"Former academic," Thorne said briskly. "Now I actually make things. I don't just talk."
Colleagues who knew Jack Thorne agreed that retirement marked the happiest period in his life. As a professor of applied engineering, and a specialist in exotic materials, he had always demonstrated a practical focus and a love of students. His most famous course at Stanford, Structural Engineering 101a, was known among the students as "Thorny Problems," because Thorne continually provoked his class to solve applied-engineering challenges he set for them. Some of these had long since entered into student folklore. There was, for example, the Toilet Paper Disaster: Thorne asked the students to drop a carton of eggs from Hoover Tower without injury. As padding, they could only use the cardboard tubes at the center of toilet paper rolls. There were spattered eggs all over the plaza below.
Then, another year, Thorne asked the students to build a chair to support a two-bundred-pound man, using only, paper Q-tips and thread. And another time, he hung the answer sheet for the final exam from the classroom ceiling, and invited his students to pull it down, using whatever they could make with a cardboard shoebox containing a pound of licorice, and some toothpicks.
When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, "How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up." He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.
But as a professor who was popular with his students-and who advocated general education-Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. But in the end, it was his fondness for Chang-tzu that pushed him out the door. In a departmental meeting, one of his colleagues got up and announced that "Some mythical Chinese bullshitter means fuck-all for engineering."
Thorne took early retirement a month later, and soon after started his own company. He enjoyed his work thoroughly, but he missed contact with the students, which was why he liked Levine's two youthful assistants. These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn't destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne's view was a sure sign they hadn't yet completed a formal education.
"Jerry!" Thorne bellowed, to one of the welders on the RVS. "Balance the struts on both sides! Remember the crash tests!" Thorne pointed to a video monitor set on the floor, which showed a computer image of the RV crashing into a barrier. First it crashed end-on, then it crashed sideways, then it rolled and crashed again. Each time, the vehicle survived with very little damage. The computer program had been developed by the auto companies, and then discarded. Thorne acquired it, and modified it. "Of course the auto companies discarded it - it's a good idea. Don't want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!" He sighed. "Using this computer, we've crashed these vehicles ten thousand times: designing, crashing, modeling, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be."
Thorne's dislike of theory was legendary. In his view' a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about. "And now look. Jerry? Jerry! Why'd we do all these simulations, if you guys aren't going to follow the plans? Is everybody brain-dead around here?"
"Sorry, Doc…"
"Don't be sorry! Be right!"
"Well, we're massively overbuilt anyway-"
"Oh? Is that your decision? You're the designer now? Just follow the plans!"
Arby trotted alongside Thorne. "I'm worried about Dr. Levine," he said.
'Really? I'm not."
"But he's always been reliable. And very well organized."
"That's true," Thorne said. "He's also completely impulsive and does whatever he feels like."
"Maybe so," Arby said, "but I don't think he'd be missing without a good reason. I'm afraid he might be in trouble. Only last week, he had us go with him to visit Professor Malcolm in Berkeley, who had this map of the world in his office, and it showed - "
"Malcolm!" Thorne snorted. "Spare me! Peas in a pod, those two. Each more impractical than the other. But I'd better get hold of Levine now." He turned on his heel, and walked toward his office.
Arby said, "You going to use the satphone?"