As the Light Dies

by M. D. Woodham

  “Amazing,”said the Norwegian Prime Minister.

  Sven joined in and said,“Yes, we’ve recorded a maximum impact speed of four hundred and seventy thousand miles per hour,”he said beaming.

  “Certainly beats digging a big hole to fill with waste!” said David Smith the particle physics, with a look of childhood wonder on his face.

  “Hold on, hold on!Wedon’t even know what it’s all for yet!”quipped the Swedish Prime Minister.“It’s all very well, but we already have a particle accelerator as already stated and we all know just how expensive they are to run, and that’s at far lesser speeds, and far less distance. What can this one do that theoriginalcan’t, even with this new coil design?”

  “Let me show you,”said Lars,“please follow me.”

  Lars turned and led everyone through the baffle board maze to the glass door between the large viewing windows that lead in to another room. He keyed in another pin while his finger print and retina were verified again then they entered the next room.

  They had to descend more stairs and found themselves surrounded by humming machinery with banks of dials and switches. Cables and pipes ran along the ceiling overhead. There were people hunched over a control panel over to one side typing on a keyboard.

  Everyone followed Lars along a designated footpath as it weaved through the machinery until Lars brought them all to a stop beside a tall steel cabinet. Lars entered yet another pin number on a little key pad and opened it and brought out what looked like an oversized electrical fuse roughly twelve inches long and the thickness of a Pepsi can with black end caps.

  The middle was roughly six inches from end to end and was clear like glass and it seemed to almost glow white in the middle.

  Murmurs spread across the group again as Lars handed it to Jade Anderson telling her to take a look and pass it on. Jade studied the canister for a moment noting how heavy it was and noticing how there seemed to be a tiny black sphere floating in the middle, nestled in the centre of the glowing light! Jade pointed out the little sphere to those immediately around her and gave it a little shake....nothing happened, she passed it along.“So what is it then?’she asked.

  “You’ll find out in a minute”, said Lars grinning and eventually the canister came full circle back to him skipping the Defence Minister as he refused to handle it and when Lars took hold of it again he said,“That had better not be a dangerous substance that they’ve all just handled!”

  Lars didn’t engage with him, instead he spoke to the group ignoring him.“All of you have just held the future of our planet in your hands, the saviour of planet earth!

  Pursed lips and frowned eyebrows faced him.

  Lars held the canister above his head for all to see.“This ladies and gentlemen is anti matter and it will cater for all and every one of our energy needs however great and demanding they may be, from powering your mobile phone chargers to poweringentirecontinents if you want it to, and it will do so with ease and with absolutely no by-products at all, no useless or potentially harmful substance left over! That tiny little globule you just held in your hands, that little spec would emit enough power to run Oslo at its maximum power usage through an extreme winter for more than six months, and with the amount that we can safely and easily produce here it’s more or less an inexhaustible energy source that we’ve managed to harness.”

  “How?” blurted particle physicist David Smith before anyone else even opened there mouths.

  “We simply smash particles together like you yourself have done at Cern,”said Lars.“We know that Cern have created antimatter whilst trying to recreate the big bang on a tiny scale with their LHC, so we knew that we needed to build a particle accelerator on at least the same scale if notbiggerif we wanted to create our own antimatter, and after hundreds of thousands of computer simulations and readily available information from Cern we knew it needed to be bigger. It had to be, to enable us to run at greater speeds allowing us to create workable quantities of antimatter every single cycle, plus we’ve found that the faster the collision speed the purer the quality of the antimatter so it’s a win, win situation! After many, many, many more computer simulations and mini models constructed and put through their paces we came to the conclusion that the coil design was the most economical design.”

  “Yes, yes but how on earth have you managed to extract the antimatter, and how do you stop it from decaying not to mention keep it stable thereafter?”asked David Smith barley managing to keep his emotions in check, he was absolutely amazed at what he was hearing knowing that a collection of the best scientists in the world worked round the clock globally, trying to figure out how to extract antimatter, and how to store it afterwards to prevent it from decaying, and as of yet despite all their combined knowledge and expertise no one had been able to take a single step towards doing either.

