Carbide Tipped Pens

by Ben Bova

How many times have you wondered why a friend or acquaintance falls in love with someone you cannot stomach? We shrug and tell ourselves that love is blind. “She Just Looks that Way” deals with a man who wants to be blind, so that he cannot see the woman he loves, because she has no interest in him.

  The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that there is a price to be paid for everything we get. Nothing in the universe is free. There’s always a price to be paid.

  * * *

  Thumbnail images of MRI brain scans covered the computer screen, a mosaic of Rorschach ink blots in grayscale. Each image represented a moment in time—a snapshot of a thought, a memory, a feeling.

  Rick Park had given it much thought. He didn’t want to change his memories, only what they meant. And that, he hoped, would change his feelings.

  He turned to Dr. Barbara Ho. “So, that’s the only part that will be changed? This … um, fusion area?”

  “The fusiform face area, yes.” She selected one of the thumbnails and maximized it to fill the screen. “Located here, in the extrastriate cortex. It’s where facial recognition and physical attractiveness are processed. We’ve been treating people with body dysmorphic disorder by modifying some of the neural pathways in this area.” She moved the mouse pointer over the region. “People with BDD perceive themselves as ugly and disfigured, even though there’s nothing wrong with them.

  “But in your case…” She looked at Rick. “What you’re asking for is … a little different.”

  “Can it be done?”

  “It can be done, although we’ve never attempted it before.” She paused. “Chris has warned you about the risks?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still want to go ahead with this?” She tapped a file folder on her desk. “We’ve got your signed consent and waiver, but I want to hear this from you myself. Do you understand the risks, and do you still wish to proceed?”

  “I understand the risks,” Rick said slowly, “and I want to go ahead with the treatment.”

  “Fine.” She opened the folder and started writing on one of the papers inside. “I’ll say this much, you’ll certainly be taking our research into a whole new area. Tell me, how long have you known Chris?”

  “A long time, since the seventh grade,” Rick said. “Didn’t see much of him the last couple of years until he finished his masters at Wisconsin-Madison and moved here to Hopkins to work with you.”

  “Well, the next time you see him…”

  “He’s coming to pick me up after the treatment.”

  “Yeah, well, when you see him, can you do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Tell him he still owes me a thesis.” She closed the folder and put down her pen. “All right, let’s get started.”

  Rick stood slowly, keeping his newfound doubts silently to himself.

  * * *

  The icon representing the LIDARSAT spacecraft traced a sinusoidal groundtrack across a Mercator projection of the Earth. In the bottom right corner of the screen, a clock raced ahead at many times normal speed.

  Rick watched the orbital simulation with disinterest. His mind was elsewhere.

  She would be here today.

  Rick had known that she would be coming for weeks. He’d heard from his line manager, not her. When he found out he tried to e-mail her, but she never responded. He called her up. Her father was home, said she was busy, couldn’t come to the phone. She never called back.

  The months apart without contact, or at least without any interaction initiated by her, only intensified his feelings. He told himself he was looking forward to seeing her again. He told himself things would be different.

  “Rick?”

  He turned—and there she was, at the entrance to his cubicle, standing beside the line manager, Harry Davidson.

  “I’d like you to meet Mariel Beckenbauer, our new thermal engineer,” Davidson said. He was in his late fifties, tall yet chunky, with a substantial beer belly his cheap suits couldn’t hide. His gray hair was cut short, parted on one side, and he wore thick Coke-bottle glasses.

  “Mariel’s from Canada,” he continued. “She was a summer student here last year. It took a while for the TAA to go through the State Department, but here she is at last.” He put a podgy hand on Mariel’s shoulder. His fingers looked like dried sausages.

  “Hello.” This moment had been on his mind for weeks, yet now, it was all he could think of to say. He looked at Mariel, and a surge of emotions swept over him—confusion, longing, anger, regret, desire, sadness.

