Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle

by Anthony DeCosmo

  "He was prematurely balding, he smelled, and he was very much full of himself. On top of that he showed an open disrespect for women. It may sound self-serving, but that had a lot to do with why he removed me from his team. He kept Ruthie around because he liked looking at her ass—excuse me for being so blunt."

  Gant tried hard but he could not suppress a smile.

  "Ruthie and I were research assistants, not well suited to his project, but I believe he enjoyed bossing women around. He would always refer to us as 'the girls'. I was in my thirties at that point, Ruth a little younger but still an intelligent researcher. He treated us like summer interns. He worried about our figures—not the math kind, either. Ronald was always telling us that we were putting on weight or something. Yet he was the one with the cupcakes and girlie magazines in his desk drawer."

  Gant mumbled, "Briggs does not sound like the hero type."

  "Hero? Why would he be a hero?"

  Gant started to explain but Thunder spoke first: "He initialized containment protocols, locking himself in the Red Lab to confine whatever went wrong."

  "No. He would have been the first to run for the exits."

  Gant said, "Then whatever it was that killed Briggs and his researchers was bad enough that he reacted without considering the consequences. What was he up to?"

  Dr. McCaul stood and paced across the small office. Her eyes absently wandered to a cluttered bulletin board full of various notes and reminders.

  "How much do you know about quantum physics?"

  Gant responded, "How much do you know about urban warfare tactics?"

  She laughed. "Okay. We’ll go for the short version."

  Thunder said, "From what I heard he was sifting through atoms looking for … well, I heard he was looking for ‘God.’"

  McCaul’s eyes lit up. "Yes, that’s exactly right. Why did you need me again?"

  Gant turned away from a shelf full of statuettes and collectibles he had been examining. He found himself smiling again. He could not help it; he liked her. She was not one of the coldhearted scientists he so often dealt with. He did wonder, however, how long it would be before Archangel came to this facility to handle some screwup or another.

  He asked, "What does that mean,' looking for God'? I would think that would be a better subject for a Bible study group."

  "There are many Bibles, all dealing with the truth behind existence. I have a personal interest in that, you see," she said, nodding toward the shelf of figurines and trinkets that had grabbed the major's attention.

  "Quite a collection you have here," he said and held up a pendant featuring what appeared to be plaques with inscriptions written in Hebrew.

  "That's a kabbalah pendant of the two tablets," McCaul explained.

  He gently returned it to the shelf and pointed at a brass figure. "I recognize Buddha here." He then motioned toward a six-inch sculpture with a stone-like resin base holding an Arabic symbol that made him think of fire. "What about this?"

  "That is the word Allah, depicted in a pure and cleansing flame."

  Nearly a dozen more such collectibles lined the shelf, each a symbol from the world's most popular religions, ranging from Christian crosses to a collection of coins depicting the great masters of Sikhism.

  Thunder pulled the conversation back on track by asking, "What did his experiment have to do with God?"

  The older woman grinned a little and answered, "In all honesty, Dr. Briggs was not really looking for God; not in the generally accepted sense. No, he searched for the fundamental building blocks of creation. Of course, people of religion believe the universe was created by God, and therefore Briggs would mock that he was trying to find God himself, hidden in the subatomic world."

  Gant said in a nearly mocking tone of his own, "I would imagine that a search for the Almighty would be focused out into infinity," and he pointed a finger at the sky in reference to the mysteries beyond the stars.

  "You know, when we think about the infinite we always think in that fashion; about the universe up there in space. After all, the universe is so incredibly big that it is hard to comprehend. But science tells us there is a boundary, that our universe is like an expanding bubble, and sooner or later you will run out of space. For example, take this room." McCaul motioned to the four walls surrounding them. "If this is the universe and you go out far enough, you will hit a wall. Of course, getting out far enough is the trick. Science fiction aside, it is doubtful humanity will ever explore even a tiny fraction of the universe."

  "Okay," Gant said in a light tone, "so the universe is big."

  "But it has its boundaries," Liz added.

  "If you want true infinity you need to go in the other direction," McCaul continued. "Like I said, if you travel far enough, sooner or later you will hit those walls. On the other hand, you can always cut something in half. You can always get smaller. No matter how many times I cut a strand of my hair in half, I can always take one of those parts and cut it in half once again. And so on. The truly infinite is not the big grand universe, it is the atoms that comprise everything in that universe."

  Liz wrinkled her brow and said, "I thought there were limits. I thought there were pieces that couldn’t be cut up."

  "I’ve been away from subatomic theory for a while, but every so often they say they’ve found the absolute-positive-end-of-the-line building block. Quarks, leptons, and the like. There was a time, dear, when the atom itself was considered indivisible."

  Gant said, "And that sort of blew up in our face."

  McCaul considered this for a moment, then laughed. "That’s very good. Very good, indeed. For a military man, you have a sense of humor. Dry, but it's there nonetheless."

  Liz asked, "Was Briggs’s research military in nature?"

  McCaul looked at Thunder and smiled in a manner that made Gant think of a mother smiling at a child who asked if babies come from a stork.

