LHC Online - an email conversation - Part 1
-----Original Message-----
From: Dr Pierre Dubois
Sent: 02 September 2008 10:17
To: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Subject: LHC Online
Hi Thomas
The momentous time for you is here at last! How has the Large Hadron Collider been performing, on its first start up? I’ve been keeping abreast of events at your end as I feel that I have played my small part in your efforts. I hope you don’t mind me basking in your reflected glory?! Who would have thought that under your feet (or around you as the LHC is so deep!) you are amid the ancient streets and walkways of old Roman Apolliacum? During our excavation we found the remains of the temple dedicated to the god Apollyon, There’s an interesting aspect to that deity which I’ll let you know about when I get more time.
Work calls me away; Archéologie Industrielle International is flying me out to the Gabon of all places. Apparently some uranium miners have found an interesting historical anomaly. In Africa? I ask you, it sounds like a complete waste of time, but I’m getting a good pay packet for this so I can’t complain… however the iodine tablets I’ve been issued are a bit of a worry, but c’est la vie.
Anyway let me know how it goes. My internet access is likely to be intermittent at best, unlike you at the birth place of the World Wide Web! Enjoy cracking those atoms!
Pierre
-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Sent: 22 September 2008 14:22
To: Dr Pierre Dubois
Subject: RE: LHC Online
Pierre
Was great to hear from you and yes you may bask in my reflected glory, the glory that is Apollyon! LOL. Sorry I haven’t replied sooner but it has been all go here during the run up to and the actual test firing process. We fired it up on the 10th sending a stream of protons clockwise and then counterclockwise. All seemed well until we had a magnet quench. As you know we steer the particles around the LHC using magnets. Well we had a major breakdown with 100 or so magnets in adjoining sectors. We lost six tonnes of cryogenic coolant which vented into the tunnels with such force that 50 magnets were damaged in the subsequent explosion and we lost vacuum conditions in the main cyclic beamline. Now I know you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and we are dealing with the science of the Big Bang but I think we were very lucky. I’ve instigated a full Health & Safety review. This could have been a disaster if some workers were in the tunnels effected. The expanding liquid Helium could have displaced the air in people’s lungs and asphyxiated them.
Most probably it was all caused by a simple electrical fault but it triggered an abort failsafe leading to the cryogenic leak. Some of the magnets rapidly rose in temperature by up to 100 degrees!
Anyway it looks like repairs will take some time; perhaps all autumn and winter. Don’t tell anyone please Pierre, as this will add a further few million Euros to the European taxpayers bill. Let’s hope this wasn’t the work of the angry god Apollyon? LOL!
How are you settling in, in the Gabon. I was a bit confused as to why the Archéologie Industrielle International would be interested in uranium mines, but as you say if it pays well…
Take care and keep swallowing those little pills!
Thomas
-----Original Message-----
From: Dr Pierre Dubois
Sent: 14 October 2008 11.14
To: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Subject: RE: LHC Online
Hi Thomas
I’ve just got full access to the server, so I have full control over communications from our camp here in the Oklo uranium deposits! There’s some very interesting stuff going on over here my friend. I was dubious as to why they wanted the services of an archaeologist as opposed to a geologist but then they are crawling over this place already. Uranium mining has ceased for the moment while we mount our investigation. Can you believe that that there seems to be deposits of metal ores that are so pure you would think they had been extracted and refined? I think that’s why they’ve brought me here, just to convince the geologists here that this isn’t or could never be the case. I’ve been telling one of them here (a South African called Brandt) that of course it’s a natural process of accumulation that has caused this. He just shook his head at me and in answer has started me on a caving course. It seems he wants me to go deep underground. What on earth do they think I can help with down there... never mind, I must keep thinking of the pay… nowhere to spend it here though! It’s all a case of the peculiar coincidences that have formed these metallic deposits here. I need to discover the process and convince my colleagues here, but you’d think that that was the job of geologists, wouldn’t you?
Talking of deep places, regarding your workplace fun and games, have a care! Apollyon is the Greek form of the Hebrew Abaddon. In Revelations Abaddon is the destroyer, the angel of the Abyss, the keeper to the keys of hell. At 100 degrees it must have been nearing hell-like temperatures!
It looks like I’m missing Christmas and staying here into the New Year. Still if it’s what the Archéologie Industrielle International want, they pay the bills.
Anyway, time to pop some more pills.
Pierre
-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Sent: 24 April 2009 10.00
To: Dr Pierre Dubois
Subject: RE: LHC Online
Pierre
Hope your Christmas in Gabon was a good one?
