Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 13

Five minutes late, Hal Michaelson drove his government vehicle — a cream-colored Ford Escort — to the small portal building that granted access into the Superblock, the section of Lawrence Livermore Lab encased within double ultra-tight security fences. Passing deeper and deeper through tightening rings of Lab security, he felt as if he were penetrating one of those dolls-within-dolls-within-dolls Russian toys he had picked up during his time on the disarmament team in the former Soviet Union.

At this level of security, though, the guards were heavily armed and authorized to use deadly force.

José Aragon was already waiting outside the gate, pacing back and forth in his dark green leisure suit and maroon tie. His hair had been slicked back immaculately and his face beamed when he saw Michaelson, stretched back in a huge grin as if his face were made of plastic.

The Associate Director motioned him toward a vacant “Government Vehicle Only” parking spot and hurried over to open the door for him. Aragon was an AD for God’s sake, Michaelson thought; he didn’t have to act like a bellboy.

“Thanks for coming, Hal,” Aragon said breathlessly. “Let’s go right in. I’ve got the paperwork finished. We can give you a full-fledged tour of the Plutonium Facility. You’ll see everything you need to know for your demo.”

Michaelson extricated his large body from the small Ford and stood looking down at the much shorter man. “I thought Lesserec was taking care of all this. Why do I need to waste my time here?”

“Oh, Hal!” Aragon said, “It’ll be good for you to see things first-hand. It’s been a long time since you’ve been in this area, and I want to show you all of the improvements we’ve made.”

“Improvements?” Michaelson said, then snorted as they walked toward the tan portal building that stood in front of the chain-link fence. “I thought the Plutonium Facility was shutting down.”

Aragon raised a hand. “Not shutting down — defense conversion,” he said. “Dual-use technologies. Ways we can take advantage of what we already have in place, even after the end of the Cold War. The Livermore Plutonium Facility is one of only two of its kind in the entire country. We can’t afford to lose this one.”

“Right, right,” Michaelson said. “Save the patriotic speech for later. I don’t have much time. Got a meeting with the Lab Director at 4:30.”

They entered through the door, passed their badges to the guard sitting behind a glassed-in enclosure, and then walked through a sensitive metal detector before retrieving their badges. Then they stepped through a second set of doors to the outside, on the other side of the Superblock fence now.

The Plutonium Facility itself was flat and practically featureless, the ugliest building in the entire square-mile lab: gray concrete splotched with age discolorations, veined with electrical and ventilation conduits running up the flat cement sides. Flashing yellow and magenta lights announced alarm or preparatory conditions inside the building. Crash-out escape doors allowed emergency exit from the inner laboratory rooms if a criticality alarm should sound.

“Just a sec,” Aragon said as he scurried across the asphalt courtyard to one of the building’s side doors. “I have to check something. Wait for me here.”

As he ducked inside, Michaelson stood under the warm afternoon sun, frowning. It was just like Aragon to make him wait. The boob could never get things right. He’d proven that amply enough in the past.

Fifteen years earlier Michaelson had made his name at Livermore by launching the prestigious, big-budget Laser Implosion Fusion Facility: a groundbreaking, technological demonstration project that had implications for cheap and safe power generation to meet the nation’s needs for the next century or so.

Michaelson had built the LIFF into one of Livermore’s flagship projects with the full press treatment, brochures, tours, demonstrations, and high hopes. But, as had happened so often throughout his career, Michaelson encountered severe difficulties with top management. At the peak of the LIFF project, Michaelson had become incompatible with the then-Director of the Lab.

He had found himself quietly transferred to a new position as the head of a high-visibility on-site inspection team in the former Soviet Union. As a disarmament expert who dominated the news, Michaelson captured the public spotlight — but in the eyes of Livermore management, their loose cannon was safely distant in the Ukraine, working with his dedicated team of inspectors, including his personal deputy, Diana Unteling….

