Partically Perfect in Every Way
The whirr of the electric motor echoed off the walls, making the 3.8metre tunnel feel much smaller than it actually was. Edward Flint rattled along; a hard hat that seemed surplus to requirement given the speed he was going perched ridiculously on top of his cranium, a tiny light casting a piercing glare in to the gloom that surrounded him. A mop of black hair poked out from the hat band, flicking in to his eyes with every jolt. He was an average man – average height, average weight, average looks, even average clothes. What was not average about Edward Flint, however, was his brain.

He’d tried, on many occasions, to describe how it was that his brain worked. It wasn’t just that he was academically brilliant, although that much was given. He had described his thoughts as pulsating balls of electric light. His mind fizzed to the point that sometimes he felt his brain would dribble out through his ears. And, while he was completely average, he rarely had any thought that could be described as such. His theories dealt with the unimaginably large (such as the construction of the Universe) to the unimaginably small (such as the search for the Higgs boson).

At just twenty four years of age, Edward held his doctorate in Particle Physics. His distinguished academic career had got him noticed by some of the world’s finest minds, and that is how he came to be rattling along a 17 mile long tunnel, a hundred metres below France, in the Large Hadron Collider.

The countdown was on. The machine was built, and the many tests that had to be conducted on the collider had been done. Gigantic magnets were even now bringing the temperature of the collider down to its operational level. Soon there would be no chance of getting down here, the whole area would be a radiation zone. He smiled at the thought that, once the machine was operational, the journey he was taking would be completed by a proton in just fractions of a second. In fact, where he to complete a full circuit of the tunnel, it would take him a little over four hours – a journey the proton would make eleven thousand times a second.

If science were a woman, he thought, I would marry her.

He pulled the scooter up at the entrance to a lift. He sighed as he got off and pressed to call the lift down to his level. He still thought that the most appropriate way for Scientists to travel around an experiment of this scale and magnitude was by Segway. What would people think if they found out they were using mobility scooters? Unthinkable.

A small bell chimed as the lift arrived. Edward climbed aboard, selected his destination level, and leaned backwards against the wall. This was the most exciting time, for all of the theorising and predictions, none of the scientists really knew what was going to happen when they threw the switch (if only there was a big, red switch to throw, and not just a series of computer models to run). The hope, of course, was to recreate the high energy physics just after the Big Bang had taken place. And the holy grail of this was the discovery (of the remnants, anyway) of the elusive Higgs boson. The God Particle. If they found it, it would be the greatest discovery of a generation. Total destruction of a bunch of protons, studied in incredibly precise detail, would show them the very building blocks of the Universe. His thoughts began to drift to the myriad possibilities, when the lift shuddered to a halt.

Exiting in to the warm light of the continental afternoon, Edward walked to his car. As he got in and started the engine, he looked over his shoulder. The building was amazing, and he could not wait for the moment, in two year’s time, when they would finally throw protons together at the speed of light.

~~

The two years had passed in a whirlwind. When the collider had first been turned on, it had gone without a hitch. Millions of people across the world who had convinced themselves that the whole planet (and a good chunk of the galaxy) would be swallowed up by a man-made black hole were left amazed by the fact that the black hole they had all been so certain would appear was conspicuous only by its absence. Even the residents of the towns and villages that the LHC ran under were unaffected – there was no deep apocalyptic rumbling, no shaking in the ground – only a slight dimming of the lights occasionally as the collider ramped itself up to full power. Some great results had already been obtained, but it was only now that they were starting to see high-energy experimentation taking place.

Today was Edward’s day. The drive to the complex had been a nervous and fraught one, he was filled with an energy that made him excitable as he had been when he was a small child. Flashing his ID at the security gate, he wound his way through the buildings, parking the car next door to a low door. One of the few concessions to movie technology had been made, and he leant forward to have his eye read by the retina scanner. A tiny bleep indicated that he was, or at least had the eyes of, Dr. Edward Flint, and the door swept aside with a satisfyingly Star-Trekesque swish.

Edward walked in to the long, white corridor. Various scientists were running around the place, wide eyed and fretful. Many of them were carrying huge reams of calculations, or standing around in huddles in the corridor, discussing schematic diagrams in hushed and fervent voices. The whole building felt as if it was filled with the same nervous energy that Edward had felt on his drive in.

Rounding a corner, he saw the door that he still could not believe bore his name. He opened it, walked in, and sat down behind his desk. Moments later, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.” His voice rolled around the room, it had a deep and tonal resonance.

The door opened, and a junior scientist, present on an apprenticeship, entered.

“We’re slightly ahead of schedule, Dr. Flint. We’ll be ready to go in about half an hour. The top brass are pretty keen for us to get going on this one. Are you ready?”

