The Media Candidate (20 page)

“I appreciate your directions, Ms. Dobbs.”

Elliott then had a spirited discussion with Mr.
Compton, which ended predictably.

That evening, he recounted his adventure to his
family, knowing they would stand behind him and respect his efforts
to right an unworthy world. A small chorus of gaping mouths greeted
him. “There goes my A,” Susie said. “I’ll probably get a D. How
could you be so stupid, Dad? I can’t go to school tomorrow. Compton
will expel me. He expelled another kid over something like this.
How could you be so stupid?” Tears welled up in her eyes as she ran
from the room.

“Please don’t talk to my teacher, Daddy. I don’t
want to get spelled because you’re so stupid.” With that, Luke
trotted down the hall after Susie.

“What the hell got into you, Elliott Townsend?
You think you’re such a smart guy,” Martha shouted shaking her
head. “Why don’t you let the teachers teach, and you can go to your
lab and do whatever you do there. What’s wrong with the kids
getting some environmental awareness? And if Susie wants to write a
letter to Fantasy or to Queen Isabella, what’s that to you?”

“But Susie didn’t want to—”

“Since when do you know so much about plastic
and recycling? I’m sure Ms. Dobbs knows a lot more about that sort
of thing than you do. You said yourself the kind of research you do
doesn’t have anything to do with the real world, just quarks and
quantum stuff that nobody else would ever care about. So why don’t
you just keep your nose out of this environmental stuff?”

“Just because my work at the Lab is unrelated
doesn’t mean—”

“And then you topped it off by opening your big
mouth to the principal. Susie’s pretty upset. I’ve never heard her
call you stupid before. And Luke—he’s always looked up to you. Go
back to your lab, Dr. Townsend. Go count your quarks and write your
equations. We can sure get along without your interference at
home.”

This time Elliott made no response. He just
studied the floor.

As time progressed, family emotions subsided,
with Luke admitting Elliott back into the family first and Martha
holding out the longest. Two months later, Susie announced at
dinner that she was going to do a science-fair project.

“Can I help?” Luke interrupted. “You gonna build
a rocket ship or a laser gun or something? I can help you build
stuff. I help Daddy in the garage sometimes, don’t I Daddy.”

“Yes you do, Otter.” Elliott turned toward Susie
and said, “He can be a big help to you, Susie—and so can I, if you
want any help.”

“Well, another scientist in the family,” said
Martha with a smirk. “Isn’t that interesting.” She glanced at
Elliott who skillfully avoided her.

“What kind of project you going to do?” Elliott
asked.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about something
environmental—maybe about recycling or something like that. Ever
since that Fantasy Cola letter, I’ve been thinking about it. I read
somewhere you can even recycle plastic bottles, but I’m not sure
exactly what to do.”

Martha said, “Have you asked that nice lady who
teaches science? What’s her name?”

“Dobbs,” said Elliott.

“Yes, that nice Ms. Dobbs could help you. She
knows a lot about environmental things.”

“If you’d like to kick around some ideas, just
let me know,” Elliott said. “Why don’t you think about it and write
down some ideas? Then we can get together and brainstorm it.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“Maybe you can find the book where you read
about recycling plastic bottles,” Elliott said.

“Sure.”

Elliott delivered some dishes to the kitchen
where Martha was arranging the dishwasher like a vase of daisies.
As he bent down to help, she whispered, “Don’t screw up this time,
Elliott.”

Susie spent her spare time at the library
enchanted by engineering studies comparing paper, plastic, glass,
and aluminum packaging. Her father had told her: “Start at the
beginning, Susie.”

“What do you mean? Where else can you start?
That’s what the start is, it’s the beginning.”

“Most people start in the middle or at the end.
They think they know the answer before they even understand the
question. That’s why you wrote to Fantasy telling them the answer
was glass when you really didn’t understand the question. It’s
easier to skip the beginning, but it can be pretty dangerous,
too.”

Susie applied that wisdom to the science fair,
exhausting the school library and turning to the city library.
Elliott hoped it was the stirring of a great scientist. Martha
hoped it would end peaceably.

