by Dean M. Cole
Hans shook his head. “No, it’s not supposed to be. This can’t be happening.”
Sampson ground his teeth together and turned on Hans. “You keep telling yourself that, jackass!” He extended a hand and pointed toward the shrinking ATLAS detector. “In the meantime, you’ve killed the whole damn planet.”
“Vhat!?” Hans shouted as he turned toward Sampson and poked the taller man’s chest. “Oh, so it vas vee up until it goes wrong? Now it’s me?”
The reporter stepped between them and pushed the two men apart. “Now is not the time! Shouldn’t we be doing something?”
The two men glared at each other angrily. Then they looked at Miss Preston and shook their heads.
Sampson gestured at Hans. “Thanks to him, there is nothing we can do.”
Hans bristled. He stepped up, ready to punch the man.
The reporter pushed him back again. She looked from the men to the slowly shrinking device and then at the room of dumbstruck scientists. She raised her voice above the cacophony of the ATLAS detector’s continuing collapse. “Well, then, why is everyone just standing around?! We need to get the hell out of here!”
Hans's head dropped. Defeated, he stared at the floor. “No one is running because vee all know that there is nowhere to run to.”
“Uh, yes there is. Anywhere but here would work for me right now.”
Sampson shook his head. He pointed at the now van-sized clump of metal. “Soon, that’s going to lose its attachment points. When it does, it’s going to fall, and it’s not going to stop until it reaches Earth’s center. Then it’s going to start gobbling up mass, and it won’t stop until the entire planet, including everybody on it, has been sucked into the singularity.”
Nodding, Hans looked up at the still glowing device. He tilted his head. “Vhat attachments? It has pulled away from everything.”
Shaking his head, Sampson pointed at the ruined detector. “Something must be …”
Miss Preston stared at the men, a confused look on her face. “What is it?”
Hans looked at her and then back at the indistinguishable mass of the detector’s remnants. It now looked like a beach ball-sized orb of bright orange, molten metal. “Vhy is it just hanging there? It should have fallen already.”
Sampson nodded. “You’re right. And look, it’s not shrinking anymore.”
No sound emanated from the sphere.
A hush fell across the control room as all occupants stared in dumbstruck silence.
As they watched, the ball of liquid metal began to dim. Then the glow was gone completely. It appeared as if someone had suspended a perfectly round polished metal sphere where the ATLAS detector assembly had been.
Hans saw a fisheye reflection of half the facility painted across its curved surface. If not for the protective coating on the control room’s window, he likely would have seen himself in that reflection. The film on the far side of the glass created a mirror effect, so a reflection of the orb hovered at the center of the image. It looked like a real-world version of an M.C. Escher spherical mirror painting.
Everyone in attendance winced as a loud ping rang out.
At the same time, the solid metallic sphere suddenly looked liquid as a ripple emanated from its top. Concentric rings radiated downward as if someone had dropped a large stone into the now mercurial ball. When the waves reached the bottom of the sphere, they rebounded and began to circle its round surface, creating undulating peaks and valleys of interference patterns across the ball of liquid metal.
Hans broke from his paralysis. He returned to his computer console and sat down.
Sampson pulled his eyes from the incredible scene and looked at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to use the robotic arm und see if I can interact with it. Maybe I can disrupt it somehow.”
“What good will that do?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing, but vee have to try.”
Sampson started to say something else, but then the reporter shoved him aside and stepped up next to Hans. “Shut up, and let the man work.”
Hans looked at her and nodded.
After activating the manipulator arm’s software, he grabbed its actuator with his left hand and began to extend the long, mechanical device toward the still undulating sphere. He slipped his right hand into a gloved-shaped interface. It allowed him to control the robotic grasper at the end of the arm. He flexed his fingers and watched the remote hand mimic his movements. The grasper’s white fingers waggled in unison with Hans's.
Approaching from the right side of the sphere, the grasper moved to within a meter of the mercurial orb’s tremulous surface.
Hans stopped the arm.
What was he going to do? Slap the sphere with the actuator’s hand? Punch it? Maybe this wasn’t a black hole after all. If he could break it up, perhaps he’d disrupt whatever was happening.
Hans nodded. “Screw it!”
He balled the remote hand into a fist and then raised the arm. He’d just hammer the sphere and see what happened.
The orb suddenly stilled. The waves vanished in the blink of an eye.
Once again it looked like a solid sphere of polished steel.
Then the orb flared, its surface becoming as bright as the sun.
The blindingly bright light vanished before Hans could even raise a shielding hand.
Trying to blink the afterimage from his vision, he exchanged confused glances with Sampson and the reporter.
Then new movement drew their eyes.
Turning, Hans watched as the top of the once again mercurial sphere began to distort.
Then something emerged from the mass, extending almost a meter toward the ceiling.
Hans blinked. “Vhat the hell is …?”
A hand opened up. It looked mechanical.
Just as Hans registered the fact, a second one extended from the top of the sphere. The two white arms probed the air for a moment. Then the metallic hands reached down and buried themselves in the equator of the beach ball-sized orb.
