Apple Overturns Auto Industry

Apple Overturns Auto Industry

Rob Graves

Earlier this month Apple CEO Tim Cook surprised everyone with his unveiling of Apple’s latest innovation, the iCar. With an unexpected entry into the auto industry, the battery-powered wheel-less vehicle purportedly hovers several dozen feet above any terrain and travels at speeds up to 300 MPH. But even with that, the truly shocking news comes in the form of its price tag - just $599. “We feel it’s important for everyone to have access to the iCar,” said Cook, “so we worked very hard to make it affordable to just about anyone.”

While the response from consumers is overwhelmingly positive, many remain skeptical. Dept. of Transportation director Richard Bagley points out, “While this is an interesting development, let’s remember it’s just one facet of personal transportation. Owners of the iCar will still need to use the existing road system and follow the same rules as everyone else.” When asked about the effect the iCar would have on the auto and oil industries, Bagley says “We’re confident a large number of consumers will continue to purchase conventional automobiles, and view the iCar as just another passing fad. Folks will not want to give up the time-honored tradition of the leisurely Sunday drive, or the much higher quality of a fully-priced car.”

Others aren’t so sure this is the case. Gerald Freebaugh, CEO of the new start-up MapSter says, “With the iCar I can drive from Boston to New York in about forty-five minutes. Why would I take the highway?” MapSter, one of several new companies that have sprung up seemingly overnight with the advent of the iCar, will calculate a safe, nearly straight-shot route between any two locations, avoiding any major obstructions. Federal lawmakers have attempted to shut down the site, but Freebaugh says “They can’t shut us down, because we’re not forcing anyone to do anything. We’re simply here, providing information.”

Lawmakers aren’t the only opponent MapSter is facing. Yesterday the city of Danbury, Connecticut filed a civil suit against the company, citing Freebaugh’s Boston to New York example above. Rita Colon, head of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, states “MapSter is providing a simple and easy way for travelers to bypass our city completely. We depend on the tourism that US 84 brings through Danbury. These iCar users driving illegally might never even know our city exists now. We’ve always had the highway to bring them through.” When asked to comment on the suit, Freebaugh replied “Maybe now cities will have to offer tourists something worthwhile to bring them in. Would you really want to go through Danbury if you didn’t have to?” This morning the city amended their civil suit, adding the names of over fifty iCar drivers believed to have bypassed Danbury in recent drives. The suit demands that they are fined an undisclosed amount, recouping “gas, souvenirs and food-goods” the iCar drivers might have otherwise paid to the city’s businesses. 

The news of the iCar could however be most devastating to the auto and oil industries. Jerry Stapleton, president of the United Auto Union laments “Apple has asked us to make a Faustian deal and abandon the American tradition of building cars the way we always have in this country, something we adamantly refuse to do. Furthermore, we will continue pushing lawmakers to crack down on those operating their iCars illegally by not using the established highway system. We are advocating a special division of law enforcement to police these individuals. Right now there is no way for traditional methods to track them.” When asked to justify the use of taxpayer dollars for such a force, Stapleton answered “There are countless jobs at stake, not just in the auto industry, but in several other industries as well. The construction industry will be decimated without roads to build and maintain. The auto industry will collapse, unable to compete with the $599 price tag of the iCar. And that doesn’t even bring the oil industry into the equation.” Freebaugh, who has seemingly become an unofficial spokesperson for the iCar revolution, answers “At one time horse and buggy advocates had a hard pill to swallow too. After that, it was the guys that built ocean liners and railroads that that had to pick up and move on. It’s just the way it works. And it’s not like the auto manufacturers can’t join the fray and make a competing product. They just refuse to do it, because they are stuck in their old model and can’t give up that control." 

Freebaugh added, “The problem is we’ve got this great new way of doing things, but they are trying to retro-fit that into an outdated system. Automakers are mad because we don’t have to buy their overpriced cars anymore. Construction companies are mad because we don’t have to use their roads anymore. And tourism boards are mad because we aren’t being forced to drive through their [expletive] cities anymore.” When asked what message he has for the various Chambers of Commerce suing him, Freebaugh responded, “They should first realize that it’s a level playing field now. We can all go to any city we want, by any route, no matter how far it is off the beaten path. And they need to face the reality that they are going to have to come to the table with more to offer than just ‘this is the way it has always been.’ Give us a reason to go to your city and we'll go.”

So what does Apple have to say about all this conflict? Alison Remner of Apple’s public relations says “While some will be resistant to the idea, we expect many innovative cities and states to begin planning and structuring around what the iCar has to offer. These will be the cities that do the best in the coming transition from traditional automobiles, those that accommodate the inevitable changes.”

