Collider
“Reaches out and grabs you and won’t let go” “A thriller in the ultimate sense”
C o l l id e r By T o m Sc h u e tt “I couldn’t put it down …”
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Hadron Publishing, Incorporated, March 2010. Copyright Š 2010 by Tom Schuett All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Hadron Publishing, Inc., Minneapolis, MN. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ONE
Outside Geneva, Switzerland–Present Day Inescapable, that was how the darkness felt. Gradually, methodically, it was advancing, bringing confusion and fogginess. An ominous feeling made his breathing labored. He moved slowly and with calculation, down the corridor, his skin prickling. Evil was present. Confronted with a life or death situation, the odds against him, he resolved to live. Wicked men with greedy hearts sought to destroy his life work, and with no consideration, either, for the countless innocent bystanders who were pawns in the unfolding drama. Failure meant the innocents would be the casualties in a monumental battle for the truth. Collateral damage was acceptable to these men, whoever they were; that had been the problem all along.
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But who were they? And why were they afraid of his experiment? The hallways were deserted. In the shadows he crept with precision on his way to the main electrical room. Pausing at each hallway intersection, he peered around the corner, craning his neck, looking for the armed men. He stood straight-backed, heels against the wall, wondering what he might have done differently. The men had stormed the facility an hour earlier, rounding up his co-workers and securing them in the control room. What had happened to the private security forces? Had they been so easy to overcome? He hoped to God everyone was safe. Fortune had briefly smiled upon him. He had been in the restroom when the men began their assault. Hearing the commotion, he had stolen a glance out the bathroom door to see heavily armed, military-type personnel, carrying automatic weapons and herding people down the hallway. There were two options–fight or flight. To climb the bathroom stall, then hoist himself up into the ceiling seemed the only sensible thing to do. As he did, he heard one muffled shot.
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After replacing the tile, he lay motionless, filled with unprecedented horror–these might be his last living moments. The only solution was to disable the collider: the massive, billion-dollar atom smasher he had dedicated his life to. If his assumptions about these men were right, the control room would be heavily guarded. Desperately he tried to gather strength despite his pounding heart and weakening knees. He struggled to move, constrained on all sides by metal hangars, electrical wiring and ductwork. With difficulty he stretched his arms above his head and rolled to his stomach, covering his clothes in dust. A chill went through his body as the ventilation system sprang to life. Listening to the footsteps of the men patrolling the halls, it reminded him of the sound his uncle’s steel-toed army boots made on the wood floor when he came to visit. He bowed his head and said a prayer. If there was a God, they needed him. He had to find a way to the electrical room, where he could interrupt the power to the collider. It would give him time, as the collider could not operate on generator power alone. Twisting his body, he grabbed the edge of the
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tile, prying it up with his fingers. The grating of the tile against the framework made him pause, the silence causing every sound to seem amplified. Slowly he slid, feet first, out of the ceiling toward the railing. With his feet nearing the rail, his shirt began to tear as it snagged on a metal clip, the dust from his clothes landing around the commode. Ripping away the fabric, he freed himself. Emboldened by enormous responsibility and guilt he left safety venturing forward to an unknown fate. Peering around the door, the hallway was empty and nefariously quiet. Slowly he tiptoed, crouching at the waist, down the hall. He was now thirty feet from the door to the electrical room. The gray door was emblazoned with a bright yellow triangle, which read VERWARNUNG! HOCHSPANNUNG! An instant before, the hallway had been clear. He decided to check one more time. He paused, only for a second, to summon courage. A moment’s pause was all the intruders needed. He started around the corner and it happened more rapidly than he had thought possible. Two dart-like objects raced toward his torso as he arched his back and spun to avoid
