File 1 - Unfortunate event

March 23th 2030, particle accelerator RESERV Sweden, observation station ALICE

Crouched in front of his monitor, a nearly sixty years old looking man stared as green indicators lighted one by one in a random manner. His expression was one of worry.

By his side, a middle-aged looking man watched the light recital going on.

None of the lights could escape his attention; this was the most important moment in this man's life, a coronation.

If this test was to succeed, then his genius in energy pioneering will be legendary.

Ambition and pride!

He did not want to be a flicker in the history of science, and thus has sacrificed everything for this experiment. He even went as far as lying to his own staff about the true nature of this protocol.

Initially, they were here to test the installation up to eight TEV before the grand opening planned next month.

“Mr. Graham are you sure that this is safe? Our orders were to test the installation up to eight TEV, but the protocol you entered is set to launch the collision at twenty-four! This is way over the previous value! We don’t know what had happened that time, but surely, the disaster from fifteen years ago shouldn’t be underestimated!” the sixty year old looking man pleaded while whispering.

This man’s worries were justified.

Fifteen years ago in the CERN particle collider, an explosion struck in the middle of an experiment.

Due to the collider collapsing, particles that were nearing the speed of light emerged and collided with the matter around. A chain reaction occurred.

In an instant, the entire twenty-seven km length Hadron collider exploded, collapsing the supporting foundations.

A circular hole, the size nearing one hundred km perimeter and more than fifty deep, appeared on the surface of the earth killing hundreds thousands of people.

This event created an uproar in the opinion as thousands upon thousands of people were mourning the deaths of family, friends and lovers.

Since then, the only way governments and scientists were able to continue their energy agenda was through half-truths and concealing.

Their behavior was not caused by ill will nor did it come from a disregarding attitude toward the masses: it was because they now were facing a more urgent dilemma.

This Swedish particle collider was an improvement of the previous prototype, build more sturdily; “safety” was a prerequisite.

“Stanley, I was the one in charge of the design and testing for this new, improved infra-structure,” snarled Graham “from ground up I didn’t let anything to conjecture like those idiots! This improved structure is, without a doubt, able to withstand the charge!”. “Just focus on the protocol, don’t interrupt me with your unneeded distractions, the time is near!” Graham said.

“As far as I’m concerned it was an error to let these people handle such a tool, not only did they destroy years of hard work during this collapse, they didn’t even left behind a speck of exploitable data” Graham snorted inwardly.

Truth being told, he was a just envious, at that time, his rival Pr. Shepard got ahold of a post as research director at CERN’s foundation.

Objectively speaking, it was a good choice.

Pr. Shepard was a man recognized by his peers as a great leader, not only was he highly intelligent and capable, he was also impartial and straightforward. The reason Pr. Graham did not get this spot was that he was an arrogant and extremely self-centered person.

He was intelligent, but not wise.

However, Graham did not see it like that. For Graham, not only was he more gifted than Shepard was, he also pointed out way before the fatal collapse the risks of extending the CERN experiment without careful restructuration.

Back then, he though: “So what if he is so perfect, I’ll keep a low profile for now, and the day he trip will be the day I’ll come out for the fatal blow”.

He did not get the chance to give him “the fatal blow”, but Pr. Shepard’s disappearance, along with the fact that his family died as well, gave him a sense of justice cast upon the world he was living in.

A breath of fresh air.

Not far away seated in military manner was a man who looked no more than twenty five years old, wearing black pants and a dark blue jacket.

Solid build, black hairs and jet-black eyes, he was not bad looking.

Aside from the fact that he seated quite orderly, which contrasted greatly with the scenery around, his eyes betrayed boredom while looking around the screen displaying numbers and heat scanning of the collider's sensible parts.

Energy nowadays was all the hype especially since this fatal incident, fifteen years ago, which caused so much environmental disasters and sealed humanity’s fate.

The amount of smoke, rock particles, soil, and dust expulsed during the explosion put the earth, after a few months, under a cloud so thick, that less than five percent of sun light was able to pass through.

Life was slowly disappearing from the surface of the earth, and a stable source of energy would provide humanity with a mean to escape their fate through space. The matter of the earth in the brink of extinction was of utmost secrecy and only few organizations were aware of this fact, Sam’s organization was one of them.

Sam sighed inwardly, “these scientists truly don’t learn anything, and they walk toward the unknown so confidently, so arrogantly, as if there was nothing to be afraid of!” For him, this attitude was suicidal.

Only carefully can one advance in unexplored area with a little more safety.

Compared to that, the attitude displayed by these scientists at that time, was like children playing with their father’s newly acquired gun behind his back! Truly courting death.

