Return of the Ancients

Chapter 3 The Speed of Light

The group moved like some many-legged organism towards the main entrance of the giant, sagging sandwich building. Arn was amazed by how modern the interior was, how clean, how… sterile. But something else struck him as strange — it was almost empty.

‘Where is everyone?’

A balding, smallish man was making his way towards them, and Arn’s voice must have carried in the library-like hush of the high-ceilinged building.

‘Mostly under your feet. Like just about everything else in the Fermilab community.’

Beescomb cleared his throat and walked forward to introduce himself. The small man nodded, shook his outstretched hand, and held out his other hand for the paperwork. He quickly scanned it, and then stepped back from the shadow of the larger teacher so the students could see him.

As he did, a number of large dogs raced up, pushing in between the crowd and quickly sniffing pockets, bags and fingers. Some of the girls squealed, and Arn reached down to pat one of the largest dogs, who gave his fingers a quick sniff before racing off after a discreet signal from its keeper.

‘Don’t mind them,’ said the small man. ‘Just working members of the security detail. In those few seconds they were among us, they searched for everything from explosives to drugs, and even for excessive nervousness — they miss a lot less than the most sophisticated electronics. In fact, you might be interested to know that Fermilab is breeding some of the best and smartest guard dogs in the entire world: increased intelligence, size, and a higher tolerance to ionising radiation — our new guardians if you like.’ He gave a small nod, like a bow. ‘My name is Dr. Albert Harper, and I’m the chief physicist working on the Tevatron project. I’d like you all to follow me to the theatre for a short background briefing before we descend for the test-firing.’

A couple of hands shot up, but Harper held up his own like a traffic cop. ‘Whoa, not yet. I’ll take questions following the presentation — we simply cannot be late; the project has cost about a billion dollars, and is being monitored and managed by a very large, very expensive, and very impatient team.’

He laughed as though he was joking, but Arn knew the head scientist had got his message across: you’re on my turf and my time — jump to it.

The group filed into the amphitheatre, and Arn let his long hair fall forward over his face to try to avoid seeing a glaring Steve Barkin skulking at the rear.

Before the last student had sat down, the theatre darkened and Harper’s voice droned from speakers around the room.

‘Welcome to Fermilab… funny name right? He peered around the room, his eyebrows raised and an ironic smile indicating no answer was really expected.

‘Well, the science community you’ve come to today was originally home to the village of Weston, and was once little more than farmland. In fact, you might see some of the first barns still around the place. There’s even a small burial ground with tombstones dating all the way back to 1839. We still maintain it out of respect for the original inhabitants.’

Arn kept his mouth shut, even though his, and Dr. Harper’s, concept of original inhabitants differed by about 250 years.

Harper continued. ‘We weren’t always called Fermilab though. We actually started out as the National Accelerator Laboratory when President Lyndon B. Johnson himself commissioned it in 1967. But, in 1974 the laboratory was renamed in honour of Nobel Prize winner, Enrico Fermi, one of the most famous physicists of the atomic age and…’

Edward’s hand shot up, and at the same time his voice sprang from the dark next to Arn. ‘The father of the atomic bomb.’

Harper pointed to where Edward’s voice had risen, and nodded. ‘Yes, yes he worked on the Manhattan Project, but did you know he also developed the world’s first nuclear rector, and contributed to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics?’ Again the eyebrows went up.

Harper’s voice had become momentarily rushed as though responding to a challenge. He paused, staring in Edward’s direction for a few seconds before he smiled, and smoothly changed back to talking about the facility, his voice once again relaxed. ‘Since those early days we have grown, adding extra circumference, accelerators, and too many upgrades to mention.’

Harper waggled a finger in the air. ‘Although there is one worth mentioning.’ A giant image appeared behind him of a ruby red cylinder — glass-like, perfect — a magnificent stone. ‘Diamonds used to only be a girl’s best friend, well, now they’re the nuclear physicist’s greatest gift. They are unparalleled in their transmission of heat and light, and are virtually indestructible. Our friends down under at Australia’s Macquarie University found that their optical properties far surpassed anything else at the unique wavelengths required for high-powered laser technology. And red was best, because it allowed a pure beam without all of white light’s additional, fractious particles.’

