Ramon Garciaparra paused at the door to check the nameplate; the sign proclaimed Security Office Large Circular Collider MIT. He felt some of today’s irritation wash away with the realization that the flatfoot’s directions had got him through the subterranean warren after all. A strong scent of tobacco emanated from the room beyond.
Pushing through the door into the campus security nexus he was almost overwhelmed by the fugue of cheap cigarette smoke within. Waving the nicotine fog from his watering eyes Garciaparra made out two occupants in the windowless den.
Leaning back on a desk opposite the door was a smart looking guy with greying hair, holding a lit cigarette poised over the lip of a disposable cup. Between drags dead ash dropped unnoticed onto his tailored suit, his attention otherwise focused on the bank of television monitors arrayed in the corner
In front of the CCTV screens perched the second occupant, a mousy looking man in a drab lab coat, the long fingers of one hand drumming out a frantic tattoo on the work top whilst the other hand pivoted back and fore on a large dial like a safe cracker searching for the magic combination.
“You know it’s against Massachusetts State law to smoke in a workplace? Even a world-famous workplace.” Garciaparra’s announcement of his presence startled both men, the suit dropping his tab into the plastic receptacle, and the lab coat jerking the dial violently, eliciting a frustrated snarl.
“Christ! Jesus man, if you saw what we’ve have, you’d be sparking up too.”
“Twenty years since I last toked, so I doubt it. Heard you guys were looking for me.”
The suit glanced at the badge hanging around Garciaparra’s neck and offered his hand as he stepped away from the desk, “Thanks for coming down here Detective…”
“Garciaparra. Cambridge PD.” As he took the proffered hand the detective sized its owner up further, ex forces he concluded to himself, not the easily rattled kind.
“Duffy Lewis, Chief of Security for the project. Guess we solved the mystery of our missing scientist…if we can verify the security footage is real.”
“I thought the feed for last night was corrupted. Unrecoverable the patrolmen told me upstairs.”
“Unrecoverable, unless you’re a genius like Glen here, he was able to reconstruct the night’s take from a hard drive back up.” Lewis indicated the other LCC employee as he spoke.
The lab coat named Glen gave a ghost of a smile, eyes darting around the room, “I prefer stable genius Mr Lewis, labelling someone as just a genius makes it sound like they’re crazy.”
“A hard drive? I didn’t think they even made those anymore.” Decades old tech in the world’s most advanced lab piled on the weirdness of this case for Garciaparra.
“With all the particles whizzing around down here, they have triple redundancy on most systems.” Lewis shrugged, “a lot of expensive equipment is all I can say.”
“Well what have you got to show me? There isn’t a lot else to go on right now.” Garciaparra flipped out his notebook and skimmed his notes, “Dr Adeyemi arrives for work on Tuesday morning and hasn’t been seen since. Car is still in the faculty lot, no signs of a struggle inside, bank account and credit apps untouched. Husband called in a missing person’s report on Wednesday morning.”
“Well…Glen was checking the date stamps to make sure what we were looking at was…real.” The Chief of Security’s eyes unfocused for a moment and he swept his hand through his trimmed hair as he spoke.
“You think you may have been hacked?”
“Not possible with the hard drive. Remotely anyway. It’s not connected to any external infrastructure.”
The lab coat piped up, “I’ve concluded that whatever we saw, it wasn’t AI generated or even good old CGI.”
“Lord, it’s real?” Lewis voice faltered, and he slumped back onto the edge of the desk, producing a polished cigarette case from inside his jacket.
“Well I guess real is subjective Mr Lewis,” Glen pushed his glasses back up his nose as he spoke, reminding Garciaparra of Clark Kent, “but is this feed a fake? No. Whatever that was, the camera recorded it faithfully.”
“Look guys, this has not been a fruitful day so far, so if this footage means I can get home on time, let’s get on with it.” The detective moved around behind Glen and stood facing the monitors. “I finally got tickets for the Green Monster seats tonight and I don’t intend missing out, its only the Expos, but hell I’ve been waiting two whole years.”
Garciaparra heard the snap of a lighter closing behind him, as a fresh wave of tobacco rolled over, “I don’t think you’ll be too concerned with the Red Sox tickets Detective once you’ve seen…the…footage. Roll it Glen.”
The stutter in the Chief of Security’s voice was matched by the screens as they blinked into life, painting a deluge of rectangular afterimages on the detective’s retina.
Finally, the displays snapped into coordination and Dr Adeyemi’s office leapt into life, with each panel showing a different angle of the same frame.
Garciaparra had become acquainted with the room during the day and noted nothing was out of place from the current arrangement. The bookcases were stacked with journals as now, and the back wall was adorned with the same professional qualifications and accolades.
What was new, was the sight of the eminent scientist in the flesh. Hmm seems younger than her official photos, the detective made a mental note to update his pad once the viewing was done. With her pinned up hair, smart blouse, and prim glasses, Aisha Adeyemi was the epitome of a scientist type in Garciaparra’s eyes. She was peering at a bulky folder of printouts, a folder that wasn’t in the catalogued items of her office.
