The Civic Circle seemed invincible, but their power rested on their secrets. Uncle Rob was right: we couldn’t reveal those secrets without it leading back to us. For now. Eventually though, we should be able to construct a plausible way to reveal the Circle’s secrets – a way that didn’t lead directly to the Tolliver Library and to us. In the meantime, we had to figure out the rest of what the Circle was hiding and why. Amit and I would need a good education from Georgia Tech to understand and uncover the Circle’s secrets. A few weeks later, Amit and I were back on campus in our first class, Introduction to Computer Programming, eager to take our first steps on this new path toward saving the world.
What a disappointment!
Our instructor droned on and on in a monotone explaining “what is a computer.” We sat in the back of the class and Amit kept distracting me by rolling his eyes at the ridiculous simplicity of the material. Probably just as well with Amit studying computer science and me trying to make up my mind between physics and electrical engineering we didn’t have many classes together. Amit’s attention span was even shorter than mine.
My next class, Linear Circuits, had me appreciating the simplicity of programming. I’d taken an electronics class in high school, but it was basic stuff. I knew resistors from capacitors and inductors, Ohm’s Law, and the basics of analyzing direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) circuits. We’d even taken apart a telephone, a television, and an ink jet printer, and worked through some simple digital and analog electronics to reverse engineer how they work. Despite my experience, I was already struggling in the first class. Linear Circuits was AC electronics on steroids.
The teacher, Professor Muldoon, was a no-nonsense type who assumed if he told you something once and you didn’t get it, it was all your fault for being stupid. Someone told me he’d been recruited because the School of Electrical Engineering had been looking for professors with more practical experience in industry. I wish they’d recruited someone with expertise in teaching instead! He handed out a syllabus and immediately launched into something called phasors without any other preliminaries. These phasors combined imaginary numbers and polar notation to describe AC circuits. The complex numbers and trigonometry were flying fast and furious. Professor Muldoon would work an example on the board, stare intently at some complicated trigonometric expression, and then calculate the answer – in his head – and write it on the board faster than I could key it in my calculator! Whoever coined the phrase “set phasors to stun” must have taken linear circuits. It was overwhelming and deeply humbling.
The class I was most looking forward to, though, was Electromagnetics. My life turned upside down last year when I found a curious anomaly – a difference between the online scanned version of a book and the physical copy in the Tolliver Library in my hometown. Working with Amit, I learned that the electrical pioneer, Oliver Heaviside, had discovered some unappreciated aspects of electricity and magnetism. Electromagnetic waves normally have a balance of electric and magnetic energy. When two electromagnetic waves coincide or interfere, they upset that balance. The fields add together normally, like 1 + 1 = 2. The energy, though, goes as the square of the field, so if 1 + 1 = 2 for the fields, then 1 + 1 = 4 for the energy. It took some time for me to wrap my head around the geometry of what Heaviside described. In constructive interference, you double the electric field and get four times the electric energy. But that’s because when you double the electric field “E”, you cancel out the magnetic field “H,” so all the magnetic energy becomes electric energy. The total energy is actually conserved. It works the other way in destructive interference. The geometry looks like this:
Something called a Poynting vector, “S,” describes the energy flow. When one field or the other goes to zero, the energy in the waves slows down. In a perfect constructive or destructive interference, the fields become momentarily magnetostatic or electrostatic, respectively. Energy is stationary in static fields. Yet, the waves continue moving through each other at the speed of light. The waves exchange energy with each other. It’s like the energy in one wave bounces off the other as the two waves pass through each other. It took some time for me to understand Heaviside’s discovery. What still didn’t make any sense was why the Circle suppressed his discovery and why FBI agents who weren’t really FBI agents showed up to kill anyone who got too close to the secret.
Electromagnetics had a bad reputation among freshmen – “E-Mag, Re-Mag, Three-Mag, Out!” And that was the introductory emag class. I was taking a more difficult intermediate level class, since Tech actually did recognize my community college transfer credit in physics. Still, I was looking forward to the class. I hoped studying electromagnetics would help me better understand Heaviside’s discovery and what motivated those who were trying to suppress it.
The subject matter was not the only challenge, however. In fact, the introductory lecture was straightforward. Professor Graf reviewed the electromagnetic spectrum, from audio frequencies, through radio waves, infrared, visible light, ultra-violet, X-rays, and gamma rays. I found it difficult keeping my mind on the subject matter and my eyes off Professor Graf’s rather shapely figure. Finally, she was explaining the difference between x-rays and gamma rays.
“There isn’t an exact cutoff between x-rays and gamma rays,” she explained. “Certain high energy x-rays actually have shorter wavelengths, higher frequencies, and higher energies than certain low energy gamma rays. So, there’s actually some overlap. The distinction lies in their origin. X-rays are atomic – they are emitted from strongly accelerated electrons or from transitions of electrons in atomic orbitals. Gamma rays are nuclear. They are emitted from radioactive decay processes within the nucleus of an atom. Those radioactive decays are nuclear phenomena – inside the nucleus – completely independent from atomic phenomena in the electron orbitals outside the nucleus. That’s why we make the distinction between x-rays and gamma rays. It’s based on the origin, and not, strictly speaking, the energy levels, although gamma rays generally have higher energies than x-rays.”
