Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  He anticipated that recruiting on the non-technical side would probably take more doing since it was outside his expertise. Fortunately, Pueblo had an outpatient clinic, so having both physicians wasn’t a high priority for the start of the project. However, just to be on the safe side, he did want someone on call once work began. The team historian, on the other hand, wasn’t a luxury; and he hoped to have one hired by the time the Maytag was operational. Considering how specialized the job was, however, he was slightly apprehensive about finding the right person in time. Having a team administrator from the very start would be just as important. Since the position called for a generalist, though, he was confident he’d be able to find someone without too much difficulty.

  Though hired in fits and starts, Dr. Rys did ultimately put together the team he’d envisioned. In fact, he pretty much had his technical personnel hired by the beginning of June. It was a fairly close-knit group. Many on the technical staff were from California and knew one another from before US-395. It was also an experienced group. The physicists, engineers and mathematician were on average seven years out of graduate school. The only snag he encountered was hiring the quantum physicist. Because Dr. Rys himself specialized in quantum mechanics, his standards were high and he couldn’t find anyone who measured up to the challenge of making US-395 work. It wasn’t for lack of intelligence, so much as for lack of intensity. He needed someone who was just at the cusp of being obsessed with quantum mechanics. Through the grapevine at Caltech, he’d heard of a few promising PhD candidates, but they wouldn’t be looking for work for at least another year. As a result, he decided to hold off on hiring for that position. Otherwise, he had his technical personnel onboard a month before the project’s July 8th start date.

  Not surprisingly, his experiences hiring the non-technical staff were more mixed. Though it wasn’t a priority, he found US-395’s physicians fairly quickly, hiring an infectious disease specialist with a degree in epidemiology and a surgeon who’d once worked in a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War. Recruiting the rest of the non-technical staff didn’t go as smoothly. Finding the team historian proved to be particularly difficult. He’d interviewed some exceedingly bright candidates, but they all seemed to have had their hearts set on careers in academia. The fact that Dr. Rys couldn’t provide specifics about the project didn’t help. Vague references to a chance to be a part of history, as well as to record it often weren’t enough. Frankly, put in their position, and given a choice between working in the tony world of academia versus being a historian for some amorphously described government transportation project, he would’ve been hard-pressed to choose the latter. Of course, if he could’ve just told them what they would’ve been working on, his problems would’ve disappeared. If anything, he probably would’ve had too many applicants then. But he couldn’t and so he didn’t.

  It went to the proverbial eleventh hour, which found Dr. Rys preparing to send an offer letter to a freshly-minted PhD out of the University of Chicago with the improbable name of Dr. Thurston Herodotus Jollybelly. Despite the name, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Jollybelly was brilliant. He’d earned undergraduate degrees in history and physics at Chicago; and had authored some very impressive articles examining how societies shaped technologies and vice versa. However, during his interview, Dr. Rys got the distinct feeling that US-395 was a safety-net in his job search, and was therefore hesitant to extend him a job offer. Time, however, was running out and with Dr. Jollybelly’s offer letter sitting on his desk awaiting a stamp, Dr. Rys heard his wife calling him to come outside. Once he got there, Abigail introduced him to their new neighbors, Carlos and Rocío Sandoval. As it turned out, Carlos was a new associate physics professor at Caltech where his brother taught mathematics. Hearing this, Dr. Rys realized that he must have been the younger son of the man who drove him to the airport about five years earlier for his first meeting in Washington, DC. During their conversation, Dr. Rys mentioned his difficulty in finding a historian for his research project. At this, Professor Sandoval brightened and recommended Michael Gidsen, a classmate of his from Harvard, who’d just completed his doctorate in history at Princeton.

  The following day, Dr. Rys set up an interview with Dr. Gidsen; and subsequently learned that his dissertation had been on the geopolitical impact of technology proliferation. Specifically, he’d researched arms races and had applied John Nash’s discoveries in game theory to find ways to defuse them. As luck would have it, rather than a career in academia, Dr. Gidsen was actively seeking work in government, and was considering job offers from the State Department and the United Nations. His background and career goals dove-tailed perfectly into the kind of work Dr. Rys needed done for US-395. The offers from the State Department and the UN were a problem, of course. There’d be no shortage of interesting and meaningful work to be done in either place. Nevertheless, Dr. Rys offered something neither of them could: the warm California sun. Dr. Gidsen had mentioned that he grew up in Santa Monica and jokingly admitted that he didn’t consider himself much of a winter person. As a result, the allure of returning to the West Coast after almost a decade of winters in the Northeast would probably be difficult to pass up. Six days after sending him an offer letter, Dr. Rys received a phone call from Dr. Gidsen accepting his job offer.

  When the time came to hire the team administrator, Dr. Rys sought a generalist who could acquire a high-level understanding of the project and how its different pieces worked together, while reliably executing the mundane yet essential clerical tasks that kept US-395 going. If the project were a large corporation, the administrator probably would’ve been its chief operations officer or chief financial officer. However, since it was a government project whose sole mission was to develop the Allen field generator technology, the functions often delegated to a CFO or COO weren’t as relevant. This gave Dr. Rys the luxury of being able to hire someone relatively inexperienced who could learn on the job. To complement the technical staff, he sought someone with a liberal arts background; and relied primarily on university career centers to source applicants. He ultimately interviewed several candidates, each one enthusiastic, bright and capable of getting the job done. However, one person stood out from the rest.

