George and the Big Bang

by Lucy Hawking

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found that the dim lights in the basement were already on. They could just about see across the big room: It turned out to be full of junk—old office equipment, discarded computers, broken chairs, splintered desks, and reams and reams of computer paper. They picked their way cautiously through the terrible mess, guided by the sound of a computer whirring away somewhere behind the wall of debris. It soon became clear that they were not alone in the basement. Above the sound of the computer they heard a very clear and very human voice.

  “No!” A howl of frustration. “Why, you stupid computer, won’t you let me do what I want to do?”

  Moving carefully forward—Annie and George in front, with Vincent, who was taller, poised behind them—they could see through the mess to where an old man in a tweed suit was attempting to operate an enormous computer. It stretched across one whole wall of the basement, such an antique that it was made up of compartments, what looked like cupboard doors, and great stacks of machinery, all piled on top of each other. In the middle was a monitor screen, on which the old man seemed to be watching a film. Only the top half of the set showed a picture—the bottom half had text scrolling across it in bright green letters on a black background.

  “It’s Professor Zuzubin,” George whispered into Annie’s ear. “He’s here! He should be at the Collider—he said it was a meeting for all the Order of Science to Benefit Humanity and that means him as well.”

  “What’s he doing?” asked Annie, speaking into George’s ear in turn. They watched, agog, as Zuzubin ran the footage again in reverse, and the words scrolled backward off the bottom half of the screen. He pressed PLAY and the film started once more. As they watched the images, they could see a man who looked like a much younger version of Zuzubin himself, standing at the front of a packed auditorium in front of an old-fashioned overhead projector.

  “It’s the lecture hall where your dad gave his talk!” said George to Annie. “It’s Zuzubin, and he’s giving a lecture at Foxbridge!”

  “He once had Dad’s job,” she murmured. “He was a math professor here.”

  “Maybe he wants his old job back,” muttered George grimly; he didn’t like the look of what he was seeing. “Look—in the audience! It’s your dad!”

  In the film, a young man with a thick shock of black hair, wonky glasses, and a big smile had just stood up.

  “It is my dad!” said Annie, tears coming to her eyes. “Oh my God! I can’t believe he was ever that young! What’s he doing?”

  Old Cosmos answered that question for them. “Professor Zuzubin,” he said in a mechanical voice, speaking the words the young Eric was mouthing on the screen. “I have shown that your theory contains a flaw!” In typical Eric style, he looked as though Zuzubin should be pleased by his remarks.

  In the film, Zuzubin kept smiling, although his grin was becoming fixed onto his face as though stuck on with superglue.

  Eric continued in the voice of old Cosmos: “I have shown that the model of the Universe that you propose violates the weak energy condition.”

  On the screen, Zuzubin’s nostrils flared and he looked angry.

  SINGULARITIES

  A singularity is a place where the mathematics used by physicists goes horribly wrong! For example, as you approach the center of a black hole—one type of singularity—space-time curvature grows to infinity and the normal rules of mathematics fail at the exact center (they say to divide by zero, which everyone knows isn’t allowed!).

  Sometimes a physics calculation makes an assumption that turns out to be wrong at a particular point, and a singularity is found. Once this is understood, the calculation can be adapted so that the error is fixed, the math works properly, and the singularity disappears. Good result!

  The more interesting singularities are harder to get rid of and suggest that a new theory is needed. For example, black hole and Big Bang singularities occur in the math of General Relativity. Perhaps a theory with very different math is needed to understand what is really going on, and to get sensible results at such places in the Universe.

  This is a busy area of research for scientists who hope that a Theory of Everything will get rid of these singularities.

  the space containing all we see around us in the Universe reaches zero size

  and all paths going back in time come … to an end.

  This singularity is also known as an initial singularity because it sits at the beginning of time.

  “Bellis,” recited old Cosmos, the words scrolling along on the text screen. “Your theories concerning this ‘Big Bang’ are interesting, but impossible to prove.”

