Distraction - Bruce Sterling [125]
“That’s a remarkable claim.”
“Look. It’s a long, dismal story but … look, basic science and corporate sponsorship have never worked out. My problems aren’t scientific at all, they’re all in management. Our agenda here is organic materials processing, we’re looking for new biologically based solutions to traditional engineering problems. There’s a lot of room to work there. Our problem was our corporate sponsorship in Detroit.”
Chander sighed. “I don’t know why the automobile industry got involved in sponsoring our work. That wasn’t my decision. But ever since they first showed up, five years ago, they’ve wrecked everything we do. They keep demanding results from us, then shortening our schedules and changing our deliverables. They micromanage everything. They send in brain-damaged car executives on sabbaticals, who show up, and steal rare animals, and run goofy futurist scenarios, and talk nonsense to us. We’ve been through absolute hell here: reengineering, outplacement, management by objective, total customer service, you name it! Every kind of harassment imaginable.”
“But industry supplied your funding. Those were your corporate sponsors. You couldn’t win complete federal funding for your proposals. If you can’t make your own sponsors happy, then why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” Chander said. “It’s simple! It’s a very simple, straightforward thing! I’m here because of power.”
“You don’t say.”
“Electromotive power! My krewe and I were researching new power sources for the American transportation industry. And we’ve created a new working model. It’s mitochondrial ATP power generation. With signal transduction, protein phosphorylation, membrane diffusion potentials.… Look, do you even know what a ‘mitochondrion’ is?”
“I’ve heard that term, I think.”
“The mitochondrion is the power plant in the cell. It generates energy from adenosine triphosphate, it’s the basic reason we can live and breathe. Mitochondria are microscopic. But imagine they were”—Chander spread his hands violently—“a meter across.”
“So you’ve cloned a piece of a living cell and made it a meter across?”
“I was never any good at explaining science to the layman.… No, of course it’s not a meter across. It’s not a mitochondrion at all. It’s a biomechanical device that uses the membranes and the structure of a mitochondrion. They’ve all been scaled up, industrially. It’s a giant waffle of membranes and gelatin matrix. It’s not a living thing, it’s biological hardware, engineered and turned into an electrochemical battery. You could drive a car with it. You could drive a truck! And it runs on sugar.”
“So you’ve created an automobile engine that runs on sugar.”
“Now you’re getting it! That’s it! Sugar, water, and a few trace elements. Totally organic and totally recyclable. No combustion, no emissions, and no toxins! And it runs at room temperature.”
“So this is another new automobile power plant. Sure, fine. There are plenty of those on the market already—flywheels, steam, liquid nitrogen. How is the acceleration?”
Chander punched the air. “It’s like that! It’s like punching my fist! Mitochondria did that! It’s the technology that powers muscle! It’s fast, it’s clean! It really works!”
“What’s the catch?”
“There isn’t one! It works fine! Well, it’ll work better when we get the prototype bugs worked out … there’s some problems with osmotic pressure, and even flow-through … oh, and if the battery gets infected, then it rots pretty quickly. But those are just shakedown problems. The real problem is that Detroit doesn’t want our product. They won’t put it into production.”
“So you’ve achieved a great success,” Oscar said. “Then explain something to me. Your lab’s had more private funding than any other Materials facility, but you’ve never shipped a product. You’re the Principal Investigator here, but you’ve had more krewe turnover than any other lab.…”
“They were all spies!” Chander said. “They were spies and saboteurs! I didn’t have any choice but to fire them.”
“I’ve noticed that the rest of your