The Eidolon

by Libby McGugan

  “I heard you were with Romfield Labs,” says Rene. “How long were you there?”

  “About five years,” I step into the car. It smells of smoke and a hint of mint.

  “That’s a long time,” says Rene, offering me a stick of chewing gum. “And the Grid, it’s working out with you?”

  “It’s getting there.” I step across the line between truth and fabrication, and realise I’ll be doing a lot of this. “We’ve had a few glitches we’re ironing out, but it’s coming together.”

  “It’s a great time to come here. Your boss must know a few people, no? To get you in?” He grins as he turns the ignition. He pays the exit fee and drives out of the car park, the old car chugging with the effort. “A very exciting time to be around.”

  “Yeah... So what do you do at CERN?”

  “I got a post here when I graduated three years ago. I’ve been working on the muon detector, on the outer shell of ATLAS.”

  “You enjoying it?”

  “It’s the best decision I ever made. And what a time to be here!” Rene slaps his hand on the steering wheel. “There’s a real buzz about the place, you know? Like we’re on the edge of something huge. Everyone feels it.” He negotiates his way out of the airport and onto the Meyrin highway. He’s not a shy driver. I tighten my seatbelt.

  “I’m sure they do,” I say. “When’s the first run?”

  “First thing on Monday. So, you don’t get much time to settle in, but with your background...” – he snorts – “no problem. Actually, it’s a shame, you will miss a few days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The engineers, they need to do their last tests, so we will have three days when we cannot work while they do that. But don’t worry, you will have a lot to do today and tomorrow. The tests have been going well so far, did you hear? After all the problems last time, it’s big relief, I tell you. Everyone was going crazy!” He laughs, a sound that’s too big for a small car. “It’s a very good place to work, you know? I mean I get up in the morning and I am happy to be going to work, and how many people can say that, eh? Not many, I bet. And I have a lot of good friends here, and it’s like we’re all part of this big thing that is very important, you know? Have you ever had that? But it’s not all work, no, no, we have a lot of fun too. We go out at the weekends into the city. And we do a lot of sport. Last month I was the winner of the squash championship against this guy and he is crazy, I mean crazy that he lost and...”

  He talks like a parrot. I’m reminded of a phrase I read somewhere in one of Cora’s zen books: Do not speak unless it improves on silence.

  I make the appropriate noises of understanding at the appropriate points in Rene’s monologue and look at the Swiss scenery as it whizzes past – the small settlements gathered around the neat church towers, the houses with their overhanging eves, the cows being driven by old men in flat caps in the fields, the expanse of the open countryside.

  “You would not guess it was here, eh? Twenty-seven kilometres of superconducting magnets right below us. It’s fantastic what we built, no? And in a few days, this will be way hotter than the centre of the sun. That’s hot!”

  Hotter than you could imagine, Rene, if it goes ahead. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s hot.” I glance at the graffiti on an underpass. It’s stylish, artistic. Not like British graffiti; this has flair. The Swiss even have a better class of vandalism.

  “It’s been an incredible time. When we found the new particle...” He shakes his head.

  “Must have been some party.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Do you think it’s the Higgs?”

  “I think, yes. But what would be more amazing is if it doesn’t fit with the Standard Model. Then we’d have a lot more questions to answer, no? ‘Back to the drawing board’, is that how you say it?”

  Rene babbles on like a four year old with a new toy. His enthusiasm is palpable. There will be more like him, just as dedicated, just as swept up in the excitement of what they’re part of. I’ve been there. There’s a thought that’s doing its best to surface, that I’m doing my best to smother – can I really do this to them?

  The entrance to CERN is a little underwhelming. It breaks from the dual carriageway opposite open fields. A medium-sized blue sign displaying the CERN emblem announces it, but you’d be forgiven for driving past. It doesn’t look like the kind of place that houses a particle accelerator, but then, I don’t know what would. Once you drive in, though, past the blue and grey buildings on the right, there’s a large red globe standing about thirty feet high.

