The God Particle

by Daniel Danser

  ‘You must have really pissed that guy off back at CERN?’

  ‘I gave you the condensed version on the way here. Why don’t I save the rest of it until you’re feeling better, then I’ll tell you all about it over a couple of beers?’

  ‘A couple? Ya wee shite, I think I deserve the barrel.’

  Tom laughed, despite the excruciating pain in his head. ‘You’ve got it, big man. The whole barrel.’

  They had arrived at the waiting ambulance. Its blue strobe lights melded with those from the dozen or so police cars in the car park, illuminating the buildings and the faces of the crowd that had gathered out of curiosity in a monochromatic light show. The two orderlies collapsed the gurney’s framework, lifted Jed onto the ambulance and then expanded it again, ensuring the wheels were locked in place. Tom clambered in afterwards, taking a seat on the chair opposite.

  ***

  Despite Jed’s protestations, they were rushed through to A & E, where they received immediate attention. The buzz going around the hospital was that a crazed gunman had gone berserk at the lab up the road, killing one and injuring at least three others. They weren’t that far off the mark.

  Tom received six stitches to his head wound, had an X-ray, which was clear, and had to stay in overnight for observation.

  Jed had X-rays followed by a CT scan. Miraculously, all his vital organs were undamaged, apart from his liver, which was in poor shape; however, that was put down to years of self-abuse rather than anything he’d sustained in the fight. He had severe bruising to his arms, legs and torso, two black eyes, as well as several fractures to his nose, in addition to three cracked ribs which, the doctor informed him, should heal by themselves in six to eight weeks.

  The nose was a different matter; it would require extensive rhinoplasty surgery to rebuild and straighten it. However, he was assured that, over time, they would be able give him his old profile back. He was also advised to stay in overnight for observation; but, as soon as his ribs were taped up, he took one look in the mirror, tweaked his nose into some form of shape and discharged himself.

  ***

  Tom had been allocated a gown and a bed in a private room, but he was desperate to see how Serena was. He had ascertained from his nurse that she had regained consciousness. The brain scans showed no significant damage, but she had mild concussion.

  He threw back the covers and made his way to the door. He was still a little woozy and his head hurt like hell; it felt like the worst morning hangover of his life without having had the enjoyment of getting it the night before. As he made his way down the corridor, he noticed two docile deputies, lounging on either side of a closed door. Their alertness piqued when they saw him approaching.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be resting, Professor Halligan?’ the younger of the two enquired, rising out of his seat and moving to block the door they were guarding.

  ‘I’m just checking on my friend. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Miss Mayer? She’s in the room at the end, but I heard the doctors saying she shouldn’t be disturbed.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if I just popped my head in.’

  He continued on his way before they had a chance to object. It was an alien feeling to him, being uncomfortable around the police. He half expected one of them to say, ‘Hey, aren’t you wanted by Interpol?’

  He stopped outside Serena’s door and knocked softly. Hearing no reply, he went in. She was propped up in bed, bolstered by some over-sized pillows. Her eyes were closed. A catheter ran from her arm into a transparent bag containing a clear fluid, suspended above her head. On the index finger of her left hand was a clip connected by wires to a heart rate monitor. As Tom approached the bed, he could see the visual representation of her heart beating on the screen. He was mesmerised by the green line pulsating its steady rhythm.

  ‘Will I live?’ Serena asked groggily, opening her eyes when she heard Tom approach her.

  Tom smiled, leant over and kissed the bandage on her forehead, being careful to avoid the site where the bullet had struck. ‘My prognosis is that you’ll live to a ripe old age, but you certainly had us all worried for a while.’

  She reached up and tenderly touched the dressing above Tom’s eye. ‘And you?’

  ‘A few stitches and a scar that I’ll be able to bore the pants off explaining how I got it to anybody stupid enough to ask.’

  She paused for a moment, trying to organise her thoughts. ‘What about Deiter?’

