There are three black metal frame racks, each about six feet high, looming over me. They’re filled with electronic and mechanical apparati. Ion gauges glow a mottled orange; light-emitting diodes stare red or green; one video screen flickers a seemingly random pattern of jagged lines while another colorfully draws smooth graphs with neat titling. Across the face of all three racks are peppered switches, knobs and dials. The racks emit a loud racket from throbbing pumps and hissing air valves. Two metal tumblers sit on the front of the leftmost rack. One emits a fog which creeps between its cork stopper and ice covered rim. The fog rolls down toward the floor but vanishes about midway on its descent. The other tumbler is filled with boiling water whose steam rises and disappears, the mirror image of its neighbor.

I sit on a folding metal chair at the base of the middle rack. A keyboard hangs down just touching my knees. A notepad is on my lap. Every few minutes I scribble eleven numbers into it and maybe a cryptic remark like zero or traps changed. There is a computer mouse pad on a wooden crate adjacent to the keyboard. I draw lines on the computer screen in front of me and depress the mouse button when an arrow on the screen points to the proper rectangle. The letters on the keyboard wait stoically to be used to bring words to life; but this is a world of lines, numbers and symbols. The letters collect the fine coral dust which settles from the air. A laptop computer sits on the crate to the right of the mouse pad. I take the same eleven numbers that I had written into the notebook and key them into neat columns. Rows of digits slowly fill through the evening and march up and off the video screen.

Sometimes the rack in front of me spits out a sheet of paper. On it are eight little graphs like the ones before me on the monitor. I clip the paper onto a clipboard and rapidly go to work with the mouse. I tap on it, move it a little right, tap, diagonal to the left, tap, and on and on: move, tap, move, tap. The images on the screen grow and shrink. Lines appear on graphs and then disappear. Rectangles with numbers finally result and I write each onto the latest eight graphs piled on the clipboard. Intermittently a series of beeps alerts me to a different task. The cork plug is pulled off the ice rimmed metal tumbler. Three thin tubes, milky white but transparent, are pulled from the liquid argon inside and are then plunged into the boiling water next door. The tubes resist a little like condemned lobsters. Several unnatural wrist adjustments are needed to twist the tubes from one flask to the other. Shortly thereafter the hiss of air and the shift of glow from three red lights to three that were previously dark reminds me to return the tubes from the world of steam to the world of ice. Sometimes water must be added to the boiling cauldron. Sometimes liquid argon to its antithesis. The argon is kept in large jugs. When it's poured, torrents of fog burst from the mouth of the jug and obscure the immediate area. This shroud reaches all the way to the floor and spread out over and around everything in its path. It swirls around the legs of my chair and under the racks. Exhausted, it finally disappears. Small droplets of argon sometimes splash onto the racks or floor. They form perfect spheres and dance about on the horizontal surfaces upon which they alight. This is the same phenomenon as putting droplets of water on a hot griddle. As it’s poured the argon bubbles like the boiling water, and gurgles and jurgles after the tumbler has been filled.

Sometimes a tube will clog with ice. One of the eleven numbers which I chronicle will slowly decline. I get a couple of wrenches and replace a short piece of line feeding into the back of one rack. Behind the racks is a jumble of the white tubing of varying diameter (#2, #3 spaghetti) and power cables slithering out every which way. There is also a pile of aluminum and steel gas cylinders lying on the floor between the racks and the wall. The dials on these five foot long tubes are inspected occasionally and more numbers seriously recorded. I sit alone in running shorts and socks. The physical movements become choreographed by their repetitive nature. I develop a rhythm and take pride in my fast sampling rate, my scientific piecework. When cramps start to set in, I get up in one of the brief lulls in the twelve minute cycle of motion and get a drink of water, or do 15 pushups in a clear space on the floor, or go find the little boysbush. It’s not unlike working in a factory. But labor unions have not reached the research world. My shift goes from about 5 PM until 1 or 2 in the morning. There’s no one to relieve me for a break.. Eight hours straight through except when the computer crashes. The sampling goes on now around the clock. The field lab is crowded during the workday but shortly after I arrive only one from each of the three research groups is usually there. Loud rock music playing can barely be heard over all the din of the various devices packed inside our bubble. Conversations are nil since everyone is locked into their routine. Only the end of a CD convenes us to quickly debate the next selection.

The other groups setups have been better automated so I’m often there by myself. Last night was one such time. It was just after sunset and I went outside to relieve myself. While I was standing by a bush in the near dark, a flash of light in the sky toward the sunset caught my eye. A dull glow of gold-red could just be seen in the west between the horizon and the dome of the dark night sky overhead. Stars were already visible. Between the gold and the black a green band exploded. It flickered in intensity and covered an arc above the last glimmer of day. This is the green flash. The setting sun changes color because its rays must scatter through more and more of the lower, thicker air to reach your eye. At some point after the red ball of the sun has just gone beneath the horizon, only the green rays can make it through. Usually clouds or smog will mask this final gasp of daylight. But last night the show went on for many seconds. I don’t know why it was flashing. I stood transfixed by the celestial celebration until it was over. Then smiling at the serendipity of the moment I went back into our fluorescent-lit bubble to gather more data about paradise.

(July 27 1994Kiritimati, the Republic of Kiribati)