10: Underground
“The amount of energy you wasted in that damn airport is unbelievable,” Gryal managed to restrain the yells trying to burst forth.
“In all fairness,” Mordrin said, his head bowed, “I do not think the energy was wasted.”
“Really,” Gryal hissed, clasping Mordrin’s chin in his hand and wrenching his head up, “because the way I heard it the Mancynn is now in league with Chaos and neither of you could find him again.”
Warren took his turn at standing up to Gryal, “All of our Hexagons have limited life in them. The workers simply do not have the skill of the Entities when it comes to engineering. And their work was never energy efficient. You experienced that when you masqueraded as that damned pharmacist.”
“YET YOU HAD TIME TO LOSE!” Gryal cried, letting some of his unrelenting anger loose.
While the rage subsided, Mordrin tried again. “At least he’s still going there...as far as we know.”
“Did you actually see him on the plane?” Warren murmured in his ear.
“Well, no. But they didn’t enter transit, so we can only assume...”
*
The layer of clouds far behind, the short flight of just under two hours was nearly over. There had been little chance for Noah and Philip to talk further on the plane, there were too many people who could listen in on their conversation, so they’d decided to continue talking at the hotel.
The plane bumped on contact with the runway, before levelling out on all three sets of wheels, slowing to trundle over to the terminal. There was the usual wait on the tarmac before they could disembark with the other travellers and go through to passport control. Once through, the students and teachers all had to wait for everyone to find their luggage on the conveyor belt, and then they were done. No time was spared looking in the shops. The group proceeded (well, the teachers proceeded, the students were forced to follow) out of the main double doors and to a courtesy bus waiting a short distance from the entrance.
They all squeezed on until every available seat was taken, which meant their luggage was crammed onto their laps. The vehicle set off, making the quick journey to the NH Geneva Airport hotel.
After navigating their way to the reception area, Dr Radcliffe had a brief talk with the receptionist, showed her their many passports, and handed out the door keys to students.
Prior to the trip, the students going had been split into groups of three or four. Philip didn’t know anyone else on the trip, and hence was billeted with strangers whom he thought he would not get on particularly well with.
Someone from his group, a tall boy with spiky blond hair, stepped forward to take their key from the science teacher. When every group had a door key, Dr Radcliffe spoke up once more over the growing noise of the pupils before him.
“Okay, everyone, you’ve got about forty-five minutes before we want you in the lounge just down the corridor,” he pointed somewhere to their right, trying to boom his words for all to hear. “Until then, go and find your rooms, there, up the stairway and straight ahead, unpack your bags and get settled in.”
Some ran off immediately, not necessarily in the right direction, others stood hesitantly, not certain where to go, while groups like Philip’s moved towards the staircase, not hurrying, just making their way to their rooms.
Their room at the hotel looked comfortable enough, with its dark wood floor and snug-looking beds. The blond boy went straight to the TV on the desk by the opposite wall, turned it on, and a few seconds later threw the remote aside, obviously deciding there was nothing good on. Philip quickly took the bed by the door, which no one seemed interested in anyway, unpacked his suitcase as fast as he could, while at the same time keeping order amongst his possessions, and left the room again, going in search of Noah.
It was between five and ten minutes before he bumped into anyone. And this person was neither Noah nor someone he’d thought he’d meet on this trip.
“Well, hello,” were the words Cary Cole chose to greet him with.
“I didn’t see you as the science type,” Philip remarked, keeping out of arm’s reach of her, remembering their last encounter.
Cary shrugged, “You obviously misjudged me.”
Philip just glared at her, “This doesn’t have anything to do with me helping you with that project, does it? Because that is a lame, and quite frankly expensive, excuse for coming out to Switzerland.”
Cary imitated shock, “Of course not,” then, quieter, “There’s more things than just that damn project. And all the smart people are here, so you don’t have to...”
“Pathetic. You must be...” Philip began, before he was interrupted by Noah coming up behind him.
“Ah, Philip, I...oh, I see you’re busy.”
Philip turned to Noah, “No, no. Cary and I were just finishing.”
Looking both confused and frustrated, Cary watched the pair walking away down the corridor.
