John Ringo: Into the Looking Glass

“NASA, then defense contractors,” the secretary said, smiling faintly. “Ph.D.s in physics, aeronautical engineering, optics, electronic engineering and some other stuff. Smart guy. Very bright, very sharp, high watt.”

“Fifty-ish, balding,” the Homeland Security director added, chuckling. “Fifty pounds overweight, pocket protector, five colors of pens, HP calculator on his hip.”

The defense secretary just smiled.

The man who entered, passed by the Secret Service, was just below normal height. He had brownish-blond hair that was slightly tousled and lightly receding on both sides. He walked like a gymnast or a martial artist and if there was an ounce of fat on his body it wasn’t apparent; his arms, which had strangely smooth skin, were corded with muscles. He had light blue eyes and a face that was chiseled and movie star handsome. He was wearing a light green silk shirt and well-worn blue jeans over cowboy boots.

“Gentlemen and ladies, Dr. William Weaver,” the defense secretary said, lightly with some humor in his voice. “Senior scientist of Columbia Defense.”

“I’m sorry about how I’m dressed, Mr. President,” the scientist said, sliding into a chair at a gesture from the President. “I didn’t think I was going to need a suit this weekend; they’re all at home.” He had a slight, but noticeable, deep south accent. “ Ahm sorry ’bout how Ahm dressed, Mister Pres’dent.”

“Not a problem,” the President said, waving his hand. Unlike his predecessor he insisted on suit and tie in the nation’s work and never took his off when he was in the office. He had changed as soon as he got back from Camp David and all the senior staff were in suits or dresses. “Where’s home? You don’t live in Washington?”

“No, sir, I commute from Huntsville,” Weaver said.

“We don’t have much for you to go on,” the President said. “But this event this morning appears to have originated at the high energy physics building at the University of Central Florida. We think that it might have been due to something that was being worked on by a physicist named… name?”

“Ray Chen,” the national security advisor said, watching the newcomer.

Weaver closed his eyes and grimaced. “Ray Chen from MIT?” he asked, not opening his eyes.

“Yes,” the NSA said.

“Well congratu-effing-lations, Ray,” the scientist said to the ceiling. “You just made the science books.” He looked back down at the President and then narrowed his eyes. “I can make some guesses Mr. President. That’s all they are but they are informed guesses. Say about a seven on a scale of one to ten.”

“That’s good enough for now,” the President said. “How bad is it?”

“Not nearly as bad as it might have been,” Weaver answered, clearly trying to figure out how to phrase things. “One possibility is that we would all have just disappeared, as if we were never here. Unlikely, but possible. I’m going to have to explain and I’ll try to tell you when I’m getting into completely raw speculation.”

“Go ahead,” the President said, leaning back.

“What Ray Chen was working on was the Higgs boson particle,” the scientist said, shaking his head. “First thing to remember is that quantum mechanics can drive a normal man crazy so if it seems like I’m insane just keep in mind that it’s the physics, not me. A Higgs boson is a theoretical particle that is named for the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, who suggested it as a way to explain some phenomena in high energy and vacuum field physics. Some scientists and especially science fiction writers believe it contains a universe within itself. Me, I always thought it was just reinventing the zero point energy fluctuation energies, or vice versa.”

“You mean a galaxy?” the Defense Secretary asked.

“No, Mr. Secretary, a universe . All the physics that make up a universe, which won’t be the same as this one, all the math, all the galaxies if they form. Theoretically.”

“That’s…” the Homeland Security director stopped and chuckled. “It isn’t insane, it’s the physics, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Weaver said, nodding. “The thing is they take really high levels of energy to form. CERN in Switzerland’s been working on them for forever and couldn’t get one. But the other thing is, there’s another theory that when it formed it might just… supercede this universe.”

“Supercede?” the president said. “As in replace?”

“More or less, Mr. President,” the physicist said. “That’s why I said: Not as bad as it might have been. We might not have even known anything happened, just all been gone. Moonshots to the Mona Lisa, gone as if we never existed. And anything or anyone else in the universe. Biggest argument against that happening is that it hasn’t and something , somewhere in this big wide universe must have made a Higgs boson before.”

“I see,” the President said.

“Or even, and I think we might be onto something here, open a hole into another universe. You see, they don’t last for long, even if you make one. Now, within the universe, it’s all the time of the universe which might be, well, the whole thing. In the couple of nanoseconds they exist in this universe, in that universe they’d have the Big Bang, us making the universe so to speak, universal cooling, star formation, planet formation, the formation of life, contraction and then erasure. Billions and billions of years in that universe compressed to less time than it takes a computer to calculate two plus two in this universe. I know you’re a God fearing man, Mr. President, but with Higgs boson theory, God might have been Ray Chen pushing a button as he said: ‘Let’s see what happens.’ ”

“So you do understand what happened?” the President asked. “If this was a possible result, why would anyone do such a thing?”

“Well, the recognized negative results were very low order probabilities, Mr. President,” Weaver said. “They’d been studied over and over again and they were dismissed. I dismissed them and I still think I’m right. What would happen if you made a Higgs boson the normal way is a brief flash of light, some secondary particles and then it would be gone. Might not even be able to tell you’d done it. But that’s the normal way, which involves great big linear accelerators.”

“They had one in UCF,” the FBI briefer said, glancing at his notes. “We’d first put the explosion down to an accident with that.”

“Shows you don’t know high school physics, much less this stuff,” Weaver said in an equanimible tone. “Couldn’t get anything like that out of even a big collider much less the four meter or so that they had at UCF. And you can’t get a Higgs boson out of one normally at all. What we really needed was the super conducting supercollider they were building in Texas. That was one of the scheduled experiments. But Ray Chen wanted to make a Higgs boson.”

“Why, in God’s name?” the President asked. “If it was possible that it would erase all life on earth?”

“Why did you want your baseball team to win the World Series, Mr. President?” Weaver shot back. “Besides which, forming one and then watching it degrade would tell us a lot about how our universe really works. Understanding physics is the basis to everything, Mr. President. Everything from cellular telephones to the MOAB. And Ray was good at it. Very bright, very crazy in that way you have to be to understand quantum mechanics. And he thought, I’ve read the papers, that there was a way to shortcut to a Higgs boson. I won’t get into what it is, but he thought that under certain conditions it was possible to change physics in a very limited area. And with the physics changed you could make a Higgs boson. And I think that it was his shortcut that went wrong.”