John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

“Are the experiments nearby?” she asked.

“Some of the smaller experiments are not far from where you’re standing, in the west campus of the ring,” George said. “Their buildings are part of the SSC campus, just a short walk from here. But the two big detectors are both located off at the east campus. That’s on the far side of Waxahachie, about a forty-five-minute drive from here. What would you like to see first? Do you want to see LEM right now?”

Alice looked at her watch. It was almost 1:30. This looked like a good opportunity, so she might as well go for it. She considered how she could work this telepresence thing into her novel. “Sure, if you have the time,” she said.

“Okay. I have a couple of hours before I have anything scheduled.” George’s headscreen swiveled toward Belinda. “Tell Roy that Ms. Lang will return around four. Jake should be finished chewing on his leg by then.

“And before I forget, what I came here about was a little project for you, Belinda. KIRO-TV in Seattle wants to do a news spot for tomorrow’s seven o’clock news about how people in the University of Washington’s particle physics and micro-gravity biology groups are using telepresence remotes at the SSC and on the Space Station. I think they’re looking for a contrast between the science done at Department of Energy projects and at NASA projects. I almost feel sorry for NASA. They always make the DOE look good by comparison.”

Alice looked at George’s expression and opened her notepad. “Telepresence: DOE vs. NASA, KIRO-TV/Seattle, Conflict!” she wrote.

“One of my biology colleagues and I went over to their studio and did an interview last Thursday,” George continued. “Now they want background. Could you find some stock clips of the SDC and LEM experiments and put them on the satellite feed? Preferably clips showing some mix of the University of Washington people and remotes swarming over one of the LEM subsystems. They’d like to have it sometime tomorrow morning, Seattle time. Noon at the latest. Okay?”

“No problem,” said Belinda. “That’s just the kind of thing our video database was designed to do. And we’re always delighted to give NASA another object lesson in how the technical support of science should be done.” She grinned.

The head and upper torso of the remote swiveled toward Alice with an audible whirr. “Do you have a car, Alice?” George asked.

“Sure, it’s just outside,” Alice said. She glanced downward to the bulky rollers on the base of the remote. “However, I don’t think you’d fit.” She was beginning to enjoy her conversation with the little machine. It was like being Dorothy in Oz, talking to the Tin Woodsman or the Tick-Tock Man.

“Not a problem,” said George. “Belinda will give you a map, and I’ll meet you in the reception area of the LEM building on the east campus.”

Alice looked down at the little machine. “You’re going by a different route?” she asked.

George’s face registered a smile. “You might say that, Alice,” he said. “It will take you about twenty minutes to drive to LEM.

While you’re in transit, I’m going to park this remote in a charger bay, disconnect, and eat my sack lunch in my office here. When you arrive at the LEM building, I should be waiting at the front door.”

Alice blinked. “This is like a Star Trek rerun,” she said. “You’re going to beam over to the other building.”

“In a manner of speaking,” George agreed, “except that I’m already here, or should I say ‘there’?”

Alice took her little digital still camera from her purse and took several shots as the image of George winked at her. The remote pivoted sharply to the right and whirred away down the corridor.

Just then a familiar figure in blue coveralls strolled up to Belinda’s desk. “Belinda, you sweet thang, would you mind callin’ me a shuttle?” Whitey said. “I need to go over to the LEM buildin’ on the east campus.”

“Hello, Whitey,” said Alice. “I was about to drive to that very place. Can I offer you a ride? You can show me the way.”

ALICE FOLLOWED THE CURVING TREE-LINED SSC CAMPUS road to the point where it exited to a farm-to-market highway.

“Go that way, ma’am,” said Whitey. “Goes through the middle of Waxahachie, but it should be quicker this time of day.”

She turned on the road he had pointed out. “You have work to do on the LEM detector?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “They want some more wirin’ done down in the ring, and the LEM buildin’ is the closest access point. There’s a fast little monorail down in the ring that I could ride over on, but drivin’ across the middle of the ring in a car or riding the SSC shuttle bus is faster. Somebody borrowed my truck for another electrical job, or I’d drive myself.”

“How long have you been an electrician, Whitey?” Alice asked. She was glad to have another chance to interview him without being too obvious.

“Got m’ trainin’ in the Marine Corps,” he said. “I was a demolition expert and did a lot of wirin’ that way. Of course, my daddy was an Oil Man…”

Alice could hear the capital letters.

“… and I did electrical wirin’ for him sometimes when I was in high school, but I didn’t get real good at it till we was down in the Persian Gulf. After they let me out of the Marines, I got a job with a construction company when the SSC was being built, and then got a staff job with the laboratory. Been here ever since.”

“How old were you when you joined the Marines?” she asked, interviewer style.

“Oh, I was about nineteen,” he said. “It was summer, and I’d just graduated from high school. I’d played football for the Waxahachie Indians, but I hurt my knee when we was playin’ the Italy Gladiators, so I didn’t get a college scholarship. I was plan-nin’ to go to Texas A&M anyhow, but Daddy was goin’ bankrupt. So I made a deal with the Marine recruiter to get electrician trainin’ if I joined up. Guess it worked out pretty well for me, though I near got myself killed once or twice down in the Gulf, defusing Iraqi booby traps at the Kuwaiti oil rigs and around Ol’ Saddam’s hidey-hole in Baghdad.”

“Your father had problems in the oil business?” she asked, remembering the stories she had heard of the high rollers. She hadn’t seen much evidence of Big Oil since coming here. Despite what one might think from the old Dallas TV series reruns, she had learned that most of what remained of the Texas oil industry was concentrated in Houston, while the Dallas-Fort Worth economy was driven primarily by aerospace, biotechnology, banking, and insurance.

“Daddy was an independent Oil Man, a wildcatter,” said Whitey. “He did pretty well for a while. Did lots of drilling. Had him a fine cable-tool rig on the back of a truck.”

“You mean you can drill for oil from the back of a truck?” asked Alice. “I thought it took a big steel tower and massive machinery.”

“Well,” Whitey said defensively, “it was a pretty big truck. You see, he wasn’t runnin’ one of those giant oil companies. My daddy was a wildcatter.”

“How does that work, being a wildcatter?” Alice asked.

“Well, he’d buy hisself an oil lease on some land. Where it looked like there might be some oil? Then he’d round up some investors. They’s folks in the East and in California that just love to put their money into the oil bidness. ‘Investing in our Energy Future’ they call it. It’s one of them tax shelter things. Daddy’d take the money and hire himself some roughnecks and go out and drill for the black gold. Can take a year or so to drill a well, and of course they’s lotsa expenses while the drillin’s goin’ on. He never had much of the investment money left by the time the well was done. So when it came in a dry hole, he’d just have to send out the telegrams to his partners telling that they’d had some bad luck. After that, he’d go out and buy another lease and line up some more investors.”