by Jim Lombardo
“Mom, Dad, I’m going to need 10,000 toothpicks, a bunch of fast-acting glue, and some medical-grade nitrile gloves. Wire cutter scissors would help…oh, and safety goggles too. Please. I’ll write this all down for you.”
Hannah had learned that in a pin tumbler system using a cylinder lock, about five driver pins are lined up along a slot, or keyway, held down by a spring. This prevents a plug from rotating within the cylinder and opening the lock. When a key is fully inserted into the keyway within the plug, the pins are pushed up only as high as the teeth on the key, which are at varying heights. The pins are different lengths too, and only when pushed up in the exact same sequence as the key pushes them up with its teeth, will they all align horizontally at the exact point where the plug and cylinder meet, the shear point. This allows the plug to freely turn and open the lock.
Brian raised eyebrows at the grocery store by purchasing 40 boxes of American birch wood toothpicks, with 250 in each one. Per the order, he also bought two plastic packs containing 200 multi-colored cocktail spears each.
“So, like, what’s up here?” the cashier asked as she rang in box after box of toothpicks.
“Huge cheese cube party this weekend,” came his ready response.
Before long, Hannah was on the floor, working on top of a drop cloth that Brian had laid out for her. She appeared comically small in relation to her outfit, which included a bulky knit cap to keep her hair out of her way, oversized safety googles, and extra small nitrile gloves, which still had to be shimmied down each finger to get a tight fit. A pail of loose toothpicks was set to one side amidst a few dark amber bottles of fast-setting glue, one of which was open.
Hannah lay on her stomach and began by picking up a single toothpick. She dipped its end in the bottle and then attached it to a second toothpick at a 90 degree angle. After holding them together for 20 seconds the two were securely joined. Adding a third and fourth one, resulted in a square frame, and then by gluing on four more toothpicks at the proper angle, she had created a pyramid shape, which she set onto the floor. The child used the wire-cutting scissors to modify the length of the ninth piece and proceeded adding that to the prototype she was building.
As the hours passed, her model steadily grew. Painstakingly plugging away, Hannah shifted to her knees as the day wore on, and then was able to work standing upright. Occasionally she would return to her computer or flip through a library book to briefly check something, but then hasten back to the toothpicks. By the following day she was stacking books on top of one another and precariously reaching up to add specific elements to the structure. The apartment was beginning to smell like a glue factory, and Monica and Brian worked on setting up window fans to draft the fumes away. On the third day, Hannah asked her parents to help her stack separately produced substructures from the floor onto the top of the burgeoning construction where she couldn’t reach.
“What is this, Hannah?” her parents kept inquiring.
The answer was always the same. “I’ll tell you when it’s done.”
“I’m thinkin’ this toothpick monument was way overdue, smartypants.” Brian wise-cracked at one point. “All that popcorn stuck in our teeth, all those club sandwiches and cocktail wieners. Where’d we be without ’em? Good to finally see some recognition here.”
On the fourth day, after a marathon session of fine tuning, Hannah stepped back from her three distinct structures. While gazing at them, she peeled off her gloves, and shed her goggles and cap like an athlete removing gear in the locker room after a tough battle. Her face was glowing with satisfaction. But that expression swiftly drained from her face as she spotted Ellie’s card resting on a table nearby. Hannah hung her head with her eyes downcast for a few moments before looking back up at the card.
“Ellie, I...I failed you. I didn’t make it in time to save you.” She shook her head, and tears filled her eyes. “How do I say ‘I’m sorry,’ when there’s no way you can ever hear it? I can’t fix that, Ellie...not ever.”
Hannah looked towards the ceiling. “Where are you now? Are you in Heaven? Where is that?” The child then began to study the objects that were sitting idly around her, with an odd look on her face. A pen was strewn on the computer desk, an empty dinner plate with crumbs on it lay still. She examined one of her hands as if she was looking at it for the very first time. “What is this all about?” she asked herself intensely. “What’s going on here with all this? How could Ellie go from being something so wonderful to nothing at all? I want to know. I have to know!” She grabbed the card, clutched it tightly, and then flopped facedown onto the bed and bawled. “I WILL know!” Brian and Monica came rushing in.
