Spare Parts

by Joshua Davis

  The operator put him through to Frank Swankoski, a temperature engineer at the company. Swankoski knew as much about thermometer applications as anyone. All day long, he talked to military contractors, industrial engineers, and environmental consultants, so he was momentarily confused when he heard Oscar’s high-pitched Mexican accent on the other end of the line. The seventeen-year-old wanted advice on how to build a complex underwater robot.

  This was the second call Swankoski had received from amateur roboticists in less than a month. A few weeks earlier, some college oceanic-engineering students had called and said they were entering the national underwater-ROV championships. Oscar explained that his team, too, was competing. They were going up against colleges such as MIT, so they needed to learn as much as they could from the experts. Swankoski liked Oscar’s attitude. The college students had simply ordered what they wanted and hung up. Oscar told him they didn’t know exactly how best to measure temperature underwater and needed his advice. Oscar activated the speakerphone, so the others could hear anything he might say.

  For Swankoski, it was a fun break from the day-to-day grind of the office. Plus, these kids sounded as if they really wanted to learn, so Swankoski launched into an in-depth explanation of his wares, offering details as if he were letting them in on a little secret. “What you really want,” he confided, “is a thermocouple with a cold junction compensator.”

  Swankoski ran through the science: two different alloys are placed side by side, and their different conductive properties transform temperature into voltage. That’s a thermocouple. The amount of voltage generated between the alloys is a sign of how much temperature difference there is. That data can quickly be used to calibrate the outside temperature. It was like a master class in materials science and electrical engineering.

  “Whoa,” Lorenzo said, feeling suddenly a lot smarter. “That’s badass.”

  Oscar asked him how much the device would cost, and Swankoski offered to donate one. He wanted to see these kids win and, with his help, thought they could do it.

  “You know,” Swankoski said, “I think you can beat those guys from MIT. Because none of them knows what I know about thermometers.”

  After they hung up, Oscar looked at each team member pointedly. “You hear that?” he said triumphantly. “We got people believing in us, so now we got to believe in ourselves.”

  IN NOVEMBER 2003—A FEW WEEKS after the team had begun the ROV project—Fredi loaded up a van with six of his marine science students and headed west. If he was going to teach kids about the ocean, it seemed only right to show them the thing. So Oscar ended up crammed in a middle seat with Luis, who took up most of the bench.

  Oscar didn’t know Luis that well—no one seemed to. His size and expressionless gaze convinced most people to keep their distance. But Oscar now had a five-hour van ride with Luis’s belly crowding the seat. He decided to strike up a conversation. Oscar had used his mattress-factory savings to buy a 1991 Mitsubishi 3000GT, a two-door sports car that he was intensely proud of.

  “What do you drive?” he asked Luis.

  “An ’89 Camaro RS.”

  It was a serious American muscle car, meant for racing. Oscar was impressed. Luis started talking at length about his car’s attributes—it had a red paint job and a 3.05-liter, V-8, TBI engine. He spoke quietly, in a restrained rumble, as if he were accustomed to letting his size do the talking. But once he started talking, he didn’t seem shy. It was as if he had never said much simply because no one had ever asked him a question. Oscar liked him even more by the time they got to San Diego.

  The ocean was mind-boggling to Oscar and Luis. They had glimpsed it on a previous Marine Science trip to California. Now they dove into the water and were startled to discover that it tasted salty. They were used to freshwater lakes and rivers.

  Fredi had arranged for the students to tour SeaBotix, a San Diego–based ROV manufacturer. Company president Donald Rodocker had helped establish the Navy’s saturation diving program, which allowed divers to descend beyond one thousand feet using equipment similar to that of scuba divers. After Rodocker left the Navy, he pioneered the commercialization of small ROVs in the eighties with the HyBall ROV, a bright yellow sphere with a clear-plastic midsection that allowed a camera to rotate 360 degrees. To the ROV community, Rodocker was a legend.

