Wormhole - 03 Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 Richard Phillips

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47 North

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612184951

  ISBN-10: 1612184952

  For my lovely wife, Carol, who believes that finishing a task is at least as important as starting it.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  CHAPTER 107

  CHAPTER 108

  CHAPTER 109

  CHAPTER 110

  CHAPTER 111

  CHAPTER 112

  CHAPTER 113

  CHAPTER 114

  CHAPTER 115

  CHAPTER 116

  CHAPTER 117

  CHAPTER 118

  CHAPTER 119

  CHAPTER 120

  CHAPTER 121

  CHAPTER 122

  CHAPTER 123

  CHAPTER 124

  CHAPTER 125

  CHAPTER 126

  CHAPTER 127

  CHAPTER 128

  CHAPTER 129

  CHAPTER 130

  CHAPTER 131

  CHAPTER 132

  CHAPTER 133

  CHAPTER 134

  CHAPTER 135

  CHAPTER 136

  CHAPTER 137

  CHAPTER 138

  CHAPTER 139

  CHAPTER 140

  CHAPTER 141

  CHAPTER 142

  CHAPTER 143

  CHAPTER 144

  CHAPTER 145

  CHAPTER 146

  CHAPTER 147

  CHAPTER 148

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dr. Rodger Dalbert stepped out of the black Mercedes, almost losing his footing on the icy blacktop. His driver reached out to support him, but he waved the hand away.

  “It’s OK, Carl. I’ve got it.”

  “Black ice is a bitch this morning. Thought we’d slide off the road in that last roundabout.”

  Rodger smiled at the bigger man. “That crossed my mind.”

  An icy blast of wind forced Rodger to duck his head, seeking some protection behind his overcoat’s high collar. Damn, it was cold. Of course, what could one expect of March in Switzerland?

  On the bright side, Meyrin wasn’t far outside Geneva. Rodger had always loved Geneva. Too bad his schedule wasn’t going to allow him to tour more than the airport. Oh well. He’d known his personal life would suffer when he’d agreed to chair PCAST, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

  Hitching his overcoat more tightly around his neck, Rodger hurried out of the wind and into the building that would host today’s conference, a review of ongoing repairs on the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. The most ambitious science project ever undertaken by man occupied a monstrous tunnel a hundred meters below ground, just west of Lake Geneva, its twenty-seven-kilometer circumference crossing the border between France and Switzerland in multiple spots. This building sat seventy meters above a cavern in which the huge ATLAS detector enfolded LHC Point One, a beam interaction point where two super-accelerated proton beams collided...at least they did when the whole thing was working.

  “Dr. Dalbert. I am so pleased you could make it.”

  Rodger turned to see Dr. Louis Dubois, the famed French physicist who headed the team of ATLAS scientists, approaching from across the room. The man had aged since last Rodger had seen him, at a conference in New York, long black hair flowing down over his shoulders as if he had just stepped out of a Paris salon, looking more like a twenty-something Yanni than a Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist. Now, he wore it tied back in a greasy ponytail, as if he hadn’t bothered to wash it in weeks. His eyes, which seemed to have sunk back into his face, showed a fatigue no sleep could wash away.

  “The pleasure is mine, Dr. Dubois. I apologize for my tardiness. The drive took us a bit longer than expected this morning.” Rodger nodded toward the reception desk. “Should I sign in?”

  “No need. I have your badge right here. Now, if you’ll follow me, the conference is about to begin.”

  Passing through a doorway, Dr. Dubois led Rodger down a short hall and then turned right into a room that was much smaller than what Rodger had expected. The conference table seated a dozen, but today only three people occupied its chairs. Dr. Dubois, with Rodger in tow, now made a grand total of five.

  As Rodger seated himself, Dr. Dubois moved to the head of the table and began the obligatory introductions.

  “Good morning to you all. Although most of you have already met, I wil
l make my way around the table.

  “On my left is Dr. Robert Craig, chief scientific advisor to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense.”

  The stocky redheaded man inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “Continuing in clockwise fashion, Dr. Klaus Gotlieb, scientific advisor to the European Commission.”

  Rodger recognized the bald, birdlike visage of the older man from an August meeting in Stockholm. Although he’d only chatted with the scientist briefly, the encounter had felt interminable.