The LIFF had been left in the untried hands of José Aragon, a bright-eyed “yes man.” Michaelson suspected Aragon had climbed up the ladder simply because of his minority status… and had continued to rise as people promoted him to get him out of their hair.

It had taken Aragon only a few months to trash the LIFF. Because he was not a scientist, because he did not understand the real issues behind the project, Aragon had unknowingly misled Congress, made impossible concessions and unrealistic promises, and mixed up details… all of which led to missed deadlines — and the bad luck began to spiral. Any non-scientist might have screwed up just as much, but Aragon had been in the hot seat.

While in Kiev, Michaelson had gotten a tip-off from one of his former workers about how badly Aragon was screwing things up. Enraged, Michaelson had flown back directly to Washington, leaving Diana Unteling in charge of the disarmament team. He rushed like a hero to the rescue, barging into Congressional hearings, pulling strings, making phone calls, shouting at the right people, pleading with others, trying to save the LIFF funding from being canceled. All to no avail.

The ripples of scandal had caused a great shakeup at Lawrence Livermore. The Director himself was “promoted” to DOE Headquarters in Washington. Michaelson was removed from the disarmament team because of his “notorious lack of responsibility and blatantly abandonment of the inspection team.” And the huge and expensive LIFF, nearly completed, was mothballed without ever being switched on.

Aragon, the incompetent boob who had caused it all, found himself promoted to Deputy Associate Director, then Associate Director. Would miracles never cease? Michaelson thought.

He himself had been demoted to group leader, but Hal Michaelson had enough pull and enough connections that — starting from a scratch — he created a new project based on his on-site inspection experience halfway around the world. With a mere scrap of discretionary funding from the Lawrence Livermore overhead budget, Michaelson had launched the groundbreaking work for his virtual reality on-site inspectors. Now T Program had the enormous prestige of full presidential backing with an upcoming landmark demonstration.

And he was stuck waiting outside the Plutonium Facility, looking at his watch, and cursing José Aragon’s name.

As Michaelson watched, a beat-up gray government pickup drove up to the double gate outside the portal building. A uniformed security guard came out and opened the outer chain-link gate. Metal bollards automatically sank down into the ground like giant steel teeth, allowing the truck to drive into the compound.

The guard closed the fence behind him as the driver ran around to pass his badge through the reader. The guard took out a long angled mirror on a pole and began inspecting underneath the chassis of the old truck. He opened the doors, looked under the seats, popped open the glove compartment, and rummaged around in the bed of the truck. The driver came back through the portal building, and waited for the guard to finish his search.

Michaelson tapped his feet as he watched the tedious process. What a pain in the ass, he thought.

When the guard signaled by slapping the hood, the driver hopped back into the truck. The second set of metal bollards lowered to allow the truck access to the Superblock.

“Okay!” said Aragon, coming out the side door and rubbing his hands together. “Just had to reset the software. We’re ready to go in. Follow me and we’ll get you suited up and checked through.”

Aragon continued to chatter during the entry process. They passed through another metal detector, then into the locker rooms where Michaelson had to squirm into a tight-fitting orange lab coat, clip on a nuclear accident dosimeter, and finally enter the Radioactive Materials Area.

The building was as ugly inside as on the outside, Michaelson thought: 1960s prison-barracks style… or worse yet, public schools from the ‘50s, with linoleum-tiled floors, white painted cinderblock walls. More metal junk and pipes than could possibly be accounted for ran along the suspended ceiling and along the walls.

The workers seemed busy, like a bunch of good-old-boys who catcalled to each other, with a lot of back-slapping, punching in the biceps, friendly joshing. It annoyed Michaelson. They seemed like a bunch of high-school football studs playing grab ass. Even though the workers seemed on good terms with each other, no one appeared to recognize Aragon; however that didn’t stop him from smiling and greeting each person he passed.

Michaelson felt bone tired, thanks to Amber, thanks to the long flight. Traveling did little more than upset his stomach and make his eyes burn. He’d been running on adrenaline for days before the presidential press conference, and now that it was over he felt exhausted, letdown. He had little patience for a boob like Aragon.