  Rodocker took the students into the company’s laboratory and showed them his latest vehicle, an amazingly compact orange robot called the LBV, which stood for “little benthic vehicle.” The machine could dive five hundred feet and cruise at 2.3 miles per hour underwater. The base model retailed for more than ten thousand dollars and rose from there with add-ons.

  Despite its diminutive size, the bot still had to contend with a problem endemic to ROVs: its tether. All ROVs are connected to the surface via a bundle of cables that allows its operator to control propellers, sensors, and manipulators. The cables also carry video and infrared signals so that the operator can see where the ROV is going. Normally, the tether also supplies power to the robot. It’s a major engineering challenge to minimize the size of those cables, as the combined diameter creates drag, slowing the ROVs movements. It also poses a significant snagging hazard.

  Rodocker was a precise man. He wore a neatly trimmed, gray goatee, round spectacles, and a green plaid shirt. Oscar stood just to his left and marveled at the facility. The place was a dream. Racks held specially designed mechanical grippers, endless spools of wire and cable, and beautifully molded plastic casings for the LBV.

  While Rodocker talked about building advanced ROVs, Oscar leaned in close to the LBV. An arm sticking out the front had a pincer capable of grabbing a variety of objects. It would be the perfect tool to complete two of their mission tasks: they had to recover the U-boat captain’s bell and retrieve a “towfish,” a mock-up of a sonar device that would be lying on the pool bottom. Rodocker talked about the prototypes they’d built of the pincer in order to arrive at the final production model. It took a lot of work to make something that was small and highly functional.

  Emboldened by his experiences talking to De Tray and Swankoski, Oscar blurted out a question that would have been unthinkable weeks earlier: “Sir, would you consider lending us one of your prototypes if you aren’t using it anymore?”

  “I’d be happy to,” Rodocker responded easily.

  On the drive back to Phoenix, the kids marveled at their good fortune. They had a state-of-the-art pincer on loan from a real ROV company. They’d learned how salty the ocean is. Oscar and Luis had become fast friends. The trip had been a great success.

  But then a problem appeared in the heat waves coming off the I-10. Near Yuma, Arizona, just after they’d left California, they spotted brake lights. Cars were coming to a stop. A phalanx of official vehicles bore the logo of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They were headed into an immigration checkpoint.

  Everybody’s heart rate kicked up. Luis had a green card thanks to his father, but Oscar was in the country illegally. He knew what had happened to the Wilson High kids in Niagara Falls the previous summer. He could be arrested and deported.

  “Give me your school IDs,” Fredi commanded. “And nobody talk besides me. Understood?”

  The kids nodded and nervously handed their IDs forward. Fredi eased up to the checkpoint and rolled down his window. An officer asked for identification. Fredi handed over the school IDs. “We’re on a school trip,” Fredi offered.

  The agent glanced at the van—it bore the school’s name. He could see the Latino kids sitting inside. Oscar prepared for the worst. He imagined being torn from his family and dropped across the border. He wouldn’t know what to do or where to go.

  The agent scrutinized the IDs and looked back at the kids. After a moment, he handed the IDs back.

  “Okay, have a good trip,” he said and waved them on.

  Fredi accelerated before the guy could change his mind. Nobody talked for a while. Suddenly, their desire to see the ocean and learn abo
ut robots seemed foolish and maybe even reckless.

  OSCAR RETURNED to the robotics closet with a mix of excitement and fear. The anxiety he felt at the immigration checkpoint had dissipated, but the threat was still there. He had to decide. The ROV contest was back in California. If he wanted to compete, he’d have to risk another checkpoint.

  Oscar made a quick decision. In ROTC, he had done multiple rope courses, rappelling down sheer cliffs. He’d learned to not let his fear control him. This was no different. If he wanted to do something great, he’d have to put his worries aside. They now had a thermocouple, a range finder, and a frightening black claw that only an engineer could love. Oscar picked the pieces up and positioned them in the wooden model.

  “I think we can fit everything,” he said.

  With that, he put the checkpoint behind him.