  “Nice to see you,” said Mariel with brittle neutrality.

  “Come on,” Davidson said. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team.”

  As Rick turned back to his computer, a black depression settled on him.

  * * *

  The white saucer-shaped object glided silently over the skies of Washington, DC. There were no visible markings or discernible method of propulsion. From Rick’s perspective, the object seemed to dwarf the Washington Monument and the trees of Gravelly Point.

  He reached out to it.

  That could be a you-pho.

  Someone suddenly cut into his field of view, leaping upward. An arm reached out and swatted the Frisbee away, beyond Rick’s grasp.

  “All right! Way to go with the big D.”

  Another voice called from the sideline. “Force the line, Rick. No breaks!”

  As the opposing player tapped the disc on the ground to put it back into play, Rick took up marking position. The opponent jerked his shoulder, apparently going for a forehand flick. Rick lunged to block, recognizing the fake a split second too late. The opponent went the other way, spinning around to deliver a backhand throw toward the end zone.

  “Up! Broken!” Rick yelled, trying to warn his teammates he had let the handler throw to the undefended side of the field. But they were all out of position. He watched helplessly as the disc sailed to the end zone and was caught by a woman on the opposing team.

  The game concluded, and the teams lined up on the field to shake hands.

  “All right folks, good game,” said Chris Brown, the captain of Rick’s ultimate team.

  Cassie Clarke glared at Rick. “We were counting on that force. You can’t let them break you like that!”

  Rick was in no mood to respond. Chris opened his mouth, but another teammate, Jill Kravitz, spoke first.

  “Leave him alone, Cassie. We’re just having fun here.”

  “Fun is fun, but I’d like to win sometime too!” Cassie retorted.

  “Hey, hey.” Chris raised his hands. “All will be solved with beer. Who’s in?”

  Cassie shook her head, and the rest of the team also declined.

  “No beer for me, and besides my dad is coming into town tonight,” Jill said. She smiled at Rick. “But maybe we can hang out another time.”

  Chris watched the team depart. “The post-game drink is an essential part of the game. This is why we haven’t won.” He turned to Rick. “I guess it’s just us, then?”

  Rick nodded.

  “God, you actually look like you need a drink. Where do you want to go?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rick mumbled.

  “How about Fadó? We can walk there from Gallery Place Metro.”

  The other team had already left the Gravelly Point field. Rick picked up his gear, and as he did so glanced toward a spot beside the Potomac River between two clusters of trees. A memory surfaced, and his heart tightened.

  Fadó Irish Pub was surprisingly empty for a Friday night. Rick and Chris seated themselves at one of the small square wooden tables, ordering a pitcher of Yuengling and an appetizer of smoked salmon bites. In the background, “Why Don’t You Love Me?” by Amanda Marshall played from the jukebox.

  “So, this guy walked into the lab today,” Chris said. “I swear he looked like a movie star. Chicks must fall all over this guy, but he’s got this thing about his nose and hands. Classic body dysmorphic behavior. There’s absolutely n
othing wrong with his nose. Now his hands, sure, he’s got dishwater hands from those two jobs—”

  Chris tapped Rick’s mug. “Earth to Rick?”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything on the field, but Cassie was right. You were off your game today. Something wrong?”

  Rick took his beer, knocked back a swig of it. “Mariel started working at Devcon a few days ago.”

  “Mariel?” Chris thought for a moment. “That girl from Canada you met last summer?”

  Rick nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t explain it. It’s like she’s a completely different person than the one I met last year. It’s like a switch was thrown in her head—black is white, white is black, a hundred and eighty degrees. Her personality, the way she acts toward me, is completely different. I don’t mean to be funny, but it’s like she’s been replaced by alien pod people, or she’s a double from the Star Trek evil mirror universe or something.”

  “That’s really weird,” Chris said. “It must be hard to see her around all the time.”

  “Uh, huh.” Rick wrapped his beer in both hands.