  “What is that?”

  “An exhibition hall. Donated by the Swiss government.”

  “It’s a bit rusty.”

  Rene snorts. “It’s not rust, it’s wood. OK, this will do.” He pulls up outside the reception area, leaving the car abandoned, rather than parked. I follow him up the five steps to a foyer. On the left is a small visitor shop where a few tourists browse through books and soft toys.

  “We have to get your security arranged,” says Rene. He walks towards the front desk, where a petite blonde lady smiles when she sees him.

  “Bonjour, Rene,” she says, and follows this with something in French that I don’t understand. Rene laughs and glances at me then strides to a door to the right of the desk and swipes a security card through the slot beside it. He steps aside and holds the door open for me.

  “She said you need a shave,” he whispers and grins as I pass. He leads me though to an office where a the security man, dressed in a black and white uniform, takes my documents and a photograph of my face and in return gives me a small plastic card on a red lanyard.

  “We have a briefing at two,” says Rene, glancing at his watch. “We’ll just make it.” We leave the reception building and cross the street, past the rusty globe, to a fenced off area that leads to a car park and a large concrete building at the far end. Rene swings open the gate.

  “Is this ATLAS?”

  “Yes,” says Rene. “This is it.”

  Large metal towers flank the front entrance like sentries, and someone in a hard hat stands on a cherry picker, slapping paint on a brightly coloured mural on the outside wall.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Students,” says Rene. “They’ve been painting a cross section of the detector. It keeps them busy. Bonjour!” shouts Rene and waves at the man in the hard hat. “Vous avez manque un peu!”

  “Tres drole, Rene!”

  “Do you like my bike?” says Rene as we pass a black motorbike by the entrance.

  “It’s a Ducati Streetfighter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. You like bikes?” says Rene, his eyes lighting up. “If I knew that I would have come to get you on it. Maybe I’ll let you take it for a ride sometime.”

  “That’d be great.”

  Coming towards us is a small crowd of fifteen or so people, straggling behind a tall thin man whose head looks too large for his body. They must be visitors. “Do you get a lot of tourists?”

  “Yes, most days, although only above ground now that the experiments are beginning.”

  Rene swipes his security card to open a door into a modest, dim entrance. A glass wall opposite looks into a large room. Inside, huge flat screens hang from the walls displaying coloured data, and banks of consoles on crescent shaped desks sit in front of them. There are maybe twenty people in the room, sitting or standing, crowded around consoles.

  “Is that the control room?”

  “One of them,” says Rene. “But the main one is on the first floor.”

  A man passes us on his way towards the exit. There’s something odd in the way that he walks, a kind of rolling gait, as though one leg works better than the other, and his long scruffy coat makes him look out of place. His eyes, beneath a tangle of dark hair, stay on me for a moment, and the way he looks at me makes me uncomfortable. He pushes through the door and is gone.

  Rene leads the way to the next level and we stop
at a vending machine.

  “Who was that guy?” I ask.

  “What guy?”

  “The one we passed just now, on the way in?”

  Rene shrugs. “Didn’t notice him. You want some coffee?”

  “I don’t have any change.”

  Rene grins. “Don’t worry, one of the students rewired it – you don’t need money.” He hands me a steaming cardboard cup.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re on the late shift,” he says as he strides along the corridor. “The B team, same as me. I can show you round later. Professor Von Clerk is taking the briefing. He’s a good guy.”

  The control room is packed full of people, too many to count, crowded around fifteen desks, peering at a line of screens.

  “It’s pretty busy,” I say following Rene in.

  “This is nothing. Wait till you see it at the launch. I mean, there will be people everywhere! You better get up early if you want a seat. Here. Let me introduce you to Professor Von Clerk.”

  He squeezes through the crowd, and I follow him towards a big, grey-haired man at the front of the room. He lifts his head from the console he’s leaning over and looks squarely at Rene.

