Nicole’s Reviews > The Gold Bug Variations > Status Update

Was I a child prodigy? Did I keep my lunch bag in the dissection freezer? Did knowing the chemical nature of humanity keep me from favoring certain eye color? Did I have any words of wisdom for the generation of molecular geneticists then cutting their teeth in school labs?

Did you?

I told them to read from the bottom of the meniscus.

helps(heaven,X) if helps(X,X)

NASA's eyes in the sky determine the vectors on every molecule of atmosphere. They feed all the numbers into a Cray, and the animal pounds away, megaflops, on a simulation that knows everything about adiabatic cooling, turbulence, vapor pressures, topography, solar radiation. The machine assembles and delivers a perfect prediction of tomorrow's weather. Only it takes two days to run.

There's a similar dance to find a common denominator language for conversation. Observe clothes, ported books, license plate. Try a few mumbled words. I overheard two men in the Liège (Luik, Luttich) railway station conclude, after halting negotiation, that their strongest common language was Latin.

To have been a virgin post-doc then! I exhumed the Watson-Crick paper that had touched off the wholesale gold rush. The primary sources still exhale the atmosphere of intellectual dizziness, the articles thick with a sense that someone would soon crack the complete caper and seize the ne plus ultra of the research world, the riddle of life.

Tooney Blake, dark, mid-height, a youthful forty, is at the piano doing a terrifyingly down-tempo version of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." Only he's missed the point of the song: "Potato, potato, tomato, tomato," all pronounced exactly the same.