Linear Accelerator

The sky was clear, but the air was still heavy with humidity. The G-M counter didn’t register much more than the usual background radiation. To be safe we still exited the cave wearing masks and googles. Our goal was just a short walk away. We inspected the surroundings, but it didn’t seem like there was anybody other than us here recently.

From the outside, the complex was nothing more than a two and a half walls and bits of roof. Ruins of several uninteresting buildings surrounded it. Surprisingly, one of the doors was still standing, though you could have just walked right past it as one of the walls was missing. The CERN logo was still visible on the doors, though just barely. The inside was mostly rubble, anything of value had been broken or corroded with the years of exposure to the elements. Luckily for Estelle and me this building was not in fact our goal. In the corner of the room, still partly covered by the debris was a door leading underground.

I started removing the remaining debris and Estelle stood watch behind me. It took a couple of hours for me to finish, drenched in sweat and panting.

“It’s a good thing we left for the cave yesterday,” Estelle said. “We wouldn’t have made it in time.”

I only grunted in agreement. After a short rest I tried the doors and they didn’t budge. “Excellent, it’s locked,” I said. There was no irony there. Locked doors in most circumstances meant no looting had taken place. Estelle only smiled and began rifling through her backpack, hanging the coil gun over her shoulders. It swung around awkwardly. Seeing her trying to handle the large gun was always a source of amusement for me.

“Where is it,” she said after an unsuccessful minute. I sighed, went to her, stuck my hand into the backpack and in the same motion pulled out the device she had been searching for, presenting it to her. “I wish I knew how you do this.”

“I don’t understand how you don’t,” I said and shook my head. “Still, I would be more distressed now if you suddenly became capable of finding things in your backpack.”

The device was a simple small plasma cutter. I powered it on and the air compressor started humming. As soon as it was done, I began cutting away the hinges of the door. The bluish orange jet was eating the material away in a most satisfying manner. I was about half way done, when the jet grew weaker and then gave one last pathetic spurt before dying. I figured that the gas ran out, which would be somewhat surprising, since it usually lasted way longer. I attempted to turn the compressor on again. It gave a start, then died.

“Battery’s dead,” I announced.

“Shit,” Estelle replied.

“Elle, language!” I said, but she just smiled and winked at me.

“Can you break into it already?”

“I’ll try,” I said. I kicked the doors, but not giving too much strength into it. As I expected, the doors didn’t budge and I didn’t’ want to hurt myself for no good reason. “I need to cut more.”

“I don’t think we have any more spare batteries,” she said.

“True,” I replied and went to her. “But we still have this.” I took hold of the coil gun, that still rested on her back and ejected the power source. One of the best things corporations were able to do was create standards. Since it was a good thing, it obviously happened only rarely but this was one such case. The batteries powering various tools and weapons made from technology scavenged from CERN were interchangeable. Or perhaps it was CERN that created them that way and corporations couldn’t be bothered to change the design. That was perhaps a more probable reality. I knew I shouldn’t have praised MiSiTech so fast.

“This could be a bad idea,” Estelle warned me. “We could end up defenceless.”

I was aware of the risk, but at the same time, we hadn’t made any profit in a long while. “We’ll go straight back to the train as soon as we are done here.” I could still see concern in her face, but she nodded. In a minute the cutter came back to life and I made short work of the door and handed the battery back.

“It looks like it still has a couple of shots left in it,” Estelle said after checking the display. She handed me the gun and I strapped it tightly to my back. We took out our GLOCKs and knives and prepared to enter the room. The coil gun could be a liability in a tight corridor. From the outside we were unable to see anything, so we entered and started clearing the room, me taking left and Estelle taking right. The clutter and furniture made it hard to be certain about the effectiveness of our strategy, but it was the best we knew to do.

“Clear,” I said after getting to the other side of the room.

“Clear,” she responded. Some of the tension was released, but we still both kept an eye out for any potential danger. This room wasn’t a lab, but more of a large hallway or anteroom. Structurally it was well preserved, though various items were lying around in a random manner. The doors were marked, but that was not helpful, since they were just numbered and started with the letter C.

I pointed to one of the doors and stood to the side. Estelle moved to the other side. She opened the door and again we went to clear the room. This one turned out to be an office. A chair was knocked over, another one still standing and some papers were strewn across the desk. More interesting were several pieces of electronic components.

I had a good feeling about the place. A moment later a thump sounded from some other room. I jumped and Estelle let out a slight gasp, but the same moment we were both pointing our weapons towards the door and waited. For a minute nothing happened. Staying behind cover as much as we could, we crept towards the door. Not that we were stealthy at all, since the flashlights on our pistols were the only light sources in the complex and we dared not turn them off. In the hallway there was a sudden scampering and scratching sound. I flicked the gun to it and just saw a small form as it disappeared behind the corner.

“Radlings,” I whispered. Just as I glanced back, Estelle shrieked. One of the creatures was clinging to her arm. Her pistol went off, but the struggle continued. I ran to her, but before I reached her, she had managed to stab the knife into it’s maw. She was breathing heavily. “Are you hurt?”

Her answer was interrupted by even more sounds approaching sounds. We backed into the office. As soon as one of them showed its face, we opened fire. Some of them were also crawling along the walls.

“Take right,” I said. Radlings weren’t the most dangerous creatures, especially after losing the element of surprise, so ammo was in a way wasted on them. I rammed my knife into one crawling along the wall, while also kicking away another that wanted to jump on me. All the while Estelle kept the ones on the other side at bay. I stomped the one I had kicked and shot at one of the two coming through the doors. Even while a single one wasn’t too dangerous, getting jumped by several would end in at least some injury. In total there were about a dozen of them. I waited near the door, but no more came in. I peeked around the hallway, but could see no more radlings approaching.

