The God Patent (39 page)

As though to emphasize that she had been ranting, he spoke just above a whisper. “The secretary of energy called me at home last night, after midnight on the East Coast, and
ordered
me to remove a classified document from our website. I had no idea what it was or why it was there but agreed to remove it.”

“Okay, no problem. It’s back up. Sorry to bother you.” She turned to leave, a bit shocked at her own behavior.

“Lawrence Berkeley
National
Laboratory is not going to break federal law,” he said. “I am not going to risk our funding for your scientific jihad.”

Emmy’s temper rushed back in, but this time she was ready. She stared at him and spoke very clearly. “Remember this day. This is the day that you destroyed your career. Claude, I remember when you were a physicist. You’re not a physicist anymore, you’re a corporate pawn.”

She left, and when she got back to her office, sure enough, Foster’s dissertation was no longer linked from the website. She called Bob Park in Maryland.

“It’s classified?” Bob growled into the phone. “First they classified their mistakes to keep them out of the press. Now they’re classifying their campaign contributor’s mistakes.” Emmy could almost hear him scowling. “I read that piece of hogwash yesterday. My stomach was turning by the fifth page. I thought you were putting me on, then I checked the press release.” At the end of a long sigh, he added, “All right, this is what I’m going to do—and I
hope
they charge me with treason—I’m sending it out as an attachment. Over ten thousand PhD physicists will have it in their inboxes within an hour.” He chuckled, a gravelly chuckle that reminded Emmy of her father. “Talk about peer review. Then I’m calling the
New York Times
science editor.”

A second
What’s New
special edition was transmitted with Foster Reed’s dissertation attached. Copies were printed and shelved in the libraries of every major lab—SLAC, Fermilab, CERN in Switzerland, Tsukuba in Japan, DESY in Germany, Rutherford in England, and others.

But when Park called the science editors at the
Washington Post
and
New York Times
, he got the same message that Emmy got when she called the
San Francisco Chronicle
and
San Jose Mercury News
—the science correspondents were in meetings. In fact, they were on a conference call with the chief technological officer of National Engineering Group.

That evening, NBC news led with a report of “perhaps the most significant investment in science ever made by a private corporation. It could bring about both energy independence and the completion of President Reagan’s dream of a Star Wars antimissile system.” CNN’s was somewhat vague: “A new way to harness subatomic energy reported by an obscure Christian university
in Texas has caught the attention of major energy and military investors.” Fox reported, “The Bible has overtaken science.”

A television interview with NEG CTO Bill Smythe was careful to maintain that it was “an alternative energy source with great potential, whose specifics can’t be discussed because of their potential national security applications.” He described Foster and Ryan as “inventors in the great American tradition of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard,” who brought “good old American know-how to the biggest problems facing America and the world.” He told America to expect skepticism. “From Einstein’s relativity to the invention of the personal computer, great ideas always bring out naysayers. This technology will be no different. National Engineering doesn’t invest in fads—this is not some elitist theory without applications. It’s good hard technology. Once again, a couple of guys working for a small company in the heart of America did an end run around government-financed labs. We’re just doing what private enterprise has always done, investing in promising solutions to make an honest buck for our shareholders.”

The next morning, a Tuesday, the
New York Times
headline blared, “Christians Discover Science They Like.” The
Washington Post
: “Little Christian College Beats Big Labs to the Punch.” Not even college newspapers could resist the sensation; the
Daily Princetonian
ran “Evangelical Word U Embarrasses Institute for Advanced Study.”

Emmy stared at the
San Francisco Chronicle
headline: “Physics and Bible Get Married in Texas.” Bile rose in the back of her throat. She wanted to fight. She wanted to cry.

She had a dozen phone messages, most from colleagues offering support. Four of the messages caught her by surprise. The first was from the director of LBL, whom she’d threatened the day before. He said that he and the director of SLAC wanted
her to represent the labs. The second message was from the director of SLAC, echoing the first and adding that he was checking with the National Academy of Sciences to coordinate a response with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The third message floored her. CNN asked her to appear on Wolf Blitzer’s
The Situation Room
later that afternoon with Foster Reed and Ryan McNear.

