16th June 2020 - Holly Springs National Park, Mississippi, United States

‘ וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי אוֹר; וַיְהִי-אוֹר.’ - Genesis 1:3

“And God said Let there be light, and there was light” - Genesis 1:3

The first thing I did when returning to work the next day was pay a visit to Human Resources, complaining I was afraid CERN had fallen afoul of the labor laws, and that my team was being paid less than the minimum wage, and should we be audited, it would reflect badly in the newspapers. I emphasized that I wished to retain the team and swapping out new workers, would probably cause a delay in the next series of particle firings scheduled for just a few months away. HR no idiots caught my drift, and gave the agency a call, within a week the team came into work smiles on their faces, as they related they had received an unexpected pay rise. Right a pay rise to the legal minimum wage, the world was so messed up.

Khalil, as agreed with me was humping his taxi all over Lyon at all hours of the day and night, to try bring home the bacon, we calculated that with the pay rise and his moonlighting with the taxi he could bring in an extra 2000 Euros a month. I had mentioned to my supervisors that he would be working with the other maintenance teams for the next few weeks, to ‘knowledge share’ and share work experience, or some such bull. Since there where so many other maintenance teams its unlikely they would know which team he was supposed to be working with on any particular day, and each team would assume he was with the other. The rest of the team and I picked up the slack in work left to us by his absence, which was no small thing, the guy was a freaking demon and did the work of three men, his knowledge and experience clearly showed, as we gradually slipped behind schedule a little more each day. I had no choice but to falsify our readiness reports, and try cover up the maintenance not completed.

The remaining Team members did not say a word at Khalil's absence, nor complain about the extra work and I figured he’d let them in on what we were doing.

I silently rejoiced, our conspiracy had grown, and we now had more soldiers recruited to the cause! In fact when José mentioned that his wife offered to bake a cake and sell the proceeds, this spurred the team into action and soon, we had all the teams wives and family furiously baking, and we held a cake sale each week in the parking lot offering all manner of tasty cake, tea and coffee at prices high enough to make Starbuck’s blush, but so good was the cooking we had no lack of customers CERN having about 2500 employees.

After hours the boys would stick around, and we put all those fucking Xerox machines to use, printing hundreds of flyer's of Hana’s photo with an appeal for a donation. CERN had a strict policy on charity work, and would remove the flyer's periodically, but those Xerox’s machines could pump out over 200 pages a minute, and we replaced the flyer's just as fast, there wasn't a room in the huge complex you couldn't see her adorable little face pleading for a chance at life. The security were mostly immigrants as well, so they ignored our silent rebellion, and secretly helped us collect the donations made each day.

The money rolled in, and after a few months we were just 2000 Euros away from getting Hana a new heart. It wasn't a moment too soon. She could barely walk, and Sadiya had to stay by her side at all hours to ensure she would make it just one more day. I’d transfered the bulk of my savings to Khalil at that point, claiming he could pay me back when he got the chance, the gratefully look, and haunted tired eyes, and his robotic motions all told me he barely slept anymore, he and his wife wept when they realized they finally had enough money.

“Go” I urged

“Call the hospital and pay them for the operation, they will need all the time they can get to setup, I have to get back to CERN, we have a firing tomorrow and I need to make sure our section is ready.”

I ran down the collider tunnel, buried 100m below the surface, my breath fogging the chilly air, to my right the particle beam path and magnetic coils. It was cold because in preparation for the firing, the Superconducting Dipole magnets had been chilled to cryogenic temperatures about -520.34°F, thankfully that was within the magnets and not the tunnel, still the cold radiated out and made for a chilly working environment. I had worked throughout the night trying to rectify and fix all the outstanding maintenance issues, that I had been letting slip for months now, some were minor, a part due to be replaced by a certain date but was still working fine, those I ignored. I was hurrying to fix those issues in my section flagged as red and nonfunctional. Replace a blown fuse here, a circuit breaker there and so on, not too complex but there was so many! I dragged my little cart of parts and tools behind me as I ran further down the tunnel, there at last. Magnetic Diploe 114, one of the converters on the cryogenic heat exchanger wasn't working which mean this particular magnet wasn't very superconductive at the moment. I knew that, but the control room didn't as I’d been silencing the alarms along with my false readiness report. If I could get the converter replaced in time for the firing, then it would be OK. I was almost finished removing the dead converter when my radio crackled to life.

