In the Psychiatric Ward of the Westhaven Medical Center, Doctor Steven Benford hugs his knees against his chest as he rocks back and forth in his corner. This creates waves of motion, rolling in his cerebrum, and keeps him in the present tense. Doctor Benford knows above all else that it is important to keep oscillating. The present is best for him. The present is the smallest sliver of time that he can deal with.
Small was his business. Sporadic fragments of memory glimmer in front of him… his career as a nuclear scientist, discovering an unusual subatomic particle. The images play against the gray walls of his cell. A waft of missing joy he might have felt reaches out to slap him from time to time, the joy of earning fame and a Nobel Prize.
Bitterness belongs to the past. Just keep rocking the present, rocking rocking rocking, Steve ol’ boy. Stay in the here and now. He grips his knees tighter to his chest.
The angel who floats in and delivers elixirs lands by his side: “Doctor Benford, here is our medication and supper. How are we feeling today?”
Benford rocks on, no answers for the angels today. No answers from him, damn it. Ignore him for so long and then expect answers? Where were the answers when he needed them?
Where were they when the electronic trace of the new subatomic particle had shimmered across the analyzer screen—the trace of a particle never before seen by man, vanished forever into the void of failed recording equipment? He reset the equipment and tried again, of course, but the results were negative. There was something he wasn’t seeing. Some condition or parameter unknown on that first run. What was missing?
Dr. Benford groans as the past seizes him back to that ozone-scented control room, with its half dozen scientists manning the long control panel laden with knobs and meters and lights and switches. The underground ring of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s new cyclotron whipped protons around a three-mile diameter circle at nearly the speed of light. Proton lightning smashed into a piece of lead in the chamber next door, scattering its nuclear innards. Like the electrodes the doctors press on his temples from time to time, leaving glowing chips and traces to pick apart and analyze. It was all the same. They can’t find the answers in him, just as he couldn’t find the answers in the chunks of lead he blew apart at the lab.
The shimmering particle taunted him. He knew it was there, sometimes, but it didn’t appear when other people were watching. Or when the recording equipment was working. Soon he alone had faith in the particle. No one else believed him, but he had seen it with his own eyes.
And then he had remembered the antinuclear demonstrators gathered outside the electrified, barbed-wire fence that day. One of them had been dressed like a priest and had performed dramatic ceremonies to excite the crowd. Benford detested them all, trying to shut down his livelihood, his path to fame. Didn’t they know that the next breakthrough medical advancement might come from this very facility to save their sordid little lives?
He could never remember exactly how he made the connection, but the priest had probably “blessed” the facility, or some such nonsense, but that’s when the particle had appeared for the first time. He remembered how foolish it had seemed at first, that a religious ceremony could somehow affect his experiment with a hocus-pocus prayer. But the thought stuck somehow, and for some reason it was insistent, kept appealing to his sense of logical deduction. He would turn it around in his mind and look at it from all angles. If there was a God, and he could bless matter, what would that mean for the matter? How would it be changed? Were good luck charms actually possible? It went against everything he was taught in school and believed. But that’s the nature of science, moving forward through previously held truths. And besides, there was nothing left to test.
An article in the campus newspaper quoted the priest as saying, “…let all atoms smashed in this lab behind me be blessed with goodness!” Now that was interesting. The priest was not difficult to track down. It turned out he had an agent, and the newspaper reporter was happy to help.
Benford sat at a back table in the bustling coffee shop, slightly embarrassed at what he was doing. He stood to welcome the man to an empty chair across from him. “So you’re the priest?” he asked.
“Yeah, but like I said, I’m not a priest. I’m an actor. They gave me a script, paid me enough, so I did it. What’s the problem?”
“No problem.” Benford paused, wondering how to proceed. “How much did they pay you?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but—” The man stood to leave.
“Shhh, just listen.” Benford glanced around the café, eyes catching those of nearby patrons who had looked up at the raised voices. “Just listen, okay? I want to hire you to do it again. Read the same script as before. How much will it cost?”
Raised eyebrows, and then that crisp accountant’s smile. “Four hundred.”
Benford pulled out his wallet and counted out the bills. The actor snatched them away when offered, and quipped, “You got yourself a priest, buddy!”
Benford set up the meet the following Saturday at the rear security gate. After signing the actor in under his authority, Benford led the man through various empty hallways to an elevator, which they rode down several levels in silence. The fluorescent-orange visitor’s badge bit at the priestly black robe as he was ushered into the control room. Benford pointed to a position in front of the control panels, in view of a camera that he had set up previously to record every word. Benford had asked for only two of his assistants to come in that morning, and both raised their eyebrows at the scene now in front of them.
