The God Particle

by Daniel Danser

  ‘What could have caused such a quake?’

  ‘The surface of the earth is divided into giant plates of rock - and most earthquakes occur at faults where two of the plates meet. Where the plates are colliding, one of the plates usually gets pushed down under the other. Not surprisingly, this process can be very violent. The two plates can get stuck together and the result is that the area around gets compressed. Eventually, the strain on the fault becomes too much. The plates suddenly slip past each other and the result is a megathrust earthquake.’

  ‘Could we have predicted this happening?’

  ‘Earthquakes, by their nature, are very unpredictable. You never know for sure where the next one will occur. But we have been aware for some time of the possibility of one occurring again in Istanbul. The city is situated near the North Anatolian Fault, close to the boundary between the African and Eurasian Plates. This fault zone, which runs from northern Anatolia to the Sea of Marmara, has been responsible for several deadly earthquakes throughout the city's history. Among the most devastating of these was the 1509 earthquake, which caused a tsunami that broke over the walls of the city and killed more than 10,000 people. More recently, in 1999, an earthquake, with its epicentre in nearby Izmit, left 18,000 people dead, including 1,000 people in Istanbul's suburbs…’

  Tom switched off the TV, but the three continued to stare at the blank screen without saying a word.

  It was Ajay who broke the silence. ‘Om Sarva Mangal Manglaye Shivay Sarvaarth Sadhike Sharanye Trayambake Gauri Narayaani Namostu Te.’

  Tom and Serena both turned to look at Ajay.

  ‘What does that mean, Ajay?’ Tom recognised the words from the card that was in the flowers on the statue.

  ‘It’s a prayer to Lord Shiva,’ replied Ajay. ‘It means, O! the divine couple Shiva Parvati! Thee, the protectors of this universe, along with Lords Brahma and Vishnu. We pray to you for our well-being, prosperity and the enlightenment of our souls.’

  ‘Did you place the flowers on Shiva’s statue?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ajay said bashfully, looking down at his feet.

  ‘But why?’

  Ajay didn’t answer, but kept his gaze firmly on the floor.

  ‘Why, Ajay?’ Tom said, a little more forcefully than he’d intended.

  When Ajay looked up, Tom could see tears welling in his eyes. ‘I pray to Shiva, to show compassion and restraint.’

  ‘And you think that Shiva is responsible for this earthquake?’ Serena said gently, putting her hand on Ajay’s arm to soothe him.

  ‘I know he is,’ Ajay protested vociferously, taking them both a little aback. ‘I’ll prove it to you.’ Ajay stood up and walked out without saying another word.

  CHAPTER 13

  Frederick had reconvened the meeting in the Bunker a day earlier than anticipated. He wanted to make sure that, in the unlikely event they were questioned by the police, they all knew what to say.

  He had already found out what had gone wrong with the device which caused the explosion. But he wanted the person responsible to explain to the others the circumstances which led to the deaths of two maintenance workers and left another two in hospital.

  He opened the meeting by thanking everybody for making it at such short notice, before turning to the man on his left to take the floor.

  The man played anxiously with his silver-rimmed spectacles. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead despite the air conditioning regulating the temperature of the room at a steady 23°C. He cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘I would firstly like to apologise for attracting the unwanted attention of the authorities, which could potentially put us all in jeopardy. Secondly, I would like to reassure you that I will do everything in my power to ensure that the investigation is brought to a swift, innocuous conclusion. Thirdly, I would like to give you my personal undertaking that nothing like this will ever happen again.’ Suitably humbled, he took off his glasses, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and sat back in his chair.

  ‘But how did it happen, exactly?’ the only woman in the group spoke up. She clearly wasn’t going to let him off the hook with just a grovelling apology.

  He returned his glasses to his face and cleared his throat again. ‘I underestimated the amount of charge required to cause the pipe to fracture. Luckily, the escaping helium dampened the explosion somewhat, causing minimal damage.’

  ‘Apart from the two casualties,’ somebody at the far end of the table interjected.

  ‘Yes, the loss of life is very regrettable,’ the bespectacled man replied. ‘But I don’t need to remind you of what would happen if the Collider was allowed to discover the God particle.’

  ‘We are all well aware of the consequences,’ interjected Frederick. ‘But our code does not permit the loss of life in order to prevent the God particle from being discovered.’

  The man shrank back in his chair, accepting the admonishment.

  ‘I think the main purpose of this meeting,’ said Frederick, trying to steer the discussion back on track, ‘is to discuss how our exposure, following this tragic incident, can be minimised. Our forefathers were forced to go underground, and it is our legacy to maintain that anonymity until we achieve our objectives. Having the police crawling all over the facility puts that at risk.’

  ‘We need a scapegoat,’ the woman proffered.

  Frederick frowned. The idea of implicating an innocent person didn’t appeal to him, but he knew, deep down, that it made sense.

  ‘Any other suggestions?’ he looked around the room at the blank faces staring back at him. No other proposals were forthcoming. ‘Okay, who do you have in mind?’ he said resignedly.

  ‘One of the maintenance team,’ a man on his right proposed.