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them. He was aware of a fleshy thud, as a searing heat radiated high up near his ribcage. Instantly he remembered the surveillance cameras; how could he have forgotten? Involuntary, tremor-like convulsions caused him to shake violently. In his head, he ran more quickly than he ever had in his life, but his body was paralyzed. He ordered his feet to move, but they could not. His synapses were in electronic overload, able only to twitch, ensnared in a hopeless battle. The technology he knew nothing about: electro-muscular disruption, caused by the M-18 model 44002 advanced tasers had sent fifty thousand volts through his body, overriding his central nervous system and dropping him limp and dazed to the floor. Still he fought it, driven to shut down the collider. Struggling to rise to the surface of consciousness and catch a breath, over and over he would be jerked back to suffocating depths. Then, in the midst of his despair, darkness inexplicably surrendered. He broke the surface into the light. Abruptly he sat up in his bed and screamed. “Noooooooo!� His bare chest was heaving, the sheets tangled in his legs. No one came running. No one had heard. With the back of his hand, he
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wiped his forehead, scanning the room, orienting himself. Looking down, he noticed the sheets were damp. It had seemed so real. It always seemed real. This was the fourth time this month. Several minutes passed before his pulse returned to normal. The clock read 6 a.m. Time to head to the office. Samuel Joseph was a troubled man. Perhaps it was the stress and pressure related to working on the collider. Or, perhaps–was there a purpose, a warning, in the vivid nightmare he had been enduring night after night? The sun was shining, the sky clear, the temperature hovering around 16 degrees Celsius, with an occasional gust of wind making the air feel cool as Sam walked to his office. The Alps rose majestically on the horizon, covered with a fresh layer of white. On the Route de Meyrin, cars sped past, honking their horns in frustration as they raced to work. A blue sign with a white border read CERN. Today was the day scholarly men throughout the ages, who had dared to challenge creationism and the church, would be proven right. The event would happen now, but it would take many years and much examination to
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understand. These brilliant scientists would work at a frenzied pace for the foreseeable future, ignoring family and friends, in order to understand what they were about to witness. They had worked years for this moment, enduring harsh criticism. Billions of dollars had been spent to build the largest machine ever assembled. But after all the data was analyzed and the results quantified, humankind would finally know how life began. No more vicious debate between two sides, each claiming to have the answer. One would be proven right and the other wrong. That was it. Above the earth’s surface, things were bright and peaceful. One hundred meters below the earth’s crust, things were happening at a breakneck pace. Hundreds of engineers were finishing their final inspections as Sam made his way down the access shaft. He continued his daily ritual as he stepped onto the large green wire mesh lift. Every day, he visited the actual collider tunnel. Sitting in his office, or even the central command room, it was easy to lose perspective and forget the enormity of what they were attempting. Sam left the collider and returned to the heart of CERN. Building 513 was the central
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computing center. Sam watched in wonder as men and women who had dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge sat before computer monitors making final preparations, fingers flying over keyboards, voices reciting instructions and commands. The communication from station to station was precise; no mistakes must occur now. The central computer center was twenty feet high from floor to ceiling and fifty feet wide by sixty feet long. Two walls were covered with computer projections of the most critical data. Rows upon rows of computers linked to an even larger, international web in order to secure the necessary computing power for the enormous calculations that were to be performed. Those who had been unable to endure the pressure of such meticulous accuracy had left the project long ago and abandoned their place in history. Nothing was theoretical at this stage, and reality demanded laser sharp focus. The smallest inexactitude would ruin years of preparation. There was room in here now only for the brightest minds in the world, and they all knew it. As the scientists monitored their progress, two subatomic particle beams raced around the collider’s huge circumference completing 11,245
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revolutions per second. The path the particles followed was 26,659 meters long, 16.565 miles. The magnets that propelled the beams, at nearly the speed of light, had been super cooled to 271.3 degrees Celsius. Scientists, physicists, dignitaries and government officials all waited with great anticipation as they stood on the observation deck in the central computing center. Smiles creased their faces as they awaited their place in history. Even the Pope was present, standing in the background, resigned to the inevitable triumph this experiment would yield to science. His face was rigid and contoured, the lines showing his age, his pontiff’s hat covering his bald spot. In his heart he feared what lie ahead. How could Genesis and the inerrant word of God survive? The expectation of the great fanfare that waited was consuming. The scientists longed for the data, the government officials for the potential taxes generated by new revenue streams, the dignitaries for the cameras. Muffled conversations could be heard throughout the facility as workers and observers alike wondered how this day would impact the world or even the universe. For months discussions had focused on wormholes, black holes and alternate dimensions
