"Which brings us to oil," Cid said with a grin.
"Oil? That useless goop?"
To Barret, who worked in coal mines, the mention of oil was a surprise. All it was ever good for was burning in lamps.
"It's only been useless since mako came along. Truth is, oil was supposed to usher in a new era. We even had us some respectable technology to produce different fuels from oil. But once mako showed up, the technology was carried over to mako applications. And so oil had up an' vanished from history."
But Cid continued, explaining how he and his team had pulled out old records and located an oil field. Luckily, it wasn't too far from Rocket Town. On site, they'd found facilities to drill for oil and refine it into gasoline—half-collapsed, maybe, but there nonetheless. Cid and his companions had restored the facilities to an operational status. But gasoline didn't yield enough power.
They needed a more potent fuel. They had persisted in efforts to that end, and at last prospects for making jet fuel were looking bright. In tandem with that, work was underway to revamp the engines to run on the new fuel. But that work wasn't going quite as well.
"When did you fools ever find the time—"
"After it happened. Right after."
"Well, damn, Cid! That's incredible!"
"Like I said, we had the records. There ain't a speck a' new technology. All we did was bring the old tech back to life."
"Whatever you did, this means the end of coal, don't it?" Barret, having grown up in a coal miners' town, had mixed feelings about that.
"Times change. We just happened to be born on the cusp, that's all."
"Can't say I feel one way or the other about that."
"Then how 'bout you feel lucky? The comin' age is our chance to try all kinds a' things."
"True that."
"The only unlucky part is..."
"What?"
"With so much to try, we're all gonna run outta time. Ain't that a bitch?"
Cid and Barret set out east from Rocket Town. They walked a full day before reaching their destination. Shera came out to greet the two of them.
"Yo!" called Barret, who was happy to see her again after so long. Shera looked like she hadn't changed at all. But Barret noticed the stigma on her hand right away. She must've sensed it, as she made an attempt to hide her hand beneath her coat.
"Well, does it hurt?" Cid asked gruffly. "Don't push yourself."
We're all gonna run out of time, thought Barret.
Cid looked up at the oil derrick. It showed no signs of operation.
"Why the hell isn't this—"
Shera quickly explained the situation.
"We shut it down this morning. We might have gotten more, but output had dropped all the way to ten percent of when we started drilling, so we had to shut down the pump."
Cid slumped his shoulders and muttered, "The first day it came spurtin' out even without the damned pump. We turned jet black from all the oil rainin' down. Laughed our asses off."
Barret let out a great sigh.
"The planet ain't gonna give us nothin' else, huh."
"That's not true," Shera said in a firm voice. "The planet has all kinds of things in store for us. Like coal, oil, mako, you might say. There might even be things we don't know about yet. We'll be okay, as long as we don't misuse them. As long as we don't get greedy. If we're resourceful. The planet must be concerned about us. After all, the Lifestream that courses through it was once the lives of people who lived right here where we stand."