Chapter Eighteen: The Large Hadron Collider

“Mingyang, let me take you to see your dormitory first.”
Zhang Mingyang followed Wang Bowen toward a tunnel entrance. As he left, he glanced back and shot Bai Muqing a glare, paying him back for the kick to his chest last time.

At the checkpoint by the entrance, several fully armed soldiers were on patrol. Seeing that Zhang Mingyang was a stranger, they immediately raised their guns, aiming them at him.

“Raise your hands and don’t move! This is the base’s special security unit!” Wang Bowen reminded him.

Zhang Mingyang had never experienced anything like this before. He stood there in a daze, quickly raising his hands above his head and showing his wristwatch.

Two soldiers approached him, guns at the ready. They ignored Wang Bowen and headed straight for Zhang Mingyang. Upon seeing his watch, one of the soldiers took out a device and scanned it. “Gemini, energy engineer—cleared for entry!”

Once the device confirmed he was base personnel, the soldiers lowered their guns and allowed Zhang Mingyang to pass.

As the soldiers lowered their weapons, Zhang Mingyang finally breathed a sigh of relief. His heart had been in his throat, afraid those soldiers might fire at any moment.

After passing the checkpoint and entering the cave, Zhang Mingyang patted his chest, exclaiming at the danger. “Grandpa Wang, those soldiers didn’t have any killing intent at all. Their faces were expressionless, yet the psychological pressure was overwhelming. No wonder they’re the special forces—if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought they were robots!”

Wang Bowen nodded. “You’re right—they actually are robots.”

“Really?” Zhang Mingyang turned to look back, surprised. “Are they artificial intelligence?”

Wang Bowen waved his hand. “Not exactly artificial intelligence—just programmed robots. Another of Wang Huairen’s masterpieces!”

Wang Huairen again? Zhang Mingyang was at a loss for words, wondering just how much black technology this base contained thanks to that man.

Pointing to the rock overhead, Wang Bowen continued, “We’re on the first floor of the base now. There are three more floors above and one below. The entire ‘Four Ring Mountain’ has been excavated in a square pattern. From now on, if you go anywhere, make sure to follow the map on your watch. If you get lost, it could be very dangerous!”

Alarmed by Wang Bowen’s warning, Zhang Mingyang quickly pulled up the map on his watch. When he checked the underground floor, he saw only a restricted zone marked—no name.

“Grandpa Wang, is the entire underground floor restricted?”

Wang Bowen nodded. “The underground level is fifty meters deep. It’s the core area for building the spaceship’s power source. There’s a massive, fifty-five-kilometer-long ‘large hadron collider’ down there used for manufacturing antimatter. That’s where you’ll be working.”

“A fifty-five-kilometer collider?”

Zhang Mingyang exclaimed, “Our university has one, but it’s just a positron-electron collider, only two hundred and twenty-five meters long! Compared to this, ours is a mere toy! We spent three years of research funding building that thing in our department, and nearly didn’t finish it!”

Wang Bowen laughed. “This one cost the entire project’s budget. There was even an accident that nearly wiped out everyone in the base—if Wang Huairen hadn’t given his full support, antimatter energy wouldn’t have been developed in a hundred years.”

“Grandpa Wang, can we go see it now?”

“Sure.”

Seeing Zhang Mingyang’s enthusiasm, Wang Bowen decided to take him for a look. They turned left and right through the corridors to a special elevator, holding up their left wrists for the system to verify their identities.

“Cancer, Gemini, identity confirmed. You may enter.”

With the system’s prompt, the elevator doors opened, and they stepped inside.

“Grandpa Wang, was the hadron collider also designed by Wang Huairen?”

“Not entirely,” Wang Bowen shook his head. “The pipelines and general construction were handled by the Institute of High Energy Physics. The core ‘diverter’ was Wang Huairen’s design.”

“Diverter? What kind of device is that?” Zhang Mingyang thought of the collider at his department—he’d never heard of a diverter.

“You’ll see it in a moment.”

As they spoke, the elevator reached the lowest level.

Ding—

The doors slid open, and they stepped out.

“Whoa!”

Faced with the immense machine, Zhang Mingyang couldn’t help but cry out. He’d never seen a collider of such magnitude in his life.

The entire underground space was vast, the ceiling nearly ten meters high. The enormous accelerator and endless pipelines stretched as far as the eye could see, leaving Zhang Mingyang deeply awed.

“Grandpa Wang, does a machine this size really have enough power to run?”

Wang Bowen curled his lip. “Don’t get me started. When we first built it, we had no idea it would consume so much electricity. The moment we switched it on, it drained two power plants and blacked out the whole base for a week.”

“After realizing how much power it needed, we built three nuclear power plants around it. Each use draws four hundred megawatts and shuts down for a week afterward.”

Zhang Mingyang paced back and forth around the machine, stopping suddenly in front of the ‘target.’

“Grandpa Wang, what’s that device on the target pipeline?”

Wang Bowen looked at where he was pointing. “That’s the diverter.”

“What does it do?” Zhang Mingyang couldn’t help but ask.

Wang Bowen walked over and opened the control console’s simulator. “When the collider reaches full power, trillions of protons race around the accelerator ring at a frequency of 101,240 times per second. Their speed is three times that of light.”

“Two beams of protons, each at a maximum energy of 21 trillion electron volts, rush toward each other. When their combined energy reaches 42 trillion electron volts, they collide with the target.”

“Then, the detector will rapidly identify the antimatter in a ten-billionth of a second and relay the information to the computer, which then passes it to the diverter.”

“Finally, the diverter generates a unique, repulsive magnetic effect, pushing the antimatter back into the storage unit. It’s incredible!”

Watching the simulation, Zhang Mingyang grew more and more curious—how was this ‘diverter’ built? What was the principle behind it?

Noticing Zhang Mingyang’s confusion, Wang Bowen sighed. “Don’t bother thinking about it. When Wang Huairen disappeared, he took all the diverter’s blueprints with him. We have no idea how it was built.”

“That’s such a shame!” Zhang Mingyang gazed at the giant collider, suddenly yearning to run an experiment immediately.

Wang Huairen glanced at the time. “Mingyang, let’s go. You’ll have plenty of chances to come here. For now, let me introduce you to your department colleagues.”

Standing by the elevator, Zhang Mingyang looked back longingly at the collider, while Wang Huairen gave him a gentle push inside.