Final Theory

by Mark Alpert

Simon ignored him and turned to the students. “Come on, get the body in the truck!”

  Within half a minute they’d stowed the corpse in the cargo hold and mopped up the blood from the asphalt. If anyone should pass by, it would look like the woman had simply abandoned her post. Simon returned to the driver’s seat and Gupta got into the truck’s cab on the passenger side. The professor shot him a stern look. “No more killing, please,” he said. “I used to work with some of the physicists here, back in the eighties when they were building the Tevatron.”

  Simon shifted the truck into gear. He was in no mood to talk, so he said nothing. The convoy began moving again.

  “In fact, I was the one who suggested the name for the particle collider,” Gupta continued. “Teva is short for a trillion electron volts. That’s the top energy that the protons in the accelerator can achieve. At that energy they’re moving at 99.9999 percent of the speed of light.” The professor whirled one of his fists in a circle, then smacked it into his other fist to simulate a particle collision. He was so keyed up he couldn’t keep his hands still. “Of course the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland can reach higher energies now. But the Tevatron does an excellent job of packing the protons into a tight beam. That’s what makes it suited for our purpose.”

  Simon gritted his teeth. He couldn’t take this nervous chatter much longer. “I don’t care about all that,” he growled. “Just tell me about the control room. How many people will be there?”

  “Don’t worry, there won’t be more than a skeleton crew. Five or six operators at the most.” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s because of all the budget cuts. The government doesn’t want to pay for physics anymore. The national laboratories need private donations just to keep their accelerators running.” The old man shook his head again. “Last year my Robotics Institute donated twenty-five million dollars to Fermilab. You see, I wanted to make sure they didn’t shut down the Tevatron. I had a feeling it might prove useful.”

  The road veered to the left and Simon saw a strangely shaped building on the horizon. It looked like a pair of giant mattresses leaning against each other. Near the building he spotted a low embankment that swept across the grassland in a great circle.

  Gupta pointed at the unusual building first. “That’s Wilson Hall, the lab headquarters. I used to have an office on the sixteenth floor. Wonderful views.” He lowered his arm slightly and pointed at the embankment. “Under that ridge is the Tevatron’s beam tunnel. The particle raceway, we used to call it. A four-mile ring with a thousand superconducting magnets to guide the beams. Protons go clockwise, antiprotons counterclockwise. Either beam is powerful enough to burn a hole through a brick wall.” Then he pointed at another building closer to the road. It was a nondescript windowless structure, very much like a warehouse, sitting directly above a section of the beam tunnel. “And that’s Collision Hall. Where the protons and antiprotons smash into each other. Where we’ll launch the neutrinos into the extra dimensions.”

  The professor fell silent, gazing at the facility through the truck’s windshield. Grateful for the interlude, Simon drove past a row of cylindrical tanks, each bearing the words DANGER COMPRESSED HELIUM. Then he came to a long reflecting pool that lay in front of Wilson Hall and mirrored its odd silhouette.

  “Turn here and go behind the building,” Gupta instructed. “The control room is next to the Proton Booster.”

  The convoy coasted down a driveway that bypassed Wilson Hall, then came to a parking lot in front of a low, U-shaped structure. Gupta’s estimate of the number of personnel in the facility appeared to be correct: there were fewer than half a dozen cars in the lot. That number was sure to increase in three hours or so, when the regular workday began, but with any luck they’d finish the job before then.

  Simon parked the truck and began issuing orders. One team of students unloaded the crates of electronic equipment while another transferred the hostages to the truck Agent Brock was driving. Simon had decided it would be best to keep Brock away from the control room so he wouldn’t figure out what was going on. The former FBI man had been told that their mission was to steal radioactive materials from the lab. Simon strode to Brock’s truck and got his attention. “Take the hostages to a secure location,” he ordered. “I don’t want them getting in the way. There are some unoccupied structures about a kilometer west of here. Find one and sit tight for a couple of hours.”

