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Apr. 14th, 2008 12:48 pmGordon starts at Black Mesa tomorrow.
Technically he’s already there. He finished moving his possessions into the employee dormitory in Sector C earlier today. But that’s different, that’s just the location and not the job, not the action, not the part where he finally gets to do real research again-
(He’s picking his way along an exceptionally narrow trail up to the top of one of the more promising-looking rock formations, one hand firmly gripping the Mongol’s handlebars. Carrying a forty-five pound bicycle over one shoulder’s just asking for trouble, and it’s not geared for pedaling up a trail this steep. But there isn’t a better downhill mountain bike made in the United States. On a day like this he needs something to bleed the nervous, anticipatory energy off. The country around Black Mesa’s practically made for a downhill racer’s dreams, as lumpy and narrow and challenging as any rider could ask for.)
The climate’s cold up here, and windy right now. Nothing like Boston, where he’s been since the doctorate, but it’s still cold. January’s January, he guesses, no matter where you go.
That won’t matter, starting tomorrow. Not much, anyway. Black Mesa’s underground, mostly, and whatever isn’t underground is still so tightly climate-controlled that it might as well be a Fremen sietch. Sixty-eight to seventy-two degrees, across the board, and the humidity adjusted locally to reflect whatever the most suitable balance point is between human comfort and experimental equipment’s needs. The staff only gets subjected to the environment around them when it’s absolutely necessary, or when they choose to do so. Otherwise? It’s all under control.
Which has its perks, definitely, but sometimes. . .
(The trail is exceptionally narrow here, barely as wide as his feet are long. He’s ridden narrower before, but seldom with such a steep drop-off on one side. If he misses the curves in the trail on his way down he’ll be lucky if Black Mesa searching parties ever find what’s left of him without the use of a helicopter.)
Well.
(It’s a chance worth taking.)
The way Gordon sees it, control is absolutely vital to science. The importance of individual variables, each in their own time and category, can’t possibly be determined without it. Keep it tight, keep it neat, keep it precise and in line. Then you can test to your heart’s content, and you can make sure every individual piece of your hypothesis is correct- or you can correct it if it doesn’t match the observed data. And then- and this is the part he’s pretty sure even Dr. Kleiner forgets sometimes- then you can take that beautiful, polished, magnificently sound experimental procedure of yours and see what happens when all the perfect parts get thrown in the path of oncoming reality.
(There’s a spot where the trail widens, a few meters short of the top. Moving the Mongol up a trail like this is hard work. It’s a fair place for catching his breath. He glances down and to the left, and for a moment the plummeting rockface below him puts him in mind of the display in Milliways, if only in terms of scale.)
Because that’s the thing. Pure science is exactly that. Pure. There’s nothing in the world that’s genuinely pure unless it’s forced to be so. There’s always something unforeseen. There’s always entropy. The real world is one anomaly after another, irregularities stacking up and interfering with one another. It’s the sum of a million contradictory histories in every second. And once you’ve got your beautiful science down pat, it’s got to be able to account for that, for all of that, or it’s not going to do anyone any good at all.
Tomorrow he starts in the Anomalous Materials lab. One variable at a time, one test, one element. Then the next, and the next, and who knows how many others after that, and then-
(To the top, now, and no more putting it off.)
There’ll be practical applications eventually. There’ll be real-world testing. And if the pure science to which he and the people he’ll be working with have dedicated their lives so far is worth anything at all, it’ll make a difference. Even if it only starts off in quantum computing, his dreams of teleportation will be that one step closer to being genuinely real.
The thought alone is enough to set his palms to sweating, even in the January chill. Gordon pulls off his gloves and wipes his hands on his thighs before taking one last look around him.
(Forgiveness is a human thing. Neither the obscurest quantum principles nor the end of universes will extend it to you if you fail; nor gravity, neither, it’s all one and the same-)
The world around him blurs into a vast streak of brown and blue and white as he and the bike rocket down the trail he’s just so arduously climbed.
