Read Double Digit for Free Online Page B

with access to the inaccessible and free pizza.
    On the first weekend that I would have been in New York with John, I heard Professor Halsey speak for the first time. It was an overview of his research in nanotechnology, which promised to change everything about the way we fuel our homes, grow our food, and perform brain surgery. His work looks at changing things on a nano level, by altering matter that is a nanometer in size. He said this: “A nanometer is how long your fingernail grows in a second.” I almost passed out. I mean, a piece of regular computer paper is 100,000 nanometers thick. How can you change something so small? And then how can the result of changing something on that level be so huge? I’ve heard people on TV describe the moment their lives changed—a near-death experience, a new baby, a great idea, love at first sight. I was surprised to find out that mine would be at an under-attended lecture by an eighty-year-old man in a chemistry lab basement. (And it was also not lost on me that I would have missed this if I’d gone to see John in New York.)
    Halsey was not charismatic or even engaging, but his research was so brilliantly thought out and his findings so clearly groundbreaking that I felt like he was unlocking a vortex of information that would change science forever. I ran home and downloaded every single one of his published research papers and read until three a.m. They were pure poetry. I had a thousand questions and even more ideas. There was no doubt in my mind that his work was my future. I knew that I could help him with his research and fantasized that I could take it to the next level. Professor Halsey’s destiny was tied to mine; I just had to meet him.
    On Monday morning I marched over to his office to offer my services. Sitting behind a desk as gatekeeper to his office was Bass.
How many jobs does this guy have?
“Sorry, Digit, Professor Halsey doesn’t employ freshmen. I started this gig last year as a sophomore and had to beg for it.”
    I wanted to say,
Yeah, but you’re wearing a T-shirt that says
ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU HAVE DIFFERENT FINGERS
,
and while I want to tell you that I have a bumper sticker that says that on my wall at home, and it honestly is one of my very favorites, I really should mention that I am a thousand times more qualified for this job than you are.
Instead I said, “I know I’m a freshman, but I’m . . . well, I have this . . .” I had to stop myself. I realized that at MIT I wasn’t that different from anybody else. Ah, the irony! How long had I spent trying to wrap my head around my differentness? And now that I had, I wasn’t so different at all. You couldn’t throw a paper airplane without hitting a genius around here.
    I tried a more direct approach. “I’d really like to talk to him for a second if he’s free. I stayed up all night.”
    “He’s not here, and he’s never free. But I’ll tell him you say hi.”
    Rewind and replay this scene every single day that week. I wrote letters and sent my resumé and high school transcripts. I gave him an essay expressing my thoughts on my favorite one of his research papers. No luck. On Friday Bass asked me to kindly stop calling. And loitering.
    So, instead, I took a part-time job working for Ernest Marcello, a math professor who was trying to use mathematical algorithms to predict the economic impact of tripling the use of nuclear power, adjusted for the human health risks. I applied for the job and was hired to start immediately, and it took me two weeks to realize why no one else wanted it. The research was completely bogus, the professor was insane, and the entire project seemed intended to justify his presence on campus while he wrote a spy novel in his spare time. But it gave me access to a big chunk of the library of ongoing scientific research at MIT, so I stuck with it.
    My parents and Danny flew in for parents’ weekend in mid-October. Tiki’s parents couldn’t come because