Chapter 4

At the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC after my first year at Harvard as a Ph.D. student, I worked on something I had no idea what its purpose was. I know I worked for NRL Code 3040, the Advanced Technology Branch. Summer in Washington was great. I commuted from Alexandria, Virginia to NRL in DC.

At NRL, I just fired a pulsed laser and a continuous wave laser at a solar power panel. Then I recorded the electromagnetic response of the solar power panel using sophisticated electronic instruments such as oscilloscopes, time to digital converters, and analog to digital converters.

Dr. Sheila Bender, an NRL Postdoctoral Fellow, was my immediate supervisor. Dr. Luis Freedman was our Principal Investigator (PI). He ran the Naval Research Laboratory's Applied Optics Laboratory. Sheila came from Stanford University where she completed her Ph.D. in electrical engineering the year I graduated from UNLV.

NRL had tight security. I needed a visitor's security clearance to be there and to gain access to building C60, where Code 3040 was located. I had to swipe my identification badge through a card reader. The guards, active duty sailors, would yell at me for not properly displaying my ID badge.

I liked Sheila. She was only a few years older than me. I considered giving her my rosary bracelet. I pictured in my mind having dinner with Dr. Sheila Bender. Then I'd present her with the box containing the rosary bracelet. I'd open it to the delight of Sheila. The I'd wrap it around her left wrist. Finally, we'd kiss, in my mind of course.

"Michael, stop daydreaming," said a voice. Sheila said, "This is a very important project. You're being paid with taxpayer dollars, remember?"

"Anything you say, Sheila," I said. I got back to work and conducted my experiments. Over and over I measured the electrical response of the solar panels in response to varying laser pulse frequencies.

Sheila set up her own set of experiments in the Applied Optics Laboratory. I admired her girlish figure and her long sandy blond hair. That day, she wore a pink cardigan, a white blouse, and a white, knee-length skirt. I saw no ring on her ring finger on her left hand. In college, I never had to look for the ring. In graduate school, the women I often met were either engaged or married. Her angelic face gave me a sense of peace, that is despited her strict management style.

"Why are you lookig at me?" said Sheila. "Luis wants a technical report from you by the end of the week."