  “Professor, this is Robert Strong, from Romfield,” says Rene.

  “Ah yes. I heard you were coming.” His accent is German, or Austrian. He shakes my hand. “You’ve picked a good time for a transfer. Just don’t use any initiative. Strictly observation, okay?” He winks at me.

  “I understand.” But I can’t promise.

  Rene leads me towards the back of the room and stops at a desk. Four screens per computer; three seats per station. “This is the station for our sub-detector.” He gestures to the seat next to him.

  I drop my rucksack on the floor.

  “All right, people, we have a very big day ahead of us.” Von Clerk announces. “We only have five days left before the launch...” – scattered applause and whistles ripple round the room – “and we’ll be out of action from Friday while the engineers run their last tests. That gives today and tomorrow to make sure we’re ready, so I need everybody’s full attention. Can I also take this chance to introduce Robert Strong, who has been working at the UK end of the Grid.” Faces turn towards me, some smiles. I wave a little awkwardly, flushed in the spotlight. Professor Von Clerk claps his hands. “Okay, then, let’s get started.”

  But there’s one person who doesn’t move. He stands at the other end of the room, tall and lean with shoulder length grey hair, a clean-shaven face and small round specs. He continues to stare at me while the others take their places. I feel the man’s eyes boring into mine, but Rene doesn’t notice as he babbles on, explaining the data on the screens. I nod but barely hear him.

  “But just ask if you are not sure, yes?” says Rene. “We have done these tests so many times now, that... Jack!” he says as a man with a pony-tail sits down to his left. “This is Robert Strong. He comes from Romfield Labs. In England.”

  “It is good to meet you, Robert,” says Jack, extending his hand. His accent is American, but I have difficulty placing the state. “Jack Harley. Rene’s showing you the ropes?”

  “He’s keeping me in line.” Jack turns to his console. He doesn’t seem to share the buzz of the other people. If anything he looks worn out. “Rene,” I say in a low voice, “who’s the guy over there, with the blue shirt and the round glasses?” I nod to the man, who’s pointing at his screen while a younger man beside him looks on and nods.

  “That’s Professor Stiller,” says Rene. “He’s been here a long time. Bit of a loner, you know? But he’s very good at his job.”

  “Really?” I watch Professor Stiller. He looks older than I recall from the photograph in Amos’s office, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s him. My stomach has twisted itself into a tight coil.

  “Yeah,” says Rene. “He has a real passion for his work – I mean more than most people. He’s one of the best.” I feel a flush of pride.

  Professor Stiller glances at me again. It’s as though an unspoken bond connects us. He knows. We both do. I want to walk up to him now, to forget the worm and the threat from the accelerator and everything else. I want to tell him what I’ve done with my life, to fill him in on all those years. But what if it doesn’t work out like that? What if he doesn’t want to know?

  Professor Stiller’s mobile phone rings. He steps away from his desk, frowning. He walks up the metal staircase to the mezzanine level above, then glances down at me. I drop my gaze and stare at my console, but on the edge of my vision I see him pacing back and forth, muttering into the phone. He nods and ends the call, then trudges down the stairs. He doesn’t look at me after that.

  I feel for the memory stick on the cord beneath my shirt. How the hell am I going to do this?

  BY SIX PM, I’m hungry. Jack has adopted me, since Rene has a few things he wants to run through, and seems to think that if you need a food break your heart’s not really in it. Professor Stiller keeps his distance. I walk beside Jack, whose long limbs mean I’m virtually jogging to keep up with him.

  “Is Rene wearing you out yet?”

  I smile. “He’s keen, isn’t he?”

  “Never slows down. He’s like that all day, every day. Lives and breathes it.”

  We pause to allow a car to pass on Route Marie Curie.

  “I thought everyone would be like that, given what’s happening.”

  “Well, most of us are. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible time.” Somehow his expression doesn’t convey his conviction as he holds open the door of Restaurant 1. It opens into a long brightly-lit hall lined with rows of dark wooden tables. It looks like an upmarket service station. I follow Jack to the hot food queue.

