Chapter 20
Twenty
Ahuge weight had been taken off of Milo’s shoulders during the ride to Brookhaven.
He hadn’t realized just how much pressure he had been feeling about solving time until Elio said he had arranged the trip for Milo and mentioned Nobel prizes.
You had to be a contender for a major prize like the Nobel or have a massive grant to gain approval from the Department of Energy to run a study at Brookhaven.
But…it was time!
That conflict had been accepted as unsolvable but Elio wanted to prove that time—spacetime—operated in loops and that those loops entangled in infinite ways.
With access to a collider, Elio could—in theory—produce the Higgs boson particle and a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.
Elio believed those singlets had the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they could move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or the past due to the entanglement of those spacetime loops.
Milo had nothing but time and was happy to dedicate the rest of his life to Elio’s cause, regardless of the risks.
The only thing Milo truly feared was the fading of Elio’s trust and respect.
Would he grow frustrated and distant if they didn’t make progress or would Elio lose interest if someone smarter than Milo came along?
Unlike Elio, Milo anticipated the coming of smarter scientists and looked forward to the next age of discovery.
Just as he and Elio had learned from and built off of the work of heroes like Einstein, budding physicists in colleges and universities were learning from their work and would one day surpass them.
Somewhere, a fourteen-year-old boy or girl was reading Elio’s paper on the Hubble constant and would write something even more profound for the world of astrophysics.
Would Elio still think Milo was special if he wasn't the best and the brightest anymore?
Something in Milo’s gut told him Elio would and that in time, grief would release its grip and allow him to find peace.
One day, Elio would be able to rest, content with all that he had achieved and would no longer be burdened with such an impossible task.
Until that time came, Milo would give it his all and do whatever he could to help Elio push the boundaries of quantum physics.
There were risks beyond their careers that physicists had long quarreled over when it came to the problem of time and quantum mechanics.
Most famously, the grandfather paradox: if you went back in time and killed your grandfather, then you could not exist in the future.
In a wider context, what were the risks to humanity if a major event was altered?
Wars could be prevented but so could the development of lifesaving technologies.
Then, there were the immediate existential risks.
Like what might happen if an ambitious, yet misguided genius got too close to a spin-polarized proton collider.
Scientists used colliders like the one at Brookhaven to create conditions similar to those that existed one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, recreating matter that existed in the early universe.
In order to do that, heavy ions are collided at immeasurable speed, resulting in temperatures in excess of 7 trillion degrees Fahrenheit.
“Are you excited? I’m excited,” Elio said as he threw an arm around Milo’s shoulders.
Milo nodded, staring at the gray dome of the old High Flux Beam Reactor and the red and white smokestack. Both were decommissioned but Milo got a terrible sense of foreboding as he considered what was beneath their feet. “Yup. Can’t wait,” he said with a pained smile.
Hector was parking the van but the Mean Guys were already ignoring directions.
Instead of waiting in front of the RHIC—the building that housed the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider—Josh, Kyle, and Bryan were playing tag in the parking lot, Tyler and Chad had wandered off to take phone calls, and Brad went to find a bathroom.
“We made it without anyone getting a bloody nose,” Elio pointed out and Milo rolled his eyes.
“I was worried about you behaving but I might walk back to Manhattan. I don’t know if I can take another two-and-a-half hours in the van with the Polka King and the Six Stooges.”
It had been a nearly nonstop slap fight once they hit the Throgs Neck Bridge. To make matters worse, Hector played polka music and tried to start a singalong. Milo almost asked Elio to take Hector out with his tennis ball.
“I have a headache and the tour hasn’t even started.
Is anyone even here at this hour?” Milo scanned the parking lot, frowning.
There were very few cars and he had only seen a handful of people, mostly security personnel, since they arrived on the Brookhaven campus.
“Friday night’s a weird time for a tour. ”
“Not really,” Elio said quickly. “We won’t be in anyone’s way or interfere with an ongoing study. We’re meeting with a team from the Energy Department and the RHIC but they’re giving us the run of the place while it’s dead,” he explained, making Milo groan.
“Don’t say that. I still don’t understand how or why we’re here but we should be closely supervised.”