“Are you alright, Hannah? What’s wrong?” her mom asked.
“Ellie’s gone, I couldn’t save her, and now it’s too late.”
“Don’t cry, baby. You did your best. It’s not your fault at all. It’s the cancer’s fault.”
Hannah got control of herself and explained somberly. “But it was so close, sooo close. If she had just been able to hold on a tiny bit longer....”
“Hannah,” Brian said, “we know you tried, but Ellie just didn’t have time to wait for a cure. I mean it’ll probably be years until anyone gets hold of something that could have helped her.”
“But you don’t understand. The cure, Mom and Dad, the cure…I have it now.”
Monica and Brian looked at each other with puzzled faces. They turned to the byzantine structures towering above them. Each one now had a polished, finished appearance, standing at attention. Mute envoys of life.
Hannah was soon calling Dr. Lally’s cell phone. “Hi, Rich, it’s me. I have something. Can you get here?”
Less than an hour later, the doorbell was ringing and the doctor was led into the guest room.
Hannah skipped a pleasant greeting. “Okay, Rich. I have here a blueprint for a new cancer treatment based on the lock and key principle. But let me say first that I’m not taking the credit for this, sir. It simply builds upon elements of various research and therapies already developed into one novel treatment. And here it is. Remove and isolate a cancer cell from a patient. Map the unique molecular structure of its surface. See here.” Hannah pointed to the largest of the structures. “Produce a mold of that. This is the lock. Next create a key in the lab, as you see here.” She then pointed to a second smaller module. “This would be designed to fit perfectly into the lock. Billions of these microscopic keys would be infused into a patient intravenously. Traveling through the bloodstream, they would bind themselves to the cancer cells, while simply bouncing off normal cells. The keys would be engineered to be defenseless against a chemical agent that is harmless to non-cancerous cells. Here’s the molecular structure of the drug we’ll need to produce.” Hannah directed the doctor’s attention to the third, and smallest component. “After the bonding between the keys and locks have all taken place, note the colored toothpicks at the point of connection, the drug would then be introduced into the person’s system. As the keys die off, they would be like gangrenous limbs, pulling the cancer cells down with them.”
Dr. Lally was silent at first, just thinking. Then he began to pensively pace around the intricate and convoluted-looking structures. He peered through an opening in the largest one, then poked his head completely inside of it as he continued his inspection.
“This will work.” Hannah said confidently.
“You were right to call me. But what are the means by which the keys will be attracted to bind with the cancer cells? I mean, in the real world keys don’t just jump into locks.”
“The biomolecules of the protein-ligand we create will signal the transmembrane G-protein coupled receptors of the cancer cell. The shape of the receptor that is transmitted to the cytoplasmic surface of the key will ensure a coupling of the cytoplasm with the heterotrimeric G-binding protein. There should be high affinity with irreversible covalent bonding if the bi
omolecular compatibility between the two entities is sufficient. But we can use metal ion affinity chromatography to measure the lock and key affinity on a group of cells before treatment. If it’s not a good fit, then it’s back to the locksmith to make a better key until we get it right. I’ve developed plans for the malignant cell surface mapping, and how to produce the ligand keys and drug we’ll need.”
Taking stock of this proposition, Dr. Lally stood back and put his hands on his hips. “You’ve done your homework, Hannah. I need to transport these structures to my team right away. Do you have written documentation for all of this?”
“Yes, everything is right here.” Hannah pointed to her head with her index finger, and tapped a few times.
“Then…can I also transport you to my team today?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Anomaly
An ocean away from Hannah, but connected to her in destiny, a physicist by the name of Dr. Gordon “Gordy” Anderson sat vexed while staring at a computer screen in his lab.