  "Colonel, I think you and I both know that everything we do eventually has military applications. But to answer your question, no. Briggs’s work was purely scientific. The military handled security at Red Rock but was not directly involved in Ronald's big project."

  "Which was?"

  Dr. McCaul paused and rubbed her chin with two fingers.

  "How best to explain …" she mumbled. "Do you know what the big bang is?"

  "Well, that has to do with the creation of the universe, right?" Liz tried. "Some sort of explosion that started it all."

  "To put it simply, the big bang is the moment the universe was born, conceivably beginning from a singularity that essentially exploded. This event led to the creation of the first atomic nuclei and then the first atoms, the root of every piece of matter in our universe."

  Gant asked, "So how do we end up in an underground laboratory in Pennsylvania?"

  However it was Liz who answered: "He was trying to find traces of those original atoms, wasn't he?"

  "Very good. There was a book titled The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question by a Nobel Laureate named Leon Lederman. He first used the name 'the God Particle' in his book. I should mention that most scientists absolutely hate that name, by the way, and Lederman's book came out about a year after Briggs's experiment. In any case, what we're really talking about is the Higgs boson. That’s what Briggs was looking for."

  "Exactly how do you find something that blew up in an explosion millions of years ago?"

  McCaul answered Liz, "After a terrorist blows up a car or a building, how do you know what type of explosive was used?"

  Gant answered, "You look through the debris to find explosive residue."

  "Honestly, that's not the best metaphor," McCaul admitted. "But it will do for our purposes. Think of the very first particle at the heart of the big bang as the explosive. Residue from that explosive—from that first particle—should be scattered throughout the debris. In this case, the debris is all the matter of the universe."

  Gant said, "So he gets out a p
owerful microscope and looks for it."

  "You may want to stick to urban combat, Major. Particles such as the Higgs boson exist in an observable state for only short periods of time and under extreme conditions—that is, if they exist at all."

  "Wait a second." Liz wagged a finger. "I thought they found that thing, over in Europe. Just this year."

  McCaul said, "I've steered clear of particle physics for the last decade or so, at least as best I can. I've moved out of the hard sciences and more into archeology. But yes, I read that they have found evidence of the Higgs boson. The verification of its discovery would be a bigger deal for science than walking on the moon, by a wide stretch."

  Thunder said, "They use some sort of giant, um, it was a big—"

  "Particle accelerator, yes," McCaul answered for her. "Accelerators stretch for miles in a big circle and are used to slam particles together. Those collisions reveal other particles for fractions of a second, but just long enough to observe their existence. They needed a really big collision to find Higgs, and even then it's a question of poring through the data for months."

  Neither visitor said a word; they just stared at her.

  "Let's take our terrorist bomb example. Now let's say the bomb is on a car going at the speed of light and it hits another car going just as fast head=on and it blows up in the collision. Now imagine that whatever the bomb is made out of, it will disappear a split second after exploding. Again, not a great metaphor, but it will have to do."

  "I do not understand. If something is there, it’s there. What do collisions have to do with anything?" Gant felt far out of his league.

  "Yes, it can be quite confusing. That’s something that astronomy and quantum physics have very much in common—a lot of our so-called observations are really mathematical guesses. We see some force acting upon an object like a planet or electron and we hypothesize as to what is causing the force. The Higgs boson—the God Particle—is theorized to be the mechanism that produces mass."

  "Whoa, wait a second." Gant waved his hand. "I thought you people figured all this out years ago. Are you telling me that we are sending probes to Mars but we still do not know everything there is to know about … about …"

  McCaul finished for him, "Matter?"

  "Yes. Or, well, maybe. I mean everything. The basics. The stuff that makes us, us. The stuff that makes this desk solid." He rapped on the desktop for effect.

  "Believe it or not, Major, that desktop is not nearly as solid as you think."

  "Dr. McCaul," Thunder interrupted the theoretical discussion, "this all sounds very interesting, but we need to know more about the Briggs experiment, specifically. Something went wrong and has remained wrong to this day."

  Their host massaged her chin as if considering her words. After a few seconds she spoke. "I said before that you can always cut something in half, right? That real infinity is the infinitesimal. Consider this, then." She appeared pleased to have found the right way to explain. "Let’s say this room is the universe. One way to explore would be to head toward the ceiling—to reach into the distance. Like we do with those Mars probes and gigantic telescopes and so forth. Understand?"

  Both soldiers nodded.

  "Briggs was trying to dig through the floorboards. He wanted to find the secrets of the universe by finding the basic building block—the God Particle. The Higgs boson."

  "How?" Thunder asked.

  "That is a very interesting question. During my time with Briggs I was technically a research assistant. In truth, everyone who worked with Briggs was a gofer. He gave us tasks to do, buttons to push, and readings to relay, but he guarded his secrets closely. In some ways, I can't blame him. This is a cutthroat company; Wall Street raiders and inside traders have nothing on the scientists and administrators here. Like the rest of us, Briggs knew a number of researchers whose life work was stolen by co-workers or bosses. That's why he worked very hard to get his experiment moved to a government facility."

  "Dr. McCaul," Liz said, "I mean, Doreen, there is no particle accelerator at the Red Rock complex."

