Collider World | Peter's Log

2012 | Peter Ansay

My name’s Peter Ansay and I am a physicist working at CERN. 

Well, actually it would be more accurate to say that I used to be one, before the administration board kicked me out of CERN, making a laughing stock of my theories, destroying my credibility and forcing me to live like a recluse in a hotel room in Geneva, powerlessly waiting for the day the Hadron Collider they so proudly assembled will destroy the entire planet.   

That’s a fact. If we don’t do something immediately to stop the Collider, the world is bound to end. 

That’s not exactly the kind of ending I had imagined for me when I enrolled at Edinburgh University to study Physics, my biggest dream being to follow into my father’s footsteps - Frederik Ansay, the great physicist, Nobel prize winner, an inspiring figure for many a scientist, and, on top of it, one of CERN’s more estimated board members. I can hardly imagine what went through his head when I broke into the Board of Directors claiming that we had to shut down the Collider, a several million pounds project they had been working on for over 8 years. My father didn’t say a word while the President had me dragged out by the security.  He didn’t try to defend me or to answerback. He didn’t say a word, but his look spoke for himself.

 My father was ashamed of me.

I saw that look only once before in my life, and I’ll never forget it. 

I spent my whole childhood in utter adoration for my father, devoting entire afternoons to imitating him in my games and dreaming about the day I’d finally become “a real scientist”, just like him. I did everything I could to please him and get his precious attention.  I was always among the best students at school, I never created problems, I didn’t even hang out much, which was due to the fact that I had few friends - very few. I guess I didn’t look like very good company to my schoolmates, who highly preferred bullying me rather than befriending me. But whatever happened at school, it remained at school. I used to cover my bruises and wipe out my tears before getting home. The last thing I wanted was for my father to think I was a loser. 

But one day, I must have been 15 years old, something completely unexpected happened.

I was eating my lunch in the school canteen, alone as usual, as I’ve never really liked to engage in a conversation with other people, when Kelly MacRae, one the beauties of my school, sat down next to me. The event was per se something that utterly subverted the ordinary social procedures in the school, but it was when she invited me to her birthday party that I realized how revolutionary that moment was. I had never been the kind of guy girls could find interesting and to be honest I had never really given much importance to it either. But Kelly MacRae was somehow beyond average girls.  I still can see myself nodding a clumsy “yes” after a more-than-awkward thirty-second silence spent mulling over the possible reasons for her wanting me at her party.   

For someone who had never been invited to a party before, I felt quite unruffled the moment I rang the bell of Kelly’s house that night and got introduced to her friends, most of whom by the way where the same guys who had decided to make a sport of me since first grade. But strangely enough that night everyone seemed to be particularly friendly towards me, offering me drinks that I decided not to refuse, and toasting at our new born friendship. Only an exaggerated number of pints later I realized that it was not exactly friendship that they had in mind. But I was too drunk and confused to do anything but follow my mates out in the street, gently pulled by Kelly’s hand, and walk up to what I recognized like a vaguely familiar surrounding, before everything would fall into blankness.

When I woke up, I found myself nestled in the porch of the school; an adult hand was shaking me awake, while a pungent smell of puke reached my nostrils. My sight was still blurred but I could hear my schoolmates giggling all around me. When I finally managed to pull myself together I noticed that I had a paint spray in my left hand and from the expression on my teacher’s face I inferred that I was in a big heap of trouble; deduction that was entirely confirmed the moment I turned around and saw what was on the main school wall.