  He told her how Jed had burst into the office and tackled him to the ground, effectively saving their lives. How Jed and Deiter had fought over the gun and how he had managed to sneak up and knock Deiter out.

  Her face clouded as the memories slotted into place. ‘Poor Charles,’ she said almost to herself.

  ‘Deiter’s under armed arrest. It looks like he won’t be going anywhere for a very long time,’ Tom replied, in an effort to comfort her, but her melancholy persisted. ‘What’s with the drip?’ he said, to change the subject.

  ‘Painkillers, antibiotics and saline solution,’ she replied faintly. ‘Apparently, I’m dehydrated.’

  ‘Any idea how long they’re going to keep you in?’ He was trying to keep her mind off the images of Charles slumped over his desk, which he knew must be haunting her, as it did him.

  ‘The doctors were a bit vague, but they said they wanted to keep me awake overnight so they could monitor my concussion. Any suggestions on how I can do that?’

  ‘A few, but none that would be appropriate, given your condition.’

  ‘Try me.’ Her hand reached out and gently stroked his cheek. He bent forward and kissed her full on the lips.

  Just then, the door suddenly flew open and in pitched the deputy he’d spoken to earlier, his right hand brandishing his gun, his left clutching at a patch of blood that was spreading across his abdomen. Tom could see the hilt of a scalpel poking out through his fingers.

  ‘Stay in your room,’ the man managed to gasp. ‘I’ve called for support.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Tom asked, alarmed. But before the deputy had a chance to reply, Tom already knew the answer.

  ‘He’s escaped...’

  CHAPTER 38

  Jed had made his way directly from the hospital to his favourite drinking hole, where he knew he’d get the type of solace he was looking for.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ was the greeting he’d received from Cherie as he walked into the bar. ‘You look like you’ve been hit by a truck.’

  ‘Ya should see the state of the other fellah,’ was his response.

  He was already on his fourth pint of Steel Reserve High Gravity Lager, when Cherie shouted across the bar to him that he had a phone call from a colleague who wouldn’t give his name. Puzzled, he reluctantly left his drink and slid off the stool, wincing at the pain, the anaesthetic qualities of the lager not yet having worked their magic. In the ten years he’d been coming to Stars ‘N’ Bars, not once had he divulged his recreational whereabouts to anyone, not least the people he worked with. He made his way over to the waitress, who was impatiently holding the phone out for him.

  ‘Aye,’ he said into the phone, annoyed that he’d had to leave the second love of his life on the bar getting warm.

  ‘Jed? It’s Tom.’ A note of urgency was evident in his voice.

  ‘Tom, ya wee shite. How did ya know I was here?’

  ‘Trust me, Jed. It wasn’t difficult to work out. Sorry I didn’t give the barmaid my name, I’m getting a little paranoid in my old age.’

  Tom then told him how Deiter had stabbed one of the deputies before disarming the other one. He’d then taken a doctor hostage with the deputy’s gun and used him as a human shield whilst he made his escape, shooting him dead once they were off the hospital premises.

  ‘The Sheriff’s adamant that he’s going to flee the country,’ he continued. ‘He says in his experience that’s what they always do. Probably head to Canada first before boarding a flight to Euro
pe. He’s deployed most of his men to search for him between here and the border.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ replied Jed. ‘You’re not so convinced.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said resignedly. ‘Knowing Deiter, he’s going to head for Brookhaven and try to destroy the collider. It’s the only way he can stop us from slowing down the field. Can you meet me at the facility? We need to get the collider up and running before Deiter has a chance of sabotaging it.’

  Jed looked longingly across the bar at his pint. ‘Aye, she’ll jest have to wait for me,’ he replied, as if to himself. ‘I’ll see ya there in two shakes of a lamb’s tale.’

