Authors: Glenn Cooper
“Hypothetical,” Quint spitting out the word like a hairball. “Did you hear that, Camp? Hypothetical.”
“I won’t deny it,” Matthew said, “but most elemental particles were hypothetical before they were proved real.”
“Go on,” John said. “I’m listening.”
Strangelets, Matthew continued, were thought to have occurred in certain high-energy scenarios, such as the early stages of the formation of the universe, or within neutron stars or with head-on collisions of cosmic rays.
“How about inside the MAAC?” John asked.
“That’s the important question,” Matthew said. “Yes, theoretically colliders can produce strangelets. However, to date, no collider, not even the LHC has been shown to generate them. But this morning we exceeded all previous collision energies.”
“And?”
“David Laurent and his people are analyzing the spectrometer data. He’s going to come see me when he’s got some conclusions.”
“And what if strangelets were produced?” John asked.
“Again, it’s hypothetical, but it’s always been one of those infinitesimally small risk factors out there in collider research. These strangelets, the theory goes, particularly negatively charged strangelets, would be highly unstable but the larger they were the more stable they’d become. So the disaster scenario goes like this: one strangelet collides with a nucleus of ordinary matter and catalyzes its transformation into strange matter. This liberates considerable energy producing a larger more stable strangelet that collides with ordinary matter catalyzing more strange matter. And on and on in a chain reaction, until all the ordinary matter in the world is converted into a molten lump of strange matter. Again, hypothetically, this could happen in the blink of an eye.”
John arched his brows. “That doesn’t seem to have happened.”
“Clearly not, but I’ve always been concerned about more subtle scenarios,” Matthew said.
“Such as?”
“Okay, I know I’m out on a limb here, and you can see from Dr. Quint’s face that he thinks I’m on the fringe, but far more likely than a cataclysmic chain reaction involving massive amounts of ordinary matter is a short-chain of strange matter production. This would involve minute amounts of matter. The strange matter formed would spontaneously decay harmlessly in a miniscule fraction of a second.”
“What’s the problem with that?”
“The energy generated when strange matter is produced would be relatively enormous, much higher on a unit basis than nuclear fission or fusion.”
“But there wasn’t an explosion,” John said.
“Right, no explosion. What I’m talking about is intense energy production on a scale that’s unimaginably small. Something huge and tiny at the same time, if that makes sense.”
Dr. Quint piped up, irritated, “Listen, this is a waste of our time.”
“Please, hear me out. I’m almost finished,” Matthew said. “Strangelets may be hypothetical and so are gravitons but Dr. Quint and every scientist who works here believes gravitons will be found. For all we know, when the data’s analyzed, we may have found them today. Gravity is peculiar as all get up. It’s ridiculously feeble. After all, when I pick up this pen my puny arm muscles are defeating the gravitational pull of the entire Earth. We think it’s such a weak force because gravitons may spread out over, not just our observable dimensions, but through all the extra dimensions of the cosmos. The equations of supersymmetry and string theory argue strongly for the existence of extra dimensions. In fact, most of the really good theoretical physicists today believe that the consequence of extradimensionality is that our universe exists as one in a multiverse of other universes, perhaps an infinite number of other universes. Communication between these other universes is impossible. We’re trapped like flies on sticky paper in our own three dimensional space in our own universe. But gravity, which is the warping of space-time, is the exotic traveller. Gravitons can freely tunnel into other universes. Do you follow?”
John nodded tentatively.
“So here’s what I’ve been worried about and I shared my concerns with Emily who correctly placed them into a low-probability bin. What if MAAC’s unprecedented collision energies produced a relative abundance of strangelets and gravitons? What if, in a volume of space, trillions and trillions and trillions times smaller than the head of a pin, those strangelets produced fleeting but enormous energies akin to what was seen near zero-time at the Big Bang, perhaps fusing ordinary matter and gravitons together? And what if the result was that matter and gravitons were able to pass together through an extra-dimensional tunnel?”
