Chapter 10: Depths Within Number Eight

November 3rd, 5:54 am, Japanese Standard Time. The Tokyo University of Frontier Sciences: Department of Chemical Sciences.

One low fluorescent light gently hummed from the ceiling above on the second floor, inside laboratory room 2-8. At one of the lab benches was a laptop running a series of chemical physics simulations. The harsh tapping of human fingers on the laptop's keypad sporadically jostled the gentle hum of the light, while a fume hood's automatic ventilation slowly turned off.

The only human being inside the lab was a tall, skinny young man in his late twenties, dreary-looking, wearing a sweat-stained laboratory coat. On his head was a black eyepatch covering his left eye. There was a noticeably long, faded scar meandering downwards from his covered eye to the bottom of his cheek. His right eye had restless bags, the veins in his pupils red from lack of sleep. He rubbed his temple while his pupil dilated with the changing colors of the frames and text on his laptop screen.

"I wonder...how about? No, that was already tried."

He took a moment to look at series of hand-written calculations in a notebook lying in front of him.

"There should have been some kind of yield in the prior series test runs... some detection, even an outlier. Nothing. Why nothing?"

He set the notebook down and popped on a computer program. It was an atom model. He clicked further inside the atom, separating out the composite forms of the proton and neutron into the quarks. Scrolling inside these quarks generated fuzzy, transparent points emanating in and out of the screen. He right-clicks, causing them to become red, contrasting the soft colors of the surrounding quarks. The top right corner of the model screen read, "Heavy Metal Atom."

"First the non-metals, the then metalloids, now nearly all the metals. If this doesn't work, I'll have to try the whole Periodic Table again, for the..twelfth time." Suddenly the screen flashed with the results of the simulation. Failed Run.

"Well, that officially omits nearly all the theoretically viable heavy metals for further consideration," he huffed heavily, scratching his nose with the ball of his pen while making additional notes in one of his notebooks.

"I thought uranium and its isotopes would have yielded some kind of result by now. If there wasn't any yield from the heavy metals, perhaps I should slightly modify the duration for the more fundamental elements," he mumbled to himself, scrolling to a data sheet on his laptop, viewing the mountains of organized raw data filling the columns, rows and reports he wrote.

"Of all these, only one element came close. A modification to some variables in the experiment maybe?"

He turned his head around and starred at a small map of Japan on the far side white wall. It was seemingly out of place in a laboratory room. He glared intensely at it. His eyes focused on Awashimaura Island, a small island west of central Japan.

Suddenly a beeping sound came from the fume hood. A pleasant voice announced from a large machine situated inside the fume hood to follow disposal protocol when emptying the contents from the device. The young man broke his focus and hurriedly opened the fume hood. He set the failed samples, a tray containing twelve metal spherical orbs into a hazmat disposal unit into the adjacent fume hood.

The device was composed of two large, blue cylindrical tanks, the size of helium tanks. Welded between them was a small, rectangular metal container, yellow in color, covered in biohazard warnings and caution signs. Each of the blue cylinders had a small vertical opening covered in thick, tinted glass. Peering inside the interior one could see a series of oval, dark-purple plasma coils circling the inner interior of the two cylinders. The exterior hull on the yellow box had mounted dials, sensors and hook-ups to several computers in the lab, along with an additional hook-up to the young man's laptop.

He grabbed twelve more marble-sized metal spheres, each one with an extremely small opening facing upwards. They were light tan-grey in color and dull in texture. He stuck six of the spheres in the tray first. He retreated to another bench and carefully injected a minute amount of colorless gas into them. He retrieved and delicately put the other six spheres in a separate part of the tray, the opening-side set directly upwards. He did not inject any substances into them.

With great trepidation, he slipped the tray into the yellow metal container, closed the door and set the dials for various conditions. He closed the fume hood and headed back to his laptop.

"Let's retry this element, one more time, under these conditions," he announced. He scrolled to a different screen and set the voice recorder on his laptop and spoke up, "Trail test one-thousand and thirty seven, element series O-twenty-three, K-two hundred and ninety-three and Gpa nine. Previous trials for this element have yielded only minuscule results, not nearly enough to garner further research. Attempting another test based on suspicions...," he paused, looking at his notes frantically, then sheepishly began again, "-tentative suspicions based on new preliminary calculations of its subatomic properties and potential. Experiment will commence at 6:00 am, thirty-two seconds from now. Experiment duration will last longer this time. It is hoped that there will be some form of confirmation yield indicated by the spectrometers."