Hands went up around the room — where was it found? Is it expensive? Is it here? Can we see it?

Harper waved the hands down. ‘For a start, we didn’t find it, we grew it. Took over a year to create this single, three-inch structure via chemical vapour deposition — the result, after cutting and polishing — a lens of perfect, consistent clarity. And, at US ten million dollars, it was a fraction of the cost of using a natural diamond. Not that you’d be lucky enough to ever find one like it.’

Harper looked at the image of the red diamond for a few seconds, the red glow reflecting on his shiny face as well as an expression that was a mix of pride and adoration. ‘Yes, we’ve come a long way.’

He lifted one arm theatrically to motion towards the screen. ‘To where we are today.’ Pictures of rolling green fields and forested countryside were displayed against a backing soundtrack of birdsong and soft music. It faded out, dream-like, to be replaced by images of the massive Tevatron collider.

The view shot into the sky, and panoramic pictures from miles overhead showed the size and scale of the gigantic Fermilab project. The physicist recited his lines with great enthusiasm — the world’s second most powerful proton-antiproton collider — four miles in diameter, but able to send particles around its gigantic ring at 99.999 per cent of the speed of light, completing the four-mile trip nearly 50,000 times per second. The objective was to smash those particles together at a rate of almost two million collisions each second.

Arn nodded in the dark, scribbling notes without looking down at the page. Cool, he thought. He turned his head to the left and saw the presentation screen reflected in Edward’s glasses — tiny copies of the Tevatron in each of the lenses. He smiled — his friend’s face was rapt with awe. Turning slowly to his right, he saw that the light made Becky look even prettier. Again, he wished he could think of something cool or funny to say, but gave up in case he sounded like a jerk… again.

He slowly eased back in his seat, and snuck a look over his shoulder to where Barkin and his friends were seated. Huddled together, their faces were also lit up, but by something Barkin was holding on his lap — a portable PC game, probably. Grades are gonna be looking good again this year, Stevo, Arn thought and chuckled softly.

Arn turned in his seat, happy that he wasn’t the focus of the dimwit’s attention for at least a few moments, just as a new image appeared up on the large screen, and Dr. Harper was moving into presentation wrap-up mode.

The new pictures were of the void of space and distant galaxies, and Harper was talking about the connection between physics and astrophysics, and how their project would assist in solving the mysteries of dark matter throughout the universe.

A crude drawing was attached to the lower corner of the image — a rough cartoon, but its point was clear. Darth Vader was holding up a lightsaber next to some crudely scrawled words: ‘The dark side controls the universe — dark matter holds it together — and dark energy determines your destiny.’

‘Dark energy determines your destiny’ — good quote, Arn thought, as the lights came up.

The student group was herded from the amphitheatre and down a long corridor, before being shown to a set of large steel doors. Behind them, heavy clanking and whirring could be heard until the giant doors slid back to reveal a grey service elevator large enough to fit ten elephants — or twenty boisterous teenage students — with ease.

Arn and Edward stayed near the front, and Becky stood to the side, chatting animatedly with her friends. As the doors slid shut, from the rear came the familiar voice of Steve Barkin: ‘Smells like a thousand butt cracks in here’ — followed by the nasal sniggering of his close friend, Otis Renshaw.

Arn tried to stop himself, but couldn’t resist. ‘Only you would know what that smelled like, Barkin.’

The lift erupted in laughter. Even Becky covered her mouth to hide a laugh and Beescomb scowled from under his brows, but didn’t say a word. Beside him, Edward rolled his eyes, before shooting Arn a clear you are really asking for it kind of expression.

The lift continued down for another few seconds, and Arn noticed that Becky had moved a little closer to him in the crowd. Hmm, he pondered — insults, the way to a girl’s heart.

