Nomad Codes

galactic passions was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos s eries. “It was beautiful and it was science, and therefore it was real, far more real than religion to me.”
    Driven by his enthusiasm for all things cosmic, Firmage continued to investigate zero-point energy following his otherworldly encounter. Zero-point energy, or ZPE, is the term some physicists use to describe the enormous store of quantum energy that fills even the smallest and most empty regions of space. Given its enormous potential energy and quasi-mystical character, ZPE has also become a flash point for all sorts of fringe scientists, free energy researchers, New Age physicists, and maverick inventors. As Firmage used the Internet to absorb findings and build contacts in the ZPE world, he came to believe that human civilization was on the verge of radical technological discoveries, breakthroughs that would enable us to replace fossil fuels and to fly to Alpha Centauri at the drop of a hat.
    As he researched ZPE, Firmage also heard the siren song of the extraterrestrial. Having scarfed up flying saucer books as a teen, Firmage delved once again into the house of mirrors that surrounds the UFO, chasing whatever elusive truths snake through that labyrinth of vision and hoax, conspiracy and anomaly, science and psyche. Having already used the net to build connections with physicists and researchers exploring ZPE, Firmage wound up collecting a more esoteric range of contacts, including, he claims, top military and scientific leaders. These people proceeded to convince Firmage that UFOs were absolutely real, and that the government has kept the knowledge under wraps since the fabled Roswell crash of the 1940s.
    Like many buffs, Firmage found himself longing for the day when this dense fog of official lies and obfuscations would finally dissolve in the light of alien truth. In a rather messianic twist of the tale, Firmage came to believe that he, Joe Firmage—brainiac whiz kid, triumphant CEO, digital darling—was the man to tip the scales. And so Firmage decided to write a book, or rather, he gathered fifteen anonymous “experts” to write a book along with him, nondisclosure agreements and all. With foolish and naive courage, Firmage went public with his beliefs late last November, promoting and Web-publishing, at considerable expense, a 600-page tome called, unbelievably, The Truth ( www.the-wordis-truth.org ). And once The Truth got out, Joe Firmage’s silicon success story came tumbling down.
    The shit hit the fan even before The Truth launched. The day after Firmage put his name on one of the pre-publication teaser pages for the book, a call came in to Mark Kvamme, the CEO of CKS, a slick Silicon Valley ad agency that USWeb had merged with just that fall. “Boy, I am going to enjoy competing with you now that your CEO is becoming the next L. Ron Hubbard,” gloated the rival. Soon panicked investors started ringing up. Wryly, Firmage notes that these calls came in before anyone knew that his book concerned UFOs—it was simply the religious undertones of his teaser site that got folks riled up.
    Within a week, Firmage voluntarily stepped down from his corporate position—though he admits that if hadn’t gone willingly, he would have gotten the boot. He retained the title of head of strategic planning, but when his ET research hit the press, even that largely symbolic post became a thorn in the side of USWeb/CKS. Wall Street thought he was nuts, and the headlines didn’t help: “From IPOs to UFOs,” “The Ex-CEO Files,” or “The Truth is Out There—And Joe Firmage is Paying For It.” Nor could people keep a straight face when confronted with Firmage’s suggestion in a Silicon Valley paper that some of the tech that put the Valley on the map was reverse-engineered from crashed Roswell saucers—a process Firmage compares to a bunch of chimps getting their hands on a Palm Pilot. It was all getting to be too much. In January, he simply resigned from the firm. For all the “visionaries” and “gurus” it claims to harbor, Silicon Valley still answers to the bottom line, and the bottom line these days does not include room for alien hieroglyphs—at least when you step outside of Hollywood.
    Having helped turn the Internet into a major vehicle for corporate presence, Firmage became its victim as well. After all, Firmage made his silicon millions from the very same medium that sucked him into the UFO paradigm. “I can assure you of one