by Jim Lombardo
Hannah continued as Anderson listened with a clueless stare.
“The void is going to continue to reverse, or eat up matter, space, and time until it gets the message that nothing is left, that it has reached the end of its mission. That will be when everything—all matter, space, and time in the Universe—is completely nonexistent. But if you can create another void, then these two bodies, or should I say anti-bodies, are going to find each other. Encountering the absence of matter, space, and time in the other void will fool Mother Nature into flip-flopping the process. Both voids will sense their goal has been reached, and instantaneously revert back to infinitesimal points again. You will have effectively pushed the pendulum the other way. I should add that, ‘instantaneously’ is from the void’s vantage point. From our view, the retrogression will take about as long as it took for the first void to get to the size it was when it decided to reverse course.”
“It decided? You talk about these voids as if they’re conscious beings.”
“It’s actually possible. Human consciousness, even an ant’s consciousness, is nothing more than electrical activity. The surface of the voids have electrical activity too. A good analogy here might be the jellyfish. Did you know they don’t have a brain? They’ve been around for 650 million years, hunting, eating, migrating, and reproducing, all by turning stimuli such as light, gravity, pressure, chemical changes, and scents, into electrical impulses that they react to instinctively. All without a single brain cell. My guess is the voids are not self-aware, but if they could talk, they might tell me otherwise. And I certainly wouldn’t want to insult their intelligence right now.”
“Only mine, right?” Anderson said with a sly grin. “So, how often does this…tidal cycle take place? And how long does it take to complete a cycle?”
“This is where I definitely don’t have any words to express it, Gordy. The most accurate answer I could give to your question is, once every never.”
The door finally swung open, and the two gazed poignantly into each other’s eyes.
“Marblehead…my esteemed colleague, Doctor Gordon Anderson, here, take this.” Hannah pulled her charm bracelet off her wrist. “This is my safe journey bird bracelet that I always wear. But I want you to have it now.” She held up the ring of turquoise beads that were joined together in two places by miniature golden swallows with wings outstretched. The beads were connected to both the tail and beak of each bird to complete the piece.
Anderson took the bracelet from her graciously, but his heart was pained. “Thank you so much. I’ll keep it with me for good luck.” He scooped her up and gave her a tight squeeze.
Hannah wrapped her arms around his neck, then rested her head on his shoulder, acting for a few precious moments like the young child she was, before popping back up resolutely. “Doctor, it’s go-time.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Reconnecting
“Hannah?”
“Dad! Are you okay?” Hannah asked, pressing the secure phone receiver to her ear under her thick hair. Although Monica had been talking every day with Brian, Hannah had been turning down requests to speak with her father directly. Monica’s brief reassurances that her father was being cared for reasonably well during his detention was all Hannah had been interested in knowing up to this point. She had felt it necessary to cordon off her father’s predicament in the interest of solving the crisis. But with Anderson off to pursue her directive, she was now willing to allow herself and her father a few minutes of emotional connection and support.
“Oh, Hannah. No, I’m not okay. I still can’t leave. Tell them to let me go.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll be together soon, but for now you have to hold on. Can you do that for Mom and me? Just trust me, everything will be fine.”
“Sweetheart, please, I need to get outta here. You can get me out. Just tell ’em you won’t do any more work until they let me go. They’ll listen to you, they have to.”
Hannah sounded firm. “Dad, I’m not getting into a negotiation like that, and hopefully you’ll understand. I need to concentrate on rescuing the world. But just remember this one thing...to me, you’re one of the most precious things in this world that I’m trying my hardest to rescue.” There was a sigh, and a long pause on the other end of the line. “Are you physically alright?”
“I’m in one piece, but I don’t even know where I am. There’s no window. They blindfolded me, and flew me someplace. I could be anywhere. And they’re not telling me anything. What’s going on? Am I ever gonna see you and your mom again?” Brian began grunting as he fought to keep himself from breaking down.
Hannah dissected her father’s words. “They took you somewhere in a plane? How long were you flying, Dad?”
“A long time.”
“Yeah, but how long would you estimate?”
“I don’t know. It must’ve been like four hours.”
Hannah furrowed her brow for an instant and then started giggling. “Oh, Dad, relax. Don’t you get it?”
“What’s so funny? Don’t I get what?”
“You’re here, Dad, with Mom and me, in this complex. We’re all at a physics lab in New Mexico. You’re probably a stone’s throw away from me right now.”
“I am?”
“Of course, don’t you see? They wouldn’t separate us by 3,000 miles with the end of the world looming. But, Dad, I have more good news for you. The end of the world is not going to happen. Sit tight. Let me focus on this, and when I tell them we can see each other, you, Mom, and I will be together five minutes later. Trust me.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Adiemus
Hannah’s recommendation for resolving the crisis lurched up the NSA chain of command and was relayed to the appropriate worldwide authorities, including the upper hierarchy of EPIC. She was to remain at the Los Alamos lab to monitor the situation while Anderson was dispatched back to Oxford, England, by the U.S. Air Force.
