The European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, was ground central. There, particle collision tests were slated to uncover details about the subatomic structure of the universe, information the physics community hoped would answer questions first raised by physicists as far back as Galileo in the 1500's. Taking a longer view of human history, one that considered humanity's earliest attempts to understand the starry skies above, this test was the latest culmination of the best thinking the planet had ever seen.
If physics had a Mecca, CERN was it, thanks in full part to the Large Hadron Collider. The massive underground circular tube was buried nearly six-hundred feet beneath the earth's surface. Its seventeen mile circumference earned its status as the largest human made structure on earth. Or off.
It drew more energy than any other machine, and took over three decades to complete. Inside the ring, particles were accelerated to near-light speed then smashed into one another, breaking them into infinitesimally small constituent particles.
Using extremely powerful magnets to attract the tiny pieces, researchers would observe and record the new, smaller particles as they flew away from the collisions. In doing so, they hoped to study the creation of matter so absolutely small it wasn't matter at all, rather the signals that underlie matter, the subatomic strings representing the most basic unit of understanding humanity had theorized.
Scientists hoped today they'd verify the strings' existence.
These facts and countless more surged through Alex's mind. Much of her work over the last six years explained the theories and practices that the scientific community tested in their search for the elusive unified string theory.
Studying the Big Bang was looking back in time 14 billion years, or 13.7 billion if you wanted to be specific about it, to the moment the universe came into existence. To her that fact bore all the significance in the world. That humanity had uncovered as much about the physical space we exist in was amazing enough, but this was something much bigger. It was as close as science had come to glimpsing the most basic components of reality, the fabric of existence, and whatever that meant.
"Amy, we're live in two minutes," said the cameraman, officially named Jake Milanski, looked a lot like Newman from Seinfeld. Jake had a shock of greying hair and thick glasses, and a personality that was, frankly, bizarre. Alex loved him already.
Jake was never without a small brown monkey, a kid's doll about the size of a pear that he bungeed to the top of his camera when he worked. According to Bryan, Jake was the 'figurative best in the business', and she'd understand the value of the monkey before the end of the trip.
Jake and Amy had been working together for years, too, and their collective experience gave her some sense of calm. Not nearly enough to cover her jittery nerves, or to prevent the sweat that she felt forming on her forehead. Luckily, Lori was presently dabbing it with a tissue.
"If all else fails, imagine you're talking to you mom, without the annoyed sarcastic tone," Amy said with a warm smirk. "Kurt will prompt you from New York, all you have to do is fill in the blanks."
"OK, we're just about there," Amy said, pressing her finger to a transmitter on her headset, to Bryan Lewis in New York. Alex wore her own small earpiece in her right ear.
In a minute the show would start and the voice in her head would be that of none other than Kurt Abramson, the venerated anchor who'd led GNT's news team for the last fifteen years.
A bead of sweat dripped down her face, and again Lori dabbed it with a quick hand.
"One minute to live," Bryan said over the headset. "Let's give Alex some breathing room."
By now Jake was pointing the camera in their direction, meaning Bryan and the entire GNT production team in New York could see them all. It was a strange feeling, being watched from somewhere across the globe, and she wondered if she'd ever get used to the excitement. She hoped not.
Amy gave Alex one last look and moved behind the camera, which was positioned along a row of twenty or so other cameras belonging to various news outlets. Behind them were more reporters, producers and camera operators.
Behind those were members of the print and radio press in rows of seats on a small elevated platform. In front of and below the cameras were five rows of computer monitors, each with three or four people huddled around a single technician. Alex counted twenty-four terminals total, and about a hundred CERN personnel.
The room felts but makeshift, like the auditorium her Comms 101 class was taught in. It was big enough that you could blend into the crowd, but not so big the professor couldn't catch you dozing.
The screens in front of her glowed with blues and whites and blacks, simple displays showing highly customized programs controlling every aspect of the LHC. Information was fed back from the endless labyrinth of laboratory machinery more than five-hundred feet below the surface.