Sandra Kingsly, a Michigan homemaker, is attempting to organize an online forum for iCar owners, where consumers can express their concerns. “Right now we need an advocate for logic. The overall problem is that now we’ve got flying cars, but we’ve still got all these roads to deal with. Imagine if we’d started out with flying cars instead of the traditional car. There’s no way we would’ve ended up with our current highway system – it would be something very different. How do we reconcile that? Lawmakers need to realize that everything has changed now. It's a new game, with new pieces to play with. The existing roads are completely irrelevant, yet they are trying to fit them into the new plan. The fact is they have no part in the new plan, any more than postage stamps have a place in email." 

Apple’s Remner added “Once more communities embrace the idea of the flying car, we will actually see a very positive economic shift. The iCar is priced to be affordable to anyone who would be driving a vehicle, and in fact the demographic reaches out much farther than that. We have opened the door to many potential consumers that never could have afforded a traditional automobile. What the auto industry hasn’t yet realized is that by supporting this shift in transportation, the number of vehicles sold will increase tenfold. While they won’t be selling any more of their higher-priced cars, we believe they will still see much higher profit margins from the sheer volume of sales, given the low price point.”

When asked what aspects are specifically limiting auto makers from making this transition, Remner answered "It's the dealers actually. Right now there is legislation in place forcing the auto makers to pay the dealers a fixed amount for every car they sell. The problem is that the low price of the iCar - and any similar vehicle Toyota or Ford might produce - doesn't allow the manufacturer to pay this fee to the dealer. So they are stuck." Is there a solution? "Not until they do away with this fixed fee," Remner says."If they would simply offer a percentage of sales profits to the dealers rather than the fixed fee, you'd see auto dealers - and manufacturers - making money hand over fist due to vastly increased sales. But until that happens, the auto industry isn't going anywhere but down." 

At this early writing the implications of the iCar remain to be seen. “We’re still in the Wild West here,” Freebaugh concludes. “Eventually there will need to be some regulations and that’s fine. But it will have to look very different than it does now if it’s going to work. You just can’t expect people to go back to using roads. Not when they all have flying cars.”

Walk-Through

Well it seems many of you enjoyed the backstage pass I gave you into the world of some of my artists. I am truly thankful for each and every follower, so I'm happy to do it! I'm going to keep this special "hidden" page for future promotions and treats. There won't always be such a puzzle to solve, this was really just because I know many of you from the  Innocence & Instinct days, and this little scavenger hunt was merely a much more humble nod to that.

In case you'd like to just get to to the page where all the extras are, without any of the thinking, here you go.

Step 1: Go to www.robgraves.com. Congratulations! You're already here. Sort of. You must click "home" and go to my front page.

Step 2: Find the gate. As my site is based upon Dante's vision of Hell, of course I am talking about the gate of Hell. To Virgil this was identified with a simple sign, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Find this, and you find the gate. There are a couple ways to do this, but the simplest method is to select the entire page, and you will see the quote, which is a link, or gate, if you will.

Step 3: Gaze into the abyss. A nod to Nietzsche. This all black page you are looking at contains a single visible quote from Emit Flesti (and who is Emit Flesti? No one asked? Odd. This is an interesting issue that may come up again). His point is valid though. Even at high noon, the starts are all around us, just invisible. Much like this page. Filled with invisible quotes. To see them, and ultimately the next step, select the entire page...the quotes become visible. As does the clickable entrance.

Step 4: Click the entrance. You are presented with a simple statement, "Enter Follower, in the lowly tongue of Virgil." This is a straightforward riddle. Simply enter "follower," but in the way Virgil would've. The Inferno was written in Italian, which was considered a common peasant language, and one not suitable for such a work (the church greatly frowned upon the fact that the masterpiece was not composed in Latin). Thus, the lowly language of Virgil would be Italian. Right beneath the password box is a conveniently placed quote referring to Virgil, and this should point you in the right direction. Seguace della sacra Dei, was Virgil. To pass, so must you be. A follower of the gods. A quick trip to google would've revealed this. So by entering "seguace" you are granted entrance.

This little puzzle was just something for fun...like I said, I won't always do it to this extent. But from time to time, you will be given new passwords (or hints to find a password) and given "special" access to my music, or writing (maybe a link to an unpublished story in the future? who knows). I'll probably base these promotions around 1,000 increments of followers, so if you enjoyed this, you know what to do!

Thank you fans, for all that you do for me, and for supporting me.