  “I believe not!” said the young Eric. “The recently discovered microwave background radiation provides direct evidence in favor of the Big Bang model. Furthermore, I am firmly of the opinion that one day we will be able to build a great experiment that will show that the mathematical theories I have developed here at Foxbridge with my colleagues”—he gestured modestly to the people sitting around him—“are consistent with reality.”

  The real-life Zuzubin pressed PAUSE, and the picture froze. He frantically hammered the command buttons on Cosmos’s keyboard. A little paintbrush appeared on the screen. Zuzubin swirled it around using a computer mouse he had attached to old Cosmos. The little paintbrush swept ineffectively over the picture, but nothing changed.

  “Pah!” exclaimed Zuzubin. “Why won’t this work!” he muttered to himself. “In that case, I shall try something else …”

  He deleted all the text visible on the screen. Typing rapidly, he inserted the words: Not so. The properties of the zuzon particle are the key to understanding the relationship between the four forces and the creation of matter. I predict that any experiment at the energy scale you propose will end in a dramatic and life-threatening explosion, which will prove that my theories about the nature of fundamental particles and the dynamics of the Universe are correct.

  But as soon as Zuzubin typed in the new text, the cursor moved back and erased it again, replacing it with the original speech.

  “It’s not a movie,” murmured George. “It’s the past! He’s using Cosmos to view himself in the past, giving a lecture at Foxbridge! And he’s trying to change it—it looks like he’s made Cosmos some kind of Photoshop program to change what he said and did back then.”

  “Why?” asked Annie.

  “He’s trying to make it look like he predicted what’s about to happen,” said George. “He’s using Cosmos to go back and change the past to make his theories look right—and your dad’s wrong. And he’s trying to show that he predicted that the Collider would explode.”

  Zuzubin had been too focused on what he was doing to notice any noise the kids might have made. But even he couldn’t ignore the sound of George’s cell phone bursting into song as the theme song from Star Wars rang through the basement.

  George acted quickly. He dropped the phone on the floor, kicking it back toward Vincent, who knelt down to scoop it up, pressing END CALL and changing the ringtone to SILENT.

  But it was too late. Zuzubin was on to them. Turning around, he glared—and then smiled as he saw two pairs of eyes staring back at him from the carefully arranged mountain of junk that he’d been using to hide the original supercomputer from the rest of the world.

  “Ah, George!” he said, baring his teeth in a grin. “And look—my friend, little Annie. Come forward, my dear children. Come, come! Annie, I held you on my knee as a baby—you have nothing to fear from me!”

  George and Annie had no choice. As they stepped forward, Vincent stayed down among the old furniture. Realizing that Zuzubin might not have spotted him, he figured that if he could hide in the basement, he might be able to help Annie and George if they got into trouble. Vincent hadn’t understood much of what the old scientist had said, but it was clear to him that anyone who was trying to change the past to make himself right and someone else wrong was not a person to be trusted.

  “Annie,”
cooed Zuzubin. “So grown-up! So tall! So clever! How nice it is to see you again. But why so worried, children? Why so anxious? What can Professor Zuzubin do for you? Tell me, my dears. You can trust me!”

  George pinched Annie to stop her speaking, but it was no good. Annie was desperate enough to believe anyone who told her they could help.

  “Professor Zuzubin … ,” she said in a quavering voice.

  The old man reached behind and surreptitiously turned off old Cosmos’s monitor, so that the film of the past was no longer playing.

  “We need to get to the Large Hadron Collider,” Annie continued. “Something terrible is going to happen there! We must save my dad! We want you to send us to the LHC using old Cosmos, so that we get there in time to stop the bomb from going off.”

  “Your father is in trouble?” Zuzubin pretended to be concerned. “A bomb? The LHC? No, I don’t believe it! Not Eric, surely …” He trailed off, viewing George with a suspicious eye.

  “Don’t say any more …” George was only whispering to Annie, but Zuzubin heard him.

