Pillar to the Sky Read online

  “I understand your perspective, Professor,” Franklin said, “and I admire your work.”

  “That is not the answer I sought,” she responded, “though I appreciate the platitude.”

  Franklin, going into these situations, Gary learned, always had his bases covered. So that was the portfolio he was studying while in flight: bios of professors who might be in the audience. Typical of him, Gary realized. Undoubtedly he had studied him and Eva for years before making his choice.

  “Nor would I expect you to accept that as an answer, Professor. Will you indulge me in an explanation that might take a few minutes?”

  Garlin could only agree but remained standing.

  “First, regarding NASA. For the moment, in this economy, we all are in accord that it is receiving but a fraction of the funding that it should be getting. When we had trillion-dollar bailouts, I wish fifty billion of that had gone to NASA to take us back into space to stay.”

  It was an easy win line with this audience, and there was a round of applause.

  “I cannot arrange trillion-dollar loans, but as an American I can invest in what I believe in. This country gave me opportunity against all the odds of the social system I was born into and not of my creation or that of my parents. Other heroes—Americans who believed in the first words of our Declaration of Independence—opened those doors for me by refusing to give up a seat on a bus or by facing police dogs on a bridge in Selma, Alabama. Without them going before me, I would not be standing here today in this honored position.”

  He paused for a moment as if overcome by emotion, which Gary knew was genuine.

  “I believe that, given my age, it is time I started to pay back. The tower will be my payback to America and to the world for the chance I have been given.”

  No response for a moment, nor did he seek it as an applause line. Instead he pushed straight ahead.

  “I do believe the work I have started I might not finish. It will cost far more than I have or can ever hope to raise, but if I start out on the path, I believe there will be a day when NASA is again at the fore. So let me have a bit of hubris here and say that I am fanning the waning fire of our dreams, keeping it alive until it bursts forth anew.”

  A scattering of applause did greet this.

  “And when that day comes,” Garlin interjected, “your profit?”

  Franklin chuckled.

  “Professor, this is America, and it was, if I remember my history, built on the profit motive. I never saw that as a sin as some do.”

  There were some chuckles in the audience from that one.

  “But let me add,” he quickly continued, “I will most likely be pushing eighty by the time this project becomes fully functional and, dare I say, on a profit-making base. I have no children; as for my other relatives, well, they’ll be in for a sad shock when my will is read. And as one approaches eighty, profits really don’t mean that much. What matters more and more is the thought of what you will leave behind that betters this world for all of us.

  “I doubt if that will reassure you, but let me press to the next point of your query: disruptive technologies.”

  The hangar was silent as Franklin paused to take a sip from a bottle of water and clear his throat.

  “You are absolutely right. A disruptive technology usually sneaks up and, in military terms, outflanks those ahead of it, then moves to the fore. I could go back to the nineteenth century and cite how steamships finally killed the industry of building sailing ships. How iron replaced wood and then Bessemer steel replaced iron. Some of you engineers out there with a history background might recall that when the first iron bridge, of less than two hundred feet, was built in the 1790s at Coalbrookedale, England, it was declared the new wonder of the world and people came from as far as London on canal barges to gaze at it with awe. Iron, precious iron, used to make a bridge?

  “When was the last time any of us stopped on a highway overpass, got out of our cars, and gasped, ‘Wow, this bridge is made not just of iron but of steel!’

  “That was a disruptive technology at work, and perhaps a few stonemasons glared at the bridge and muttered this would certainly screw up their careers as bridge builders. I ask: Should they have taken the bridge down or blown it up?”

  “That is not the point of the issue today of disruptive technologies and their economic impact on hundreds of thousands, even millions of careers and livelihoods,” Garlin retorted.

  “It is precisely that point, Professor,” he replied a bit more sharply now. “Automobiles replaced carriages and eventually even railroads. But let me take three men as a modern example.

  “Go back to 1978, to three guys named Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates. Who were they in 1978?”

  He chuckled and pointed to the audience.

  “They were nerds like us.”

  This did draw a lively round of applause.

  “Consider the giants at IBM, Wang, and now all-but-forgotten-firms like Atari. The giants could not give those guys the right time of day. I do wonder about the fate of one executive in particular at IBM. Remember, they were the giants, the masters of the universe of computers in 1978. They got dragged nearly butt backward into the business of what was then called microcomputers. Everything for them was mainframe, or what they then called mini-frame. So they do start to make the micros, reluctantly in response to something called Apple, which they said only hobbyists and old hippie types would still be buying.

  “Remember back then? In my world of 1964, of course, I could not go to the World’s Fair in New York.”

  He smiled and shrugged, and Gary looked around at the audience of young students, realizing many might not even pick up on the fact that the South was still segregated in that year, and the thought of Franklin and his family venturing to New York City was nearly as great a leap as going to the moon.

  “You can find old movies on YouTube from that fair in 1964, put out by Bell, IBM, and others, touting ‘The World of Tomorrow.’”

  Franklin pronounced those words in a halfway decent imitation of James Earl Jones’s voice.