  Brock gave him a belligerent look. “We need to talk when this is over. You’re not paying me enough for all the shitwork I’m doing.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be suitably compensated.”

  “Why are we keeping the hostages alive, anyway? We’re gonna have to shoot them sooner or later. All of them except the professor’s daughter, I mean.”

  Simon leaned a bit closer and lowered his voice. “It amuses the professor to keep them alive, but I don’t care. Once you’re out of sight, you can do whatever you want with them.”

  THE STUDENTS HAD DUMPED DAVID next to Monique and Elizabeth in the cargo hold, but as soon as the vehicle started moving again he squirmed toward Karen and Jonah. As he struggled across the floor of the truck, his son’s eyes widened and his ex-wife began to cry. Someone had retied the gag over David’s mouth, so he couldn’t say a word; instead he simply huddled close to his family. He was still sick from the vodka and the beating Simon had given him, but for a moment his chest swelled with relief.

  After a couple of minutes the truck stopped once more. David listened carefully and heard a harsh grinding noise, the sound of metal being twisted. Then Brock opened the truck’s rear door and David saw a dome-shaped, grass-covered mound. It was about twenty feet high and a hundred feet across, a man-made hillock that sat atop an underground structure, some kind of large cellar or bunker. The truck was parked in front of an entrance dug into the side of the mound. Over a roll-up door that Brock had already wrenched open, a sign said FERMI NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY, BOOSTER NEUTRINO EXPERIMENT.

  As Brock climbed into the cargo hold he reached into his jacket and pulled out a Bowie knife, identical to the one that Simon had held to Jonah’s throat. Grinning, the agent approached the Swift family. David screamed, “No!” behind his gag and tried to shield his son, but with his arms and legs tied he could barely sit up, much less fend off an attack. Brock stood there for a few seconds, turning the knife so it caught the light. Then he bent over and cut the cord that bound David’s ankles. “You’re gonna do exactly as I say,” he whispered. “Or else I’ll butcher your kid. Understand?”

  Brock cut the cords binding Jonah’s ankles, then did the same for Karen and Monique. He ignored Elizabeth, who’d passed out in the corner. Keeping one hand on his Uzi, which hung from a shoulder strap, he hoisted the others to their feet. “Get off the truck,” he ordered. “We’re going into that shed.”

  Their hands were still bound behind their backs, but they managed to descend from the cargo hold and march single file toward the roll-up door. David’s heart thumped as they neared the entrance; the agent was obviously leading them to a hidden spot where he could kill all four of them at his leisure. Shit, David thought, we have to do something fast! But Brock was right behind Jonah, pointing his Uzi at the boy’s head, and David didn’t even dare to step out of line.

  They entered a dark room lit only by flickering LEDs. Brock closed the door and told them to keep moving. At the back of the room was a spiral stairway leading down. David counted thirty steps as they descended into the blackness. Then Brock flipped a light switch and they found themselves on a platform overlooking an enormous spherical tank. It rested in a concrete pit like a golf ball in a cup, except in this case the ball was nearly forty feet wide. The platform was level with the flattened top of the steel sphere, which was crowned with a circular panel, like a giant manhole cover. As David stared at the tank, he realized that he’d read about it in Scientific American. It was part of an experiment for studying neutrinos, which were so elusive that researchers needed a huge
apparatus to detect them. The tank was filled with a quarter-million gallons of mineral oil.

  “Sit down!” Brock yelled. “Against the wall!”

  This is it, David thought as they cowered on the floor. This is when the bastard starts shooting. Brock came closer, carefully aiming his machine gun. Monique leaned against David while Karen closed her eyes and bent over Jonah, who buried his face in his mother’s belly. But instead of firing, Brock tore off David’s gag and threw it across the room. “All right, now we can get started,” he said. “We got some unfinished business.”

  Brock grinned again, clearly savoring the moment. He wasn’t going to kill them quick. He was going to stretch this out as long as possible. “Go ahead, Swift, start screaming,” he said. “Scream as loud as you want. No one outside can hear you. We’re way underground.”

