“I just saw the sun blink.”
“What are you talking about, Ari?”
I turn back to the video screen, perplexed by my own words. Did I really say that aloud?
Sasha’s big green eyes stare back at me across a million kilometres of empty space.
“The sun just dimmed for a fraction of a second,” I say.
“Has Uncle made you work through the night again? The last time that happened, you thought ants crawled up your leg when you spoke to me.”
“No, Father hasn’t done that for a long time. I know what I saw.”
“That isn’t possible, is it?”
Sasha is not only my cousin, but also my best friend. She’s not a scientist. Like most back home, she is an artist, though more liberally educated than many. I am the black sheep of the family, following in my disreputable father’s footsteps.
“No, it shouldn’t be, but I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I see you are wearing the jacket.”
Caught off-guard by her non-sequitur, I stare back at her, uncomprehending. Then, with the flash of realization, I pluck admiringly at my sleeve.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“I think it looks marvellous on you. It’s just like the one your mother had, don’t you think?”
A cold stone settles in the pit of my stomach, and my smile falters.
“Oh, Ari, I’m so sorry…”
“No, I love it. I don’t have much to remember her by. This was very thoughtful.”
Mother wore her jacket when the accident took her. After ten years I thought I had come to terms with her loss. The emotions dredged up by Sasha’s lavish if thoughtless gift just proved me wrong.
I catch sight of the sun. “It happened again.”
“What? The sun?”
“I have to go, Sacha. Give my love to everyone. “
I want to sign off before she sees my tears.
“Why are you concerning yourself with that silly old machine? You should be here with me to celebrate the quincentennial.”
I bite my tongue and press my lips together. Forcing a smile, I say, “I know, I’ll be home soon.”
“Well, hurry back before all the parties are over.”
My heart breaks. I want to share with Sasha what is going on. She deserves a chance to get off world if anyone does. What good is knowledge if I can’t use it to save my loved ones?
“I have to go,” I say as my vision clouds up. “Love you lots.”
I shut down the communication before she can reply. Sasha is intelligent, but she is also self-absorbed, like most of my generation, and will soon forget my discomfort.
Father’s rough voice rouses me from my sorrow. “Ari, what were the energy readings on that last test?”
Embarrassed by my dereliction of duty, I scramble to interpret the data streaming across my monitor.
“Energy levels spiked at 20-billion TeV.”
“That isn’t nearly enough,” says Father.
“We should shut it down and reset,” I say. “I don’t think some of the magnets are tuned.”
Father’s rough chuckle is humourless. “Which ones? There are five hundred million of them in the accelerator. The machine is a thousand years old. It’s inevitable that something will not function properly. We don’t have the time. We’ll use what is working.”
Father no longer tries to mask his desperation. He closes the channel before I can tell him what I saw.
The massive particle accelerator lay untouched by anyone for at least five hundred years since the Purge. The enormous ring encircles our sun, which powers it. It is the last vestige of our peoples’ scientific apex. Too large and expensive to dismantle, it was simply abandoned and decreed off-limits.
Every other significant technology on our world more sophisticated than a communications satellite was dismantled or destroyed when the Opposers seized power and made scientific study a punishable offence. Thousands of scientists who refused to abandon a lifetime’s work were persecuted. Many martyrs were made during the darkest days of the Purge.
Only during Father’s generation have the leaders of our world loosened their restrictions on the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
And it is, tragically, too late.