“What the hell? The speck’s still there,” he grumbled, “and it’s showing up on every single picture.” He rolled up the sleeves of his favorite sweatshirt to the elbows of his long arms, and pushed his dark wavy hair to one side, but that didn’t alter the situation.
Anderson was working for the European Physics Inquest Commission, EPIC, located in Oxford, England, about 50 miles west of London. His resume boasted degrees with honors from the most prestigious educational institutions in the world, including the Cambridge Technology Institute, CTI in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he graduated at the top of his undergraduate class.
His intellectual prowess and talent for physics were widely recognized and regarded, as was his appetite for mischief in his younger days. He had been involved with two pranks during his years at CTI. Continuing an annual tradition, he had helped with somehow getting a full-sized replica of a Lunar Module atop the institution’s signature building, the Great Dome. Then in his senior year, fans of the annual Harvard-CTI football game also got a taste of Anderson’s wicked ingenuity. He had been the mastermind behind the large drone that suddenly appeared over the top of the wall surrounding Harvard Stadium during halftime festivities. The vehicle had made its way down to about 12 feet above the ground, splitting the uprights of one goal post before making its way methodically across the entire football field. Trailing behind the whirring gizmo was a menacing black flag, with the CTI logo and a skull and crossbones on either side.
Occasionally the drone would enter a dive, sending band members and cheerleaders sprinting for safety. Anderson was controlling the action via remote control from the stands, blocked from view by members of his fraternity. It was the stuff of legend. Fortunately this type of youthful exuberance simmered down, and he had concentrated his energy and talents solely on the study of molecular physics, eventually earning his graduate and doctoral degrees.
Now seven years out from his doctorate, Anderson was conducting grant-funded experiments using the Super Stonehenge Collider, or SSC, a colossal, sprawling instrument dedicated to researching the fundamental particles of the Universe.
The SSC had been built by EPIC, and was situated in England. It was the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet, and was unequalled in size. Construction had been a monumental undertaking that spanned more than a decade. Over 9,000 engineers representing 45 countries participated in the project. Up to this point, there had been only one casualty in its history, when a person was crushed under a huge, 15-foot-long magnet used to propel protons, after it had slipped out of a sling that was carrying it.
The collider’s central feature was a 60.2-mile-long tube about six feet wide laid out in a giant ring. This circular structure was buried deep underground to avoid interference from weather and cosmic radiation, while at the same time protecting life from radiation the device itself produced. The ring’s southern rim rested about five miles north of Oxford. Inside the tube was an utter vacuum, supercooled to a temperature lower than that of outer space. It was in these tubes that subatomic particles traveling in opposite directions and forced to 99% the speed of light, smashed into each other, creating cataclysmic collisions that blasted the particles into bits, mimicking the cosmic event known as The Big Bang, the moment physicists contend the entire Universe was created. Research on these collisions was helping scientists to explore the basic building blocks of matter, and the forces and interactions between them.
Using the SSC, physicists could study the nature and structure of time and space, test out theories, and try to answer countless questions that had confounded the greatest minds in the world. Simply put, the SSC was built to unravel the mysteries of the Universe. The collider had been named Stonehenge in tribute to the iconic arrangement of monoliths, built during the Stone Age, which was located in Wiltshire, in the southwest of England.
At four points along the course of the tube sat massive detectors, which were basically cameras of incredible sophistication. Anderson was in his Oxford lab extracting data remotely from one 30-foot-high, 7,000-ton detector named Titan, which sat 300 feet beneath a small British village to the north.
“Could it be some type of pockmark on the pixel detector, Gordy?” asked his young Brazilian research assistant Sergio Lemos, in a thick, charming accent.