“Are you hurt?” I asked Estelle.

“Just a scratch,” she said, holding her arm. I rushed to her and looked at the wound. There was slight bleeding, but the main problem would be infections and toxicity.

“Shit. Roll up the sleeve,” I told her. I had to remove the coil gun to get to my backpack.

“Language, Tan,” she said and smiled. I could tell she was still uneasy. She hissed when I disinfected the wound and cleaned it. I finished up with a nice bandage.

“Sadly we don’t have any with puppies on them,” I said to break the tension.

“That’s OK, I’ll take the Sun with the smiley face and flowers,” she replied. None of the bandages had any pictures on them, but sometimes it was nice to pretend.

We stuck close together as we checked the rest of the rooms. It was mostly offices like the first one, and a bathroom. Estelle gave me a look.

“Very funny, let’s move on,” I said. She didn’t move but just stared with more intent. “Are you serious right now? Can’t it wait?” She just shook her head. “We can go outside and come back.”

“Please just let me,” she said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. I put my face into my hands.

“Fine,” I said though I could hardly believe it. “But keep the gun in your hand the whole time.”

“And you will stand in front of the stall.”

“Ugh. Yes fine. Just go already.”

Spending your days in the wild fighting for your life in a hostile environment makes one immune to many discomforts. Any reservations or shyness fades away after you had stood facing the open maw of a great mutant beast. You didn’t get embarrassed when a wrong step meant you lost your life. That being said, the semblance of a normal life that that one room provided for just that brief moment was enough to bring back many of those forgotten feelings.

“All done,” Estelle said, bringing me back from my reverie. I snapped to attention and surveyed the room, thankful that nothing took advantage of my lapse. Was I getting losing my sharpness? I was sure I used to be able to keep my attention focused at all times. We had to find good loot here, who knew how long before one of my slip-ups would cost us our lives.

The door of the stall opened and Estelle was beaming as she stepped out. Somehow seeing her like this made the strange situation worth it.

“Can we move on now?” I asked. In response she just took a stance with her knife and pistol.

There were only two doors left. One was at the end of the corridor and the other was closer to us and to the right. We approached it and found that the door was missing. It looked as if the entire room had caved in. Everything inside was completely smashed on a small pile on the floor. I picked up a small loose chunk of concrete from the corridor.

“You don’t think it’s?” Estelle asked. She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

I tossed the chunk inside. It fell for a second then violently smashed into the ground and was turned to dust. Next to the place it landed I saw a dark puddle and strange bits of matter. I could only guess that it was the remains of a radling. Weird things like that tended to happen in the Zone.

We went to the final door in the corridor I nudged it open with a piece of a desk that I picked up. I heard it said that lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place, but I also heard that was a lie. I didn’t want to take any chances. The door opened up into a large hall.

“Excellent,” I said. Along the centre of the room ran the beam pipe with various experiments attached to it. Everything looked neat and normal. Still, to be sure I tossed the plank inside, where it rattled and slid a little along the floor. The walls of the room were barely visible as closets of tech were stacked next to them. Much of the remaining space was covered by desks with smaller stand-alone experiments in small metallic boxes. “This might be it, our ticket out of here.” Some of the things were thrown on the ground, but most seemed intact.

“So much,” Estelle said, gawping at the sight. Despite the awe I also felt, I for once made sure to keep my attention, so I could see a small shadow flicker behind a desk. In a casual way I put the desk between me and Estelle, showing it my back. A moment later the scrabbling started and Estelle squeaked. I spun and caught the radling as it pounced on me with the blade of my knife. With a flicking motion, I threw it to the ground, stomping on it to make sure it was dead.

I gave a self satisfied smile to Estelle, and she just frowned. “You could’ve warned me,” she said.

“I won’t let any more of them near you,” I replied.

Despite the accelerator being the central feature of the room, it was in fact fairly difficult to work with. It had to be carefully dismantled which was a lot of work if you didn’t want to break anything. The other problem was that since we had a limited understanding of the technology, it was hard to say what was even valuable about it. It was very much possible that we would end up hauling two backpacks of scrap metal back to the train. Working for MiSiTech, both of us were fairly tech-savvy, but even though a lot of modern technology was ripped of straight from the looted CERN tech, it was still different enough to make it hard to tell the value and uniqueness of something that you found lying around.

I looked at the beam pipe that ended with the wall of the laboratory. I wondered what the odds were that this accelerator was one of injectors into the synchrotrons and eventually into large colliders. Each level should in principle contain a higher amount of more expensive equipment. Then again, many of those higher levels were either occupied or were reduced to a giant smouldering radioactive crater at the central part of the Zone.

“We could just ignore it for now and take some easier things,” I suggested.

“I don’t like it, but it might be for the best right now,” she replied.

I headed to one of the desks with experiments. It had two crates of modular electronics. The crate itself was way to bulky to carry even if it were emptied beforehand, but it was likely of little value anyway. The modules themselves were much more interesting. They ranged from amplifiers and attenuators to signal splitters, discriminators, logic and analog-to-digital converters. Not that I understood most of them. That was simply written on the modules, though some of the names did provide an intuitive sense of their task.

“Hey, look at this,” Estelle called out.

“Hm?” I replied and turned around while still holding a discriminator. Estelle was carrying an oscilloscope. “Impressive find. No idea how good it is though.”

“Well, it looks undamaged. We might as well take it.”

“Sure, it might be worth a lot. But it will take up all of the space in one of the backpacks. We can’t leave it on the outside and let it break down on the way back.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll take this one and you just stuff as many of those things you’re holding into your backpack,” Estelle said and so we did.

It’s a great challenge to carry enough with you to be prepared for every situation but also to still be able to carry heavy loads back from your expeditions. We closed the door leading to the lab and tried to cover it again with the debris before departing.