  ‘No. We need somebody in authority,’ the man with the spectacles stated. ‘Somebody with access to the plant twenty-four seven. Somebody who could enter the tunnels without raising suspicion. Somebody who has a scientific knowledge of how the Collider works but, more importantly, how it could be stopped.’ He could see the others round the table nodding their agreement - everyone, apart from Frederick.

  Frederick could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it. ‘You mean, somebody like Tom Halligan? But he’s only been with us two days.’

  ‘Exactly why he would be the perfect candidate. He arrives, and the very next day there’s an explosion,’ the man with the glasses countered.

  ‘But what about motive? Surely, that would be the first thing the police would look for?’ Frederick raised the objection, but he knew he’d already lost the debate. The others round the table could sense they’d found their sacrificial lamb.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ the man replied, taking off his glasses and wiping his brow again. ‘The fate of one human is inconsequential compared to the fate of the entire world.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Frederick conceded, diffidently. He closed the meeting by thanking everybody again. As they rose to leave, he turned to the person on his left. ‘I’d like you to stay behind. There are a few things we need to discuss.’

  The others filed out of the room, leaving Frederick alone with Deiter.

  ***

  ‘What do you think that was all about?’ Tom joined Serena on the couch.

  ‘I have no idea. I’ve never seen Ajay that agitated before.’

  ‘I know he’s interested in seismology. Perhaps seeing the aftermath of that quake in Turkey has brought the reality home to him.’

  ‘We were all upset by the images, Tom,’ she replied. ‘But it doesn’t account for his belief that some Indian deity is responsible for causing it.’

  ‘True. Perhaps we should…’

  The door to Tom’s apartment flew open and Ajay rushed back into the room. He was carrying a red leather-bound folder with the initials E.J.M. embossed in gilt on the front. He handed it to Tom.

  ‘Where did you get this from?’ Tom asked, noticing the gold letters.

  ‘It was Professor Morantz’s.
I found it over there, when I discovered his body, so I took it for safekeeping.’ Ajay pointed to the small table in the corner of the room.

  Tom opened the binder to read its contents. The document was divided into five sections, each marked with a different date. Within each section were pages and pages of statistics, all time-coded by hour, minute and second.

  ‘What do these figures mean?’ Tom shared the file across his and Serena’s laps.

  ‘They appear to be data readings from the Collider, going back to when it was first operational,’ Serena replied, staring quizzically at the pages.

  Tom thumbed through the file.

  ‘Look, he’s circled some of the readings in red. What do they signify?’

  ‘Those are the electromagnetic radiation readings,’ replied Serena. ‘It looks like he’s highlighted the times when they reached a peak.’

  ‘He’s also scribbled some notes in the margin next to them,’ Tom observed. He read the first one aloud. ‘Sichuan, China, twelfth of May, 2008. Richter scale, eight. Eighty-three thousand, five hundred dead and three hundred and seventy-five thousand injured.’ He turned to the next section and found a similar notation by the peak readings. ‘Do you have a pen?’ he asked Serena, who scrabbled around in her briefcase and managed to find one. He started to transfer Morantz’s observations onto the last page in the dossier, which was blank.

  Sichuan, China: 12th May 2008. Richter scale – 8.0 / 83,500 dead, 375,000 injured.

  Viti Levu, Fiji: 9th November 2009. Richter scale – 7.7 / 58,000 dead, 170,000 injured.

  Haiti, Caribbean: 12th January 2010. Richter scale – 7.0 / 316,000 dead, 300,000 injured.

  Maule, Chile: 27th February 2010. Richter scale – 8.8 / 44,800 dead, 111,000 injured.

  Fukushima, Japan: 11th March 2011. Richter scale – 9.0 / 550,000 dead, 1.2 million injured.

  When he finished writing, he gave a long, low whistle.

  ‘The dates of these earthquakes match exactly the dates when the Collider was operational. When did you say the Collider was last out of action following the leakage incident?’

  ‘It happened just before I arrived,’ said Serena. ‘So it would be about February 2010.’

  ‘And you said that it wasn’t operational for just over a year, as a result?’

  ‘Yes, we fired it up again in March 2011.’

  ‘That tallies.’

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Serena turned to Tom, searching his face for the answer.

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m saying. But what I do know, is that Morantz thought that the Collider was responsible for causing the deaths of…’ Tom quickly did the sums in his head. ‘Over a million people, not to mention whatever the death toll in Istanbul will eventually be.’

  ‘Shiva is using the Collider as a tool to destroy the world,’ said Ajay, standing behind them, looking over their shoulders. They had almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘Why would Shiva do that?’ Tom asked, trying not to sound condescending.

  ‘Because it is written in the scriptures, that when Shiva performs the Tandav, the cosmic dance of death, at the end of an age, the world will be destroyed and a new one will be reborn.’

  ‘And you think that time is now?’

  Ajay nodded, solemnly.

  ‘Do you think Morantz took his own life because he felt guilty about the earthquakes?’ Serena asked Tom.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why the hell didn’t he tell somebody about it?’

  ‘He was going to,’ Ajay answered. ‘I saw Professor Morantz the night he died. He came to my room because he wanted to read the cuttings on my wall. He said he was compiling a file that would prove the Collider was responsible for causing these earthquakes and he would show it to the newspapers.’