  David opened and closed his mouth to put some life back into his jaw muscles. Brock probably wouldn’t let him talk for long, so he had to do this quick. He took a couple of deep breaths, then looked the agent in the eye. “Do you know what’s going on at the Tevatron? Do you have any idea what they’re doing over there?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t really give a shit.”

  “You should, especially if you have any friends or relatives in Washington, D.C. Your Russian partner is getting ready to blow up the city.”

  Brock laughed. “Really? Like in the movies? With a big mushroom cloud?”

  “No, he’s got some newer physics. He’s gonna change the targeting of Gupta’s neutrino beam. But the effect will be the same. No more White House, no more Pentagon. No more FBI headquarters.”

  Monique gave a start and stared wide-eyed at David, but Brock just kept laughing. “Wait, let me guess. I have to let you go, right? Because you’re the only one who can stop him? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “I’m saying you won’t live very long if your partner succeeds. If the government gets wiped out, the army will probably take over the country, and their first order of business will be finding the bastards who blasted Washington. If your plan was to slip across the border and disappear, forget about it. They’re gonna hunt you down and string you up.”

  David spoke as earnestly as he could, but the agent wasn’t buying it. He seemed thoroughly amused. “And all this gets started with a…what did you call it? A neutral beam?”

  “A neutrino beam. Look, if you don’t believe me, go talk to Professor Gupta. Ask him what—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.” Chuckling, Brock turned away and gazed at the giant spherical tank. He strolled to the tank’s cover and stomped his foot on the steel panel. The clang echoed against the walls. “What’s in here? More neutrinos?”

  David shook his head. It was useless. Brock was too thickheaded to understand. “It’s mineral oil. For detecting the particles.”

  “Mineral oil, huh? Why the hell do they use that stuff?”

  “The detector requires a transparent liquid with carbon in it. When the neutrinos hit the carbon atoms, they emit flashes of light. But like you said, who gives a shit?”

  “Mineral oil can be good for other things, too. It’s a lubricant, you know.”

  Brock began fiddling with the clamps around the panel. After a few seconds he figured out how to release them. Then he pressed a red button with his foot and an electric motor began to hum. The panel opened like a clamshell, revealing a pool of clear liquid about the size of a Jacuzzi. “Well, look at that. There’s enough here to last a long, long time.”

  Kneeling at the side of the pool, Brock dipped one of his hands into the mineral oil. Then he stood up and held the glistening hand in the air. He stared at David as he rubbed the fingers together. “We got a score to settle, Swift. You got the jump on me in that cabin in West Virginia. Fucked up my face pretty good. So now I’m gonna fuck with you.”

  David’s throat closed. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He swallowed hard. “Go ahead,” he managed to say. “Just don’t hurt the others.”

  Brock stared at Karen for several seconds, then at Monique. The mineral oil dripped from his fingertips. “No, I’m gonna hurt them, too.”

  THE TAKEOVER OF THE TEVATRON’S control room was effortless. As soon as Simon stepped through the door with his Uzi, all the gaunt-faced operators sitting at their consoles turned away from the banks of computer screens and raised their hands above their heads. While Professor Gupta’s students took their places, Simon escorted the Fermilab employees to a nearby storage closet and locked them inside. He assigned four students to sentry duty, handing each a radio and an Uzi. Two of them took up positions in the parking lot while the other pair patrolled the entrances to the collider’s beam tunnel. If any other employees showed up, Simon planned to waylay the new arrivals and add them to the group in the closet. The authorities would have no clue that anything was amiss for at least two or three hours, giving Gupta and his students more than enough time to prepare the Tevatron for their experiment.

  The professor stood in the center of the room and directed his students like an orchestra conductor. His eyes swept across the jumble of switches and cables and screens, surveying all the readings. Whenever something in particular caught his attention, he’d swoop toward the student who was manning that console and demand a status report. Gupta’s intensity was so extreme that it tightened the skin around his eyes and forehead, erasing all signs of age and fatigue. Simon had to admit, it was an impressive performance. So far everything was proceeding according to plan.

