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.
Later that day, Javier picked up Angel and they took a long walk. The joy and excitement of Javier's new position and their prospects for testing Angel's ideas, was tempered by Angel's uncertainty and financial fears.
"Javi, don't worry about me. I can't be looking for a new job every second. Even if I could, I wouldn't. I will always leave time for you and the project. After all, it was my project first." They smiled at each other. "It's okay. You hombres always need to come and take over. That's fine."
"It will always be your project first. I won't be the bad hombre. But Sussman, I don't know. You can check it out when we meet him next week. He's gone loco over this. I think he loves you." Angel banged on his chest, affectionately. They laughed about it. "Let's work on it starting tomorrow. I think he wants to look at all the ways it could go wrong, to make sure we don't blow it."
"Okay let's do it."
By the time the meeting was to take place, Angel and Javi had written up an impressive and detailed document, outlining all of their procedures. There were some holes such as where specifically they could safely locate the clocks in the northern hemisphere. But aside from that, they were quite confident that they had covered all angles and they had created a detailed budget. What had not occurred during this period of high productivity was Angel finding a new job. It wasn't for lack of trying, and she knew there were jobs immediately available. But she had become selective and she also needed enough salary to cover her expenses, so the job had to be well above minimum wage. This weighed on Angel's thoughts as they walked into the physics building on a Wednesday afternoon.
"Before we get started, Angel, I wanted to tell you I found something you might be interested in, unless you have already secured new employment," declared Sussman. Angel's eyes lit up.
"No, I didn't find a new job yet. I am interested."
"I ran into a former student of mine, who made a respectable career choice to teach astronomy and physics down at Foothill college. He is looking for a department assistant. Normally, you would not be qualified on paper, but I convinced him that he needed to meet you and make an exception. No guarantees, but I think you've got a shot. It's close bye and it involves...well let's just say you will be working with subject matter that I know you enjoy."
"Oh thank you so much Professor!"
"Roy, please."
"I told you Angel. He wants to be called Roy."
"Okay. Thank you Roy."
"Great, I will send you his number. His name is Adrienne Franconi. Now, moving on. What do you two have for me?"
This question triggered another near-marathon session with Sussman pounding away with questions and suggestions, all of which Angel documented furiously while trying to answer, as the assault continued.
"Places in the north that were close to ideal, were like Copenhagen, Edmonton or some places in England," explained Angel.
"Oh, I had forgotten. I have already arranged the place. There is a retired professor from Oxford. He lives in a town called Preston. His name is Abel Jennings. You will find him very hospitable. He is a dear old friend and I talked to him just the other day. I'll have you know, he is committing an entire spare bedroom to this project."
"Is the latitude good for us?" asked Javier. Sussman just glared at him with a smirk, as Angel tapped into her smart phone.
"It's perfect." confirmed Angel rolling her eyes.
"Now, Javier, have you solidified all of this with your uncle? He and I have met, you know. It's been a long time but I was on the original international funding committee for his observatory. But I have never been there. Talk about remote places!"
"Yes, I just spoke to him last weekend. He is okay with everything. He says the server room has space and it is temperature controlled all year round. Plus, they have their own temperature monitoring and they keep the data. He will also allow us to have a webcam in there."
Juan Manuel Hernandez, Ph.D. was Javier's uncle by marriage. He was originally from Guadalajara, from a well to do family. But he did his undergraduate studies in Buenos Aires which then paved the way for his PhD at MIT. When he finished at MIT, he did a post doc at Imperial College of London. As Javier got old enough to start finding his interests, Uncle Juan became his hero. And Juan treated Javier as a son and took great interest in helping him plan a career in physics. Javier thought of Juan as some kind of royalty, with his fancy name that carried such a long lineage with it, that he couldn't even remember it entirely. He only recalled, Juan Manuel Hernandez Guerrero Camareno Villasenor Quinto Marques de la Barca, which made him smile whenever he thought about it.
Rio Grande was a remote place, and especially harsh and inhospitable in the summer, which was Rio Grande's winter and precisely when Javier would go there as a summer intern during his undergraduate days. He didn't miss that cold, biting wind of Tierra del Fuego so he impressed upon Angel that since it was already October, they should hurry up and get ready so that the trip to Rio Grande would be more tolerable. Actually he had never seen the place during the warm weather. He only remembered uncle Juan raving about it, trying to soften Javier's impression.