  “The image of the computer of the future, of the year 2000, which seemed a long way off back then, was some giant mainframe, like Bell with its telephone switching stations—so big it needed an entire building, coming soon to a neighborhood near you. You’d dial in to the computer. Think of that: When was the last time any of us ‘dialed’ a phone? And then, there stood the joyous housewife in the kitchen, able to access a new recipe for dinner; Junior could get an answer to his homework question; and Pop could even order a part for the family hover car parked in the garage. That was the vision of the computer in 1964, until three nerds and others like them came along.”

  This did draw appreciative laughs and several in the audience already had their iPhones or iPads out and were checking out the videos seconds later.

  “Anyhow. Nerds start making a new kind of computer in their basements and garages. One of the big giants finally stirs reluctantly. They need what was then called a disk operating system, which as you know is the absolute breakdown into strings of ones and zeroes to run the computer in such a way that regular English that everyone else can read appears on a twelve-inch-wide green screen monitor. Bill Gates writes it for them—an outside contractor, since no one in the firm could be bothered. And that savvy young man just casually throws into their contract for his services that he owns the copyright and they pay just a few bucks per copy.

  “‘No big deal. Why, sure,’” and Franklin drew a laugh when pantomiming the executive shrugging and signing the contract.

  “We know who is worth more today, Gates or IBM, and I wonder if that executive who signed that contract for his company had his golden parachute packed and ready, because he definitely was going to need it.”

  “You make light, sir, of a serious question,” Garlin admonished.

  Now Franklin bristled even more.

  “I remember, Professor, a generation ago, when the impact of what was call
ed the microcomputer really started to hit … and where it would lead. Meanwhile Jobs and Wozniak are playing around with something called a mouse. I recall when the mouse came out, even some nerds rejected it: real nerds type in their codes, none of this point-and-click crap.”

  Gary smiled at that. It was well into the middle of the 1990s when he finally decided a mouse was worth having.

  “Meanwhile, other genius types are thinking about another crazy idea: Why even have a big computer when you could link every computer in the world together by just typing in a few words, or using that mouse thing to click on a line of words? Mr. Gates and the folks over at Apple better start building machines that can interface with that! And the race was on that transformed our entire world.

  “The bottom line of the argument: if a computer can do the job better than a man or woman, then let it come. Is there a person in this room who would argue we should toss out computers and reopen factories to make slide rules?”

  He paused and looked around the hangar.

  “You know, slide rules?” he said, laughing, making a gesture as if working a calculation on one. “A gizmo sort of like an abacus. Don’t laugh: more than a few in Mission Control on the day Apollo 11 lifted off had them on their desks. And besides, you don’t have to worry about batteries running dry.”

  One of the professors in the crowd opened his book bag and actually pulled one out, holding it up.

  “I don’t leave home without it. And it is virusproof as well!” he cried.

  That drew a laugh from the crowd and a nod of thanks from Franklin.

  “That is the bottom line of the disruptive technology argument. Do we let it happen and take our chances, or do we freeze development?

  “And let us say we do freeze development somehow, which I can only see happening in some Orwellian 1984 state.”

  He snapped out those last words with cold intent, a challenge to provide a rational alternative to stopping technological innovation.

  “In such a world some nerd in this very hangar will sneak off to their dorm room or garage and, like Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates, just keep on inventing anyhow, and the hell with what others say. And thirty years hence you might be standing here, talking about some sci-fi-sounding hyper drive that can take us to Alpha Centauri and beyond.”

  This received some applause, at least from those not sitting too close to Garlin, who had finally sat back down.

  “Professor, I mean no insult to your stunning achievements,” Franklin said to her, offering a flag of truce. “In fact, for the dream of my firm to be achieved, we still need heavy-lift vehicles, on the scale of the Saturn V of the Apollo age, to loft several hundred tons into geosynch orbit before we can even begin to build. At $100,000 a pound to geosynch that comes out to…” He paused dramatically as if running the numbers through his head but, having faced this argument before, he already had the figures down. “… that will come to something like fifty billion or more, give or take a few billion just to get the material up there to start construction … at which point I will be flat broke.”

  He then smiled.

  “So if anyone here wishes to help me raise another fifty billion, I will be all ears.”

  It was obviously an exit line as he made it a point of checking his old-fashioned wristwatch.

  “I regret I must leave, because my next stop, like a desperate politician on the eve of election, is to try to raise more money. I’ll leave a stack of cards here; I have a partial feeling for Purdue. I cannot say why, because one of your alumni, who is a bit stage shy, has forbidden me to drag him up here.”

  Gary at that moment did give Franklin an icy gaze as his friend made a show of peering toward the back of the hangar, shading his eyes as if looking for someone.

  “Anyone want an internship, you got my e-mail address for Pillar Inc. Anyone graduating who wants to take a shot at what I believe will be the greatest adventure of the twenty-first century, send in your résumé. My respects to you, Professor Garlin, and I pray someday we can shake hands in agreement—”

  He paused.