“Just what exactly did you want to show me?” Michaelson asked as they walked down the hall, passing the third identical-looking glove-box lab.

“Well… ” Aragon shrugged. “We need to discuss the best place to set up those VR sensors of yours. That’s a fabulous chamber you have by the way. I witnessed a demonstration of it when Mr. Lesserec gave a wonderful tour to those kids from the Coalition for Family Values. We want to bring them in here for a tour next, show them some nuts-and-bolts work.”

“Glad you were impressed,” Michaelson said in a flat voice. “It means a lot to me. A hell of a lot.”

Aragon beamed, then faltered, not knowing how to take Michaelson’s comment. The Associate Director took great pride, and a great deal of time, to show him the new array setups in the radioactive materials vaults, the forced separation of samples of fissile material, the careful accounting and security methods.

They passed the fabrication facility, then the welding and recovery lab. Waving his hands, Aragon seemed euphoric as he showed off the new barrel counters, large neutron and alpha detectors that assayed barrels of mixed radioactive waste and suspected contaminated materials. Aragon led him to the door of another lab area filled with more glove-boxes — grungy like a bad high school metal-shop project and just as uninteresting as the first three similar rooms.

Michaelson felt his brain turning into mush. His eyes itched from lack of sleep, and he just plain did not want to be in the company of José Aragon, or inside the Plutonium Facility. He either wanted to be home in bed or back at his T Program office.

Before they could enter the glove-box room, Michaelson held up his hand. “Hold on a second.” He walked across the hall to the bathroom. “I’m calling a halt to this crap.”

Shocked, Aragon followed Michaelson like a puppy into the restroom. Michaelson stood at the urinal, staring at the wall and ignoring Aragon. Finally, he turned to the smaller man and said, “So what did you really bring me here for? All this tour-guide baloney is a bunch of bullshit.”

Aragon didn’t seem to know how to answer. “I, uh, just wanted to show you some of the things we do here in the Tech-Transfer/Defense Conversion Directorate. You are part of it, Hal, even though you don’t participate in any administrative activities.”

“Thank God for that.” Michaelson finished, zipped up, and glared at him. “Look, I’ve got the President and a bunch of foreign dignitaries coming here in a few weeks. I’ve also got a ton of catch-up work to do — and you’re playing show and tell with me. I don’t have time for it. No way, José.”

He looked at himself in the mirror, sighed at the red-rimmed eyes and the haggard face. He turned the water on in the sink, hit the soap dispenser, and lathered up before stooping over to splash the cold running water on his cheeks, in his eyes. It felt good, refreshing. He splashed again.

Aragon started to say something, but the running water drowned out his words. Michaelson shut off the faucet and stood up, flinging droplets from his hands.

“What I’m trying to say, Hal,” Aragon said, sounding panicked now, “is that I know we’ve had difficulties. I’m trying to build a bridge between us — to bury the hatchet, or whatever you want to say. I’d like us to make peace if we’re going to make this International Verification Initiative work together.”

Michaelson stepped back and looked at the AD in scornful amazement. Aragon fled to the sink, hit the soap dispenser briefly, and washed his hands just for something to do.

“Look, José, the IVI Project is mine, not yours. Not anybody else’s here. I’m the only one who had the vision and the foresight. I developed the technology. I created this alone, in spite of the mess you’ve made out of just about every single thing you’ve touched.

“I don’t want to make peace with you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you. Delicate instruments have not yet been calibrated to measure how little I care about what you think of me.”

He dried his hands, dabbed his face with a brown paper towel and tossed it in the wastebasket.

“Now, if you would escort me the hell out of here, I need to get back to work.” He turned and narrowed his eyes at the befuddled Aragon. “Or do I have to write a few more memos about your poor performance?” He smiled coldly. “Maybe this time I could send them to the President directly, since I’ve got his ear.”

José Aragon scuttled after him as Michaelson took long strides down the corridor of the Plutonium Facility, finally feeling good for the first time that day.