No Rest for the Wicked

by Dane Cobain

  “Hey Vince,” shouted Alvarez, a chubby little man in a sharp suit. “You look worried. Anyone would think this is important!”

  A couple of people laughed, but the co-ordinator smiled humourlessly and said nothing.

  Well, Boerman reflected. I’m in place. Not that it’ll do much good. Most of the work was done by the computers, and he’d only need to concentrate if something went wrong and the engineers had to override the system. With the meticulous planning that led to the Collider’s construction, that seemed unlikely. Boerman’s real job was to oversee the technical readouts and to look impressive for the press. The eyes of the world were upon them, and everyone was holding their breath.

  “One minute!” shouted the co-ordinator, and an electronic countdown began.

  The journalists looked excited, but the CERN staff had practiced this moment and maintained their professional veneer.

  “Thirty seconds!”

  “Until the world explodes,” joked Alvarez, and everybody laughed.

  The scientists were at ease, but some members of the press exchanged nervous glances. Their TV stations and newspapers had helped to fuel the unfounded rumours of miniature black holes that could destroy the world. At fifteen seconds, the sweat started to pour from Boerman’s brow. Here we go, he thought. It reached zero, and a furious cheer erupted as the computer screens began to fill with data.

  “Congratulations, gentlemen,” shouted the co-ordinator, allowing the din to die down. “We’re on!”

  Another cheer, almost as loud as the first, filled the enormous room, accompanied by the manic flashes of a score of eager photographers. Boerman tapped half-heartedly at the computer terminal – the readouts were to his satisfaction.

  “That was exciting.” He turned to look at Fleur, who was calm and composed as usual.

  She offered him the rapidly-cooling coffee and he took it back with steady hands, leaning away from the terminal in case he spilled it and became front-page news across the world. There were countless fail-safes in place, but he didn’t want to give the press an unnecessary story, especially if it would cast CERN in a bad light.

  “Yeah, it was,” he replied, draining the coffee and handing the Styrofoam cup back to her. “Do you realise, this is the most important thing that will ever happen to us? In a passive way, we’re part of history. We’re like the slaves that built the pyramids. We took part. That’s the crucial thing, do you see? It would have happened without us, but we put the final stone at the top.”

  “Nice analogy,” she said.

  “Now the real work begins,” he continued, ignoring her. “It’s time to begin the gentler and more refined process of decorating and fitting our temple to the Higgs boson. First, we have to find it.”

  “Do you think we will?”

  “I’m not sure. Nobody knows, how could they? What about you, do you think we’ll find it?”

  She looked around lazily, as though searching for the answer on one of the terminals.

  “Or…” she said, gazing into space. “Do you think it’ll find us?”

  CHAPTER FIVE: A DAY AT THE ZOO

  Wednesday September 2nd, 2009

  “ANGELICA? Get over here right now!”

  “Okay!” The energetic eight-year-old ran to her mother and left the tigers to their afternoon nap. “Can I have an ice cream?”

  “We’ll see. Your father wants to take a photograph. Put that down, you don’t know where it’s been.”

  Angelica opened her mouth to argue, but she saw the look in her mother’s eyes and decided against it. A mahogany charm dropped from her fingers and landed in the mud. Carved into the wood, a hideous Angel stared into the dirt.

  A camera flashed, but it was a warm day and the sunlight swallowed it. No-one bothered to look at the photograph – they’d already taken hundreds. Angelica’s mother took her daughter by the hand and dragged her away again.

  “Darling, do you want to see the meerkats?”

  “I want to see the monkeys,” she replied, so they walked through the reptile house towards the other end of the zoo.

  They walked past animals they’d never heard of, past the elephant enclosure where an Indian giant slept in the sunshine, and through a narrow walkway to the primates.

  “Look at them, they’re huge!”

  “I’ve never liked gorillas,” said her father, stroking his stubble and adjusting his spectacles. “Strange creatures. Their arms are like tennis balls in tights.”

  Angelica inched closer to the cage – if she stretched, she could just reach the metal mesh. It felt surprisingly cool under the late summer sun. Inside the enclosure, the alpha male crawled across on his powerful haunches until his sad face was barely a metre away from Angelica’s. A spark of recognition passed between them, and their eyes glued together. Angelica’s head burned, and she clutched at her ears with delicate hands, her hazel eyes snapping shut as the gorilla’s irises flashed red. She was ready to scream, but the pain disappeared when her father lifted her up and propped her on his shoulder.

  “Come on then, trouble. What else shall we have a look at?”

  “I want to see the pandas!”

  “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

  As the family walked away, they didn’t look back. The gorilla cowered behind his powerful hands and whimpered like a dog in a thunderstorm.

  Two days later, it was dead.

  CHAPTER SIX: FATHER MONTGOMERY’S LECTURE

  Tuesday September 8th, 2008

  TODAY, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT the Higgs boson particle, the ‘God’ particle that the CERN scientists are trying to isolate. People say that the machine will lead to the destruction of mankind. Many Catholics have attacked scientists for their ‘blasphemy,’ and professors are acting like intellectual police and dismissing good people, determined to slow the inevitable march of scientific progress. The question on the minds of many is...