“Start recording,” Benford instructed. “Status for run 127-G?”
“All systems nominal,” one of his men replied, an unasked question lingering in his voice. The other assistant entered commands on a keyboard without comment.
“Proceed,” Benford said softly, gesturing for the priest to begin.
The man in black robes stoically knelt down in front of the twenty-foot main accelerator console, hands folded in reverence. “God in heaven, we have come here today to pay tribute to the good things in life, that these things will not be taken away from us in the name of science. Let our aims be fulfilled here today, and inhibit the evil brewing within these walls.”
Benford could see the wide-eyed, questioning expression of his men, but they didn’t understand his ability to relate remote concepts. He had done it repeatedly in his thirty-seven years. His reputation with abstracts was justified. God and Science, he decided, could be related. That was the day God became real to him, so it didn’t matter what they thought. His assistants were paid to do as he told them; he was in charge of this experiment.
The proton wind increased its hum to a high-pitched whine. Then the flash and crack, scattering bits of lead nuclei in all directions. There it was again! The photographic plate slid out of the analyzer, and he whisked it into his office and locked the door. Tears of joy dripped onto the plate as he held it in a trembling hand, his other hand wiping his face. His assistants asked to see the results, and he told them no no no! He wasn’t going to share the Nobel Prize with a bunch of groping graduate students looking for a thesis. Only he was chosen to see the particle, only he was blessed.
He reveled in the beauty of the particle, the proof that God existed and that he had chosen Benford to discover it and bring it to the world. The glory of a Nobel Prize and fame was surely his now. He couldn’t believe the beauty of the spiral particle trace, proof of the divine in his hands. Benford wished to never look away—to look away would be sacrilege! Blasphemous!
Yet as he stared at this holy tablet, representing the tiniest speck of an infinite mind, it began to fade, and soon the image had completely disappeared. Another flaw in the photographic material, perhaps? Had his very own tears of joy washed it away?
He flung the plate into a bookcase. He had never known anger like this before, that luck could be this bad! He held his face in his hands. He had to figure this out. The particle existed only in matter that was blessed, but luck was always against him when he tried to prove it. Benford laughs in his cell at the memory. This is God’s little joke on him. God doesn’t want to be published, it seems. God does not want to be tied to a scientific principle, a bubble-chamber photographic proof. It must be God’s choice. God still isn’t going to give Benford his fame, his prize. Benford can feel it, the burning, the bitterness.
Stay in the present, Stevie B. Come on, you can deal with the present. He tries to concentrate on the cement floor upon which he rocks, but can’t stop the memories of his wife laughing at their child’s first words and first steps. The look on her face, the happiness. Then the pain when she told him she was leaving because he was obsessed, because he had changed. Didn’t she see that he was the next Moses, the next Jesus? She was blind! If only he could prove it to her. Her hurtful words pulled him back again to that day.
“Steve,” she was saying, “I’m sorry. I just think we need some time apart to work this out. You’re obsessed with your work, your,” she sighed, “discoveries! I need someone who is obsessed with me, like you used to be. It’s like you’ve forgotten you’re married and a father, and I’m tired of hearing about God’s will this and God’s will that.”
“Beth, listen. I’m on the verge of making it big… Beth…big! Don’t you see the implications? The scientific proof of God?”
“We’ve been through this before, Steve. Please, just stop, just stop…”
Stop stop stop? No. How could he? All those people that needed him to announce a channel to God. God of a verified scientific proof. God of the modern generation. The countless people with more faith in Science than in God would see that they were the same. He could be the peacemaker between these two warring factions, and bring peace to the modern age. The countless masses must see that God was still alive, that he, through some trickery of physics, could still influence the randomness in our lives and bless us. Benford didn’t yet know what influence the blessing had on matter, but it was surely a dimension of God’s control. He could feel the blessing particles within every atom of himself. He was a puppet for God now, and regretful as it was, a wife and kids didn’t seem to be in God’s plan for him.
After she left him, he read selected passages in the Bible, opening the book at random so that God would have a better chance of controlling the blessing particles in the quantum physics of his brain, muscles, tendons, and fingers. His blessed eyeball matter would find an arbitrary part of the page through the not-so-random chemical reactions of his brain, and he would read something like the Book of Amos, 8:12: “People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.”
