In the spring of 2008, above the rugged Chilean treescape, a giant awoke from a thousand-year sleep. With a vengeance, the antediluvian belched thick black smoke high into the night sky. Lightning arced and danced around the noxious plume that flowed from his cavernous mouth. He hissed, flicked out his fiery tongue and spewed brimstone down the mountainside. From his world of darkness, Mulciber rose with a terrifying rage.
At the opposite end of the earth, as dawn broke over rice fields in the peaceful sichuan Basin of southwestern China, another ancient primordial god turned his weary sides and struggled to free himself from the crush of his mountainous grave. a restless Enceladus shook the very foundations of a solid continent. In a great tectonic battle, the Indian plate rafted on molten asthenosphere and pushed up over the Eurasia plate, striking a northeast thrust along the Longmenshan fault and brought destruction to the rolling hills and alluvial plains of the Red Basin.
Meanwhile, along the border of Switzerland and France, between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range, deep in the bowels of the earth, subatomic particles hurl in opposite directions around a thirty-kilometer circular tunnel at temperatures colder than outer space. They gain energy with every lap until they collide at the speed of light. In the most spectacular research experiment ever undertaken on earth, scientists from around the globe search for the ‘God Particle’.
Four Years Later
Dr. Aaron Krause pushed his way through throngs of reporters on the
steps of the United States District Court of Hawaii in Honolulu. With long straggly graying hair, mustache and beard, he epitomized classic geek. After a life spent in the laboratory or behind mounds of scientific papers in his office in Switzerland, he is uncomfortable in a suit. Flashbulbs blind him, microphones jab at him and the questions keep coming.
“How do you feel about Cern winning the doomsday suit?”
“Do you think there is a chance the earth will disappear into a black hole?”
“Is LHC a doomsday machine?”
“Have you found the Higgs Boson?”
“Are the three explorers you sent down the wormhole still missing?”
The last question shook him, and he looked around to see where it came from. “No one knows about the time machine experiment,” he thought.
At the bottom of the courthouse steps, the lawyers, David Meshenberg and Warren Bailey fielded their own questions. The media was giddy with the grandeur of the project that Fermilab and Cern had just successfully defended. A more sober Aaron realized that the concerns raised in Wagner’s lawsuit had some legitimacy. This experiment sailed into uncharted waters; no one will really know the outcome until the results come in.
Aaron felt his cell phone vibrating in his vest pocket. He was anxious to make a private call to Switzerland and find out if there was any news.
Meanwhile
Sixty-six Million Years Back in Time
The sun gleamed off of the calm waters of the Cretaceous Inner Sea. Rebecca stared in disbelief. It all happened so fast. She felt as though she had lost time somewhere along the way. It was like the feeling one gets when waking from an anesthetic induced sleep. The last thing she remembered was waiting with her two traveling buddies in the time-machine cabinet. Their departure was to be delayed for another hour or so while technicians worked out a glitch. But here she stood, and it was everything she could ever have imagined. A rush of adrenaline and a complete sense of tranquility came over her at the same instance.
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