“Susie at the library again?” Elliott asked
after he walked in from work.

“Uh huh,” replied Martha, “Should be home any
minute.”

“Can you believe how hard she’s been working on
this science-fair thing?” Elliott asked. “I never expected it.
Maybe she’ll turn out to be a scientist after all.”

Martha looked at him with a question in her
eyes. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“What are you talking about, Martha?”

“You really think she’s doing this for the
science, don’t you?”

“Well, sure.”

“Come with me, Dr. Townsend.” He followed her
into Susie’s room where she closed the door. There was a color
poster advertising the “2010 Trumpet Elementary School Science
Fair.”

“Wow!” he said. “First prize in each grade is a
set of skis and boots or a mountain bike.”

“Now look at the grand prize.”

“Grand prize is a week at a ski resort or a dude
ranch for a family of four. These prizes are terrific. They weren’t
anything like this last year.”

“Not just the skis, Ted. She’s figuring on the
grand prize. She told me that was going to be her Christmas present
to the whole family next year. She’s put her trust in you to guide
her.”

“She’s really getting into the science of
recycling,” Elliott said.

“Just remember, she’s counting on you,” warned
Martha.

“But never mind the prizes, she’s learning as
much about recycling as many environmental engineers. Last week I
noticed she hadn’t found anything about the differences in
transportation energy used for different types of containers. I
suggested that if she couldn’t find anything, she could do a simple
analysis that I could help her with, but she’d need the weights of
the different containers. Would you believe, last night she came
and asked me to show her how to use that balance scale I have in
the garage? I’ve never seen her so turned-on about anything.”

“I hope the judges can appreciate all this
genius.”

“How can they help but recognize the merit of
her work. She’s taking a really scientific approach—no slogans or
gimmicks or hype, just facts and logic and analysis and tons of
references. I think she’s doing a terrific job!”

“I hope so.”

A few days later, Elliott received a recruiting
notice from Trumpet for science-fair judges. Elliott submitted his
resume as requested and mailed it back to the school.

Two weeks before the science fair, he received a
letter saying, “Despite your fine credentials, we have been unable
to secure a judging position.” Elliott knew exactly who made that
decision, and before he even recognized his emotions, he was
dialing Compton’s number. Compton’s voice-mail answered. The
distant beep brought Martha’s words back to him. This was the
screw up
she’d warned him about. He replaced the receiver
silently.

“Dobbs!” he whispered.

The night before the science fair, the whole
family was in the basement, helping put the finishing touches on
Susie’s display. It summarized the results of three months of
research in thirty-two square-feet of poster board plus a small
tabletop.

The main poster in the center presented process
flow charts for the recycling of each type of container showing the
inputs of materials, energy, labor, and capital and the outputs of
containers, air pollution, water pollution, and solid residues.
There were separate flow charts for paper, plastic, aluminum, and
glass containers.

The two side-posters described the issues and
related them to the flow charts: health risks, environmental
effects, environmental costs, recycling problems, transportation
costs, refill vs. recycle, advanced production technologies,
economic efficiency, and references.

The tabletop was reserved for conclusions, which
were displayed in an elaborate three-dimensional Lego matrix. Susie
arranged the conclusions in one dimension according to the
container function. Another dimension was divided into the
percentage of the containers that was recycled. The third dimension
was comments.

Her conclusions were startling according to the
standard wisdom. Even with no recycling, the plastic containers won
the competition for most frugal energy consumption; and at high
recycling rates, only aluminum cans came close to plastic in energy
efficiency. The paper vs. plastic bag was no contest. If all the
plastic bags were thrown in the trash and all the paper bags were
recycled, the plastic bags were still more environmentally benign
than the paper bags, even if you use two plastic bags for every one
paper bag.

About a week before the science fair, Susie and
Elliott had spent one whole evening making sure there were data and
references to support each conclusion. “But this isn’t what Ms.
Dobbs and everybody else says, Dad. Even if you go to the grocery
store, they use paper bags because everybody says the plastic is so
bad. I don’t think the judges will believe this. Maybe I should
change my conclusions so plastic doesn’t do so good.”

