Golden Years in the Paleozoic

Welcome, welcome!  I hope the Hylonomus eggs at breakfast were satisfactory?  From that little lizard, we’ll get both the chicken and the egg in 300 million years.  Guess we solved that old mystery, eh?   The flavor is excellent — a bit like a turtle egg, I’m told — and they have very little cholesterol.

So, thank you for coming to our little presentation.  People sometimes get leery — <wink> — thinking we’ll pressure you to commit.  Not at all!  Even though this meeting is required for your free three-day vacation, it doesn’t have to be a chore.  We just want to show you some facts about life here in Avalon Communities.  Facts give you options, and options are always good, right?

Speaking of options, be sure to try the Carbonita shrimp salad with fern and horsetail at lunch.  You can’t get more organic than that — fertilizers and pesticides are still two eras away.  There’s lots of vitamin E, and we can never have too much fiber, no matter our age.

Well, there it is.  Age.  Might as well come out and say it.  Your kids have been out of the house for a few years; you’ve had a good run in the stock market; the jobs are still fulfilling, but you know your career arcs are winding up.  The Big R is looming on the horizon.

Where should you retire?  Traditional destinations like Florida and Costa Rica are still popular, but do you really want to share the roads with twenty million other retirees? (Not to mention the risk of another housing bubble.)  Some tout the benefits of a low-gravity retirement on the Moon or Mars — it’s supposed to be easier to move around and more forgiving on arthritic joints — but do you want to spend your golden years under a glass dome breathing recycled air?

What you really want, no, deserve, is Eden.

The fact is, folks, the Earth of our time is too polluted and crowded, and no amount of filtering and scrubbing will ever clean it up.

But the Carboniferous Period, 350 million years before civilization, is the perfect time to retire.  Here, there’s no smog, no noise, no congestion, no traffic, no chemicals in the air and water.  At night you can see a hundred times more stars than in the streets of LA and New York.  Except for a few thousand other retirees just like yourselves in Avalon homes, you have the whole pristine planet — free from the teeming billions of our age.

Some day, after the continents have drifted into their familiar places, the view outside that window will be called Massachusetts.  But right now it’s just a beautiful beach next to the Paleotethys Ocean, a sort of Paleozoic Mediterranean.  The climate is tropical and the waves are gentle, great for sailing.  You’ll love snorkeling and fishing too: such fantastic corals, ammonites, and armored fishes lost to time.

Not into the water?  No problem.  We have miles of hiking and riding trails into the misty Paleozoic jungle behind us.  One day, these dense coastal swamp forests will turn into the world’s supply of coal, but right now they are your garden to stroll through. Would you believe that these huge trees are related to the insignificant horsetail and club moss?  And the ferns, so many ferns, each with a fragrance as unique as a flower — that really surprised the botanists when they first came here.  The amphibians and reptiles slithering and skittering through the jungle are friendly and curious, and will come to you if you bring them some dried fish pellets.  Visiting grandchildren love to pet them.

Oh, no, we have no scary dinosaurs.  They won’t show up for another hundred millions years!

Ah, I know that look.  You’re still unconvinced.  Sure, you think, this is a nice place to vacation.  But why stay?

Have you noticed anything different about the air here?  How does it feel to breathe?

You feel it, don’t you?  The air tastes better.  You feel more energetic, more awake.  You haven’t felt this good since you were twenty.

Here’s the real secret.  The air here in the Carboniferous contains 75% more oxygen than the air of our time.  When we get older, we lose alveoli and capillaries in our lungs.  Our chests become less flexible and capacious. Less oxygen diffuses into our blood from the air sacs in the lungs.  As we age, we slowly suffocate.

This hyperoxic air is the Fountain of Youth.  It allows us to breathe again freely, to enjoy exertion and activity that we thought were long behind us.  You’ll live longer and get to do it independently too.  Look at me.  I hike, I fish, I run the welcome center.  Would you believe that I’m a hundred and one?

Interested in touring some model units?  Good!  Before we go out, we’ll have to put some bug spray on you.  It’s extra strength.  Might sting a little.

Well, the truth is, we do have a bit of a problem here with insects and other arthropods.  These critters don’t pump oxygen through the blood like we do.  Instead, oxygen must diffuse passively into their bodies through little holes and narrow tubes.  So if they get too big, they’ll literally suffocate.  But with more oxygen in the air during the Carboniferous, they can grow much bigger.  The dragonflies here are about a meter across, and the millipedes more than six feet long.  They usually don’t bite unless provoked, but the sight is a bit shocking until you get used to them.

Hello?  Hello?  Oh dear.  Nurse!  Another couple’s fainted.