They heaved, and then Hans and his fellow observers gasped as two additional arms, as well as shoulders and a torso, emerged from the top of the sphere.
The being appeared to have its back turned toward the control room. Hans couldn’t see the thing’s head.
As it continued to rise, more of the torso slid into view. It tapered down to an extremely narrow waist.
Then it stopped rising.
Releasing the outside of the orb, the being extended all four of its arms out to the side. With only its upper extremities visible, the thing looked like a robotic version of a man, standing in waist-deep water, arms held wide, albeit with four of them instead of two.
The reporter bent over and whispered into Hans's ear. “Is that your robot? Was it inside the detector?”
Hans shook his head slowly. “I have no idea vhere that came from. Vee don’t have anything like it here.” He nodded toward the robotic arm and the controls still clutched in his hands. “Closest thing is this.”
Remembering the device was still active, Hans started to lower the manipulator arm, pulling it back to avoid striking the being.
Apparently detecting the movement, the robotic interloper turned right and held up its right two hands defensively, but then it paused.
Hans stopped moving the manipulator arm. Then he saw that the robot did have a head: a flat, disc-shaped protrusion that rested atop its shoulders. It appeared to have no neck. However, he thought he could see two eyes inset in the edge of that disc.
Hans glanced sideways, intending to say something to the reporter, but she and Sampson had left.
Outside, the robot stared at the manipulator arm with apparent interest. It almost looked curious. Tentatively, it extended one of its arms toward the device.
Hans relaxed his hand, unclenching the grasper so that it no longer looked like a threatening fist. Then he extended an index finger toward the being.
Still reaching towar
d the manipulator arm, the robot extended a finger of its own.
Just as the two mechanical digits were about to touch, a door opened on the left side of the facility.
Hans halted the actuator as he saw Sampson and the reporter walk into the chamber.
The robotic being lowered two of its arms and grasped the equator of the sphere as it spun to face the new arrivals.
The idiots were holding their arms out to their sides, mimicking the previous pose of the robot. Both Sampson and the reporter appeared to be saying something, but he couldn’t hear them.
Standing beside Hans, the cameraman continued to film. “This is incredible!”
Hans ignored the man and stared through the window. Looking at the being that was protruding from the top of the sphere, he thought he saw anger flare in the thing’s eyes. It leaned menacingly toward Sampson and Miss Preston, pointing at them accusingly with its two free hands.
Both humans backpedaled, pressing hands to ears as a high-pitched, siren-like wail pierced the air.
The robot raised four clenched fists overhead and then dropped out of sight, disappearing back into the metallic orb and taking the high-pitched howl with it.
Hans and the rest of the control room’s occupants stared through the window in stunned silence.
Sampson and Miss Preston lowered their hands and stared at the now calm surface of the mercurial sphere. Even from this distance, Hans could see the confusion on the faces of the damned fools. What the hell were they think—?
Hans winced and threw up a hand defensively as a brilliant beam of white light shot out from the orb. This time it wasn’t the entire surface of the sphere fluorescing. It was a narrow fan of light that swept over Sampson and the reporter.
Then it vanished, leaving the orb as it had been.
Hans looked from it to Sampson and Miss Preston and then shot to his feet.
“Son of a bitch!” the cameraman said as he took a backward step. Forgotten, the small video camera clattered to the floor at the man’s foot. “They’re … They’re gone.”
Hans knew the man was right. Sampson and the reporter hadn’t left. They hadn’t run away. He would have seen the movement.
They had simply … vanished.
Hans flinched and stepped back as another white beam shot from the sphere. “Scheisse!”
It was a wider fan of light this time. Forming a wedge, it swept across the left wall of the facility. Then it began to move toward the control room.
Hans had just enough time to register the movement before it washed over him and the cameraman at his side.
Then the light vanished again, disappearing just like the occupants of the control room.
For a long moment, the becalmed, metallic sphere hung motionlessly at the center of the silent and now emptied ATLAS detector facility.
Then another beam burst from the orb.
This time, the white light looked like a laser beam shooting straight up into the ceiling. It passed through the intervening two hundred-foot span of earth and rock like light through smoke. The narrow thread of brilliant energy shot up through the roof of the building that occupied the ground above the ATLAS detector. It didn’t stop until it reached the upper edge of the atmosphere.
A nearby farmer looked up from the side of his tractor. Standing at the center of his family’s small parcel of land, he turned and stared at the strange light.
Through slitted lids, the wizened old man watched the beam, wondering why the scientists at CERN would be firing a laser from their building, but then the thin ray of light began to widen. The movement was barely perceptible where the rays emerged from the structure. However, as the farmer looked up, he saw that it no longer looked at all like a laser beam. Overhead, the thing had taken on a cone shape. The rapidly spreading fan of white light now looked like a mountain-sized megaphone with its wide end directed at the heavens.
Looking down again, the farmer took a backward step.
The base of the light had begun to move in earnest now.
The building from which it had originally emerged had vanished behind it, and now the light appeared to be coming out of the ground. It swelled rapidly, coming straight at him.