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that they all knew they would discover. “Captain Kirk to Enterprise, come in Enterprise,” joked one of the technicians. “Beam me up Scotty,” responded a second. “Captain, I must have the dilythium crystals!” Laughter rolled across the room as they continued their chatter. The particle beams sped around the circumference in opposite directions, nearing their eventual collision. The two protons were invisible to the naked eye, yet their collision would replicate the beginning of the universe a hundredth of a second after the big bang. It was a demolition derby of particles building to a crescendo, both beams narrowly missing each other, waiting for the exact moment, the ultimate collision, the one that would rock the world. Over the loudspeakers a countdown began. Fifty minutes until the Big Bang, the technicians joked. People who had worked their entire adult lives holed up underground, striving for this very moment, scurried about each moving to their station, wondering what life would be like on the other side of this momentous event. Outside the facility, beyond the steel mesh security fence, protestors with doomsday signs screamed their opposition. “The apocalypse is
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upon us”; “Only God can play God.” News crews frantically jostled for a position in front of the CERN sign. This was the news story of the year, maybe even the century. Television stations from around the globe sent crews with orders to bring back footage. Security at the facility was code red. This was a target of high value for terrorist groups. Private security forces from MIC Security dressed in full combat gear made everyone recognize the importance of what was about to occur. It was in the middle of this chaos, Samuel Joseph suddenly found himself questioning the whole project. Rubbing his hands together, he felt the clamminess as he stared blankly across the room. He had worked so fervently on it; but were the protestors right? Were they trying to play God? What about the security breaches the facility had endured? Had they taken the necessary precautions to ensure nothing had been tampered with? What about human error? What were the consequences of a minor miscalculation? If he and his associates had done everything right, they were about to unleash the most powerful single event that had ever occurred on an unsuspecting planet. Scientists maintained the
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Big Bang had created the universe and our planet. Theologians believed God had done it. No matter which it had been, the collision of particles appeared to be at the center of the event. Had God spoken the collision into being? This question was beyond Sam. But now, if there was a God, He was watching as man was about to recreate creation. Sam’s left palm always itched when he was nervous. His breathing became heavy. Anxiety was right around the corner. He made himself pause and focus. Placing his hands on his knees, he sat upright in his chair and began a deepbreathing exercise. He and his staff had pored over every possible scenario. They were ready for this. Fear was the enemy. They knew what would happen as particle beam collided with particle beam. The mystery of the instant after the big bang would be analyzed, billions of dollars in sensors tracking the movement of every atom. All of the mathematical formulas they had devised would be confirmed, and they would raise their fists in victory as theologians grappled with their beliefs about the beginning of time. But why did his hands tremble so? His mother had taught him to listen to his inner voice:
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God speaking to him. If God was speaking now, He was telling him to stop. Were they so vain and self-assured to believe nothing could go wrong? The big bang would have made one million class-five tornados, occurring simultaneously, seem like a three year old blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Were they really trying to recreate this event? Even on such a small scale, it was not without danger. This kind of power has never been witnessed, thought Sam. It would make an atom bomb look like a hand grenade. Inside a small voice told him, “Yes, it has, Sam!” He shook his head. After all this time he still heard his mother telling him to listen. He was forty, she was eighty-three. Long ago he had left home and embarked upon his career. He loved his mother dearly and respected her beliefs. Yet still he grappled with his own. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God. Science had caused his confusion. The physical world did not fit as nicely into the creation story as the right-wing conservative dogma insisted. God had spoken the universe into existence; the religious right was unbending in this belief. He used to joke with his mother, “Maybe God and Jesus were playing cowboys and Indians
