Amplitude Read online

  Amplitude

  Dimension Space Book Three

  Dean M. Cole

  CANDTOR Press

  For R.C. Bray and Julia Whelan.

  Thanks for breathing life into these tales o’ mine. You’ve made Vaughn and Angela real for a multitude of audiobook listeners (see what I did there?).

  Contents

  Another Great Series by Dean

  Get Updates, Win Stuff

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part II

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part III

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part IV

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Part V

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Book 4 Coming 2019

  Get Updates, Win Stuff

  Sector 64: Ambush Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Another Great Series by Dean

  The Complete Sector 64 Set

  (Click or tap the titles or the image to learn more.)

  The Sector 64 Timeline

  1947 - First Contact a Sector 64 Prequel Novella

  Today - Ambush - Book One of the Sector 64 Duology

  Tomorrow - Retribution - Book Two of the Sector 64 Duology

  (Read the sneak peak of Ambush at the end of this book.)

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  Part I

  “You can't do the end of the world in a … boy meets girl way.”

  —Terry Southern

  “Hold my beer.”

  —Dean M. Cole

  Chapter 1

  “Today, vee shall plumb the deepest reaches of the quantum realm. The collider’s High-Luminosity upgrade vill shine the light of discovery upon hidden dimensions und singularities.”

  Unfortunately for the world, the German scientist had no idea how right he was.

  Doctor Hans Garfield smiled inwardly. The director of CERN’s High-Luminosity upgrade had said those words for the benefit of both the reporter and her cameraman just a few short minutes ago. In the intervening moments, he’d stood the world of theoretical physics on its head.

  The first successful collisions at the collider’s new and significantly increased power levels had resulted in a resounding success.

  This was going to be his Nobel Prize.

  Hans placed a hand over his heart as he imagined the medal hanging there.

  A slap on his back snapped Doctor Hans Garfield from his reverie.

  “We did it—!” Shouting to be heard above the cheers of the control room’s multiple occupants, the exuberant man paused and then shook his head curtly. “Sorry. You! You did it, Doctor Garfield!”

  Hans gave the postdoctoral candidate his best, most disarming smile and then tilted his head toward the man. “You vere correct the first time, Sampson. Vee did it,” he said, his German accent rendering we as vee.

  Turning from the man, Hans stared through the control room window. The large, cylindrical body of the ATLAS detector filled the majority of the view. He smiled and then nodded again. “Yes, vee did do it.”

  He gave Sampson a sideward glance. “Now please tell me that vee captured all the data.”

  The man’s head bobbed up and down rapidly. “Y-Yes.” He bent over his keyboard, his fingers pecking out a series of commands. “Here’s the energy graph.” Sampson stopped typing and pointed triumphantly, indicating a spike in the readings. “There it is, sir.”

  Hans gave the man a beatific smile. “There it is, indeed.”

  That spike of Hawking radiation would be the key to his Nobel Prize. The event that it represented was the penultimate moment that Hans had been working toward his entire career.

  A feminine voice at his right shoulder rose above the excited cheers of the room’s numerous occupants. “Is that it?” The reporter pointed at the computer screen. “Is that the black hole?”

  Nodding, Hans turned toward the woman. “Yes and no. It is not the black hole itself, but the decaying remnant of the short-lived singularity.” He gestured toward the peak in the data. “That spike represents the burst of Hawking radiation that emitted an instant after I … uh, vee created the black hole.”

  The woman from The New York Times tilted her head inquisitively. “Hawking radiation?”

  Hans nodded. “Yes, it’s a type of energy that Doctor Stephen Hawking theorized vould be released by an evaporating black hole.”

  The woman nodded dutifully, although Hans doubted she had comprehended a word of what he’d said.

  After a furtive glance through the control room window, she looked at Hans again. “Aren’t you worried that you’ll create a black hole that will end up swallowing the entire planet?”

  It was all Hans could do not to roll his eyes. “No, no. This is simply not possible. As I vas telling you before, an MBH–”

  “MBH?”

  Failing to stop the eye-roll this time, Hans sighed. “Yes, a micro black hole.”

  The reporter, Miss Preston, he believed, nodded and scribbled something in her notes. She looked at her cameraman. “Are you getting all this?”

