The Idea Factory

by Pepper White

  "Whoa. Three in a row. I know how hard that is. The same thing happened to me a year ago. How'd your chess game go yesterday?" I asked.

  "Oh, pretty good, but it didn't last all that long. I checkmated him in twenty-three moves, a little over half an hour."

  So much for camaraderie. Steve ate fast, faster than I, like he was nervous thinking about his exams. So fast that little pieces of bread got caught in his beard. He cleaned his plate before I finished my salad. He seemed tense, and I didn't want to keep him from his work, so I said, "Hey, don't let me keep you. If you need to get back to studying, feel free to head back to the library or wherever."

  He looked hurt, like I was trying to get rid of him, when in fact he probably wanted to sit and chat about anything but exams until the cafeteria closed. But he didn't know how to communicate that verbally, and I was a little too slow to pick up on it from his body language.

  He picked up his tray and said meekly, "Uh, yeah, maybe I better get back to my studying." By then it was too awkward to ask him to sit back down, so I let him go.

  December 14

  Tuesday evening, after Day 1 of exams. Two seventy had a token final exam, a piece of cake after the contest, and Bligh gave me an A. That, plus the A in David Miller's System Dynamics and Controls for the summer, canceled my two C's from the first term, making my overall average a respectable B. If I could keep up the improving trend, maybe by the time the doctoral qualifying exams (a.k.a. qualifiers) rolled around they'd write off my first term to being my first term, and I'd have a shot at M-I-T, P-H-D, M-O-N-E-Y.

  I relaxed in my tutor apartment living room, read through the Mechanical Engineering department newsletter in a leisurely fashion, and saw an intriguing item.

  "EE, ME, Physics students wanted to participate in Perpetual Motion Machine Debunking Contest for national television show. Three individuals will be selected to compete against a three-person team from Berkeley. Contest will be held in Berkeley in January; round trip air fare and accommodations will be provided. Apply in no more than 1,000 words to Chedd Angier Production Company, Watertown."

  Berkeley is a lot more pleasant than Boston in January. It's worth a shot. It would be a really nice entry in the old resume if I'm selected. There's no minimum application length specified, and I'm pretty sure I won't get it anyway, so I'll crank something out in five minutes.

  Why I Want to Be a TV Star

  1. I want to be rich.

  2. I want to be famous.

  3. I want to be a professor at MIT and this might help.

  4. Ever since I was a child I've had a fascination with perpetual motion machines and this would be a dream come true for me.

  5. I already know the answer. It's impossible to prove something's a perpetual motion machine because however long it runs there's always going to be some more perpetuity during which you can't know whether it will still run because you aren't there yet.

  December 19

  Well, the job is done; we made it. Steve's made it through exam week. He'll be home in no time and I can really relax. 6:10 P.M. The phone rang.

  "Hello, this is Mr. Watson; I'm Steve's father. He was supposed to be home this evening and he wasn't on the plane. Professor Dorsey is out but he gave me your number. Can you try to find my son?" His voice was shaky, as if he feared the worst.

  "I'm sure he's fine, sir. I saw him yesterday and he seemed fine. I'll go and check his room; then I'll put my laundry in and then I'll check his room again. I'll try to find him and have him give you a call."

  The tally mark was up to three yeses and eight nos. I knocked on the door. "Hey, Steve, are you in there?" I knocked on the door harder. "Hey, Steve, come on man; open up the door. Your father called and he's worried about you."

  No answer. I went to put my laundry in the washer.

  I saw that Steve's light was on when I walked back from the East Campus laundry. Every time I'd checked on him before and he wasn't there, the light was off. If the light was on he had to be in there.

  Knock knock knock. "Come on, Steve. Quit playing games, man." My heart began to beat fast, like when the pressure built in the tank for my experiments. Knock knock knock. No answer. The Dorseys were gone for the weekend so I went to the lab to call one of the deans.

  I caught Dean Robbins just before he left for a Christmas party. "Yes," he said, "it sounds like it could be an emergency. Maybe you better call Bill Thompson and have him come over. He's the on-campus dean on call. Here's his number."