RG

The Island

This story was recently published in the April edition of Portland Monthly Magazine (http://www.portlandmonthly.com/portmag/2011/03/april-2011/), but they didn't post the full story online. So here it is..

The Island

Robert Graves

I was nine when I saw the island.

   Dad had promised us one last snowmobile trip before the final melt, which in the upper parts of Maine usually comes in March. We’d always get one or two dustings after that, sometimes as late as May, but nothing that would stick. Nickie was four that winter, only a few months before he got sick. He was wedged between Dad and me, his blonde locks exploding from beneath his hat.

   The three of us had been sitting motionless for almost a minute, breathing in gas fumes from the idling engine, staring across a field – a logging field, the kind of place that feels haunted with ghosts of fallen trees and men who must by now be long dead.

   It was the grandest thing I had ever seen, a field too big to manage in one eyeful. I looked everywhere and nowhere at once. The remains of the trees littered the field like shrapnel after a war. Black stumps peeked through the melting snow as frozen, hooded faces, the holes left by rotted knots their screaming mouths. There was a string of these stumps, arranging themselves as an archipelago across a white sea, and it led my eyes to the island, a small cluster of trees still standing amidst the surrounding ruins. Dad cut the engine and the sudden silence made everything in the field feel closer. I heard a hawk call from the direction of the island, then saw it rise and soar away from us.

   “How many acres you think this is, Cass? Five?” Dad asked.

   I said sure. I didn’t know. It would slowly crystallize over the years that what Dad meant was not five acres, but five hundred.

   “Dad?” I asked.

   “Yeah.”

   “Why didn’t they cut those trees?” I pointed to the island.

   “Beats me, Cass.” He stared at it a long while, maybe just noticing it for the first time. I looked too, trying to imagine why the logging men would cut this whole field, but leave only that small group in the middle. There were maybe a hundred trees, huddled tightly together as though it were the place they had gathered and made their final stand against the loggers and their axes.

   “Can we drive over there?”

   “You see those stumps Cass’? They’d eat this sled alive. You wanna walk back?”

   “No!” Nickie whined, squirming between us. Dad chuckled.

   “Don’t you worry Nick, I’m just teasing,” he said. “You and your sister aren’t walking anywhere.” I nudged Nickie and he looked back at me. I could barely see his eyes through the blonde mop of curls. His plump cheeks were the color of brick, his lips wet from constant licking. I made a face at him. I wanted to see the island and he was ruining it.

*

   Soon we stood before the island, dismounted next to the lifeless sled, our necks arched upward in strained unity. The trees were taller than they had seemed from farther away. The oddity of the island was even more apparent up close, this ancient group of misfit trees that had somehow survived the fate of the forest around them.

   I could see light through the other side of the island, just barely. “Stay close in here, alright?” Dad said. “Follow me.”

   He stepped into the island and Nickie followed, with me last. I peered behind me and had one final look into the never-ending field, and when I turned back I found myself in a forest. Everything was very much alive here, the crackling of twigs beneath our feet present and close, a stark contrast to the far echoes of hawks and engines rolling across the plain. Maybe the trees on the inside didn’t even know there had been a war just a few feet away from their border.

   Dad made his way through the claw-like branches, always turning to check on Nickie’s progress. After only about ten steps, Dad picked him up. Nickie looked back over his shoulder and stuck his tongue out at me, finally mustering the courage to return my gesture. He quickly turned and buried his face in Dad’s neck.

   “How long ago do you think the loggers were here?” I asked Dad as we continued our trek.

   “Oh…fifty years ago? Maybe more. Your Grampy Owen was a logger, you know.”

   “Did he cut these trees?”

   “Well, maybe I guess.” It was getting hard to understand him between his breaths. The thin, frigid air was winding him.

   The snow was shallower the deeper we transgressed. The branches above us were draped in a thin layer of ice that was once snow, forming a mob of white, icy fingers twitching in the breeze. Dad let Nickie slide down the front of him while he rested with his hands on his knees. I kept walking ahead and after a quick glance or two in either direction, Nickie decided it was okay to follow me. I reached back and took his hand.

            ~~~

   It starts in June with vomiting. At first we think Nickie has the flu. A week passes. And another. He is getting worse, more lethargic with each day. On the CT scan the tumor is almost two inches across a brain that is barely four inches wide. It takes just six months for the cancer to kill him, and I am once again an only child.

   I don’t cry. I’m sad, but I can’t. I don’t understand why. Mom turns into a vapid, empty shell. When she hugs me I am afraid she might crack into pieces. Dad is better than mom, but they buried a part of him with Nickie, I am sure of it. The part that used to laugh more when we watched a funny movie, the part that smiled even after the photo was taken; that part is missing. I watch him sometimes when he doesn’t know, and I look for that part, because I miss it.