“MT Lead 11, come in Erik are you there?” It was Jan Dätwyler, Chief Maintenance Engineer

“Yes, I'm here Mr Dätwyler” I replied trying to keep my breathing shallow and voice sounding normal

“We see some alarms are not reporting readiness status, but your report says everything is green? Is there a problem?”

“It’s a software issue, the signals are being ignored by the software, I’ve checked each one and they all show up as green” I replied thinking quickly. “I filed a bug report on this, a couple weeks ago, but its low priority, who knows when the software team will get to fixing it?”

“Hmmf!” Jan grunted. “Ja, okay, Are all your team up top, nobody in the tunnel?”

“Yeah, yeah we cleared out this morning.”

“Okay send me a copy of the bug report when you can, I will chase those software bastards after the firing.”

“Will do, MT Lead Out” I responded.

CERN said the firings where harmless, a collision of higher energy particles happened all the time, but with running enough power through the tunnel to light up New York, why take the chance? Thats why all personal were ordered out of the tunnels during a firing, except for one notable dumbass. A small panic in my chest told me that, I was playing a dangerous game, and these little lies were all snowballing out of control.

I had less than 40 minutes remaining, and had sweat dripping down my nose despite the cold as I hurried on with the job, I had never done one of these converter replacements before but I was sure I could manage it. I finished it with less than 6 minutes to spare, closing and screwing in the final cover.

I dragged my tool cart to one the maintenance elevators, just off of the main tunnel about 20 feet from the Dipole Magnet, and slumped inside, I wouldn't use the elevator just yet, the control room would detect the activation. I would wait until after the firing.

When it happened it was almost anti-climatic, a high pitched whine for a couple of seconds followed by a loud whip crack of sound, almost like a gunshot.

For a second I felt relief, then half the dipole magnet began to smoke, oh shit! I guess I don't know how to replace that converter. Then there was an explosion of sparks. A wave of… something slammed into me, like a ripple through the air, only I swear I could see the floors and walls ripple in movement as well. There was a cloud of deep blue, smoke? It looked like smoke but moved like water in the air, and seemed to have a silver blue light of its own, it spread out of the tunnel into the elevator, I breathed in… and it burned, my body spasmed jerking on the floor, I couldn't help but breathe in, I took more and more deep breaths, I felt every pore in my body open, like I was in a sauna and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, it hurt like I was drinking molten magma, yet I couldn't help but consume it, the more I inhaled, the more I craved the next breath, I couldn't imagine how, I had lived my life without this, it was as if all my life I had drank in stale tepid pond water, and suddenly I had my first taste of the purest freshest tasting water that quenched all my thirsts, wants and desires, and the more it filled me, the more there was to fill, it felt like I could do anything. I screamed in pain, in ecstasy. I passed out.

When I woke with the biggest hangover headache of my life, there where firefighters all around me pulling the overturned tool cart off me, the air was filled with noxious smoke and I was coughing before even opening my eyes, my throat raw with pain. They put a mask over my head, and my breathing eased, everything was too bright my head pounded and I kept my eyes shut tears of pain trickling out of the corners, they sat me up, and because of the sudden movement, I threw up in the mask, disgustedly they gave me another mask. Then drag me out of the elevator, and down the tunnel, I was eventually placed on a stretcher and they moved me towards the nearest exit about 300m away. I opened my eyes and stared in confusion at what was before me, overlain against my vision.

Ability Gained: Blessed by Mana

You have breathed in the very fires of creation, and supped from a wellspring of the most pure mana possible.

Amazingly you are still alive! Had you absorbed more than this minute amount it would have killed you.