The last message, left just a few minutes before she sat down, was from Ryan, and it brought Emmy back to Earth like a falling satellite. “I’m worried about Katarina. She got arrested Saturday night. I think she’s in big trouble. Could you come up and talk to her? She got busted with meth and,”—Ryan’s voice cracked—“and for having sex in the alley behind Skate-n-Shred. Her mom is in total denial. Anyway, call me. I missed you this weekend. I hope you got caught up—love you.”

Foster Reed was in his lab when he got the call. Mabel popped her head in the door. “Dr. Reed, y’all have a call from Washington—CNN wants you on that Wolf Blitzer show…”

Foster looked up at Mabel. What was she doing here? The phone? “CNN? Have them call Jeb.”

She said, “The CNN boys want
you
, Dr. Reed.”

T
he media had an effective feedback loop: every news outlet was compelled to out-sensationalize the other. By midafternoon, MSNBC was questioning religious leaders about evidence for Noah’s great flood. They said that the flood explained away the scientific establishment’s so-called evidence that Earth was four billion years old. That the actual age was six thousand years, as calculated from the Bible, and that such seeming contradictions as seashells found at the top of mountains and the formation of the Grand Canyon all made sense in the light of the great flood.

Members of both the state of Kansas and Dover School Boards—the people who had fought at the Supreme Court to have Creation science and intelligent design taught alongside evolution in public schools—were being interviewed on national news.

The biology community responded the way it had in the past, by submitting a short press release: “Evolution is grounded in a preponderance of evidence. Creationism and intelligent design are religious ideas that have nothing to do with predictive science.”

Man-on-the-street interviews painted Joe Sixpack as skeptical that this was “it” but certain that eventually science and religion would meet. Religious leaders from Buddhists to Muslims,
Sikhs to Mormons, Hindus to Wiccans embraced the idea of science accepting a distinction between “in here” and “out there.” The official response from the Vatican: “We’re happy to see that progress is being made in understanding the work of the Lord.”

Demonstrators from the left flew to Texas to protest a dangerous new form of nuclear energy and, from the right, to prepare for the Rapture.

Ryan was excited at the prospect of going on TV—who wouldn’t be? He also understood that he would be smack between Emmy and Foster. He would stick to his core beliefs, respect their positions, and expect them to respect his.

CNN had asked Emmy and him to appear together at a TV studio north of Petaluma. Ryan waited on the porch for Emmy to pick him up. Her red Acura came up the hill, and she parked behind Ryan’s car. He went down to the street, opened her car door, and offered his arm. Every time he saw her, he felt a little
Lady and the Tramp
thrill. She was so cultured, important, respectable, and he was an outlaw.

She stepped out of the car and hugged him. Ryan saw the tension, anger, and disgust drawn in lines across her brow. He lifted her up and gave her a mushy wet kiss.

Her nose against his, she said, “Ryan, please put me down. I don’t feel playful.”

Emmy drove Ryan to the television studio where they were directed to makeup. Ryan asked the makeup artist to paint a moustache on him, “a big Fu Manchu job.” His wisecracks were more effective at removing the lines in Emmy’s brow than the makeup.

In the studio, they sat on stools separated by a few feet, each with a different color backdrop and separate cameras. The producer asked them to smile in the cameras and say a few words to check the lighting and sound. Ryan listed punch lines to dumb old jokes: “if we find my keys, we can
drive
out of here,” “he only took tips,” and “no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” By the time the producer indicated that they were about to go on the air, Ryan felt confident and comfortable. He raised his eyebrows provocatively at Emmy. She turned away, trying to cover her laughter. Good, she was ready too. He didn’t want her all uptight and defensive.

Five TV monitors were mounted behind the cameras, one each for Ryan, Emmy, Foster, and Blitzer, plus one with the live feed. Two thousand miles away, the studio in San Antonio had a similar setup for Foster.

“Has science met spirituality?” Wolf Blitzer spoke in his patented gruff monotone. “Tonight we have Foster Reed, the physicist behind Creation Energy; Ryan McNear, coinventor of the technology; and Amolie Nutter, professor of physics at the University of California and leading critic of Creation Energy—after this message.”

The producer said, “Back in ninety.”

Emmy took several deep breaths and closed her eyes. Ryan looked at the monitor showing Foster—he seemed to be looking right back.

“Three, two, one…”

“We’ll start with Dr. Reed of Evangelical Word University.” The monitor with the live feed showed a three-way split screen with Foster on the right, Ryan in the middle, and Emmy on
the left. “How does this technology bring science and religion together?”