The young man's nose twitched. He noticed a new aroma in the air. An earthy bean smell. It punctured the dry, artificial latex and chemical smells typical of the lab.

"Coffee...Professor Masaru must have just arrived," he said, a small smile creeping on his face.

"I'll need to take a quick coffee break after this experiment." He watched the clock above. Seconds until six.

"And here we...go. Commencing experiment."

The device rumbled on loudly. A low, electronic humming sound began filling the fume hood. It oscillated up and down lowly, draining out the incessant lights above the young man.

Waiting for the test results, he popped up a video previously paused on his laptop, labeled "Prime Minister Moves to Modify Constitution; Rejects Current Establishment." It was the Prime Minister of Japan, speaking to a large rally.

"We must not be shackled by foreign entanglements. We must be willing to redefine our military's character to challenge bordering aggressors, to defend ourselves and our loved ones against the undignified all around us. The glorious archipelago will never be what it once was if the pacificists and leftists reclaim the seats of government. We shall rise again as a nation, strong and powerful enough to be a force to be reckoned with. We shall again, be, the Land of the Rising Sun!"

Sweeping applause came from the massive crowd to the minister's concluding remarks. The young man smiled weakly. Using the end of his pen he scratched itchy parts of his skin adjacent to his eyepatch.

A loud, concerned and exhausted voice boomed behind the young man.

"Honestly! I don't care if you use the faculty room couch. Get some sleep!" He quickly paused the video and shrank the screen to the bottom tab on the desktop.

"Good morning to you too Professor Masaru. I smelled the coffee well before you came down the hallway. New recipe?"

"Yes, it is actually. I brought a few cups. Two are for you, but only after you get a couple hours of sleep."

"That's actually an extremely tempting offer Professor, but I'm afraid I'm in the middle of monitoring an experiment right now. I should be completed with this trial by...7:30. I promise to take a break-

"SLEEP!" she said sternly.

"Yes, sleep, for a couple of hours. Then the coffee. Is that agreeable?"

The older woman, clothed in dull brown colors, covered under her white lab coat, holding the box of coffees and a massive brief case, gave another stern, but warm look to the young man.

"Your work ethic is admirable and rivaled only by my brother, though I fear it may be the death of you. Not a second after 7:30. Promise me, alright?"

"I promise," the young man said. Professor Masaru turned back towards the entrance door. She paused and looked at the whiteboards. All four of the walls around them were saturated in calculations and formulas from chemical physics, particle physics, some quantum chemistry notes, and topics well outside the young man's field.

"What kind of particle models are these? Composite quark hadron varieties?" She asked, staring with intrigue at the calculations.

"They're...only hypothetical. Something I just dabbled on in my spare time. They're in the realm of speculation and conjecture."

"Clearly," she replied back, a curved grin on her face. "I don't think the Standard Model permits these types of behaviors in elementary particles, at least to within our understanding of the manifestations of the four forces." She began pointing to a large figure drawn on the whiteboard, "This...this diagram in particular. These properties would give this elementary particle group some alarming behaviors, even by quantum standards."

"As I indicated Professor Masaru, these were just the result of some free time. I played with a few ideas, modified some variables, and here they are. I personally have doubts that such particles could exist," the young man said half-heartedly, staring at the device.

"Nothing wrong with a bit of skepticism, but don't let that trounce your creativity. That's essential," she replied, still taken aback by the weird calculations on the whiteboard. "If this "flight of fancy" was anywhere near true, we'd have to modify the way the Standard Model is designed. So, are these composite quarks?"

"They're smaller, less than 10^-19 in magnitude."

"If you demonstrate these particles to exist, you may become famous."

He looked at the map on the wall for a moment, then turned to Professor Masaru.

"Maybe, but that doesn't concern me overly. Notoriety is overrated."

"Your drive for pure research is why you always work so hard."

"That, and another reason."

"What's that?"

The young man looked over to his laptop. He shrank the video larger temporarily, then dropped the screen to the bottom tab again, still mentally playing the Prime Minister's words "...defend ourselves and our loved ones against the undignified all around us."