  ...who is telling us the truth?

  The answer, my friends, is simple. In our society, white lies are commonplace and black ones are rarely confronted. Ignorance isn’t bliss, but people accept it because it’s easier than facing up to reality. It’s time for us to demand the truth.

  First and foremost, we need to know more about the particle. How can something so small be so controversial? Critics say that scientists coined the nickname, but that’s untrue. Why would they break their countless rules and naming conventions for the Higgs boson? As with most of the evil in the world, the name was fabricated by the media.

  So, what is the Higgs boson particle? Even its existence is still under debate, so it’s little more than a theory. It’s believed to be an integral part of the world that we see before us, and if it really does exist, it would help to explain the origins of mass in our universe. Mass, as we all know, is something that Catholics feel strongly about. But that’s the communion wine and the body of the Lord, not the scientific concept that links with gravity to give an object weight. Scientists say that the Higgs boson particle is expected to explain the moment of creation.

  Many Christians argue that the Higgs boson will (if discovered) disprove the existence of God, but that simply isn’t true. If anything, it’ll show us the techniques that he used, and that shouldn’t be blasphemous or heretical. Does it matter whether we understand creation, as long as we don’t claim its beauty for ourselves? Are there some things that man should never know?

  Friends, CERN’s research is no more un-Christian than Newton’s forays into gravitational pull or the orbits of the planets. Science and religion are code-words for an ancient search for understanding, and they ought to go hand-in-hand. Should we condemn scientists for trying to better their understanding of the universe that God created? You tell me. I, for one, find it difficult to lay blame at their feet.

  To the thousands of people involved in the project, it could be an academic pursuit or the realisation of a life-long dream. For others, it’s a way to bring science and religion together, whether as friends
or as enemies. In the end, we have to look within ourselves to find our feelings on the matter. If we are strong and faithful, we can support this research until the end, whatever the outcome.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: RETRIBUTION

  Tuesday November 24th, 2009

  VINCENT FOSTER, senior co-ordinator at CERN, looked around nervously as he walked out of the building and over to his car. Only last month, he would’ve paused to admire the leather seats and shiny alloys, but he had no time for that now. Something strange was happening, and he didn’t like it.

  The scientist thought he was being followed. A man who believed in logic, he wasn’t paranoid, but he saw shadows during the night. They weren’t professionals, he could tell. Even when they stood in darkness, his stalkers seemed to stand out. He shivered.

  He’d noticed them a month ago, not long after the first collisions in the LHC. Then, he’d dismissed them as the products of an over-worked imagination, but they kept coming back. He’d even been to the police, but they didn’t take him seriously. They sent an officer to search the area and found nothing unusual – no footprints and no suspects to support his story.

  Then, he’d been followed to work, and he started to see them at the side of the road, watching as he drove past. The dark feeling of constant surveillance had been building up for weeks, and it was slowly beginning to gnaw at his concentration. His colleagues had noticed a difference, and his performance was suffering. After a tense meeting, he’d been given three weeks of paid leave and had been asked to come back refreshed or not at all. He planned to take the opportunity to barricade himself inside the basement of his rented apartment.

  As he climbed into his car on that chilly November night, he was finalising his plans. He’d anticipated this moment for weeks, stocking up on bottled water and tinned food. Foster strapped himself in and gunned the engine, then glanced around again, squinting through the darkness. Was there someone in the shadows, softly illuminated by an invisible light? By the time that he swept the trees with his headlights, the figure had disappeared.

  “Come on then,” he muttered, locking his doors. “Where are you?” After scouring the area, he decided that they weren’t coming back. Shaking his head, he pulled out of the car park and started the long drive back to his fortress.

  The roads wound through small villages that were built into the mountainside, and the scientist had never grown tired of the journey. Now, things were different. He barely noticed his surroundings as he sped along the road in the darkness, formulating new schemes for survival. I’m losing my mind, he thought, stroking his bearded chin.

  His car rolled through a sleeping village, and he wished that the streetlights were on. His headlights illuminated the road before him, but he couldn’t see much else. Occasionally, he thought he saw a face amongst the trees, but that could’ve been a trick of the moonlight. He felt like a gazelle trying to outrun a pack of lions.

  Anxiety suddenly pushed him to drive faster, whipping around the narrow corners at a hundred kilometres an hour. He knew he could drive, but it was a long time since he’d been a reckless teenager, pushing his car to the limits under the glare of the baking Australian sun. Now, he was relying on that long-forgotten talent to take him away from his unknown adversaries.

  As he swerved around a corner and struggled with the vehicle, he saw them. Most of them were peering around the thick trunks of the gigantic trees that were anchored to the slopes of the mountainside, but two of them stood shoulder-to-shoulder forty metres in front of him, frozen and unresponsive in the road. He couldn’t avoid them – it was too late for that. Foster slammed his foot on to the brake, but he already knew it was useless.