  Dean Thompson was also on his way out to a Christmas party. "I'll be right over. Why don't you go ahead and call the campus police? They've got the master keys and can open up his room."

  I met the campus policemen, two of them, in front of Steve's room. One of them pulled out a ring with about a hundred keys on it and said, "It should be one of these."

  My heart continued to pump like it pumped in the cell. The campus policeman tried one key. It didn't work. Another. Another. Ten keys. Fifteen. Number 16 was the right one. God, I hope this kid's alive.

  The light was still on. Steve was lying on his bed. An empty half-gallon of Jack Daniels was on the floor next to the bed, on top of a stack of Penthouse magazines. The campus policeman felt for Steve's pulse.

  Steve woke up. He was glassy-eyed, semicoherent, in the depths of the depths. "What ... the ... hell ... is ... going on?" he asked. The campus policeman suggested that I talk to Steve alone for a while.

  "Look, Steve, your father's worried sick about you. You didn't answer your door, so I didn't have any choice but to call the campus police. We just wanted to make sure you were all right."

  "I'm all right, all right," he said a little more coherently. "Who the hell do you think you are busting into my room like that?"

  Dean Thompson arrived before I had a chance to answer. "What's going on, Steve?" he said firmly, like the rock of Gibraltar, yet with some compassion. "And what do you want to do about it?"

  "These people just broke into my room. I want to see their search warrant," Steve said.

  Dean Thompson asked to see me in the hall. "Listen," he said, "I'm going to go call the psychiatrist that he's been talking to, and I want you to go get Steve's home phone number and we'll have a talk with his father."

  Dean Thompson went back into Steve's room. "Mr. White and I are going to be away for a few minutes. For your own safety, I'm requesting that the campus policeman stay nearby while we're gone."

  Steve slammed the door. It was locked when we returned. The campus policeman opened it again. Steve was on the phone with his father.

  "Steve, I'd like to talk with your father," Dean Thompson said. "Will you hand me the phone?"

  Steve hung up. "No."

  "Give me the phone, Steve," Dean Thompson said.

  "No," more defiantly.

  Dean Thompson put two hands on the phone and pulled it away from Steve's body but Steve held on to it and fell toward Dean Thompson. Steve regained his balance, tried to pull the phone back, but his hands slipped and the screw under the case cut his thumb and he screamed.

  "You cut me. You cut me. I'll sue you," he said and then put his thumb in his mouth to suck away the drops of blood.

  "Do you have that number, Pepper?" Dean Thompson asked, and he called Mr. Watson.

  "Yes, Mr. Watson, this is Bill Thompson at MIT. Steve's upset but I don't think he's in any danger of hurting himself." He paused and turned to Steve. "What do you want us to do, Steve?"

  "I want you to leave me alone. Twenty-four hours from now I'll be a product of this place, not a problem for it," Steve said, a little mellowed. I gave him a bandage from my tutor's first-aid kit.

  "What would you like us to do, Mr. Watson?" Dean Thomp son asked. "Yes, we can arrange for a taxi to take him to the airport tomorrow if you'd like. And for now, Mr. White will spend some time with him. Both Mr. White and I have Christmas parties to go to, so we'll be busy for the next two or three hours, but Mr. White will check in with Steve after he returns from his pa
rty. Is that all right with you, Steve?"

  "Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure," he answered from his bed.

  Dean Thompson finished the phone call with Mr. Watson and asked to talk to me in the hall again.

  "Just chat with him. Maybe play a game of chess with him. Try to cheer him up a little bit."

  "OK, sir, I'll do my best," I answered, and Dean Thompson left.

  Pawn to king four. Steve was black; I was white.

  "So what's the point of staying here?" he said rhetorically.

  "Well, you've invested a lot of time in your studies, and you're almost done, and your parents have invested a lot of money in your studies-I mean they could have bought a vacation home for cash for what they've spent to put you through here-and you're just at the beginning of being able to put your knowledge to use."

  "Right. So what's the point of putting the knowledge to use?"

