Children Again

"You seem rather jubilant for a man responsible for the destruction of fifty trillion dollars worth of equipment.

"Only a fifth of the coils were destroyed, and no one was hurt, senator, it's not-

"My point, good doctor, is that you seem to consider triggering a multi-kiloton explosion and the destruction of a notable fraction of this nation's accumulated wealth to be worth it, no matter how we hang you. Am I right?

"Ah, yes sir-

"Then please, enlighten us as to why.

"An observatory to the south of Armstrong Station-

"As in on the Moon?

"Yes. The observatory reported an anomalous observation incident that occurred, to a 99.5% confidence, within one second of the Pevatron's coil compression."

"I've heard about that. A lot of other scientists seem skeptical - why aren't you?

"I should be. By all rights, we all should be.

"And?

"The coils were not the only things that underwent compression. Core samples at the incident site show layered compression fractures even beneath the ones generated by the explosion, with identical intensity regardless of the material - only distance from the collision point. In short, no electronuclear force could have been involved.

"So you think you've discovered a fifth force?

"Not in the sense that no one thought of it before. Alan Guth proposed a negative energy field in the 1980's to explain several problems with the model of the Big Bang. We call the associated particle the inflaton.

"Violent little bugger.

"Yes. It essentially ate about one and a half million cubic meters of space.

"And gave it to the Moon.

"A fraction, yes.

"How can we make use of this?

"It's negative and complex energy, in general... Call the decay products of this thing tachyons, if you will-

"Faster than light?

"Communication, possibly. The effects seem to be nonlocal, but it seems we can measure them anyway.

"What about travel? And why does this surprise you?

"We need to know more. The surprise is... that it seems like relativity begins to break down as Planck energy is approached, similar to how Newtonian mechanics breaks down as the speed of light is.

"A new, fundamental understanding of existence. That's your excitement?"

"Yes, senator. We're children again.