  The man nodded.

  Hans wasn’t sure why a newspaper would need a video. He supposed it had to do with providing content to their online readers.

  The reporter looked at Hans with raised eyebrows. “Please, continue.”

  After checking on the status of his ongoing experiment, Hans turned back to the woman. “Anyway, the MBH is of no threat to us.” With a sweeping motion of his arm, he gestured toward the ATLAS detector. “Vee are not doing anything that nature hasn’t done millions of times right here on Earth.” He pointed upward, jabbing his finger toward the ceiling. “In our very atmosphere.”

  The reporter tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  Hans lowered his arm. “Cosmic rays vith energy levels a million times greater than anything vee vill ever achieve on Earth bombard our upper atmosphere constantly. You see? Nature must create MBHs all the time. If they vere dangerous to us, the Earth und all celestial bodies vould have ceased to exist b
illions of years ago as micro black holes turned each one of them into a singularity. It vould be a cold, dark, lonely universe.”

  The woman chewed on his words for a moment and then tilted her head. “So you’ve detected these bursts of Hawking radiation in our atmosphere?”

  Hans blinked, surprised by the insightfulness of the reporter’s question. He nodded for a moment but then shook his head. “No.” He waved dismissively. “But that is likely because vee have never been close enough to an actual collision.”

  Miss Preston tilted her head toward the ATLAS detector. “Until today?”

  Hans smiled and then nodded. “Precisely.”

  The reporter looked through the control room’s wide observation window. “And all of this is possible because of the luminosity upgrade?”

  “Sehr gut, Miss Preston. Yes, vee recently completed the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider upgrade. Vee now have ten times more power than previous experimental runs.”

  He turned from the lady and looked at the computer console again. “Now if you don’t mind, vee have another iteration in the vorks.”

  Not waiting for the woman’s response, Hans turned back to Sampson. “How are vee coming?”

  The American postdoctoral candidate nodded excitedly. “We’re up to ninety percent!”

  Hans returned the nod. “Sehr gut.”

  He smiled inwardly. The selection committee would have no choice but to choose him for the next Nobel Prize in Physics.

  Sampson pointed excitedly. “Here it comes!”

  After glancing at the large cylinder of the ATLAS detector, Hans bent over his console and stared at its display with rapt attention. Twenty-three tera electronvolts! The energy level had reached the threshold. “Start proton-proton collisions.”

  Nodding again, Sampson toggled the command on his console.

  It took several moments for the streams to cross. Finally, data began to flow from the detector. However, it was only the normal shower of gluons and muons that resulted from the multitudinous collisions of the highly energetic particles.

  Then Hans saw one data point rise above the noise.

  Sampson sat back and pointed again. “There it is! It’s happening!”

  A grin began to spread across Hans's lips, but then the smile faltered as the undulating spikes of energy and data suddenly flatlined.

  “Vhat happened?!”

  The postdoctoral candidate shook his head. “I don’t know.” He stared at the display. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Miss Preston stepped forward. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Hans shot her an annoyed glance. “Vee seem to have lost the data stream.”

  “You mean the experiment shut down?”

  Hans threw his hand toward the screen. “Does that look like live data to you?”

  The reporter pointed through the control room window. “Well, if the experiment has shut down, then why is that thing glowing now?”

  “Vhat?” Hans blinked and looked up from his console. Staring through the window, he tilted his head. The woman was right.

  A nervous murmur rose as every occupant of the large room stared through the observation window.

  At the center of ATLAS’s radiating assembly of pipes and conduits, the detector’s massive cylinder glowed faintly.

  Tilting his head, Hans stared at the soft light. “Th-That is not possible …”

  Suddenly, the cylinder’s glow brightened.

  Sampson looked up from his console. Then he stood, pushing his chair back. “What the hell is going on?!”

  Hans stepped back and then looked at Sampson. “Don’t just stand there, idiot! Shut it down!”

  “Y-Yes, sir.” The man dragged his gaze from the glowing assembly and focused on his console’s display. He punched in a command and then looked at the computer screen expectantly. A confused look crossed his face. “It’s not shutting down.”

  The brightness of the detector’s glow ramped up.