Well, after a thorough diagnostic investigation it was confirmed that it was an electrical fault that ended up taking out 53 magnets. However, like I said we were lucky the coolant didn’t kill anyone. The bill came to €16.6 million. Like I said, don’t tell anyone about that. I tell you this because I trust you as the soul of discretion, remember out university days! We estimate that we won’t be online again until November.
Regardless of the breakdown we had the great and the good at the inauguration last October. It was a who’s who of the great and good in the EU, all the usual suspects of course and other suits, bankers and financiers with their bodyguards and the like. The funny thing was that we were ordered to make ourselves scarce that night. The joke was that they were holding some type of religious ritual! Utter nonsense of course, we mere scientists don’t pay for this, but we can’t help but get defensive of our apparatus here. If they do it again, myself and some colleagues have a way of remote controlling the security cameras, if nothing else that will put the conspiracy theorists to bed, once and for all. LOL.
How goes the caving? I should have asked you that first as we haven’t been in touch for months; I assume you’re fully trained up now? You’re small enough to wriggle down some tight spaces! LOL.
Strange that you said about Apollyon is Abaddon. I thought Abaddon was some demon, not an angel? I would have thought the name would be related to Apollo? Wasn’t Apollo the son of Zeus, almost a proto-Christ figure? I really should have paid more interest in Classical history, but that was your forte!
Hope the cave hasn’t fallen in on you and you’re still popping the pills!
Thomas
-----Original Message-----
From: Dr Pierre Dubois
Sent: 5 May 2008 20.05
To: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Subject: RE: LHC Online
Hi Thomas
Where to begin? I tell you my friend it is crazy here. I now know why we stayed over Christmas and weren’t allowed home. I would tell you more but our emails are automatically scanned for trigger words. I need to tell you but I dare not on this thread. I’ve managed to get another laptop with a different IP address. Just to be safe can I ask you to do the same? Don’t use the LHC address in our communication any more, I need a secure way of telling you what I know. You can be sure that I have indeed been caving and yes I have been taking the iodine… for good reason too.
I remember our university days at the Sorbonne very well, do you remember our nicknames? Let’s use them in future correspondence.
Regarding your query over Apollyon / Abaddon / Apollo. What were the demons but fallen angels? Despite the similar name Apollo is not related to Apollyon. Apollo was a Greek deity which although tolerated in the Roman Empire wasn’t adopted by the Romans to the same degree as others. Abaddon is somewhat confusing , depending on the interpretation; some have him as a demonic character while others as an agent of God casting sinners into the abyss. Still others identify Abaddon as Christ after the resurrection, just to confuse you with the Apollo link again that I’ve just discounted! You can read about him in revelation 9:11 if you want!
Anyway I will look to getting another means of communication open to you, look for my Sorbonne name when I obtain a secure line.
Pierre
-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Sent: 6 May 2009 23.05
To: Dr Pierre Dubois
Subject: RE: Asterix & Obelix
Pierre
Those pills cant be doing you any good, you’re raving my friend! Seriously you are scaring me. And telling me to read revelations? You’ve been out in the heat too long, get some leave come and visit me here.
Your concerned friend.
Thomas
-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Sent: 15 June 2009 10.00
To: Dr Pierre Dubois
Subject: RE: Asterix & Obelix
Pierre
Please get in touch, are you ok?
Thomas
-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Thomas Berlinger
Sent: 7 August 18.23
To: Dr Pierre Dubois
Subject: RE: Asterix & Obelix
Pierre
Still not heard from you. I took your advice and read the relevant passage:
“To him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit… And they had a kind over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.”
Bottomless pit… that reminded me of that bizarre law suit brought about by Prof Otto Rossler who thought we were going to annihilate the planet by causing a black hole to open… You don’t get more bottomless than a black hole…
Get in touch please, just so I know you’re ok?
Thomas
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: 10 December 2009 02.10
To: Obelix
Subject: One small village in Amorica
Test. Reply anon.
Asterix
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: 11 December 2009 09.11
To: [email protected]
Subject: One small village in Amorica
Asterix
It’s good to hear from you again. You had me worried with your crazy talk being incommunicado for months. You really are a bastard! Why all the subterfuge?
Obelix
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: 11 December 2009 09.22
To: [email protected]
Subject: One small village in Amorica
Obelix
I’m currently back in France for leave over Noel. Has it really been over a year, I’ve been away? It’s good to be home, if only for a short while. I can only apologise for my subterfuge, but to coin a descriptive American phrase – “the shit got real.” I’m being watched in my apartment and my phoneline is bugged. I was followed on my flight back from Africa and the same car is constantly outside my window day and night. There are men inside it, I see them smoking or their faces lit by the screens on their monitoring devices. Yes I am paranoid, but these people are serious.