"It's a personal one."

"I see," she whispered, momentarily glimpsing the Minister's face shrink down to the bottom tab of his laptop. "I trust your judgement. If you need me, I'll be grading term papers in the first floor lounge. Maybe a power-nap first, then papers. Just call if you would like to talk."

"Thank you Professor Masaru."

"You're welcome. Get some sleep, soon," she said, solemnly emphasizing the last words.

"Understood."

She walked out of the lab. He got up to his feet and turned the lights down and closed the blinds, making the room slightly darker, save for the few humming lights still above him and the two fume hoods. He returned his focus back to the laptop. Large volumes of data flooded the screen logging pages from the device's progress and readings. The humming gyrations, slow and plodding at first were becoming more rhythmic, much like a repeating trance song.

Suddenly the laboratory room began shaking. Glass beakers and test tubes improperly placed on a top shelf in the corner smashed on the cold lifeless ground, shattering into hundreds of glassy shards. He pulled his phone out. The seismic warning message just popped up on his screen.

"Strange. Usually it gets here just before the earthquake occurs; it's never late."

He squinted his eye towards the screen. His vision was blurred for a moment. He rubbed his eye with his shoulder and looked at the screen again.

"5.9, epicenter southeast of Tokyo Bay. Not that big, though sure to wake a lot of people up this early," he said, smirking at the damaged instruments on the floor in the far corner. Seconds later the shaking subsided.

"Not nearly as bad as the one four years ago," he mumbled to himself, turning towards the fume hood. He got out of his seat and inspected the area around the fume hood and the device inside.

"No surficial damage. No electrical problems, and the trial is still progressing as expected. Nothing. Nothing to worry about at al-." He looked up and froze. A small chunk of the foam ceiling tile was jostled out of its spot, dangling directly above his laptop, with the device program settings page still on and accessible.

"No way," he whispered.

The hanging chunk snapped off, falling on the laptop keyboard.

"THE SETTINGS!" he screamed, running as fast as he could. He ripped the debris off the keyboard and threw it in the other corner. He glared at the laptop screen.

"What changed...what was altered?"

A quick gleam revealed multiple variables in his program model altered, changing the internal experimental conditions within the device. Radiating from behind him were a series of mechanically loud, erratic pulses and vibrations from the device.

"Oh no...I'VE GOT TO STOP IT!" he yelled out. He frantically began shutting down all the programs connected to the device before going to the main program settings page.

"Terminate experimental run...terminate experimental run...TURN OFF DAMN YOU! WHY IS IT NOT TURNING OFF!?"

The device began sounding a low beeping alarm, followed by the automatic voice ,"Warning, internal conditions becoming unstable. Tolerance limits are exceeding. Terminate experimental test run or device will produce catastrophic damage."

He ran to the fume hood, violently thrashed the door open and reached in the back for the device's plug-in to the laptop and power cords. He ripped the power cord first, followed by the laptop connections. He ran back to the bench and ducked under the tabletop, his head poking out to watch what transpired.

The device's sporadic hums began to gradually dwindle down, back to the rhythmic pace before. In thirty terrifying seconds, the device shut down all together. An unsettling quiet, a lack of any movement persisted for minutes before the young man came out of his shock.

"Damn," he silently muttered to himself. "It's going to take me weeks to reconfigure the settings and fix the device. Damn it...DAMN IT!"

He cautiously tip-toed over to it.

"Still in overall functional condition, although my samples most likely got destroye-."

"Trial analysis and sequestration successful," a voice on his laptop said.

His eyes dilated as he froze. His heart felt as though it was going to give out. He ran back to the laptop screen, glaring in amazement at the screen's prompt message.

"It was...successful?"

He quickly surveyed the new conditions set in the program from the falling debris. Nearly all variables were tampered with in some degree or form.

"If this is true, then I need to test the samples."

He paced back to the device, slipping on a pair of bright yellow biohazard gloves. With extreme care and delicacy he pulled the tray with the twelve samples out and walked over to the neighbouring fume hood. Inside it was a plastic green rectangular crate, housing twelve compartments. Each compartment contained a spherical glass aquarium the size of a baseball. The aquariums had quarter-sized openings at their tops and contained water with various types of substances and materials, several holding algae and brine shrimp.

