One World

14) Telephone call from the future

Posted 1st April 2016

An ex-employee of CERN, who worked on the Large Hadron Collider until recently, has come forward with an astonishing story. If what he says is true then mankind must take immediate action to prevent its own imminent extinction. The whistleblower, 'Dr. X', has approached a few newspapers and news broadcasters with his account, and has so far not been taken seriously. It was only through a series of coincidences that I became informed of the tale, and I have decided to relay it to my readers today.

The testimony of Dr X

I was a junior CERN scientist working at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. I was part of a large team who processed the vast amounts of data resulting from the particle collision experiments, producing graphs and charts that could then be passed on to the senior scientists for interpretation. My team separated the data to isolate discrete signals from the various components of the collision events. On 12th September 2008, background signals in the collision data were noticed. At first these were thought to be a fault in the detection equipment. However, after diagnostics ruled out faulty equipment, the background signals were found to have a recognisable pattern to them. After much analysis, and by slowing down the signal, we determined the background noise was someone talking. By 16th September 2008 we had isolated the background signal, fine-tuned the stretch factor to play the signal at the correct speed, and amplified it. No-one in the lab could believe what happened next. A elderly man's voice came through: -

"Hello scientists at the LHC. I do not expect you to take me seriously at the moment. In 3 days time a magnet quench will occur and you will be forced to postpone your programme of experiments for 14 months. During that time the following events will occur ..."

The voice then listed a series of 10 specific events - all which seemed highly unlikely. For example, lightning striking a particular tree at a particular time; a hail storm over a particular town at a particular time and for a particular duration, etc. The message stated that none of the predictions given would cause any harm that might otherwise prompt us to intervene. The voice continued:-

"I tell you this so that when you reactivate the LHC, and you receive further messages from me, you will take me seriously. For the time being, it is imperative that you do not inform others of what I have told you, and that you go about your normal business as if you haven't heard this message.

Bye for now,

Thomas, your friend from the year 2062"

3 days later the LHC broke down. Investigations revealed that a magnet quench had occurred in about 100 magnets, which caused a series of failures resulting in damage to over 50 superconducting magnets and their mountings. It also contaminated the vacuum pipe, which lost vacuum conditions. Many in the team thought this was sabotage due to the recent message, which they now assumed to be the work of a clever hoaxer. We were ordered to be silent about the whole affair in case our funding was affected.

Over the year that the LHC was being repaired, I carefully watched the local news, Twitter, and actually visited three of the mentioned places and on the dates given in the message. One by one, all of the predictions in the message came true. The team became alarmed by this. Not because they thought this was proof that the message was indeed from the future, but that it was evidence that the hoaxer had went to exorbitant lengths to engineer the news events to order, so was clearly of great wealth, influence and ingenuity. Such an individual or group might have sabotaged the LHC - and could do it again. Billions of Euros worth of damage could ensue, putting an end to the programme. Quietly, however, I suspected this was for real.

When the LHC came online a year later, with a much publicised schedule of experiments, the secret concern for our team was would there be other messages. Were we being blackmailed? Who was this individual - was it someone inside the team? Security was tighter than ever. New protocols were installed, and we were background checked again, but more thoroughly this time.