Steve Barkin felt his face burn. He watched Becky smile and mouth something to Arn, which he bet was about him. The guy was making him look like an ass in front of his friends, his former girlfriend, and the entire freakin’ class.

He couldn’t believe it. If she ever dated Singer, Barkin would be a laughing stock. Becky Matthews and the redskin? That… was… not… going… to… happen.

Before this trip was over, he’d have to think of a way to take him down a peg or two.

Like the Pied Piper, Dr. Harper led them to the Tevatron control room. Beescomb was content to bring up the rear to ensure no solo explorations took place. After being ushered through another door, Arn’s expectations soared. He was amazed by the sheer number of screens and monitors that completely covered three of the four walls in the near freezing, barn-sized room.

The core of the Tevatron, the entire ring, the collision points, the magnetic resonance fields — everything was being scrutinised by both human and electronic eyes that missed nothing. Several technicians continued to tap away at recessed keyboards, or stared intently at graphs, calibrations and rows of numbers scrolling down their screens — but none turned, or even acknowledged the college party in any way. Just as Arn was thinking they were probably bored by the continual parade of tour groups, Harper spoke up softly from the back of the room.

‘Excuse the technicians. The new laser acceleration will be test-firing this morning, and as you would expect, it has created a lot of excitement and anticipation. Also, each firing has a considerable dollar cost associated with it, not to mention months of planning and preparation. So the teams are all pretty focused. Perhaps we can chat to them after the firing, and they can tell us about their results. Okay?’

A few shrugs and bored looks didn’t daunt the bookish scientist, and he continued to point out different areas of the room and their team members, and talk a little more about the role of each section.

Arn and Edward were at the front, and craned their necks when Harper described to the group where each of the collisions would take place. He finished by telling them that, though they would be observing the test-firing from here, he was also going to take them down to the lowest level where the collider ring was housed — to the actual collision ground zero. Arn heard his friend breathe the word awesommme as they were escorted from the control room.

They went down in the enormous lift once again. This time when the giant elevator doors slid back they revealed a cavernous room the size of an aircraft hangar, complete with high roof, fortified concrete walls, and little else except for a set of steel doors at the end. They reminded Arn of the type you see on a submarine.

Harper looked briefly at his watch and then called everyone together. He leaned towards Beescomb and said something softly that caused the teacher to nod and fall in behind the group, perhaps to ensure that no stragglers wandered off. For his part, Beescomb was beaming. The most enthusiastic kid in the group, thought Arn.

While he talked, Harper led everyone towards one of the submarine doors at the far end of the cavernous chamber. Once Beescomb had corralled everyone in a huddle behind Harper, the Fermilab physicist entered some codes into a small silver keypad, waited until a row of red lights turned green, spun the wheel on the door, and then pushed it inwards.

The strange smell was the first impression Arn had of the shaft — metallic, sharp… reminding him of a short circuit or a smell he encountered once during a plasma discharge display at a science fair. Ozone, sprang to his mind.

Arn looked one way, then the other — the tunnel stretched away in both directions. Lit to a surgical brightness, it only disappeared as it bent into the start of its four-mile loop, hundreds of feet further away.

Harper stood like a showman, with his hands on his hips and a proud smile on his face. ‘The Tevatron’s particle collision track…’ He opened his arms wide, flat hands pointed in each direction of the tunnel. ‘… Runs like this, nearly uninterrupted for miles. I say nearly because the only stop is the collision point where we monitor what happens when we smash the particles together.’

‘Where?’ The question had come from behind Arn, but he had the same query. Where was the collision point? For that matter, where was the Tevatron track? The tunnel seemed to be bare, except for some grey pipes on one side of the wall that looked more like normal basement plumbing. At a minimum, he was expecting some sort of gigantic, reinforced pathway that housed the power of subatomic particles, moving at the speed of light.

