Theodore Harris
California is a very large state. It is the third largest state in the United States of America and consists of an area that is 163,696 square miles, and is home to many Americans, containing a population of close to 40 million.
California is an interesting state, to say the least. Californians always seem to be in the news, and Hollywood always seems to have an opinion. It is known for its sandy beaches with cold waters, its many mountains, its sweet vineyards, its lush valleys, beautiful deserts, and breathtaking forests. California is also known for its dominating tech industry, Hollywood, crime, homelessness, riots, crazy politics, progressivism, massive corporations, strict gun laws, relaxed school laws, and confusing freedom of speech laws. It also contains a very wide spectrum of people, ranging and differing in social classes, ethnicities, occupations, religious and/or spiritual beliefs, sexual orientations, moral elasticity, and political stances.
Pasadena, California, is located in the Southern part of the state, with its location roughly ten miles northeast of Los Angeles. Los Angeles County has a population of close to 9.9 million. Moreover, it is surrounded by Ventura, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. All of which have a combined population of close to 18 million people. Within these regions, there are military installations, cities, towns, metropolises, mountains, beaches, deserts, valleys, forests, rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas, and all three of the classes of the class system areas (upper, middle, and lower).
In Pasadena, there is a university that attracts some of the greatest minds across the United States and throughout the globe, California Institute of Technology (Caltech for short). Sure, Caltech is not quite Harvard, Stanford, or even MIT. Nonetheless, Caltech ranks number twelve on the “best colleges” list. As fate would have it, Caltech was about to go down in the history books for something that their scientists accomplished, which was unimaginable until today, this usually warm and sunny California day.
California Institute of Technology has been working alongside Cornell University in Southern California on the SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project. Their project was the simulation of black holes and other extreme spacetimes, to gain a better understanding of relativity and physics as a whole. Gain a better understanding, indeed that has been accomplished. In the last year, the SXS project group members moved past the simulation processes and into the experimental processes. However, the EXS (Experimenting eXtreme Spacetimes) Program had a sour ring to it, so the scientists left the program name the same.
Doctor Theodore Harris has been working on the SXS Project for a decade. Holding three PhD’s, Theodore is one of the top scientists in his fields and has been working his whole life to reach this point. Theodore is 42 years old and was assigned to the SXS Program in his third year at Caltech.
Caltech was his first and only choice to work. Something about Pasadena and Caltech always enticed him throughout his college years. Theodore attained his three PhD’s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His focuses are in astrophysics, theoretical physics, and experimental physics. He has been working at Caltech for the last twelve years, and he anticipates he will receive a Nobel Prize if his experiment is successful.
Nine months earlier from this day (last August) Theodore had designed the method of creating what he named micro neutron stars. Whereas, stars are at the very least, miles in radius, Theodore had devised a theory on how to create a neutron star on the micro level. The first star that Theodore proposed to make would be no larger than the size of a soccer ball.
As it turns out, a month later, the first micro neutron star (MNSH001) was no larger than the size of an apple or an orange. This caught the attention of the United States Government even more than before. Considering that Theodore and his peers didn’t blow themselves up with creating a micro neutron star, a secret slush fund was depleted and pushed into the SXS Program.
To further push the envelope of relativity by creating a star on an existing and inhabited planet, Theodore theorized that two MNSH’s could be collided to simulate a black hole. Blinded by curiosity, glory, and simply to see if they could do it again, the SXS Project scientists created a second neutron star to collide with the first (MNSH002).
For the following eight months, the scientists with the SXS Project worked feverishly with the scientists from the United States Government on creating a containment field for colliding two newly created micro neutron stars, MNSH001 and MNSH002, to create an extremely small, and theoretically temporary black hole.
The day is May 19th of 2023. The day that would put Dr. Theodore Harris in the history books alongside Albert Einstein and relativity (also known as the Einsteinian Paradigm), as well as Isaac Newton with his clockwork universe (also known as the Newtonian Paradigm).
Theodore had come in early, around 0500, as he had been doing for some time now. With the finish line in sight, he decided he should have some lunch prior to his big moment. He had been working long hours, entirely focused on his work.
With lunchtime nearing, Theodore thought to take his lunch hour outside of the cafeteria today. Considering how many hours he had been putting into his work behind closed doors, a lunch outside seemed like a relaxing idea. The fresh Pasadena Spring air would help him relax for a short moment. He found a lonely park bench in one of the quads of Caltech.
He methodically unwrapped his lunch and began to eat his nourishment, which was a mass-produced sandwich meal with a coke, trying to relax and focus on the swaying tree in the quad area. This sort of work could really wear on your mind, and your soul as well, if Theodore believed in that sort of mythology.
