He did, however, seem overly impressed by game theory. What if the numbers dont correspond to real life? she asked him. What if you dont get five points for defecting when the other person doesnt, what if all those numbers are off, or even backwards? Then its just another computer game, right?
Well Frank was taken aback. A rare sight. Immediately he was thinking it over. That was another thing Anna liked about him; he would really think about what she said.
Then Annas phone rang and she picked up.
Charlie! Oh dovelie, how are you?
Screaming agony.
Oh babe. Did you take your pills?
I took them. Theyre not doing a thing. Im starting to see things in the corners of my eyes, crawlies you know? I think the itches have gotten into my brain. Im going nuts.
Just hold on. Itll take a couple of days for the steroids to have an effect. Keep taking them. Is Joe giving you a break?
No. He wants to wrestle.
Dont let him! I know the doctor said it wasnt transmissible, but
Dont worry. Not a fucking chance of wrestling.
Youre not touching him?
And hes not touching me. Hes getting pretty pissed off about it.
Youre putting on the plastic gloves to change him?
Yes yes yes yes, tortures of the damned, when I take them off the skin comes too, blood and yuck, and then I get so itchy.
Poor babe. Just try not to do anything.
Then he had to chase Joe out of the kitchen. Anna hung up.
Frank looked at her. Poison ivy?
Yep. He climbed into a tree that had it growing up its trunk. He didnt have his shirt on.
Oh no.
It got him pretty good. Nick recognized it, and so I took him to urgent care and the doctor put some stuff on him and put him on steroids even before the blistering began, but hes still pretty wiped out.
Sorry to hear.
Yeah, well, at least its something superficial.
Then Franks phone rang, and he went into his cubicle to answer. Anna couldnt help but hear his end of it, as they had already been talkingand then also, as the call went on, his voice got louder several times. At one point he said Youre kidding four times in a row, each time sounding more incredulous. After that he only listened for a while, his fingers drumming on the tabletop next to his terminal.
Finally he said, I dont know what happened, Derek. Youre the one whos in the best position to know that Yeah thats right. They must have had their reasons Well youll be okay whatever happens, you were vested right? Everyone has options they dont exercise, dont think about that, think about the stock you did have Hey thats one of the winning endgames. Go under, go public, or get bought. Congratulations Yeah itll be fascinating to see, sure. Sure. Yeah, that is too bad. Okay yeah. Call me back with the whole story when Im not at work here. Yeah bye.
He hung up. There was a long silence from his cubicle.
Finally he got up from his chair, squeak-squeak. Anna swiveled to look, and there he was, standing in her doorway, expecting her to turn.
He made a funny face. That was Derek Gaspar, out in San Diego. His company Torrey Pines Generique has been bought.
Oh really! Thats the one you helped start?
Yeah.
Well, congratulations then. Who bought it?
A bigger biotech called Small Delivery Systems, have you heard of it?
No.
I hadnt either. Its not one of the big pharmaceuticals by any means, midsized from what Derek says. Mostly into agropharmacy, he says, but they approached him and made the offer. He doesnt know why.
They must have said?
Well, no. At least he doesnt seem to be clear on why they did it.
But its still good, right? I thought this was what start-ups hope for.
True
Youre not looking like someone who has just become a millionaire.
He quickly waved that away, Its not that, Im not involved like that. I was only a consultant, UCSD only lets you have a small involvement in outside firms, and I had to stop even that when I came here. Cant be working for the feds and someone else too, you know.
Uh-huh.
My investments are in a blind trust, so who knows. I didnt have much in Torrey Pines, and the trust may have gotten rid of it. I heard something that made me think they did. I would have if I were them.
Oh well thats too bad then.
Yeah yeah, frowning at her, but that isnt the problem.
He stared out the window, across the atrium into all the other windows. There was a look on his face she had never seen beforechagrinedshe couldnt quite read it. Distressed.
What is then?
Quietly he said, I dont know. Then: The system is messed up.
She said, You should come to the brown-bag lecture tomorrow. Rudra Cakrin, the Khembali ambassador, is going to be talking about the Buddhist view of science. No, you should. You sound like them, at least sometimes.
He frowned as if this were a criticism.
