Alpha to Earth

April 23, 2006. Either it is going to be a go-down-in-my-history date, or just another day. Sitting in the fabrication (clean room) of my university. In a clean room gown, and nitrile gloves (typing with gloves is not much fun, really), face mask, hair cover and goggles. Waiting for the final step of my fabrication process to run, patiently expectanct, or more truthfully Very impatiently awaiting the fruit of my 6 hour labor. Well one, cannot do much about the analogy to chilbirth. When you Make something, it really is your baby , isn't it?!
The sterile environment of the cleanroom occasionally does make you feel like you are out of this world. The light is all yellow, so even glancing out of the double paned window makes you feel you are on Mars, or Jupiter, or wherever the powers-that-be claim life exists. The lone PC with internet connection helps to drive you back to reality. The white clad beings similar to me move about silently, differentiated only by their height and girth and eyes. Focussing hard on the work at hand, almost desiring themselves to see the microscopic features of their work by the naked eyes. Did this really work? Is this really there? All this stuff that I am magically seeing here under the microscope, is that really all there on that tiny chip? One can have done fabrication ad nauseum, but the tightening suspense of seeing a perfectly device under the microscope, as you move from a small magnification to large...couldn't be beaten by the nerve-racking moments of a prime time who-dunnit on the idiot box. Well, let me go check what the status is, the concoction that I am boiling....of frog's blood and newt's eyes, whether it turns my lead to gold.