Maps really aren't that helpful. There's just a bunch of geometrical shapes, numbers, names, and fastidiously highlighted sites dotting it randomly like s tars in the sky . I consulted the sundry items in my kitchen drawer for directions. I needed to find my way to the site of Enrico Fermi's lab where the first nuclear chain reactions were successfully achieved ; science has always held my fascination. The maps were lacking, in both color and detail, so I decided that if I wanted to get to the site of the first nuclear chain reaction I had to take my quest to the streets.

“Excuse me, do you know how to get to 56 th and Ellis?” I inquired of the boy joining me at the bus stop. He wore a backpack and a jean jacket. I made the assumption that he was traveling to the same destination that I was and therefore knowledgeable about the first nuclear chain reaction, occurring at the University of Chicago campus block 50 years ago. Chicago often boasts of its grids that ease its travelers effortlessly from point “A” to point “B”. Zero begin s at the intersection of State and Madison, and the site I so desired to go to today was 56 blocks south and an undetermined distance east from there.

“I don't really know where that is, I'm not from around here.” I considered this : possibl e luck or misfortune? However I decided that he couldn't get off that easily and that I would implore further into the tenuous associations of his mind . Hell, I've never been there, so he has one up on me, right? Without further introduction I badgered him to get my coveted directions but inadvertently found out how to get to the Newberry library, instead. “Yeah, I'd take the Red Line up there, and it's only a few blocks from the station. South of Division, and it's next to a park, umm, besides that, it might also be just north of State. You can't really miss it.”

The bus arrived, dumping fumes that plumed onto the street. We sat in opposite seats, ostensive of the end of further conversation. Six minutes passed till I arrived at my stop, where I then shamefully displayed my ignorance of Chicago city buses trying to get off by pushing on the doors too soon and therefore setting off the alarm. I looked back towards the boy and received an affirmative nod that I was on the right path - or maybe was it a good-luck-I-don't-really-know-where-I'm-sending-you kind of look?

Before my trip, I had only been to Hyde Park once , when a s a child I went to the Museum of Science and Industry. Places as exotic as the museum can very well seem as far away as Sumatra through credulous eyes. My favorite part of the museum was the giant heart that you could walk through and see all the parts inside moving, pumping and diagrammed. It was fascinating, and unbelievable now, knowing how blood and organs coerce my nausea.

I interrupted more and more people traveling on foot; they ask for it in choosing to forgo the safety of their cars. The people that dare not cross their arms, or have some semblance of invitation within the initiation of a smile, or their pace and stride. I can pin-point you a mile away, I can smell you coming with your turgid knowledge of urban planning , I will hunt you down.

I was pleased that almost everyone that I accosted on the University of Chicago campus knew of the site for the first nuclear chain reaction. It must be included as part of their orientation packet, along with all the accomplishments and successes accrued by fellow alumni, shadowing the present. But the events at the nuclear site stand out among the most precarious of experiments, of realizations of the human mind. There are moments that bring us to forks in the road , handing us our options in closed fists, and by the very nature of curiosity, the thrill of the knots in our stomachs we listen to that quiet voice inside our head. We get direction. These scientists worked beneath the football stadium on secret experiments as they raced to split the microscopic , to create chain reactions – reactions from chains. Direction wasn't outlined in concrete gridded blocks for them. They were competing with phenomena larger than themselves. Gambling away the safety of the city for oblivion.

Indeed the tension that must have transpired there, the beating hearts inside chests as scientists scurried underground, working against the ticking of a clock counting down two inevitable conclusions – that they would discover the secret to nuclear power, or someone else would first. And then, there's always the hindrance of human error.

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