Al's Solution

Al’s Solution

This was my big break, an interview with none other than Mr. Al Gore.  I certainly didn’t want to blow this one.  My regular job was writing articles for the Times’ Food Section, but I was rapidly running out of material for my column.

A strange set of circumstances had given me this opportunity to prove to my Editor what a top-notch journalist I was and I was determined to make the best of it.

I hoped Mr. Gore would give me something to work with, since the Boss told me to get the story or I was fired.  He was joking…I think.  He said something else but it’s really hard to understand someone clutching his stomach and speaking directly into a trashcan.

Anyway, that’s how I got the chance to meet with the man leading the fight to save the world.

I sat in the reception area chatting with Samantha, Mr. Gore’s secretary, waiting until Mr. Gore was available.  My meeting was supposed to be at 8:00.  It was 8:15.  I was getting more nervous with each passing minute.

At 8:19 the door to Mr. Gore’s office opened and a well-dressed man exited.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  He went to Samantha and handed her a large key, the kind you use to wind an old grandfather clock, but bigger by far than any I had seen before.  He told Samantha he would see her the same time next week.

After he left, I asked, “Was that ex-president Carter?”  She said it was.

“Imagine that.  What was that key he gave you?”

She said, “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“Ah, come on.  If you can’t trust a reporter, who can you trust?”

She screwed up her face a little, but relented, “All I can tell you is that Mr. Carter meets with Mr. Gore every Monday at 7:30.  It’s very important.  If he can’t be here then Michael Moore or Bill Clinton attends the meeting.  That’s all I know.”

I started to again ask about the key, but the light flashed on the intercom and Samantha said, “Mr. Gore will see you now.”

By now I was more than a little nervous.  I was led through the door of Mr. Gore’s office.

I traversed the distance to Mr. Gore’s desk.  “Hello Mr. Gore, my name is Morey Less from the Times.  Thank you very much for allowing us to interview you concerning your views on conservation and global warming.”

Mr. Gore said, “Yes, Morey, I read your column every day.  I especially liked your recipe for Cranberry Catfish casserole.  It’s become one of my favorites.”

I said, “Thank you very much Mr. Gore.  I generally try out new recipes before I include them in my column.  We share new dishes around the office.”

Mr. Gore said, “Great, that’s great, we certainly need all the sharing we can get; but I thought they were sending over your Science Editor?”

“They were, but he and most of the rest of our staff came down with a slight case of food poisoning so I was given the assignment, Mr. Gore.”

“Please, please, my friends call me Al.”

I said, “Well thank you…Al.”

Mr. Gore reiterated, “I said my friends call me Al, you may call me Mr. Gore.”

“Oh I’m very, very sorry Mr. Gore.”

He then said, “Just kidding…..click…ha…ha…ha………ha…ha…ha….whirr…click  Please call me Al.”

That smile; I was instantly put at ease.  All those accounts of Al, saying how wooden he seemed, faded away.  It was apparent that in person Al was much different than he appeared on TV.  It was a warm, genuine smile like none other I had ever seen, no crinkling around his eyes, no wrinkles on his forehead, just that almost perfect ‘U’ formed by his lips.

Now totally relaxed, I said, “Gee thanks…Al.”  I added, “Well you know this isn’t really my cup of tea, so could you kind of explain your views in layman’s terms?  You know so I can write something the readers can follow.”

“Sure,” Al said.  “I’ll have some sent right in.  You want milk and sugar?”

“Milk and sugar?”

“In your tea?”

“Huh?  Oh.  Just sugar.  How about the layman’s terms?  I mean I have a hard time with numbers and graphs and black holes, that kind of thing.”

Al said, “We scientists are just like everyone else, just much smarter.  It’s sometimes hard to explain things to lesser beings, but I’ll give it my best shot.  Please interrupt anytime you think I’m getting over your head.  Aah…the tea is here.”

From where it came I don’t know.  I hadn’t even noticed him ordering it.  He put a gigantic spoonful of sugar in his mouth then washed it down with his tea.  He said, “Aren’t you going to drink your tea?  Change your mind?  Would you like some coffee instead?”

