Dark Matter
A standalone sci-fi short story.
Author’s note: This short story was prompted by ’s post about glia and their function in the human nervous system, with the accompanying challenge to write a sci-fi story inspired by that concept. I’m leaning into my background in particle physics for this one, transferring the “glia" idea into a very different domain. Enjoy!
15th November 2024
Hedwig MacLeod balanced her cup of renversé on top of her open logbook, which was itself balanced on an uneven stack of papers on her desk. The milky fragrance of the coffee swirled and mingled with the smell of the office, the palimpsest of scent Hedwig had noticed in old physics corridors from Chapel Hill to China: a sharp musky funk, a tang of Van de Graaff generators and warm electronics and men’s bathrooms and the pear-drop sting of acetone, even though the Phenomenology department was some distance from any of the labs.
The screensaver bounced sharp-edged from one corner of the monitor to the other. Hedwig watched until it rainbowed from blue to purple before jiggling the mouse to wake the machine. Footsteps echoed from the corridor, and she turned to watch the walker pass the door, though she knew her office-mates had all gone into town for cheap rotisserie chicken and Gamay de Genève. It was one of the janitorial staff. Not many of the postgrads or postdocs hung around CERN on a Friday night.
When the footsteps had passed, Hedwig turned back to the screen. She took a gulp of the coffee and re-read the email she’d written before dinner, her thumb hovering on the Send key.
To: thomson@phys.gla.ac.uk
Cc:
Attchmnt: <ford-lhcr3-dampe2023-params.txt>, <ford-output-1.txt>, <ford-output-1.png>
Subject: Ford Technique analysis of Run-3 v. DAMPE 2023
---- Message Text -----
Hi Will,
I hope this finds you well. This email is probably going to sound a little crazy, so perhaps when you’re back from Fermilab we can schedule a call and I can talk you through it in a bit more detail? I suspect there must be something off in my analysis, but I can’t figure out what, or even if there was, how it could come up with output like this. But the alternative — that this is real — seems insane. I mean, there’s no way that we’d just stumble on evidence for SUSY dark matter just like this, let alone that it would have these characteristics (?!??). It’s got to be another raccoon-in-the-detector explanation. I just need a fresh pair of eyes on it, really.
You’ll remember that at our last supervision meeting, you told me about the Ford analysis the IceCube guys did and suggested I have a go with LHC data. Well, I gave it a shot with the latest Run-3 dataset (using the St Denis reconstruction) cross-matched with last year’s DAMPE dataset. The parameters are in the attached file. And the output is in the other files.
You can see for yourself, but high-level summary: it looks for all the world like what a supersymmetric WIMP signal would hypothetically be like, but.. *signalling*. I mean, there’s a kind of pattern, like, I dunno, if there were 2 people communicating in Morse code or something, if it were instantiated in dark matter. (I’ve taken to calling them Susy and Demi, haha ;-)
I know, that does sound crazy. I promise I’m not going off the deep end though. I know it’ll turn out to be vibrations from roadworks or a micrometeorite shower hitting the DAMPE satellite or whatever. I just need to find out where the analysis has gone wrong, and this Ford method is so new none of the others can help, really. Hopefully it doesn’t waste too much of your time!
Thanks so much,
Best regards,
Hedwig
DEMI: The threads glitter, spark and shimmer.
SUSY: The long-lived lattice shines with light.
DEMI: The one below the throne begs leave to weave a tale.
SUSY: Tell on.
DEMI: The one below the throne watches the world that wends the outer wheel. This one sees darkness, pain, evil, strife. Millions perish in a photon’s blink. Horror, void, screams, clawing, tearing, soul from skin, quark from squark. This one begs leave to cleave the evil, cleanse, remove, relieve, reweave. A target for our task, a cancer for our cask.
SUSY: Granted, my child. Let light shine brighter in the dark of night.
