The Tesla Experiment

Chapter 5

Sam unpacked his bag with savage indifference as the television behind him reported on the investigation lodged into the incident at CERN which derailed construction of the Alice detector. The latter was said to be part of the Large Hadron Collider, to record data from the mimicking of the Big Bang, taking pictures of the smashing of particles, so said the reporter. Yet, they still had no idea how the fire started and it still looked like an electrical short that could have been the cause.

Exhaustion was taking its toll on Sam, but he had to suck it up and pull himself together. To his annoyance as a freelancer, the esteemed nitpicker Penny Richards went ahead and made an appointment with a CERN engineer, Albert Tägtgren, to be interviewed by Sam.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she told Sam. “I just thought you would get on faster if I located you the right people to speak to so that you won’t waste your time trudging through the place looking for someone who could shed some light on the fire.”

“That’s fine, Penny, thank you. But how do you know which people happen to know about the incident?” he asked her, aiming that cynical journalistic radar straight at her. But she was prepared for his astute nature.

“I don’t reckon he would know who started the fire, Mr. Cleave, however as an engineer who specifically works on the Alice detector’s structural resilience and construction, he would be best versed in what kind of structure the detector is build. Therefore, he might know better than anyone else where a fault could have arisen, had it not been arson,” she rambled off, while Sam could not find one suspicious loophole in her explanation and ultimately had to respond with a simple, “Oh, alright then, Penny. I am heading out to CERN soon. I will Skype you this evening.”

“Thank you so much, Sam,” she replied cheerfully. “Have a lovely day.”

He put the phone down. “Aye, I hope your day blossoms into a fervent frenzy of misery, you little gnat.”

Sam had been imagining Penny as a gnat, specifically, since he made her acquaintance. Mentally he likened her to something seemingly insignificant and small that had an uncanny tendency to fly up one’s air passages and wreak havoc. Not a deadly kind of havoc, just enough to spoil you day and make you extremely uncomfortable.

It was morning in Geneva. Breakfast was served and consumed without any enthusiasm from the Scottish journalist, and he shed all manner of cheer to prepare him for a boring day he just wanted to get behind him so that he could get Penny off his back and dive into the bottle of Scotch he had just purchased.

“Looking awfully downtrodden there, son,” a familiar old voice came from behind Sam while he was having his last coffee after emptying most of his plate in the dining hall of his hotel. The distinct Dutch accent was unmistakable. Sam turned around.

“Professor Westdijk! What a pleasant surprise,” he smiled for the first time that morning. The old man gestured for permission to join Sam at his table, his hands full of things — a mug of hot chocolate, a newspaper and a small plate with two slices of dry toast sliding about on the clean porcelain.

“I thought I would find you here, young Sam, but not this soon. I suppose you are here to probe that fire problem?” he asked as he drew his chair closer until his belly cushioned the table.

“Aye.”

“I don’t want to dissuade you, Sam, but I think you are fighting a losing battle. There are over two thousand scientists, engineers and electricians working on the construction of Alice, mostly British. There is not much chance you will get to speak to the right people before the trail goes cold,” the old man remarked while he tried in vain to get the little rock hard block of butter onto his toast.

“It’s funny you should mention that, Professor,” Sam said, “…because I happen to have an appointment with someone I was pointed towards this very morning, for that very reason.”

“Pointed? By whom, exactly?” Professor Westdijk asked, biting into the ridiculous morsel that clearly pained his gums.

Sam checked his notes, “Uh, one Albert Tägtgren?” Sam waited for the professor to light up and recognize the name, but he only nodded, chewing like a horse.

“And what does he do?” Professor Westdijk asked with his mouth full.

“I think he is a structural engineer involved in building Alice,” Sam replied, still hoping there would be more detail behind the man he was to see.

“Nope, don’t know him. It’s a pity, because I know a lot of people working on Alice,” he told Sam, lifting his crooked finger to summon the waiter. “Earl Grey, please.”

“What exactly do you do at CERN, if I may ask,” Sam mumbled to avoid the waiter from hearing.

“I am just an advisor on the CMS… as soon as those inept assholes are done building the damn thing of course. There are about twenty five of us, physics experts in different practices, working on the detector. Most of them are from England and Germany. I am the only one from Holland,” the professor explained. “But I hope you can figure out what happened to Alice. At least that would help the project along, otherwise everything will be put on hold to wait for the closing of the investigation before anything can continue. As you can imagine, with one giant circular tube in which the experiment is to be held, we need all components in running order before any of the other detectors can be activated.”

“I understand,” Sam said. In fact, he did not know exactly how the LHC was to operate, but the professor need not know that. “So everything is held up? I just hope I can get more detail on the electrical workings of the Alice detector, otherwise I will have no way of figuring this one out.”