Congratulations you have been blessed by Mana while all things in the universe are equally bound together by mana,

it now likes you more than others, this will have the following effects.

Mana will respond to your will more readily, and infuse and strengthen your body, you will also be able to recover spent mana faster than before.

+5 to all base attributes

+2 extra attributes every level

+100% to mana regeneration

+10% to all base elemental affinity's

I was concussed, I had been hit in the head really hard, and theres a blank spot in my memory about what happened after, and now I'm seeing things. blinking again really slowly, I rested, when I woke I was in the infirmary, with someone shining a lighthouse into one of my eyeballs. Goddamn it how many times in a day, can a person zone out like that.

The lighthouse retreated backwards, and revealed an no-nonsense, doctor. How did I know? Because she was an older woman with gray streaks in her hair and a plain but stern face, she was dressed in white overcoat and had a stethoscope hanging around her neck. Yep, a doctor.

“Mild concussion and theres some damage from the smoke inhalation, report to a hospital if you experience excessive dizziness, nausea, cognitive impairment such as memory loss. Try sleep in a upright position, it will help your lungs heal, I will provide some paracetamol for the headache.” She said in rapid fire speech, and then moved off to obtain the medication.

I should probably mention I’d already experienced all three symptoms already, but my concern was put aside for the moment by the loud shouting just outside the infirmary.

“We cant arrest him? What do you mean, diplomatic immunity, he’s a fucking electrician not the goddamn Pope! What’s taking so long?” screamed a shrill voice.

“The Doctor has not yet cleared him to leave, sir” another voice replied

“I don’t give a fuck, if that man is on his deathbed, I want that shit head put on the next plane out of the EU, the very next plane, do you hear!

“If he does not leave because he is in fact dying, I want him encouraged to die faster, do you hear!”

“Yes, director I understand.” another voice mumbled.

“We have a catastrophic failure and cascading damage all down the line, that will cost millions to repair, who is going to pay for that huh? Not the EU, thats for sure! Where is the fucking American ambassador I told you to get him on the phone! I don't care if he’s in a meeting, get him now! Do you hear!”

The Director, Mr ‘Do you hear!’ walked off still shouting in the distance, and my French military attaché whom I recognized from orientation, walked in carrying a military duffel, he dropped it at my feet and spoke.

“Lieutenant Torsten, I’m ordered to escort you to the airport, as soon as the doctor returns, you will have 10 minutes to pack.

We were in the parking lot, pulling out in a black SUV, when a familiar taxi pulled out in front of us, and stopped blocking our exit, Khalil got out waving his hands in the air, I gestured stopping the attaché from leaning on the horn.

“It’s one of my team members, please can I have a couple minutes to say goodbye” I asked in a soft voice.

The attache glanced at me briefly and snapped out irritably.

“Two minutes Lieutenant, you have a flight to catch.”

I got out of the SUV and met Khalil walking up to me.

“My brother, I heard what had happened, I am sorry.. if you were not helping me then…” He trailed off in a pained voice.

“It’s not your fault, It was my choice, just not all of my plan worked out so well.”

“How is Hana?”

“The donor heart has arrived, She’s in pre-surgery al-Hamdu li-llaah, Praise be to God” he said touching his heart, lips and gesturing upwards.

“And thanks also to you, for everything.”

“Take care, look after the family. You have my number, message me and let me know how it goes” We shook hands, and I turned back to walk to the SUV.

“Ah wait, take this for your journey.” He said snapping a small leather cord with a pouch, from his neck.

I looked at it briefly, there was some sort of stone inside the small pouch, I was not sure what this was, but I nodded my head anyway, and walked back to the SUV.

“Thank you.” I said to the attaché.

“Its time to go home.”

When I landed at Atlanta’s Jackson airport, thirteen hours later, my connecting flight to El Paso was delayed, by bad weather.

While he waited with all the other passengers, he checked his cellphone, and saw there was a single text message waiting unread.

“Its done, she is still asleep, but the doctors say, her heartbeat is strong.”

Erik smiled, and decided to celebrate with a coffee.