  “So, how long have you been here?” I ask as I ladle some fried rice onto a plate.

  “Just over six months. I’m not much less of a rookie than you are.”

  “What did you do to get here, then?”

  Jack throws a sideways glance at me that suggests it’s a long story. “Let’s just say, my previous employers thought that a stint in a prestigious establishment like CERN would do me some good. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible opportunity, and a few years ago, I’d have jumped at it.”

  We pay for our food and find a table by the window. Outside, trees bend in the breeze, and the sky is a clear cornflower blue. “Is this where all the staff come for lunch?”

  I glance round to see if I can see Professor Stiller, but he is not amongst the diners.

  “Mostly,” says Jack. “If they’re working this end. There are a couple of other restaurants on site, but this one’s usually the busiest.”

  “I bet there’ve been a lot of good ideas generated around these tables.” Those ‘eureka’ moments often don’t happen at a computer, or in the lab; they happen when you’re doing something else, like doodling on a napkin in the canteen.

  “Hey, Jack.”

  I look up. A blonde woman in her thirties, with skin like white china and dark eyes behind oblong specs, stops at our table. She lays down her tray and drains the last of the Coke from her glass. “Guess what I’ve just heard?”

  “Robert, this is Helena Stanford. Helena works in the Computer Centre. Helena, this is Robert Strong. He’s a visiting computer scientist from Romfield. Maybe you could show him around your patch.”

  Maybe she could give me the access code for the Operator’s Room.

  Helena raises her eyebrows. “Good to meet you, Robert. How long are you here for?”

  “Not long – just a short secondment.”

  “Good timing. So,” she says, turning back to Jack. “Any guesses?”

  Jack shakes his head. “Blow me away, Helena.” His voice is flat, a monotone.

  “John Bryson just called me. There’s a rumour Fermilab are onto a new particle.”

  Jack straightens up. “What is it?”

  “It’s communicating a new kind of force – not gravity, not electromagnetism, not the
weak or strong forces. This is completely new.”

  “It’s not part of the standard model?”

  “Nope. We might have to rewrite the textbooks. Maybe they found what you’ve been looking for, Jack. You could be working in the wrong accelerator. Nice to meet you, Robert.” She lifts her tray and walks off, glancing back before she leaves.

  Jack stares after her.

  “That’s huge news,” I say.

  “I think I’ll wait for the press release.”

  “So what is it you’ve been looking for?”

  Jack lowers his eyes, and pushes the remains of his stew around his plate. “It was nothing. Too many years spent on a wild goose chase.”

  “Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been nothing.”

  He studies the space below my face then meets my eye. “I was looking for the particle that communicates consciousness.”

  “Oh?”

  “I set up a project with a quantum biology team in the UK. I had a first class PhD student working on it – we just needed a chance to complete the work.”

  Right. A fringe scientist. I glance at the thin friendship band on his wrist. “Who knows? Maybe you were onto something.” I’m being polite, and he knows it.

  He snorts. “That’s one of the more reserved responses I’ve had. My boss wasn’t so understanding. He sent me here on a kind of rehab – to get back into mainstream particle physics.”

  “So how’s the rehab going?”

  “It’s okay, I suppose.” He shrugs. “It’s been hard to shelve the work I believed in. I just ran out of steam.” We’ve got something in common – our research trashed by someone else’s decisions.

  I feel sorry for him, even if he is a misfit.

  HE’S A DECENT misfit, because he gives me a ride to my apartment. The rest of the shift went smoothly, and I didn’t see Elliot Strong again. I did find his office, though, in the corridor beside the control room. Third along on the right, with the wrong name on the door. I had mixed feelings when I saw the nameplate – Professor P. Stiller. I wanted to hang around to see if he would come back, but Von Clerk wasn’t far off and I didn’t need any unwanted attention. It would have to wait until tomorrow.