“I assumed you’d want to take this opportunity to talk more on...well anything and everything I guess,” Noah continued as they walked.
“That’s what I was doing when I bumped into her.”
“Who is she anyway?”
“Just a girl who can’t be bothered to do her own work and relies on others to make her succeed.”
Noah smiled, “Sounds like a keeper, in my opinion.”
“Ha ha,” Philip said, sarcastically.
At the corner of the corridor they reached a door with a brass number bolted on at eye level.
As Noah reached to open the door Philip asked, “Aren’t there other teachers sharing that room? How do you know they won’t be in there now?”
“This is one of the single rooms. It’s all mine.”
The door swung open to reveal a room not unlike Philip’s, except there was only one bed, and it also appeared to be slightly bigger. Noah went straight in, and opened the room’s mini bar, taking out a beer. Philip stepped in, and moved over to the bed. Noah turned to face him, beer can open in his hand.
“So what do you want to know?”
There were thousands of questions bursting in Philip’s head, but the one that came out of his mouth was, “At the airport, you called me a...”
“Mancynn? Yes, that’s what you are.”
This wasn’t the answer he was hoping for, “And that is?”
Noah pulled a chair out from under the desk and sat down, “On the whole, you are human.”
“That much I know, yes.”
“Are you going to let me finish?” Philip nodded, “However, there is part of you which gives you your abnormal abilities. Your ability to enter transit, to phase, to fly...”
“I can fly?!” Philip exclaimed.
“Calm down, it’s more like long-distance jumping; your molecules shift around different parts of your body, so you can increase the muscle mass in your legs, allowing you to jump further, then you shift the mass forwards to add extra momentum. You’re not a superhero. Physics wouldn’t allow it to be that simple. Anyway, you can only do these things because early on in your life the Brethren Lords altered your DNA by merging what scientists now call dark matter into it. With this extra-terrestrial substance coursing through our very cores, we can manipulate reality around us...to an extent.”
For the second time in so many minutes Philip found himself staring blankly at the person before him, “And this is what makes me a...Mancynn?”
“Exactly,” Noah nodded.
Philip leant back on his hands on the bed, thinking about what to ask next. And after some consideration, he said, “If we have all these abilities which make us so powerful, have the Brethren Lords made more of us? They could have an army.”
“They did,” Noah took a swig of his beer before continuing. “Many thousands of years ago, by our perspective of time, of course, there were other Brethren Lords alongside Gryal, Warren, Stark and Petti, two more in fact. Mordrin wasn’t there at that point. But the one you need to know about was called Khaonat. And during his time in power, they were raising an army of Mancynns on Earth. But Khaonat became power crazy, so they say, and tried to use them to conquer the planet. He was stopped by the Entities, but by that time the Mancynns had gone to war with each other, fighting over dominance and territory. They were wiped out by the Brethren Lords, who realised that even if they had two Mancynns, they would never settle for sharing the Earth. We’re here to rule, you see, to oppress the masses and to carry out the Lords’ orders and agenda. One thing that did come out of that event was that the Germanics took the word Mancynn to mean human, though they didn’t remember where they got it from.”
“If you have these powers,” Philip said, slowly, “why didn’t you try and overthrow them...or try to take over the world yourself?”
Noah grinned, “I’ve seen enough of conflict to not create more. And they may have made us strong, but they’re still stronger. Gryal may be old, but never for one minute assume he’s stupid.”
Philip’s head reeled with the information he’d just been told, and from the whirlwind of thought came upon a new question, something he’d said didn’t make sense. “You said they would only make one Mancynn. But there are two of us now.”
“Yes. And there were more not too long ago, but...” Noah’s eyes darkened, “um...they were stopped. And after that point I was against them, the Lords that is. So they did have reason to make you, they couldn’t use me anymore.”
Noah fell silent after that, and Philip felt he should stop asking questions, even if he wanted to ask more, to answer the mysteries of his life that had been hidden from him.
“It’s time to go down to the lounge,” Philip started, a high-pitched alarm going off on his watch. “We don’t have to go if there’s more you could tell me,” he pointed out, hopefully.