Elio smiled sheepishly. “I may have talked my brothers and Truman into pulling some strings,” he whispered. “A lot of strings.”
“I have such a bad feeling.” Milo wanted to tackle Hector and make a run for it with the keys but his anxiety had made driving lessons impossible.
“I told you, I have no intentions of going anywhere near the actual collider,” Elio said soothingly. “Not with these monkeys,” he added with a glare at the parking lot, making Milo sigh in defeat.
“This is really cool and I’ll be more excited once my anxiety settles. Although, I’d be a lot more excited if we didn’t have to bring the Stooges,” he said and Elio clicked his teeth.
“Don’t let them get to you. Show them you’re a bad boy.” He winked and Milo’s tummy did a somersault.
Bad boys didn’t blush. “Stop it,” he said with a swat to Elio’s chest, then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “What if something happened and I was only as smart as…Chad?” he asked, noting Elio’s concerned frown.
“Something…like what?”
Milo shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I wake up one morning and can’t remember anything I learned about physics.”
“That would make you as smart as Chad,” Elio agreed and laughed as he kissed Milo’s temple. “But you’d still be a far better person and so much hotter.”
“Thanks!” Milo pushed out a cleansing breath, his mood momentarily lighter.
The bad feeling returned with Hector. “Let’s go, my brightest stars!” he called and clapped like he was at a ballgame.
“I really don’t like him,” Elio said under his breath.
“I used to before I was locked in a van with him. Never again, Eli.”
“Never again,” he agreed.
The inside of the RHIC resembled a generic business building with a minimal, uncluttered lobby and harsh fluorescent lighting.
Three older, balding and bearded men in business suits and a younger man and a woman in lab coats greeted them.
Milo listened along as they gushed and welcomed Elio to Brookhaven.
They laid it on a little thick about Elio’s caliber and the various awards he had won but Milo appreciated the way it was grinding Brad’s gears.
“Where would you like to start, Mr. von Hessen?” One of the suits asked and Milo’s interest refocused and honed in.
“The control room!” Elio declared as he rubbed his hands together. “That’s where the real scientists play, isn’t it?” he said with a cocky grin, then winked at Milo. “Why waste time?”
“Give us a few moments to warm up the collider for a demonstration,” the young Black woman in the lab coat said as she left with the other lab coat and one of the suits.
“Right this way,” another man in a suit said as they were led down a hallway and through a set of double doors.
Hector fell into conversation with the men from the Department of Energy and Elio hung back with Milo, no longer interested in the tour.
“What are you going to do in the control room?” Milo whispered but Elio shook his head and tapped his lips.
“Nothing. Don’t make them suspicious.”
“Psst!” Brad hissed and whispered “von Hessen!”
They turned and Brad and the Mean Guys were waving and pointing at a sign.
“Let’s go!” Brad urged but Milo shook his head quickly.
“No! We cannot go near that part of the collider!” he whispered and turned to Elio for help. “Eli!”
His eyes were wide and distant and he licked his lips, nodding faintly. “We cannot…” he said faintly, then gave his head a hard shake. “No. The control room. We’re going there first.”
“You’re going there first,” Brad replied with a childish snort and gestured for the others to follow. “I want to see the actual collider, not a bunch of monitors and keyboards.”
“No, no, no!” Elio went after them, looking nervous. “We have to go to the control room first!” he whispered and swore when Tyler grabbed the bay door and stuck out his tongue at them.
“Fucking cunt!” Elio spat as he ran to catch up.
“Wait!” Milo looked for Hector but he and the men from the Energy Department had turned a corner. “This is so bad!” he groaned and went to help Elio.
Milo threw the door to the bay open, then whimpered at the brightly lit rows of cooling tanks, surrounded by pumps, hoses, and wires, quickly orienting himself as he hurried along.
He skidded when he reached the end and looked down the long gray corridor, gasping when he spotted the Mean Guys and Elio next to the two massive silver rings of the accelerator.
The rings were 2.4 miles in circumference, making it hard to detect their curve when you were standing next to them.
Each ring was nine-feet wide, resembling a pair of giant water slides, and made a loud whirring sound as they accelerated to nearly the speed of light.