  ‘That makes even less sense,’ said Tom. ‘If he was going to expose the Collider, why would he commit suicide before he’d had a chance to speak to the press?’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t suicide,’ Serena ventured.

  Tom was silent for a while, trying to remember something that Frederick had told him over dinner. And then it came to him. He repeated his thoughts out loud.

  ‘Frederick said that Morantz came to see him the afternoon he died. He’d told him that they needed to destroy the Collider before it destroyed the world, and that Deiter knew all about it and was letting it happen.’

  ‘So, Deiter could have killed Morantz to stop him going public?’

  ‘I don’t like the guy, but I wouldn’t have put him down as a genocidal manic,’ Tom scoffed.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Selena closing the file. ‘I think we’re getting a little carried away with our suppositions, or we’ve drunk too much red wine. But what do we do now?’

  Tom checked his watch. It was two-thirty in the morning. ‘Let’s sleep on it, and in the morning I’ll speak to Frederick. Do you mind if I hang onto this, Ajay? Incidentally, why haven’t you shown it to anybody else?’

  ‘I trust only you, Professor, sahib.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘I trust only you, Professor, sahib,’ Ajay repeated.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ajay returned to his room, feeling relieved that he had given the file to the Professor and was confident the sahib would do the right thing. He knew, as soon as he’d met him at the airport, that he could trust him. His assured demeanour, considerate attitude and gracious mannerisms all indicated that he was a man of integrity.

  He regarded himself as a good judge of character, despite being betrayed by the only other person he’d respected and loved.

  Ajay was eight when Frederick applied to the courts in India to act as guardian for his best friend’s child. With no living relatives and the only other alternative being an orphanage, it was just a matter of formality that he was awarded custody. Ajay couldn’t remember much about his father, but he did keep a photo of him, which Frederick had given him, by his bedside. The picture was of Ajay, as a boy, sitting on his father’s knee, both smiling at the camera for posterity. He had mental pictures of his mother from what Frederick had told him about her, but they were fuzzy and didn’t hold any sentimental value.

  He had grown up in Dusseldorf, where his father had worked before the accident, moving in with Mr and Mrs Volker following the tragedy. They were kind to him and eventually he came to accept them as his parents. Frederick and Irma were unable to conceive a child themselves, so for their part they treated Ajay like the son they could never have.

  Being in a minority of one at school, he was often picked on and bullied by the other pupils. He found solace in religion, preferring to learn from the Pandit at the local Hindu temple than his teachers at school. Frederick had always encouraged him to follow his ancestral creed, in order to preserve a sense of heritage and cultural roots.

  He was fascinated by the folk stories and traditions that had been passed down through the generations and would often spend any spare time he had helping out at the temple with the menial chores, just so he could hear the priest recount some more fables. And that was how he spent his adolescence; whilst his peers were discovering the vices of drink, drugs and girls, Ajay would be learning the Vedic Texts, the most ancient religious teachings which define ‘truth’ for Hindus.

  At the age of 16, he had given up on school altogether and spent his days shadowing the priest, whom he had become close to over the years. He even considered devoting his life to the faith and becoming a Brahmin or teacher of scriptures, like his mentor, until it was explained to him that he didn’t come from the right caste and, therefore, would never be accepted as a priest. This rocked his conviction somewhat and he began to spend less and less time at the temple and more and more time moping in his bedroom, which led to the inevitable clashes with his parents.

  Without any job prospects, he fell in with the wrong crowd and discovered the vices that he’d missed out on while growing up, namely drink and drugs. Unable to afford either habit, he reverted to stea
ling, firstly from his parents and then, as the habits took hold, from houses. He was arrested for burglary, after someone recognised him whilst leaving a house by the window, and he was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for a year on the condition that he sought professional help for his addictions.

  That was when Fredrick thought that a change of scenery would do them all a world of good and accepted a position on the CERN council, which meant moving to Switzerland. Ajay’s initial experience of his new country was from the inside of the Geneva Rehabilitation Centre, where he spent the first six months getting clean. He left the clinic looking healthier than he had done in a long while, with a determination to get his life back on track.

  Frederick found him a job at CERN, after pulling a few strings, and set him up in the accommodation block to give him a sense of autonomy; however, in reality, he had asked the night porter to keep an eye on him and inform him if Ajay received any guests or was seen going out late at night. To Frederick’s relief, over the next four years there had been nothing to report.

  Ajay enjoyed his newfound independence but would always visit his parents at the weekend, when they would spend their time together on trips into the countryside, visiting the surrounding villages or boating on the lake. Ajay felt that he was now closer to his parents than he’d ever been and, with a regular wage coming in, he could afford to treat them to the odd meal or present.

  He loved his job. He didn’t have an official title, but everybody knew that he was the general dogsbody. Ajay didn’t mind his lowly position, however, because it gave him the opportunity to meet so many different people. He would load boxes, deliver mail, organise refreshments for meetings, ferry people to and from the airport, deputise for reception staff – every day was different and every day would bring him into contact with a new set of employees who were always friendly towards him.