The Pump Jack Potion

What will petroleum be worth after we use up the easy reserves?

It’s the year 2349 and American society has remade itself to run off of sustainable energy. But they’ve also found that crude oil contains something so magical and useful it’s one of the most valuable substances on the planet.

This is the story of a petroleum prospector of the future, wandering the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico, the stomping grounds of the First Anasazi 1,300 years earlier, as well as the immigrants who flocked there after the first collapse in 2054 to establish a Second Anasazi colony â€" these were the ancestors of petroleum prospector Richard Langhorne Serles.

"The Pump Jack Potion" is a single short story that will take average readers less than a half-hour to read.