ATLAS

 “It should be around here somewhere,” I said. According to the information I bought back in Ferroviaire, we were at the exact location of ATLAS. Then again Serge didn’t seem to take great care when he had marked the location. Remembering his lack of enthusiasm when I asked about the location made my gut twist with worry. At the time I had assumed that it was part of his usual act, trying not to reveal any information that hadn’t been paid for. Now I was considering the possibility that he genuinely didn’t think we would find much of value here. The thought made my skin crawl. He might as well have mentioned not to bother going there. I stood and thought for a moment. Wasn’t that almost exactly what he had said?

There were ruins and scattered debris from buildings around the area, indicating past settlement. It all appeared to be civilian structures. There was even a partly preserved asphalt road with some pieces of asphalt lifted by large trees and others buried. Civilian settlements were often a waste of time for us. Most of the everyday technology that was used by the people here was already extracted. Only the state-of-the-art scientific things mattered. Every such laboratory was always surrounded by a civilian city or even a village, meaning that every one of those had to be thoroughly inspected, but despite the insanely large number of scientific facilities that CERN boasted, it was still a small fraction compared to the number of villages.

“Hey, check it out Tan,” Estelle called. I turned towards her. I didn’t even feel like warning her not to raise her voice. I was just too tired. It was one thing after another with no breaks. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and looked towards Estelle. She was standing at the edge of a thicket, and I couldn’t see anything beyond except that it ended. I came closer and gasped. There was a giant crater before me. Probably a couple of hundred metres in diameter and the steep edges at the rim lead to the floor tens or more metres below. The land was far more barren than the surrounding forests. At most there were small bushes and a scraggly tree in the midst of brownish grass. There were many rocks strewn around. Some of the regular shapes made it obvious that many of them were in fact pieces of concrete.

“This is it,” I said. “Stay out of sight.” The area was seemingly peaceful, but the memory of the alien attack was still fresh in my mind. I checked the sky and didn’t see any sign of the storm that had accompanied the assault. We were nervously looking around and at each other, all of us holding our breaths. Even Nicodeme seemed frightened by the potential attacker. We had told him about the alien attack. I was against it at first until Estelle pointed out that if he’s there and isn’t aware of the danger, it would put us in danger as well. It was almost frustrating how she was able to make such great use of logic and reasoning when she wanted things to go her way.

“Now what?” Estelle whispered. I didn’t know what to say. I assumed it would be obvious when we came to our goal. The other possibility was that there was nothing here at all. At that point I thought that might be for the best. If I had to face danger, I preferred the danger that I could see. I weighed my options. We could wait for a while, turn and leave, sneak inside or make noise.

“Let’s wait for a minute and rest,” I said. It had been a long day and we were all glad to sit down for a while. In the end nothing changed and we were only delaying the inevitable. I went to the edge of the crater and threw a rock. It smacked against a concrete block. After a while and more tries nothing had happened. “Cover me,” I told Estelle. She began preparing the coil gun. I saw her loading the magnetised ammunition and left her to it. For once I was happy to spend the more valuable resources.

I crept down the slope of the crater. Taking a closer look, I was able to see that there was quite a lot of debris in the crater, pieces of metal, concrete and other materials. The place had to have been involved in the incident. Perhaps some kind of explosion occurred. I passed something that looked like a collapsed room, blocked by the dirt, rocks and concrete. All the while I kept an eye out for any possible danger. The place was very quiet

I took another step and found myself inside a well lit hallway. There was the buzz of several people talking all around me. I gasped and shook my head. Only the barren crater surrounded me. I was gasping for air and looked around bewildered. I almost stumbled as I took the next step.

“Apparently it was a leak in the beam tube. Helium entered the vacuum space and the magnets warmed up. Just in time to make my PhD a living nightmare. I’ll have to join the technical team tomorrow to help fix it,” a man said.

“Good luck,” a second man said and started laughing. “You’ll need it.” He waved and then turned to me. I just stood with my mouth open. The man started humming to himself and walked right through me. The vision disappeared again. I checked my G-M counter. There seemed to be a slightly elevated level of radiation in the area but not by much. Even a natural cave would have higher levels. I had heard of people going mad from acute radiation sickness in the final moments before their death. As I stood there in the crater, everything was normal. I was agitated by the visions but nothing was wrong with me. I looked back at Estelle and the other guy and thought about going back. Estelle was signalling me for information. I just gave a thumbs-up and turned back to the depths of the crater. My heart was racing, yet I felt drawn to the centre. I couldn’t resist. In another step I was inside an office.

“Those CMS bastards are hiding their results.”

“It’s fine. I’ll just go grab lunch at cafeteria and try to get someone talking.”

I was back in the crater.

“I don’t know where it came from. I don’t even know if the experiment had started by then.”

The visions kept coming. Some lasted a heartbeat, others seemed to take minutes. I heard a scream and there was a flash of light followed by complete silence. Returning back to reality became disorienting.

An armed squad was being briefed inside a conference room.

“Article X is kept in the central part of the experiment. It’s no longer just CMS, but ATLAS too from now on. Squad alpha will make a distraction along the beam pipe, beta will take the main entrance point and gamma will provide cover and cut off any reinforcements.” A man was pointing on a schematic projected onto the wall. “If it goes south, we will use a bunker buster. Destroying the target is preferable to letting it being used. Any damage it causes will be minor compared to it’s capability in the wrong hands.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s go boys, the fate of the nation, perhaps the world is in your hands.” The men all saluted.