  “Here,”said Lars gesturing to Sven,“I feel like I’ve done all the talking and this part of the project is mostly down to you.”

  Almost blushing Sven stood forwards.“I’ll take it from here,”he said.

  “On the bottom rung of the coil we have a complex extraction system that removes the antimatter on collision from the accelerator and deposits it safely in to a storage chamber. First of all we create an intersecting magnetic field immediately after collision, so soon after the collision that the magnetic fields almost literally intersect at the same time as the initial collision, it all happens very fast. Then the antimatter gets caught in the middle of the reacting magnetic field and stabilises there just the same as it does in the containment canister Lars just handed round. The antimatter sits there in what looks like midair for less than a nanosecond and by using polarity reversal the antimatter is pulled out of the collider and into a tall cylindrical tank that is completely zero atmospheric that uses magnets again, to keep the anti matter from touching the sides.

  Once in there we lower the antimatter down to the bottom where at the last second the magnetic power is ramped up for a nanosecond giving the antimatter a little push and at the last possible moment a hatch opens in the bottom of the tank allowing the antimatter through in to our permanent containment chamber below, which again uses permanent magnetic fields to keep the antimatter from coming in to contact with the sides which would of course be utterly catastrophic because as most of us know antimatter and matter completely cancel each other out.

  So it must be stored permanently suspended in mid air but of course without the air, and without ever coming in to contact with anything, not even a dust mote! That isuntilwe want to extract energy from it.”

  The Defence Minister butted in,“If it can’t touch anything then how the hell can it ever be used as an energy source? All you’ve done here is create an extremely hostile substance, you’ve created a bomb damn it!”

  Sven held up his palms,“Please, give me a minute to continue, I’m justgettingto that part,”he said.“What do you think the facility runs off?”

  Sven waited for an answer but none came. He continued.“To carry on trying to produce antimatter using conventional power from the grid would cost tens of millions of pounds every single cycle, not to mention go against the very core of what we believe in.”

  “WHAT!”blurted David Smith,“you’ve extracted and harnessed power from antimatter. It simply can’t be done,it just can’t!”

  “Impossible,”said Andrew Lincoln shaking his head.

  “No,it can’t be done, it’s physically impossible!”came another voice, and then another.

  The Defence Minister seemed to be enjoying the negativity, he added,“It’s the most dangerous and volatile material,only justknown to man and you think you can harness it!”

  The Norwegian Prime Minister spoke up then making himself heard as he worked his way to the front.“I agree that this is all veryexcitingeveryone.”He overemphasised the word exciting for good effect.“It’sextremely exciting,and I must confess to being a little uneasy and a little sceptical up until a moment ago, but I’d like to hear the f
acts first, all of them, before I make any judgement. So if everyone could just please let the mantalk,let him explain what it is they do here and then when we all have the full picture we can move on to asking questions thatactuallycount without constantly second guessing and jumping the gun.”

  Silence fell over the group.

  Sven smiled at the Prime Minister and nodded in thanks and continued.

  “The process we use to convert this elusive material is literally the reverse of how we move the antimatter from the accelerator to its storage chamber. We’re able to remove up to one hundred micrograms at a time using magnets to separate and remove the antimatter. Then using polarity reversal again it’s moved in to the sphere shaped energy exchange chamber where we hold it in the centre and release an extremely fine mist of purified micronized dust, like a vapour, and when the two substances meet they react instantly, producing photons which are effectively light protons,pure lightandVOILA-the purest form of energy known to mankind is produced, absolutely one hundred percent efficient and one thousand times more powerful than nuclear energy. Just pure lightand heatalong with it, lots and lots of heat, and the rest is simple, you can turn any number of turbines or light up any number of photovoltaic cells, the choice is yours. The facility runs on both forms, albeit ninety percent comes from our turbines given that were limited by space down here, so it’s more economical to utilise turbines but given the space photovoltaic cells could work just as well with far fewer moving parts.”

