Introduction

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Richard Brisling’s lecture on The Beginning

April, 14 2011

“We had a beginning and by we, I mean the universe of course…..go back far enough and you will see. The math has been done, checked, then re-checked, there is no mistake...we think.  As humanity began to reeeally observe the universe around us we noticed one important thing, expansion.  Everywhere we looked, expansion, continuation, chaos fulminating into order.  All supposedly caused by a single event.

    Go back far enough and what do we have?  A single mote maybe? Tiny, unnoticeable, irrelevant. Or was it a suitcase sized mass?  Or even as big as a car?  No one really knows, what we think we know involves our understanding of time and its linear appearance to us. We are reverse engineering time as we know it. We know that the expansion is happening, we’ve witnessed for ourselves cause and effect, scale is the only difference. If we accept that the dynamics of these types of events are a constant then we can conclude that scale is irrelevant.  

    Which leads us to the concept of the ‘Big Bang’. The idea that everything you see here on earth, and everywhere else you can physically look at, came from one single event, one explosion”. The doctor stopped to take a drink from a half filled glass in front of him on the lectern. Seeming to pause a moment to gather himself, he continues on.

“One explosion, and following our understanding of those dynamic actions we suppose the universe came into being…..but we’re forgetting one thing. In any explosion, big or small, there is always leftover residue, particles of the original cataclysm, pieces of the inciting matter for these most energetic releases.  These are things we know from what we’ve observed here on Earth.  So I ask you ...why wouldn’t it be the same for the very first explosion ever?  What exception could it possibly happen under?  The answer is, it didn’t.  

   Once again we come back to scale. In the original mote there was everything that would ever be in this universe within it. When the expansion began, the fuel for it came from that mote. So ask yourselves, was it all used up in the expansion event? OR....did it comply with the normal accepted rules as we understand them?!  Are there remnants of the fuel for that explosion still around today?  Logically there has to be. What would these remnants consist of?  I would imagine something tiny, somewhere near the quantum level, but extremely powerful, composed of every single elemental substance present in this universe. I can’t imagine though that there would be that much of it left.  The chances of encountering it would be exceedingly rare to non-existent…… and yet…..I can’t help but fear the inevitable collision that might ensue in trying to capture such a particle.  How could terrestrial technology contain something that is basically part of the fabric of existence?  It could not………

Chapter 1

That which we do

The Hadron, particle test lab, undisclosed location somewhere near Amarillo, TX

April 16, 2012 8:21 am

“Standby!.......release is imminent”. The voice coming out in a loud Klaxon was just a random tech assigned to announce whatever came across his monitoring station.  He occupied a small room in the lower control room which was further inside the accelerator facility. It was closer to the action.  At the first sound everyone at the facility turned to listen to it. Today was a very important day.  It was the very first experiment involving this new state of art particle accelerator.  Built over the course of ten years at a cost ranging in the few billion it represented the new cutting edge in science. 

      The facility itself was immense.  Located in the middle of an unused military reservation that was over two hundred square miles in size.  Built on a giant slab of bedrock the facility was created to be the new frontier in American science.  It would be here that some of the basic questions about the universe would be answered.  Today was only a simple test of the accelerator’s abilities.  For today’s initial experiment they were sending in a stream of protons in order to create a simple impact event. 

“Everyone to their stations for ready-mark..t-minus 4 minutes”.   The voice commanded. 

       Several people attired in lab coats began shuffling around to find the reporting stations from which each of them would monitor different aspects of the event.  It was then that the director of the facility arrived, stepping up from the stairwell that led from the first floor to the second floor control room.

She had waited till now to appear, after nervously pacing in her private office for the last ten minutes.  This needed to go well. 

    Dr. Heidi Trent was a highly respected physicist, some would say thee most respected.  She was small in stature, with a short pageboy haircut and thick black rimmed glasses. It was hard to tell her background, though obviously ethnic, she was reluctant to ever speak of it.  She had a semi dark hue to her skin, rich like caramel.  When she spoke though it belied her stature, her voice was clear, loud and strong. 

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

       When the time had come to decide just who should head up a project like this there had been only one name submitted, hers.  It was agreed by almost anyone who knew her credentials that Dr. Trent was the perfect person for the job.  There were no equals on earth to her when it came to physics.  The fact that she was still quite young was irrelevant, her intellect was untouchable.  

     She was young because she had been a child prodigy to start with.  At age 8 she was reading at the highest level, extrapolating new formulas and generally impressing any academic she was exposed to. They had all seen what she was and knew their own intellects, though impressive, were but candle lights to the blazing sun that was her brain.  So she had to come to this place.  She had taken charge without rancor from anyone.  Her intellectual superiority, an already accepted fact among the staff.

“Is everyone at their stations ready?”. She asked, turning to one of her assistants.  

“We’re getting green lights across the boards.  Everything is online and functioning. The static test was flawless, all devices performed perfectly. We’re just waiting for the charge up now so we can begin the test”.  The enormous amount of energy needed to accelerate particles required the facility to handle massive amounts of electricity.  In order to avoid local blackouts the facility had the ability to build a charge they could then use for their experiments. 