He frowned, his eyes struggling with the grainy footage, he turned to Lewis to ask why that was, but the chief was ahead of him.
“Yeah, I know. The data is compressed, to fit on the hard drive. Looks like an old VHS feed doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know, does it?” The detective chuckled, “You’re older than you look man.”
Lewis smiled wanly in response, his hand shaking as he took a drag, “I’m going to sit back here while you watch, not sure I want to see it again right now. Or ever.”
Garciaparra shrugged and returned his attention to the bank of monitors, he blinked.
Where the hell did he come from?
Stood in the middle of the room, a couple of paces from Dr Adeyemi’s desk was an odd-looking dude.
The guy was white, around five-eleven, and had a severely receding hairline, the remains of his greying hair was buzzcut giving it a scruffy appearance matching the rumpled white shirt he sported. He wore his sleeves rolled up and the shirt collar open. Unlike most of Collider staff there was no tie, instead a large lanyard was draped around his neck ending in a chunky looking photocard.
As Garciaparra squinted to read the undecipherable symbols on the photocard, he gave a start as Dr Adeyemi did the same on screen, sitting bolt upright in her chair.
“Who the bloody hell are you? Who let you in?” The doctor wasn’t expecting her visitor.
“I let myself in. Quite easily. Is your data interesting?” The unknown man pointed at Dr Adeyemi’s work, his accent was cut glass British, like a villain in an action movie.
“Well that’s none of your business, now I’m giving you thirty seconds to leave on your own accord before I call security and they throw you out on your bony looking arse.”
The man smiled, or rather, sneered at the doctor, “Oh now, now. I don’t think you want me to leave, you want me to stay and have a little chat. A little chat about those results you’ve got there.”
Dr Adeyemi’s body stiffened for a microsecond, followed by a vigorous shake of her head. She looked at her guest as if trying to place his face before smiling at him.
“Please, won’t you take a seat, Mister…?” Adeyemi proffered the man a chair with a stiff hand gesture.
The man sneered.
“I have many names. Today, you may call me…Loki.”
The monitors crackled. The man was sat in the chair immediately in front of the doctor.
“Your results Doctor Adeyemi.” The man known as Loki flicked a bony finger towards the data folder on the desk.
“Oh yes, yes of course.” She beamed at the man, her voice racing. “Well not so much interesting, as quite well astounding!”
“Do tell.”
“Well almost unbelievably, this contradicts all the data we’ve collected globally on the Higgs-Boson particle for the last two decades. If this isn’t a massive system error, then almost everything we thought we knew about the Standard Model and the universe is wrong.” Childlike excitement radiated from the face of the eminent physicist.
“Yes, I thought you might come to that conclusion. Why where you are looking at the God Particle anyway, I thought you were investigating other issues during this period.”
Adeyemi pulled herself up in her chair and tutted like a school ma’am, “Now, we don’t use such loose terminology as that. That misnomer is inaccurate, the product of sensationalist journalism in the nineteen nighties. Higgs himself would be turning in his grave.”
“Again Doctor, what were you doing looking at the God Particle?” The voice was icy.
The physicist giggled, “Don’t call it that!”
“You would be surprised how accurate that misnomer is. Now, again, why?”
“Well we accelerate two different streams of subatomic particles to ridiculously high levels of kinetic energy and then we mash them together! Like two cars playing chicken, but badly. The Higgs-Boson particles fly off like burning car wheels.”
“I know all this! Why doctor? Why? My patience is tiring.” If the voice was cold before it was now down at absolute zero.
The doctor’s face formed into a childlike pout, “We weren’t. So there. We were investigating the state of the early universe via Quark-Glucon Plasma. The data suggested an anomalous reading on Higgs-Boson decay, so I went and checked. Clever me.”
“Yes, clever you, unfortunately.” The man called Loki sighed and leaned back in his chair, “you see Doctor, this is the problem with breaking in new…interns, shall we say. They tend to slack off when they should be concentrating. Have you ever had that problem?”
“Oh yes, some of them were really dumb, I mean really, really dumb.” She giggled again and unpinned her hair with a lazy finger.
“None of you here in this circular collider of yours, or that decrepit version in Heidi Land, were meant to see how the God Particle really works.” He shook his head ruefully, “We can’t have that getting out, my…colleagues and I have invested a lot of work in hiding the true nature of your environment from you.”
“Our environment? You mean universe silly.” The giggle this time was halting. Forced.
“No, I mean your environment.” Loki paused and rubbed his chin, “I’d like more of your normal self back for this next part.”
The monitors crackled as one.
The doctor was sat bolt upright in her chair, her hair ragged, a sheen of perspiration visible on her forehead.
“Don’t be ridiculous, that whole life is a simulation rubbish is passé, the product of the same juvenile minds that thought parallel worlds meant somewhere else you were Beyoncé.”
“You are right of course, this is not a simulation, more of a controlled environment.” His lips arced upwards, but the eyes were flinty.
“Like a Zoo then, and you, you are our god? Gods?” She laughed but her voice was strained.
