pomfelo

Untitled 1
by Pomfelo

Even though I worked on the Superior Hadron Collider for the last six months, the thing still leaves me unsettled. A device designed to help us look into how matter comes together which, incidentally, could open up a wormhole larger than the known universe is something few people can get used to. That's why people much smarter and (and let's face it) saner than me are in charge.

Unfortunately, the man in charge of the project was currently sitting naked in the control room injecting himself with enough drugs to stun a full grown rhino.

"Ah! Coffeboy! You came!"

To be fair, that wasn't the drugs talking. Interns get used to this sort of thing. (It's better than the nickname they gave the guy who worked on the Super Huge Interferometric Telescope.)

"Doctor, is there anything I get you? Clothing? Coffee? Quaaludes?"

"Ha! Those are great. It occurred to me that you haven't learned a single damn thing here! I don't actually care about that, but I need to tell someone what I discovered. Since you are the only one who has no choice in the matterHave a seat!

Only one chair was freed of bodily fluids and syringes. I still felt a sickening sticky feeling as I sat down.

"Have you been sitting inside the collider, sir?"

"Yes I have! And I've made a discovery! I know how the universe began! And how it will end!"

I tried to emulate the tone I used when I had to explain to my grandfather insisted that our next door neighbors were space Nazis with secret lizard heads. "Just because some people have the idea we are going to destroy the world doesn't mean anything. We've already started the collider. The small scale tests have all gon_"

"Fuck the small scale tests! The end doesn't matter! I know how the big bang started!"

I could have taken the job with CERN in Amsterdam, but no! I thought all of that pot would keep me from doing real work! "We know how it happened, doctor. Two giant objects ran into each other, there was a big explosion and---"

"No! Jesus, you make my appendix ache. I know which objects collided to start the big bang."

Half stumbling, half crawling, the doctor made his way through the collider, tossing a mass of papers across the room as he went. This wasn't the first time I'd seen a seventy year old naked Swiss man rave wildly. Considering the last one I saw was being taken away by police with big giant sticks, I began to think there was a standard procedure for this eventuality.

"I got this out of the collider! It's engrained in every single atom! Every speck from here to the far reaches of creation! It's here!"

The doctor began to run towards the center chamber, throwing papers wildly through the air. I grabbed one. The documents were the results of our first tests with the collider. Everything looked normal. Long strings of numbers representing the fundamental particles of ordinary objects. A few pages in, simulations of the physical look of those items began and

"Somebody fucked this up. This is just stupid."

"Nope! Don't argue with actual scientists coffeeboy! Just because I'm mad and incontinent at the moment, doesn't mean I couldn't recite for you every single atom that makes up your body! I'm right! That's what the most basic building blocks of the universe look like."

Right there on the page was a strange grill pattern, half of what resembled a gel capsule, and

"Why the hell is my social security card part of the hydrogen atom?!"

"Don't you see? Those damned lunatics were worried about opening a doorway into another universe! What they should have been worried was opening a doorway into THIS universe! One end is here, the other end is at the start of time. We created the universe, by slamming it into itself! We're fucking recursive!"

"No, this is bullshit. Even if it were true, I wouldn't trust a bastard who has spent the evening playing with his own feces."

"The proof is right in front of you. We're going to doom the world! This is the end and the beginning of human history all at once. I called you down here because you have no choice! You have to be here when I pull the switch because you always were here and will always be here!" Having reached the center chamber, the doctor began swallowing a stash of pills from somewhere I don't want to imagine. "But there's good news!"

I wanted to sit down and cry. This man was so disgusting and loathsome, I began to hope this was the end of everything.

"Don't despair coffeeboy! I've realized two wonderful things!"

"What are they?" I asked, hoping they would involve us not turning on the machine until I could find the cute girl with glasses I always told myself I would say "hello" to. (Or at least "would you like to fuck?")

"One, is that once I push this button," he danced dramatically around a console, "we'll have five minutes before the world ends."

"And two?"

The doctor picked up something that had been obviously left there for dramatic effect. "That weird pattern in the analysis? It's the grip pattern of this handgun."

Thank god.