“No, we’d better go. It wouldn’t be good for your new assistant science teacher to be late for his boss’ meeting,” Noah breathed, “I’ll tell you more later.”
They were not the last to sit down in the plush seats, but nor were they the first. A number of pupils, as well as all the teachers, had already chosen the best seats. Noah went over to sit by his ‘colleagues’, some of whom still looked at him strangely, despite Dr Radcliffe insisting that he was the new assistant. Philip took his place at the side of the group of students, away from most of the pupils, especially Cary and that boy Jimmy.
They had to wait a few more minutes for the last few boys and girls to run down the stairs and into the lounge. Once all were sitting, or standing, Dr Radcliffe addressed the group.
“Okay, quieten down. As I’m sure, you’re all eager to get to the Large Hadron Collider, that’s the whole point of this trip, is it not, and so tomorrow we’ll be setting off for CERN at 9:30. Teachers will be going around and waking you all up at 7:30. Breakfast will be between 8:00 and 8:30.” He paused for breath. “As I said, at 9:30 we will be getting on another minibus and making a five minute journey to CERN, where we will be given a guided tour around the facility until 12:00, when we will return here for lunch, and then we will split you up into groups and take you around Meyrin. Now you understand what we’re doing, go and enjoy what the hotel has to offer.”
He sat down, and students began to leave.
Suddenly, Professor Oswalt jumped to his feet, yelling to the students, “And stay within eyeshot of a teacher at all times.”
But maybe he was too late to tell every student.
Philip didn’t know what to do with himself. He couldn’t go back to talking to Noah, not just yet, he felt he’d touched a nerve with him, and there was no chance of him getting along with Cary and/or Jimmy, nor anyone else. So he just wandered, going from room to room, seeing what there was. For a hotel that cost more than a hundred and sixty francs a night, there had to be something.
*
Dr Vincent Gauthier was the General Director of the Large Hadron Collider. It was he who pulled the strings here at CERN. Unfortunately, this meant that any deadlines not met were under his jurisdiction, and he was the one to be punished. They thought he should discipline the workers more. But then again, he was in charge of the world’s largest particle accelerator, and with that came certain...privileges. Still, he wasn’t here for those (though he sometimes wished he was), he was here to see the job through, however it fitted into his Masters’ plans.
He looked at his clock, and saw it was half past four, time for the routine inspection. Gauthier moved to the door of his spacious yet cluttered office and reached for the handle. But just as he was about to turn it, someone knocked three times in quick succession on the other side. He bowed his head and shut his eyes, waiting a few seconds. Then he stepped back and opened the door. The man on the other side was just about to knock again, and so he stood, almost comically, with his hand raised in a fist just before where the door had been. In a flash, realising what he was doing, he pulled his hand down to his side. Gauthier felt like putting his own hand to his head, exasperated. He didn’t know who the man was, nor did he feel he needed to. He was just another drone in his artillery.
“Sir,” the man said, crisply.
“You do realise anything you have to say to me could be covered during the inspection.”
“Yes sir,” the man’s speech was slowing, becoming more hesitant, “but you did say to report any further updates on the...the inconvenience. We, I mean I, thought it best if you were informed now, rather than later.”
Gauthier looked at the man, thinking over what he could do, “I cannot avoid my duties, I must oversee the Collider. If you must talk, then do so while we walk.”
Pushing the man aside, Gauthier strode into the plain grey corridor, which curved away on either side of him, hissing red pipes running along the walls. He headed left, with a wide gait, the other man trotting quickly behind to keep up.
“Well, sir,” the man continued, “there have been more reported sightings of the...”
“I don’t care for sightings, what is there of note?”
“Well, sir,” this time the man paused before going on, “it is not as positive as you may have hoped.”
“You haven’t caught it,” Gauthier stated, rather than directly confirming what he suspected to be true; he knew where this was going.
“On the plus side, my men can confirm it is about the size of an adolescent, with wild dark fur...”
“And what good does this do us?”
“Well, sir, we can now identify it on camera.”
Gauthier stopped in his tracks. “I would have thought the men would have been able to identify such a creature from CCTV footage with the information I’d given them already.”