  “Next we have Dr. Pierre Boudre, senior astrophysicist for the European Space Agency.”

  Raising his left eyebrow ever so slightly, Rodger glanced across the table at the slender Frenchman. He had known and liked Pierre since they had collaborated on the International Space Station for NASA. The man was brilliant, and endowed with an affable personality that could charm a group of locals at a Houston coffee shop as effortlessly as society’s elite at a Long Island social. But what was he doing here?

  For that matter, what was Rodger doing here? What had been billed as a conference on the status of LHC repairs was clearly nothing of the sort. Five people? This wasn’t enough for a round table discussion, much less a conference. And the makeup of the group. Two French, one German, a Brit, and an American. Something about the mix didn’t seem right for an LHC discussion. The project was a worldwide collaboration. So what was this about?

  “And on my right is Dr. Rodger Dalbert, chairman of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

  “As for me, I am Dr. Louis Dubois, and I am the senior physicist for the ATLAS experiment. Actually, that title is a bit presumptuous, since we have over two thousand five hundred physicists from thirty-seven countries collaborating on this experiment. Let’s just say ATLAS is my baby and a very big baby at that.”

  Rodger heard chuckles of approval from the small assemblage.

  Dr. Dubois paused, then spread his hands, palms up, like a pastor about to call his flock to prayer. “It is by now obvious to you all that this is no conference on the LHC repair schedule. I apologize for the subterfuge, but I am quite certain you will soon understand why we deemed this necessary, given the current situation...one that requires deft handling to avoid undesirable media involvement.”

  Rodger’s pulse quickened. Media involvement? Had the CERN scientists made a breakthrough? Had they finally established definitive validation for the physics standard model? But then why not just present their results? Nothing about this made any sense.

  “Rather than try to explain why I called you together, let me show you.”

  Dr. Dubois thumbed a button on the small remote control unit he picked up from the table, bringing the flat-panel display on the far wall to life. The screen showed a myriad of colored lines twisting away from a central point, something a child might have produced given a full day with a Spirograph.

  Dr. Dubois moved the mouse pointer on the screen, circling the central point.

  “This is an ATLAS image from testing conducted just prior to the latest system shutdown, early on the morning of the last Friday in November. In fact it was still Thanksgiving night over in America when this image was captured.”

  Rodger studied the screen. Without a detailed study of the complete data set he was at a loss to spot anything unusual in the image. Clearly the extreme energy released in the proton collisions had created a wide range of particles with different charges, spins, and masses, accounting for the assortment of paths that were displayed on the screen.

  “Now this,” Dr. Dubois said, bringing a new image to the display, “is ATLAS data captured this very morning.”

  Although the first image had been indicative of an extreme energy event, this latest image showed an order of magnitude increase in particle interactions, so many that it was difficult to discern one path from the other.

  “Excuse me,” Dr. Craig interjected. “Were you using the same filter and trigger settings on this last event?”

  “The ATLAS instrument settings are unchanged,” Dr. Dubois replied.

  Something about that statement bothered Rodger, and he leaned forward. “But you said this was captured this morning. I didn’t realize that you had finished repairing the damaged electromagnets and restoring vacuum to the system. Have you managed to further increase beam energies beyond ten TeV?”

  Dr. Dubois leaned back in his chair. “That brings us to the issue at hand. There’s really no way to put this except bluntly. There never was any electromagnet damage, or any loss of vacuum in the beam tube. That was merely a cover story issued to the press to allow us time to develop a detailed understanding of the anomaly.”

  Voices rose in concert, each scientist demanding attention until no single question could be discerned above the noise. Dr. Dubois waited patiently until, at last, the scientists fell silent.

  “I understand you have questions, but before I yield the floor, you need to hear the rest of what I have to present, information that will answer many of the questions you have already asked, but which will certainly raise more. Now may I continue?”

  Glancing quickly around the table, Dr. Dubois encountered no objection. He rose from his chair, as if he could no longer bear the tension while remaining seated.

