Excerpt
You are in the Directorate of Time. Naturally you are running late. You hurry past a
glass-paned vault in which the world's number-one clock is soundlessly assembling
each second from nine billion parts. It looks more like a rack of computers than a
clock. In its core, atoms of cesium vibrate with a goose-stepping pace so sure, so
authoritative, so humbling—but your mind wanders. There is not a moment to lose.
Striding onward, you reach the office of the director of the Directorate of Time. He
is a craggy, white-haired man called Gernot M. R. Winkler. He glances across the desk
and says, "We have to be fast."
The directorate, an agency of the United States military, has scattered dozens of
atomic clocks across a calm, manicured hilltop near the Potomac River in Washington.
Armed guards stand watch at a security gatehouse down below, mainly because the Vice
President's residence occupies the same grounds. Once past their scrutiny you can
walk alone up the long drive to the stately 150-year-old Naval Observatory, the first
national observatory of the United States. Long ago a four-foot ball of Charles
Goodyear's Gumelastic rubber hung from a mast atop the observatory ... read full excerpt from: Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything ebook