  His name was Guy Pool. He was fluent in three foreign languages and had graduated from Williams College with a degree in religion. He was in his mid-20s, which was a shade older than the other applicants. After graduation, his parents had passed onto him a considerable sum of money to do with as he pleased; and he promptly spent four years traveling throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, living in various societies and experiencing a correspondingly varied array of cultures. He’d lived among Zen Buddhists, Whirling Dervishes and Taoists. He’d spoken with and had tried to internalize the spiritualism of shamans, monks, priests, rabbis, clerics, yogis and any other religious types whose paths he crossed. When asked why he’d applied for the job, he explained that for him the exotic had become mundane and the mundane had become exotic. After his four years of travel, the thought of working at a desk job had acquired a mystique more often associated with cloud-covered temples in Bhutan. Like the other candidates, Guy Pool wasn’t told what US-395 was researching. In light of that, Dr. Rys couldn’t help but be somewhat amused by their conversation. Striving to be fair, he asked Guy Pool whether he’d still want the job even if the work wasn’t so mundane. The transportation project was somewhat unconventional and might with time lose its sense of routine. After giving it some thought, Guy Pool answered that he’d be alright with that. A week and a half later, he accepted Dr. Rys’s offer letter.

  7/8/1957

  As US-395’s Monday, July 8th start approached, Dr. Rys reviewed the Project Firewall archives and ran diagnostics on the just completed Maytag. The government engineers had done an exceptional job. Soaring well over forty feet into the air and forming a gleaming, metal arc around the chamber’s sending room, the fully assembled cradle was a sight to behold. Also, conduits from the water table s
everal hundred yards beneath Pueblo now fed into the field generator’s heat-sinks, cooling its circuitry. In fact, spending any amount of time in the Maytag room required putting on one of the insulated coats that hung from the project’s freight elevator. The nuclear reactor designed to power the field generator stood ready and had been online for nearly two years without incident. As expected, the town’s energy needs relative to the power that the plant could generate were very low, requiring less than one percent of capacity. Essentially all of the reactor’s 150 MW of energy would be available to US-395 when the time came. And though Dr. Rys’s heart skipped a beat when he flipped the Maytag’s switch for the very first time to send his watch, the field generator worked flawlessly. Everything was ready.

  He left for Pueblo well before dawn that Monday. He’d had a relaxing Independence Day weekend with his wife in Santa Barbara, walking through town, taking in the sights and generally behaving as though they were newlyweds again who’d never even heard of US-395. As his three hour commute neared its end, he rolled down his window to take in the cool desert air. He was looking forward to starting work with his new team. When he pulled into the parking lot at 6:30am, he saw his general physicists, Dr. Sharp and Dr. Bishop, already there, sitting on the post office steps. When they saw his car, they immediately started walking towards it. As soon as Dr. Rys got out, he greeted them, exchanging handshakes. When he noticed that the lot was empty, he asked them how they’d gotten to work and mentioned that they should park in the lot. They then explained that they’d arrived early, parked in the lot, walked to the local diner for some breakfast and returned to find their cars missing. Pueblo seemed safe, so they wondered whether they’d been towed. Considering there were no signs posted and the lot had plenty of spaces available even during peak hours, Dr. Rys found that hard to believe. After telling them he’d get it cleared up, he asked them to follow him to the US-395 facility. Despite the less than auspicious start to the project’s first day, he was pleased to see that his new physicists were eager to get to work.

  Once they reached the auditorium, he called the local towing company, found out that their cars had in fact been towed and got them returned to the parking lot. The towing company apologized profusely, saying that seeing two cars they didn’t recognize parked so early in the lot probably contributed to the error. He gave Dr. Sharp and Dr. Bishop permits to place in their cars to make sure it never happened again. He also gave them keys to the entrance and requested that they wait for about an hour, so he could introduce everyone to the project at once.

  By 8:15am, the entire team had arrived and there was a lively din in the auditorium. Some team members were chatting with one another about their commutes or the homes they’d just bought in Pueblo. Most had gravitated towards the chamber, marveling at the newly built cradle. Dr. Rys got up on a chair, greeted everyone then began providing them with an overview of his research and US-395. His introduction to the project was at first greeted by looks ranging from mild surprise to friendly skepticism. By the time he finished the tour of the chamber two hours later, he was heartened to observe that they’d uniformly turned into looks of simple, undivided attention. He concluded his introduction by inviting everyone to gather around what appeared to be a large, unusually shaped metal suitcase. The team didn’t know it, but it was actually Dr. Rys’s field generator prototype, which he’d kept as a memento. After picking up a crescent wrench from the floor and waving it in the air for everybody to see, he placed it in the device’s cradle. Folding down the field generator’s arms, he then took its remote control and flipped a switch, causing the wrench to immediately disappear and leave an identically shaped three-dimensional void in its place. A few minutes later, he toggled the switch back, immediately returning the wrench to where it originally was, accompanied only by a nearly imperceptible flash of light.