Harper nodded and pointed to the thickest of the grey pipes. Arn nearly groaned; it was no more than waist thickness — there were no flashing lights, no shiny steel casing, no coiled wires… just a damned ordinary-looking pipe. Where’s the magic? he wondered, sighing and jotting a few more notes.

Harper turned to his left, and waved them all to follow as he set off, passing small doors built into the side of the tunnel’s walls, talking as he went.

‘Beams of particles travel through a vacuum, surrounded by super powerful magnets. These magnets bend the beam in a large circle, and by using a series of accelerators we eventually get the little critters gaining speeds close to that of light.’ He stopped and looked around at the small group, smiling as though he had just imparted a valuable secret. He waited for a second or two, perhaps to see if there were any questions; when there weren’t, he turned back and waved over his shoulder for his charges to follow.

After another five minutes of walking in silence, broken only by the hint of a background hum of electronics, Harper stopped the group at a section of the tunnel where there was an enormous bulge in the pipe — like those tabloid pictures of an anaconda that has just swallowed someone’s cat. Circling the bulge was a metallic ring that had spikes, knobs and strange devices covering its entire surface. At last, Arn thought. This is more like it.

Dozens of cameras and monitoring equipment studded the walls and the ring itself. Harper looked at the bulge of sophisticated electronics lovingly, and rested his hand lightly on it. He turned, his face bright with pride.

‘Speeds close to light…’ He paused, his gaze taking in their faces. ‘… That was — until today. Today, we use the photonic laser accelerator.’ Like a game show host, he briefly indicated a broomstick-wide pipe that entered the bulge. At its centre was a dazzling red stone — the diamond. It glowed softly and looked… warm.

Harper continued. ‘Normally, once the particles are travelling at 99.999 per cent the speed of light, we collide them… but not today. Instead we are going to fire the laser at the particles and accelerate them even further. Will we actually attain the speed of light? Our computer modelling says we might. Our modelling also says we might even… exceed it!’

He took his hand off the ring, but looked back at it lovingly. Arn wondered if he was going to pat it like a favourite pet.

‘What if you create a black hole? Could it destroy the planet — eat the mass of the Earth down to nothing?’ Becky had her chin out and was on her toes, asking the question over the top of taller kids’ heads.

Good on her, thought Arn.

Even cynical Edward, who had sidled up next to him, whispered, ‘Someone’s been paying attention to your notes after all.’

Harper chuckled softly. ‘Good question, miss. Could we create a black hole — a dark matter anomaly? It’s certainly possible. There are many strange and exotic particles we’re hoping to create. Some we probably don’t even have names for yet.’ He looked around for a few seconds to build up some suspense, obviously enjoying the theatre of it all, before his eyes found Becky again. ‘But do I think it will absorb the Earth? No. Even if we create a heavy-gravity particle, it will be so miniscule that it won’t exist long enough to absorb matter, or give off any dangerous X-ray or gamma radiation. It will exist in our reality for perhaps a millionth of a second, and will be seen and experienced only by the computers… from in there.’ He pointed to the bulge.

‘But it’s possible?’ It was Edward’s turn. ‘And what about wormholes?’ Edward’s voice rose and echoed in the tunnel, but his small stature made it hard for Harper to find him among the group.

Arn nudged him. ‘Way to go, Skywalker.’ He laughed at his friend’s determination to inject some science fiction into Harper’s science fact.

Dr. Harper gave up trying to find the new voice and looked as if he was going to ignore Edward, when the young comic book buff spoke again.

‘Even a dark matter anomaly the size of a pinhead could theoretically create a distortion in space and time. That’s true, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I…’

Edward jumped in again. ‘Theoretically, it could actually unpick a thread… open a doorway — a one- or two-way entrance to somewhere else… to some-when else.’

Harper held up his hands and raised both eyebrows. ‘Wormholes, time-travel, strange particles… exciting, isn’t it? The possibilities are endless. You’re a good group.’ He was silent for a moment, once again drawing up the suspense. ‘Every experiment in particle physics is a leap into the unknown. You could well be witnessing history today. Each of you may go home on the bus, and be able to say, today, I saw the future.’

