Sanctuario de Singularity - Part Two (The End)
VLBA site in Los Alamos, New Mexico
The boys ate handfuls of our homemade trail-mix as we bypassed Santa Fe and hooked a left onto the isolated freeway toward Los Alamos. The road was lined with safety signs dictating an unusually low speed limit. Safety Corridor! Do Not Pass! 40 mph! We wound through three unoccupied lanes snaking through a heat-stroke landscape pock-marked with a million dinky wind caves, my foot hovering over the brake.
"Mom! Why do we have to go so slow? There's no one around."
Harry stuck his hand out the window and let it rise and fall with the turbulence surrounding us. Gandalf considered the question, and I watched him in the rearview mirror, his mind sifting through all the possible explanations.
"Well, the road isn't that steep. And it doesn't look like it gets a lot of traffic. Maybe they're doing road construction? But why's this road so big?"
He shook his head to himself. He knew he wasn't right. It didn't compute.
"Guys, I know the answer. This is the only road that takes you to Los Alamos. Here, look at the map."
I passed the folder paper to the boys. Two police cars huddled in the desert median, radar guns at attention. I continued to crawl through the hills.
"Los Alamos is where the Los Alamos National Laboratory is. Everyone in the entire town either is a scientist, a researcher, an engineer, or works for the lab or to help support those who work in the lab. This town is all about science. Nuclear science, for the most part. Sometimes they have to transport hazardous materials to and from the lab. The road has to be kept safe and slow for those trucks. You don't want a nuclear spill. I'm going to take the main exit. There's a science museum that tells all about the lab, so let's head there first."
The boys grinned. I heard the rustle of the map as they pinpointed our position, heard them whisper to each other about the space wonders they might see. I wondered, too, what to expect when we rolled into town. Our local paper liked to mention that Los Alamos held the greatest per-capita income in the entire state. Would the streets be green, lush, filled with sprinkler-soaked lawns? I rolled off the exit ramp, onto the streets of Los Alamos. My boys hung their heads out the window like smell-starved hounds.
The town didn't notice us. It looked beat, tired, somehow more poor than my own cowboy town. Old cars lined the streets. I didn't see any Mercedes, any yuppie SUVs. Weeds poked through the sidewalks. The famous laboratory perched above the town like a high-tech falcon, claws gripping a mesa rife with juniper and rattlesnake, the only entries into its nest a series of gleaming security checkpoints. I pulled the car into a strip mall and cut the engine. The Bradbury Science Museum loomed before us.
"Ok! This is the official museum of the Los Alamos National Lab, gang! Let's see what the hoopla is all about! Time for some science!"
The sign on the door listed the rules: No Food! Free Admission! Cameras OK! The boys didn't stop to read. They tore through the entrance and bounded into the exhibit hall. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves greeted me with stony silence. I stared at their cement faces, tried to understand what drives a man to consider atomic annihilation.
The museum surprised me, the way the town surprised me, the way it snuck mental weeds in its paved displays, the way it catalogued and supported defense, destruction, the cheerful stewardship of our nation's nuclear stockpile. My boys ran from poster to computer, from a replica of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs to a six-minute loop film extolling the virtues of weapons testing. This wasn't what I wanted my boys to see. I wanted to see the forward gallop of new technological discoveries balanced by the karmic weight of our nuke-dropping past. I wanted reflection, a sense that we are tiny in this cosmos, that we make mistakes and strive to learn from them. I wanted the awe of new discovery placed in context with the blood money it took to arrive. I wanted to leave.
I didn't expect my boys to see the museum the way I saw it. I watched them press buttons and slide cards, imitate the motions of super secret scientists. I sat. The loop film started once more. The narrator began again, spoke in chipper voice about the Manhattan Project, explained that we dropped two bombs to end World War II. The camera cut from serious researchers to a mushroom cloud to waving American flags, a crowd of cheering, excited people. No mention of the deaths that followed, the way the land still carries shattered echo. I pulled a pen from my purse and drew a dove on the back of my business card. I set it on the empty seat to my left along with an Avon Super Shape sample. Two middle-aged men sat in front of me. They grunted approval when the loop ended. I noticed their laboratory badges.
"Mom. Let's get out of here."
Gandalf tapped my shoulder. Harry stood behind him.
"Mom. This place is all about death."
I grabbed their hands, and we ran for the car, left the heavy glass door to shutter behind us. I pointed the car home, back down the slow safety hill. We didn't speak for miles, not until the sunset-hue structures of Santa Fe filled the horizon.
"Mom."
Gandalf leaned close to the back of my head. I could feel his breath on my neck. He sounded on the verge of tears.
"Mom. We started at a place that's all about healing. And we ended at a place that's all about death. It seems like everybody believes too much. Those church people don't question things. They just believe it. And maybe those scientists who work on weapons don't question things outside of their science either. What's the difference? I don't want to end up believing in nothing."
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him he's right, that science is a religion sometimes, that people get immersed in their world and forget it's a huge universe, but Harry beat me to it.
"Well if you ask me, they should marry each other. Then they would have kids that can think about both things. Because that's what's real. Both things. But right now all those people are lopsided. Isn't that right, Mom?"
"Yeah, Harry. That's exactly it."
Gandalf lay back in his seat. Santa Fe faded behind us with the sun. We pulled off the road at Pecos and watched a lone coyote hunt rabbit. She lifted her head to the twilight stars.
Technorati Tags: New Mexico, Avon, Los Alamos
2:22:43 PM 
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