  “As I indicated in my early remarks, the testing conducted through late November produced a series of exciting results. However, during a test conducted on the morning of the last Friday in November, we noted an odd spike in measurements across the range of ATLAS instruments. I’m talking about across the inner detector, the calorimeters, the muon spectrometer, even the outer toroid magnets.

  “Even more disconcerting, the readings continued after the beam channel was shut down. Naturally, we first looked for some failure in the instrumentation, faults in the electronics or in the software responsible for collecting and processing the data.”

  Dr. Dubois’s face had taken on a pallor that could not be blamed solely on the room lights. Rodger understood why. The implications were enormous. For ATLAS to record such a powerful event with no beam firing couldn’t be good.

  “We shut down all further LHC testing until we could determine the exact nature of the problem. We have not done a beam firing since that day.”

  “Wait one minute.” Dr. Gotlieb rose from his chair to point at the screen. “You said that image was collected this morning.”

  Dr. Dubois nodded. “That is correct. That is a slice of the data collected by the ATLAS detector this morning.”

  “But, if there has been no proton acceleration around the LHC, how...?”

  Dr. Gotlieb’s question trailed off into horrified silence.

  “Jesus Christ.” The words slipped from Rodger’s lips like a prayer. It was worse than he had thought.

  “The November Anomaly, as we have come to call it, appeared at the interaction point within ATLAS and somehow achieved a semblance of stability. We immediately scrambled to isolate the anomaly in an intense electromagnetic containment field to keep it from escaping the vacuum chamber. Since that day, we have had a team of engineers working around the clock to improve the quality of the surrounding vacuum, adding multiple redundancies to prevent electromagnetic or vacuum failure.”

  Dr. Dubois pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbing at the beads of sweat that dampened his brow. “I think you can see why we’ve held this information close-hold as the best minds on the program struggled to understand exactly what has happened.”

  “But how is that possible?” asked Dr. Boudre. “Admittedly I’m an astrophysicist rather than a quantum specialist, but even the energies provided by LHC collisions have far too small a probability cross section to allow for stable formation of some sort of micro black hole. Besides, Hawking radiation should dissipate any black hole with a mass of less than two hundred thousand kilograms in under a second. A micro black hole such as yours should have evaporated in a tiny fraction of that time.”

  “We don’t think that’s what it is.”
/>
  “You don’t think?” Dr. Gotlieb sputtered.

  Rodger realized that he had also risen to his feet, although he found himself leaning on the table for support.

  “And after three months of secret study, what have you learned?”

  Dr. Dubois started to speak, paused, then began again. “The anomaly violates all accepted theory. We have pored over every paper published in the last fifty years that could remotely have bearing on this matter and have only found one that seems to describe what we are seeing. It’s a theoretical treatise titled ‘Quasi-Stable Quantum Singularities,’ published three years ago.”

  “And what does the physicist who wrote the paper have to say about your anomaly?” Rodger pressed.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t spoken to him.”

  “What? Why the hell not?” Dr. Craig bellowed.

  “Gentlemen, please sit back down. Thank you. I know you are all wondering why I have gathered you here instead of taking this directly to the world’s governing bodies. What we have here is something entirely beyond our current understanding of physics, something that for now appears quasi-stable. It has the potential to transform into something far more dangerous, possibly even a black hole that would consume our planet. If a government reacted to this out of fear, you can imagine what they might try.”

  The table jumped as Dr. Craig’s fist slammed its surface. “They’ll nuke the bloody hell out of your goddamned science experiment. Should have been done before now.”

  Rodger understood Dr. Craig’s anger. But all he could do was lean back in his chair, too stunned to respond.

  Dr. Dubois leaned forward. “And if they do that, they will probably bring about the disaster that we all fear. According to our analysis of the equations in the paper I mentioned, an anomaly of this type occupies an inflection point between a number of more stable states, most of which are unpleasant. Even a relatively minor perturbation could tip it from its perch, sweeping away humanity in an avalanche of destruction.

  “So we have determined that you four, as respected scientific representatives of the key governments of the European Union, Great Britain, and the United States, are best suited to bring this knowledge to your political leadership. After those governments have absorbed the facts, they can come to consensus on how best to proceed.”

  Dr. Craig’s face had acquired a purple cast. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why haven’t you contacted the physicist who wrote the damned paper?”