  "To do good mathematics research or to write efficient computer programs. To extend the frontiers of knowledge."

  "And what's the point of extending the frontiers of knowledge?"

  "So that products can be developed to improve the quality of life."

  "Oh, you mean like video games and high-definition television, I suppose. Is that what you mean by improving quality of life?"

  Maybe I need a swig of that whiskey, too.

  "Well, we're getting out of my realm of expertise. Maybe you should talk to a minister or your psychiatrist about it."

  "I've been talking to both, and they totally contradict each other and it just makes me more confused and depressed. You want to know something else? You know how some people dream in black and white, and some people dream in color? You know what I dream in?"

  "No, what?"

  "Equations. It's like there's no room left in my conscious or my subconscious for anything else. There's no relief from it. There's no escape. I Hate This Fucking Place."

  "I know how you feel. But you've made it through. I'm sure you did great on your exams. You've got a great career ahead of you. Just hang in there-oh, excuse me, poor choice of words. Just try to relax for another day, go home, and you'll forget this place and feel relaxed and well-educated in just a few days."

  "Checkmate," he said. "Twelve moves. You did pretty well."

  I returned from the party at 11:20. I brought Steve a pint of chocolate Haagen-Daz and a package of Mint Milanos. That combination had always helped to lift my spirits. I figured we'd watch "Saturday Night Live" together while we split the goodies.

  There was a clipping from Penthouse on his door. In bold print from a magazine article: "When somebody screws you up, you have ways to make him pay. I'd be more specific but that would take the fun out of it when I do it."

  Knock knock knock. "Steve, are you in there?" Knock knock. "Steve, it's me, Pepper; I brought you some ice cream and cookies." Knock knock.

  No answer. Oh no. We shouldn't have left him by himself. But he's an adult; he's a college graduate; we had to give him his space, accord him his rights.

  "Hello, Dean Thompson, it's Pepper here. There's a strange note on his door and he doesn't answer when I knock."

  "Call the CPs again," he said. "I'll be right over."

  I called the CPs, put the Haagen-Daz in the freezer, went downstairs, and knocked again. Still no answer. High blood pressure time again. Hurry up, CPs; he may have just a few breaths of air left.

  The CPs were quicker this time, and they knew which was the right key. The light was on but the room was empty, as was a second half-gallon of Jack Daniels by Steve's bed. Dean Thompson arrived. "We should never have left him alone," he said. "Sergeant, call the dispatcher and put the force on alert. Cover the tops of all the stairwells, the roofs of the Green Building and Macgregor. Have two cars patrol Mem. Drive and the Harvard and Longfellow bridges. Pepper, you know what Steve looks likewhy don't you drive with the sergeant here. I'll walk up and down the sidewalk on this side of the Charles."

  There was a plan for this contingency.

  I drove with the sergeant. We were both quiet. I remembered failures: giving up physics, not keeping up in bicycle races, leaving Stephanie, two C's in one term at MIT. I had a life, though. That always kept me going.

  The sergeant pulled a U-tum by the Hyatt. "You know any prayers, kid?" he asked.

  "I learned the Twenty-third Psalm when I was a kid," I said.

  "Why don't you try saying it to yourself, not out loud. I'll do the same thing."

  "OK."

  There was no one beside the still, frozen, snow-covered waters of the Charles, no one on the footpath above the seawall. We drove back and forth slowly, stopped occasionally to look out across the ice. My pulse rate went down, but my chest and my stomach felt weightless, like when a roller coaster plunges. I tried to remember the words to the psalm.

  On the seventh drive past the sailing pavilion, the dispatcher said over the radio, "We found him. He's all right. He's been in the TV room at the student center the whole time."

  The sergeant and I drove to the student center, where we met Steve, Dean Thompson, and the CPs. "Saturday Night Live" was almost over.

  "Steve, we're going to have you sleep in the infirmary tonight, under observation. Then the campus police will help you pack and drive you to the airport tomorrow morning," Dean Thompson said authoritatively.

  "You know, Steve," I said to him as tutorly as I could muster, "you've caused a lot of grief for a lot of people tonight."