I said, “Oh no, the tea’s fine.  I just like mine a little cooler than scalding.”

Al said, “Many people do.  Shall we begin?”

“Just let me get out my pencil.  Ready, and thanks again for the interview.”

Al asked, “It’s over already?”

I said, “No we’re just starting.”

Al replied, “Very well, shall we begin?”

For my first question I asked, “Al, could you tell the American public just how you intend to address the issue of conservation?”

Al began, “This is really quite simple.  I’ll try to give you an example.  You see this is going to be a bipartisan undertaking.  Those Republicans always spouting ‘Family Values’ unknowingly do have a part of the solution.”

“I don’t quite follow.”

He said, “Well think of it this way.  Let’s say, a family of four each eat an apple every day.  Now on Sunday they always have an apple pie.  It takes seven apples to make an apple pie.  Now in order to have their Sunday apple pie each have to conserve one-forth of their apple each day.”

I said, “I’m with you so far but what have the Republicans got to do with it?”

Al said, “I’m getting to that.  We need to go back to the family values of a century ago, back when there were six or eight kids in a family.”

“Oh, I see,” I didn’t really, but felt I should say something.

“Of course you do, but you’d be surprised just how many don’t.  As simple as this seems it’s still necessary to state the obvious as background before getting to the exciting part.”

Continuing, Al said, “Now remember it takes seven apples to make an apple pie, but now with eight in the family they each only have to conserve one-eight of their apple each day to make the Sunday apple pie.  This is just basic math.”

I kept punching numbers into my calculator.  Every time it told me we would be using more and not less apples.  Stupid calculator.  I’ve never had one yet that worked right.
I said, “But wouldn’t you need two apple pies for a family of eight?”

Al said “Aah…that’s the real beauty of the thing you see.  They were eating too much apple pie to begin with.  Not only will we conserve apples but also address some of the worldwide health issues. But remember this is only an example, it’s actually a little more involved.”

“Then you force everyone to eat only half as much pie to conserve apples?”

“No, no,” Al replied.  “This will all be voluntary.  Once conservation is explained people will naturally want to do all they can.  Now in countries like China, Sudan and Iran, once their national leaders really focus in on conservation, the people will jump right on the bandwagon.  They have real trust in their governments.  In many Asian and African nations conservation has been practiced for centuries.  Vast numbers of their populations have never even tasted apple pie and their low health care costs prove the benefits.  Many of them have never gone to a doctor.

“Unfortunately in the US it will take slightly longer.  First we have to get those nasty, greedy, war mongering Republicans out of office.  Once the Democratic Party is in control the people of the United States will regain their trust in government and embrace voluntary conservation.  We’ll address the whole issue of conservation in the five-thousand page report.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed.  It had been a long time since I had last exclaimed and just felt the time was right.  “A five-thousand page report on conservation, that seems like a lot for such a no brainer.”

“Five-thousand is about standard for any comprehensive report.  It could be a few more or a few less,” Al said.

This was really fascinating stuff, but I had a deadline.

“Mr. Gore, could you explain your views concerning renewable energy and global warming?”

“Problem solved.”

“You’ve already solved the problem of our reliance on oil, the burning of other fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions?”

“Done, done and done.”

“Why hasn’t anyone heard of this?”

“I need to clarify a little.  Although I’ve completed all the theoretical science, practical science lags behind.  So when I say ‘problem solved’ what I’m meaning is that we already have the answers, we just need to put them to practical application.”

“I can see why you won the ‘Nobel.’  And how long before we see this new technology on the market?”

“That’s still a couple years off.  I didn’t build the internet in a day you know.”

“Could you use apples to explain how it’s going to work?”

Al said, “No, this time I’m afraid not.  See it’s a mechanical process, but on a molecular scale.

“First of all I’m assuming that you know what water is.  But did you know that there’s a whole lot of the stuff just lying around?  I can’t make this much simpler.  Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen.  If you light a mixture of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen it gets pretty hot.  That’s the easy part, burning it I mean.  And when it burns the only waste is water.  No sulfur dioxide, no carbon dioxide.  It’s better than gasoline.