Quint rose and said. “You passed from science to science fiction several minutes ago. I thought I was the one who got hit on the head. But here’s my deputy head of Hercules who seems to be suggesting that Dr. Loughty has trundled off to another dimension. That’s enough. I’ve got calls to make.”
There was a knock on the door and Trevor came in.
“Sorry to interrupt but I thought you should know. The police just found the stolen car. The reporter’s dead. Her neck was snapped.”
John stood and put his hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “I’ve got to go but we need to talk some more. A lot more.”
John had Trevor brief him on the forensics. The CSIs had found good prints on the door handle and several more on the shards of broken glass. Fortunately the cleaner had disinfected and polished the door hardware as part of her morning rounds so they weren’t expecting to sort through a zoo of prints. The stolen car was being processed as they spoke.
“There’ll be blood in the car,” Trevor said. “I definitely hit him.”
“How long will it take to get the prints analyzed?”
“It’s going to be top of the queue. They’ll be running them through the IDENT1 computer already. If he was ever arrested in the UK, we’ll have him.”
“How about the interviews with the control room people? Did any of them hear him say anything? Or notice anything peculiar?”
“He didn’t say a word, guv. Just barreled through there like a bull out of a chute. But a few people who were nearest him told me there was a funny smell about him.”
“A body odor?”
“In a way, but no one described it exactly like that. More like a smell of decaying flesh. Like meat gone bad.”
John shook his head. “Wonderful. What about his clothes, his shoes? Anything identifiable?”
“From what people said and from the still photos off the CCTV it looks like he was dressed in old farmer’s gear. Really rough kind of hand-made garments. Ill fitting. One funny thing one of the techs noted.”
“Yeah?”
“Said he had a rope belt.”
“Rope.”
“Yeah, a bit of rope to hold up his trousers.”
John was painstakingly reviewing the CCTV footage when Trevor called.
“Bad news, guv. There’s no finger or palm matches in the National Fingerprint Database.”
“Shit. How far back does it go?”
“1987.”
“The guy looked like he was late thirties, early forties so it should’ve been there. From the way he was quick to use violence I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have an arrest record. Maybe he’s not from the UK. Can you run them through Europol, Interpol and the FBI?”
“Already requested.”
“What about the blood?”
“It’ll be run through the NPIA DNA database. It’ll take several days but if the bloke’s prints aren’t there I don’t have much hope for his DNA.”
“All right. I’m going back to talk to Matthew. He’s got a wild theory.”
“Oh yes? What’s he say?”
“Just trust me. It’s wild.”
Matthew was in his office going over spectrometer plots with David Laurent.
“Find anything?” John asked.
“It’s very preliminary,” Matthew said. “Not the kind of thing we’d ordinarily even talk about at this stage.”
“This isn’t an ordinary situation,” John said.
“Right. But please take this with an enormous pinch of salt. We may have a graviton signal.”
“And I think there might also be strangelets,” David said, excitedly.
Matthew quickly added, “Please remember the collider was running for only a brief time before we powered down so the number of collisions was tiny compared to a full experimental set. We don’t have enough statistical power to make any hard conclusions.”
“But there’s a chance your theory’s right?” John asked.
“All I can say is that the conditions were possibly present to support it. You know, Emily was standing at the closest spot in the control room to the collision point of the beams. It was less than three meters under her feet.”
“What does your colleague here think about your ideas?”
David delivered a Gallic shrug. “You know, in science you have to keep an open mind. But it’s not something that has occurred to me.”
“What has occurred to you?”
“I have no explanations.”
“That’s very helpful, thank you very much,” John said, eliciting another shrug. “I hate to ask this question but is it possible she was just, I don’t know, vaporized by some strange energy field. What I’m asking—could Emily be dead?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “I honestly don’t know. Everything’s on the table till it’s excluded by data.”
“Christ.”
“Has there been any progress in locating the stranger?” Matthew asked.
“There’s an active manhunt, but no. His fingerprints weren’t in the police database.”
“How many years does the database include?” Matthew asked.