  The Citroen flew forward, and Foster pressed back against his seat, preparing himself for an impact that never came. Even through his terror, he was too morbidly fascinated to close his eyes. When the car was centimetres away, the Angels disappeared, vanishing as if they’d never been there at all. Foster blinked; his foot was still jammed against the brake, and he slowed softly to a halt in the middle of the narrow road.

  For a few brief moments, he saw nothing but the night. Then, like something from a nightmare, two figures materialised in the darkness and began to walk towards the stricken automobile. They shone, as always, and Foster was too terrified to move. An ethereal, harmonious voice whispered to him, wiser than a library and older than a thousand fossils.

  “Wait,” it seemed to say. “Wait for us to reach you.”

  With a mighty effort, he took his eyes off the mirror and eased the car forwards. He started slowly, but when he saw more of them climbing from behind the trees, he accelerated around the corner and raced home. As he turned, he could still see them on the road, striding purposefully towards him. He didn’t apply the brakes until he pulled onto the drive.

  ***

  The crunch of pebbles beneath the tyres sounded like the breaking of bones. The noise used to relax him, but now he felt desolate and alone. The darkness swallowed him whole as he fumbled with his keys on the doorstep. As Foster marched determinedly around the corner, several of the spectres stared in his direction. He patted his pockets, searching for his mobile phone.

  “Damn,” he cursed. “It’s in the car.”

  Somehow, he unlocked the door and bolted it behind him, before hitting the light switch with a trembling hand. His gaze darted around the hallway; only his reflection looked back at him. In the kitchen, he picked up a carving knife and ran across the floorboards towards the stiff cellar door. He kicked it open, locked it behind him with a rusty key, and ran down the stone steps. Foster tried to forget that he was outnumbered, that he was scared and alone and afraid to take a life, if that’s what it came to.

  He sat with his back against the cold, stone wall, staring at the stairwell and the doorway. This was where he’d make his stand, surrounded by tinned food and crates of water. In one corner, a camp-bed was already made, and the whole place was rancid with dampness and fear.

  After fifteen minutes, he was still waiting in the half-light, and his heart-rate was gradually slowing. He heard nothing from above and wondered if they’d given up pursuit. Foster tilted his head to one side and heard nothing but a distant melody on the wind. Silently, the assault began.

  Two pairs of spectral feet sank through the concrete roof, and Vincent Foster squealed with terror and surprise. The rest of the bodies soon followed, like unholy stalactites reaching for the floor. The co-ordinator was too scared to move, so he stared at the fiends in front of him.

  “Wait.” To ignore the command was unthinkable. “The others are coming, and you will wait.”

  The words buzzed around his skull and he knew that they were true. The others would come, and nothing he could do would change it.

  Seconds later, more Angels drifted through the ceiling. He couldn’t look at them directly – he had to stare at them from the corner of his eye. What the hell is happening? He looked at the situation like a scientist. I suppose reality is subjective.

  “Reality is subjective,” they said, in a shared voice that reverberated eerily around the room.

  Impossible, he thought. They can’t know what I’m thinking.

  “Mr. Foster, nothing is impossible. Merely improbable.”

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice clear and calm, though his heart was raging against his ribcage.

  “We have no name, just a purpose.”

  “And what’s your purpose?”

  “We exist to purge the universe of unworthy life-forms. In terms that you will understand, we are the auditors of intelligent thought. You must justify yourself. Why should we let you live?”

  “You murder?”

  “A human crime. We do not murder, we judge.”

  As one, the Angels pressed forwards. Foster thrust at them with the blade of his knife, which passed easily through flesh. It happened in slow motion. The stricken Angel didn’t flinch, but Foster’s arm began to sizzle and he drew back in blinding agony.

  Th
e Angel smiled with a sad wisdom. His flesh grew cloudier until Foster could see through him to the wall on the other side. The scientist blanched with incredulity – the knife was lodged in the translucent void where the Angel’s stomach should have been. Smoke poured from it like dry ice on a movie set, and the blade burst into bright flames. It burned quickly and ferociously until the molten steel fell to the floor and began to eat its way through the concrete.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, but his disjointed mind didn’t want an answer.

  “Do you understand now?” they asked.

  Foster shook his head.

  “Very well. You may ask us three questions, and then you must tell us why you deserve to live.”

  “Three questions?”

  “That is correct. What is your second question?”

  Foster realised his mistake and cried aloud, but it was already too late to change it. He surrendered the question without argument and focused his intellect on the two that still remained.

  “What are you?”

  “We have no name, but your countrymen will grow to call us ‘Angels’. We are not defined by our names, but you may define us by our purpose. We exist to free the universe from sin.”

  “I see,” said the scientist, though he didn’t. “Sounds too biblical for me.”

  The Angels merely glared at him with inscrutable faces.

  “And your third question?”

  “That one’s easy. Where did you come from?”

  “You released us,” they answered, and he gasped. “You woke us from our eternal slumber. Your day of judgement is coming, and we are holding the gavel.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, the shadow of his former self. “How did I release you? What did I release you from?”

  “No more questions – justify your existence.”

  “And what if I can’t?”