“Gaetan,” Estelle hissed my name. I stopped and looked back. She was gesturing for me to return. On the way back I was spared from further visions.

“What?” I asked.

“What do you mean what? What in the world were you doing down there? It looked like you were drunkenly stumbling around the crater with no goal. You even passed the central part and almost walked into the open shaft. Now you wandered back to us but instead of coming back up you just kept walking around. If you hadn’t come up when I called, I would’ve gone down to get you myself,” Estelle’s words came so fast I didn’t even have a chance to reply to any of it. “Did you at least confirm it’s safe. Was the alien around in the central shaft?”

I was staring at her and blinking. In truth I had no idea what the answers to her questions were. “I don’t know,” the words came slow. “I saw … the people.”

“What?”

I told them about the strange visions.

“Amazing,” Nicodeme said. “Visions of the past. Could it be?” He was speaking mostly to himself and then shook his head.

We ended up going into the crater together. My reckless wandering would’ve already alerted any hostile presence. We were all bracing ourselves for the visions but none came. We walked right into the centre of the crater and nothing happened. Estelle gave me a concerned look.

“I don’t see anything now either. I’m fine,” I said. Estelle let out a doubtful grunt. I looked at Nicodeme who wasn’t paying attention and was looking around in an almost desperate manner and seemed to be getting annoyed at the fact that nothing strange was happening.

At the centre of the crater there was a partly collapsed shaft leading straight down. I chucked a stone inside. We waited for a minute and held our breaths but nothing happened.

“It’s a tight fit, but I think we could get inside,” Estelle said.

“And it doesn’t look like it would fit an alien spaceship,” I replied. I tied the rope around a large piece of concrete. “I’ll go first, you follow,” I pointed at Nicodeme.

“Wait. Can you get down the rope?” Estelle asked.

“Yes, it’s fine,” Nicodeme responded.

I descended into the depths. With my backpack there was barely room to squeeze by. I’ll have to take it off if I manage to find anything useful down here. It was a problem I would love to have. The shaft eventually opened into a large chamber. It was hard to tell exactly how big it was as it was also partly collapsed like the shaft itself. The room was a relic of a great experiment on the collider, much of it was destroyed and scattered around. Great pieces of metal, concrete and other materials had flown across the room, destroying all in their paths. Is there a single piece of tech that hasn’t been destroyed. Was this all for nothing? It made me wish I had never met that dying man. Yet the sight we had seen that day was real. The threat was out there and it had the potential to cause great calamity not just in the Zone but across the entire world. The landing on the floor was softened by the floaty feeling of lightly reduced gravity.

We were back on the surface a couple of hours later. Estelle looked excited as she helped me to the surface. My dour expression made her reconsider her questions.

“Nothing at all?” Estelle asked.

“Nothing useful,” I grumbled. “Just some random junk.” I began pacing. “Coming here was a waste of time. Yet there is something out there.”

“Well what is it?” Nicodeme muttered behind me. We glared at each other.

“I don’t understand. That guy said it’s here. Even in the visions they mentioned ATLAS,” I said. That made Nicodeme perk up but he didn’t speak. “They mentioned CMS and ATLAS and even that something is kept there. It could be exactly what we are looking for.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. CMS and ATLAS were in opposition,” Nicodeme said. Estelle and I exchanged glances. “It shouldn’t be here anyway. What exactly did they say? And what did that man say?”

“They said the article in the central part of the experiment and that it isn’t just CMS but ATLAS too. I don’t really remember what the man said, but I think it was something similar,” I said. Nicodeme was muttering to himself and no longer paying attention to anything else.

“Of course. Not ATLAS, but ATLAS 2. You idiot, it’s a number.” Nicodeme was becoming more excited.

“What are you saying?” Estelle asked. “How do you know all this.”

Nicodeme suppressed his emotions. “Well unlike you two rats, I actually have an education. Can you even name all the experiments on FCC and LHC?” He looked from me to Estelle. “Well can you?”

“No,” Estelle replied. “We know of a couple, but not all.”

“There you have it. We should move out. This is big,” Nicodeme said. Estelle and I remained still. “What?” A moment of silence stretched.

“First of all, you follow us and not the other way around. Second, we don’t know where this experiment even is,” I said.

“Oh, I see. Well I know where it is,” Nicodeme said.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Another part of your education?” He showed a little embarrassment. Then we studied the map and plotted the course. “It’s fairly far away. We could go back to Ferroviaire but it’s very far out of the way.”

“We haven’t used up too much resources so far,” Estelle said. “There would be little difference. In the end even this was supposed to be only a scouting expedition. Still, lugging around all this stuff would be tiresome.”

“We could just leave it here,” Nicodeme said. I scowled at him and he raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Just saying. I don’t think this place gets much traffic. If we really need this stuff we could just come back later.” I had been about to suggest a similar course of action, yet now that he had done it, I wanted to do the opposite out of pure spite.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Estelle said. “What do you think Gaetan?”

In the end we just buried the mostly useless junk. Even carrying it all the way back to the train in Ferroviaire would have been barely worth the effort.