‘Oh, brother,’ whispered someone from the back of the room. Arn turned to see Steve Barkin sneering.

Mr. Beescomb clapped, and tried unsuccessfully to get the class to join in with him for a few seconds — before giving up and settling for just clearing his throat and offering some words of praise on behalf of the college.

Steve Barkin gradually managed to drop a little behind. Bumbling Beescomb was clearly preoccupied with the ongoing discussion he was having with the dump’s chief dweeb, and not watching each of his charges.

Barkin was sulking, bored, and ambled along, placing his hand on the levers for each of the small doors. None of the levers budged an inch, until…

One of the doors opened smoothly and silently. Barkin looked down to see the lock panel was registering green, not red indicating a sealed door. He quickly looked inside — a smallish room with maintenance equipment, some suits with glass face-panels, and rows of thick boots and gloves.

He snorted. It reminded him of one of his online games about mutants in the future, where everyone wears biohazard suits and spends all their time either shooting at, or being shot at by zombies. How the zoms managed to shoot guns, when they couldn’t even speak, was beyond him.

He went to pull the door shut, then he paused. A smile drew one side of his mouth up, and he closed the door quietly. It’ll be perfect, he thought.

He quickly caught up to his friend Otis and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back to the rear of the group. In a few seconds he had explained his plan, and Otis grinned and nodded enthusiastically.

Barkin sniggered as he imagined how his plan would work. He just needed a little diversion, and then Singer would look stupid and be in trouble all at the same time. Perfect, he thought again.

Arn was fascinated by technology. Any sort of groundbreaking wild science attracted him like a moth to the front porch in summer. Ever since his father had brought home a book on the ancient Greeks, he had been filled with an insatiable hunger to learn more — not about their politics, culture, or even their art — but about their machines.

He dropped back, telling Edward he’d catch up later. He sketched the particle collision track in his notepad, wrote a few sentences he’d expand on later, and then spent a little time looking at the back of Becky’s head. Her long dark hair shone in the artificial light of the ring chamber. He wondered what it felt like — silk, he bet… and probably smelled like apples — wild apples, whatever they smelled like. But it just sounded right. He sighed.

Overhead, red domed bulbs started to flash and turn — like upside down ambulance lights, but without the accompanying scream of sirens. Harper looked from the lights to his watch, clapped his hands once, said a few words to the group to round things off, and then started herding them back the way they had come. Arn stepped back as they pushed past, quickly finishing his notes.

He hurried to catch up, and as he was about to pass one of the submarine doors, he noticed that Barkin’s friend Otis was talking animatedly to Beescomb up ahead. He couldn’t imagine what it was about, as he doubted this field trip would have been high on Otis’s interest-Richter Scale, or whether he even understood what it was about. Arn shook his head. Strange, he thought — the way Otis hung onto Beescomb’s arm, like he was guiding him.

Just as Arn was wondering where Otis’s partner in crime might be, from behind him he felt his T-shirt being pulled out of his jeans, and then up and over his head. He was spun around, and a fist to the stomach up under his diaphragm knocked the air from his lungs, and any words from his mouth. The blow made his legs go weak, and he doubled over. Just as he felt himself falling, he was wrenched up and dragged to one side.

The flashing red lights, which made the inside of his T-shirt pulse red every second, suddenly went dark, and he was pushed to the floor. A familiar voice sneered, ‘So long, Singer — I hear radiation shrinks your balls. But that shouldn’t worry someone who didn’t have any to start with.’ There was a soft, cruel laugh, the sound of a door closing, and then… complete darkness.

Arn rolled over and sat up, pulling the shirt down from his head. He blinked. Everything was so dark, it was as if his eyes had been painted black. He managed to gulp air into lungs that still didn’t want to fully inflate, and he got to his feet holding his arms out in front of him.