  Soon, Cristian and Lorenzo showed up, and the kids started to talk about how to build the real ROV. Fredi and Allan knew that other teams had used machined metal in previous years. Some colleges had machine shops and could custom-fabricate parts. Machined-metal ROVs tended to be smaller and more compact, which came in handy when exploring cramped underwater spaces. But Carl Hayden couldn’t afford the necessary metal, nor did the students have access to a machine shop. Even if they did, nobody knew how to operate the machines.

  “We should use glass syntactic flotation foam,” Cristian said excitedly. “It’s got a really high compressive strength. They use it on submersibles.”

  Lorenzo didn’t really know what submersibles meant. Cristian, however, had done his research. He had watched James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss, a documentary about the director’s journey twelve thousand feet down to visit the wreck of the Titanic. The film crew used two ROVs outfitted with glass syntactic foam to enter the wreck. Cristian had taken this hint and done further research online.

  “It’s got glass microspheres embedded in an epoxy resin so it keeps it shape under pressure while still providing buoyancy,” Cristian said.

  “Damn, dude, how do you come up with all that?” Lorenzo said.

  “How much is it?” Oscar asked.

  “Two, maybe three thousand for what we need,” Cristian responded.

  “¿Cuánto?” Lorenzo blurted. It was a lot of money.

  Cristian tended to think in abstract, idealized solutions. They didn’t have that kind of money and everyone knew it. They had a total budget of less than a thousand dollars. Glass syntactic foam was not an option.

  One alternative was polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. It was a material they were all familiar with. For decades, migrant laborers had installed PVC pipes throughout American farmlands. Workers from Mexico and Central America laid miles of the white plastic tube to irrigate fields of strawberries and corn. The piping didn’t have the strength of metal, but, like the laborers, it was low cost, easy to work with, and rugged. The combination had helped turn America into an agricultural juggernaut, so it seemed only natural to use it now. It was also all they could afford.

  “We can run wires through the pipe to keep them dry,” Lorenzo said. “And the air inside will make it float.”

  It seemed like an idea worth testing, so Luis drove to Home Depot and bought twenty dollars worth of three-centimeter-diameter Schedule 40 PVC piping. Schedule 40 pipe was an unassuming subset of PVC, but it had impressive attributes. It was strong enough to work in temperatures as high as 140 degrees and able to withstand pressure 250 feet below the surface. They’d only be going down fifteen feet, so it was more than robust enough for the job.

  When they gathered around the ten-foot-long pipes in the robotics closet, it seemed like a lot of material. “There’ll be a lot of air in there,” Oscar pointed out.

  Cristian started scribbling on a piece of paper and made a crude sketch of an ROV. While the others watched, he calculated the volume of air inside the pipes and concluded that they would need some ballast.

  “You mean like something heavy?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Yeah,” Cristian said, his tone suggesting it was obvious what ballast was.

  The simplest solution was to affix weights to the frame to counterbalance the buoyancy. But weights would take up precious space in a machine already cluttered with sensors, propellers, and a pincer. The machine would turn into an unwieldy behemoth. To further complicate matters, they would have to contend with the thick tether cable sprouting out the top.

  “Wait,” Cristian said, an idea forming. “What if we put the battery on board?”

  It was a bold idea. Most teams wouldn’t consider putting their power supply in the water. A small leak could take the whole system down. But the competition required agile movements through narrow passages; a thinner tether would be a key advantage. Cristian proposed housing the battery in a heavy, waterproof case at the bottom of the ROV, where it would stabilize the machine’s movements. An onboard battery would also limit transmission loss. Voltage dropped if it had to travel down a long cable. If the battery was right next to the propellers, that wasn’t a problem, and they wouldn’t have to run a thick electrical cable to the bot.

  “What do you think?” Cristian asked the group.

  “That’s a badass idea,” Lorenzo said, his highest compliment.

  Oscar was worried though: “There’s a reason other people don’t do it.”

  “If we do the same as everyone else, we’ll finish last because they’ve done it before,” Cristian fired back.