            *

   At first it is easy to remember Nickie the way he was, before the chemotherapy and radiation took away his golden hair and plump cheeks. I remember him spread on my father’s chest while they napped together on the couch. This is how I see Nickie, at first.

   Soon I remember him in the hospital, bandaged after surgery. Then I see him thin and pale and bald. And when I try to think of him on the couch with Dad, it’s wrong. His round cheeks aren’t covered with ruddy splotches like they should be. His ringlets aren’t draping over his forehead in cascading blonde spirals. The image is polluted, my own thoughts and nightmares seeping in and distorting its colors and textures. When I see him sleeping in my father’s arms, he is sick and broken.

   I decide to protect that memory by only thinking of it quickly and carefully, like looking at a photograph in the rain – a quick glance, and I put it away

            *

   A year passes and I am eleven. Mom and Dad decide I should go to counseling. I don’t have a choice. I say okay.

   Nickie isn’t real to me now. I wonder sometimes if he had really existed. The pictures everywhere tell me that he did, but I don’t believe them. That is another girl’s brother in those pictures. Maybe they are just the pictures of strangers that come with the frame when you buy it.

   I tell this to the counselor. He assures me that Nickie was real, and that I am doing something called disassociating. He tells me I need to remember everything I can about Nickie and write it down. This will help me, he says.

   So I write, and I write more. Months pass. It must not be helping because the memories begin to feel like stories, and I can’t remember which parts really happened and which parts I am making up. The stories become shallow to me, uneventful. I write about a night at the movies. I write about a day we went snowmobiling. Nothing happens in the stories, we are simply there.

            *

   “Cass’?” It is my father, calling from the doorway. I have been scribbling in my notebook, drawing in the margins beside one of my stories where nothing is happening.

   “Yeah?” I answer.

   “You writing?”

   “Yeah.” He comes in and sits on the bed. I realize he’s been crying because his eyes are swollen and red. It was worse before, the crying. Sometimes he would slip in and out of it casually, like you would laughter in a conversation. He’s been better since Christmas, the second Christmas without Nickie. But my favorite part of him is still missing, still buried.

   “Your mom…your mom and me were talking. Remember that last trip we had on the sled? Couple years ago I guess? It was about this time of year wasn’t it.” It isn’t a question meant for me to answer. “I was thinking maybe we could go out again. You and me. Before the melt. I know we didn’t get to go out last year, with everything…” He pauses and swallows hard. “…with everything that was going on. We haven’t been out since…you know, since then. Since that last time. I thought maybe you’d like to go again. You and me.”

   I tell him yes. Yes I want to go, I want to go tomorrow morning because it’s a Saturday. He smiles at me and says sure. And I think I see it, the missing part, faint and small, a spark flashing in an abyss, but I see it. His smile is real, not just a costume put on for me.

   He gets up and hugs me into his side and for the first time since Nickie died I notice my father’s smell, not his cologne or shampoo, just his scent, the way every girl knows her father’s scent. “You’ve been so strong for us Cassie…your mom and me. You’ll never know.”

   I nod in silence, standing on the reticence that has been my only solid ground since Nickie left. I don’t mind him thinking I am strong. I don’t want him to know my dead brother is just a concept, something I knew had existed but didn’t believe in, the opposite of Santa Claus, or God.

   He squeezes my shoulder and leaves the room without any more words. I think about the snowmobile, the last time Nickie and I went. I think about all the last things Nickie and I did together. And it makes me think of what else Nickie and I would’ve done since he died.

   I begin writing and it’s unlike anything I’ve written before, because it’s about what Nickie didn’t do. I write about the girl he would’ve married, I write about whether he would pass his driver’s test on the first try, about what sports he would’ve been good at. I don’t know if it helps me or if it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. But it feels good to me, because it’s different. I finally stop, and get into bed.

            *

   When I wake my pillow is wet. I’ve been crying. My hair is clinging to my face in a tangled wet mass, pulling every direction. I don’t know if I am still crying, but I am shaking, trembling. For the first time since he died I remember Nickie. Truly remember him, and experience him. There was one memory I hadn’t found, but it found me. It found me in a dream.

   I sit up in bed, leaning back on my hands. My chest starts heaving, I can’t stop it. Fresh tears come. And I remember the island.

            ~~~

   “These bushes are thick!” Nickie said, more playfully than angrily. I tugged him along; he was having trouble marching through the crusted snow.