  “Whyever not?” he said. “Eric was my favorite pupil, my best ever success story. If he needs my help, then it would be my honor and privilege to provide it.” He bowed low to show that this was indeed so.

  Annie turned to George. “We don’t have any other options,” she said wildly. “There’s no one else we can ask!”

  “So you want to go to the Collider!” said Zuzubin smoothly. “Sure, that is no problem. You can be there in under a second.” He entered a few commands on the keyboard, his hand hovering on a doorway into the great computer.

  “When I open this door,” Zuzubin purred, “Cosmos will take you directly to the place you need to be—directly to the right destination for you. You, Annie, can be the hero today. You, Annie, will solve all the problems and make everything good once more.”

  Annie’s eyes sparkled. For once, she would be the hero. For once, she would be the person who made a difference, the one who saved the day. Not her dad, not her mom, not George. Her.

  “I’ll do it!” she said decisively. “Take me to the Collider!”

  “Oh, but you can’t travel alone,” tutted Zuzubin, shaking his head. “Your little friend will have to travel with you. It must be you and George, or I cannot open Cosmos to transport you.”

  “Annie …” George tugged frantically at her T-shirt. “No! That doesn’t make sense!”

  “I don’t care!” declared Annie. “Professor Zuzubin, open Cosmos and send us”—she turned and glared at George—“to the Collider.”

  “What about space suits?” said George desperately. “We haven’t got them.”

  “You’re not going into space,” said Zuzubin in the same oily tone, “so why would you need them? This is just a short hop from one country to another. You step through the portal here”—his hand was on the doorknob—“and you will emerge almost instantly at your destination. I promise you this. I swear on my oath as a member of the Order of Science to Benefit Humanity that this is true.”

  “See?” said Annie. “He swore on the Oath—the one you took, the one I took—the one Dad and all his scientist friends took! He wouldn’t lie, not about the Oath!”

  “I most certainly would not,” said Zuzubin gravely. “Now, Annie, listen carefully. You are the hero … you are going to travel through the portal … you are going to save the day.” His voice had an oddly hypnotic quality. Annie blinked rapidly and her head seemed to sway around on her neck.

  George looked at his watch. It was already six p.m. in Foxbridge, which meant it was seven p.m. in Switzerland—only thirty minutes until the quantum bomb went off, taking the great experiment, Eric, and all the world’s top scientists with it. Zuzubin, sensing that George was weakening, winked at Annie and pulled the doorway open. Beyond it, they could see nothing—only darkness.

  “Step through,” said Zuzubin insistently. “Step through, dear children! Zuzubin will make sure you are safe and sound … safe and sound … nice dear little children.”

  As though in a trance, Annie stepped forward, sleepwalking into the dark doorway, through which she disappeared in a matter of seconds.

  George couldn’t let her go alone. He had no idea where she would end up: Even if some miracle did transport her to the Collider, she wouldn’t be able to defuse the quantum mechanical bomb because she didn’t have the code. He ran after her.

  How different, he thought, the original Cosmos—the world’s first ever supercomputer—was to new Cosmos, the sleek, personable, chatty little computer they had grown to know and love. Old Cosmos was like trying to steer a huge cruise liner when you were used to a sleek little speedboat.

  Bracing himself, George stepped forward and passed once more through a portal to an unknown world of discovery and adventure, the darkness swallowing him whole.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From his vantage point among the junk, Vincent noted everything that happened. He watched Zuzubin’s sinister face, and although he couldn’t make out each word the old man said, he could see Annie looking conflicted and confused, and George turning red with anger. Vincent saw George protest but knew there was little the other boy could do.

  Once Zuzubin opened the portal door, which Annie believed would lead them straight to the Collider and her father, Vincent—like George—knew their fate was sealed. He prepared himself to leap out of his hiding place. As always, before Vincent used his karate skills, he recited the karate mantra to himself:

  “I come to you with only karate, empty hands. I have no weapons, but should I be forced to defend myself, my principles or my honor; should it be a matter of life or death, of right or wrong; then here are my weapons, karate, my empty hands.”

