and consequently across the general public, suddenly thought the project was one of the greatest ever devised by any member of the human race.
