CERN

FIGARO NEWTON took one last look at the audience. He could hardly keep his breakfast down. This was much more intimidating than watching a seminar on Skype. He was physically at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Up in the last row — was that Glasberg and Weinhow sitting next to each other and whispering? Did they fly in for this? How many Nobel laureates were watching anyway?

And the others. Most of the others were full of gravitas, so full of dignity, seriousness, a firm sense of belonging. Fig was one of the shortest in the room and felt he had none. He was merely a graduate student from a minor university, one unaccredited at that.

The sports coat felt uncomfortable. He had bought it in a thrift shop years before in the hopes of getting a date to his high school prom. It was just as well he did not. The sleeves were too long, and he felt tiny within the draping shoulders.

None of the graduate students in the audience had their glasses held together by tape over the nose. Even his scraggly beard looked out of place.

It had been such a whirlwind. An email from his doctorial advisor to hop on the first plane for Geneva he could get. Professor Chalice had finally got a seminar slotted to talk about his work, but it was a little too soon. He had to focus on data collection because the year-end shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider was almost here. There was hardly any time to spare. Since Fig was Chalice’s only graduate student, he would have to give the talk instead.

And then the phone call from Ashley Anderfield with the job offer from USX. Five for five — five interviews and five acceptances! He had not expected one from USX. The word buzzing around was that they were in trouble. But no matter which one he accepted, if he were frugal, he could save enough to keep working on his dissertation for another semester. Chalice’s email changed everything. Maybe if he did well in Geneva, a fellowship might follow, and he could turn all of them down.

He remembered talking with Anderfield and finally signing off with a ‘I’ll think about it.’ No sense in blowing off any of the fallbacks if he didn’t have to.

And it was a good thing he kept his options open. The preparation for the talk had not gone as expected. Professor Chalice had not even met him at the airport. Instead, his advisor had left a message about a hotel, the lecture time and room number, the PowerPoint file name, and not to disturb him until summoned to do so.

When he had been an undergrad, Fig had talked before audiences and knew once he got started he would lose himself in the words. He tried the old trick of thinking everyone was naked, but today that did nothing to help. The image of the exposed paunches of these middle-aged men and women was not a pretty one.

“Chalice is setting some sort of record,” someone in the second row called out. “He’s been here for over a year and hasn’t come to a single seminar. Even sends an RA when he is supposed to be the speaker.”

Great. Even some physicists were hecklers. Fig had to do something to make the atmosphere a little more friendly. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and then a second time to be sure, trying to make the daydream fresh…

Standing in front of a learned crowd. Expounding a great theory and watching their eyes widen in surprise. The thunderous applause. A standing ovation. Glasberg, no Glasberg and Weinhow pressing forward to shake his hand…

So why not? Maybe it could happen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he told himself. Excelsior! Faint heart never won fair lady. Margaret’s sassy smile in the eighth grade briefly flickered before him, but he pushed that aside. Into the Breach. Carpe Diem. Concentrate. Oh man, he was going to be so lame. …

Finally, be true to oneself., here goes.

“A physicist, a mathematician, and an engineer walked into a bar…”

“TO SUM up,” Fig said, “the data collected two years ago showed an anomaly in one of the low cross section decay channels. Nothing to write home about, but exactly as Professor Chalice’s super symmetry theory had predicted. Then, when another round of collection after the year-end shutdown was added, the discrepancy became larger. Those results are what I have presented here.

“Professor Chalice could not give this talk because he is busy with the LHC run going on now. We hope when that data is added, we will be able to say…”

Fig paused for effect. “As the bishop said to the actress, “Ah, that is a gluon of a different color.”

This time, no one laughed. Most of the audience immediately rose, not for an ovation but to leave quickly and get back to more interesting work. The moderator stepped to the dais. “Before the questions, I only would like to say that the results presented are an example of CERN’s outreach program — getting some of the smaller universities involved in the work we are doing here. Now please direct your questions to Mr. Newton.”

The questions! The experimental ones he probably could handle by himself. After all, he was the curator of Chalice’s data. But the theoretical ones… He glanced again in the direction of Glashow and Weinberg. They were already gone. None of it was going to happen. Oh, well, there were other dreams where that one had come from.

FIG HURRIED down the long corridor of guest offices on the basement floor of the satellite building. The overhead lights were dim, part of an energy conservation plan to thwart the complaints that CERN was a waste of taxpayer money. It took a bit of getting used to, but it was no worse than a stroll at evening twilight. Most doors were open, the usual indication the occupant would permit interruptions from whatever he was doing.

Luckily, someone had shown him how to use the directory to find Chalice’s room number. It was closed. Not unexpected, given his aloofness.

Fig tapped gently, but got no response. His advisor would be pleased with how things had gone. Would want to know immediately if not sooner. That is why he did not wait for his advisor’s summons. Best to avoid the scolding that would occur if he delayed until later. Don’t make any stupid mistakes while trying to capitalize on the opportunity for some educational funding.

He put his ear to the door and heard Chalice’s voice. He was there. Evidently, he was talking to someone.

Yes, Professor Chalice was bristly. Always concerned about proper protocol — the respect due to a full professor — even one from a place like Wagonbrook. And he did push the image of sainthood to the limit. Suits a car salesman would be proud to wear. A business card with the tag line ‘Searcher for the holy grail of physics.’

But if there was conversation, then perhaps his advisor would not mind hearing his report now rather than later. Cautiously, Fig grasped the knob and turned. The door was not locked. He slowly started to open it. Only darkness showed in the slit that had been revealed. Although the corridor was dim, the darkness of the office wall on the right now looked striped with a vertical ribbon of soft light.