Even though Hannah had discovered a possible solution to the problem, she did not consider her work complete. She continued to labor intrepidly, monitoring the characteristics and behavior of the object, straining for additional clues, and trying to discover alternative means of stopping the void’s growth. A Plan B could very well become necessary. She worked on devising measures to maximize humanity’s opportunity and time to deal with the sphere if her plan failed. And a significant portion of her efforts were allocated toward keeping abreast of how other physicists were scheming to solve the issue. What were their theories? What was their math? Was there something she could learn from them? She needed to keep an open mind, and avoid being satisfied with her own conclusions. With so much at stake, she wasn’t going to allow herself any arrogance or complacency. There would be no letting her guard down.
However, Hannah did relax once for a few minutes to enjoy a magnificent song titled “Adiemus” by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins. Interestingly, the lyrics are not from any human language. They were just made up, to fit the melody and rhythm of the piece. Hannah found herself fantasizing that the nonsensical words were actually a message to her from an alien civilization in their native tongue.
As the song began, a lone singer was reaching out to Hannah from a distant bend in the Universe, to greet her, to declare the existence of its species, and to thank her for trying to preserve everything. With the chorus, a grouping of juvenile extraterrestrials joined in to rally her on, asking her to draw strength and peace from their telepathic, colony-webbed brainwaves. In her mind’s eye, Hannah formed a moving image of darkened figures silhouetted against a light brown background. They appeared to have humongous heads, but it was hard to discern their outline because they were continually altering their physical shape to the beat of the music.
The song concluded with a communal expression of support and encouragement. They conveyed their love and admiration for her, and stressed that these sentiments w
ere not contingent upon the outcome of the crisis. The aliens also assured Hannah that they fully understood if she considered their communication to be merely a fantasy.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Faith and Fate
On day 20, the object was about eight miles in diameter and burgeoning rapidly, having grown two miles wider from the previous day. Seismographs were now picking up larger tremors in the surrounding area. Readings ranged as high as 3.9 on the Richter scale, a measure of the amplitude of seismic waves.
Anderson was reunited at EPIC with his boss Dr. Shepard, Dr. Murray, and select members of the Council. They were joined by high-ranking officials from the NSA, CIA, and the GCHQ, the primary British intelligence and security agency. Anderson detailed for the group his work with Hannah and her instructions. Murray played the devil’s advocate. “We have to consider that if we all hop on board this train of trying to create a new mass, or void as Hannah calls it, that will mean expending the lion’s share of the best minds and resources we have. If it turns out to be a blind alley, have we then wasted our last playing card?”
Anderson jumped on that. “I think it really comes down to whether or not you trust Hannah. I, for one, do. She’s offered to Skype with us to explain her plan in more detail, but to tell you the truth, none of you will understand it. It’s incomprehensible to me, and probably to anyone. You’re better off just hearing it from me in layman’s terms. And it’s simply this, create a single new void, or whatever it is, in as little time as we can.”
One of the other engineers chimed in. “The Chinese had an intriguing proposal—to use high-energy lasers to disassociate the atoms in the thing, and essentially neutralize it. Maybe just poke a hole in it and it could pop like a balloon.”
Anderson countered without hesitation. “We could try that, but according to Hannah there are no atoms in it to disassociate. In fact, she told me their idea has the same odds of succeeding as trying to negotiate a peace treaty with it.”
The room gently rattled from a tremor that felt stronger than previous ones they all had been getting used to. Dr. Murray drew in a labored breath and rose to his feet. “Give me a moment, would you please?” he asked respectfully. He turned, buried his hands deep in the pockets of his slacks, and paced over to a window, where he gazed out deep in thought. The doctor knew that in the very direction he was looking, behind a bank of gorgeous pink clouds on the horizon, the leviathan lurked. And it was coming.
“Oh, bloody hell,” said Murray. Still gazing out, he firmly delivered an order. “Put me through to Hannah.”
There was initial concern that it would be futile trying to persuade the massive number of essential engineers, administrators, and support staff to leave their families and return to work on the SSC renovation project. After all, these could be their final days to spend with their loved ones. With this in mind, Dr. Murray asked Hannah if she would be willing to speak to the world. The child promptly recorded a televised address for broadcast, speaking with remarkable poise and calm.
“My friends. For those of you who do not know me, I am Hannah Blake from Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the United States. However, today, let’s not think in terms of what country we’re from, but rather that we all live together on one Earth. As you may be aware, I’ve been working with experts around the globe to find a resolution to the difficulty in England, and happily I can announce today that I’m confident we’re on our way.”
She leaned forward to stress her next words. “But I’m asking for something from each one of you. Yes, you. And that is to have faith that we will succeed. Faith and fate are two similar-looking words in the English language, and this is not just a coincidence. Because our fate depends upon your faith.