I had studied radioactive decay processes as part of my debate research on radioisotope thermal generation (RTG). I knew what Professor Graf said about radioactive decays being completely independent from atomic influences wasn’t exactly true. Maybe she was oversimplifying, but I thought I’d ask her to clarify.
“Professor Graf?” I asked. “Aren’t there certain beta decays whose decay rates can depend on temperature or on external fields?”
She looked puzzled. “No, I don’t believe so. Nuclear processes are independent of atomic behavior.” I didn’t press the point.
At the end of the class she announced, “We’re looking for an undergraduate research assistant to help us out in our mirror lab. If you’re interested, you can check out the job posting for more information.”
I had some time before my next class, so I looked at the link Professor Graf had provided. The job involved making mirrors for a gamma ray telescope – using a kiln to shape glass disks into optical shapes, and then depositing aluminum on them in a vacuum chamber. The work sounded interesting. I didn’t know vacuum pumps, but I had helped my uncle with his compressed and liquefied air business. Until the legal mess surrounding my parents’ estate was resolved, I was entirely dependent on my Social Justice Initiative Scholarship and on my Uncle Rob. It would be nice to have my own money. I updated my resume to emphasize the points that tied into the job posting. Then, I turned to explaining the question I’d asked in class.
Certain kinds of beta decays involve an electron being captured by a proton in the nucleus and transforming into a neutron. These “electron –capture” beta decays can be influenced by strong electric fields or possibly even by temperature – a rare case where phenomena on the atomic level can influence nuclear behavior. I wrote a cover letter summarizing my qualifications for the job and I “Omnied” for some links to information on the temperature dependence of beta decays. I sent my email to Professor Graf, and went to th
e Student Center for lunch.
Funny how new words enter the English language. The government created Omnitia when they nationalized the Internet in the interest of public safety after the 9/11 attack. They formed Omnitia by consolidating Yahoo, Altavista, and a number of obscure start-ups, including one with a name like Googol. Then, they logged and correlated all searches looking for patterns that might suggest a future terror attack. In addition, they looked for anyone who searched on sensitive or restricted terms. To fire up your Omnibrowser and “Omni” for data was fast becoming a synonym for online search. Only a few online rebels insisted on using third-party search engines like Duck Duck Go that would protect your online privacy. What’s more, a concern for online privacy threw a red flag that you were up to no good and invited further scrutiny. Those were exactly the online surveillance tools that had helped finger my research with Amit, which led to the deaths of my parents and too many others.
Amit and I had worked out our online protocol with Uncle Rob. Most of the time we were compliant young citizens who dutifully used the Omnitia infrastructure. When we needed to search for potentially sensitive data, we’d use a separate laptop that we never connected to our official online presence. Uncle Rob had even sourced us some surplus military laptops – ones without all the surveillance hooks the computer companies put in standard commercial gear for the public. We’d considered using an open-source Linux distribution, but Rob vetoed that. “Too easy for someone to slip in malware in one of the drivers.” Instead, he had us using the military distribution of Windows XP. “DoD would never be stupid enough to allow the military version to have all the backdoors they put in the commercial distribution,” he explained.
We’d access a public Wi-Fi node from a distance using directional antennas. Then, we’d use Amit’s VPN code to route our encrypted query through one of the hotels using his network software. Amit would either borrow a recently checked out guest’s profile or make up a reasonable but phony profile. From there, we’d use TOR to bounce our queries around the Internet in a way that was supposed to be untraceable. It was complicated to set up, and the resulting links were slow, but it let us make secure online searches.
Amit was my debate partner all through high school, and frankly, he was better at it than me. I was an excellent researcher. I could string together facts and evidence to prove, or at least support, almost any given point in an argument. I was a master of dialectic. Amit, on the other hand, was a master of rhetoric. He could speak with a passion and a conviction that made you want to believe him, and then the next round he’d be speaking with the same passion and conviction on the exactly opposite side of the debate question. We made a good team, but it was Amit’s skill that usually carried the day for us. I had trouble turning my argumentation on a dime like Amit could. I was never quite sure whether it was just a skill I lacked, or whether it was something Amit lacked: a certain kind of reticence or consistency. Nothing in my long friendship with Amit prepared me for our first social justice class, however.
“Welcome to Introduction to Social Justice Studies,” the professor said with a warm smile. “Social justice values our diversity and promotes a fair and equitable society. All people share a common humanity and deserve respect for their rights, equitable treatment, and a common share of community resources. Social justice commands us to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.”
Professor Gomulka introduced himself. “…but, this class isn’t about me,” he quickly added. “It’s all about you. Let’s introduce ourselves to each other. Tell us all your name and something about yourself – something relevant to your personal quest for social justice.” He pointed to a girl in the front row.
“I’m Madison Grant,” she introduced herself.
