And the Mechanics of Saving the World It was May 4th, 1999, and Tom Bradbury was twenty-two years old To see him pass by on his bicycle, with his bookbag slung across his back, and a flat plaid cap pulled down snug on his forehead, he looked perfectly ordinary and entirely forgettable. Halfway through this third year as an engineering student at the University of Cambridge, Tom had exasperated…

73 days. Two months and two weeks since he had been free of the mountain. Pre-dawn to post-sunset, seven days a week he had worked on that mountain with no break. Sure, it rained a few days and after the equipment couldn’t move, when the men had no footing, after injury was imminent, not a manageable risk, did the bosses look up at the sky…