“The next one to two weeks will be a pivotal period in the history of our civilization. This is not the time to withdraw or hide away from it. We must all forge ahead with the faith that we will succeed. We need to support the European Physics Inquest Commission in Oxford, England, in every way we can. We need to rally our neighbors, colleagues, families, and friends. We need to do our jobs, no matter how trivial they may seem to us, because each one of us depends upon one another. More than you think. Securing our future means that the Super Stonehenge Collider must be repaired. But there is so much more. Farms need to be tended to. Food and life-saving drugs need to continue to be manufactured and distributed. Healthcare needs to be provided. Water supplies need to be protected and made available. I ask that you remain unwavering in the faith that we will succeed, and I’m telling you that if you are true to this creed, we can seize whatever fate we please.”
The world listened and was inspired. EPIC employees and associates in the scientific community responded courageously, and offered their unconditional assistance. A new found spirit of worldwide cooperation emerged and flourished. This revitalized attitude pervaded all elements of society. The media in all its forms returned to operations, and was being used to publicize emergency information and solicitations for any type of help that EPIC and society in general needed. Issues that normally would have stymied progress, such as compensation or legal contract matters, were considered moot. This was an all-volunteer effort. Humankind was pulling together as one, to combat one common enemy.
Fortunately EPIC engineers had a head start laying the groundwork for getting the SSC operational again. The organization was able to launch the intricate contingency plans already developed to address potential SSC damage or malfunction. These were not devised solely as safety measures, but the sensible business of minimizing the financial cost of the SSC lying dormant for an extended period of time. Still, since no engineers had ever conceived of the current problem in the context of the time constraints they were now facing, their approaches needed to be customized and expedited. While plans had previously been designed to replace defective equipment, the emphasis had shifted now to workarounds and patches.
Another hurdle they needed to overcome was the fact that the machinery in the SSC and its detectors was so exotically complex that no single person, or even one single engineering company or institution, had the wherewithal to complete the repairs. The only chance of success would be a unique and hastily arranged collaboration and coordinated effort amongst a large assemblage of engineers, each bringing to the table their specialized abilities. A concert of humanity. Somehow the Titan detector needed to be repaired rapidly, with hundreds of parts calibrated to the precision of less than the diameter of a human hair. One hundred million channels of electronics would need to be synchronized to within a billionth of a second.
Dr. Murray had a difficult time estimating how long it would take to get Anderson back to his experimentation, but he was requesting his team work nonstop, in shifts, to give the doctor the precious time he needed. EPIC’s makeshift motto now was “Every billionth of a second matters.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Green Light
Nine days after parting with Hannah, Anderson was hurriedly tossing dirty clothes out of his hamper onto the floor of his heavily guarded apartment in Oxford.
“Where the heck is it?” he grumbled.
He finally found what he was looking for, snatching his faded green CTI sweatshirt from the bottom of the basket, tossing it over his head and wriggling into it. His hands shook.
“Okay, okay, you can do this,” he reassured himself while looking at his reflection in the bedroom mirror.
EPIC leaders had just woken him from a restless sleep at four o’clock in the morning, advising him that the SSC had passed specifications, and was being powered up. He’d be able to begin conducting and reviewing his first experimental collisions in approximately three hours. By waiting on standby in his lab, he could then begin in earnest the moment he got the final green light. Anderson was not a superstitious person, but he wasn’t taking any chances. As much as possible, he wanted everything to be exactly as it was on that fateful day 28 days before when he ha
d inadvertently created and first noticed the speck. That included wearing the identical outfit he had worn, all the way down to the same pair of sky blue boxers, and socks that had “Mad Scientist” printed all over them, which his ex-girlfriend had given to him for his birthday as a gag.
Anderson shuffled through the dark, making his way towards the black, fortified SUV that was waiting for him with the engine running. Although difficult to see beyond a cover of fog, the sound of the now 30-mile-wide sphere was clearly audible as a dull, sinister roar of extremely low frequency.
As he entered his lab, his assistant Sergio was already there making basic preparations under the watchful eye of Dr. Shepard.
“Gordy!”
“Hey, Sergio! Shep!”
The men embraced heartily.
“Thank God I’m back in the game,” said Anderson.
“You’ve got a big cheering section,” said Shepard. “I can’t tell you how hard everybody worked to get you back into this seat.”
Anderson’s lab chair stood empty in front of two widescreen computer monitors.
“I’ll try to make it pay off.”
Dr. Shepard patted Anderson on the back. “Okay, we’ve gone through the protocol a hundred times. I’ll get out of here and let you two prepare. Pretend it’s twenty-eight days ago. Whatever you were doing then, whatever it is that you created, just do it again. The control center at the SSC will advise when they’re ready with the first proton packets. Godspeed, and good luck gentlemen.”
“Thanks, Shep,” Anderson replied. “Might be needing that.”
After Dr. Shepard had shut the door behind him, Anderson turned to Sergio. “Just like old times, buddy, huh?”
“Except the whole world wasn’t watching us then.”