The young man retrieved six of the glass aquariums out and placed them in another crate, leaving three aquariums with life, three without. He systematically sorted out six orbs from the sample set; three with the injected substance, three without.

"I'll reserve three each for a safer comparison later, should this test prove my ordeal to be fruitless."

He closed the fume hood, retreated back to the bench and opened up a new program on his laptop.

"Activating release from housing orbs in three, two, one."

Clicking activate on the screen, he fervently turned around and eyed the fume hood, waiting for some form of reaction to take place.

Twenty anxious seconds passed. He checked the data log in the program for any clues. No readings.

"Well, that was a complete failure. The device's program probably misidentified the particles. I'll need to analyse the other orb samples and see if these new conditions can be replica-."

BOOM!

"WHAT IN HELL?!" he shouted. Turning around he saw the interior of the fume hood door and surrounding metal interior evaporating away. He arched his head forward, fixated at this horrific sight.

"THE CRATE...THE ORBS, EVERYTHING'S GONE!"

A lab thermostat was registering a rapid increase in room temperature.

"THAT HEAT! FORTY-NINE CELSIUS!?

A thunderous rolling sound started coming from the interior fume hood. Smoke started spewing from the minor fires and circuit breakers being melted away. He narrowed his vision closer to the electrical flashes. The circuits, multiple loose wires, fires and smoke plumes began dissolving away to nothing.

The chaos inside the fume hood settled down seconds later. Disquiet stillness.

Not a sound could be heard, as though anything with any form of atomic motion froze in time. The young man's senses felt paralysed. He thought to himself, "What did I just do?"

He quickly rummaged through a supply closet, pulling out the top portion of a heavy duty hazmat suit, multiple biohazard containers and several tongs. He restled the hazmat suit on his upper body, making sure to angle his body forwards towards the fume hood.

His heartbeat shot up fast as he took great pains to walk slow enough toward this hazardous area. Every tense tip-toeing motion shot up his spin, as though he were walking towards his soon to come death. He pressed on, his curiosity and intrigue besting his evolutionary instincts to run back.

Only a meter away from the fume hood he slowly raised a pair of tongs in his hands, waiving it around the space just outside the fume hood.

"Still intact...a little further."

Centimeter by centimeter he entered the tongs into the now sterile-looking air in the fume hood, taking great pains to prepare to dash at the first sign of danger. He lowered the tongs on a dissolved, malformed piece of rubber matting in the corner edge closest to him, the front ends of the tongs slowly dissolved away, leaving the handles and generating a bit of heat. He quickly dropped the tongs on the mat. The rest of the body was unscathed except the handle part that landed on a warped part of the mat.

He stared blankly at them for a moment.

6:32 AM

"Professor Masaru will be expecting a break from me in an hour. I need to clean this mess up and take my remaining samples to my own lab for further analysis," he mumbled, releasing exhausted yawns from his stressed, tired state. He looked towards the other fume hood housing the device.

"You too."

The young man began rapidly backing up all the accumulated data from the main database to his laptop. He made several copies for himself, then altered several recorded variables in the data entry logs, re-introducing them back into the main database. After several minutes of computer work, he brought a small cart out from the supply closet and delicately placed the heavy device on it, leaving it by an eye-wash station near the entrance. He looked back at the malformed fume hood.

"A little more time, then I can replace the glass and interior metal sheets inside."

For twenty minutes he used his cellphone to photograph hundreds of photos of the fume hood, the laboratory whiteboards with all his jotted notes, the program settings and comparisons of the tongs after interior exposure within the fume hood. He also made a series of quick audio logs to document passing thoughts on what his most reasonable steps should be, and erased all his notes and calculations of the whiteboards.

"I don't have much time left. Surely it should be safe now?"

He walked over again, still wearing the hazmat gear, this time holding another pair of tongs and a radiometric device. His pace was faster and more assured. He inched towards the interior, slowly waving the tongs around.

No reaction.

He placed the tongs on several intact pieces of metal and the rubber mat inside. Still no reaction. Now he tried purposely placing the tong ends on malformed parts of the interior. First he tried the degenerated rubber matting corner. No reaction. He rubbed the tongs on other exposed, deformed pieces. Nothing happened, no alarming disintegration or reaction of any kind. He then placed the tongs down inside the fume hood and held the end of the radiometric device. He began sweating, waiting for some lingering elements of his experiment as he waived it around in the air and near every surface. No sounds or indications. No radioactivity.