   “Well you should see it up here. The trees are even thicker-” I stopped mid-sentence and froze, for there was nothing else I could say or do when I saw it, the reason the loggers had left the trees here.

            *

   “Why did you stop?” Nickie asked, bumping into me. I didn’t answer, just waited for him to see. I saw his head swivel, taking it in. “Oh…what’s that? Daddy!” Dad was right behind us anyway. He strode up beside Nickie and drove his hands into his hips.

   “Well holy shit then,” he said, his chest heaving slightly. We stood dumbly amongst the trees, surely as a group of weary, superstitious, and confused loggers must have done decades before us, and we shifted on our heels trying to make sense of the three, body-sized mounds that were laid in a tiny clearing within the island.

   “Penobscot, I bet. Or maybe some Maliseet. Probably on their way to Nova Scotia.”

   “Are there people buried in there Daddy?” Nickie asked, not quite scared, not quite excited.

   “I think there are Indians buried in there, Nick. Three of ‘em it looks like.” I scanned the mounds and my eyes landed on the grave furthest away. It was much smaller than the rest. I somehow knew in my heart that this had been a young boy who had died. I had no proof; I simply knew. I fought every urge to peel away the rocks and see him. If Dad had turned for only a second I might’ve done it. But he didn’t look away; his gaze was trained on the mound, because Nickie was walking towards it.

   “Nick, you don’t get too close to that now. That’s why these trees are still standing, this is a burial ground or something. Those loggers knew not to mess with it.” But Nickie did get close, almost right up to it. When he stood before the mound I realized how small it really was. Maybe it covered a child only his size. A large branch had fallen across the grave, where it now balanced steadily, half rotted away. Nickie bent, reaching for it.

   My father seemed caught between genuine concern and simple wonder as he watched his son clumsily slide the branch off the small mound. Nickie set it delicately next to the grave, and then stood over it a moment, admiring his work.

   “Alright now. Come on back over here with your sister and me.” 

   He begrudgingly slinked his way towards us.

   A branch caught his hat in its icy talons, plucking it off his head. Nickie quickly reeled and pulled it from the muddled cluster. He whipped off his mittens and began laboring with his chubby fingers to re-roll the rim of his flocculent cap. Against the frosted ground his eyes seemed to glow blue. Darker roots, the color his hair would’ve become in a few more years, were hiding deep in his blonde serpentine curls. And then it happened, the part in my dream that woke me, the part that I would remember every day after I awoke from it.

~~~

   The dream changes, its reality twisting and transforming. I begin to see through everything, the world translucent; the graves, their revealed bodies half-buried in dirt and rock, the last one a child, his bones fragile as glass, the three of them together, yet completely alone in their death. And I see Nickie, without his ringlets, without the piece of skull the doctor had removed; but the tumor is there. It’s black and swollen, pulsing in the small pocket of his inculpable brain.

   And I realize the tumor has been there his entire life, part of him, always part of him. It was there while we ate cotton candy at the fair, it was there all those nights I let him into my bed after he’d had a nightmare. It was there when we found the island. I think of how often I had laid my hand on his forehead and almost touched it, this marker, this symbol burned into him, somehow both growing and dying, both still and dynamic, like an inexorable hourglass slowly expiring. And he is finally real to me, because I see him in his completeness, as he truly was.

*

I never go back to the island, never uncover the secrets buried in those mounds. But I often think of them, especially the smallest one, the one I know is a boy. I think of the Indians that had known him, that had loved him and played with him, that had continued on without him. I think about the lives they would have carried out, lives that had been meant to include one more person, a child that would always exist within the island.

New York, New York full music.

Hey all. I recently scored the trailer for EA's new game Crysis 2. They asked for a hard electronica version of "New York, New York." It was a blast to do and I'm excited to work with them again. I had Mark Holman do the vocals (he co-wrote some of the new Red album with us). The full trailer is here.

It's pretty amazing graphically and they used my music where they needed it.

For those who'd like to hear it, I uploaded the full unedited music bed to youtube. Enjoy.

"New York, New York" uncut.

Until We Have Faces: Revealed

Red's new album, Until We Have Faces, is finally available.  Click here to check it out on iTunes.

Great Review of Until We Have Faces

The guys over at TheNewReview.net gave a great review of Until We Have Faces:

"Every song has its place and purpose. Red has pulled together yet another fantastic release. Their methods have not changed, but have merely been tweaked and perfected. The use of orchestra instruments is perfectly incorporated. The message is bold and honestly placed. Until We Have Faces is heavy and beautiful, and is my favorite release from Red to date."

Click Here for the full review.