  But when Vincent looked up, Annie and George had disappeared, and only the old man Zuzubin was there in front of the great silent computer, laughing and laughing until the tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks and he had to bring out a perfectly pressed white handkerchief to wipe them away. When he finally stopped laughing, he switched the monitor back on, but this time he changed the channel.

  Vincent peered through the debris to see what the old man was doing now—on the screen he could just make out the image of a room with two smallish figures moving around inside it. He edged closer, as quietly as he could, just as Zuzubin picked up an old-fashioned microphone and started speaking into it.

  “George and Annie … ,” he said.

  *

  On the other side of old Cosmos’s doorway, George and Annie had stepped through and found themselves in complete darkness. Behind them, the portal door clicked shut. They had absolutely no idea where they were—until a light flipped on, illuminating their new surroundings. For a second, they just stood open-mouthed in surprise. They had never before stepped through a computer doorway and found themselves anywhere like this before. They were quite used to emerging from Cosmos’s portal into different gravitational conditions, where they flew upward into the atmosphere of a strange planet, or got dragged down onto the surface. On their previous journeys, they’d stepped through Cosmos’s portal to encounter lakes of dark methane, volcanoes that erupted in plumes of slow-moving, sticky lava, or planet-swallowing sandstorms. They’d seen a sunset with two suns in the sky as well as witnessing the fast-forwarded fate of an exploding black hole. But they’d never been anywhere like this before.

  In some ways, it was just a room, so it was hard to say why it felt so creepy. It was square, the ceilings were of normal height, it had a comfy-looking sofa, a television set and a couple of cosy armchairs, a patterned rug on the floor, and bookshelves that held hundreds of hardcover books, their spines neatly arranged in alphabetical order.

  On one of the armchairs, a cat stretched and purred. The curtains were closed, but Annie ran straight over to them and pulled them back. The two friends saw a view of a snow-capped mountain range, with dark fir trees on the lower slopes and a blue sky above the peaks, darker clouds gathering beyond the more distant mountains. �
��Where are we?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t know,” said George slowly, looking around. “But this is definitely not the Large Hadron Collider.” They could both feel that something about this room was terribly, horribly wrong.

  “Are those the Alps outside the window?” wondered Annie hopefully. “Should we open the door? Perhaps the Collider is nearby.” The door they had come through had closed behind them. They both looked at it.

  “Won’t that just take us back to Foxbridge?” said George. “Don’t we need another door to exit from wherever this is?”

  At that moment the antique television set spontaneously crackled into life. Black and white flashes shot across the screen, showing only a small part of the fuzzy picture behind them. But the voice that addressed them was unmistakable. Professor Zuzubin was speaking to them from the television set, unaware that lurking Vincent was just behind him, waiting for his moment to strike.

  “George and Annie,” said the professor, his image settling onto the screen.

  “It’s Zuzubin!” screamed Annie. They could see him clearly now, the collection of junk in the background as he loomed closer. Everything fell into place for George—the voices they had heard in the cellar, the yellow glasses Zuzubin had been wearing, the phrases he had heard on the radio news broadcast, the secret use of old Cosmos in the basement.

  “It was you all along!” said George, speaking into the television set. “You’ve been traveling around the Universe, leaving things inside black holes! You invented the True Vacuum theory in order to scare ordinary people into joining TOERAG! You were the insider who betrayed the Order of Science. You set up the meeting tonight so that all the top physicists would be in one place—then you could blow them all up and be the only one left! You want to change what happened in the past to make it look like you were right all along—that your theories, which everyone has forgotten about, showed that the Large Hadron Collider would explode!”

  “And,” said Zuzubin nastily, “I have succeeded—in all my aims. In just a short while the Collider will indeed explode, and the world will realize that I am a scientist who should not have been forgotten! It will look like I was right all along and there will be no other physicists to contradict me. I have won!”