It’s worth it.
Technically he’s already there. He finished moving his possessions into the employee dormitory in Sector C earlier today. But that’s different, that’s just the location and not the job, not the action, not the part where he finally gets to do real research again-
(He’s picking his way along an exceptionally narrow trail up to the top of one of the more promising-looking rock formations, one hand firmly gripping the Mongol’s handlebars. Carrying a forty-five pound bicycle over one shoulder’s just asking for trouble, and it’s not geared for pedaling up a trail this steep. But there isn’t a better downhill mountain bike made in the United States. On a day like this he needs something to bleed the nervous, anticipatory energy off. The country around Black Mesa’s practically made for a downhill racer’s dreams, as lumpy and narrow and challenging as any rider could ask for.)
The climate’s cold up here, and windy right now. Nothing like Boston, where he’s been since the doctorate, but it’s still cold. January’s January, he guesses, no matter where you go.
That won’t matter, starting tomorrow. Not much, anyway. Black Mesa’s underground, mostly, and whatever isn’t underground is still so tightly climate-controlled that it might as well be a Fremen sietch. Sixty-eight to seventy-two degrees, across the board, and the humidity adjusted locally to reflect whatever the most suitable balance point is between human comfort and experimental equipment’s needs. The staff only gets subjected to the environment around them when it’s absolutely necessary, or when they choose to do so. Otherwise? It’s all under control.
Which has its perks, definitely, but sometimes. . .
(The trail is exceptionally narrow here, barely as wide as his feet are long. He’s ridden narrower before, but seldom with such a steep drop-off on one side. If he misses the curves in the trail on his way down he’ll be lucky if Black Mesa searching parties ever find what’s left of him without the use of a helicopter.)
Well.
(It’s a chance worth taking.)
The way Gordon sees it, control is absolutely vital to science. The importance of individual variables, each in their own time and category, can’t possibly be determined without it. Keep it tight, keep it neat, keep it precise and in line. Then you can test to your heart’s content, and you can make sure every individual piece of your hypothesis is correct- or you can correct it if it doesn’t match the observed data. And then- and this is the part he’s pretty sure even Dr. Kleiner forgets sometimes- then you can take that beautiful, polished, magnificently sound experimental procedure of yours and see what happens when all the perfect parts get thrown in the path of oncoming reality.
(There’s a spot where the trail widens, a few meters short of the top. Moving the Mongol up a trail like this is hard work. It’s a fair place for catching his breath. He glances down and to the left, and for a moment the plummeting rockface below him puts him in mind of the display in Milliways, if only in terms of scale.)
Because that’s the thing. Pure science is exactly that. Pure. There’s nothing in the world that’s genuinely pure unless it’s forced to be so. There’s always something unforeseen. There’s always entropy. The real world is one anomaly after another, irregularities stacking up and interfering with one another. It’s the sum of a million contradictory histories in every second. And once you’ve got your beautiful science down pat, it’s got to be able to account for that, for all of that, or it’s not going to do anyone any good at all.
Tomorrow he starts in the Anomalous Materials lab. One variable at a time, one test, one element. Then the next, and the next, and who knows how many others after that, and then-
(To the top, now, and no more putting it off.)
There’ll be practical applications eventually. There’ll be real-world testing. And if the pure science to which he and the people he’ll be working with have dedicated their lives so far is worth anything at all, it’ll make a difference. Even if it only starts off in quantum computing, his dreams of teleportation will be that one step closer to being genuinely real.
The thought alone is enough to set his palms to sweating, even in the January chill. Gordon pulls off his gloves and wipes his hands on his thighs before taking one last look around him.
(Forgiveness is a human thing. Neither the obscurest quantum principles nor the end of universes will extend it to you if you fail; nor gravity, neither, it’s all one and the same-)
The world around him blurs into a vast streak of brown and blue and white as he and the bike rocket down the trail he’s just so arduously climbed.
It’s worth it.
