Chapter 2
That which has been done
Somewhere in the mechanical bowels of the particle accelerator
April 16, 2012 8:31 am
Elijah Jaeb had arrived early to work. He had planned it weeks in advance. He knew as sure as god made little green apples that he would be needed, particularly on this day. Part of what goes into a project this advanced and complicated is the physical engineering of the thing. The actual building of it. That’s where Elijah came in. He had worked on the site from day one when the first shovel went into the ground. There wasn’t a foundation, rivet or conduit he wasn’t intimately aware of. It had been his job to make sure the precise technical specs of just building the foundation, building and overall apparatus were met. The accelerator was a delicate machine. It needed to be built on a single piece of bedrock then shock mounted against vibrations. Even the motion of the earth as it spun through the cosmos, something no one really notices, would be enough vibration to mess up the calculations and measurements.
He was 6’2, an even 210 distributed over a lean athletic body. The slight darkness of his skin, a small hint to his native heritage. His face was kind and honest looking, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair cut short. Elijah had been the honour graduate in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. twelve years ago today. At the time, as the top graduate he had his pick of jobs in the private sector. There were plenty of other opportunities at the time but the one he wanted to work on most was this project. He wasn’t an expert physicist, but he wasn’t a mental slouch either.
Particle acceleration science was the key to so many future advances, he was convinced of it. He’d studied some of the more important papers on the subject meant for lay people. He’d even consulted a few theoretical physicists he knew. Asking them a few questions on theory to help clear the picture up for him. From their explanations, thinking up this experiment was only half the battle, building the apparatus to perform it was the real hurdle.
While today was only really a static test of the basic functions of the accelerator he thought it was important to be on hand for it. He had other tasks to perform naturally. This was only the first in a series of static tests. Sometime next week they were going to be testing the capture chamber. It was working right now but there were still a few more checks and stress tests that needed to be done to make sure it was all working right.
That’s where he was headed right now….to access tunnel twelve B, which ran up the center of the accelerator loop and exited near the power relay system that was used to charge the facility. Elijah wanted to check the transformer links that connected the power to the containment suite. It was a long walk, he occupied his time by doing visual inspections of the various pipes and wire conduit that ran like crazed spaghetti strings down the walls of the tunnel. Nothing on the surface seemed wrong, feeling the odd pipe and conduit he detected no excess heat so nothing was working harder than it should have been which was good.
Soon enough he reached the junction between the two sections. Walking a short ways down the hall he found the access panel he was looking for. He placed the small bundle of tools he had brought with him on the ground in front of it. It was rather large for an access panel, measuring four feet by four feet, but there was a reason for that. Each link in the power transfer system was as big as a human head and there were upwards of twenty of them on the inside of the panel. Lifting the panel free and depositing it in a leaning position along the wall he got his first look at the setup since he had installed it himself. There were some jobs that were just too important to leave to others. Taking the proper tool out of his bundle he got down to the business of checking each link carefully…...
TWO STORIES ABOVE IN THE FACILITY CONTROL ROOM
8:32 am
Laurie had been studying the data from the event intenly for the last few minutes trying to make some sense of it. She had reset the containment suite programs that were responsible for analyzing what was being contained. Reapplying it to the capture event only produced the same result. A rolling scroll of elements, in order from lightest to heaviest, flashing across her screen. The programs were functioning correctly, the containment suite hadn't been contaminated and everything else was functioning as it should. So what the heck was she looking at. She wasn’t given any more time to study because all hell broke loose suddenly.
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A loud alarm sounded, coming from every speaker in the control room at max volume.
“Failure of containment imminent. You have a lead link failure inside the chamber. Reading massive energy fluctuations in our power grid as well. All personnel prepare to evacuate”. No one reacted at first, not believing what they were hearing, convinced they had already faced everything the day could possibly throw at them. Dr. Trent looked up from her monitor, her concentration on the earlier snafu completely broken.
“What’s happening Laurie?”. She could see on Laurie’s face that she had an inkling of what the announcement meant.
“We can’t afford to have any kind of power failure now. That containment unit is holding back something I’ve never seen before. We don’t have any idea what will happen if it breaks the vacuum it’s in right now, it could be catastrophic”. Laurie’s face was now pale white and an impromptu sweat had broken out on her forehead. Heidi waved her hand in the air impatiently gesturing for Laurie to finish her thought quicker.
“Worse case scenario?”
“If whatever we have trapped ignites when it meets air, it will go off next to the nitrogen cooling tower we use to cool the computers, that will punch a whole straight through the west wall”. Laurie was already back at her monitor trying to find a way to isolate the area in question but she ran out of time as the voice came back for just a moment.
“Containment failure, I repeat containment fai….”. It was cut off as all the lights went out and the power grid shut down completely…..
8:35 am
Elijah was just getting to the link for the containment suite when he noticed it was a bit warm, like it was being used. That didn’t seem right, he had seen the printout on the parameters of today's experiment. There had been no mention of an attempt to capture. He was standing there scratching his chin absently looking at the links when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look.
A bright searing light came flying through the wall like some ghost heading straight towards him. He tried to move out of the way instinctually but it only resulted in him exposing more of his body to the bright light, which he could now see had a small spark at its center. It struck him in the middle of his chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and flung him twenty feet in the air down the tunnel until he came up on the junction wall that seperated twelve B from the power relay system. His back was slammed so hard into it that the air completely left his lungs. The attack of force continued unabated, pinning him solidly against the surface leaving him unable to move a muscle. He was looking around frantically, trying to find the source of the unrelenting force pinning him in his place. He saw nothing...until he saw it...them.
A portion of his vision suddenly dimmed completely like he was about to pass out. As he watched, a strange mist appeared in front of his eyes that flowed like water. Then images started flying out of it and towards him until they passed out of sight. He missed the first few then one caught his eye for its strangeness. It was a man, but no kind of man he had ever seen before. He was huge, and he had eight arms, four on each side of his body. He was grotesque, with blotchy skin, a misshapen body and cold cruel eyes. He was holding something in each of his eight hands that Elijah first thought were spheres or maybe balls but as they got closer he realized they were planets. One of the planets in his hands drew the most attention, the planet it held was deep blue, with soft rolling clouds and criss crossing rings around it.
As he passed out of sight another image appeared that didn’t make sense, it was a dinner table with two seats in a dark room that appeared to have no walls. That wasn’t even the weirdest part. As the strange room began to pass beyond his vision he heard a voice suddenly say something.
“Oh...hello...wait...don’t go!”. Then it too faded into the background.
Several other images flashed by that he couldn’t interpret. He was just starting to feel pain from the force of the impact with the wall and a sudden searing sensation that he was just now experiencing dead center on his chest when one more image appeared.
She was beautiful. Her skin was light blue, with swirly patterns of deeper blue on both her cheeks. It wasn’t makeup, she wasn’t human, for some reason he was sure of that. Yet ...she may have been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen before. Her eyes were large ovals and filled with kindness. Her smile, clearly directed at him, glowed in his vision. And she was now looking at him, like he was looking at her, seemingly aware of him. As her face got closer he felt the sensation of being touched on his chest and cheek before she said two words and he lost consciousness.
“Sleep now”
(M.I.T. =Massachusetts Institute of Technology)