"This is...unfathomable. The possibilities...Emiko...Emiko is the only person I can trust this information with."

A small, twisted grin gradually formed on his face.

"I...I did it. I found them."

7:43 PM

A huge thunderstorm roared outside in the dark evening hours of greater Tokyo, the heaviest downpours in Mikata. The guerilla rainstorms and extreme weather jostled and drenched the smaller city west of Tokyo, generating extremely loud thunderous echoes from the chaotically charged atmosphere.

Lightening struck a metal flag pole; the flash instantly filtered through a small basement window, spooking the young scientist in the lower foundations of his dwelling. The young man, frantic and singularly wide-eyed, shuffled around his desks in the basement of the make-shift laboratory of his home.

" WHERE THE HELL IS IT?" He roared out, his voice temporarily drowning the low booms of thunder and constant downpour of rainfall outside the basement window. He looked up to the small stream of water dribbling from the bottom of the window, down the concrete walls into several nearly full buckets. He noted that he would need to empty them when he had a moment. Feverishly searching around his laptop, the drawers in his desk, the large aquarium with native Japanese fish and several bookcases surrounding the buckets, he then patted his laboratory coat on the outside by his thighs. He then slipped his hand in the back pocket.

"THE WHOLE TIME!?"

He pulled out his cellphone, now scrolling to his text messages page.

"Still no reply. Why has she not replied back yet?"

He turned around to face the back corner of the basement. Next to a large, weathered mirror was the device on a metal table with a haphazard-looking fume hood constructed around it.

"At least this trial will be pre-programmed to follow the steps, while avoiding collateral," he mumbled, taking a second to stare yet again at the device. He grabbed a small green box containing dozens of spherical metal orbs, stared at it for a moment, then placed the box back down next a long cylindrical device. It was the size of a small fire extinguisher, dull-grey in color, littered with digital sensors and indicators. The center of the cylinder was composed of a rigid glass center housing a large metal orb connected to the ends of the cylinder. A sticky note was placed on it reading, "Next Phase; Preliminary Design."

He began erratically pacing around his basement lab, mumbling incoherently to himself before several minutes lapsed. His tunnel-vision thinking led him right next to the device again, but he instead shifted his attention to the mirror. He walked over and noticed something. Himself.

"I'm...I'm a mess. My lab coat... I don't think I've changed or washed it in two days," he paused, sniffing a corner of the fabric by his chest and arms.

"Three days...just a bit longer. A shower after this... I...probably should wash immediately...or...I need to make sure this experiment goes well. In the mean time," he paused, pulling his cellphone out and checking the clock, " I can use this large amount of time to do a full record of my thoughts and the processes of my experiment...some details...at least until this new analysis series is over. So many thoughts...I need...I need this, to get a personal record, for myself."

The young man slowly walked away from the mirror towards the old wooden desk his laptop was situated on. His left foot caught up in several electrical cords on the ground, causing him to nearly trip and accidently rip the cords from their connections.

"DAMN IT! The last thing I need is for this mess to trip up my feet. Prioritizing a more organized setup should be my next chore," he said before hearing water from the buckets dribbling over the side towards his basement drain. He huffed a defeated sigh.

"After draining the buckets of course."

He adjusted some of the cords on the ground to follow a more collective, uniform path towards the back of his desk, away from his feet. He pulled the chair out, sat and gave a weak yawn. He prepped an audio and video recorder. Looking into the camera, he coughed in his fist, prepping his thoughts and contemplating the best way to start a summarized personal record of his exploits and discovery. He continued staring blankly at the laptop screen for another minute, briskly downing half a warm energy drink laying on a coaster in the corner. He momentarily eyed over some tidbits of data streams on the corner screen, making some minor notes until finally mustering up a coherent set of thoughts.

"Log three-hundred and sixty-nine. November 4th, 2015. Time; 7:50 PM. Weather conditions are cyclonic and extreme. This log is a general summation of the overall research process and findings I have undertaken on contested elementary particles, as well as my finalized conjecture I've saved in various folders. The purpose of this video is to document the chronology and broadly define my findings, discoveries...and thoughts."