  After a while one of the students called out, “Initiating proton injection.” The professor replied, “Excellent!” and seemed to relax a bit. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at his idiot grandson, who sat in the corner of the control room, playing with his Game Boy. Then, still smiling, Gupta tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling.

  Simon approached him. “Are we getting close?”

  Gupta nodded. “Yes, very close. Our timing was lucky. The operators were already preparing a new store of particles when we arrived.” He returned to surveying the computer screens. “Now we’ve made the necessary adjustments and we’re beginning to transfer the protons from the Main Injector to the Tevatron ring. We have to move thirty-six bunches, each containing two hundred billion protons.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “About ten minutes or so. Ordinarily the operators insert the bunches evenly around the ring, but we need to alter the arrangement to produce the spherical collision pattern. We’ve also modified some of the magnets on the ring to create the proper geometry for the proton swarms. That was the purpose of the equipment we brought here in the crates.”

  “So in ten minutes you can start the collisions?”

  “No, after we finish transferring the protons, we have to inject the antiprotons. That’s the trickiest part of the process, so it may take a little longer, maybe twenty minutes. We have to be careful that we don’t cause a quench.”

  “A quench? What’s that?”

  “Something to be avoided at all costs. The magnets that steer the particles are superconducting, which means they work only if they’re cooled to four hundred and fifty degrees below zero. The Tevatron’s cryogenic system keeps the magnets cold by pumping liquid helium around the coils.”

  Simon began to feel uneasy. He remembered the tanks of compressed helium he’d seen while driving past the beam tunnel. “So what can go wrong?”

  “Each particle beam carries ten million joules of energy. If we aim it the wrong way, it’ll tear right through the beam pipe. Even if we make a very small error, the particles can spray one of the magnets and heat the liquid helium inside. If it heats too much, the helium becomes a gas and bursts out. Then the magnet ceases to be superconducting and electrical resistance melts the coils.”

  Simon frowned. “Could you fix it?”

  “Possibly. But it would take a few hours. And a few more hours to recalibrate the beam line.”

  Fucking hell, Simon thought.
He should’ve realized there were more risks to this operation than the professor had let on. “You should’ve told me this earlier. If the government finds out we’re here, they’ll send in an assault team. I can hold them off for a while, but not several hours!”

  Some of the students turned around and looked at him nervously. But Gupta put a reassuring hand on Simon’s shoulder. “I told you, we’re going to be careful. All my students have experience operating particle accelerators, and we’ve run dozens of simulations on the computer.”

  “And what about the targeting of the neutrinos? When will you input the coordinates for the burst?”

  “We’ll do that when we inject the antiproton bunches. The trajectory of the neutrinos will depend on the exact timing of the—” He stopped in midsentence and stared blankly into space. His mouth opened and for a moment Simon feared that the old man was having a stroke. But soon he smiled again. “Do you hear that?” he whispered. “Do you hear?”

  Simon listened. He heard a low, quick beeping.

  “That means the protons are circulating in the beam pipe!” Gupta shouted. “The signal starts out low and rises in pitch as the beam grows more intense!” Tears leaked from the corners of the professor’s eyes. “What a glorious sound! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Simon nodded. It sounded like an unusually rapid heartbeat. A slab of muscle pounding frantically just before the end.

  THE ELECTRICAL CORD SLICED INTO David’s wrists. He made a final, crazed attempt to yank his hands free, feverishly twisting his arms behind his back as Brock stepped toward Karen and Jonah. All the hours of struggling and straining in the truck’s cargo hold the night before had loosened the cord a few millimeters, but it wasn’t enough. He screamed in frustration as the agent approached Karen, who was hunched in a tight ball, folding her body around Jonah’s. Bending over, Brock gripped the back of Karen’s neck. He was about to wrench her away from the boy when David stood up and hurtled toward them.