Magic Made Simple

Chapter 1: Tutorial

The room is completely silent as preparations for the experiment begin. An unspoken agreement to not break the peaceful quiet hung in the air as everybody double checked, then triple checked that nothing would go wrong. Our team had been under constant pressure from our sponsors to get this project done as soon as possible, and we were all feeling it in this very moment. Years of hard work to get to this point, and countless meetings where we'd had to convince investors that this would be worth the cost. If things went as planned, it certainly would be.

The silence is finally broken when the head scientist and lead of the project, Benjamin Krone speaks.

"Alright, we have all cameras ready, all devices tuned, and several thousand people watching through a live feed. We will now go through our pre-op checklist. If nothing is found wrong, we will make history together."

I could tell through the serious demeanor that Ben was reluctant to speak with such a commanding tone. He'd only been assigned project lead due to being the most leader-like out of the group. He still saw himself as just one of the scientists. I'd always liked that about him. Given that this moment would probably be in dozens of future documentaries, he needed to show off a sense of authority and confidence regardless of personal feelings.

I didn't blame him one bit for having to act like the most important person in the room, and I knew that none of the other 10 people present did. I certainly wouldn't enjoy the pressure of knowing billions of people would see every movement of my hands, hear every word I spoke, and analyze the results of my work for years to come. I did kind of have to worry about that last one, but much like when Armstrong walked on the moon or Oppenheimer made the atomic bomb, I would just be one of the scientists and not the face of the project.

Ben began calling out each of the scientists by name, asking for verbal confirmation that they saw nothing with the readings or devices. My name was last, as I was generally seen as the number two on this project.

"River Banks, please confirm that there are no issues with any instruments or the readings on your screen."

"Confirmed." I say, wincing a bit at the fact that my whole name had to be used. I knew that quite a few people would get a chuckle out of the name. My father had always told me it would get peoples attention, though that had always been what I disliked about it.

"All present scientists have confirmed the safety of this test." Ben says, addressing the cameras around the room. He input a code on a number pad, which then slid away to reveal a lever within a cubby in the wall, a physical activation of the machine to both show off for the cameras and to ensure a random software error wouldn't set it off by mistake.

"Beginning experiment in 5...4...3...2...1..."

Everyone in the room held their breath as the lever was pulled down with a unceremoniously silent motion.

The entire building began to hum as countless electronics, motors, machines, and magnets were activated all at once. The humming slowly got louder and louder as everything began powering up more and more, and soon the experiment began.

Now, the experiment itself was humanity's effort to create a blackhole.

I know that sounds ridiculously dangerous and stupid, but extremely small blackholes weren't super dangerous. Despite common belief, a blackhole doesn't need to be super big. Actually, even if it was just the size of a baseball it would already have more mass than Earth. Our goal wasn't to make something like that, instead it was to turn just a few kilograms of matter into a blackhole.

Even with that small amount of mass, it was an incredibly difficult task only able to be accomplished after decades of research, and five years of building a super massive facility to allow it to happen in the first place.