  “How did you guys meet?”

  * * *

  The reception at the Goddard Visitor Center following the Soffen Memorial Lecture was not well attended. Astronaut Shaun Christopher, the keynote speaker, had left immediately after his presentation, so most of the audience did the same. Surveying the stragglers, Rick spotted the usual suspects from the local aerospace contractors that served the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Alamer-Daas, Raytheon. He was the only person from Devcon Systems.

  Rick was cornered by some recent graduates of the NASA Academy who were fishing for job leads. He handed out his business card and made the obligatory polite encouragement to send him their résumés. Two of the alums made a show of scrutinizing his card, while the others politely thanked him and left.

  That’s when he saw her.

  She wore a stunning blue silk dress cut in that pseudo-Chinese qípáo style that was popular of late, the kind with the long split up the side of the leg. Her curly brown hair flowed down to her shoulders, framing a cherubic face with dimpled cheeks. And she wore glasses. Rick loved women who wore glasses. The round wire frames perfectly accentuated her soft hazel eyes.

  “Hello there!” she called out.

  “Hello,” Rick replied. Momentarily lost for words, he reacted with imbecilic instinct—he handed her one of his business cards.

  She read the card. “Rick Park, systems engineer, Devcon Systems.”

  “That’s me. And you are?”

  “Mariel Beckenbauer.”

  “Mariel,” Rick said. “Like Hemingway?”

  “Like Cuba.”

  “Oh.”

  The NASA Academy grads introduced themselves and proceeded to ask her about job prospects. Rick took his eyes off Mariel and spotted some engineers he knew from the Applied Physics Laboratory. He excused himself. As he walked away, he heard Mariel explain she was also a summer intern.

  Rick joined the APL group, who were discussing a reaction wheel problem on one of their spacecraft at Earth-Sun L1. It didn’t take long for him to notice Mariel, again on the outside of the crowd. As before, she joined the group and introduced herself.

  Rick said he needed a drink and excused himself, eventually joining another group. When she reappeared a third time, he finally figured it out.

  “Cheers.”

  Rick and Mariel clinked their wineglasses.

  “So, you’re an intern?” Rick asked.

  “Yes. I’m here for the summer.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “I’m supposed to be doing thermal analyses for some Earth science missions over in Building 32, but so far I’ve only been doing Photoshop stuff for Public Affairs.”

  “That sucks.”

  “I’m a foreign national,” Mariel explained. “Thanks to ITAR, they won’t let me do any real engineering work. My TAA’s in limbo at the State Department.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Vancouver,” Mariel replied. “But I’m living in Germantown for the summer.”

  By now, the wine bottles were empty, and the hors d’oeuvres trays had more toothpicks and used napkins than food. The reception was winding down.

  “Can you give me a ride to the Metro?” Mariel asked.

  “Sure.”

  It was a short ten-minute drive to the Greenbelt station. In contrast to her manner at the reception, Mariel was strangely quiet during the ride. Rick tried to engage her in conversation, asking what she did in Vancouver, where else she had traveled in the world, what were her favorite movies. She didn’t respond to any of his questions, and simply stared silently out the passenger-side window.

  They arrived at Greenbelt Metro, and Rick pulled the car up to the Kiss & Ride drop-off.

  “Well, that was a lovely evening with good company,” Rick said.

  Mariel nodded, and finally spoke. “You know, I haven’t had a chance to see much of DC. If you have some time…”

  “I’d love to.”

  * * *

  The LIDARSAT preliminary design review meeting was a tedious affair that ended far past the scheduled time. When the presentations concluded, Rick made his way to where Mariel sat. He saw Davidson put a hand on her shoulder and say something. Mariel nodded, and Davidson left.

  Rick was standing right in front of the seated Mariel. She was staring at her laptop, making no acknowledgment of his presence.

  “Hi, Mariel,” Rick said. There was no way she couldn’t have heard.

