Free Disclosure by Michael Crichton Page B

Rockand-rol music blared. Everybody was casual y dressed; most of the designers wore shorts and T-shirts. It was clearly A Creative Area.
    Sanders went through to Foamland, the little display of the latest product designs the group had made. There were models of tiny CDROM drives and miniature cel ular phones. Lewyn's teams were charged with creating product designs for the future, and many of these seemed absurdly smal : a cel ular phone no larger than a pencil, and another that looked like a postmodern version of Dick Tracy's wrist radio, in pale green and gray; a pager the size of a cigarette lighter; and a micro-CD player with a flip-up screen that could fit easily in the palm of the hand.
    Although these devices looked outrageously tiny, Sanders had long since become accustomed to the idea that the designs were at most two years in the future. The hardware was shrinking fast; it was difficult for Sanders to remember that when he began working at DigiCom, a “portable” computer was a thirty-pound box the size of a carry-on suitcase and cel ular telephones didn't exist at al . The first cel ular phones that DigiCom manufactured were fifteen-pound wonders that you lugged around on a shoulder strap. At the time, people thought they were a miracle. Now, customers complained if their phones weighed more than a few ounces.
    Sanders walked past the big foam-cutting machine, al twisted tubes and knives behind Plexiglas shields, and found Mark Lewyn and his team bent over three dark blue CD-ROM players from Malaysia. One of the players already lay in pieces on the table; under bright halogen lights, the team was poking at its innards with tiny screwdrivers, glancing up from time to time to the scope screens.
    “What've you found?” Sanders said.
    “Ah, hel ,” Lewyn said, throwing up his hands in artistic exasperation. “Not good, Tom. Not good.”
    “Talk to me.”
    Lewyn pointed to the table. “There's a metal rod inside the hinge. These clips maintain contact with the rod as the case is opened; that's how you maintain power to the screen.”
    “Yes...”
    “But power is intermittent. It looks like the rods are too smal . They're supposed to be fifty-four mil imeters. These seem to be fiftytwo, fifty-three mil imeters.”
    Lewyn was grim, his entire manner suggesting unspeakable consequences. The bars were a mil imeter off, and the world was coming to an end. Sanders understood that he would have to calm Lewyn down. He'd done it many times before.
    He said, “We can fix that, Mark. It'l mean opening al the cases and replacing the bars, but we can do that.”
    “Oh sure,” Lewyn said. “But that stil leaves the clips. Our specs cal for 16/10
    stainless, which has requisite tension to keep the clips springy and maintain contact with the bar. These clips seem to be something else, maybe 16/4.
    They're too stiff: So when you open the cases the clips bend, but they don't spring back.”
    “So we have to replace the clips, too. We can do that when we switch the bars.”
    “Unfortunately, it's not that easy. The clips are heat-pressed into the cases.”
    “Ah, hel .”
    “Right. They are integral to the case unit.”
    “You're tel ing me we have to build new housings just because we have bad clips?”
    “Exactly.”
    Sanders shook his head. “We've run off thousands so far. Something like four thousand.”
    “Wel , we've got to do 'em again.”
    “And what about the drive itself?”
    “It's slow,” Lewyn said. “No doubt about it. But I'm not sure why. It might be power problems. Or it might be the control er chip.”
    “If it's the control er chip . . .”
    “We're in deep shit. If it's a primary design problem, we have to go back to the drawing board. If it's only a fabrication problem, we have to change the production lines, maybe remake the stencils. But it's months, either way.”
    “When wil we know?”
    “I've sent a drive and power supply to the Diagnostics guys,” Lewyn said. “They should have