Time Off

Chapter Six

Miguel stormed into the office area, where a dozen cubicles were arranged, one of which he shared with Angel. Angel was so absorbed in her computer work that she didn't even notice as Miguel approached, urgent and gruff. "Ay Prima! Cual es tu problema?"

"Miguel! Oh shit! Sorry!" Angel had forgotten her meeting up at Stanford's linear accelerator facility, SLAC, with contractors.

"Gary said he called you but no answer." Miguel referred to the contractor's project manager that was waiting for her at SLAC. "He called me and I had to bail on my other stuff to go cover for you. Damn girl!" vented Miguel, raising his voice. The office was empty except for the two of them. Angel reached for her phone.

"Ay! My stupid ringer is off. Lo siento Primo. My bad. I won't do it again I promise."

"Yah? Well this ain't the first time. So why's it gonna be that last time? You're all messed up on your books and shit, physics and shit. Loca."

"I can't help it. But I won't let it interfere. Hey, you like fishing right? You're also crazy about the Raiders, right? That's what it's like."

"Books? And the computer? That ain't like fishing, or the Raiders. Ain't no excitement." Miguel tried but couldn't contain a smile. "Loca, you know that? Something wrong with yer brain. You should read about that instead." Angel smiled with relief, as she saw Miguelito soften.

"Okay, I will."

"Now you can cover for me tomorrow. I need to go back and inspect my other job. I was supposed to finish it today when I had to cover your ass. Tomorrow, they got a new lab design review at the physics building." Angel perked up. That was Sussman's building. There was certainly no chance that she would miss that one. "Ten o'clock, don't forget. Take good notes."

"Si Miguel. Gracias."

"Okay, I'm out. See you manana." Angel stood and gave Miguel a hug. When he left the room, Angel returned to the computer and tried to finish the paper she was reading. It was titled, DOES THE INERTIA OF A BODY DEPEND UPON ITS ENERGY-CONTENT? By A. EINSTEIN September 27, 1905. Her readings spanned a great many areas of physics and cosmology as she tried to test the plausibility of her thoughts against as many phenomena as possible. Phenomena such as normal gravitational behavior, dark matter, dark energy and black holes. And then there were subatomic areas of interest like refraction, the two slit experiment, atomic structure, the periodic table, the array of subatomic particles discovered by the various colliders, string theory, and on and on. She saw no end to it. Pouring through the paper online, with her ringer now on, she was suddenly startled by a text message. It was Lola.

"Mama. When are you coming?"

"Coming now :)"

":)"

Angel closed the browser and switched off the monitor and started to pack her things. She walked out to the main loop road to see if she could catch the free bus out to El Camino Real, where she would transfer to the county bus. During her trip home she took a mental inventory of what still didn't make sense. The most nagging item that still confused her was the concept of intertia, which had led her to seminal articles like the one by Einstein, which was the basis for the infamous E=mc^2.

Her idea of energy consumption causing gravity made sense to her as a concept. She could visualize what was happening. But besides gravity, mass exhibited another behavior that was codified by Newton but observed and considered well before his time. Inertia. A property proportional to mass, causing it to remain at rest or in constant motion unless acted upon by a force.

Angel felt that it could be irrelevant to her proof, using rates of timekeeping. But it was a concept about which she felt unsettled, and it caused her to dig and search for understanding. She knew that there wouldn't be any explanation out there that would make sense to her. And there wasn't. It was mostly about understanding the behavior but very little on the root cause of the behavior. Angel viewed it as fundamental, a piece of the puzzle, without which a complete understanding would not be possible.