The farmer turned and tried to run, but before the old man could take two steps, the light washed over him.
The man vanished, leaving nothing in his wake but the dust kicked up by his well-worn and now absent boots.
The ring of sterilizing white light continued to spread, sweeping across fields and streams and then cities, mountains, and oceans.
Like its creators, the uncaring, energetic wave had no empathy. It didn’t care about the life that it scoured from the planet.
It just was.
Until it was not.
Chapter 2
The bright lights of the control room vanished, and the ground heaved violently.
Hans's knees buckled.
He stumbled and nearly fell. Then he felt something moving underfoot.
“Get the hell off me!”
Hans peered down. In the wan light cast by the emergency lights, he saw two moving forms.
He took a backward step. “Sampson? … Miss Preston?”
As Hans's eyes adjusted to the low light level, he saw that dust now covered their faces and clothing. “Vhat happened?”
Shaking his head, Sampson stood, helping Miss Preston up as he did. “Hell if I know. We were standing here trying to figure that out for ourselves when you suddenly landed right on top of us. You knocked us on our asses.”
“How did you get back in the control room so quickly?”
Miss Preston looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Doctor Garfield doesn’t know.”
Hans furrowed his brow. “Vhat don’t I know?” Then he wrinkled his nose. “And vhat is that smell? Did something die?”
Sampson stopped brushing the dust from his lab coat. He grabbed Hans's shoulders and turned him around. Then he pointed up. “Look. We’re not in the control room. We’re not even inside!”
Hans opened his mouth to ask what the damned fool was talking about. Of course they were inside. However, the words died before he could form them as he stared at a tan-colored disc that hung high overhead. Then he blinked with sudden recognition.
They were outside.
That wasn't an emergency light.
It was the sun!
Hans stared at it. His heart raced as he tried to understand how he’d gotten there and what he was seeing. The sun looked too dim as if seen through an atmosphere choked with dust.
Lowering his gaze, he looked around. All of the other occupants of the control room were out there as well. They were standing around him. Several of them were also staring into the sky, although a few of the people had fallen. They were climbing to their feet and knocking dust off themselves.
Turning slowly, Hans scanned the hazy horizon. In every direction he looked, the ground fell away. They appeared to be standing on top of a broad hill. It was impossible to discern the height of the terrain as the hazed atmosphere obscured everything beyond two or three kilometers.
As Hans continued to turn, familiar terrain rotated into view.
He froze.
“Oh, mein Gott …” He swallowed and shook his head.
The unmistakable outline of Geneva’s surrounding Alpine peaks peered down on the mulling group of white-coated scientists. The wide bases of the mountains were lost to the dusty atmosphere, but their denuded, craggy peaks stared down on them without their normal cap of glacial snow.
How could all of that ice disappear?
“Vhat have vee done?”
Someone slammed into Hans, bowling him over and knocking him from his feet. The impact caused his breath to burst from his lips as he careened down the arid slope.
The person landed on top of Hans and then rolled off of him, all the while cursing in French. The male voice sounded gravelly, like that of an old man.
Something on the ground crackled beneath Hans as he rolled a
cross it.
It sounded like snapping twigs.
Or bones?
His lab coat snagged on a protrusion and tore.
White-hot pain erupted from his forearm as something gashed Hans and yanked him to a stop.
He scrambled back to his feet. “Vatch vhere you’re going!”
The old man stood, not bothering to knock the dirt from his soiled overalls or the stained plaid shirt beneath.
Tilting his head, Hans reached out and flicked the worn denim of the man’s clothes. “Vhere in the hell did you come—?”
The Frenchman batted away his hand. “Ta gueule!”
Hans's eyes flared angrily. “Don’t tell me to shut up, dummkopf!”
The evident farmer bellowed loudly. He bowed up, raising his hands as if to strike Hans.
Then another body slammed into the old man, pounding him into the ground.
Multiple startled cries rang out as four more people and a cow suddenly appeared right in the midst of the group of scientists.
Hans stared wide-eyed, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
Before he could utter a word, he fell to the ground again as someone else slammed into him.
He tried to stand, but something was pinning his legs.
Another person fell on top of Hans. He banged his head painfully. He’d hit a sharp-edged stone. Blood flowed freely from the point of impact. It dripped onto the rock. Looking at the now bloodied outcropping, Hans realized it wasn’t a stone at all. It was the broken claw of a long-dead lobster. Hans shook his head, releasing an arc of red droplets. No, it couldn’t be a lobster pincer. The thing was a meter long. It was too big to be a—
Someone else dropped onto Hans, slamming his head into the claw again. This time the weight was too much. He couldn’t raise any part of his body.
He was pinned to the ground!
The weight pressing down on Hans continued to ramp up.
Then it became too great even to draw breath.
With his last conscious thought, Hans finally understood it all.
He had died.
And this was Hell.
He was right on one account.
Sometime later, the unending crush of new arrivals squeezed the last vestige of life from Hans, and he became correct on both.
