The God Particle Read Online Free Page B
stumble backward, into the wall.
Something falls to the ground. Something that causes the man to relax his grip. Steve drives him into the wall harder, thrusts elbows at him, and manages to finally wriggle free.
Now he spins around, looking for the door. But the man is blocking his way. The room spins, whips around him.
“Please,” Steve says. “Just let me pay and go.”
The muscular man responds by rushing him again. Steve puts up his hands, but it’s no use, he can barely tell up from down at this point. The man holds him with one hand and punches him in the face with the other. Pain flowers in his cheek and nose, flaring agony tempered by the haze of alcohol. Steve wonders when the man will realize his opponent is bested and stop punching him. He wonders how he got himself into this mess. And then, as the man grabs him yet again, as they stumble into some kind of breakaway wall, he wonders what that shattering sound is, wonders what that slashing pain in his neck is, wonders why he seems to be falling, why rain again patters his face, and then, just as everything becomes obvious to him—not just that he has fallen out the window, but everything—just when
everything
becomes obvious, one last, powerful impact administers a knockout blow and sends him into an endless, swelling world of thrumming darkness.
1
If you were to ask Mike McNair, chief physicist and director of the North Texas Superconducting Super Collider, to discuss something as profoundly important as Einstein’s special theory of relativity, he could charm you with a witty and informative discourse about the far-reaching consequences of relatively simple but grandly beautiful concepts of physics. No problem.
But if you were to ask him about the best way to approach a woman in an Atlanta airline terminal, specifically about the blonde in the white blazer and black skirt seated at the end of his row here in American Airlines gate T11, Mike would have nothing intelligent to say. No insightful nuggets of wisdom to share with a curious observer. Nothing.
Until a few moments ago, he’d been suffering over the GEM printouts in his lap, looking for something, anything, any kind of idea that might help him find Higgs before Donovan decides to replace him.
Now he can’t stop looking at the woman in the white blazer. She’s hunched over a laptop computer, and while he can’t see her face from here, Mike is fascinated by her well-proportioned thighs and sculpted calves. By her golden hair. Her butterscotch skin.
A couple of televisions in the area are tuned to American’s corporate news network. Hidden speakers bark stories about politics and terrorism and NFL preseason highlights. A few seats to Mike’s left sits a breathy, overweight man in a cheap gray suit, and to his right, a smarmy salesman in a striped polo branded with an AT&T logo seems to be talking to himself. Gate attendants mingle around the information desk. The digital monitor tells anyone who cares to look that Flight 1479, non-stop service to Dallas/Ft. Worth, will depart on time at 4:45 PM . He wonders what the blonde is working on, intent as she is on the laptop’s display. Mike knows he should get up and move closer to her, close enough to inquire politely about her work. But he can also guess how a move like that will appear from her point of view—the typical airport predator hunting for a woman trapped by her gate assignment—and even if he could push aside his self-respect, if he could somehow summon the nerve to go over there and speak to her, what would he say? Ask questions about her, sure, but when it came time to hold up his end of the conversation, what would he talk about? Physics? The illusory nature of human reality? Yeah, she’d really dig a chat like that.
Special relativity can be expressed mathematically by E=mc 2 , an elegant equation with profound implications.
Mike’s theory of courting, on the other hand, is burdened by a chaotic maze of incompatible
Something falls to the ground. Something that causes the man to relax his grip. Steve drives him into the wall harder, thrusts elbows at him, and manages to finally wriggle free.
Now he spins around, looking for the door. But the man is blocking his way. The room spins, whips around him.
“Please,” Steve says. “Just let me pay and go.”
The muscular man responds by rushing him again. Steve puts up his hands, but it’s no use, he can barely tell up from down at this point. The man holds him with one hand and punches him in the face with the other. Pain flowers in his cheek and nose, flaring agony tempered by the haze of alcohol. Steve wonders when the man will realize his opponent is bested and stop punching him. He wonders how he got himself into this mess. And then, as the man grabs him yet again, as they stumble into some kind of breakaway wall, he wonders what that shattering sound is, wonders what that slashing pain in his neck is, wonders why he seems to be falling, why rain again patters his face, and then, just as everything becomes obvious to him—not just that he has fallen out the window, but everything—just when
everything
becomes obvious, one last, powerful impact administers a knockout blow and sends him into an endless, swelling world of thrumming darkness.
1
If you were to ask Mike McNair, chief physicist and director of the North Texas Superconducting Super Collider, to discuss something as profoundly important as Einstein’s special theory of relativity, he could charm you with a witty and informative discourse about the far-reaching consequences of relatively simple but grandly beautiful concepts of physics. No problem.
But if you were to ask him about the best way to approach a woman in an Atlanta airline terminal, specifically about the blonde in the white blazer and black skirt seated at the end of his row here in American Airlines gate T11, Mike would have nothing intelligent to say. No insightful nuggets of wisdom to share with a curious observer. Nothing.
Until a few moments ago, he’d been suffering over the GEM printouts in his lap, looking for something, anything, any kind of idea that might help him find Higgs before Donovan decides to replace him.
Now he can’t stop looking at the woman in the white blazer. She’s hunched over a laptop computer, and while he can’t see her face from here, Mike is fascinated by her well-proportioned thighs and sculpted calves. By her golden hair. Her butterscotch skin.
A couple of televisions in the area are tuned to American’s corporate news network. Hidden speakers bark stories about politics and terrorism and NFL preseason highlights. A few seats to Mike’s left sits a breathy, overweight man in a cheap gray suit, and to his right, a smarmy salesman in a striped polo branded with an AT&T logo seems to be talking to himself. Gate attendants mingle around the information desk. The digital monitor tells anyone who cares to look that Flight 1479, non-stop service to Dallas/Ft. Worth, will depart on time at 4:45 PM . He wonders what the blonde is working on, intent as she is on the laptop’s display. Mike knows he should get up and move closer to her, close enough to inquire politely about her work. But he can also guess how a move like that will appear from her point of view—the typical airport predator hunting for a woman trapped by her gate assignment—and even if he could push aside his self-respect, if he could somehow summon the nerve to go over there and speak to her, what would he say? Ask questions about her, sure, but when it came time to hold up his end of the conversation, what would he talk about? Physics? The illusory nature of human reality? Yeah, she’d really dig a chat like that.
Special relativity can be expressed mathematically by E=mc 2 , an elegant equation with profound implications.
Mike’s theory of courting, on the other hand, is burdened by a chaotic maze of incompatible
Readers choose
Andrew Warren
David K. Fremon
Janelle Denison
R.L. Stine
Ellis Peters
Juan Gómez-Jurado
Lecia Cornwall
Sandra Brown
Karen Whiddon