  After giving everyone a few minutes, Dr. Rys took them out to a local restaurant, Art’s Diner, and treated them to lunch with the caveat that no one was to talk about work. Although it catered to a town of only around nine thousand people, the diner served meals on par with the Pantry back in Los Angeles. On top of that, it was just a ten minute walk from the post office, so it was also the most convenient place to get food outside of packing a lunch. Dr. Rys ordered his usual, a corned beef Ruben sandwich with onion rings and a soda. Most everyone else got the day’s lunch special, a grilled steak, fries, salad and a slice of apple pie for dessert. During lunch, he learned that the team split just about evenly between commuters and those who’d chosen to move to Pueblo. Among those commuting, Dr. Gidsen moved back to his hometown of Santa Monica and thus had the farthest drive. Those who’d chosen to live in Pueblo found few surprises. It was exactly as it appeared: nice, safe and quiet with friendly townspeople. As their first lunch together progressed, Dr. Rys noticed that the conversations flowed smoothly and people seemed to get along well with each other. He thought with some satisfaction that they’d eventually grow into quite a team.

  Once they returned, the team’s nuclear engineer, Dr. Kerberos, suggested taking a group picture. Dr. Rys responded by half-jokingly confiding that since he was a little boy he’d had a near-phobia about taking photos. All kidding aside, he noted that they had a lot of work to do. From a technical standpoint, the immediate goal was to build a probe to collect telemetry by the end of 1958 regarding where exactly the Allen field sent things. In Dr. Rys’s estimation, that was top priority. Accordingly, he tasked his physicists and mathematician with drawing up a list of telemetry needed to determine the characteristics of the counterpart location to the Allen field in the sending room. Ideally, of course, he wanted to find out where it was on a world map. In lieu of that, he wanted to at least evaluate its suitability for human passengers he hoped to one day send. Once a list was drawn up, they were to work with the electrical and mechanical engineers to draft designs for a probe. Dr. Rys would review them and when a design was finalized, he’d requisition the parts and build most of the probe himself. He also asked Dr. Kerberos to explore ways to boost the reactor’s power output or increase the Maytag’s efficiency. Dr. Rys hoped to find some way past the generator’s existing limit of sending 180 lbs. for five minutes.

  As for the non-technical staff, he asked Dr. Gidsen to keep track of project failures and successes in order to promote organizational learning; and requested that everyone keep a daily journal chronicling their work to assist his efforts. The team historian’s second responsibility, which was no less important, was to help Dr. Rys ensure that the Allen field technology was developed wisely. With that in mind, he asked him to research the histories of comparable technologies and to think about the most probable scenarios for US-395’s development. Dr. Rys ultimately wanted actionable recommendations regarding the types of institutions and mechanisms that could be created to keep the eventual products of their research from fueling another arms race. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that; however, it probably made sense to install the brakes on a car before driving it.

  In terms of the US-395 facility itself, he gave copies of the Firewall project files to the medical team; and requested that they familiarize themselves with every aspect of the chamber, so they could identify any upgrades needed to ensure the team’s safety. On top of providing Guy Pool with a schedule of expenses and clerical tasks he needed to administer to keep US-395 going, Dr. Rys also gave him a copy of the Firewall archives, so he could assist with any necessary modifications. Finally, to gauge the team’s overall progress, Dr. Rys asked him to prepare a monthly report that showed how close each task was to completion. By his initial estimates, the work that he’d just farmed out would probably take at least a year and a half to finish.

  To maintain everyone’s sense of perspective, Dr. Rys emphasized that although each project contributed to the overarching goal, no task was necessarily an end unto itself. Given the small team size, the development of a silo mentality was improbable, but he wanted to create a culture resistant to it nonetheless. To insti
ll a holistic approach, he set aside an hour every Friday for people to give presentations about their work. An additional hour afterwards was blocked out for a free and open discussion with all questions, opinions and suggestions respected. Whether or not recommendations were implemented was, of course, left to each task group and ultimately Dr. Rys himself. The presentations would begin the following Friday with the team historian, Dr. Gidsen.

  Firefall

  As September drew to a close, Dr. Rys saw that his team would soon overtake what at first seemed too ambitious a timetable. US-395 was progressing at a whirlwind pace. He’d recruited with an eye toward building a harmonious, yet productive work environment; and based on his estimates as to where they stood relative to the objectives he’d set forth in July, he’d succeeded. In addition to being almost nine months ahead of schedule in terms of sending out the first probe, significant upgrades were underway to the Maytag.

  Dr. Rys had originally sought modifications that would enable the generator to send more than 180 lbs. for five minutes. The “900 pound-minutes barrier” as it came to be known wasn’t a problem yet, but it would be, particularly in light of their goal to eventually send human passengers. He went over the issue with Dr. Kerberos, the team’s nuclear engineer, who’d been evaluating changes to the reactor to break through the barrier. Wondering whether a solution might be possible through modifications to the Maytag, Dr. Rys walked him through his quantitative model of the physics underlying the Allen field generator.