Broken Symmetry

“Because otherwise the energies of their beam would cause positive feedback with ours, and—and I don’t want to think about what that would do to our universes. It might bring them together, or blow them apart.”

Ray sighed. “An abandoned ring. How ironic.”

“Ironic?”

He was silent as they took a curve. “Louis Reichen called today, from Washington.”

“Oh. It’s not good news, is it.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, it’s not.”

“That’s why you brought up the idea of shutting down the SSC back there. To soften the blow.”

“Yes. After all, if we’re going to have to shut it down anyway, I would rather there be a good reason behind it. And if it was harming people in another universe, that would be a good reason. But this—this is just stalled budget talks and political infighting. And we’re the ones getting the ax for it.”

Kristin didn’t want to ask the next question, but needed to know. “How soon?”

“They’re giving us half a year to wrap up any experiments that we might still be running. I got them to grant us that much.”

“And then?”

“Unless we can think of some way to get those beams back, that will be the end of the SSC.”

They rode the rest of the way back in silence.

6. Spin Down

Roy couldn’t believe his luck. In only four weeks, they had convinced the DOE to reopen the SSC facility. He and Harold stood on the ground above the underground ring, watching the last of the scintillator detectors from Fermilab being installed.

“Are you sure about this, Harold?”

His eyes twinkled. “Very sure, as always. According to my calculations, this is the third most probable spot for the crossovers to occur. And anyway, the evidence is already all around us.” He swept his arm around to indicate the various holes in the ground, formed by fresh explosions during the last month. The current detector was being set up on a piece of the ground that was, as yet, unscarred.

“True,” Roy said, “although—”

A far away boom interrupted Roy. Everyone jumped, including the people setting up the new detector. They continued working when the echoes died down.

“Harold?”

“Sounds like it came from Detector One. A little early, but let’s go check it out.”

The two men drove along the circumference of the ring until they found the fresh hole, smoke lazily drifting out of it. They parked a safe distance away and approached on foot.

“Look,” Harold said, and whistled.

The hole was right in the center of the surrounding detector, which was unharmed. A blue light indicated that the detector had successfully taken data, which at this very moment the computers back in Waxahachie would be analyzing.

“I can’t believe our luck,” Roy said.

Over the next few months, Roy, Harold, and other physicists gathered in Waxahachie, and pored over the accumulated data from the SSC. Once again, Harold and Roy found themselves in Roy’s office, discussing the experiments.

“It looks good,” Harold told Roy. “We seem to be close to confirming the existence of the Higgs boson.” The two scientists tossed the physics back and forth for a while. The Higgs boson, a particle formed only at extremely high energies, was the key particle in the Grand Unification Theory. Discovery of the particle would indicate that three of the four fundamental forces—the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces—were actually aspects of one overall superforce.

“That still omits gravity,” Roy pointed out.

“Who cares? If we can get just one more run out of the other universe’s accelerator, we’ll have gotten closer than anyone has before. Even Einstein.”

Roy nodded. Einstein had spent the last years of his life trying to unite gravity with electromagnetism. If only he had known that gravity would be the hardest force to unite of them all.

“The next step would be an accelerator of even higher energies. Probably have to build it around the Moon.” Roy sighed, and smiled. “Too bad we won’t be around to see it.”

Harold chuckled. “Roy, God Himself could appear in front of you with the one ultimate equation that explains all of physics, and you would shrug and think about how it would put all of us out of work. Forget about it! We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. Many-worlds and Grand Unification in one year, when just a few years ago we thought the SSC was long dead.”

Roy laughed. “It’s been a long, hard project, Harold. I’m just as happy as you are, but I’m exhausted from all the political stuff as well as the physics.”

“Well, relax. Just one more run of the accelerator, and you, my friend, will be on stage in Stockholm getting your Nobel prize.”

7. Spin Up

“That’s even more preposterous than your original theory,” Ray said. He and Kristin were eating lunch in the cafeteria. The mood around them was somber, and yet people were still joking here and there.

Kristin nodded. “I don’t care. We’ve got less than a month before they close us down forever. I think I have a right to request these runs.”

“What possible good could it do?”

“What possible harm?”