  As he finished, he and Lars were both smiling like excited children in a sweet shop.

  “Very impressive,”said the Norwegian Prime Minister nodding and the Deputy Prime Minister of Finland came forward and asked,“What do you plan to do with this new found energy source?”Before Lars or Sven had chance to answer the Norwegian Defence Minister butted in.

  “This could be a formidable weapon! It would be absolutely catastrophic in the wrong hands!”

  “No,”said Lars,“Noweapons,ever! We want to save the planet not aid its mindless destruction. With this we can completely eradicate the need to burn fossil fuels ever again and with continued development we hope that one day our cars and trucks and so on will also run on this power, or at least on cells charged by the release of energy from antimatter.”

  The group were silent for a moment as they considered what Lars had just said, then Andrew Lincoln asked,“Can we see the main storage chamber?”

  “Just what I was about to ask,”added the Defence Minister.

  “Certainly,”said Sven,“follow me.”

  Sven lead them along the foot path passed various humming machines and equipment and down another stair way and then stopped by a wall that was clad in steel covered with thick rounded off rivets and lined with portholes it almost resembled a cartoonish submarine!

  “Please,”said Sven waving towards the line of portholes sunk in to the thick steel.

  The group approached the small round windows. The glass was so thick embedded in to the three feet thick steel that it was like looking through a narrow tunnel.

  “Holy Christ!”said David Smith the first of the group to look through one of the portholes. He was followed by Jade Anderson crying out,“Oh my God!’and then,“Holy shit boys what have you done?” from the Defence Minister as he backed up.

  Once everyone had caught their glimpse in to the unknown through the portholes they all backed away like the Defence Minister and looked at Lars and Sven!

  They were afraid of what they saw!

  Lars couldn’t understand it. He thought that they should all be amazed!

  Last to peer through one of the vacant portholes while he fished out and cleaned his glasses, the Norwegian Prime Minister looked and his eyes widened, and fear started gnawing away at his bones like a hungry rat!

  The antimatter suspended within the chamber that had them all so concerned was the size of a large exercise ball! It was black and shiny, and it rippled and quivered as it hovered in mid air suspended in its magnetised metal box. Some thought it looked alive as it quivered and rippled for no apparent reason as though it felt cold in there. The thought of it being alive, feeling something, unsettled them and some couldn’t bring themselves to take a second look.

  Looking to the Norwegian Prime Minister Lars asked,“What’s wrong sir?”

  “That looks like an awfullotof the stuff considering how hostile you say it is! Given that you say you only need a minute amount to power so much, do you really need such an amount stored up like this?”

  Lars said,“Our reason for having created a stockpile and stored up so much is to prove that we canandsafely.We’ve stored more than this in the past, we can store large quantities safely and because it’s, its own energy source we can store it indefinitely without ever fearing a dip in production levels!”

  “So you have room in there to run a couple of cycles and let us see the transition from collision site to storage?”enquired David Smith, the only one who still seemed excited by it all.

  “Yes,”said Sven.“That was our aim, although granted you won’t see much. It will only be a tiny spec dropping in to the containment chamber, but if you’re quick you’ll see it, and then you’ll see the larger globule react as it draws in the smaller one. There’ll be a tremor of ripples visible that will run across the surface of the sphere of antimatter as they join. We’re all set to go if you’re ready!”

  “Well I’d love to see it,” said David.“I want to see history in the making.”

  Lars smiled.“I’m glad you feel that way. This has taken an enormous amount of time and effort and money.”Lars glanced over the group waiting for the go ahead from the majority, there were people here he did not want to upset.

  They hovered by the portholes taking second looks then quietly discussed amongst themselves what this could all mean. Lars gave them the time they needed; he didn’t want anyone to feel pushed, not with his current company. After a few minutes some of the guests came forward to ask more questions, some wanted to talk through the whole sequence again. The Defence Minister bombarded them several times expressing his dislike to the situation, making Lars wish the Defence Minister hadn’t made it in today.