“Well, sir, you must understand, with all the things you bring into the facility, they can never be sure exactly which thing they are looking for.”
“They are to look for the thing that moves as if it is a hunting creature, the only thing that is out of place that is also alive.”
With that, the General Director began once again to walk with great strides, the other man quick to follow.
“And anyway,” Gauthier added as an afterthought, “it is not too much of a threat. It could be left alone.”
“But sir,” the man annoyingly reminded him, confused, “it has already taken down two guards and is loose in the facility...”
“...And has not yet shown any other signs of aggression. If it cannot be found, then let it be. Our job here should not be forgotten, not for any distraction.”
The pair had reached a large set of double doors in the inner wall of the corridor’s curve. So far, this had been the only door to interest Gauthier. For one inspecting an entire facility under his command, it was odd that he should walk past the offices of the average worker that actually required examination. Gauthier slipped a card from his pocket and swiped it through a control pad by the doorframe. A little light went green, and a panel opened up next to him. Gauthier punched in his eleven digit code into a number pad and put his eye to the retina scanner. One could never be too careful.
“This is far too important,” he stepped back from the scanner, waiting for the doors to open. “And now we can progress to the next stage.”
*
There had been enough in the hotel to distract Philip over the past twenty or so hours. Either way, it couldn’t possibly compare to the day ahead of him. He was eagerly awaiting the call to gather in the foyer. Surely it would come any minute now.
Noah wandered in, presumably for the same reason. He nodded in Philip’s direction, and peered into the neighbouring room, where the other members of staff were convening. Philip couldn’t hear what they were saying, but a moment later they were all coming out into the foyer, one teacher going into the lounge and calling the students over. This was what he’d been waiting for. He didn’t even properly hear what Dr Radcliffe said to them all before leading them out to the awaiting bus.
The journey flew by, yet it couldn’t have been longer for Philip. As a boy who had a passion for physics as well as ancient history, this was almost a dream come true. For many years he’d wanted to go to CERN and the Large Hadron Collider.
So his heart leapt when the spherical building emerged from over the treeline on the right-hand side of the bus. As they got closer and closer, his excitement grew and grew. And when they drove past the CERN building he saw in detail the metal slats which comprised the outer layer, and the main structure behind it. The bus continued a little further on to reach a right-hand turning. They moved up a slight incline, passing rectangular white buildings and turning right once more into a large car park off the north-west side of CERN.
Out they climbed, some hurrying like Philip, others taking their time. But before they could enter the building, Dr Radcliffe took one final register, making doubly sure everyone was here. Satisfied, the teachers called for them to split into their six predetermined groups. As Philip hadn’t really been listening, he just went over to Noah, only frowning when he saw Cary and Jimmy were there as well. What were the chances?
The double doors opened, and they all pushed their way in. As he had in the hotel, Dr Radcliffe went over to the reception desk. The receptionist smiled and nodded, and three smartly dressed men sauntered over, the one in front also smiling. His white teeth were as shiny as his black hair. Another thing that was shiny about his person was the ID tag, showing the name ‘Dobrowski’.
“Hello,” he said it as though he was reciting a speech, which he probably was, “I am Mr Dobrowski, and I will be showing you around some of the facilities here at CERN today. Those of you not with me will be shown around by these good men here...”
The two men behind him bowed their heads in greeting.
“...who I assure you are splendid tour guides, just as good as myself,” he afforded himself a chuckle. He clapped his hands together, “So then, shall we begin?”
The teachers split the groups two per guide. As it turned out Philip and Noah’s group was assigned Mr Dobrowski. The other two men were leading their groups off to the sides, while their guide led them to a large elevator just behind the reception desk.
Down they went, down to the Collider a hundred metres beneath the surface, the lift rattling as it moved. Over the noise, Dobrowski began his long speech about the Collider.
“Right now we are near ATLAS, one of the two purpose-built detectors of the Large Hadron Collider. It is used to detect a number of phenomena in physics. Around three thousand physicists from thirty-eight different countries have worked on this project, and the detector was completed in September of 2008.”