He could hear Chalice more clearly. “Everyone, pay attention. My third-stage trigger has found another event, and I have computed the changes to be made.”

Fig extended his head into the partially open door and waited until his eyes adjusted. Chalice was sitting at a desk near the opposite wall, absorbed with whatever he was looking at on the computer screen. He had not noticed the door was ajar.

“First, the initial pixel detector,” Chalice said. “I will give you the new ID.” A keyboard in front of the professor began to clatter, and one of the windows before him started to scroll.

Fig puzzled until he made out the band of metal circling the top of Chalice’s head and the positioning earphones over his ears. A headset. Whomever Chalice was talking to must not be in the room.

“Two, one, seven, three,” Chalice said. “Convert it to binary as you have been taught.”

Fig cracked the door slightly more and snaked himself into the office. As silently as he had opened it, he closed the door behind. Waiting for the right moment to announce his presence, he let his eyes adjust to the almost total darkness. Several of the windows on the screen were for entering text commands, and Fig recognized the image in the center one. It was a reconstruction of an event from the Atlas Toroidal Apparatus, one of the two high-energy detectors of proton-proton collisions.

What was it above Chalice’s head? Tiny specks of many colors, each one too small to resolve individually, but together they formed an iridescent cloud, almost like an aurora but not quite — churning in restless motion.

“Closer to the microphone when you are done,” Chalice said. “I can’t tell you what to do next until I know you are finished with the last.” The advisor waited a moment. “Slower and more clearly. And speak up, speak up.”

“Ah, professor,” Fig ventured softly. “I do not mean to inter — ”

Chalice bolted from his chair and whirled about as if bit by a snake. “How long have you been here?” he commanded. “What did you hear?”

His headset was not wireless but connected to another device on the desk. The cord had pulled out of its jack when he rose, and a second voice spoke from a nearby speaker. “The first ID has been changed and the error correcting code modified to compensate. What is next? Another pixel detector, a semiconductor tracker, the calorimeter, the muon spectrometer?” To Fig, it sounded like one of the high falsetto chipmunk characters from years ago.

“Silence!” Chalice shouted. “Silence! All of you. Factor some large numbers or something while you await my next command.”

He walked to the wall and flicked on the lights. Striding menacingly toward Fig, he growled, “I told you to wait until summoned.”

“Yes, but, I though you would want to know as soon as — ”

Chalice glowered down at Fig. “You did not hear anything, understand?”

“Hear anything? Only you talking to someone.”

Fig pushed his glasses upward on his nose. “Well that, and the funny cloud over your head.” He craned his neck to look upward. There was no glow, but the air shimmered in a subtle way. He noticed his ears now were buzzing faintly as well. This was quite curious. Was he imagining things? Wasn’t there a bunch of colored dots before?

“Say, those events showing on the screen,” he said. “Are they ones being collected in real time right now?”

“I will make a bargain with you,” Chalice’s expression grew even grimmer. “You keep quiet about this, and, as the reward, … you will get some tuition relief.” Chalice scowled. “Or perhaps to make it even more clear — you will still get a degree.”

Fig felt his stomach protest again. He was only hanging on by a thread with Chalice anyway. And if now he got the boot, the last three years were a total waste. Out on the street. No advanced degree. No postdoc anywhere.

“Okay, Okay. I will not talk about what I heard — whatever it was.”

FIG SCOOTED the chair a little closer to the table. The IT staff had been quite helpful. As another visiting scholar, he had obtained an account and a desk — in a public area rather than a private office, but it certainly would do. He had done this many times before remotely from the States, of course, but he felt a thrill using the exploration tools on data that was so fresh. As he had witnessed Chalice doing a few hours before, he would be working with events shortly after they were obtained, not months later.

Fig brought up a level three trigger. It performed complicated queries on events reconstructed from the raw data.

He set the criteria to save the same type of events his advisor had been studying for the last two years. Low probability final states from marginal observations. The ones ambiguous and possibly corrupted by error. He and Chalice were bottom feeders, trying to squeeze new physics out of material no one else wanted to bother with.

Of course, the first plot he brought up was the crucial one. If there were a bump not explained by known particles, then he, well, Chalice actually, would be the discoverer. And since his advisor had predicted it before…

It was fascinating to watch the histogram on the screen begin to fill up in real time. In general, lower level triggers filtered out what happened with most of the collisions. Only a few hundred per second were processed further. And of those, only every minute or so would there be one passing Chalice’s level three.

An hour passed, but there was no unexplained bump at the right-hand edge of the plot. In fact, it looked much worse than the data from the last two years. Where had the effect of Chalice’s predicted particle gone?

Then the screen flickered and refreshed. The histogram redrew. Now, there was a bump at the edge. He was sure there was no such instants before. What was going on here?

Fig looked at his watch. It was exactly 11 AM, Central European Time. A coincidence? He cleared the graph and started over. The histogram again started filling.

A minute before twelve, he made a screenshot of the display. Again, there was no bump on the right. Again, there was a flicker and refresh. When the histogram was repainted, the bump was there. Fig superimposed the two graphs and flickered them back and forth like an astronomer looking for a planet moving against a starry background. There was no doubt about it. The raw data collected in the last hour now was showing results that had changed.

Fig pondered. He knew that all sorts of recalibrations were performed on the raw data all the time. One lecture he had Skyped said there were almost as many modifications as there were new additions. But there should be nothing as dramatic as what he had just seen. What strange phenomena was happening to the raw data? What was making it change?

Professor Chalice. He needed to interrupt him again.