Secrets of the Antiwave

PART 1 | Chapter 2: I am Become Knowledge...

People often mistook the stadium-sized ferroconcrete doughnut for the entire SMO facility. That was just the AC unit.

Beneath several floors of subterranean living space, under two kilometres of cryogenic equipment and fifteen layers of EM heat-shields, was a tiny chamber -- roughly the size of a lightbulb. Within this diminutive chamber were three unsuspecting hydrogen atoms, destined to reach the Planck Temperature.

The original plan had accounted for four atoms, but there'd been a mistake in the injection process. Calculations later discovered that such an extra atom would've vaporised Mars, and perhaps the entire System.

Gotta love science.

After two hours of preparation, the scientists López and DeVille announced that the ultra-heat matrix was prepared for activation. I then realised that I was the only person in the bunker without a lab coat. Something told me it was too late to ask.

Risking the fate of 23 billion lives in the Solar System, Elisa Rutherford, the head of the team, lifted the translucent safety-lid from a cherry-red dial marked 'ACTIVATE'.

From the perceived safety of our bunker, she offered her riposte to a long-dead Oppenheimer, 'I am become Knowledge, destroyer of Gods.''

Now it'd be phenomenal if I could finally put my journalism degree to good use and describe the strained exhalations of a universe set alight, the second encore of a dawning reality's warcry, the Big Bang with a subwoofer -- but no. After Rutherford had turned the dial, all we heard was a short, crisp, and anticlimactic click that sounded just like another notch on the dial. (It was later found out that the entire population of Mars had heard the same sound.)

The preliminary readings came in. None of it made sense. We simply assumed our costly equipment had been fried.

'On the flip-side,' I said, 'let's give ourselves a pat on the back for not destroying the System.'

Everyone expressed a mixture of anxiety and laughter, laced with mild disappointment. Everyone except Elisa Rutherford, who was still staring at the cascading columns of data, streaming across the holoscreen. A moment later, she let out a gasp. The second-lead scientist Dimitriev turned to see and yelled.

The heat shields were intact; the equipment was undamaged.

Rutherford quickly ran her hands across a keyboard, summoning wavy sinusoids into holographic existence. The EM waves replayed at femtosecond speed. Holding our breaths, deafened by the beating of our hearts, we stared and witnessed the impossible.

Extending across the top-left corner of the holoscreen was a disjointed serpent of digits. The serpent approached the Planck Temperature. Then, it went over.

The wave's crests and valleys lengthened, transforming into vertical lines. These then bent left and right sequentially, crisscrossing into a complicated latticework of overlapping curves. Then the wave flipped and disappeared.

'-1' was the frequency reading. I didn't need a doctorate in physics to know that this was out of the ordinary.

Although it looked absurd, the numbers matched up. The readings shouldn't have made sense, but they did. We all shouted, embracing each other with tears in our eyes. Somebody cried out 'we have changed the world!', to which Rutherford calmly replied, 'forget the world, we've become immortal.'