At this point, the elevator shuddered to a halt, and the doors slid apart. The group stepped out into the grey corridor, spreading out to allow everyone some space. The corridor had a gentle curve; the Collider was so large that it was hard to tell it was arcing at all. But as soon as the lift had emptied, they were off again, straight to their next location, no time to look around.
Along the corridor was the occasional door, each with a clouded window and a small name plate. They were even surprisingly greeted by a scientist cycling by on a flash yellow bike.
Suddenly, to their left, the wall disappeared and before them lay the detector, reaching up to the high ceiling, an enormous disk of red, silver and blue.
Mr Dobrowski was obviously going off on his practiced speech once again, but uncharacteristically, Philip wasn’t listening to the physics. For as soon as he’d approached the detector, with the group spreading out on the balcony looking out onto the machine, a tingling feeling had spread throughout his body, starting at the tips of his toes, rapidly swimming up his legs to his torso, finally falling down his arms and filling his skull, making him feel lightheaded. Glancing over at Noah, he guessed he was feeling the same way.
“Now one of the instruments which detects the energy signatures of the particle collisions...”
“Excuse me, Mr Dobrowski, I...” Noah piped up.
“Please call me Johnathan,” he interrupted the interruption.
“Okay, Johnathan, is there anything here which could produce harmful radiation?”
Mr Dobrowski looked at him strangely, “I am sorry, I didn’t catch your question.”
“Could it make energy that hurts people?” Noah reiterated.
Mr Dobrowski smiled, “No, no. ATLAS is perfectly safe. The entire place has been safe since that hydrogen leak a few years ago.”
“What about through there?” Noah said, pointing to a door off the side of the detector.
Mr Dobrowski paused for a second, “No, no. Not there either. Of course I can’t tell you what’s behind there, I am only allowed to show the areas which are not classified.”
With that, he led the group on to the next area of the Collider, having seemingly forgotten the speech he’d started. But Noah and Philip held back, waiting until everybody had passed. Once the party was out of sight, the pair moved towards the door. As they’d expected, it was locked…not that that was going to be a problem. The Mancynns phased, walking through the wall.
On the other side was another, smaller corridor. But here, unlike the main parts of the facility, there were hissing red pipes bolted to the walls on both sides. They trod carefully, taking it one step at a time.
“What do you think they’re doing here?” Philip wondered aloud.
“Who knows?” Noah murmured, “But if Gryal is in control here, then it can’t be anything good.”
After a short distance, they came to a staircase, spiralling deeper into the Earth. Down they climbed, holding on to the cold metal railings.
They saw it almost immediately. The staircase levelled out onto an open area, no, a cavern, which seemed to spread out all under the Large Hadron Collider. Piping and cables hung down from the ceiling, trailing across the floor, spanning the gap to a massive construction. In the middle was what seemed to be one giant electric-blue dome, attached to the roof of the cavern, pulsating slightly. Coming down from the dome was an equally large column of the same intense blue, with murky green wisps of something coiling within. The base of this column met the chalk-white net to which the pipes were attached. Sparks flew across its surface, men in uniform were working at panels every few hundred metres, and at the cavern floor an enormous crate was being moved into the centre, dragged by numerous vehicles.
Philip and Noah moved around the walkway to get a better view, stepping over the red pipes. From out of his pocket, Noah drew a beige stone, about the size of his palm, covered in red rings. Philip watched intently as he held it out before him, squeezing the sides as he did. Abruptly a bubble of red light expanded from the heart of the stone, continuing out through the walls and around the entire cavern. Philip looked hastily into the cavern, and was relieved to see no one seemed to have noticed.
The red light came back just as rapidly, but instead of disappearing into the stone, formed a complex image, a 3D map.
Before Philip could ask, Noah replied, “I’ll talk more about it later. But this is an accurate representation of the whole facility around us.”
He put his fingers to it and enlarged the image, as one does on a touchscreen phone.
Suddenly, they heard a scream coming from the direction in which they’d come. Turning around abruptly, they saw some men in uniform wrestling two teenagers to the wall. Another man, dressed in a sharp suit, was coming up behind them. And then Philip got a closer look at the teenagers. They were Cary and Jimmy.