Love Story: In The Cloud

by Ken Renshaw

  I had previously decided to get a second opinion of Candice's work from someone in the scientific community. I contacted Dr. Peter Gallagher, an elderly physicist at UCLA who, in the process of retiring, had taken on the role of 'expert witness' in legal cases. He had been a good witness in one of my patent cases. I wanted to sit down with him and see what he thought about Candice's work. We had arranged to meet at his office at UCLA. Peter arranged for guest parking for me and emailed me a map of campus.

  UCLA has been in a period of great expansion in the past decades. Big, boxy industrial looking buildings with no unique features were side-by side in the new area. It appeared that UCLA had decided not to waste money on architects when they built the new additions. As I drove through, I thought how dismal an isolated researcher must be, working on a small grant, in a warren of offices in nondescript buildings. Strangely, Google and Apple have centers that are like campuses, while UCLA has research centers that look like high-rise industrial parks.

  Peter's office was in Sihler Hall, one of the older buildings in the original part of campus, looking as though it had been built in the nineteen thirties– a red brick exterior, white cement trim, only three stories tall, situated overlooking an open space with lawns and trees. I walked up to the third floor to Peter's office. His small office, looking out on the green space, crammed with books, was somehow very tidy and organized.

  Peter was a jolly–looking gray-haired man, balding, paunchy, wearing a worn sport coat and a sport shirt with a bolo tie.

  "Good to see you again, Dave. Sit down. Any trouble getting parked?"

  "No, I'd forgotten how beautiful it is in this part of campus."

  "I'm lucky, I guess, on being on a faculty committee that requires me to be up here. One of my friends calls the new part of campus as 'E2L-ville' since, for many people down there, English is a second language. 'Big Research Dollar Granteese' is the native language. They need to build and fill those buildings as fast as they can. Big science means big research bucks, which means prestigious positions, which means prestigious university.

  "Up here, we still deal with something called education.

  "But, you didn't come out here to talk about how it was in the old days. I read Dr. Montgomery's papers and I am quite impressed. I had a couple of my peers also look at them. Nobody could find any scientific flaws! But, the eight-space paradigm is the kind of thing that would be hard to get accepted. Much of that big science juggernaut on the south campus would have to reorient its direction. Many people in many prestigious positions would have to significantly alter their programs. They would have to add crow to the south campus cafeteria menus because many people would need to eat it.

  "The first law of science is: you never can convince someone about something new if it will cost them money, from grants or department budgets.

  "The second law is: academia never accepts new ideas until the old ones retire.

  "Dr. Montgomery's ideas are perfectly sound. It will probably take a generation or more for anything like that to get academic acceptance. However, I'll be glad to testify to her paper's soundness for you."

  "Good!" I replied.

  Peter looking into the distance added, "Right after I graduated, I had to serve my ROTC commitment. It was toward the end of the war in Vietnam. I was assigned to a menial job in an aircraft carrier.

  "A Carrier Task Force is an amazing thing to see in action. The carrier carrying the Flag officer is at the center. Around that are screens of destroyers, and sometimes missile frigates, tankers carrying fuel oil, supply ships, etc. Tens of thousands of men going the same direction.

  "If the man on the bridge with the stars on his shoulders says, 'change the course by thirty degrees,' slowly but surely, all those ships change to the new direction, without altering the formation. It is awesome!

  "Changing the scientific direction of those people in the block buildings in the south campus would be much more difficult!"

  "Maybe our trial will add some stars to shoulders of those who might like to try." I replied.

  "It could change the practice of medicine by having doctors consider symptoms and maladies that might originate from other space times!"

  Peter and I discussed the case and his suggestions on how to approach it for a while, and then I left.