“It goes back to 1987. Why?”
“Is it possible to check older records?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to ask Trevor. The guy looked young enough to be in the database provided he was ever arrested.”
Matthew had a queasy look. “I just think it might be prudent to check back further.”
When he returned to his office John called Trevor in.
“How would you go about searching for pre-1987 fingerprints?”
“There’re cards going back to about 1900 I think. The National Fingerprint Collection used to be kept in New Scotland Yard but it got moved to secure storage elsewhere in London. You want to go back further on this geezer?”
“I do.”
“Don’t know why. He’s too young.”
“Can you just have it done, please?”
“Yeah, ’course. It’ll take a little while. They’ll have to do a manual search using the Henry system.”
“What’s a while?”
“Dunno exactly. I may have some lady friends still about in fingerprints. I’ll see what I can do.”
Alone, John turned up the volume on the TV and listened for a while to the news on the manhunt in Dartford. A SKY helicopter was broadcasting live feed of police fanning out through a Dartford neighborhood of attached houses. He muted the sound and stared into space.
Emily was gone.
His fists balled up involuntarily in anger and frustration. He wanted a drink badly. He might not see her again. And his last memory would be her reproachful eyes.
Night came, the car park thinned out, but John refused to leave. He rode the lift back down to the control room and turned on the lights. He sat at Emily’s work station and watched the empty floor, trying to will her to reappear at the spot where she had vanished. He stayed there for an hour and must have nodded off because he was startled into confused wakefulness by Trevor calling his name.
“Sorry, guv.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I saw you on one of the cameras.”
“What’s up?”
“A mate of mine in the Met fingerprints bureau just rang me. They finished the manual search for us.”
John recovered from his slouch and sat bolt upright. “That was fast.”
“Told you I had a lady friend or two still there.”
“Well?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. It’s totally mad.”
“Just tell me.”
“There’s a match. It’s for a bloke named Brandon Woodbourne, a former resident of Dartford.”
“Former? Any idea of his current whereabouts?”
“No where close to here, guv,” Trevor said, shaking his head.
“Don’t slow-play me. I’m not in the mood.”
“Yeah, all right then, it's just that, like I said, it’s mad. Brandon Woodbourne was born 15 November 1915 and was executed by the hangman at the old Dartford prison on the eighth of April, 1949.”
John ran his palms over his face. “It’s not mad. It’s just not the same guy. Either they made a mistake or the two sets of prints are very close.”
“It’s no mistake. They said it was a perfect match. Two people can’t have prints that are identical like that, according to them.”
“I don’t care what they say. This guy was here. He wasn’t dead. Do they have a mug shot of the guy?”
“No. Just a fingerprint card.”
“Well, it’s a waste of time, but to prove the obvious, go to the public library tomorrow and find the guy’s picture. It was probably in a newspaper.”
“We can check right now, guv. A good lot of old newspapers have been digitally archived.”
“Yeah?”
“Had to help my sister with a school assignment, didn’t I?”
“What’s the website?” John asked, logging onto Emily’s computer with his own logon ID.
“Don’t recall. Just search for newspaper archives or British newspapers online. Something like that.”
The top listing was The British Newspaper Archive.
“Yeah, that’s the one. See if there’s any Dartford papers there.”
There weren’t but there was a Kent newspaper called the
Dover Express
. John entered the date of Woodbourne’s hanging and stared at a thumbnail image of the front page of the paper. To view it properly he had to purchase a two-day access.
“Waste of time,” John griped while entering his credit card. With an account open he clicked on the first page. “No photos, only text,” he said, but there was a prominent article proclaiming the execution day for the serial killer, Brandon Woodbourne of Dartford. He was to be hanged by the famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint. Woodbourne, a roofer, had eight known victims from Kent and London, all young women, and though he was suspected of other unsolved murders he chose to take the knowledge of these crimes to the grave.
The article was continued on page four and when John scrolled to that thumbnail he saw that all the photos for the newspaper were printed on that one page.