Edward leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes, and watched as the lights of his mind played on the back of his eyelids. He took a deep breath in, and expelled it slowly with great control.

“Yes,” he said “let’s do it.”
He followed the junior scientist down another long corridor, then up a steel flight of stairs, and in to the operations room. Ahead of him sat vast banks of scientists, each working hurriedly on a computer terminal, ensuring the collider was at optimum temperature, readying the computer models, preparing the giant ATLAS detectors so they could watch the birth of the Universe.

Edward, who was the lead operator in this experiment, walked to the front of the room, and stood on a small podium. A hush fell over the people, and Edward nervously spoke.

“Good morning. Today we embark on an experiment which we have been preparing for these last years. Today we may finally see the Higgs boson. Today, we may find God.”

There was some nervous chatter.

“We have less than fifteen minutes to go before we start. So, my good colleagues, I say this: Engage!”

He raised his finger in an authoritative manner. Slowly, in an embarrassed way, the collected scientists got back to work. Edward walked back to his desk. The junior scientist was already there, holding a stack of data. Edward smiled at him.

“Not the right time for a Star Trek joke, eh?”

“Well,” said the junior scientist, “you just couldn’t do it, Doctor, you didn’t have the power.”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s ok.” He looked at his watch. He placed a headset on, and flicked the intercom button on his console.

“OK everyone,” his voice boomed around the room “Let’s get this show on the road. Startup models to run in 3... 2... 1... run!”

A sound of furiously clicking keys filled the room.

“Now then, ladies and gentlemen, run model H-B1.”

On opposite ends of the collider, bunches of protons began whizzing around the collider at eleven thousand miles a second. They had no voices, but they were surely screaming. They accelerated and accelerated until, at the crucial moment, a computer model changed their trajectories and smashed them in to each other.

The scientists barely had time to hold their breath before they heard the boom. A boom that had been entirely unexpected. The building shook. Alarms went off. Lights flashed.

Edward sat up in his chair. “What’s happening?” he yelled at a bank of scientists opposite him.

Some keys clacked. “We’ve had a catastrophic failure in ATLAS 1, Doctor Flint.”

“A what?”
“A catastrophic failure. Something’s gone bang much louder than it should have.”

“How bad?”

“Well... On a scale of one to ten I’d say we were looking at a trip to the laundry.”

“Shit.”

“You could say that sir, yes.”

Edward jumped out of his seat. Dashing in to his office, he threw open a cupboard and pulled out a bag marked ‘Radiation Survival Kit’. He ripped it open, and pulled out a radiation suit. As he left the office he was hopping his legs in to it, and by the time he had reached the end of the corridor he was pulling it over his shoulders. He launched himself in to the car, and took off to the site of the ATLAS experiment.

As he arrived, he saw a thin, reedy plume of smoke floating out of the lift entrance. The car skidded to a halt and Edward jumped out, running in to the lift and repeatedly jamming the down button until the door began to close. He saw security guards dressed in radiation suits running towards him, but they were too late. The doors slammed shut and the lift began its descent.

Two minutes later, the doors opened and Edward exited the lift. He raised the arm of his suit up to his visor, and looked at the radiation detector. It came out at background levels, completely safe. Edward knew this was impossible, there had to be some radiation down here. The suit must be broken, he reasoned. He jumped on to a scooter, and made his way along the tunnel until he came to a giant cavern, filled with the body of the huge ATLAS experiment.

The light in here was brighter than usual. Slowly, Edward walked up to the experiment. He placed a hand against it, and found that it was hot to the touch, and humming slightly. The chances were that held inside the machine were incredible levels of radiation that the suit could not protect him against, but he had to understand what had happened here. There was a small access hatch that allowed engineers access to the inner chamber of the machine where the collisions occurred. He keyed in a code on the lock, and the hatch panel released with a click.

Edward took a deep breath, and pulled it aside. More of the thin smoke poured out. He waved it away, and looked inside the machine. There, in the centre, sat a small old man with a friendly face.

“Just where the hell,” the man said irritably, “am I?”

Edward, dumb with shock, managed to say “Eep.”

“What? Oh, just my luck, just when things were going so well, too. Well?”

Edward swallowed. “Well what? And how did you...?”

“Where. Am. I?”

“Oh. You’re in the ATLAS experiment, at CERN.”

“Am I indeed? One minute I’m having a deeply important conversation and the next, WHAM! Somewhere under France. Oh, thank you so much for bringing me here, I don’t think.”
“But we didn’t...”

“Bring me here? Yes you did, old son. You’re one of those particle physicists, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re looking for the God Particle, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” said the small old man “You found him.” He stuck out his hand. “God. Pleased to meet you.”

“Eep.” Said Edward.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Mon 8 Sep 2008, 13:13, Reply)