“Possibly an issue with the pixel detector, or maybe the spectrometer,” Anderson replied. “It’s weird how it’s always there like an equipment defect, but then why would it be moving steadily in one direction? And it actually looks a tad bigger now than yesterday. I don’t get it. We’re already behind on data collection, and this is going to screw us up even more.”
Deep within Titan lay a tiny internal chamber called the Proton Beam Axis where the particles collided. Sensors were poised to capture data on these events, which was then converted into images by an ultra-sophisticated computer program. But something was causing a little black dot to appear in all of the pictures being taken. It was this anomaly that Anderson believed was the root cause of the corrupted data he was receiving.
Dr. Anderson sat, thinking and looking puzzled, viewing picture after picture that all included the same minuscule black dot. He rose abruptly to his feet, pushing himself up onto the knuckles of his two fists that remained on the lab desk, as he kept his eyes glued to the screen. He was like a heart surgeon hesitating over his patient during an operation, with blood-spattered gloves grasping surgical instruments, trying to decide how best to proceed. He was stumped.
Using a mouse, he magnified one picture of the speck as much as possible without sacrificing too much resolution. He noticed that light was refracting off the edges in an unusual way. He rubbed his tired eyes.
“What’s next, boss?” Sergio asked eagerly.
“I don’t know. Let’s call it a day. I’ll talk to Shep in the morning.”
Sergio cast his eyes down.
“You look bummed out, Sergio. You know it’s not too late to hit the pubs for a pint or two.”
Sergio’s mood brightened. “Alright, Gordy, twist my arm. I wanted us to get to the next sequence, but I guess I can be talked into chasing hotties instead.”
“Oh, so it’s not them chasing you?”
“On occasion. My accent’s irresistible, of course. But then they find out I’m obsessed with molecular physics.”
Anderson chuckled. “Yeah, I’d save that for the second date.”
“Advice from the master. Thank you, boss. Adeus!”
The men exchanged a good-natured fist bump, and Sergio left.
Deep in thought, Anderson distractedly pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt back to his wrists, preparing to make his way out of the lab and into the everyday world again. After making his way to the doorway and flicking off the lights, he turned back to the room. He fixed his gaze on the computer monitor that had not yet switched over to screensaver. There sat a picture of the magnified circu
lar shadow, a dead zone of complete darkness against a glowing background of bright white. “You stupid bugger!” he yelled before exiting, slamming the door loudly behind him.
At the start of the next day, Anderson and his boss, Dr. Hamilton Shepard, examined a series of images taken at regular intervals over the course of the previous night. The data readouts and photos revealed that the tiny black dot had continued at a steady pace in a southwesterly direction while slightly increasing in size. About 20 minutes after the dot disappeared from the field of view, the detector had been automatically shut down by another computer that carefully monitored its condition, indicating that the safe operating range of at least one parameter had been breached. EPIC officials ordered a physical inspection be conducted on Titan as soon as possible to determine what was going on. They requested Anderson’s participation.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Titan
That afternoon, Anderson drove three specialized engineers in his car five miles north, out to a small building that served as the control and command center for the Titan detector directly below. They were greeted by Staff Engineer Scott Perkins who was managing the building and its operations that day. He verified their credentials via an iris recognition biometric scanner, and then provided them access to the “clean room” to suit up in white scrubs, booties, cap and gloves. It was imperative that the team minimize the introduction of dust or other foreign particles into the work space below. Any contamination could compromise the exquisitely delicate equipment inside. Scott fed the workroom far below with additional oxygen, to ensure acceptable levels for the group. He would have the responsibility of monitoring the workers via security cameras and handheld transmitters.
The engineers included a married couple Patrick and Cynthia Houseman, who had met while working for EPIC. They were both PhDs with many years of experience with the SSC. They were joined by Neil Bransford, a mechanical engineer working on contract, who was specialized in repairing and renovating the detectors. During the brief ride down the elevator, the group continued to discuss the problem at hand. They speculated in complex engineering terms about possible causes of the curious dark spot.