Shaking his head he reported his attention toward the people present. Dozens of people were in a hurry rushing back and forth between datacenters, printers and meeting rooms. Like bees in a hive.

Judging the moment adequate, he stood up and went toward ALICE’s observation chamber, the test will be finished in a few hours, and he had things to do. Officially, he is Pr. Stanley’s bodyguard, but the truth of his assignment was otherwise.

He took control of one of the numerous electric cars available to circle through the collider indoor highway, and headed toward ALICE experiments chamber, after one hour of travelling, he finally reached his destination.

Passing through the metallic doors, he checked his surrounding to verify one last time if someone was following him and after making sure that he was alone, he locked the door behind him and went toward the station.

Opening a panel, he took out a device from his inner pocket and plugged it in the mainframe of ALICE Quantum computer.

-----

Graham’s mood was ecstatic : all the data pointed out that the original calculations were on the dot, not only when nearing 11TEV the structure wasn’t entering resonance, the data suggested that the particle speed was even faster than the speed recorded at the CERN under the same conditions.

This news caused Graham an immense joy as well as comforting him in his theory. “Optimizing the trajectory as well as the speed through self-energizing induction was indeed the clever way!”

Of course, he knew the implication was that a perfect control after collision would be much more hazardous. That is also the reason why he did not want this experiment to be made public before testing, and one of the reasons for Stanley’s worry.

But Graham, of course, though otherwise: “If it’s not me who can resolve and provide us with a solution then who can?” he was confident in knowing that after Pr. Shepard’s death, no one could surpass him.

“The very principle for research to advance is through breakthroughs of this sort! If no one is daring enough to advance a piece, how can humanity make its way on the chessboard of fate? I’ll show them that I, Graham, is humanity’s only savior!”

He motioned his fingers through his console, putting more power through the collider, and soon, people around, one by one stopped what they were doing.

With time, the expressions on their faces became frantic.

Twelve, thirteen, fifteen, twenty TEV!

All the staff was looking at Graham. Fear and terror filled their eyes. They of course trusted Pr. Graham as eminent and undisputable specialist, but what is scary is scary after all. The numbers displayed were simply ridiculous!

Twenty TEV? The value the CERN planned the day of the collapse was eighteen TEV, and no one knows if it reached that value before collapse. Now they were witnessing a more frightening value in the very collider they were in!

Being afraid is the default state in that case.

In ALICE observation chamber situated in the center of the collider, small ripples were starting to form, the ripples were appearing and disappearing and each time black colored matter seemed to leak out.

“What is that?”

“I never saw this type of reaction”

“Is this what Pr. Graham is aiming for?”

“Let us go and ask!”

Staff member were wondering about this mysterious phenomenon.

Seeing this Stanley and Graham became frantic. “Pr. Graham, let us stop at that for now, we already got enough data to browse for at least a decade. Being cautious will allow us to come up with a better understanding as to what we are encountering right now”. Stanley said a hint of fear in his voice. He was sweating profusely.

Stanley was afraid, never in his life did he witness such an event, even though they were ten of kilometers away from ALICEs observation chamber, and separated by large amount of rock and metal, they could clearly feel an eerie, cold feeling seeping out from that direction.

“It seems that it’s already too late” said Graham, despair filling his face, “I already stopped powering the installation at 18 TEV but the inducted force are resonating and enhancing the signal on their own!” he couldn’t control the reaction that was occurring.

Frantically, Stanley turned around, turned on the control room microphone and shouted: “Everybody, leave immediately, we encountered an anomaly and cannot control it, our only chance to escape is n….”

At that time the scene froze as an enormous fog of dark matter swept through the entirety of the circle drawn by the collider, turning them to ashes, a one hundred and eight km jet-black circle flicked as a thunderous sound were heard through the planet.

*RUMBLE**RUMBLE**RUMBLE*

*BANG*

----------

Sam was crouching near the mainframe and checking his device while monitoring the movement outside the door. His mission was to make sure that this facility’s data were never lost, so he was sent to “save” the data before they pass through the scientist watchful and most of the time “censoring” gaze. This type of mission was necessary because humanity’s future was in balance. Governments were not willing to put all their eggs in the same basket.

Suddenly,

*ploc*

He heard a sound behind him; the sound was as a drop of water falling in a full sink.

He turned his head toward the sound and saw something odd: ripples were forming inside the room and each time, from the center of the ripples, black fog was leaking.

*ploc*

*ploc*

*ploc*

“What is happening? What is this thing?” he hurriedly stood up, staring at the ripples. Extreme confusion filled his eyes. “This test was just a warm up before the opening next month, how can this happen? Has something gone wrong?”

Waking up from his daze, he started toward the exit, when a ripple suddenly appeared right where he was and struck him.

Time froze and he lost consciousness.

-----