“The only draw back is you can’t burn water.  We’ve tried for years.  Even though it’s made out of the same stuff, hydrogen and oxygen, it simply won’t burn.  We finally figured out that we had to separate the hydrogen and oxygen before we could set it on fire.  That was a problem.  It just took more energy to separate it than you get out of it when you burned it…until now.”

I said, “You’ve found a solution.  How?”

Al said, “It really wasn’t that difficult once it became apparent that politics wasn’t my true destiny.  Once I knew that, I realized that my whole reason for being was to save the world.”

“Wow,” I said.

Al continued, “I decided it was time to invent ‘Nano Technology.’  That was the answer.”

I said, “Nano, Nano,” doing my best Robin Williams impression.

Al’s expression never seemed to change but he said, “Please leave the jokes to me.  Nano, Nano…click….whirrrrr…….ha….ha…….……ha..click.”

Al went on.  “You see we build these teeny little robots.  They are only a couple times bigger than a water molecule.  They have a teeny little pair of scissors, which they can use to snip apart the water molecules.  They then put the oxygen in one tank and the hydrogen in another tank.  Then we can set it on fire mak…”

“Making heat and water,” I blurted out.  I then had to apologize, “Oh sorry Al, it was just the sudden revelation.  I won’t interrupt again.”

“That’s Ok.  We’re all pretty exited about it. But,” Al continued, “We hit a couple snags.”

“Snags?”

“Yes.  The first was the actual manufacturing process.  It just took too long to build the teeny little ‘Goreites.’  That’s the name we came up with.  Anyway first we had to make our own tools to assemble them.  Craftsman is the official tool of NASCAR, not the official tool of Nano Technology.  Click …click… ha..ha…. whirr…click.  And building the teeny little Goreites was an extremely tedious and time consuming process.”

Continuing (Al continued a lot), “He said I came up with yet another brilliant idea.  Why not just have them build themselves.  We put a couple extra arms on the Goreites.  One arm has a screwdriver, the other a pair of pliers.  They can now replicate themselves.  Just put a few of them in a bucket of water and in a day there’ll be billions of them.”

“And then you have to attach a teeny little battery to the Goreites,” I inquired?

“No, no.  Goreites are solar powered.  Just set them out in the sun and they start replicating like crazy.  A flashlight will work in a pinch.”

“And they’re made out of water?”  Al was getting really way over my head.

“Of course not!  They’re made of sodium chloride, just good old salt.  You just have to put a little salt in the water and they start building.  The mixture has to be just right.  Too little salt and you don’t have enough Goreites to do the job, too much and they replicate too many.  About a half teaspoon per gallon is about right, but that leads us to our final problem.

“All that shaking and vibrating they do when they’re replicating generates a lot of heat and all they want to do is replicate.  They haven’t cut up even one water molecule so far.  They boil the water off so fast you can hardly keep water in the bucket, if you get just a little too much salt in it.”

I said, “Not being a scientist I could be wrong, but couldn’t you use boiling water for something other than tea.  I mean there has to some use for it.”

Al said, “By golly you’re right.  We geniuses sometimes overlook the obvious.  Please don’t include that in your story.  But I now see a brighter future.  You can use boiling water to heat homes and make electricity.  It doesn’t fully address the problem of what we’re going to use to power our SUVs but this will be a tremendous start toward fixing our world.” 

Al had the same dreamy, far away look as all the other great thinkers.  He said, “As soon as the Goreites are out of the lab the world will be a better place.  I’ll once and for all put an end to global warming.  And the technology of today can make it happen.”

There was something nagging at the back of my mind about the Gorites being out of the lab, salty water and sunlight, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.  Well anyway, if I was going to make deadline I had to wrap it up.  I said, “Thanks Al, this will make a great story.  And I really want to thank you for saving the world.”

Al simply said, “That’s my job.”

I looked back as I was opening the door to leave.  Al was waving.

He said, “See you in the funny papers. Click…whirrrr…ha..ha..ha …ha..ha..ha……ha..ha..click…whirr …click..click ….whirrrrrrrrrrrr……click.”