What Would You Say You Do Here?

INT. BELL LABS - NEW JERSEY - DAY

1986

These hallways aren’t quiet. They never are.

Inside the famously multidisciplinary Bell Labs, the world’s SUPER NERDS intentionally work in close proximity, no matter their specialty.

That, in fact, is the point.

Physicists, early software developers, chemists, graphic designers, electrical engineers and material scientists hustle back and forth from end-to-end, door-to-door, bouncing otherwise-unrelated questions, ideas, and equations about wireless communications, cosmic waves, and lasers off each other like pinballs.

Anyways, at Bell Labs, it’s been sixty years of this chaos, and the proof is in the pudding.

They have already invented much of the underlying technology we rely on today, from transistors to UNIX and the C programming language, to DSL modems, fiber optic cables, f’ing LASERS and — the backbone of our future — the solar cell.

INT. BELL LABS - NEW JERSEY - LUNCH TIME

Mathematician RICHARD HAMMING, father of a bunch of math concepts I couldn’t even begin to understand, much less explain to you, stares off to the other side of the cafeteria where his COLLEAGUES chow down at the physics table.

Today he finds himself dismayed, reluctant to join them for the usual banter.

HAMMING (to himself)
I already know math. Like, so much math. I have invented various kinds of math. I’m not learning much by sitting with those math dorks. Sure, it’s lunch time, and I could just chill out and not have to learn something for an hour or whatever, but YOLO, you know?

Scanning the room, Hamming spots an empty seat at the CHEMISTRY table and wanders over, a sudden gleam in his eye, his red plastic lunch tray packed with pudding and sloppy joes.

HAMMING
Mind if I join you?

The CHEMISTRY JOCKS look up into the face of a man who has a whole bunch of math concepts literally named after him and quickly approve his request, not having any idea his true intentions.

CHEMISTRY JOCKS
(making room for Hamming)
Now we’re cooking with gas!*

*insert your own chemistry joke here, maybe something about compounds

Hamming sits, and a few bites of proto-Hamburger Helper later, he breaks the ice with a simple question for his new friends.

HAMMING
What are the important problems of your field?

A moment of hesitation, and then all at once, 1986’s chemistry luminaries fill him in, talking over themselves. Hamming basks in their rabid enthusiasm, so similar, and yet so different from his own.

Minutes later, the chemists clear their trays and go about their work day. Hamming watches them go, his trap set.

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