Hadron

Raining again. It suited his mood. He turned on the CNN news stream to the computer in his office. Listened absently while some talking head droned on aimlessly about politics and plagues. He thought going back to the beginning would be nice to be able to do, but time and events conspire to make such a thing impossible. It wasn't now possible to go back. Never really was, he sat, musing. so, Jonathan Harding, financier,entrepreneur, and CEO of the world's most powerful bank, The Communal World Bank, or "CWB" as it was known, glanced at his reflection in the dark windows of his office, noting his pompadour had become mussed, and decided to make the best of his situation. The people who'd entered business life as friends were no longer friends but scheming competitors, hoping to get ahead by stepping on him as they went by, climbing to the top to replace him.Hardening his attitude, he made a decision. In the darkness of his office with the only witness being the the droning CNN anchor, suicide was a tempting option, but that would give his "friends" what they wanted by his own hands. He rejected it. He planted his feet in the lush emerald carpet, placed his hands on his mahogany and cherry desktop, and began to reach for the phone to begin his draining of the swamp which seemed to reach out, trying to drown him, when the CNN talking head suddenly began sounding hysterical about something. Jon sat back down and began to listen.

On the monitor, an amazing event seemed to be taking place, a picture of the area near Bern, Switzerland where the Large Hadron Collider had been, there was no sign of the buildings and infrastructure, the great sets of machinery and power plants which had supported it. It had disappeared completely and suddenly.

Earlier, inside the LHC underground, the strength of the magnetic dipoles which accelerated particles within it had been increased from 7.7 Teslas to over 25 each, in an effort to produce and control mini black holes, thought to contain answers to questions concerning travel through wormholes and other phenomena that might allow interstellar travel someday. This made the magnets more difficult to keep synchronized. The controls for the first aberrant station's field were less off than he expected, but he tuned them anyway, just to make sure, then went on to the next. His upcoming promotion would make Helena happy, as their first baby was due any day now. There were many meters of wires and conduits between stations, and the exercise felt good, as Jacob enjoyed his brisk walk to the next station. Jacob pondered the new LHC upgrades, as they were a very large jump in power, but he wasn't worried, about the power needed to move various particles around the circuit at up to 99.999 percent of the speed of light. Now, in 2035 the making of Higgs Boson particles were an everyday occurrence because of the available power. The scientists and the leaders of the various countries involved in the LHC were very proud of their accomplishments, comparing themselves to having the "very power of God Himself in creating such things" Yet there had seemed to be, with this last upgrade in power, an alignment problem every time they they began to open up for the definitive testing of what the LHC could now do. Magnets would get out of sync. Conduits would heat almost to melting, sometimes needing replacement, stalling the work yet again. It had been several years since the upgrade was begun, and the LHC had not been fully functional in all that time. The leaders of the funding nations were becoming impatient. So today's test would be important, and Jacob wanted to be part of the success. And the top brass had said that everything was now in order. So Jacob aligned his last station, sent back the signal of completion, and the world around him suddenly seemed to cease to exist. He knew he wasn't dead, yet. But there was a moment when he felt total nothingness around him. His world was both black and white simultaneously, it seemed. Then the "Things" as he thought of them, started to appear. To his amazed mind, they appeared to be something out of nightmare, a cross between a grasshopper and a helicopter, being in size somewhere between the two, a being which could not exist. He thought he was dreaming, and the things seemed to have human faces, fleetingly reminding him of people he knew and were long dead. t His considering this as the idea of a dream quickly ended as the "Things" attacked him, stinging with their prehensile tails over and over, terrible, painful stings, like that of hornets from Hell. and he heard screaming, not just his own, but from all over the facility, preternaturally hearing all the individuals in the many square miles of living hell which the LHC had become. Jacob hoped for death to come soon, but it would not, and the agony kept on and on while he alternately prayed, which he'd seldom done since a child, and cursed, which he'd done often.

Jonathan watched in amazement on his monitor as a huge, hole, so dark that it seemed to suck light from everywhere around it opened up in the ground where the LHC, the pride of nations had been. While suddenly, just after the hole appeared, almost every person who'd been inside came bursting from the hole, screaming almost in gibberish concerning stinging insectoid monsters and crying as if mentally breaking down. While the survivors were coming out of the hole, an immense "being", for lack of a better description, larger than even a Blue Whale began to emerge from the huge Black hole where the LHC had once existed. It appeared to be some sort of octopus-like being with human-looking mouths up and down its arms in the place of suckers.It began to speak from its numerous mouths, in every language spoken by man. "Call me," it said," Leviathan"

"Your machine has recalled me from my sleep in the depths of the universe, and drawn me to this place from within another dimension. My dimension, we like to call, 'Gehenna'. It formed at the other end of the singularity which created your own universe. I bring you peace."