  Finally though, after some further discussion the Defence Minister was outnumbered with most of the group deciding that sometimes technological breakthroughs came with great risks that had to be overcome in order to be able to invest in the future of mankind and more often than not the greater the breakthrough the greater the risk involved, and besides, the cycle had been carried out many times already. Lars didn’t hesitate when he got the go ahead from the Prime Minister; he pulled a walkie-talkie from his pocket and spoke in to it.“First cycle is a GO. I repeat first cycle is aGO.”

  A moment later a voice came back from the walkie-talkie and said,“Pre- cycle sequence started.”Then there was a pause until the voice came back and confirmed that antimatter capture would take place in exactly three minutes and with that a digital clock that hung on the wall started to count down. At first nothing happened, the room was silent but gradually the hum of machines grew getting louder and louder until the whole room felt like it was vibrating!

  People were having to shout to be heard. The Defence Minister stared at Lars.“This is all normal, don’t let the noise alarm you,”Lars called to him as a distant heavy thrum began somewhere above them sounding as if it were coming closer like a fast moving train on the underground.

  “The conducting magnets and boosters are coming on,”shouted Lars.

  The noise pulsed on and off getting faster and faster and louder and louder as the clock counted down until at ten seconds left there was a steady deafening thrum, everyone stood in rigid anticipation peering through the thick tunnel like glass, even the Defence Minister, he’d even claimed his own porthole to watch from pushing someone else out of the way to do so. Jade Anderson had expected some noise but not like this, she could feel the vibration through her feet, it came in deep bone shaking pulses.

  Lars shoute
d out,“FOUR... THREE... TWO... ONE!”

  Everyone held their breath. There was an almighty whoosh over and above the train like sound that caught everyone out making them all jump as the machinery done its job at a tremendous speed. Magnets and boosters worked in unison switching on and off pushing the most miniscule particles along the collider at unimaginable speed towards the detector and towards them.

  It sounded like a thousand trains now, all coming at once. And then suddenly the noise stopped dead leaving everyone almost deaf for a moment with the sudden loss of noise, a few people flinched.

  The little hatch at the back of the containment chamber snapped open. Straining eyes watched as a tiny shimmering black teardrop fell down in to the collection chamber and arced towards the quivering black beach ball as it was caught by the magnetic field. All eyes were on the little globule of antimatter, two people gasped, another said“Wow!” and another whispered.”There it is,look!”

  The tiny little tear drop was ingested instantly and disappeared through the surface of the larger shimmering sphere of floating antimatter creating one seamless ripple as it did. The ripple ran across the entire surface of the shimmering mass leaving the large globule smooth like a pebble behind its wake. The ripple worked its way across the sphere to the other end where it closed in on its self with an almost audible plop!

  David Smith was the first to break the silence that followed.“That was simply amazing, just amazing, I can’t believe it.I just can’t believe it!” he said.

  “This truly is the start of a new dawn,”added Philippe Sanchez and Sarah nodded eagerly in agreement.“This is going to change the world,”she said.

  Others were also full of praise; it was music to Lars and Sven’s ears even though Lars knew part of it was relief that they were still here!

  The Swedish Prime Minister approached them both, he was smiling and nodding, he said,“You both have my full backing,”and he pushed his hand out and shook both of theirs. Behind him both Deputy Prime Ministers from Denmark and Finland approached and promised their full backing, as did the Norwegian Prime Minister, telling them that there was never any doubt in his mind that he’d be giving Project Tree Cycle his full backing. The Defence Minister still had doubts however and he repeated his fears of the technology being unstable, and the possibility of a terrorist attack or the potential for using the substance to produce the most powerful bomb the world was ever likely to see. He found himself in a very heated conversation about it with the other members of the group. While they were preoccupied with their mild mannered argument others began to speak up and started arguing about the pros and cons, for and against the properties of antimatter. Tempers were starting to rise and people were shouting to be heard when suddenly the humming started again!