“So close, that I will not disagree with you.” The humourless smile was unmoving.
“Tell me then oh God, why do you make this world so awful, eh? The death? The unnecessary suffering? The Conflict? What kind of gods would do that to their followers?”
“Ahh, a small correction then. Not a Zoo, more like a farm.”
“What?” Adeyemi’s voice rose in pitch, and her breathing picked up pace.
“Yes, a farm. My kind have fed on your kind since you first gained sentience.”
“No, I refuse to believe that we are living in an old Keanu Reeves film, this can’t be right.” The doctor’s breathing was rapid, she swung her head around the room.
“True, we don’t use you for energy, and you didn’t create us. No, we use you for sustenance.”
The doctor gave an involuntary yelp.
“We have roamed the realities since time immemorial looking for lesser species to feast upon. Once we hunted you one at a time, and you called us Daemons. To be honest though I found that time consuming and inefficient, so I persuaded my brethren to adopt more modern practices.”
“We’re…your…cattle?” Hyperventilation forced the doctor’s words out haphazardly.
“More like poultry, you’re free range after all.” Loki cackled and now there was real emotion behind the gaze.
“But how can you feed on us? When we die our bodies are interred, or cremated. I don’t believe you!” The physicist’s denial was loud but hollow sounding.
“Oh, we don’t feed on your flesh, nothing so barbaric. Nothing so primitive, no we feed on your consciousness, your soul as you like to call it.”
Adeyemi shook her head, words failing to leave the petrified mouth.
“You asked me how we could be so cruel earlier? Well, frankly, because it makes you taste better. All the suffering makes you…juicier.” He licked his lips as he spoke, as if relishing a delectable memory.
“Evil…Evil. Demon.”
“Demon? Yes, OK if you want. Evil? No. Practical.” Loki stopped to wipe a modicum of drool from the corner of his mouth, “I mean you do the same. You fatten your own livestock; you eat their young. You tenderise meat by hammering it, you marinate food with hot spices to cure them.”
He shrugged. “So, you see, I can’t let this data leave the room. I mean, imagine the mess it would make if your chickens started to revolt.”
From somewhere Doctor Adeyemi found a burst of adrenaline and kicked herself away from the desk, falling backwards in her chair.
Bouncing to her feet she burst for the door, as she cleared the desk, Loki stretched out a long leg, impossibly long, and sent the physicist tumbling to the floor.
As the doctor tried to untangle her legs, Loki rose from his seat and stood over her.
“You know some of us still like to hunt you on occasion, for the sport they tell me. I didn’t understand why they bothered...until now. I’d forgotten how…visceral this feels!”
Loki’s body exploded outward, a mass of darkness, a hint of black leathery wings here, a glimpse of thrashing tentacles there. The writhing blackness engulfed the office, blocking the CCTV capture of Dr Adeyemi almost completely, her patent leather shoes the only remaining sight of her existence.
The feet could be seen scrambling backward, the sound of hysterical sobbing proof that the physicist could still be heard at least. A glint of something hard and shiny shaped like a talon rose and then fell swiftly. The sound of something wet and soft tearing.
The screaming began.
Twenty seconds later the kicking feet stopped, and the screams ended.
The screens cut out.
Garciaparra raced for the waste bin he’d seen in the corner, when he reached, he realised someone had used it for the same purpose earlier. As he heaved his afternoon coffee and donuts into the trash receptacle, he felt a hand on his back.
“I know man, I know.” Lewis was shaking himself as he did his best to covert the detective.
Through gulping breaths Garciaparra managed to speak, “That’s not right, it’s not possible.”
“I know, I know.” Repeated the security chief.
“No, I mean it’s not possible. The crime scene team swept the office looking for a sign of struggle, there was nothing, nothing out of the ordinary. Not even under UV, just some minor stains like any old office.” The detective straightened as he spoke, using the bare concrete block wall for support.
“That’s because unlike my incompetent intern, I am very thorough. I’m not likely to miss a localised backup for example.” The British accent cut the air like a shard of jagged ice.
“Jesus!” Garciaparra and Lewis whirled to face the new voice.
Glen had gone, his murky lab coat shredded on the floor, in his place sat a figure familiar from the CCTV playback.
“No, not quite.” The thing sometimes known as Loki responded, rising from the workstation as it did so.
It dominated the middle of the room, back in its human form, though Garciaparra could now see how that label wasn’t accurate. The skin was sallow and looked leathery like old paper, yet somehow was crisscrossed with fine cracks like an old china cup.
“You may call me Loki, or Nyarlathotep, or any of a thousand other names. Not that though.”
The tobacco fog was blown away by a foul stench as it spoke, reeking of formaldehyde and the worst viscera Garciaparra had witnessed on the autopsy table or in the morgue.
Covering his mouth with one hand the detective reached for his piece with the other.
“Ah yes, I have one thing to be thankful to my intern for. At least I’m finally getting out and getting some exercise.”
The room went dark.
The sound of a firearm discharging echoed in the corridor outside, followed by the sound of screaming and flesh tearing.
After two minutes there was only silence.
THE END