  Hans raised his hands. “Cut the power. Kill it!”

  Sampson bent over his console again. His fingers blurred as they flew across the keyboard. A moment later, he shook his head. “It’s not responding.”

  Hans eyed the large red button inset into the console’s white surface. He fingered its clear cover, momentarily reluctant to lift it. Pushing the kill switch would activate several non-conductive, mechanical cable cutters. They would sever electrical feeds at multiple points along the supercollider’s twenty-seven-kilometer circumference. The entire collider would be shut down for months, and the repair costs would run in the millions.

  Suddenly the ground quaked. Hans raised widening eyes and stared at ATLAS.

  Had the detector just rippled?

  Beside him, Sampson shot to his feet. “Oh shit!” Pale-faced, he turned toward Hans. “Press the goddamn button!”

  The ground lurched.

  Another ripple radiated across the surface of the detector. This time, there was no questioning it.

  Hans swallowed. His suddenly dry throat clicked in his ears.

  He flipped the clear, plastic cover open and hammered the button.

  Nothing happened.

  The green LED next to the button cycled to red, indicating the wire cutters had activated, but the overhead lights didn’t even flicker.

  Hans pressed the switch several more times.

  Still nothing happened.

  The ground heaved beneath him.

  This time, the entire detector assembly distorted.

  Sparks shot out from the device.

  Hans continued to pound on the big red button. “This … is not … possible!”

  The reporter stepped up. “What’s happening?!”

  “I don’t know!” Hans said, shouting over the din of the noise that was now coming from the ATLAS detector. “Vee must have lost cooling. I think there is a fire inside the detector, but that should not be possible.” He pointed at the kill switch. “This button is hardvired to its own, dedicated power supply. It’s a failsafe. There’s no vay it didn’t work, but vee still have power.” He pointed at the overhead lights. “It should have killed everything, even the lights.”

  Sampson was back at his console. Again his fingers flew across the keyboard. Then he shook his head. “It’s still running.”

  “Of course it’s still running! I can see that vith my own two eyes.”

  Shaking his head, Sampson pointed at the display. “I mean the detector. It’s not flatlined. It’s maxed out. The energy coming through ATLAS is off the chart … literally!”

  “Vhat are you talking abou…?”

  The words died in his mouth as Hans saw the value next to the single line: thirty tera electronvolts.

  That couldn’t be. Even after the upgrade, the collider wasn’t capable of a center-of-mass energy level greater than twenty-five TeV, but there it was, pegged at the instrument’s maximum displayable value. The fact that it wasn’t deviating south of that number told him that the actual power output was likely even higher. As Sampson had said, the power level was off the chart.

  The ground lurched, nearly knocking Hans and everyone else in the room from their feet.

  The cacophony emanating from the detector reached ear-splitting levels, setting his teeth on edge.

  Then everything stopped.

  All noise ceased.

  Even the omnipresent electrical hum of the collider’s powerful magnets seemed to evaporate.

  In the suddenly quieted control room, Hans exchanged pensive glances with Sampson and the reporter.

  The postdoctoral candidate breathed a sigh of relief and pointed at the red button. “Finally, it worked.”

  Looking up, Hans shook his head. “The lights are still on.” He pointed at the idle emergency lights. “Those should be on. They should be the only lights on.”

  The idiot cameraman followed his every move, first pointing the lens of his device at the overhead lights and then at the dark emergency ones.
r />   An incredible wrenching sound shattered the silence.

  All heads snapped to front.

  The videographer aimed his camera through the observation window again.

  Hans stared with widening eyes as the large, cylindrical body of the ATLAS detector began to crumple. It collapsed inward like a water bottle having its air sucked out. “No, no, no! This can’t be happening.”

  The reporter looked at her cameraman. “Are you getting this?”

  The man looked at her and gave a single nod.

  She turned her attention back to Sampson and shook her head. “What can’t be happening?” She gestured to the window. “What is it doing?”

  Sampson pointed at the shrinking device. “The MBH didn’t evaporate. It’s a stable black hole, a singularity.”

  Miss Preston looked from the still shrinking device back to Sampson and Hans. “I thought you said that wasn’t possible.”