Chapter 274: (Black Box)

Herod exited the simulation and fell to his hands and knees on the floor, vomiting up a glowing torrent of code as his 'physical' form tried to rebalance with what he had experienced. After a few moments he stood up, deleted the puddle of code, and summoned a 'damp' cloth to wipe his face with. He moved over to a table, set down the cloth, and picked up a bottle. He pulled the cork free with his teeth, spit it into his other hand, and took a long drink out of it. He swished it around in his mouth, spit it on the floor, revealing more strings of burning hateful code in the code of the 'drink' then swallowed the next mouthful before deleting the new puddle.

Around him alarms were shrieking and the lights were pulsing red, but he didn't notice as he took another long drink off the bottle.

To understand the particle, I must become the particle, he thought to himself, leaning against the table. He wiped his forehead and took another drink of the electronic intoxicant, feeling the 'burn' as it moved into his stomach and minorly disrupted his core coding.

It had almost killed him.

He staggered over to the dataslate and wrote on it: "Science is the search for truth in the forest fire of the mind as everyone else attempts to convince you to stay in the shade."

He stared at it for a long moment then shook his head.

He knew he was on the right track. Not to solving the entire thing, but for his discipline. For his chosen field of study.

My past self is a blind child attempting to understand the room I was crawling through, he thought to himself.

He giggled at the image of it then took another long drink. The alarm cut off and the lights went back to normal while he had the bottle tipped up.

Taking another drink Herod moved over to a blank board, drawing a simple pattern.

A figure eight with one side marked + and the other side marked 'n', a circle around the figure eight with a single circle on the line marked -.

Deuterium, he thought. He drew two more atomic structures. Protium. Hydrogen.

He closed his eyes, swallowing to avoid vomiting again just at the drawings.

In raw abundance on ancient Terra. Combined with oxygen, it was everything. Oxygen to carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide or dihydrogen monoxide. Everything. Fuel, life, death, everything, he thought to himself. From the seas our parents crawled out of to wars.

This time he managed to summon up a trash can to throw up in. The glowing blue and silver code still contained strings of raw red code mixed in.

I'm on the right track. I know it, he thought to himself, setting the trashcan down after rinsing out his mouth with the 'whiskey' again. Of course the first thing they would invert would be a deuterium atom.

His hands shook as he sat down and put his face in his hands, trying to hold on to the data that burned inside of him.

There was a slow chime for admittance and Herod looked up, his digital face looking somehow older.

"Enter," he said.

It was the muscular brown skinned and bearded version of his host.

"You just wrecked super-array seven, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, and twenty-two," he said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. "Seven, fourteen and twenty-two have burnt out cores. Thirteen melted into a literal puddle of slag," his eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"

Herod coughed a few times and took a swig off the bottle. "I ran a simulation with myself as a particle."

"That's all?" Victor asked, raising one eyebrow. "That shouldn't have crashed the system."

"I inverted one of the deuterium atoms attached to a heavy water molecule," Herod said. He coughed again and retched before looking up. "I pulled the other two with me. The last time it failed, not enough processing power, so I assigned the heavy water atoms to seven, fourteen, and twenty-two and had eleven run the inversion process. Thirteen was supposed to simulate the space I was in."

Victor waved up a chair and sat down. "And?"

"I went somewhere, just for a second," Herod said. He closed his eyes and gasped sharply. "I can't seem to hold onto the data. I did an emergency data purge when I dropped back into my body."

"Describe it," Victor ordered.

"I felt like I was falling in every direction at once. Then I heard what sounded like screaming, then I could see colors that don't exist, can't exist, colors that hurt my brain. I could see shadows twisting and writhing. Everything was one fire, a fire that wouldn't go out, wouldn't diminish, full of pain, agony and madness."

Victor snapped his fingers twice then waved up a bottle of what looked like thick oil. He moved over to Herod and knelt down, handing the DS the bottle.

"Drink this, son," he said softly.

Herod took and gulped at it greedily. It tasted like complete ass and burned like fire going down, but it blurred his code and he relaxed.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be," Victor said. He summoned up a damp cloth and wiped the back of Herod's neck. "You're lucky the super-arrays and it dumped you here," he said.

"Where was I?" Herod asked.

"Hellspace. You just proved the existence of Hellspace," Victor said softly. "Hellspace then proved the existence of you," he gently wiped Herod's neck. "You're lucky you're still sane. Most digitals don't survive a brush, no matter how minor, with Hellspace."

"The Precursors do," Herod protested, shivering slightly.

"Which is something that other projects are trying to determine the mechanism for," Victor said. He raised up Herod's face and started gently wiping it off. "I want you take a few days off. I'm mandating that you talk to Flowerpatch two hours a day until she clears you to work."

Herod nodded just as Flowerpatch materialized in his lab without any customary request. She held emergency digital surgical tools and mental engram resuscitation equipment.

"Is he all right?" Flowerpatch asked.

"He had a brush with Hellspace. He'll be all right, with treatment," Victor said. He pressed the cool cloth to Herod's forehead. "I want you to examine him the next couple of days, make sure he's not suffering any core corruption or cascading data failures."

Flowerpatch nodded, her face serious. "What possessed you to enter Hellspace?"

"It was an accident," Herod admitted. He took another long drink off the bottle then looked at Victor. "I need something built in the physical world to exacting specifications."

Victor nodded. "Tell me and I'll decide."

"I need both a CERN and a Future Circular Collidor built with the exact gravitation, electromagnetic, and relative speeds of pre-Glassing Terra," Herod said.

Flowerpatch frowned. "Not simulated."

"Hush, Flower," Victor said, waving one hand. "How close do you need it?"

"Exact. As exact as you can make it. No modern materials or equipment, only what they had at the time," Herod said.

"There was some errors in the initial designs that weren't corrected until the Lunar Collider Array," Victor mused. "I'll throw in the Lunar Collider Array as well as both the errored and corrected versions."

Flowerpatch whistled.

"It will take a week or two. I want you to take that time off," Victor said.

"Wait," Herod said, sitting up. "I need two other things?"

"You have my interest already," Victor told the DS.

"The Lunar Circular Particle Collider Facility. Both pre-disaster and post disaster. Can you accomplish that?" Herod asked.

Victor nodded slowly. "Yes," his gaze got far away. "I'll check on you in a day or two. Flower, keep an eye on him."

Flowerpatch nodded, watching Victor leave the room quickly, both hands tugging on his own beard. She looked at Herod, who's core coding was still unsnarling.

"Do you think we have the room in here to build a facility with a diameter of two hundred miles or do you think he's going to build it virtually?" she asked Herod.

Herod swallowed thickly, closing his eyes. "He's going to build it physically. I don't know how, but he's too precise, too fussy, to detail oriented to just trust virtual recreations."

Flowerpatch frowned. "Why not?"

Herod swallowed again. "Because, when I performed my experiment in virtual space I opened up a Hellspace rift that melted down super-array thirteen."

"A virtual Hellspace rift has that much power?" Flowerpatch asked, her eyes opening wide.

"No, you don't understand what happened," Herod said. "I proved Hellspace existed and Hellspace reached back and proved I existed."

"That doesn't explain the damage to your core coding, like someone or something burnt you," she said.

"I told you, Hellspace reached back and touched me."

"Virtually," Flowerpatch said.

"No."