08 October 2003

Fire Drill

The new Governor of California is a muscular Austrian with a playful sense of humor. He once said he admired Hitler. What a kidder! He has been elected for a three year term, if the electorate doesn't decide to recall him. There is no getting around America's love affair with show-biz, and here we go again. I understand the LA Times was printing free copies of it's hard-hitting investigative reports on the Gropemeister, and distributing them free, too. Alas, it appears that their verve to discredit the monsyllabic muscle-builder seems to backfired, motivating a surge to the poles by both red-blooded American males and red-blooded American females who might have liked an opportunity to experience an unwanted advance from the millionaire ex-Mr. Universe.

The BBC this morning clucked in relief that Arnold is foreign-born, and hence not eligible to serve as President. The memory of Ronald Reagan seems to have them a little rattled. They thought Ronnie was a joke and it was enormously disconcerting for them when it turned out that he wasn't that at all. I voted for a film star twice in my life, and I hope that I don't get a chance to do it again.

The Pakistanis are launching medium-range rockets to unnerve their neighbors. I wonder if Arnold could get elected there, and actually do some good.

The whole thing is hard to believe. I had intended to catch the early returns last night but fell asleep in my armchair watching an account of Lewis and Clark heading west. They had just passed through the territory of the Lakota Sioux, the only Indians on the route that contemplated ending the expedition on the spot. I was stunned by the courage of the Corps of Exploration. I would like to follow the trail someday.

I am starting to dream of a vacation like that, a long one. I was thinking that in the monthly four-hour meeting on the Thirteenth Floor yesterday. The Staff to which I have been assigned to support has embraced me with a vengeance. I am already on the recall list, so they can get hold of me day and night. It is that serious.

"Don't worry" they said at my corporate office. "This is just temporary, until we hire a theoretical physicist with program and budget experience." I may have been born at night, but not last night.

But I need the job and now I drive to the Company, scan the e-mail and answer the phone messages, then walk to the Metro and take two stops down to the Committee's offices in the tall building in the middle of Arlington. I like the office location, though I am in an interior cubical. There are windows and we are on a lower floor. That is good. We could hurl office furniture through the windows and jump, if necessary. I had a sledge hammer in my last office that was located in a symbolic target, and a long heavy-gauge line so we could blow out the window and rappel down from the sixth floor. Be prepared, that's my motto.

But yesterday was the monthly Community meeting in the big conference room on the Thirteenth floor. Committee voting members came form all their Agencies to talk about developments in the field. Being scientific types, they love to talk., and the meetings go on and on. It is a nice room, and when I walked in I recalled that I had presided on a promotion ceremony there, imported as one of the few available Navy Captains to lend a suitable gravitas to the event. There is a display on the wall which has interlocking pentagons of brass of employees of the Agency who have been killed in the line of duty. The last time I was in this room there were seven fewer pentagons on the wall.

The Chairman was apologetic. He said that the County had directed an evacuation drill for the building this morning. It was too hard to coordinate all the individual calendars and adjust the meeting time, so at some point we would have to leave the room and walk down thirteen flights of stairs and rally in the parking lot of a building across the street. The County was going to time our performance, so there was a certain urgency to the evolution.

We got through one of the presentations and were starting the questions when the speakers came on and told us to get out. We dropped our pens and papers and filed out of the room. The Chairman told us they would lock the room and our valuables would be secure. We found the nearest stairwell and started down in good order. Other files joined us as we went. Until we arrived at the landing above the eighth floor. There the parade stopped. I was between two ladies from the tenth floor. Sirens and buzzers wailed in the bakground. And we stood and shifted our weight and people began to press gently from behind.

The concrete walls were featureless and the handrails painted a stolid blue. And we waited. And shifted our weight. And waited.

I thought for a moment what it must have been like in the dark with the smell of smoke and jet fuel. Trying to make way for men in bulky gear going up as the adrenaline rose. There was shouting up above "Make a hole! Make a hole!" as an Air Force Master Sergeant cascaded down through us clutching a radio. He disappeared in an eddy of flustered workers below.

I am not claustrophobic by nature, but I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. I wished I had a window and a hammer and plenty of line.

It took another ten minutes- at least it seemed that long- before the line once more began to go down. In time we were in the parking lot looking up. It was peaceful and the Autumn sun was warm. Everyone agreed that getting the crowd back on the elevators to return to their offices was going to be a zoo. Knots of workers checked in with their monitors and drifted off toward the coffee shops.

It was still too early for any of the bars to be open. But I certainly felt more like hitting the long road west like Lewis and Clark and leave the thirteenth floor behind.