  ***

  Jed was already in the control room by the time Tom arrived, having made a detour via Charles’s office. He got an eerie feeling crossing the police barricade tape and seeing the room where he could quite easily have lost his life. He didn’t want to spend any more time there than was necessary; so, being as there were no police guards present, he hastily retrieved the laptop from the desk, tucked it under his arm and scurried out of the door.

  The distinct lack of police presence around the campus worried him. He had tried again to convince the Sheriff of Deiter’s mission, but had been condescendingly put in his place by the insularity of the officer.

  ‘Stick to what you know best, son, and I’ll do the same,’ the Sheriff had said. He had conceded to increase the frequency of patrol cars passing the facility, but that was as far as it went.

  ‘How’s Serena?’ Jed asked, as the two men sat side by side.

  ‘She’s fine. They’re keeping her in overnight for observation.’

  ‘Any more luck with Deputy Dawg?’

  ‘If I’m right about Deiter,’ replied Tom, ‘we’re pretty much on our own.’

  ‘We’d better get this show on the road then,’ said Jed, turning to face the computer screen in front of him. ‘I managed to get the beams calibrated and aligned this afternoon before our run-in with Doctor Death. So all we have to do is start up the primary particle accelerators, wait until they’re up to speed, then release the beams.’

  Tom knew from his time at CERN that it took at least twenty technicians to run a full experiment, but that was mainly down to the four monitoring stations equispaced around the ring, each of which had to have its own team to ensure their equipment was functioning properly and to analyse the results. All Tom was interested in was running the collider to its maximum potential for as long as possible to generate the strongest magnetic field it was capable of producing. That would normally require at least four people to ensure safety limits were being adhered to; today however, they would have to manage with just the two of them.

  ‘How long do you think we’ll be able to run the collider for?’ Tom enquired.

  ‘The thermal shields are effective for about ten hours,’ replied Jed. ‘After that, the collider reaches critical temperature and the system automatically shuts down, dumping the beam’s energy.’

  Whilst Jed went through the initialisation sequence, Tom powered up the laptop he had retrieved from Charles’s office. He found the programme he was looking for – aptly named ‘Armageddon’, presumably by some smart alec at NASA, and opened it up. The red line that they had seen earlier had continued its steady progression south, but had increased its speed; it was now travelling at thirty miles per hour. Tom did a quick mental calculation: seventeen days until total polar reversal. He checked the figures in the last column; over the last twenty-four hours, there had been a continuous acceleration.

  ‘Primary particle accelerators activated,’ said Jed.

  The notification drew Tom’s attention back to the schematics Jed was studying on the screen in front of him.

  ‘Seventy… eighty… ninety… one hundred per cent. Primary accelerators at maximum capacity. Releasing the beams now.’

  Jed keyed in an instruction on the console and the image changed from a diagram of the collider to a series of scrolling numbers. ‘That’s odd.’

  Tom could tell by the intensity on Jed’s face that something wasn’t quite right. ‘What is it?’

  Jed pointed to a column of figures that were increasing in value. ‘That’s the temperature generated by the collider. I wouldn’t have expected to see anything like those values until nearer the end of the run.’ He pressed some more buttons on the keyboard and the screen changed again, this time to a line-graph showing an upward trend. ‘Looks like we’ve got a wee gremlin in the system.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Tom’s concern was apparent in his voice.

  ‘Somebody, mentioning no names, seems to have manually deactivated the thermal shields.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’

  ‘There are override panels dotted around the length of the tunnel. Maintenance use them all the time whenever they’re working on a section. I should have checked they were fully operational before releasing the beam. That’s the protocol. Sorry.’

  Tom was at odds with Jed’s calm demeanour. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Jed. ‘Without the heat shields, the system will reach critical temperature in a matter of minutes and the failsafe will kick in. Then we’ll have to find out which panel that bastard has pressed and reactivate it. It’s an inconvenience and a waste of our time, but nothing more. The problem is, if he keeps doing it we’ll never be able to operate the collider long enough to generate a magnetic field. We’ll have to find him. Why don’t you call our friendly local Sheriff and ask him to send his boys round?’

