Time Off

Chapter Ten

Javier entered the physics building and headed straight for Sussman's office. He felt the same thrill of a year earlier when he came to Stanford and went to see Professor Singh to get his initial marching orders. He was no stranger to Stanford, having already lived in the Bay Area for five years. He earned his PhD at Berkeley and had been to Stanford frequently. His dream was academia and a tenured professorship. He aspired to one day follow his hero, Feynman and land at Caltech, but he knew there were many equally good outcomes.

Now, just days after his biggest setback, Javier felt catapulted ahead, a phoenix with a new beginning. He knocked energetically on Sussman's door, carried by adrenaline and a manic buzzing in his head.

"Come in!" Unlike his typical demeanor, Roy was undistracted and delighted to see Javier. "Okay Javier. It's all worked out. We don't even need paperwork apparently. They just changed a couple of names in the system and it's done." Sussman snapped his fingers for effect.

"That's fantastic Professor."

"First rule, everyone on my team calls me Roy. Even when I yell at them."

"Okay. Roy," uttered Javier, testing out his new privileges.

"I talked to Singh and I did a little digging on you. M theory eh? So what is your current thinking about it? I mean Witten himself doesn't even seem too sure about things these days."

"I feel the same way, a little uncertain. Just like everyone else, I was waiting for super symmetry to pop out of the Cern data but now it's like, what are we doing?"

"Well aren't you the lucky one. You met Angel Villasenor and so did I and that's what we're going to work on."

"Really? You have funding for that?"

"I have funding for you, for about six months, then we will see. There will be other things opening up. But you, young man, I want you to take this seriously. I'm not joking and this is no less important to me than anything else we are working on here. In fact I would say it's more important to me personally. But I need to be cautious."

"I Understand. People might think it's crazy."

"So I can't go applying for new money. I am totally forthright about my proposals. No bait and switch with me, you understand? That's my principle."

"Yes sir."

"Then you can understand why we are on a shoestring. You need to make sure that we have the best shot possible. So we don't look back at a bunch of missteps and bad data, wondering. One shot! We've got one shot at this! Remember, temperature. Anything electronic needs to be monitored and controlled for temperature. And you need a lot of redundancy. Make me a plan. I want to see a draft in one week."

"Yes sir."

"Roy."

"Yes Roy." Sussman stood up abruptly and shook Javier's hand.

"Welcome aboard Mr. Camareno."

"Thank you Roy. I will see you next week."

"Go ahead and schedule that meeting with Marjorie, and give my best to Angel. I hope she can join the meeting next week."

Javier barely recalled walking from the physics building to his car. He was in some sort of trance, as if floating. As he sat in his car breathing hard from the excitement, he tried to reach Angel by phone, but there was no answer. His fingers were shaky but he managed to hammer out a short text to her. "Querida. The Sussman thing is fantastic - only assignment is to work with you on the plan and the experiment. Yahoo!"

":)"
"At school w L, call u soon"

Javier drove home and immediately changed and grabbed his road bike and blasted around the Portola Valley loop in an hour flat. The whole time, he worked out details in his mind, but mainly he just smiled and cranked the pedals like never before.