Chapter 1
“Sometimes I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Famous last words Doctor St. Clare.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
It’s 4:00 am at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, which is more commonly known as CERN, and I have, yet again, volunteered to be the guinea pig for another experiment cooked up by yours truly and my research partner, Dr. Hans Godunov. Hans is a brilliant, but really freaking old (I’m sure that’s a scientific term), theoretical physicist. He pioneered high energy particle collisions back in the 60’s, and helped construct the first electron-positron collider.
I’m fairly sure the particles in his brain collided with some strong hallucinogenics in the 60’s as well because his experiments are out there. Far, far out there. But I consider myself lucky to be working with him at CERN. Who am I kidding? I’m lucky to be at CERN at all at my age, let alone working with Hans.
Who they really should be keeping a better eye on, since at the present time, he’s attempting to prove the existence of dark matter by accelerating subatomic particles into each other at roughly the speed of light. But they did give him the shittist time of day with the Large Hydron Collider, or LHC for short, so they aren’t completely ignorant of the fact that he may be losing it.
“Can you back up to where you were Marion?” he yells to me over the hum of the machines operating the collider.
“Sure thing Hans!” I yell back with overtly fake enthusiasm. I guess when it’s this early in the morning, and it’s just the two of us here, we can forego the formalities of referring to each other by our titles.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure we’ve ever been here by ourselves. Generally, it takes a small army to make the LHC run. Must be Hans had everything set up in advance so as few people as possible had to show up at this ungodly hour.
Hans looks over his reading glasses to me, noting my position and frowns. He shakes his head as if he’s having a conversation with himself in his head - which he probably is - and his long shaggy white hair swishes into his face at the movement.
“Uh no Marion.”
“What?” I yell back. It seems like the LHC is getting louder, or maybe its just the echo in the cavernous space.
“Where you were before. IF. YOU. PLEASE,” he yells, enunciating the last three words slowly.
Looking behind me, I try to figure out where exactly he wants me to stand. I don’t even try to figure out why. I slowly walk backward in slow exaggerated steps. It’s a bit cartoony but it’s obviously important to have me in a certain position.
“Maybe so the ancient aliens can beam me up,” I mutter to myself. Hans watches me, his eyebrows scrunched up a bit. After three large steps, he nods at me and I stop.
“Why do you want me here anyway?” I finally ask, yelling across the space to him.
He just nods to himself, apparently not hearing me, or purposely ignoring me. Both equally plausible.
Taking a look around in my new, new spot, I realize I’ve migrated from the desk behind the work tables holding the plethora of machines, computers and displays that control the LHC to a seemingly random open space.
I look over at Hans quizzically, trying to catch his eye, but he’s moved to one of the computers that I recognize as the one that controls the types of particles accelerated.
Now I’m lost. I thought we were working with just protons today. Must be he decided to try something else? Oh God. I hope he got permission, otherwise they’re going to kick our sorry asses out of here.
“NO!” Hans yells out as I start moving toward him to get an explanation as to what the heck is going on here. Automatically I freeze on the spot at the panicked tone of Hans’ voice.
Hans looks up as I hear the hum I had thought of usual LHC noise seem to centralize above me. I follow Hans’ gaze up as it the hum morphs into a sound more like a jet engine. Directly above me is a black shoot of sorts. It reminds me of a HVAC duct, but much larger and black instead of the usual silver.
Unbidden, the scene in Die Hard pops into my mind where Bruce Willis says, “Come down to the Coast, let’s get together, have a few laughs.” Before I can even smile at the memory, I feel an odd sensation.
“Oh shit!” I manage to get out as the hairs lift off my neck, making me freeze in place. My breath catches in my throat as the rest of my hair follows those on my neck up, fighting gravity. Then the rest of me lifts and I pull the curtain of black hair back that’s floating in front of my face to see what’s going on.
Trying not to overreact, I stop breathing as a shimmering gold light dances around me.
Icy panic begins to crawl down my spine and I look pleadingly at Hans hoping for an explanation or some help, or something!
The noise gets even louder. The crescendo tearing through my skull. I feel like my ears are going to bleed. My arms and legs are suddenly thrown wide of their own volition and my nose begins to bleed. I start screaming as it feels like I’m being torn apart. I start a flat spin, like I’m hurtling through space with no control. I can’t see anything with my hair wrapped around my head and my ears both pop.
I try to find Hans with my eyes to beg for help. At this point my screams are an incoherent mix of pain and pleading for the pain to stop.
And then stop it does as everything goes black and I lose consciousness.