  "This was my last chance to even up the score."

  Sunday Morning

  Dean Thompson called at ten. "He's on the plane. The CPs had no problem taking him and his things to the airport. They took him all the way to his seat and watched the door of the plane close, so we're sure he's on his way."

  Another product of MIT has been shipped. But do you have a receipt?

  C H A P T E R

  14

  Perpetual Motion

  January 2, 1983

  "Yes, this is he," I said.

  "We'd like you to go to California as one of MIT's contestants in the perpetual motion machine contest on January 20," the producer said. "We received thirty applications for the three spots, and everyone here at Chedd Angier Productions agreed to accept you sight unseen. Your application had real chutzpah."

  Yippee. A free trip to California. Nationwide television exposure that any struggling young comic would kill for. If I play my cards right, go to aerobics class, pump some iron for the next two weeks, and take charisma lessons, maybe some New York or Hollywood producer will see the show and say, This kid's great. Let's sign him up for a vapid sitcom." Thirty K per episode sure beats an engineer's $30K per year.

  "Thanks a lot. What were the other applications like that made mine stand out so much?"

  "Most of the others submitted six-page notarized essays on perpetual motion, with figures and drawings, and reference letters from professors. They all looked the same after a while. But yours stood out. We've also selected two others on the basis of our interviews. One of them came to the interview wearing a tuxedo and a red carnation. He's quite an accomplished trombone player."

  "That sounds like a friend of a friend, a guy I chat with in the infinite corridor every month or two. Is it Dan Wagner?"

  "Yes, that's him. And the other one is a senior in Mechanical Engineering, Tim Neuberger. He's extremely bright. I picked him because he said the most interesting intellectual experience he'd had was reading the Talmud. I think the three of you will make a good team."

  January 3

  Literature review. Perpetual Motion. I referred to my notebook from Gyftopoulos's class. Problem set 3, Problem 1: "Prove the Impossibility of a Perpetual Motion Machine of the First Kind (IPMM1)-4 out of 10 points." Problem 2: "Prove the Impossibility of a Perpetual Motion Machine of the Second Kind (IPMM2)-2 out of 10 points." These will be no help. I remembered asking Professor Gyftopoulos whether the toy bird that you put next to a glass of water would qualify as a perpetual motion machine. When its beak goes in
to the water it's pulled down by the capillary action of the water going into the wick on the beak. Then it rocks back and forth, with seemingly no energy input.

  Yes, Professor Gyftopoulos had said, you are right in saying that is not a perpetual motion machine, because you have perpetual motion but no transfer of energy out of the system.

  We haven't seen a perpetual motion machine, something that puts out more energy than goes into it. Since we haven't seen a PMM, we'll say that one can't exist, because energy, whatever that is, is conserved. Since energy is conserved, there can be no perpetual motion machines of the first kind.

  A perpetual motion machine delivers power perpetually, with no energy input. A PMM of the first kind "purports to deliver more energy from a falling or turning body than is required to restore the device to its original state." An example of this is a closedloop waterwheel and pump joined together.

  If the waterwheel generated more power than the pump needed to push the water back up to the top of the waterwheel, the waterwheel could generate power perpetually without any fuel. But despite many attempts, no one has devised a system that achieves that. If they had, the Persian Gulf would be no more than a pleasant vacation spot.

  An article in Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the various attempts at perpetual motion: Edward Somerset, second marquis of Worcester (1601-1667), produced a machine around 1638 or 1639 and operated the device for Charles I and his court. In the same century, the Dutch physicist W. J. Gravesand inspected the machine of the Frenchman Offyreus and was impressed by its construction, although he was not allowed to inspect the interior of the machine. Gravesand wrote about the device in a lengthy and detailed letter to Newton.

  The simple drawings in the encyclopaedia looked primitive compared to our high-technology devices today, but they looked just as sophisticated as many of the two-seventy design contest machines, including my own.

  January 4

  I asked Chet Yeung for permission to take the time off to go to the contest, plus a week of vacation time to bicycle in the Bay Area, to lose some weight for the cameras.