Into The Quantum: Chapter One

INTO THE QUANTUM

By: T.D. Colt

"Maisie, don't go out too far!" I yelled at my little sister. The waves crashed around us, getting higher and higher with each swell. Mama left me in charge of Maisie so she could go get ice cream for us and told us to stay at the shoreline, but Maisie ran out into the water. I ran after her, trying to get to her, but the waves hit my legs and pushed me back. I stood up and brushed the sticky sand off my shoulders, looking around for the defiant five-year-old. I waded back in the water, pushing against the waves, calling for Maisie. I wasn't a strong swimmer, especially in the ocean because I was only seven, but I used all my might, digging my toes into the sand to anchor myself against another wave- this time hitting my face. I shook my hair out of my face and kept swimming, looking around for any sight of her.

"Merri!" I heard Maisie calling. I frantically looked around me and saw her a good 20 yards ahead of me. A huge swell was traveling towards her as I fought the current.

"Maisie, hold on!" I screamed as I swam as hard as I could. The swell reached her and she was flung towards me by the water. She crashed into me and we went under water, clinging to each other as our lives depended on it. I kicked my legs as hard as I could towards the surface.We reached the air gasping for breath, and no sooner did we breath in, another wave hit, pushing us back under. The salt water burned my eyes as I looked at my little sister, her blonde hair floating around her, the water untangling it from around her. My lungs burned from the lack of oxygen as I tried to pull her up. Suddenly, little white sparks like electricity zapped around her, the water getting colder around us. The sparks suddenly all zoomed towards Maisie and disappeared as if they went right through her. Her little blue eyes widened and she squeezed my hand as she tried to scream, the water muffling her voice as she turned into nothing, her hand no longer in mine. She was gone. She disappeared into thin air, and I drowned in darkness as I gave up my last breath.

"Merri, wake up, please sweetie," I heard a voice say to me that I recognized as my mom. My eyes flew open as water poured out of my mouth and nose. I rolled over, coughing into the sand. My whole body hurt, and my eyes still stung from the water.

Maisie.

"Where's Maisie?" I asked, looking around to see if she was there, too. Mama brushed the sand off my cheek as I tried to stand up.

"Take it easy, sweetie," she told me as I wobbled on my feet. Suddenly, a man in a cop uniform came over and whispered something to my mom. She nodded, and he bent down and smiled at me as if everything was okay.

"Merri, my name is officer Davis, is it okay if I ask you a few questions?"

I nodded and he took out a pen pad.

"What day is it, Merri?" I thought for a moment.

"July the twenty-fourth," I replied.

"And, the year?"

"2001."

He jotted some things down on his paper as he asked me another question.

"How old are you, Merri?"

"I'm seven," I retorted.

"Good," he said as he pulled out a pen-shaped object from his pocket and held it to my eyes, along with a finger.

"Look at my finger, Merri," he told me as he turned a light on at the end of the pen thing, and switched eyes after a few seconds. He turned it off and put it back in his pocket with his pen pad. He stood up and turned to my mom.

"Well, Mrs. Talmadge, Merri didn't suffer any brain damage and she'll be back to herself in no time. In the meantime, all we can do for Maisie is search the shores for any sign of her, but her chance of survival is minimal with the swell that came in."

Mama hung her head down and started sobbing. The officer bit his lip and looked at her with contrition.

"I am truly sorry for your loss ma'am. If there's anything we can do, anything, give us a call." She nodded and thanked him as he walked back to his squad car.

The ride home was silent. The days grew darker, and the nights grew terrors. I couldn't sleep, and when I did, I always relived that same memory that I desperately tried to forget. However, no matter how hard I tried, Maisies room was still next to mine. Her toys were still stuffed in the couch cushions. Her scribbles and drawings were still on the refrigerator door. Her pictures were still on the wall. I couldn't take it anymore. after four years of being haunted by images of my sister, of the memory of what really happened, I did the only thing I could. I went to the library and immersed myself in books about science. I studied physics, particles, the quantum realm. I advanced into high school physics classes at twelve years old. I became obsessed.

Finally, I found something useful. A pair of Russian scientists, one an astrophysicist, one a particle physicist, had discovered a quantum sized molecule that destroyed atoms by ripping apart the quantum fabric, forcing the atoms to fold in on themselves similarly to a black hole, and literally pop out of existence. The particle, so dubbed 'The God Particle' because it defied every law of physics known to man. The God Particle was attracted to atoms that formed any sort of biological mass- making it almost like a virus. The Russians, Dr. Andrei Daniil Krushnik and Dr. Zakhar Mendol Yaroslav, found a way to isolate and contain the particle for research. So a year later, on my thirteenth birthday, my present to myself answered. I became a stowaway on a cargo plane headed to Moscow, where the scientist's lab was. I was so close to freedom from my sisters haunting image. I was so close to the truth.

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FIVE YEARS LATER

"Merri! Where did you put laser for accelerator?" I heard Andrei yell. I rolled off the stiff bed in my living quarters that Andrei and Zakhar had built me in a spare storage room. Luckily, the storage rooms in the laboratory were quite large, but it's no five-star hotel room. The floor, walls, and ceiling were high-grade steel and were not pleasant to walk on barefoot. I slid my feet into my slippers and padded down the hall with a blanket over my shoulders. I came into a wide room that they used for the accelerator, a long metal tube that stretched all the way around the room. Andrei was in his white lab coat, bent over a table examining some blueprints. His brown hair was speckled with gray from age, and his face was all stubbly. He always wore thick glasses with a black frame and had a weird Russian tattoo on his neck. He would look scary to the average person since he was built with brawn and was six foot five. However, after living with him for five years, he's not scary at all. He's about as harmless as a soft little bunny.