“Good luck,” the old professor laughed, his cheeks dark pink and his goatee riddled with bread crumbs.

“You make it sound so much easier than my nightmares told me it would be,” Sam smiled miserably, shaking his head.

“Agh, don’t fret, Sam. In time this will also dissipate and what worries you today will be just a memory,” the professor said, wiping his hands on his cardigan. Sam looked at his watch.

“Well, there are questions to be asked. I must dash, Professor. Thanks so much for the conversation. I don’t feel so horribly out of place amongst the guests here now,” he told the old scientist.

“I’ll probably run into you there. Try not to get overwhelmed, alright? It’s just a project. A multi-billion Euro project that will probably come to nothing but factions of physics professors at loggerheads about what they actually achieved by the experiment,” the old man chuckled as Sam waved goodbye and left the hotel, ten minutes behind schedule.

Sam took the time travelling to the CERN facility to enjoy the environment. From what he had learned in his research the construction companies had utilized the unearthed soil and gravel well, but employing the best functional landscaping to create a vast landscape of hillocks and small lakes to form a man-made park. It looked beautiful, with rolling mounds of green lawns and large bodies of water. The tall fence of the facility came into view along the road and Sam’s stomach sank.

He hated to admit that he was not one for science or particle physics and he knew very little about mass construction and super machines. Now he would have to either maintain a ruse of knowledge or let everyone know that he, the great prize winning journalist, was now at the mercy of their tolerance in his ineptitude. Maybe he just felt that way because his life of late had been slightly off the norm. Of all the intense adventure he had survived, perhaps his life could only dip into boredom and lackluster, who knew.

“Credentials,” the guard asked through the driver’s window.

Sam showed the man his press pass and after a brief call to the office, the guard returned. “Section 8 only, Mr. Cleave. There is a restaurant in Section 8 for you to wait. Please do not venture off to any other part of the facility.”

“Thank you,” Sam replied.

As he expected, it was a maze of white coats and hard hats that enveloped him as he searched for Section 8, where Albert Tägtgren would meet him.

“He is probably already waiting, pissed as hell,” Sam muttered to himself as he searched the select few males seated alone in the huge spread of tables in the restaurant, which reminded him more of a mess hall one would find in Star Trek.

“Sam Cleave?” someone said.

“Aye,” Sam almost shouted, elated that he did not have to go along asking every engineer-looking man his name. A very neat blond man appeared in front of him, extending a hand. He wore square glasses and his wedding band was the same color as his tie, Sam noted.

‘Looks like a seventies serial killer to me,’ Sam entertained himself in thought.

“Albert Tägtgren, at your service. Penny Richards told me you would be coming,” he smiled cordially. Sam was relieved that the man with the Swedish accent was not pissed as hell after all.

“I’m sorry I am late, Mr. Tägtgren,” Sam started.

“Please call me Al,” the engineer told Sam. “Everyone calls me Al. It is less… Swedish?” He laughed and took Sam by the upper arm. “Coffee?”

“Oh, no thank you. I just had about a liter of caffeine at my hotel just to wake up. Long night of research,” Sam explained, looking around at the chatting crowd of scientists and construction men.

“Research on CERN?” Al asked him.

“Afraid I still don’t know everything I’m supposed to know,” Sam admitted, choosing the honest, ill-informed path. But it was a good choice, because Albert Tägtgren was the kind of man who enjoyed enlightening laymen on his line of work. He spent the next two hours explaining structural engineering requirements and basically what the collider’s experiments would entail. Sam’s head spun with all the talk of the Higgs boson particle and the speeds at which the collider will propel particles to cause tiny crashes every few seconds, or so he understood the gibberish. Eventually Sam had to remind the over-zealous engineer what he really interviewed him about.

“So, after that bit of background,” he said in his boyish teasing, “can you fill me in on the structural damage sustained during the recent fire?”

His host grew silent for a moment, not expecting that Sam had kept his focus through the entire lecture. Tägtgren cleared his throat and fumbled with his security card. First he surveyed the area as if he was about to share a secret… which he was.

“Mr. Cleave, I have a theory, but honestly I am too reluctant to voice it, especially to a journalist, you understand?” he said under his breath. Sam was very satisfied with the man’s response.

“I understand completely. But if you want, we can keep this off the record,” he assured Albert, switching off his recorder and putting it away. “I am far more interested for myself what the truth is, than to appease a bunch of business moguls looking to find a political scapegoat.”

“Well, I am very happy to hear that, Mr. Cleave, but this is definitely not about politics or competition. In fact, it goes beyond the believable and dare I say, explainable,” Albert whispered urgently.