play a key role in America's battle against energy shortages. AT the top-secret Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, part of the University of California at Berkeley, scientists are experimenting with an extremely powerful laser named Shiva, for the multi-armed god of Hindu mythology. The beam coming out of Shiva is split into 20 beams that come back together on a tiny, barely visible glass ball. Inside the ball are two forms of hydrogen. The laser beams unit with such force that the ball collapses. The heat from this implosion fuses the hydrogen atoms together.

In that fraction of a second, more energy is generated than the combined output of all the electrical power plants in the US over the same brief period of time. The key to making this nuclear fusionto the north, and the creation of a good, well graded dirt road to the talc mines for heavy trucks, the Butte Valley miners pushed an extension of the Warm Spring Road westward into Butte Valley and the Anvil Canyon route relegated to a seldom-used byway. Then, in October of 1994, with the passage of the Desert Protection Act, Anvil Canyon was designated as part of an official wilderness area, thus prohibiting vehicle use in it. Not that the few locals seemed to adhere to the prohibition, as Anvil Canyon still received occasional, if illicit, use.

The second piece of oddness in what Brenner was observing was that the vehicle appeared to be a standard passenger van. While Anvil Canyon could still be travelled by a competent four wheel