Sam Outmaneuvers Enlow's Supercollider Sabotage
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Millgate braces for a losing battle, invoking historical figures who smoked to justify his defiance.
Enlow storms in, threatening legislative retaliation against Illinois, revealing his true motive for blocking the supercollider.
Sam counters Enlow's threat by exposing his pork-barrel politics, forcing him to fold and withdraw the hold.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Explosive fury laced with threatened power, simmering into humiliated retreat
Enlow bursts into the office seething from Sam's note, threatens anonymous blocks on all Illinois infrastructure to retaliate, issues a stern warning amid rising tension, and storms out after Sam's hypocrisy revelation targets his pork projects.
- • Intimidate Sam into submission via project sabotage threats
- • Safeguard personal pork-barrel interests from supercollider competition
- • Political notes demand forceful reciprocity
- • Public advocacy conceals essential self-serving protections
Resigned philosophy veiling terminal acceptance and quiet defiance against futile interventions
Millgate sits philosophically invoking FDR and Churchill's smoking legacies during supercollider talk, rises after Sam's introduction to Enlow, dons his coat post-resolution, firmly declines hotel stay and Sloane-Kettering treatment, expresses gratitude to Sam, and exits with wry commentary on Sam's physicist aptitude.
- • Bolster supercollider cause through historical analogy and presence
- • Exit with dignity, rejecting pity or prolongation of suffering
- • Historical icons' vices underscore human pursuit of greatness
- • Pure science endures beyond political machinations or medical overreach
- • Personal mortality demands graceful autonomy over extended agony
Defiant confidence in confrontation morphing to conciliatory pragmatism, shadowed by deepening concerned empathy for Millgate's plight
Sam stands assertively to engage Enlow, introduces Millgate strategically, exposes hypocrisy with pointed pork-barrel satire, pursues reconciliation by calling after the departing senator to apologize and lift the funding hold, then pivots to earnest concern for Millgate's health before closing the meeting.
- • Secure supercollider funding by neutralizing Enlow's block
- • Preserve political alliance through apology and resolution
- • Offer personal support to Millgate amid terminal illness
- • Scientific advancement outweighs parochial pork interests
- • Personal rapport can salvage political brinkmanship
- • Human compassion demands action against inevitable loss
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
Sam urgently pitches Sloane-Kettering's elite cancer specialists as a beacon of hope to Millgate, invoking its storied role in past presidential health crusades, only for Millgate to reject it outright, underscoring the organization's symbolic might clashing against personal resolve in this intimate crisis.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Sam inquiring about Jack Enlow's presence sets up their later confrontation where Sam forces Enlow to withdraw the supercollider hold, closing the narrative loop on this subplot."
"Sam inquiring about Jack Enlow's presence sets up their later confrontation where Sam forces Enlow to withdraw the supercollider hold, closing the narrative loop on this subplot."
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"MILLGATE: F.D.R. smoked. SAM: Yeah. MILLGATE: In the White House, Campobello, everywhere."
"ENLOW: All infrastructure projects earmarked for Illinois are about to be anonymously blocked. SAM: (stands) Let's play our game."
"SAM: Until Dr. Millgate told me the thing is gonna be built in Illinois. So, of course, you have to be for it on the record, but off the record, it crowds out all the pork you've got your eye on, like the Senator Enlow Off-Ramp, Rest Stop, Hotel and Casino."