"Well I must say, your data collection and statistics looks quite stable and reassuring," continued Sussman. "We still have very little understanding of how much time dilation we are looking for. But at least we know that we are working within a level of precision that is stable. Now, let's get going on the elevated temperature testing so we can characterize the sensitivity. We have time to do a good job on it. You will be thankful for this later, if you have some temperature excursions. We will be able to correct for it."
"Yes sir, we will start that immediately," shot back Javier.
"I guess that does it. Let's meet every week, to make sure we are on track. And Angel, good luck with Franconi."
Javier and Angel blasted through the doors of the physics building into the bright afternoon sunshine. They embraced so tightly that Angel's feet came off the ground and she bent her legs, giving way to Javier's strength. When he slowly returned her to the ground they were still deep into a kiss. They held hands, with arms outstretched, smiling at one another as they started to turn in a circle, like binary stars feeling each other's pull. Their idea of gravitational attraction was new and different. And that was what drew them even closer than they had ever been.
As her first taste of white privilege, Angel did get the job at foothill college. There were a number of administration tasks but for the most part, Angel had time to study and plan and she learned about operations and running experiments in the small but impressive Foothill Observatory. To her pleasant surprise, Angel was making more money than she had at Stanford and used that extra money to buy a dated but serviceable little Toyota. This also allowed Sevy to finally get his driver's license and experience the freedom of going out with friends on evenings and weekends. Angel knew that when she went away during the school break, Sevy and Lolita would be by themselves. The car was important.
The day before Angel and Javier were to set out on their wild adventure, Angel took her final photographs of all the time pieces together in one place.
"Okay, this is it kids. I'm taking the final shots before I break up this big family of watches and phones. They are going on vacation with mama."
'"You're getting even more weird, mama," replied Lola. Severino laughed from the kitchen at his sister's comment.
"Okay! Bye bye watches. Have fun," he called from the next room.
Angel packed two small hard cases, each with customized foam cut-outs to organize the watches and phones. She was sending three iPhones and three watches to each location, including leaving the same number in Palo Alto as the reference group. Besides the two cases destined for Rio Grande, Argentina and Preston, England, she took one watch and one phone from the Palo Alto group and would use those to snapshot one last time at the new locations, as further verification that nothing unusual happened during the traveling. It was a tight plan, vetted by Sussman and now in the execution phase.
The next morning, which marked the beginning of Sevy and Lola's holiday vacation, Angel exchanged teary goodbyes with her children, as Javier came in to say his goodbyes and then whisk her off into the unknown.
It was long trip. To reach Buenos Aires, they first flew to Houston, then waited a few hours. Luckily, they planned a two day stopover to see Javier's family. They were also to meet his uncle Juan there and then travel together to Rio Grande.
At the home of Javier's parents, they had a large gathering. It was a normal affair, given the holidays, but this was much bigger than usual, owing to the arrival if Javi's new love interest. Everyone was curious about "La Mexicana," and the extended family packed the sizable Camareno home to get a better look. "Is this a normal party? Or does it have something to do with us?" Angel asked Javier.
"We have never had a party this big, not even close. So to answer your question...." They both laughed.
"Are they interested in science? Or is it strictly a girl-boy thing?"
"I assure you. Uncle Juan is the only scientist here, speaking of which there he is. Come on!" They walked in from the garden patio and Juan caught sight of them and threw his arms in the air in a dramatic gesture. Angel noted his dashing appearance, well dressed with a dark tan, gray hair and a well groomed beard. He looked like a real outdoorsman and full of life.
In fact he was an outdoorsman. His desire to set up the observatory in Patagonia was not only about science, it was about his love for the outdoors and adventure.
"Tio, this is the woman I told you about. Angel, meet Juan." Angel blushed at the realization that all of these people had been primed.
"Que bonita. Angel welcome to Argentina." Juan issued kisses on either cheek in a rapid protocol, which Angel found very exotic, very European. "You guys came at the perfect time. I'm going show you some big whales and lots of other things."
"Thank you Juan. Me gustaria mucho," said Angel.
"Uncle loves to show off his precious Tierra del Fuego. You know, I also have never seen the place except in the snow."
"Es verdad muchacho. You will also see a different place than you remember. As far as your little experiment, I was skeptical but then I realized. Time really does run more slowly in Patagonia. In fact, when I go there, I think it stops completely!" They all laughed. "But seriously, when you told me about Sussman, oh my god. Hey! My little observatory is all yours. Now where's the cerveza? I have a lot to catch up with you young man. I'm so proud." Juan had his hands clasped onto Javier's shoulders as he looked up to his nephew who was several inches taller.