Typical Day
Esperanza Quakes breathes in a big whiff of sea air as the oil survey ship roughly rocks in the waves.
Rock me now, Gulf of Mexico. Soon I'll rock you, she thinks as she drains the last bit of her morning coffee and makes her way quickly across the deck. She knows the explosives will soon be deployed overboard, so they'll be expecting her below deck in the lab.
You too can be a seismologist. You, yes you, can sit in a lab staring at a computer, she thinks as she savors the last bit of sea air.
She's been a seismologist focusing on deep-sea oil surveying for about five years now. It's not what she dreamed of when she first decided to go into the field. There weren't too many kids in her liberal hometown saying, "You know what I want to do when I grow up? Work for Big Oil, Inc.! Yaaaay!"
Esperanza had always imagined herself doing field research in far-flung places, or saving lives by consulting with architects and engineers about how to build earthquake resistant housing. But none of that was meant to be. She'd done a summer internship on a survey ship when she was in grad school. One thing lead to another, and now here she is.
Whatever. It's not like those student loans are going to pay themselves, she thinks as she opens a hatch and clanks quickly down the narrow stairs.
"You're late, Esperanza," growls Dr. Knox, the head of Esperanza's research team. "Big Oil, Inc. isn't paying you to take in the sea air."
I almost admire this company for coming up with such a fabulously uncreative name, Esperanza thinks, and then, When I get my PhD and head one of these teams, will I force people to call me doctor? I can't decide if it's pretentious or not. But all she says is, "Sorry, Dr. Knox. Won't happen again."
A half-hour later, the team is all perched eagerly before their computers. The satellite data looks good for this area of the ocean floor. The likelihood of finding oil is high, so there's extra tension in the air. The explosives are in place thousands of feet below them on the ocean floor. Everything is set.
Esperanza bites her fingernails with anticipation. Her mind races. Sometimes when I actually think about what we do, it still blows my mind. We plunk little bombs into the ocean, guide them to the right spot, explode them, send waves of sound through the very layers of the Earth, measure the vibrations with geophones. I mean, I know how all this stuff works, and sometimes I'm still like...whaa?
The instruments in the lab jump, and data begins to pour into the computers. This is what I call art, thinks Esperanza as the gracefully curving seismic lines appear on her screen. Even though these survey missions are majorly expensive for oil companies, they still come in way cheaper than the alternative—randomly drilling all over the place.
Slowly, the team begins to get a map of what this section of Earth looks like as their instruments measure the waves that are filtering through the ground deep below. Eventually, they'll be able to construct three-dimensional diagrams of the underground geometries.
Underground geometries. Good one. That's what I'll call that math rock band I want to start when I retire.
Later into the evening, the mood is positive in the lab. The preliminary results look great. It'll take more analysis, but the team thinks they'll have good news to report to the powers that be at Big Oil, Inc. And when Big Oil, Inc. is happy, everybody's happy. Well, almost everybody.
Suddenly, Dr. Knox begins to sing his good luck song, "Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed / A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed...." Dr. Knox waves the rest of the team to join in.
It's creepy when he's in a good mood, thinks Esperanza, but joins in anyway. There's no point in trying to stand against the irresistible pull of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. "Then one day he was shootin' at some food, / And up through the ground came a bubblin' cruuude...."
At long last, it's time for Esperanza to call it a day. She squints her aching eyes. Staring at a computer for hours on end can really take a toll. I'm going to be blind by the time I'm forty-five, she thinks.
She stretches the kinks out of her back and heads to her cramped quarters on the ship. As she's drifting off to sleep, she looks at the picture of her family sitting by her bunk. It's been a while since she’s seen them, but hopefully today's success will mean that she'll get to see them soon. It's been a good day all in all.
Her eyes close, and she quietly sings, "Oil that is / Black gold / Texas tea...."