  Another person approached. Mariel look up.

  “Oh, hello, Sanjay,” she said. “I should have the new model runs for you tomorrow.”

  “No problem,” Sanjay said. “See you later.”

  Rick watched the other man leave, then turned back to Mariel. She was on her computer again. He wanted to scream, to grab her by the shoulders and make her acknowledge him.

  At last, Mariel closed her laptop and abruptly walked away without a word.

  In a stupor, Rick followed her like an obedient puppy. She said hello to people she passed. Rick followed her upstairs and found himself outside her cubicle.

  “Mariel, what have I done to upset you?”

  * * *

  The Washington Area Frisbee Club held an introductory clinic for novice players the first Saturday of each month at the Sligo Middle School. From the sideline, Rick and Chris watched a trio work the disc down the field in a weave drill.

  “Put down that pivot foot, Kathy,” Chris called out. “That’s traveling.”

  “I finally had a chance to talk to Mariel,” Rick said. He told him what happened.

  “You asked her what you had done to upset her? Man, that’s way more polite than I would’ve been.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And what was her explanation for all this? Wait, let me guess. Never really liked you? Met someone else? Thinks ultimate is for dogs?”

  “No, none of that. But I wish it was, because it’d be a whole lot easier to understand.”

  “Then what the hell did she say?”

  “She said … she said it’s because she’s gluten intolerant.”

  Chris turned to Rick. “She said that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “O-kay … Those free doctors in Canada told her this?”

  “She said she found out herself. She thinks she’s been like that since she was born.”

  “Self-diagnosis. Gotta love the Internet. Actually, gluten intolerant people can become depressed, but you said she’s only like that to you and normal to everyone else?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d say she sounds bipolar, but who am I to argue with Google?” Chris shook his head. “Has she always been like this?”

  * * *

  “Where are we?” Mariel asked.

  “Gravelly Point,” Rick said. “Come on.”
>
  They got out of the car. He led her along a paved bike path that took them near the edge of the Potomac River. They found a spot between two clusters of trees. Rick produced a blanket from his knapsack and laid it on the ground.

  “This is nice,” Mariel said. “How do you know about this place?”

  “My ultimate team plays here sometimes, on those fields behind us.”

  “Catching Frisbees? Isn’t that a game for dogs?”

  “Yeah, except I don’t use my mouth.”

  It was a clear night, and they had a perfect view across the Potomac. A Metrorail train was crossing the Long Bridge from DC to Virginia, a string of lights gliding over the river. Beyond the bridge were the illuminated Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument. Far to the right was the dome of the Capitol Building, partially obscured by the darkened trees on the eastern bank of the Potomac.

  It was the Fourth of July in the nation’s capital.

  Fireworks rocketed into the night sky to the left of the Washington Monument, exploding into showers of flame and color and sparkle. Concussive booms echoed across the Potomac, and on the surface of the water, diffused reflections of the fireworks shimmered and danced in concert with the bursts above. In the background, the muted but audible strains of the 1812 Overture could be heard from the radios of other spectators in the park and those on their boats in the river.

  A plane roared overhead, taking off from Reagan National Airport. They looked up.

  “That could be a ufo,” Mariel said. She pronounced it like a word, “you-pho.”

  “Well, there are some lucky people on that UFO with an amazing view.”

  They turned away from the sky, and toward each other.

  Rick put his hand on her shoulder, ran it down her back. She didn’t turn away. He pulled her closer. She put a hand on the back of his neck, pulling his head slowly toward hers. He moved with the touch, leaned in close. Their lips met.

  The fireworks continued.

  * * *

  Chris and Rick were, once again, the only post-game patrons at Fadó Irish Pub.

  “This is unacceptable.” Chris pounded the varnished wooden table, jarring the pitcher and mugs. “Drinks are an essential part of ultimate. This is why we’re losing.”

  Rick took a sip of beer. “Can you get me in for the treatment?”