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one day, when God came around the corner, saw Jesus, and said, ‘Bang! …Oops.’” His mother had laughed, but then looked pensive, even sad, and he could tell she was wondering if she had failed him. Today, he would be one step closer to the truth. He hoped that he and his mother were both right, that creationism and the Big Bang could co-exist. A knock on his door snapped him out of his musings. Into his office walked Sophie Thompson, his co-worker and confidant. “Hey, are you ready for this?” she said. “I’ll never be ready for this,” he joked. “Well, get ready, because it IS happening. You ARE going to face all kinds of questions today. For which you WILL have the answers.” “The only answer I’ll have today is whether or not we got the beams to collide. You know they’re looking for more.” They would all want to know how life began. Everyone would think that all the answers would be plain at the moment of impact, but it could be years before they had anything relevant to disclose. “You’re quick on your feet. Somehow you’ll make them all laugh and they’ll be so charmed,
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they’ll forget why they’re even here.” Standing with her hands on her hips and her head tilted, a smile spread across her face and her eyes lit up. Sophie knew there was greatness in Sam; she had seen it right away. Somehow, though, Sam did not always see what others saw. Sam laughed. “I’m glad someone believes in me. What’s up?” He looked up at her, then quickly away. He appreciated the compliments, but he had always been uncomfortable with praise. She glanced at him with a teasing smile. “Let’s see, hmm. You’re only about forty-five minutes from making history. The world is watching, and you’re probably the most talked about person on the globe right now. Hmm, not much is up. Oh yeah, the President of the United States is on line two. He’s been holding five minutes now.” Sam’s face flushed and his smile vanished as he leaned forward in his chair. “What? No! Tell me you’re kidding! You didn’t just make the President wait for me, did you?” Sophie tried, but ultimately she grinned, only barely containing her laughter. “No, I just wanted practice saying it. You are so gullible.” Sam blushed. “Funny!”
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They sat in silence for a moment looking at each other, speaking volumes without saying a word. A smile returned to Sam’s face as he reclined in his chair shaking his head, the palm of his left hand rubbing the arm rest. As they looked into each other’s eyes, Sophie’s smile faded to a grin and she let out an audible sigh. Sophie knew of Sam’s deep concerns. On a daily basis he wrestled with the idea of shutting down the collider. They had discussed it for hours, each time concluding that they were, in fact, ready: if there was an error, they had taken the proper precautions to guard against catastrophe. If a single moment can define the rest of eternity, that moment came early. Sam and Sophie, along with the rest of the world, would not know the swiftness with which they were taken. A flash of light engulfed the room. A brilliant, blinding white light so hot it could not be measured. The power of God unleashed with a miscalculation of time and space. One tiny error, overlooked by all who cared to look, caused a collision before there was supposed to be one. The roar of creation was
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deafening, but no one was alive to hear it. And everything began again.
TWO
Outside Earlier
Geneva,
Switzerland–Six
Weeks
Samuel Joseph sat in his modest apartment at the CERN complex. He was the director of the Large Hadron Collider project. At forty, he was well-respected by his peers and blessed with a keen ability to solve problems. He had taken up science early, to the enjoyment of his Poppy, who had been a pediatrician. “You’re making your Poppy proud,” his grandpa would say. “The only thing that would have been better was if you were a Coug.” Poppy had gone to Washington State University as an undergraduate and was fiercely loyal to their teams, even though there never seemed to be much to root for. Sam had gone to the University of Michigan, where he played football for the Wolverines. He was 6’2” and 205
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pounds in his playing days. He had been quarterback on a team that won the national championship. Drafted by the Packers, he was the rare athlete that chose instead to pursue his education forfeiting millions of dollars. He could have chosen any graduate program he wanted, but he stayed close to his parents. His Ph.D. was in particle physics and soon he was at the forefront of his discipline. At thirty, he began working on the collider. Quickly he rose through the ranks. Sam’s boss, Peter Gottlieb, knew he was a lucky man. He had one of the brightest minds in particle physics working for him. At first he felt threatened by Sam; but soon he admitted to himself that one couldn’t do such an enormous project alone, and his success
Tom Schuett
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