I had to get a new lap top with which to open this channel to you. I couldn’t just buy it of course, I had a friend smuggle it to me in a pizza box. Anyway, the reason for all this? As you know I was being trained to go caving, well I went into the mine and what was there was just extraordinary. The pure ore deposits I told you of? They are manufactured pipes. We travelled down one, but it was millions of years old. The whole are is under millions of years of geology and there is no history of industrial activity in this area during the whole colonial period.
It’s an atomic reactor! Buried under the ground is an ancient nuclear reactor and it’s still active. I’m sure that’s why I’ve been allowed home for a time, to give me a break from the exposure to the background radiation I’ve been absorbing. We were proceeding with care as the last thing we want to do is break into the actual reactor core by mistake. We have found that there is a nearby site that this reactor used to provide power for. Hell, it still might be doing so! All I know is that first we had hired security protecting the site backed by Gabonese soldiers. Now French paratroopers have cordoned the area. My shadows are secret service, I’m sure of it.
It’s frustrating, I’m unearthing the kind of artefacts that archaeologists dream about, but I will write no paper, my conclusions and my findings will be locked away forever. Our whole history is a lie, my friend. The reactor predates humanity, if man didn’t build it, who did, and to what end? I am due back in the New Year. I’m equally excited and frightened of what we may discover.
I must come across like a ranting lunatic. I assure you I am sane. Just know that I’m alive. I will contact you again as soon as I can, but I imagine we will be put under a serious lockdown when we investigate the reactor further.
Here am I uncovering the past unknown and here are you unlocking the unknown future; does the black hole generator live again?
Asterix
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: 23 December 2009 11.08
To: [email protected]
Subject: One small village in Amorica
Asterix
I’m at a loss of what to say. I want you to tell me that this is all an elaborate ruse and that you are playing a joke on me. However, our previous correspondence has been noted by those on high and I was warned by my administrator that the French secret service have been asking questions regarding our friendship. I said that we had a long standing history of playing practical jokes upon one another. My administrator told me that he had refused to give our correspondence to them as I am a Swiss national. I deleted our thread on the Cern server, and like you have switched to an alternative line of communication.
The French Govt has a strategic presence in the Gabon for raw materials, especially for the uranium, being a nuclear armed state; surely any reactor there must be one of theirs?
In answer to your question, yes the black hole has been opened once more and is running smoothly. We have began colliding high energy beams and we believe that the magnets have now been trained, shaking out any crystal imperfections and avoiding any future quenching incidents.
Soon we will be able to recreate the environment just after the big bang and search for the elusive “god particle”… but which god I wonder and are we creating or destroying. I am now suspicious of the statue of Shiva outside our entrance. We have been told that the great and good are due to have another visit. We will be watching via the CTV. I will let you know what we see!
Take care my friend. I will await for you to instigate contact, so as not to draw attention to you via internet traffic.
Keep popping those pills.
Obelix
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: 08 July 2011 03.23
To: [email protected]
Subject: One small village in Amorica
Obelix
Upon my return, the excavation began in earnest. I have not returned home for over a year. Although I’m scared by the implications of what we have found, the archaeologist inside me is excited beyond measure.
All of my work is constantly being scrutinised. I keep my lap top hidden and write to you in the dead of night, an ear at my door lest my tapping of my keyboard alerts my “minders”.
This reactor is still active and has been for at least 300,000 years. I say reactor but this is actually a complex of 13 reactors, all still active to varying degrees. I’ve uncovered engineered materials, screws and what I can only assume to be electrical circuitry encased in sedimentary deposits. I was never taught to expect to find fossilised computer parts at the Sorbonne.
We are all in a state of shock here about the consequences to all this, yet we are unable to articulate and hypothesise towards the true nature of what we are uncovering. My colleague Brandt is the only one I truly trust as we together have put together an explanation that this is a natural reactor, whereby the perfect conditions are available for an atomic reaction to take place. Yet, as Brandt has told me while we have been out of earshot underground, although in theory possible, it is highly unlikely as the deposits would require at least 3% fissionable uranium (its approx. 1% here) and the whole process could be halted by contaminants such as Born which is abundant here. To have it happen once is nothing short of miraculous, but thirteen times?
Coincidentally we had a visit from thirteen of the great and good with attendant bodyguards and hangers on. Like you, we lowly workers were ordered to make ourselves scarce during their visit. Brandt joined me with a bottle of scotch while we were in lockdown; these thirteen are the movers and shakers, the power behind the throne, the authors of the very narrative we call reality.
Take the utmost care my friend. I’m still popping the pills.
Asterix
- to be cont'd *