I walked over to him, lifted the blueprints, and pulled from underneath them a small piece of metal that similarly resembled a flashlight.

"I didn't touch it. You put it on the table last night instead of where it is supposed to go." He took it from my hand and stuck his tongue out at me.

"I have not decided if taking you in from cold alley by dumpster was good or bad choice," he told me.

"Oh, you love me. You couldn't live without me. You would have done blown yourself up," I retorted.

He chuckled, and said, "True, true, child. I have taught you well. What is status on God Particle?"

"It's still stable. No new information on it. We're still clueless." I sighed. He looked at me like I was an equation that was missing a number, and he couldnt figure it out.

"Merri, when we took you in, I knew you would be good scientist. Destined for greatness, no doubt. I know nothing of how God Particle works. You do. You saw it. We know nothing, but you do. If anyone can solve God Particle problem, it will be you. Have faith, child. Answers will come."

"I know. I just wish I was smarter and I could figure it out," I told him.

"You are brilliant, Merri. More than you think. You need to give yourself time. Give particle time. You cannot rush it. Now, I have work to do, I am sure Miss Ellie is looking for you."

"Okay, but can you please turn up the heat? I'm freezing,'" I asked. He chuckled at me.

"You are in Russia, there is no heat!" He told me. I rolled my eyes at him and walked down the hallway. I went to my quarters and quickly changed my clothes into my black pants and shirt. I ran a brush through my tangled blonde hair and pulled it into a ponytail. Finally, I threw my lab coat on and went down to my lab where the particle, and Ellie, awaited me.

"You're late," Ellie told me in her thick, french accent.

I picked up a clipboard off my desk and proceeded to tell her, "Andrei was giving me another one of his deep, philosophical advice talks."

"Oh. Yeah, I've lived with that for way longer than you have, so you can't complain," she retorted. Her curly brown hair was messily stuck in a bun with a pencil through it. Ellie was a great person. She's usually nice, but can be a little snobbish somedays. This was definitely one of those days.

I walked over to the glass containment cell that held the particles. They zipped and zapped around in a random pattern of sparks.

"Any change in the particles?" I asked. I looked at the clipboard, which held the most recent data on them. Everything was the same.

"No, we still have nada. The only things we know is that its attracted to high temperatures above 95 degrees, especially life forms, and that it destroys the quantum fabric of atoms."

I sighed and sat the clipboard down on the desk and sat down in the comfy desk chair.

"Nothing else?" I asked.

"No, nothing."

I sighed again and leaned back in the chair.

"Radiation levels?" I questioned.

"Stable at zero."

"Vibration rate?"

"Unstable, fluctuating between zero and five hundred twenty-three."

"Isolation temperature?"

"Steady at negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit."

"Tacos for taco Tuesday tomorrow?"

"Already pre-ordered them from the Taco Shack."

I crossed my legs and spun around in the chair like a child.

"You'd think they wouldn't have taco shops in Russia," I said off topic.

"Yeah it is kind of weird," Ellie agreed.

Suddenly, as if there was an earthquake, the whole building shook. Tools and papers flew everywhere. I flew out of the chair and hit my head on the floor. The pain came a few seconds after impact, and I knew I was going to have a knot there. Ellie rushed towards me to help me up. I heard the sirens go off, and the emergency lights turned red.

"Zakhar! What's going on?" I yelled. Zakhar rushed into the room frantically, his black hair in a tangled mess and his lab coat ruffled.

"Ah, well, there is slight problem," he stuttered.

"Obviously! What happened?" I questioned. I heard a large crash from down the hallway.

"Particle accelerator broke, now there is dangerous particles bouncing off walls!"

"Oh, crap, what did Andrei do this time?" I said, frustrated. I ran down the hall and into the accelerator room, where there was a blue streak of light bouncing all around the room. I saw Andrei sheltered under a table.

"Andrei! Get out of there!" I shouted as the blue light whizzed passed me and bounced off the wall.

"Protect God Particle!" He yelled back. He was so stubborn.

"You first, get over here and I can shut the door!"

He gave me a disapproving look as he bolted towards the door. The blue ball of light whizzed after him.

"Run faster!" I shouted. As he made it to the door, The particle flew past us and down the hallway before I could close the door.

"NO!" Andrei yelled, but there was nothing we could do.

"Ellie, Zakhar, move!" I shouted at them. I saw them dive under the desk as the particles hit the glass. The glass shattered everywhere, covering the floor with sharp little pieces.

The strangest thing happened right then. The God Particle absorbed into the blue light, and it stopped in midair like it was frozen. The particles pulsed like a heart, and it tried to fold in on itself, but couldn't. It was stuck. As the particles cooled down a bit, it turned into a solid blue ball of energy and plummeted through the floor. I ran towards the hole in the floor to see it. The light got dimmer as it fell further through the earth until it was gone.

Andrei appeared beside me.

"Is that thing going to go straight to the core?" I asked him.

He looked at me with a frightened expression.

"Yes."

"What will happen if it reaches the core?" Ellie questioned.

Andrei looked at me, then at her, and at the hole.

"The God Particle will absorb cores heat. It will destroy Earth from inside out."

"How do we stop it?" I asked. There has to be some way.

"Stop it? They don't call it God Particle for nothing, Merri. It is powerful as God. You cannot stop God. It will reach core, and we will all die."

The room suddenly felt heavy, Like a darkness had enveloped us.

"What do we do?" I asked.

Andrei looked at me.

"We run."