He was like a blind man who had lost his cane. He couldn’t tell if he was in a room as big as an aircraft hangar, or as small as a broom closet. He certainly couldn’t hear the sound of his college group anymore.

The class was herded back into the lift. Edward tried to ask some questions, but Harper, distracted, kept checking the time and apologising for keeping them so long. The laser test-firing must have been nearing its countdown.

The lift took them back up towards the monitoring room. Harper turned to the chattering class and put his finger to his lips before he opened the door. He spoke softly to Beescomb and pointed to the rear of the room, and then went to join the technicians.

The room, which was so quiet before, was now a hive of frantic activity. Edward wondered why they had needed to be silent, as instructions, countdowns, and equipment checks were shouted from one scientific team member to the next.

Edward narrowed his eyes to concentrate on the multiple screens and display panels within the room, his gaze at last resting on a digital clock counting down in hundredths of a second — there was little more than four minutes remaining.

He stood on his toes and looked for his friend.

Arn slowly felt his way around the room. His outstretched hand and fingers drifted over locker doors, then some empty space, and then… He jerked back his hand, his heart pounding hard in his chest for an instant when he thought he felt a person there, standing quietly in the impenetrable dark.

He swore softly as he gripped the sleeve, and began to laugh in relief — it was just some sort of suit. Feeling around some more, his hand brushed across the top of a bench, knocking a plastic cup to the floor and sending a ballpoint pen rolling across its surface. Finally his fingers closed on a small plastic cigarette lighter.

He flicked the wheel, but other than a spark from the flint, there was nothing. He tried again and again — but obviously there was no gas. Still he held it out and flicked the wheel a few times more, spying the outline of a door in the split-second illumination. He stuck the lighter in his pocket and felt about the door until he came to the locking mechanism. He found, as he had hoped, that the door locked from the outside, but not from the inside. There was a button. He pressed it and pushed — the door swung open easily.

‘That’s one I owe you, Barkin.’

He stepped from the chamber and looked left and right. He was close to the laser acceleration track, and not far from where the ring bulged around the pipe. With all the cameras positioned there, he expected he’d get someone’s attention pretty quickly.

Barkin is going to pay for this, he thought, and jogged towards the bulge, leaning in close to the mechanism and waving his arms.

‘Moving into ignition lockdown.’ The room fell into silence. Even the chattering students were silenced by the suspense as they watched the screens.

A computer-generated voice counted down from thirty seconds: Twenty-nine — twenty-eight — twenty-seven — twenty-six…

One of the technicians was on his feet pointing. ‘Wha… what the… there’s a kid in there!’

The room descended into shouting, panic and confusion. Beescomb went as white as a sheet as he recognised the figure on the screen. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came.

Twenty — nineteen — eighteen — seventeen…

‘Shut it down, shut it down!’

Barkin smirked at the rear of the observation room and nudged Otis. Harper grabbed and lifted one of the technicians from his seat, taking control of his command board. The scientist’s voice had gone up several octaves as he screamed over his shoulder, ‘Abort, abort! For God’s sake, abort!’

Five — four — three — two…

The synthetically calm computer voice intoned, ‘Laser firing commencing.’

The room froze as if time had stopped. There was no sound or movement as everyone watched the screens. Edward held his breath.

The photonic diamond glowed, turning the chamber, and their screens an infernal red as the particles, which were travelling at a fraction under the speed of light, were given an extra kick by the laser.

On the screen, they could see Arn stop waving and turn to look at the bulge. The screen blurred slightly, like it was recording something behind a gauze veil. Then Arn blurred as the veil thickened and became more like a waterfall of oil.

Edward sucked in a breath in horror. Arn seemed to bend unnaturally for a moment, his body distorting, his mouth opening in a silent scream of pain and confusion. The Hadean red glow of the diamond, coupled with Arn’s horrific contortions, made it a scene straight from the pit of Hell.

The display went black.

The only sound Edward heard was Becky screaming Arn’s name. She actually cares after all, he thought with surprise.

The screen came back on.

Arn was gone.