Quantum

20

The sun beat down on the cab of Bud Vesper’s Caterpillar E120B excavator. Even with the windows open, the temperature inside the cab was a good ten degrees hotter than the ninety-five predicted by the cute weathergirl on the local news.

Yesterday the chairman of the University of Michigan’s physics department and several other dignitaries stood on the manicured lawn behind West Engineering and Randall. They wore unblemished white hard hats, and each was armed with an engraved bronze shovel. They broke ground with great ceremony, each turning a spadeful of sod to celebrate the construction of the modern addition that would join together the two old buildings.

Today the steel bucket mounted on the end of the Cat’s hydraulic arm bit out thirty times more earth than those ceremonial shovels each time it tore into the ground. After moving several tons of dirt and clay, Vesper called for Darrell Jones, the surveyor on his crew, to check the depth on the cut he was working on.

Jones motioned that they had reached the specified depth, so Vesper started cutting the next section.

Fifteen minutes into the new cut, Jones walked over with a story pole — an eight-foot metal ruler with markings accurate to a tenth of an inch. Attached to the pole was an electronic target that emitted a loud tone when struck by the oscillating laser on the surveyor’s transit. Jones held the pole vertical; the laser line was just shy of the target.

Jones motioned for Vesper to dig a little farther. As the bucket deftly peeled away another few inches of earth, Jones signaled for Vesper to stop as a strange object caught his eye.

Vesper had exposed a sixteen-inch-long piece of something. Jones dug around the edges of the object, which felt soft and rubbery.

‘I hope this isn’t some damn utility line,’ Jones groused.

He gripped the object with both hands and pulled. It easily sprang loose, and Jones quickly realized that it was a human arm.

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ!’ he yelled.

‘Hey, Darrell,’ Vesper called out from the excavator.

‘Bud!’ Jones screamed, still bug-eyed and frantic. ‘Bud, somebody’s fuckin’ arm is in the goddamn hole!’

‘Easy, Jones, easy. Say again?’

‘There is a fuc-king arm,’ Jones replied, enunciating each syllable with deliberate precision, ‘in the god-damn hole.’

Vesper looked down into the excavation and saw an arm lying right where Jones had left it.

‘I ain’t no gravedigger,’ Jones complained.

Vesper shook his head in disgust, knowing that this discovery could set his project schedule back worse than a month of heavy rain. He pulled a phone off his hip and called Fred Murrow, the university’s project manager for this job.

‘Hey, Fred,’ he said sarcastically when the other man came on the line, ‘guess what I just dug up?’

‘Don’t tell me you hit the steam tunnel.’

‘No, we’re well clear of that. Guess again.’

‘Bud, I don’t have time for this. What the hell did you hit?’

‘I didn’t hit nothing, Fred. I dug up somebody’s fucking arm. I looked at all the as-built drawings for this site, and I don’t remember seeing the word cemetery anywhere.’

‘All right, Bud. Just sit tight. I’ll make a few calls and then I’ll be right down.’