  Tom placed the call and told the Sheriff what had just occurred. At first he was sceptical, but eventually agreed to send in a posse to search the tunnel for any signs of Deiter. When Tom had finished, he put the phone down and turned to his friend. Jed’s face was ashen.

  ‘Houston, we may have a problem.’

  CHAPTER 39

  The core temperature had already reached the point at which an automatic shut-down should have occurred and was still rising.

  ‘Why hasn’t the fail-safe triggered?’ Tom asked anxiously.

  ‘Ya cunning bastard,’ Jed said to himself and then looked at Tom. ‘Looks like our wee gremlin has also been buggering around with the fast kicker magnets.’

  Tom recognised the terms, but couldn’t place their significance.

  ‘They redirect the beam into the dumping tunnel,’ Jed explained.

  Tom remembered from his days as a student: the beams themselves are made up of two hundred and eighty trillion protons squeezed into a stream much thinner than a human hair. Each hair-thin beam of protons that races around the collider contains as much energy as an express train going at over two hundred kilometres an hour. During any one cycle, there would be thousands of these, smashing head-long into each other. When it is time to shut the machine down, that energy, which is so concentrated that it could liquefy anything directly in its path, must be safely disposed of.

  The fast kicker magnets deflect the beam into a straight, six hundred metres long, tunnel that runs at a tangent to the collider. Like throwing the points on a rail track, it directs the beam from its circular path into a siding. Once inside the tunnel, other magnets cause the beam to spread vertically and horizontally so that, when it hits the dump, its destructive energy is dissipated over a larger area. At the end of the tunnel is a cylinder of graphite composite, eight metres long and one metre in diameter, encased in steel and concrete, which is designed to absorb the beam’s energy. The beams smash into their target with the sound of one hundred and fifty kilograms of TNT exploding.

  ‘So, what happens now?’ Tom asked.

  ‘If we can’t dump the beam, then the system won’t shut down,’ Jed replied.

  ‘And if that happens?’

  ‘The temperature within the core continues to rise, until… boom! We create our own personal black hole, right here on Long Island.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘We need to realign the magnets so we can dump the beam. But somebody needs
to stay here to monitor the system.’

  ‘Okay, you stay here and I’ll sort out the magnets,’ Tom volunteered.

  ‘No way, wee man,’ replied Jed. ‘That nutter’s still on the loose. I’ll have more of a chance against him than you.’

  ‘Look,’ said Tom beginning to lose patience, ‘we could debate this all night, but the fact is we’re running out of time…’ As if on cue, an alarm bell sounded. ‘You know the system better than I do, so you should stay,’ Tom shouted over the top of the ringing.

  Seeing the logic in Tom’s argument, Jed reluctantly agreed and fished the electronic pass key out of his pocket.

  ‘The magnets are located at the entrance to the dump tunnel, Sector 4H,’ Jed shouted in reply. ‘You’ll need to gain access to the tunnel via the inspection chamber. Once you’re in, set the computer coordinates to thirty degrees, then get the hell out. You’ll have three minutes before the system resets and dumps the beam – and, believe me, you won’t want to be on that station when the train passes through.’

  ‘Got it, 4H,’ Tom replied. He took the pass from Jed and headed for the door.

  ‘And watch out for that feckin nutter,’ Jed shouted after him, but he had already gone.

  ***

  He made his way cautiously into the service tunnel that ran concentric to the collider, his faculties on high alert. If Deiter had any sense, he would have set the collider to self-destruct, then escape to the border as the Sheriff predicted. But Tom knew that Deiter wasn’t the sensible type; his obsession to stop them slowing the polar reversal down overrode any cognitive reasoning.

  He climbed into one of the golf carts used by the maintenance crew and set off in the direction of the dump tunnel. He had a vague recollection from his student days at the complex where it was located, but the signage was so clear it didn’t take him long to find it.