The window!
There it was. As he got close, he began to see that other place — that other life. He set the lamp down, inadvertently dousing its flame, but now he could see by the light of another world.
He placed his hands against the slowly-turning orb, and sensations flooded through him. He was not just seeing that other world now, but experiencing it in its totality: sounds and smells, the weight of a gun on his shoulder and a morion helmet atop his head.
“I choose this life,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Lord, in thy mercy, let this life be mine.”
I am a coward.
The thought came unbidden into his head, as if whispered by someone else.
He sagged against the wall, and suddenly felt fresh air rushing into his lungs. A breeze — warm tropical air — drifted across his face.
He opened his eyes.
It worked.
“Thank you, Lord—”
A low groaning sound silenced his prayer of thanks. He looked around, trying to find the source of noise, which was growing in intensity, but the world he beheld was unchanged…no, there was a change. Darkness was swirling around him like smoke, enveloping him, sucking him back through the open window. He reached out, trying to find something to hold onto, but it was too late.
Gil Perez opened his eyes and shuddered, trying to shake off the chill memory of the…what was it? A waking dream? A vision?
He looked around, seeking solace in the solidity of the real world, but everything was wrong. Nothing was as he remembered it. The palace walls, the stone battlements beneath his feet…all real, but…wrong.
It was dark. The stars shone brightly overhead, yet his last recollection was of standing the mid-afternoon watch,
I am still dreaming, he thought. That must be it. In a moment, I will wake up and find myself back on the wall.
He felt a twinge of guilt for having fallen asleep at his post. Perhaps he had contracted some tropical disease. Yes, that would make sense. His strange vision was some kind of fever dream. He was delirious. The captain of the guard would surely understand.
“You there!”
The shout startled him. The voice was unfamiliar, the accent odd. Gil straightened as if preparing himself for an inspection, and turned to find three soldiers striding toward him. He did not recognize any of them. Even their attire was strange.
“Who are you?” barked the man in the lead. “What are you doing here?”
Gil studied the strange faces and the even stranger apparel, wondering what to make of the men. They were soldiers, there was no doubt of that, yet they clearly were not part of the Palace Guard, nor even part of the garrison stationed at Fort Santiago.
Could this perhaps have something to do with the death of the Governor General? Was some visiting government official trying to seize power?
If so, what did duty require him to do?
“I am Gil Perez of the Palace Guard.”
The lead soldier advanced until he stood nose to nose with Gil. “I am the Captain of the Guard, and I have never seen you before in my life.”
Gil was shocked by the man’s statement. This most certainly was not Captain Licenciado Pedro de Rojas. “Sir, I have been serving in the Palace Guard for over three years. Ever since I arrived in Manila.”
The captain took a step back and regarded Gil warily. “Manila? Are you drunk or mad? Or are you perhaps possessed by a devil? Manila is three thousand leagues from here.”
“Three thousand?” I am dreaming. In a moment, I will wake up. “Where am I?”
“This is Cuidad de Mexico,” said the captain. “And you are under arrest.”
Paul Dorion paused at the foot of the stairwell, gazing up at the CMS — the Compact Muon Solenoid — with almost reverential awe. He felt like a pilgrim, visiting the Holy Land or Mecca, standing in a place where history had been made.
No, not just history. Miracles.
The very existence of the CMS was a sort of modern miracle. It had taken ten years and the combined efforts of nearly four thousand scientists, to design and build the twelve and a half thousand ton detector, disassemble it into fifteen manageable sections which could be lowered into a manmade cavern, and then reassemble it to tolerances less than the thickness of a human hair. For all its complexity, the CMS was really nothing more than an enormous camera, taking pictures of things that no human eye would ever — could ever — behold.
While it was true that the Large Hadron Collider had not yet accomplished the much publicized goal of identifying the elusive Higgs boson — the so-called “God particle” responsible for differentiating other high energy particles in the instant following the Big Bang — the simple fact of the LHC’s existence and operation was an achievement on the order of reaching the moon. In the twenty-seven kilometer long tunnel, protons — the basic elemental building block of everything that could be seen and touched — were accelerated almost to the speed of light and then smashed together in a collision that replicated, at scale, the creation of the universe. When the accelerated proton beams met, annihilating each other in an explosion of sub-atomic particles, the invisible event was recorded by one of two general purpose detectors situated at opposite points along the circumference of the LHC: ATLAS, just over the border in Switzerland near the headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and — Paul’s pride and joy — the CMS.
As far as Paul Dorion was concerned, that was a lot more impressive than walking on water. And it all happened right here, right where he was standing.
A bemused voice snapped him out of his reverie. “Are you going to do any work today? Or should I just leave you to your gawking?”
Paul felt a twinge of irritation as he turned to look at his co-worker and fellow researcher Lauren Hayes. She was smiling, but that was not necessarily a good indicator of the intention behind her words. He could never tell when Lauren was joking. Maybe it was some inherent cultural incompatibility — he was French and she was from London — or maybe it was something even more fundamental. Regardless of the explanation, his track record for judging her moods was a record of failure that verged on being statistically impossible. When he took her seriously, she would tell him to lighten up; when he thought she was joking, she would throw up her hands in exasperation. Even when he second-guessed himself, he was always wrong. It was enough to make him wonder if her ambiguity was intentional.
“Sorry,” he said, offering no explanation.
Lauren was an attractive women by any measure, and among the predominately male community of scientists and technicians at CERN, was frequently the object of libidinous desire. Perhaps that, more than anything, contributed to Paul’s inability to read her. Despite the romantic reputation of his countrymen, he had a mixed track record with women, and his uncertainty sometimes came across as aloofness. With respect to Lauren and the fact that they had to work together every day, this was probably a safeguard; better to maintain a professional distance.
“I’ll start at the top” he told her, still avoiding her gaze.
She laughed. “That’s what a girl likes to hear.”
What does that mean? Paul shook his head and started up the stairs to the top of the detector while Lauren moved to the base of the enormous ring-shaped barrel and began her inspection.