  “If our ROV short-circuits, we’ll definitely finish last,” Oscar said.

  “Sure, but if we can’t figure out how to waterproof a case, then we shouldn’t be in an underwater contest,” Cristian said.

  “He’s got a point,” Luis said abruptly.

  Everybody looked at Luis. He looked calmly back at everyone else. It was as if the oracle had spoken.

  “Okay, then,” Oscar said. “Let’s put the battery on board.”

  FOR LORENZO, the robotics team was like a new family. In some respects, Fredi and Allan were surrogate parents, constantly advising him and pushing him to do better. It was the same for the others. A team spirit had developed. Lorenzo wasn’t the only one sitting in the front row of his classes. The rest of the team had adopted the approach as well. “What’s the point of doing something half-assed,” Fredi told them repeatedly. The boys took that to heart.

  It wasn’t a perfect family. Cristian tended to look down on ideas that weren’t his own; Oscar wasn’t convinced that Lorenzo was reliable; and Luis showed little emotion of any kind. But the guys at least listened to Lorenzo, let him brainstorm crazy ideas, and didn’t tell him to go away because he looked funny. The robotics closet felt more like home than his actual house. Fredi and Allan joked that, if they let him, Lorenzo would be happy living in the cramped room.

  But that wasn’t possible. Lorenzo stayed as late as he could after school, but both Fredi and Allan had a forty-five-minute drive back to their families in East Phoenix. Fredi was already asking a lot of Pam; she was supportive of his work, but she also needed all the help she could get at the end of a long day at home with the boys. Lorenzo usually lingered until Fredi shut off the lights and started locking the doors.

  Fridays were the hardest. Lorenzo’s dad was likely to start drinking Milwaukee’s Best, and Fredi and Allan weren’t always able to come back to school over the weekend. That meant two days of hell.

  The school week was only a partial respite. Lorenzo was making headway with Cristian, Oscar, and Luis, but the rest of the school still seemed to view him as a misshapen freak. He wanted to look cool and started wearing jewelry: two gold earrings in his left ear, a gold chain with a medallion, and a flashy metal watch. But as he passed people in the hall, they still laughed. Somehow he continued to strike his classmates as a walking joke.

  The taunting increased as his sophomore year got under way. One day, in health class, a kid behind him started teasing him about his hair. It’s girly; he looks like a woman. Lorenzo ignored the guy. Then Lorenzo felt something hi
t the back of his head. The student had flicked a wad of gum into his long hair. Lorenzo tried to pull it out, but it only got more entwined. The class snickered. He was mortified; he had gum stuck on his fingers and in his hair, and he could hear his classmates trying to suppress their laughter.

  When he got home that night, he burst into tears. His mother offered to cut the gum out; that would be the fastest solution. But Lorenzo refused; he didn’t want somebody to be able to force him to cut his hair. His mother quietly got some vegetable oil and started trying to loosen the gum. It took three days for her to get it all out.

  Soon after the gum incident, Lorenzo was trailed home by another student. As he crossed over the Thirty-Fifth Avenue overpass, the student started asking Lorenzo why he was wearing earrings and a flashy watch. Lorenzo ignored him for a while, but the kid kept pestering him. Lorenzo finally stopped and turned.

  “This is how I am,” he said.

  “But you look stupid,” the kid said.

  Lorenzo tried using his anger-management techniques. “Diez, nueve, ocho, siete…,” he counted backward. He knew that if he got in another fight, he could be expelled. Before, he might not have cared. Now he wanted to build this robot.

  The kid behind him didn’t let up. He started saying things about Lorenzo’s mom and Lorenzo tensed. He couldn’t allow anybody to insult his mother.

  “Hijo de puta,” the boy said. Your mother’s a whore.

  Lorenzo snapped. He hurled himself at the boy. He managed to land a few punches, but the kid walloped him in the face, bruising Lorenzo’s eye socket. Traffic on the bridge came to a stop. Someone separated the boys.