“Good job Duncan, let's get ready ourselves.  I need you to go and physically check each station.  Make sure that there’s nothing being overlooked.  We…”.  Suddenly the voice came back over the facility's address system interrupting the doctor's string of orders.

“Imminent collision event detected...I repeat ….imminent collision event”.  Everyone stopped their shuffling and became completely still and silent.  Dr. Trent surveyed the board wide eyed, not believing the announcers words.  There were no particles present in the chamber.  She looked over to the release station to see if there had been a human error.  But the attendant of that station, Dr. Weintz, was himself trying frantically to determine what was going on. 

“Dr. Weintz...what’s going on over there?!”

“I’m checking the system now, there can’t be an event about to happen, that’s impossible!”

“Why!?” Was all she asked. Dr Weintz turned so Heidi could see his face.

“Because they aren’t even loaded yet, that happens last.  I hadn’t even got to the start up sequence yet!”. His hands were flying wildly across his keyboard as he tried to sort it out. The voice came back just then. 

“Imminent impact event in thirty seconds”.  Heidi heard Dr. Weintz loudly lament.

“What friggin 'event!......there’s nothing in there for christ sakes!”. He was now looking at the connections to his terminal in a hopeless attempt to find a technical snafu. 

“What is it?”. Heidi asked, looking from one station to another and getting the same “I don’t know” face from each of them.  She did the only thing she could think of.

“Ready the capture suite”.  Everyone stopped and looked back at her. Duncan went as far as to step up closer to her to remind her that the capture suite was untested. She waved him away before he could begin his objection.

“Everyone stop looking at me and start doing what I told you”.  She turned to Duncan who was just beginning to restart his objection, cutting him off with a raised hand.  

“I realize it’s untested Duncan, I just can’t see any other way.  That alarm means we can either capture it or risk an unknown impact.  This thing, whatever it is, is about to arrive no matter what so we need to be ready. Ready the capture chamber”.  With that she turned away and back to her own monitor.  The voice returned.

“Tracking event approach, signature looks strong, event in ten...nine”. Heidi started looking over the incoming readings trying to guess what it was that was arriving from who knows where.

“Impact for capture in three...two….one…”. As the last number left the speaker's mouth, every light in the room, and the facility plus the surrounding towns, dimmed to almost darkness, then suddenly snapped back a nano second later to almost too much brightness.  Everyone in the control room involuntarily shaded their eyes from the sudden and untraceable brightness.  The voice came back.

“Capture success...containment reading 100%!”. The unknown voice shouted from the control room.

“Containment of what exactly?”An unrecognized voice asked from the control room floor.  Yeah thought Heidi, exactly what?  Looking at the excited faces in the room she knew she had to assert some control. 

“Everyone calm down, I need systems diagnostics and software checks started immediately.  I want to know just what the hell went wrong here”. With that she turned to Duncan, turning her back and lowering her voice so the others wouldn’t hear.

“Get downstairs, check everything mechanical, make sure this wasn’t a technical failure of the apparatus”.  Duncan nodded once and departed without saying anything more. 

   Dr. Trent refocused her attention to her monitor as the various reporting stations began sending her their diagnostic readouts.  There were no red flags, everything was reading as functional.  It didn’t make sense. Looking back at Dr. Weintz’s station she decided to make sure it wasn’t human error. 

“Weintz!....are you sure there were no particles in the injection chamber”

“Yes!” He yelled back almost too loudly. He continued on in a somewhat shrill voice.

“I’m telling you...there was nothing in there!  I was still three steps away from even pushing the button that would set up the button push that would initiate the whole thing. The chamber was empty I tell you!”. He was still combing over his equipment looking for a break in a wire, anything that would explain what had happened.  It was then that Laurie spoke up from the containment monitor.  

“We have a successful containment event doctor”.  Laurie said while looking over her shoulder at Dr. Trent.  Heidi left her own monitor to rush over to Laurie’s monitor to have a first hand look.

“Well...what is it?”. She asked as she approached and began looking at data streaming across the screen.  Laurie’s answer was confusing 

“I don’t know Dr. Trent”

“What do you mean you don't know?  What does the data say?”. Laurie was already shaking her head back and forth in exasperation.

“It looks like the reader is broken. It just keeps cycling through every known element. There’s something else though, look at this”. She tapped a few keys and suddenly the data stream stopped, frozen at one section.  Laurie pointed out what Heidi had just noticed, which should have been impossible. 

“What the hell is that”. Heidi asked, pointing to one particular data point.  

“Exactly...this thing HAS to be malfunctioning.  Those three elements don’t even exist!”. Heidi was shaking her own head now.  

     Then one particular detail jumped out at her from the screen.  Everything else was right though.  Atomic weights, relative position to each other on the periodic table...everything.  All the data was down the line correct. What did that mean? she wondered.  

“Check then recheck this data...send it to me when you are done”.  She looked over at Weintz who just shrugged his shoulders signifying that he hadn’t found anything wrong in his desperate search.

   It didn’t make sense.  How could one of the most carefully thought out scientific projects ever conceived  have this many problems on its first day.  There had to be a reason……