  "No, particle accelerators are normally rather large; you would have noticed. Ronald Briggs felt he could accomplish the same idea using the concentrated power of several lasers with the idea of actually tearing apart the fabric of space to study the building blocks of our universe. Now understand, we're talking about a project I worked on twenty years ago, so my memory may be a little off. From what I could see at the time, Briggs had managed to work around the massive amounts of power required to produce that type of energy and he confined the entire experiment to an area the size of an average laboratory." She considered and added, "Honestly, whether or not he succeeded in his experiment, his project offered a great deal of promise in regard to maximizing energy use."

  "How so?" Gant asked. He knew something about energy and felt compelled to contribute at least one intelligent question to the discussion.

  "Well, right now there's a facility planned for construction in Great Britain named the, oh, now what was the name? Something like the Extreme Light High Field complex or the like. I suppose that's close enough to Google. Anyway, the plan is to use these lasers to produce several hundred petawatts of power for a split second to then mine the vacuum of space, pulling apart particles of matter and antimatter. They aren't using this technique to look for Higgs; that's solely in the arena of particle accelerators now. However, the idea is to discover dark matter, another theorized building block of our universe."

  "First a God Particle, now dark matter." Gant shook his head. "I still have no idea where this is going."

  McCaul showed her first sign of real frustration as she snapped, "I’m sorry, Major, but there are people who spend decades studying the elemental forces and who never come close to comprehending what they’re studying. I can’t teach you in ten minutes what some of us can’t learn in a lifetime."

  Liz spoke for them both when she said, "We understand that, Doctor. We’re not asking for the background and the theories or even the principles of his research. We’re trying to find out what may have gone wrong and why. We need to know because we need to go in and clean up the mess Dr. Briggs made."

  McCaul's eyes widened. "That was over twenty years ago. Surely his research has been furthered by now?"

  "Doctor McCaul," Thunder spoke. "Something went wrong with the Briggs experiment on that day back in 1992. Containment was initiated and no one knows why. You were cleared for Red Lab work; you understand what can happen."

  "Yes, but certainly the follow-up teams were able to retrieve some of his notes and documents. As I said, his research into Higgs was interesting, but how he was going to get there—through the use of lasers—was far too valuable to abandon. Imagine suspending particles and ripping them apart. Like pulling the wings off a fly. Unless, of course, his entire contraption was a total failure."

  That idea seemed to please McCaul. A hint of a smile suggested she found satisfaction in saying the words "Briggs" and "failure" in the same sentence.

  Liz said, "The follow-up teams were never heard from again. The Red Lab he worked in has been quarantined ever since that experiment went wrong. I’m surprised no one spoke to you about this."

  Major Gant shifted uneasily. He had felt unsure about this trip to begin with, but mentioning entry team details made him uncomfortable. He started to think Liz was going a little too far. Certainly Borman would hit the roof if and when he found out about this trip, but if he learned how much they had discussed with McCaul he could charge them with insubordination or even revealing classified information.

  Dr. McCaul returned to her chair behind the desk and sat down, placing her hands on her head. She seemed to have lost her balance both mentally and physically.

  "Then his work is lost. Well, that makes sense. All these years I was just hoping he was wrong with his theory and his search for Higgs. But now it sounds as if he might have been right."

  "Let me put it bluntly, Doreen," Liz said and asked, "Can
you think of anything that could’ve caused such a situation?"

  McCaul did mental battle with her memories.

  "I imagine you’re hoping I have one important clue—maybe a secret about the experiment I can divulge. I'm sorry, I don’t. Odds are, his plan to generate enough power to get those lasers going backfired and produced an explosion that wiped his team out. That's my first guess. But there are other concerns, of course. The type of thing you always hear about with these types of science projects. That was back before the Internet, and Tall likes to keep its research out of the public spotlight. But look at how people reacted to the Large Hadron Collider; all sorts of nonsense about creating black holes that would suck up the Earth. Seriously, people spend too much time talking about science they don't understand. Although I suppose it makes for a good story or two."

  "So what could’ve gone wrong?" Thunder asked again.

  Surprisingly, Gant offered an answer.

  "Maybe he found God. Maybe he found this ultimate building block. Maybe he found it and punched through it. I do not understand much of what you are telling us, Dr. McCaul, but I think I am catching on. He could have released a tremendous amount of energy, maybe even hazardous radiation of a type with which we are not familiar."

  "What about the other direction?" Thunder took the ball and ran with it. McCaul sat silent, wearing an expression of mild amusement.

  "What if his machine actually caused some sort of collapse and he created a micro black hole; something that would simply suck in all the matter and energy around it. That would explain why no one ever came back; as soon as they got into the lab they were caught."

  "True," Gant volleyed. "But that would not explain the mental influences at the—" he stopped himself, looked at McCaul, and smiled.

  "You know," the older woman said, offering yet another take, "what if there was actually a God who created the universe? What if that singularity at the center of creation was God, and he said 'let there be light' with a single thought? And what if that thought caused the first atoms, the first pieces of matter that would grow and become what we see as existence?"