Despite his attempt to half-way meditate, which he had learned on a Caltech professional development retreat, and which he despised every moment of, his half-hearty attempt had failed. It could have to do with the fact that he paid little attention to mythologies, legends, religions, and philosophies.
Why should a man such as myself bother with such nonsense? When I am about to change the very world that human beings lived in?
Yes, it could have to do with the fact that he was overly arrogant and logical to a fault. It could also be due to the fact that he was distracted and nervous. Theodore did not enjoy being nervous, viewing it as a weakness of humanity. It is likely that it was a combination of his arrogance, over-ambition, anxiety, and nervousness for his inability to relax and think of anything else except his work.
Regardless, his mind was a whirl and jumping in multiple directions all at once. He was so close to his goal. His mind kept on returning to the Nobel Prize that he would surely receive in the near future.
How could I not receive a Nobel Prize for changing how humanity would see the world? I would be bringing the human race into a new era of science, and the next paradigm shift.
Theodore finished his lunch at a steady pace, to avoid indigestion and damper his great moment. Theodore follows it up with a brisk walk around the campus and back to an offsite building, with an SXS Project and U.S. Government made underground lab built several stories below. It was time to finish his life’s work.
“It will be successful… it has to be. I have spent too long and sacrificed so much to get to this point.” Theodore whispers under his breath as he sets the modified molecular collider, now a micro neutron star collider, into motion.
Theodore was surrounded by thirty-five scientists, however, he barely noticed them. He knew their names and prided himself of his recall abilities, even though he rarely spoke to his coworkers unless it was work related. He thought of them as lesser than coworkers, because that would infer them as his equals. No, they were his inferiors. Theodore considered himself above all of them, despite having been working alongside a handful of them on this project for the better part of the last decade. It made logical sense to Theodore.
Yes, the other scientists analyzed data and helped with mundane busy work through these decade-long processes. Nonetheless, it was my theories that I proved through real-world applications.
All of them may have been there together to witness the scientific breakthrough of the millennia; a mixture of scientists from Caltech, Cornell University, and U.S. Government Officials. In truth, Theodore’s truth, they were all there to witness Doctor Theodore Harris’s scientific breakthrough that would reshape the world as they knew it.
While he was preparing to start the sequence countdown on the modified collider, Theodore thought to himself on what he would say on the stage while accepting the Nobel Prize.
“Within Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, lurked the concept and mystery of the black hole. The black hole is a mystery no longer.” Then gave himself early congratulations and readied himself to start the modified collider.
All of their hard work, all of his hard work, had led up to this moment. The day had finally come for Doctor Theodore Harris to show the world his great genius. It is close to 1:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Something about the thirteenth hour of the day for this collision of two micro neutron stars rings true to Theodore, and he punches in the sequence for the modified collider machine.
He, and the other thirty some odd scientists and government officials, are in a containment room roughly fifty feet wide in both directions with reinforced concrete walls, the room being six levels beneath the ground floor of a building just outside of Caltech.
The Micro Neutron Star Collider whirls to life, and everyone in the room is holding their breath, including Theodore Harris.
Any second now, I will make history and will always be remembered.
Theodore watched, with a slight smirk, as the two micro neutron stars that he had created, collided.
Theodore would never find out whether or not it was a success or not, for he ceased to exist an instant later.
At exactly 1300, Pacific Standard Time, the two micro Neutron Stars collide and successfully create a temporary black hole. At that very instant, every living person within twenty-three and a half feet of the newly created temporary black hole is compressed horizontally and stretched vertically into what can only be described as human-based noodles. Scientists actually refer to this phenomenon as the spaghettification phenomena. Most of the scientists and government officials were human-based noodles in one instance and sucked into the extremely small black hole, the size of a soccer ball. the next instant, with only four of them surviving the immediate and somewhat graceful destruction.
Those four lucky individuals that were outside the 23-foot-radius flee in a flash. Dr. Mathis, Dr. Lee, Dr. Shaw, and Colonel Briggs ran as far away, as fast as they could. It is apparent that they were fearful for their lives and afraid of what they just created, and rightly so, on both accounts.
For the next sixty seconds, everything appears to be normal, aside from the several scientists and an Army Colonel running for their lives and as far away from their man-made black hole, as humanly possible.
After a minute had passed, at 1301 on May 19th of 2023, something is noticeably different in Southern California. At 1301, the people that were within the Blue Hole Radius would soon realize their world was drastically divergent from the world that they knew and understood, only a minute sooner.