  “—while floating in zero-g, out at geosynch orbit.”

  Before Garlin could fire back, Franklin had already put down his mike, walked off the stage, and was heading for the open hangar doors. He tried to avoid getting inundated by members of the audience wanting to shake his hand, some even holding out pens and sheets of paper and asking for an autograph. Out in the parking area, it was turning into a traffic jam.

  “Get on the plane and let’s get outta here,” he whispered as he strode by Gary and Eva, acting as if he did not know them.

  The crowd surged after him, few barely noticing Gary, Eva, and Victoria, though Professor Garlin did. Gary was a bit anxious as she came up to him but then graciously extended his hand.

  “Gary Morgan, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “Hope you don’t think I was being rude, but it is a question that needs to be raised and which your friend will soon find increasing resistance from, if not outright blocking moves or far worse.”

  “I must confess, Professor, I never really thought much on it.”

  Garlin smiled.

  “You, a student I remember from twenty years ago as one of the best?”

  Gary reddened, his feelings toward her softening. Besides her traditional technology work, she also taught a course on the societal impacts of technological innovation, which he had found to be fascinating.

  Gary introduced his wife and daughter.

  “Given who your father is,” Garlin said, smiling at Victoria, “I am actually running a graduate seminar on this exact topic of the ethical questions raised by disruptive technological advances. Would you be interested in auditing it, young lady?”

  How could Victoria refuse such an offer, regardless of her workload? She gratefully accepted.

  “I think your Mr. Franklin wishes to, as they say, ‘get the hell out of Dodge,’” Garlin said, “so I will leave you three for your farewells. And, Morgan, even though I completely disagree with this whole scheme and think you are way beyond the edge of the envelope, I am proud you were once a student of mine.”

  She departed and Gary smiled inwardly. She was a formidable intellect, and highly respected. It was evident that she would use her influence to stand against the building of the tower, but nevertheless he did admire her.

  The three stepped out of the hangar but did not head directly to the Gulfstream: it was evident it was going to take Franklin some time to get there as more and more cars parked along the access road to the airport and people who had come to see Franklin Smith got out and flocked in his direction.

  Gary had his arm around Victoria, her mother by her other side, holding her hand. It was time to do it.

  “If you said yes to Professor Garlin,” Gary said, “you have to follow through.”

  “Oh, I will. It sounds interesting, and what I learn might help the project.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  He looked at Eva and swallowed nervously.

  “I think you are here for more than just watching me fly,” Victoria said, and there was a tightness in her voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that I can sense both of you are tense.”

  He stumbled trying to say the words and finally looked appealingly at Eva, who broke the news and answered Victoria’s initial questions. He was unable to speak as he felt her arm slide around his waist and she leaned in against his shoulder, struggling to hold back tears.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Hey, sweetheart, remember what I always used to say when you were little and were freaked out by lightning storms, or when things just spooked you?”

  “‘Until you see me get afraid, kid, there is no reason to be afraid.’”

  She could barely say the words.

  “Exactly. So keep that in mind, sweetness. The doc says with the new medications and such, I got plenty of years ahead of me. We wanted to tell y
ou that face-to-face, and you know we never hide anything from you.”

  Victoria held him tightly.

  Gary’s cell phone rang, the tone indicating it was a call he could not ignore: it was Franklin, little more than a hundred feet away.

  “We’ll be along in a few minutes,” Gary said.

  “Gary, just got a call from our stop later this afternoon and the schedule’s been changed a bit. Something’s come up.”

  “We’re on our way now, just saying good-bye to Victoria.”

  “Why say good-bye?”

  “We’re leaving, aren’t we?”

  “Bring her along.”

  “What?”

  “You three need some time together. Kidnap her and bring her along; I’ll see that she gets a flight back here in time for classes on Monday.”

  Franklin clicked off.

  “We’ve got to get going, Victoria,” Eva said, hugging her daughter.

  “Sweetie, you have any plans for this weekend?” Gary asked.

  “Well”—she blushed slightly—“I did promise Peter I’d hang around to watch him try for his solo.”

  “That was Franklin. He suggested you come along with us.”

  “What?”

  Gary looked at her appealingly. Leave it to his friend to keep pulling these last-second surprises. Given where they were headed so late in the day, why did Franklin suddenly invite her along?

  “Daddy, I don’t have anything packed, half of my shirt just got cut off…”

  Her voice trailed off as she looked into her father’s eyes and smiled.

  “Sure, Daddy, let’s go.”

  He gave her a warm hug as Eva wondered aloud in Ukrainian what Smith had up his sleeve this time.

  “Give me a moment to explain to Peter,” she said, and broke away from his side.

  “Who is this Peter guy?” he could not help but ask.

  “Come on, Daddy, he’s just a friend.”

  She waded into the crowd. He looked at Eva, who was smiling as she watched their daughter make her way up to Peter and say something inaudible. His smile transformed into a crestfallen look a few seconds later. She gave him a quick hug, then a kiss on the lips.