“Welcome to social justice, Madison,” Professor Gomulka said warmly. “What challenges have you had to overcome to be with us here at Tech?”
“I grew up with a single mom, and I saw how hard she had to work to take care of me,” Madison replied. “Many of her male coworkers had stay-at-home wives which gave them an unfair advantage in the workplace. I had to become a strong, independent woman, myself, to help my mother out,” she said proudly. “I made extra money as a yoga instructor to support us.”
“We live in a social system designed and built by men,” Professor Gomulka confirmed. “Employers don’t like to accommodate women who need time off to take care of their families. Your and your mother’s heroic struggles highlight how all of us need to work to de-center masculinity and other elements of the dominant patriarchal perspective, so we can foster an environment that promotes equality through diversity and inclusion.”
I noticed a common pattern as each student introduced him or herself and explained their family background. My classmates all came from modest circumstances and I doubt many would have been able to afford the tuition if they weren’t in the program. Professor Gomulka encouraged each to speak of how they’d been oppressed by society, and had warm words of support for their heroic victimhood. Finally, the professor got around to Amit.
“Amit Patel,” Amit said by way of introduction. “I grew up in a sea of white faces in Appalachia, a symbol to my classmates of ‘the other’ that threatened their nation and community after 9/11.”
I recognized the phrase from his scholarship essay, but Professor Gomulka interrupted him before he could continue his colorful prose. “It’s too easy to sacrifice our humanity, to give way to fear of the other,” the professor explained. “The powerful have less empathy. We ignore how the domination of American economic and cultural imperialism offend the sensibilities of Muslims and others around the world. Then, we are surprised when the peoples we have oppressed strike back. Terror inspires fear, and fear inspires more terror. Instead, we must recognize oppression and correct historic injustices.”
I was still trying to figure out what his impressive sounding words actually meant in practice when he turned to me. “I’m Peter Burdell,” I introduced myself. “My parents both died in a car accident, so I’m an orphan.” Explaining the probable role of the Civic Circle in that “accident” would be counter-productive. “Their estate is still tied up in probate, so I appreciate how the social justice initiative is paying for my education.”
“Anyone can fall into the vicious cycle of poverty and injustice,” Professor Gomulka offered sympathetically. “That’s why we have to ensure that even the least advantaged have access to goods and wealth adequate for free and equal people to live a complete and fulfilling life.” I felt vaguely uncomfortable – as if Professor Gomulka were patting me on the head like a dog while slipping a collar around my neck. A brash voice next to me interrupted my introspection.
“My name is Marcus Brown,” a black student sitting next to me declared proudly. “And where I come from doesn’t matter near as much as where I’m going.”
“Marcus, self-respect has a social basis,” Professor Gomulka began with just the slightest hint of condescension. “Self-respect relies on basic institutions to allow an individual to advance their ends in harmony with society at large. Social justice is about the activism required to clear your way and make your self-respect possible.”
“That’s fine,” Marcus acknowledged, though the skepticism in his voice was loud and clear, “but I’m not going to be waiting on some activist to tell me what to do and what to think. And my self-respect doesn’t rely on anybody else’s approval. I think…”
“For a colored man,” Amit interrupted, “you’re showing an amazing lack of gratitude for all your allies who’ve fought long and hard for social justice.”
Amit’s presumption shocked me until I realized what he was up to. He’d found the perfect opening to worm his way into Professor Gomulka’s confidence. Without the benefit of my insight as to Amit’s motives, the rest of the class, Marcus included, stared dumbfounded at his effrontery.
Finally, Marcus broke the silence. “Who the hell are you to talk to me about ‘colored’ people?” he as
ked Amit, indignantly.
“Social justice activists have been campaigning for your rights and mine for decades,” Amit countered. “Why, fifty years ago, folks like you and me would have had to use different water fountains and restrooms, if we were allowed on campus at all. We activists are the only reason you and I have any civil rights. We did all this for you, and yet there you are, flaunting your self-respect, attacking those who made it possible, and supporting the racists who would love nothing better than to burn a cross on our campus and string you and me up on the nearest tree.”
Marcus was furious, but Professor Gomulka cut him off before matters got out of hand.
“This is a safe space where we need to support each other,” he said, patronizingly. “There’s nothing wrong with being proud of who you are, Marcus. However, Amit is right that we’re all indebted to the activists who’ve made our civil rights possible. There are reactionaries even here at Georgia Tech who see you and Amit as tokens that erase their guilt and complicity in oppression. You need to be careful in your choice of words not to reinforce that reactionary tokenism. If you don’t want to acknowledge your allies, Marcus, well that’s fine. We don’t need your acknowledgement, but at least you really should abstain from undercutting our efforts on your behalf.”
I could tell Marcus was no less angry, but he had his temper under control.
“I’m Ryan Morgan,” the student beside Marcus said in a controlled voice that didn’t do a good job hiding his contempt for Professor Gomulka. “I’m from Macon.” Ryan didn’t seem inclined to share a tale of victimhood. Good for him.
A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth Page 4