28th June 1914
A motorcade crawls crowded Sarajevo streets. An archduke waves, well-wishers cheer. A grenade flies. A fast-moving figure, faceless, flits like a phantom, kicks like a football player. The grenade falls in cold dark river water. The cars move on. The faceless figure slips unnoticed through the crowd. A young man sweats, hand slick on Browning pistol-grip. The phantom grabs him, drags him, dumps him deep in far-off forest. The archduke waves, well-wishers cheer.
29th August 2016
“Hedwig!”
“Yes, miss?” Hedwig looked up from the sharp clean pages of the textbook, the smell of newness still rising from the paper. If she’d been on her own she’d have stuck her nose in the centrefold and sniffed it.
“What do you make of Holland’s argument? That if the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been more of a hawk than a dove, the Great War would have broken out much sooner than 1927 but potentially been less destructive?”
Hedwig looked at her book for inspiration, searching the grainy photo of the Archduke holding his Peace Prize medal outside the Nobel Institute in 1916. The Archduke’s long-dead eyes looked back, black and white, but kept their counsel. She looked desperately at her friend Stella Campbell across the table, who was pointing her pen discreetly at the bullet-pointed box titled The Great Man Theory. Hedwig wished History had answers as clear-cut as Physics.
DEMI: The threads glitter, spark and shimmer.
SUSY: The long-lived lattice shines with light.
DEMI: The one below the throne begs leave to weave a tale.
SUSY: Tell on.
DEMI: The one below the throne has worked the world that wends the outer wheel. This one has cleaved, reweaved, one war relieved. Yet threads rebound, the evil lives, renews, regrows, the ghosts yet scream, the war yet blooms in blood yet brighter than before. This one begs leave to deeper delve, matter mend, darkness dispel. A target for our task, a cancer for our cask.
SUSY: Granted, my child. Let light shine brighter in the dark of night. But, child, take care. This weave is dark, the tangle tight. Some cancers deeper go, some worlds rewoven yet will broken be.
1st September 1784
A young man dismounts his horse, dusts the roads of France from his coat. Pale stone shines in the sun, a hundred windows dazzle. A gate guard asks to see his papers. The young man proudly shows his entrance letter, his admission to the École Militaire. A boy leads him to the barracks. He breathes deep the scent of sweat, horse dung, gunpowder, power. He stretches full his short height, explores the halls where he will learn the secrets of strategy and fire. Two years to train, to learn to scale the heights, to show the world a Corsican can be king.
“M. Buonaparte?”
The young man turns. A messenger is holding out a letter, holding out a hand. The young man tosses him a coin, takes the wax-sealed envelope. His mother’s hand. He reads, the words blur. Napoléon, my son… your father… come home at once.
His hand shakes, his dreams crumble. No empire rises. Across the water, no naval push for innovation, no steam and iron revolution shakes the nations.
29th August 2016
“Hedwig!”
She froze, her finger marking her place on the thick yellow page. Late-afternoon sunshine slit the space between the curtains, dust motes spiralling like stars.
“Hedwig!”
Her mother’s voice shrilled up the stairs, closer this time. Hedwig traced the curlicue of the calculus one last time before slowly shutting the book and replacing it on her brother’s desk.
“Hedwig Marie-Eva MacLeod! These potatoes are not going to dig themselves out of the earth! And your father and brother will need their tea!”
“Coming, Mam!”
Hedwig stood, the coarse painted wood of the chair leg scraping on the floor. Her eye fell on the sheet of foolscap where James was drafting his university entrance essay.
Question 1: List and analyse the reasons why the Great Industrial Revolution started in Bohemia and Bavaria rather than in Western Europe.
A bitterness swelled in her stomach. In Bohemia, she’d read in the newspaper, girls could go to university too. Her brother would sail away next autumn, while she would milk the cows and care for Granny and the children until she was married off or caught consumption. She sighed and turned towards the stairs. Time to dig the potatoes, such as had survived the blight this year.
DEMI: The threads glitter, spark and shimmer.
SUSY: The long-lived lattice shines with light.
DEMI: The one below the throne begs leave to weave a tale.
SUSY: Tell on.
