Gregory Benford

Hubris. They disliked questions unless there were clear answers. They believed so much in their method that they conjured up certainty out of undeniable risk.

She sighed. “We’re just guessing.”

“When you have a Ph. D., you call them hypotheses, not guesses.”

“Ummm,” Alicia said, trying to be polite. “Still sounds like we’re just making this up as we go along.”

“We are.” Max grinned. “Invent, then check. It’s really the only way to make progress.”

I like Orange County, though. It’s like L.A. without caffeine.

“We will be just like the USA. Only we will be more honest.”

”We’ve got two parties.”

“No you do not. You have only the party of the banks, of the money men, and they divide it into two pieces for your voting.”

She felt a tingling, curiously pleasurable: her “curiosity reflex,” she had called it in high school, when she had first glimpsed the serene certainties of physics, starkly contrasting with the world’s raw hubbub.

That was what drew him to mathematics. Not because it was rarefied, but because it probed to the subtle, deeper reality. People said that mathematicians were unworldly, and yammered on about how Einstein couldn’t make correct change. Nonsense. Einstein just didn’t give a damn. It was the subtle, the beautiful that concerned him.

A particle detector that ran beautifully was either obsolete or hadn’t been designed close enough to the cutting edge of the technology.

Data always overruled theory.

Orange County, with its signature long lines of tall palm trees, was working toward being “max-frilled,” as the slang had it, but at least it didn’t have the touches of L.A. The post office didn’t offer valet parking yet. On rainy days parking tickets weren’t slipped inside protective envelopes, as in Beverly Hills. There were no water bars, with fifty chilled varieties at two bucks a glass, with no ice because it would erase the regional subtleties. And when you called the police department and got put on hold, no classical music played.

Outside the Sea Lounge were ranks of motorcycles, mostly Harleys. Through the open windows she could see a jammed crowd raising beer glasses to the monotonous thump of the live band. Being Harley guys, they were of course rebels, rugged lone wolves, individual spirits, as was obvious because they were all wearing the same jackets and jeans, bandannas and sunglasses, big brass belt buckles and tattoos, probably even the same underwear.

“Law of the universe,” she said. “The longer the menu description, the worse the food.”