No, come on. Youll find it interesting, Im sure.
Okay. Maybe. If I finish a letter Im working on.
He went back to his cubicle, sat down heavily. God damn it, Anna heard him say.
Then he started to type. It was like the sound of thought itself, a rapid-fire plastic tipping and tapping, interrupted by hard whaps of his thumb against the space bar. His keyboard really took a pounding sometimes.
He was still typing like a madman when Anna saw her clock and rushed out the door to try to get home on time.
The next morning Frank drove in with his farewell letter in a manila envelope. He had decided to elaborate on it, make it into a fully substantiated, crushing indictment of NSF, which, if taken seriously, might inspire some changes. He was going to give it directly to Diane Chang, head of NSF. Private letter, one hard copy. That way she could read it, consider it in private, and decide whether she wanted to do something about it. Whatever she did, he would have taken his shot at trying to improve the place, and could go back to real science with a clean conscience. Leave in peace. Leave some of the anger in him behind. Hopefully.
He had heavily revised the draft he had written on the flight back from San Diego. Bulked up the arguments, made the criticisms more specific, made some concrete suggestions for improvements. It was still a pretty devastating indictment, but this time it was all in the tone of a scientific paper. No getting mad or getting eloquent. Neither chicken nor ostrich. Five pages single-spaced, even after he had cut it to the bone. Well, they needed a kick in the pants. This would certainly do that.
He read it through one more time, then sat there in his office chair, tapping the manila envelope against his leg, looking sightlessly out into the atrium. Wondering, among other things, what had happened to Torrey Pines Generique. Wondering if the hire of Yann Pierzinski had had anything to do with it.
Suddenly he heaved out of his chair, walked to the elevators with the manila envelope and its contents, took an elevator up to the twelfth floor. Walked around to Dianes office and nodded at Laveta, Dianes secretary. He put the envelope in Dianes in-box.
Suddenly he heaved out of his chair, walked to the elevators with the manila envelope and its contents, took an elevator up to the twelfth floor. Walked around to Dianes office and nodded at Laveta, Dianes secretary. He put the envelope in Dianes in-box.
Shes gone for today, Laveta told him.
Thats all right. Let her know when she comes in tomorrow that its there, will you? Its personal.
All right.
Back to the sixth floor. He went to his chair and sat down. It was done.
He heard Anna in her office, typing away. He recalled that this was the day she wanted him to join her at the brown-bag lecture. She had apparently helped to arrange for the Khembali ambassador to give the talk. Frank had seen it listed on a sheet announcing the series, posted next to the elevators:
Purpose of Science from the Buddhist Perspective.
It didnt sound promising to him. Esoteric at best, and perhaps much worse. That would not be unusual for these lunch talks, they were a mixed bag. People were burnt out on regular lectures, the last thing they wanted to do at lunch was listen to more of the same, so this series was deliberately geared toward entertainment. Frank remembered seeing titles like Antarctica as Utopia, or The Art of Body Imaging, or Ways Global Warming Can Help Us. Apparently it was a case of the wackier the topic, the bigger the crowd.
This one would no doubt be well attended.
Annas door opened; she was leaving for the lecture.
Are you going to come? she asked.
Yeah, sure.
That pleased her. He accompanied her to the elevators, shaking his head at her, at himself. Up to the tenth floor, into the conference room. It held about two hundred people. When the Khembalis arrived, every seat was occupied.
Frank sat down near the back, pretending to work on his pad. Air-conditioned air fell on him like a blessing. People were sitting down in groups, talking about this and that. The Khembalis stood by the lectern. The old ambassador, Rudra Cakrin, wore his maroon robes, while the rest of the Khembali contingent were in off-white cotton pants and shirts, as if in India. Rudra Cakrin needed his mike lowered. His young assistant helped him, then adjusted his own. Translation; what a pain. Frank groaned soundlessly.
They tested the mikes, and the noise of talk dampened. The room was impressively full, Frank had to admit, wacky factor or not. These were people still interested enough in ideas to spend a lunch hour listening to a lecture on the philosophy of science. Surplus time and energy, given over to curiosity: a fundamental hominid behavioral trait. Also the basic trait that got people into science, surviving despite the mind-numbing regimes. Here he was himself, after all, and no one could be more burnt out than he was. Still following a tropism helplessly, like a sunflower turning to look at the sun.
