He could have sat at a desk and run the department, but Manuel liked being directly involved in the day-to-day operations. He loved the cameras and microphones and recorders and transistors and scopes and wave-forms. He loved and understood everything technical— the tubes and relays and printed circuits and wiring. He knew what made the sound and pictures that went into the homes of millions of Angelinos, and that was important to him.

Manuel had been there through the transition from analog to digital. He had witnessed the changes in the old-style color television as it was transformed into the new computer-based media. Satellites could now beam their signals to millions of receivers using tiny roof-mounted dishes not much bigger than pie plates. Wide-area computer networks were now linking tens of millions of users with real-time video, audio, and data, sending out millions of bits of digital information every second.

The new generation spoke of the old broadcast television of the late twentieth century as the horse-and-buggy service. Manuel had seen it all, and while he championed the new technology, he hadn’t lost touch with the tradition and the ground-breaking work that had made all this possible. He never stopped believing that, despite all the new innovations, his transmitters and studios would continue to be the mainstream of the information age for years to come. So he was happy to check on the transmitter himself.

Manuel was halfway up Mount Wilson when he switched on the car radio. He listened in stunned silence to the same disturbing news report that Carl and Lori Throneberry had heard. His peaceful morning was immediately shattered.

Suddenly tears came to his eyes. “Oh, God, no!” he whispered. He knew that Cathy and the boys would be in danger. His precious transmitter could blow up, and there he was on a narrow road halfway up the mountain.

Cathy worked as a systems analyst for a computer software company not far from their modest home in Altadena. She had opted for flextime as the best balance between her demanding office job and the even greater demands of mothering three pre-teenage boys.

“Please,” he whispered, “let her still be at home.” Manuel gritted his teeth as he picked up his cellular phone and punched in his home number. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when his wife answered.

“Cathy. There’s terrible news. I just heard it on the radio. A natural disaster is coming. There’s no time to explain right now, but listen to me. I want you to do exactly what I tell you. Put all the food you can gather up into the car, especially canned foods, dried foods, and things like that. Fill up all the gallon jugs you can find with drinking water. Then I want you to get the boys together as fast as you can and meet me at the transmitter. Do you hear me? Don’t waste one minute. I’ll be at the transmitter in about twenty minutes. Just go fast, Cathy. And, remember, I love you.”