Bruce Sterling - Distraction

Chander immediately began barricading the doors again. “Let me give you a hand with that,” Oscar volunteered. He helped Chander wedge a dismantled chair leg against a superglued door chock.

Unlike the majority of Collaboratory locals, Chander, as an in-dustrial researcher, wore a business suit and a tie, with a serious hat. His dusky face was ashen and his eyes were puffy with stress. “I was wondering if she’d have the nerve to meet with me herself,” he said, biting his plump lower lip. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you show up.”

Oscar opened his plastic carry-case. “I brought some supplies for your sit-in,” he said. “A little frozen gumbo, some tasty rice. ”

“You know that I’m on a hunger strike, don’t you?”

“I hadn’t heard that,” Oscar lied.

“Get ’em to turn on my lab phones again, and you’ll hear plenty about all of my problems.”

“But that’s why I came here personally,” Oscar said cheerily. “To hear you out, man to man.”

“I’m not going to put up with this,” Chander announced. “She’s destroying my life’s work, it’s completely unfair. I can wait just as long as the rest of you can. I can do anything that you can do. I’ve got my own friends and supporters, I’ve got industrial backers from out of state. I’m an honest man-but you don’t have a leg to stand on. Once word gets out about all the stunts you’ve pulled around here, you’ll all be indicted.”

“But I’m from the Senate Science Committee,” Oscar said. “Of course the Senate will take an interest in your plight. Let’s have a seat, and you can fill me in on the issues.”

He sat cautiously in a partially wrecked lab chair and produced a paper notebook and a classic fountain pen.

Chander dragged up a plastic lab crate and sat with a groan. “Look, Congress won’t help me. Congress is hopeless, they never understand the technical issues. The point is… I have a break-through here. I’m not just promising a breakthrough. This isn’t just some empty last-minute gambit to get me off the hook. I have a major technical innovation here! I’ve had it for two years!”

Oscar examined his notes. “Dr. Chander… as you know, there’s been a general productivity audit here at the Collaboratory. Every department has gone through the same assessments: Genetic Fragmentation, Flux NMR… your department has been through five reorganizations in four years. Your production record is, frankly, abysmal.”

“I’m not denying that,” Chander said. “But it was sabotage.”

“That’s a remarkable claim.”

“Look. It’s a long, dismal story but… look, basic science and corporate sponsorship have never worked out. My problems aren’t sci-entific at all, they’re all in management. Our agenda here is organic materials processing, we’re looking for new biologically based solu-tions to traditional engineering problems. There’s a lot of room to work there. Our problem was our corporate sponsorship in Detroit.”

Chander sighed. “I don’t know why the automobile industry got involved in sponsoring our work. That wasn’t my decision. But ever since they first showed up, five years ago, they’ve wrecked everything we do. They keep demanding results from us, then shortening our schedules and changing our deliverables. They micromanage every-thing. They send in brain-damaged car executives on sabbaticals, who show up, and steal rare animals, and run goofy futurist scenarios, and talk nonsense to us. We’ve been through absolute hell here: reen-gineering, outplacement, management by objective, total customer service, you name it! Every kind of harassment imaginable.”

“But industry supplied your funding. Those were your corporate sponsors. You couldn’t win complete federal funding for your propos-als. If you can’t make your own sponsors happy, then why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” Chander said. “It’s simple! It’s a very simple, straightforward thing! I’m here because of power.”

“You don’t say.”

“Electromotive power! My krewe and I were researching new power sources for the American transportation industry. And we’ve created a new working model. It’s mitochondrial ATP power genera-tion. With signal transduction, protein phosphorylation, membrane diffusion potentials… Look, do you even know what a ‘mitochondrion’ is?”

“I’ve heard that term, I think.”

“The mitochondrion is the power plant in the cell. It generates energy from adenosine triphosphate, it’s the basic reason we can live and breathe. Mitochondria are microscopic. But imagine they were” — Chander spread his hands violently — “a meter across.”

“So you’ve cloned a piece of a living cell and made it a meter across?”

“I was never any good at explaining science to the layman… No, of course it’s not a meter across. It’s not a mitochondrion at all. It’s a biomechanical device that uses the membranes and the structure of a mitochondrion. They’ve all been scaled up, industrially. It’s a giant waffle of membranes and gelatin matrix. It’s not a living thing, it’s biological hardware, engineered and turned into an electrochemi-cal battery. You could drive a car with it. You could drive a truck! And it runs on sugar.”

“So you’ve created an automobile engine that runs on sugar.”

“Now you’re getting it! That’s it! Sugar, water, and a few trace elements. Totally organic and totally recyclable. No combustion, no emissions, and no toxins! And it runs at room temperature.”

“So this is another new automobile power plant. Sure, fine. There are plenty of those on the market already — flywheels, steam, liquid nitrogen. How is the acceleration?”

Chander punched the air. “It’s like that! It’s like punching my fist! Mitochondria did that! It’s the technology that powers muscle! It’s fast, it’s clean! It really works!”

“What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t one! It works fine! Well, it’ll work better when we get the prototype bugs worked out… there’s some problems with osmotic pressure, and’ even flow-through… oh, and if the battery gets infected, then it rots pretty quickly. But those are just shakedown problems. The real problem is that Detroit doesn’t want our product. They won’t put it into production.”

“So you’ve achieved a great success,” Oscar said. “Then explain something to me. Your lab’s had more private funding than any other Materials facility, but you’ve never shipped a product. You’re the Principal Investigator here, but you’ve had more krewe turnover than any other lab…”

“They were all spies!” Chander said. “They were spies and sabo-teurs! I didn’t have any choice but to fire them.”

“I’ve noticed that the rest of your krewe hasn’t joined your per-sonal industrial action here.”

“Their morale’s been destroyed. They know we’ve been targeted for removal. They know all their hard work will come to nothing. They’re just hoping that someday the memories will fade.” Chander’s shoulders slumped.

“This is a remarkable story. I’ll have to check this story out with your industrial liaison.”

“Sure. Go ahead. His name is Ron Griego, he’s a project man-ager for corporate R D up in Detroit.”

Oscar blinked. “Would that be Ronald K. Griego?”

“You actually know Ron Griego?”

“I think I do,” Oscar said, frowning. “In fact, I suspect we can see this matter properly expedited in short order.”

After leaving Dr. Chander, mollified at least to the point of eating, Oscar and Kevin sought shelter in the lush foliage north of the Ge-netic Fragmentation unit. Oscar then called Griego’s krewe secretary in Detroit.