And tears would drain into his beard, because he had to know for sure, he was so close to knowing instead of wondering, and God wasn’t telling him. God, why are you forsaking me?
“Steve, could I see you for a second in my office?”
Benford looked up from his work to see the Director of Research, Doctor Chuck Haufner, looking at him with cold gray eyes. They walked down a well-lit hallway to his office, and Chuck told him to please shut the door.
“Please, sit.”
Dr. Benford reluctantly sat in a small plastic chair as his boss took a seat behind his large metal desk.
Dr. Haufner continued, “For the last few weeks some of us have noticed a change in your…attitude. Your theories about this new particle of yours are very interesting, but we do not have the resources to spend on a wild-goose chase. We need better evidence.”
Dr. Benford pursed his lips and paused before replying, then leaning forward he said, “Chuck, listen to me, I know you need proof. I’m trying. I just need some reliable recording equipment and some time. I saw it, you have to trust me.”
“Well, then it’s all academic.” Dr. Haufner leaned back in his chair. “There’s no money in the budget for new equipment. And we certainly can’t afford any more accelerator runs. What are you up to, now, twelve runs? We’ve got other work to do, work that pays the bills.”
Dr. Benford stood. “Please, Chuck. Just a few more—”
“Look, Steve, you’re one of the most brilliant minds we’ve got. But this is going too far. I think it’s best if you take a couple of weeks off, just to rest that overworked head of yours.”
“No.” Benford noted the undercurrent of pity in Dr. Haufner’s eyes, the slight disdain of his smile. He knew what Haufner was getting at. “No, I’m fine.”
“Then if you don’t get back to work, the paying projects, I will be forced to take action. One more unauthorized run of the accelerator and you’re off the team. I’m sorry.”
Benford felt pity right back, the smallness of Dr. Haufner’s unenlightened mind, but he forced a neutral expression onto his face. He stood, turned and left the office without a word, focusing all of his control on closing the door gently behind him. But clearly Chuck Haufner didn’t have a single blessing in his God-forsaken body. Benford could smash every atom in the high-and-mighty Director of Research and he wouldn’t see a single blessing particle. Like the Pharisees of old, Chuck Haufner was simply blind to the truth.
Naturally the accelerator runs had to continue, the proof had to be found. With every run he could feel God mocking him, hiding from him in the miles of conduits and twisted pipelines of the facility. He prayed again in front of his laboratory control room, the recording equipment, and the whirlwind of proton fury ripe to smash atoms. “Oh Lord! Bless me and this laboratory! Bless this equipment so that you may be seen! So that your glory can be finalized, made known to all!” He would bellow his prayers with such rapture that the overnight security guard was finally forced to say something to his supervisor about Doctor Benford’s curious late-night research. Nobody was irreplaceable, even Benford. His contract was terminated and he was ushered out of the facility.
Benford rocks more quickly when remembering such moments, but the visions are strong. Even pressing his thumbs into his eyes does little to lessen their intensity. Let it play then, he thought. Let the tape play and it will soon be done.
Benford would not let a mere termination keep him from his destiny. His memoirs would show how determined he was to continue the experiments, how much perseverance this blessed soul had! The late-night security guard would stop him every time.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Benford. I’ve been ordered—”
“I have to get in!” Benford would scream, trying to push the guard aside. “I must test myself, my own flesh! Please…” Pleading, but no progress. He was forced to turn away.
Benford had not worked at the facility without learning a few architectural secrets. And he had prepared for a time such as this. He had contingencies. There were ways in other than the normal channels. He took advantage of the large tree he had seen overhanging the northwest comer of the electric fence. Then he skirted the three security cameras, and finally slipped into the unlocked window of a dark conference room he had visited a few days before.
The preparation was simple as the accelerator was always idling, which was less expensive than starting it up cold for each run. This, he knew, would be the last run he would ever make. The forces of evil about him would certainly crucify him now. So this last run was for him, and for him alone.
First, he needed an adequate tissue sample. He had hoped that the pain of dipping one’s little finger into liquid nitrogen would not be considerable given the low temperature, but he was wrong. It felt like molten metal, sharp hot pain for a couple of agonizing seconds, and then it went numb as his pinky completely froze through.
He slapped his left hand onto a table and squelched a brief scream. His frozen little finger separated from his hand cleanly at the second knuckle, shattering like tempered glass spilling across the black lab bench. Holding a pair of long-nosed tweezers with his other hand, he selected the largest piece of himself and placed it in the grip of the bubble chamber clamp.