The old monk cut quite a figure up at the lectern, incongruous at best. This might be an admirably curious audience, but it was also a skeptical gang of hardened old technocrats. A tough sell, one would think, for a wizened man in robes, now peering out at them as if from a distant century.
And yet there he stood, and here they sat. Something had brought them together, and it wasnt just the air-conditioning. They sat in their chairs, attentive, courteous, open to new ideas. Frank felt a small glimmer of pride. This is how it had all begun, back in those Royal Society meetings in London in the 1660s: polite listening to a lecture by some odd person who was necessarily an autodidact; polite questions; the matter considered reasonably by all in attendance. An agreement to look at things reasonably. This was the start of it.
The old man stared out with a benign gaze. He seemed to mirror their attention, to study them.
Good morning! he said, then made a gesture to indicate that he had exhausted his store of English, except for what followed: Thank you.
His young assistant then said, Rimpoche Rudra Cakrin, Khembalungs ambassador to the United States, thanks you for coming to listen to him.
A bit redundant that, but then the old man began to speak in his own languageTibetan, Anna had saida low, guttural sequence of sounds. Then he stopped, and the young man, Annas friend Drepung, began to translate.
The rimpoche says, Buddhism begins in personal experience. Observation of ones surroundings and ones reactions, and ones thoughts. There is a scientific foundation to the process. He adds now, if I truly understand what you mean in the West when you say science. He says now, I hope you will tell me if I am wrong about it. But science seems to me to be about what happens that we can all agree on.
Now Rudra Cakrin interrupted to ask a question of Drepung, who nodded, then added: What can be asserted. That if you were to look into it, you would come to agree with the assertion. And everyone else would as well.
A few people in the audience were nodding.
The old man spoke again.
Drepung said, The things we can agree on are few, and general. And the closer to the time of the Buddha, the more general they are. Now, two thousand and five hundred years have passed, more or less, and we are in the age of the microscope, the telescope, and the mathematical description of reality. These are realms we cannot experience directly with our senses. And yet we can still agree in what we say about these realms. Because they are linked in long chains of mathematical cause and effect, from what we can see.
Rudra Cakrin smiled briefly, spoke. It began to seem to Frank that Drepungs translated pronouncements were much longer than the old mans utterances. Could Tibetan be so compact?
This network is a very great accomplishment, Drepung added.
Rudra Cakrin then sang in a low gravelly voice, like Louis Armstrongs, only an octave lower.
Drepung chanted in English:
He who would understand the meaning of Buddha nature,
Must watch for the season and the causal relations.
Real life is the life of causes.
Rudra Cakrin followed this with some animated speech.
Drepung translated, This brings up the concept of Buddha nature, rather than nature in itself. What is that difference? Buddha-nature is the appropriate response to nature. The reply of the observing mind. Buddhist philosophy ultimately points to seeing reality as it is. And then
Rudra Cakrin spoke urgently.
Then the response, the replythe human momentthe things we say, and do, and thinkthat moment arrives. We come back to the realm of the expressible. The nature of realityas we go deeper, language is left further behind. Even mathematics is no longer germane. But
The old man went on for quite some time, until Frank thought he saw Drepung make a gesture or expression with his eyelids, and instantly Rudra Cakrin stopped.
But, when we come to what we should do, it returns to the simplest of words. Compassion. Right action. Helping others. It always stays that simple. Reduce suffering. There is somethingreassuring in this. Greatest complexity of what is, greatest simplicity in what we should do. Much preferable to the reverse situation.
Rudra Cakrin spoke in a much calmer voice now.
Here again, Drepung went on, the two approaches overlap and are one. Science began as the hunt for food, comfort, health. We learned how things work in order to control them better. In order to reduce our suffering. The methods involved, observation and trial, in our tradition were refined in medical work. That went on for many ages. In the West, your doctors too did this, and in the process, became scientists. In Asia the Buddhist monks were the doctors, and they too worked on refining methods of observation and trial, to see if they could reproduce their successes, when they had them.