Beyond the computer stations were four large monitors where the most pertinent testing information would be displayed, data that would verify whether or not the experiment was going as planned.
Behind the row of three foot stanchions that separated CERN staff from the press, there were at least a hundred reporters, anchors, producers and assistants.
On the wings of the room stood still others, non-essential staff who worked at CERN in roles unrelated to the ATLAS project, the years-long research program under which the current experiment was run.
Of the ten thousand scientists, engineers, technicians, administrative and facilities personnel employed at CERN, about half were physically on campus today, stationed throughout the sprawling facility watching on the campus CCTV, while millions more tuned in from around the globe.
Thanks to the blanket coverage on television, on the radio and the internet nearly anyone with access to a screen or speaker could watch the historic moment as it unfolded. The electricity that came with being on the world's stage was palpable inside the room.
At the front of the space stood the heads of each project at CERN, some of the most brilliant minds in physics. Among them were leadership from scientific and engineering departments as well as the theoretical and experimental physicists whose work was directly tied to the day. It was slated to start at 11 A.M. An enormous numeric analog clock, the kind of display that was used in train stations to relay departure and arrival times, read "10:58:49 HOURS".
"Okay, here we go in 5, 4, 3..." Amy directed her team, using her fingers to finish the countdown. Just then, a little red light went on at the front of the camera. Amy put a hand up and mouthed, "Wait."
Fifteen agonizing seconds later Alex heard the voice of Kurt Abramson through her earpiece. In those final moments, she lost any confidence she'd built up, a fact that became the single thought in her mind as she nervously waited for his report.
"And now let's go live to Alex Whitmore, GNT science and technology correspondent, on the ground at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. Alex, walk us through what's going to happen there in less than a minute."
She froze. Or maybe the word was choked. It was something about how Abramson phrased his remark.
"In less than a minute..."
She felt time slow down, heard her heart beating in her left ear while Kurt's words echoed in the right. She couldn't tell how much time had passed, and as she stared into the camera lens, noticed something in her periphery. It was Amy, holding a notepad that had something written on it. She glanced over.
"YOU GOT THIS!" was all it said.
And that was all it took.
Instinctively, Alex put a finger to her right ear and nodded her head up ever so slightly as she began to speak. To viewers it looked like a signal delay, the short pause that sometimes accompanies an anchor passing a story to a field reporter.
"Thank you Kurt, right now we're standing in the control room for an experiment that the world's physics community has been anticipating for more than two years, or more accurately, more than a hundred when you consider where this work began, on chalkboards and in the notebooks of lauded physicists."
"Today, their successors will restart the Large Hadron Collider after implementing upgrades that will help the massive machine probe deeper than ever before into the fundamental materials that make up our physical universe."
Alex had found her rhythm. She delivered her report with ease, inflecting her voice at just the right moments, as she'd rehearsed, priming the audience with pertinent details. The collider's energy was drawn from a fusion reactor. The technology was on loan from NASA. Fusion would allow the LHC to harness vast energy and propel ionized particles ever closer to the speed of light, before smashing them into one another head on.
Researchers were looking for particle fragments created by the collisions. CERN was the most powerful machine on the planet, connected to a global network of supercomputers built by various commercial entities. Connecting those supercomputers was a dedicated global network. And of course, one of Alex's favorite lines, the experiment represented collaborative synchronization of human activity on a global scale never before achieved.
The project had unified the scientific community, she explained, aweing over what it had taken to made the experiment possible.
"All around me are and throughout this facility are thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians who have spent the last two years preparing for today. The results of their work will be displayed live on those screens at the front of the room," she said, pointing. To viewers at home, their screen split, with Alex's face on the right and a direct feed of the main monitor on the left.
Presently, a woman walked to the front of the room where a podium was set up.
"They're about to start Kurt," said Alex, her attention now on the woman, a diminutive figure who nonetheless had a commanding presence. "We'll have to continue this discussion after the experiment gets underway," she added, closing.