there’ll be any opposition, especially if it’s a temporary thing. I suppose my team could help make it a smooth transition.”
“It has been a pleasure, Professor Robertson.” Naimi offered his hand. “Enjoy Rome. Travel safe on Wednesday, and congratulations again on your technical award.”
Robertson locked the door and returned to the Jacuzzi. He let his head submerge completely before turning on the jets. He felt like he could throw up, but he was too angry.
What is going on? His drones being relocated to some oil field in the desert? Robertson couldn’t stand Dr. Winford Garton III. He was a sixty-five-year-old, condescending, Southern-born, aristocratic salesman. The term snake oil came to mind. Though married, Garton was also a campus womanizer, who had been reprimanded twice for sexual misconduct—specifically, improper touching.
Robertson wanted to pick up the phone and stop this whole ridiculous desert surveillance idea. The patent issues had never been resolved, and if push came to shove, he really didn’t know who owned what.
Is the drone my invention or Georgia Tech’s? he wondered. They handed him a research team and told him to develop something that could fly on Mars. Am I that expendable? Funny how word of the drone had spread so quickly, but after all, the Pirelli Award was an international event. This was probably the first of many weird offers. And this Al-Assaf character and his Saudi money. Talk about weird.
It really wasn’t a proposition at all , Robertson recounted. Propositions meant you had a choice. The Saudis were known for dangling huge sums of cash in front of academia when they wanted something, and knowing an insider like Faiz certainly helped.
Rome or not, now Robertson was even more anxious to get home. He spit a stream of water upward like a fountain. He wondered vaguely, as he sank into the water again, how Al-Assaf knew that his flight left on Wednesday.
Atlanta, GA
Tuesday, May 12
KEVIN JONES set his guitar—a Taylor acoustic six string—next to an open window in the fourth-floor robotics lab of Georgia Tech’s Technology Square Research Building. He reached for a pair of binoculars and rolled his fingers over the focus dial until a Domino’s Pizza delivery car on Fifth Street came into view. Target acquired.
“Yo, Zee. Pavlov was right.”
Roman “Zee” Zibinski stopped trimming the rough fiberglass edge of a newly molded drone wing and cocked his head thoughtfully. He’d heard the name before in some distant class and associated it with canines, but it, along with a gazillion other lecture facts, were sound asleep in his head, refusing to awaken. He visualized Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer.
“Who’s Pavlov?”
“The father of stimulus-response,” Jones replied. “When Ivan Pavlov rang a bell, his dogs knew they were going to be fed and started to salivate. When I see a pizza delivery car, I start to salivate. Pavlov was right. It’s an involuntary reflex.”
“You’re always salivating,” Zee quipped. “It’s either food or girls. We’ve had pizza three nights in a row. I’ll pass.”
“Did you hear that Domino’s wants to use aerial drones? What a great idea. No traffic lights, hot food, and you don’t have to tip the driver.”
“Are they hiring?” Zee asked halfheartedly. “Maybe I could be an unmanned delivery technician.”
“Hang tight,” Jones said, reaching for his instrument. “You’ll get a job offer. Even I figured I’d have to play and sing at a local bar to pay the bills before I won the lottery. They’d call me Pavlov with a guitar—guaranteed to make women salivate.”
Zee stretched a rubber band and snapped it across the room. Amazingly, it clung to the back of Jones’s shoulder-length mane. “You are truly disturbed. You can’t hang around a research campus strumming old Simon and Garfunkel songs forever. Instead of playing ‘The Sound of Silence’ all day, you might want to learn the sound of
“It has been a pleasure, Professor Robertson.” Naimi offered his hand. “Enjoy Rome. Travel safe on Wednesday, and congratulations again on your technical award.”
Robertson locked the door and returned to the Jacuzzi. He let his head submerge completely before turning on the jets. He felt like he could throw up, but he was too angry.
What is going on? His drones being relocated to some oil field in the desert? Robertson couldn’t stand Dr. Winford Garton III. He was a sixty-five-year-old, condescending, Southern-born, aristocratic salesman. The term snake oil came to mind. Though married, Garton was also a campus womanizer, who had been reprimanded twice for sexual misconduct—specifically, improper touching.
Robertson wanted to pick up the phone and stop this whole ridiculous desert surveillance idea. The patent issues had never been resolved, and if push came to shove, he really didn’t know who owned what.
Is the drone my invention or Georgia Tech’s? he wondered. They handed him a research team and told him to develop something that could fly on Mars. Am I that expendable? Funny how word of the drone had spread so quickly, but after all, the Pirelli Award was an international event. This was probably the first of many weird offers. And this Al-Assaf character and his Saudi money. Talk about weird.
It really wasn’t a proposition at all , Robertson recounted. Propositions meant you had a choice. The Saudis were known for dangling huge sums of cash in front of academia when they wanted something, and knowing an insider like Faiz certainly helped.
Rome or not, now Robertson was even more anxious to get home. He spit a stream of water upward like a fountain. He wondered vaguely, as he sank into the water again, how Al-Assaf knew that his flight left on Wednesday.
Atlanta, GA
Tuesday, May 12
KEVIN JONES set his guitar—a Taylor acoustic six string—next to an open window in the fourth-floor robotics lab of Georgia Tech’s Technology Square Research Building. He reached for a pair of binoculars and rolled his fingers over the focus dial until a Domino’s Pizza delivery car on Fifth Street came into view. Target acquired.
“Yo, Zee. Pavlov was right.”
Roman “Zee” Zibinski stopped trimming the rough fiberglass edge of a newly molded drone wing and cocked his head thoughtfully. He’d heard the name before in some distant class and associated it with canines, but it, along with a gazillion other lecture facts, were sound asleep in his head, refusing to awaken. He visualized Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer.
“Who’s Pavlov?”
“The father of stimulus-response,” Jones replied. “When Ivan Pavlov rang a bell, his dogs knew they were going to be fed and started to salivate. When I see a pizza delivery car, I start to salivate. Pavlov was right. It’s an involuntary reflex.”
“You’re always salivating,” Zee quipped. “It’s either food or girls. We’ve had pizza three nights in a row. I’ll pass.”
“Did you hear that Domino’s wants to use aerial drones? What a great idea. No traffic lights, hot food, and you don’t have to tip the driver.”
“Are they hiring?” Zee asked halfheartedly. “Maybe I could be an unmanned delivery technician.”
“Hang tight,” Jones said, reaching for his instrument. “You’ll get a job offer. Even I figured I’d have to play and sing at a local bar to pay the bills before I won the lottery. They’d call me Pavlov with a guitar—guaranteed to make women salivate.”
Zee stretched a rubber band and snapped it across the room. Amazingly, it clung to the back of Jones’s shoulder-length mane. “You are truly disturbed. You can’t hang around a research campus strumming old Simon and Garfunkel songs forever. Instead of playing ‘The Sound of Silence’ all day, you might want to learn the sound of
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