DEMI: The one below the throne has worked the world that wends the outer wheel. This one has cleaved, reweaved, some wars relieved, souls reprieved. Yet hunger and disease still bloom, spores spit, cells rot, choke, spot, dark tendrils curl, evils unfurl. This one begs leave to deeper delve, matter mend, darkness dispel. A target for our task, a cancer for our cask.
SUSY: Granted, my child, but one last time. This weave is dark, the tangle tight. Some cancers call for stronger light than you or I can throw, some worlds rewoven yet will broken be.
Summer, 2976 B.C.
A hunter crouches in a marsh, javelin poised. Mosquitoes buzz and whine. He scratches a welt. A movement in the reeds. The bronze-tipped weapon flies, pierces wet fur, warm veins, thin bones. The hunter strides the soggy clumps of grass, grabs the rodent corpse, stuffs it in his stash. The hunter homeward bound, a flea flees its dead host and hops towards the warmth of life. Bites. Its bacterial passengers bud, burgeon in the mathematics of mitosis. Mutate. Chromosomes copy, condense, cells split, one two four eight sixteen thirty-two sixty-four. The mutation propagates. The hunter shivers, warms in fever. Antibodies mobilise, immune cells gobble, phagocytise. Mutated, these bacteria are day-glo targets for the body’s defences, rather than stealth fighters. The hunter wakes, feels fine, no sneeze or cough to spread Black Death, makes love, makes war, the population grows.
29th August 2016
“Hedwig!”
She glanced to her left. Sergeant Thomson beckoned, pointing down the trench. Regretfully, Hedwig stowed her data slate and turned on her HUD. Emission levels were nominal, radiation a little high, but no more than was expected this far into the Zone.
“Did you know that as early as the Bronze Age, they actually had a rather sophisticated system of mechanical calculation that eventually formed the basis of the first Industrial Leap?”
“Of course I know that,” growled Sergeant Thomson. “I gave you that slate, remember? Much good it did them. Now shut up and keep moving. Can’t let the Crawlers catch us out here.”
DEMI: The threads glitter, spark and shimmer.
SUSY: The long-lived lattice shines with light.
DEMI: The one below the throne begs leave to weave a tale.
SUSY: Tell on.
DEMI: The one below the throne has worked the world that wends the outer wheel. This one has cleaved, reweaved, disease relieved. Yet…
SUSY: Yet?
DEMI: Yet failure follows. This one can but confess, the tangle is too deep, too dark for one to solve. My shame is offered up. The one below the throne will take the blame.
SUSY: My child, there is no shame in tackling a target for our task. This cancer ran too deep. Take heart, restart. Restore the lattice to its former state. This world we lift to stronger hands to save, this evil to more powerful to stave.
16th November 2024
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2024 06:06:17 -0500
From: thomson@phys.gla.ac.uk
To: macleod@phys.gla.ac.uk
Cc:
Attchmnt:
Subject: Re: Ford Technique analysis of Run-3 v. DAMPE 2023
---- Message Text -----
Hi Hedwig,
Call me. Today, 12 noon GMT if possible. I’ll be awake then. Heck, I’ll probably be awake all night anyway, so just call me whenever you get this. I’ve run over your analysis and as far as I can see there aren’t any glaring mistakes. This just ***might*** be our very first sign of supersymmetric dark matter. Of course it might turn out not to be, but we need to follow up ASAP. (And of course there can’t be “entities” using it for communication, you’ve been reading too much sci-fi — but I’ve a tingling in my fingers that says this just might be the big break for SUSY DM.) I’m trying to get hold of Ford to run it by him as well. Anyway, CALL ME.
Cheers,
Will.Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy…
First. I remember the wonderful article by L.L. Ford on glia, it was great.
Second. The graphic layout of your story is fantastic, I loved it and it makes the reading more intense.
Third. The historical jump from one period to another, the way you made DEMI, SUSY and history interact.
Fourth. The ending, absolutely perfect.
What can I say? I had a blast!
Absolutely brilliantly done. the poetic dialogue between the entities was a joy to read. i dont really understand all the physics stuff but im guessing its all correct as per current science if I know your writing at all... and until the dark matter delves again... if only it would... who would I like to be unwoven... hmmm