American Elsewhere (44 page)

MICHAEL DERN
: My name is a matter of public record. So yeah. Yeah, I am special. Not as special as you, though, but

: You sure know how to sweet-talk

MICHAEL DERN
: I do. So how’s it going?

: That’s it? Just how’s it going?

MICHAEL DERN
: We’ll start there, sure.

: Seriously?

MICHAEL DERN
: Seriously.

: Not good.

MICHAEL DERN
: No?

: Yeah. Not good. And I’m saying that knowing full well that I could lose my job, and the job of everyone else here. It’s not good.

MICHAEL DERN
: What’s so not good about it?

: The results we’re getting.
is excited about them, sure. His
but you’ve got to understand that… like, think of looking at a dark room. You see a flash on one side. Then you see it again on another. What’s the guarantee that it’s the same light? Isn’t a much more practical explanation that it’s just two different lights that appear similar?

MICHAEL DERN
: You know I’m a physicist too, right?

: Yeah, but you went to Stanford, so.

MICHAEL DERN
: Very cute. So you’re saying you disbelieve

: hypothesis about the photon tracking.

What I will say is that I think we’ve made more progress exploring photon signatures than we ever have on cosmic bruising. If there’s one great contribution we’ve made to science, it’s that.