The final preparations complete, he prayed blessings upon himself and pressed the red discharge button on the control console. There was a crack of nuclear thunder, echoing throughout the facility. Shouts echoed down the halls. An alarm sounded, and before the results could be pulled from the analyzer, Doctor Steven Benford was taken away by the security team.
Benford rocks himself into the present, the playback complete for now. He lies there in the present for a few glorious minutes, his mind empty of the past. Then the portal to the other world opens and two dark angles stride into his cell. They stand a minute looking at him, but he refuses to acknowledge them. No angel is getting anything from him.
“Dr. Benford, I don’t know if you remember me? It’s been a few years.” After Benford refuses to answer, he continues. “It’s Chuck. Chuck Haufner, your former supervisor at Lawrence Livermore? And this is our attorney, Mr. Wingsdale.”
What a cursed dark angle to visit. Benford’s rocking accelerates, but no words will be bestowed on these two.
“Well, anyway, I’m here to let you know that your former research has paid off, in a way.” The two dark angels look at each other and then stare back down at Benford oscillating on the floor. “We’d like to tell you about it, if you’re willing.”
Benford is not willing, but he is also not willing to communicate this to these intruders, so the wordy one continues. “After your…after you came here, some of us at the lab were curious about that last accelerator run you conducted, apparently on yourself?” He glances down to Benford’s left hand with its truncated fifth finger. “The good news is that the recording equipment worked that time, and there was indeed a unique particle trace on the slide. It appears you were onto something, so we had to wait a couple of years for what turned out to be a highly unusual grant request to be approved. But we finally did obtain some funding for a limited number of runs. We couldn’t reuse your…sample, of course. But we did conduct some experiments on other specimens, such as holy water, lead crucifixes, and some other materials that we had blessed by a real priest this time. Hey, did you know that the guy you used was just an actor?” They wait in vain for an answer.
“Well, anyway, we obtained proof that certain religious ceremonies were able to manifest this new particle in about half of the samples. We still don’t know why only half, but we had a control group with zero religious ceremony and those all came back negative. So that’s proof of some correlation.”
Benford’s audience again waits for a response. Benford continues rocking. The quiet one pulls a paper from his attaché case and reviews it briefly, as the wordy one presses on with his story. “So we now have something that’s publishable and, in fact, we’re going public with it in three to four weeks. We wanted to come by and see if you had any comments? If you wanted to collaborate at all. Of course you’ll be listed as a coauthor.”
Just rocking.
Now the quiet one finally speaks. “Dr. Benford, we have an agreement here for you to sign. It comes with a sizable stipend for release of your previous work. Would you like to see your research caried on, Dr. Benford?” He pushes the paperwork towards the floor, but Benford rotates around to look more at the cell wall than directly at his tormentors.
“No? Dr. Benford, we don’t feel right not paying you something for your work, so we’ll have your doctors sign the release since you appear to be incapacitated.”
They’ll get no answers from him. Come in here to steal my work. Take my life’s work and make it their own. What animals. No no no answers from him.
The wordy one says in a lowered voice, “I think we should give it to his ex-wife, who’s still raising their two children. She could certainly use it.”
“The hospital is going to want something,” says the other angel.
As they turn and head away, the talkative angel looks back, wearing the face of his old nemesis, Dr. Haufner. “Eh, Dr. Benford, just so you know. The particle you discovered has the same mass and spin direction as the particle our experiments uncovered, but…” He looks at the other angel before continuing and gets a slight nod. “Um, Dr. Benford, the particle we found had the opposite charge of the particle you discovered. Our photo traces were all clockwise spirals, and yours was counterclockwise. Same velocity and mass, just an opposite charge. Really quite amazing. So we’ve decided to name our particle the ‘blessing,’ and we’re going to rename your particle the ‘curse.’ I hope you don’t mind.” And with that they turn and leave.
Doctor Steven Benford hugs his knees against his chest as he rocks back and forth in his corner. Waves of motion, rolling in his cerebrum, keep him in the present tense. Doctor Benford knows above all else that it is important to keep oscillating. The present is best for him. The present is the smallest sliver of time that he can deal with.
Kevin Prince
Cover art by Levi Matthews
Connect on Instagram @levimatthews.artist or on his website, LeviMatthewsArtist.com.
This was fun to get into again, and thanks to Allison & Lucy for their great suggestions!
The twist on this was fascinating! Loved it :)