Then Elliott spoke. “Everything we have
today—CDs, videos, fancy bikes, medicines—all these things happened
because scientists were stubborn and listened to their data and
their visions instead of what everybody said. If you turn your back
on the truth, you can never be a scientist … or a woman.”

“How can my conclusions possibly be right when
everybody knows it’s just the opposite?”

“You’re learning a lesson in the difference
between the truth-as-somebody-would-like-it-to-be and the
truth-as-it-is. The truth-as-somebody-would-like-it-to-be is
whatever is popular, whatever the fad is. Something becomes true if
enough people want it to be.”

“Which truth is the right one? There can’t be
two truths, especially if they’re opposite.”

“Remember when we went skiing in March? You’d
been looking forward to that weekend for so long that you were
convinced the skiing was going to be great. But it wasn’t so great,
was it. Remember how warm it was and how the snow got real slushy
and then turned to ice late in the afternoon? But you were
convinced it was great snow, and you went blasting down through
those trees and hit that patch of ice and wiped out and ripped a
gash in your leg.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“The great skiing was the
truth-as-you-wanted-it-to-be, and the ice was the
truth-as-it-was.”

“Suppose I skied through the ice without
falling? Then which truth would be right?”

“Then you’d have been lucky. The truth-as-it-is
doesn’t always bite you in the butt. Sometimes you get lucky.”

“But what about this recycling thing, Dad?
What’s going to happen when everybody finds out they’ve been
wrong?”

“How are they going to find out?” Elliott
asked.

“I’m going to have this big display, and
everybody’s going to see the truth-as-it-is!”

“How many people do you think will see it?”
Elliott asked.

“I’ll bet a couple thousand people will come to
the science fair, and they’ll all see it!”

“This is a local grade-school science-fair,
Susie. Maybe a couple hundred parents will come. Maybe half of them
will walk past your display. Half of those will—you keeping track,
Susie?”

“Right, a hundred will pass, and now we’re down
to fifty.”

“Ok, and maybe those fifty will stop to look,
and maybe half of those will actually read something, and maybe
half of those will understand anything about what you did, and
maybe half of those will believe you. And you always overestimate
these things by at least a factor of two, so what do we end up
with?”

“You mean I gotta divide by two? Then, I guess
about … three people.”

“Ok, you’ve communicated your message to three
people.”

Susie stared at her pile of notes and data. “You
mean I did all this just for three people?”

“No, you did it for just one person. You did
this for yourself, and nobody else.”

“Suppose some reporter sees it and puts it on
the TV. Then a lot of people would see it.”

“I guess there’s a slight chance of that if two
things happened. First, you’d have to win first place. And second,
we’d have to tell them you were abandoned by your parents as a
baby, and you’ve been living in the back of a Chevy pickup with
your uncle ever since. Oh, by the way, you’ve got too many legs,
too. You’d have to get rid of one of your legs so you wouldn’t be
able to use the skis you won. The media likes that human interest
stuff, it’s what they specialize in.”

“Dad, quit joking now. Do you really think they
might put it on TV?”

Elliott looked away at an old TV in the corner.
“Maybe, Susie. Maybe.”

“Newspapers print news, right? And this is news,
isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s not quite that simple. The
newspapers are in business, so they print what they think their
customers want. If they don’t tell them what they want to hear,
some other paper will, and that’s how you lose customers.”

“I don’t understand. I thought news was
news.”

“You’re probably right. I just made it too
complicated,” Elliott sighed.

“But suppose the judges believe in that other
kind of truth. Then this is all for nothing.”

“That isn’t going to happen. I can’t promise
you’ll take any prizes, but this is a fantastic project. The judges
are professionals, and they’ll judge it on its scientific merits. I
may not know much else, but I’m a good physicist and I know good
science when I see it, and what you’ve done is really something.
I’m so proud of you. You just can’t imagine.” Elliott squeezed her.
“What you have here goes way beyond the fifth-grade level,
Susie.”