Walton - Supersymmetry

Also by David Walton

Superposition

Published 2015 by Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books

Supersymmetry. Copyright 2015 by David Walton. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger
Cover Image Media Bakery

This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Inquiries should be addressed to
Pyr
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228
VOICE: 7166910133
FAX: 7166910137
WWW.PYRSF.COM

19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Walton, David, 1975

Supersymmetry / by David Walton.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-1-63388-098-6 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-63388-099-3 (e-book)

1. PhysicistsFiction. 2. Quantum theoryFiction. I. Title.

PS3623.A454S87 2015
813.6dc23

2015011713

Printed in the United States of America

To Karen
My theory of everything

PROLOGUE

J acob Kelley spent the last minutes of his life at a baseball game. He hadnt been to Citizens Bank Park in years, not since his children were young, and he reveled in the vivid hue of the brightly lit Kentucky bluegrass, the low roar of the crowd, the squeak of hinged seats, and the smell of popcorn and beer. The stadium was aging now, no longer the sparkling novelty it had been in his youth.

In the eighth inning, the Phillies took the lead with a three-run homer. With the best closer in the league warming up in the bullpen, the rest of the game wasnt much more than a formality. Jacob considered leaving early to beat the traffic, but it wasnt often he came out to a game. He wandered off to find a pretzel and a beer instead.

It was strange to be alone. Baseball was a much different experience without kids along, chattering and begging for treats and poking all the chads out of their all-star ballots. But the kids were all grown up now. He had tried to convince the twins to come with him, but Sandra was on patrol and Alex was working hard on an upcoming demo. Claire lived on the West Coast now, with her own family, and Sean was in the Marines on overseas assignment. It was sad when a family started breaking up, each child finding a different place in the world, but he supposed it was inevitable.

He had to admit he was enjoying himself, even without them. The game was close, and it was a good crowd41,528, according to the big screen. He could leave behind his worries about Alex and Sandra; there was nothing in the world but the crack of the bat and the soft collision of ball and glove. Baseball was a clean sport, precise and mathematical. Jacob was a physicist, or had been before he switched to teaching, and the analytical nature of the game appealed to him. It was sports boiled down to pure numbers.

Jacob took a bite of his pretzel and sighed. He was going to have to tell them. He should have told them already, but it had never seemed like the right time, and somehow, one or the other of them always had an excuse that kept them from coming to the house together. He wanted to tell both of them at once, since it affected them both. He would have to call and insist that they come together. Maybe next weekend they would be free.

On the way back to his seat, Jacob stopped short. He knew something was wrong before his mind could even process what it was. The space over his seat was contorting, changing shape, refracting light like a huge drop of water. He had seen it before, but it wasnt supposed to happen again. Not here. Not now.

He dropped his pretzel and cup, heedless of the beer splashing on the concourse, and backed away, unable to tear his eyes away from the distorted space over his seat. The wrongness grew, bending the metal and plastic around it like light through a lens. Other people started to notice. Fans pointed and shouted, and those sitting nearby scrambled to get away.

It expanded rapidly in a sphere, silently warping everything in its path. A woman who was slow to get away screamed as her leg was caught, and then she herself was enveloped. People started to panic then, everyone pushing and shouting and shoving to get to the stairs. Jacob turned to run as well, though he knew it would do no good.

The distortion grew larger. Everything nearby seemed to be stretching and curving away. Without warning, the growing sphere sucked back into nothing. This is it, Jacob thought. Ill never see my children again. There was a bright flare of light, and then the whole stadium tore itself apart around him.

CHAPTER 1

I t would be the disaster of their generation, like the fall of the Twin Towers or Kennedys assassination. Sandra Kelley was one of the early responders, one of the first to see the stadium lying crushed, torn apart as if by an angry giant. She was less than two years out of police academy, a junior officer still doing patrol on the night shift. She had seen victims of traffic accidents, so she wasnt entirely green, but nothing could have prepared her for this.

It seemed as if every police car, ambulance, and fire truck in the city had been routed to Broad and Pattison, but it wasnt nearly enough. There had been a Wasted Euth concert at Lincoln Financial Field that night, so there were crowds of gawkers to control, and the number of injured in the parking lot alone was more than they could handle. Debris lay scattered everywhere.

Most of the light poles in the parking lot were still intact, but the stadium wreckage itself was dark, an unexpected hole where once 2000-watt lights had blazed out into the night. The sky was overcast, a brooding bank of clouds that hid the stars and seemed to press down on the city.

Sandra dialed her dads phone for what must have been the tenth time. The call went straight to voice mail, just like every other attempt. Her voice was shaking badly. Dad, please call. Please get this. Tell me you werent at the game.

She called her moms phone next. No answer. She had left three messages already, but she left another one anyway. Mom, its Sandra. Please call. Dad was there, wasnt he? He had tickets. I dont remember when, but I think it was tonight. He invited me, but I was on duty... She choked on the words and clicked off.

She weaved her way around battered blue plastic seats, strewn across the parking lot alongside unrecognizable pieces of mangled metal and concrete. There were bodies, dozens of them. Some of them were whole. Others were not. She stopped, doubled over, and vomited on her shoes.

Her sergeant took one look at her face and pointed her toward crowd control. Facing away from the stadium as much as possible, she and a dozen other cops shouted people back and strung police tape to cordon off the whole area. The first moment she could, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called her parents again. Nothing.

Here. Another cop pushed a water bottle into her hands. It was Nathan, from her class at the academy. She took the bottle gratefully, swished some water in her mouth, and spat it onto the pavement. It cleared some of the taste of vomit from her mouth, but not the acid taste of fear. She felt jittery and light-headed, like she was on some kind of uppers or a massive dose of caffeine.