The young man paused for a moment. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and cracked his back, then cracked his neck. He continued on.

"On May 3rd, 2015 I was performing a series of experiments related to my doctorate in the University of Tokyo Frontier Science Faculty labs. While waiting for the data logs to these experiments, I began toying with ideas on particles smaller than quarks, even smaller than the hypothesized sub-components of quarks, preons. The Standard Model of particle physics best describes our understandings beyond the atomic level, but on a whim, I wrote out a series of modified equations with adjusted variable values. After a long time of conjecturing, my calculations predicted something not too unusual, a new subatomic particle, smaller than preons. Research and mathematical alterations tend to routinely predict particles that most of the time do not exist, or have no possible way of experimental verification. So, I was entirely skeptical with the resulting predictions. This was after all more of an entertaining thought that's been a passing fancy of mine. I ran the calculations through various different simulations and models...each gave the same result, the predicted subatomic particle, but with no discernable behavior or lists of probable behaviors. I decided, out of curiosity to further test these model predictions and see if further variable changes from my calculations would yield anything significant."

He paused, regaining his thoughts and jotting several notes on his journal to organize the next bits of information.

"My first experimental trials indicated that the current physics and chemistry equipment I had access to at the labs needed to be redesigned, altered to analyze subatomic particles with any degree of verifiability. My monetary capacities were and still are limited, as was the academic legitimacy of this research, so inquiring with more advanced laboratories around the world was out of the option. Therefore I went to work on engineering a modified spectrometer through eleven preliminary prototypes on a device... the one in the back corner of this room is design twelve from the "two hundred and sixty-nine" series," he paused, moving out of the way of the camera and zooming in on the device in the back of his basement for a few moments, then returning back to himself.

"Over time my intrigue with these undetectable particles began waning. No results, nothing to show forth, so after a month's work I became discouraged. That is until I tried using fundamental elements in my studies, as large a variety as I could. Of course with the bias of hindsight I should have tried using elements of a simpler variety instead of focusing on the alkali, earth and basic metals...so much wasted time, even when each chemical calculation predicted some kind of yield. I still wanted to perform the experiments to see if anything...anything could be detected. Nothing, until I tried Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, Sulfur, Phosphorus, and Oxygen. These five yielded something of a statistical indication that these elementary particles might exist, or at least through these ones, so in a way, I tentatively confirmed that such particles exist, though I wanted more evidence. I know quark confinement states that one may never be able to actually observe quarks. I was maddened into looking for something even smaller than particles my entire discipline states cannot be observed...and yet. I wanted to isolate these particles, if that was all possible. That's where my life became completely devoted to modifying design twelve into twelve ~ two hundred and sixty-nine...how to observe such particles in isolation. How could I observe these particles and isolate them for a long enough time to analyze them, learn more about them, see if they work with the standard model or not."

Another flash of lightening pierced the damp cool space of the basement, catching his attention for only a moment, before continuing on.

"In late August I received my doctorate, allowing me absolute focus on this project. I opted out of other important types of research and social activities for the one I became obsessed with. The initial findings with those elements I mentioned? I plugged them in to a systems model of the elementary particle, and it predicted a series of very strange...very alarming set of behaviors these particles could exhibit. Skeptical, yet curious, I pushed these predictions to the side and continued onwards, until approximately 6:30 am this morning, I saw those predictions unfold in front of my very eye."

An ambulance siren pierced the acoustic environment for a few moments, followed by a wave of rolling thunder. Seconds passed before only the gushing waves of rain above him could be heard in the background.

"I have another entry log in my experiments file that elaborates on what occurred in the lab. Suffice it to say, what occurred was based on an absolutely improbable sequence of choosing the right element, add to that geophysical and deficient structural design interventions, producing unintentionally programmed conditions," he paused, chuckling at the memory of his reaction to the events earlier, " that gave me the data to confirm the predictions. Essentially the isolated particles, in small, disperse quantities relative to one another and other macroscopic particles, behave inertly, much like leptons. However, if coalesced in large sets, in clumps as large as hadrons under exceedingly immense temporary pressures and temperatures, they behave like hadrons, strongly interacting with all forms of particles and matter around them...degenerating their bonds. This behavior is akin to the reactions... of antimatter. The reactions degenerate surrounding matter into a slew of various elementary particles at high energy. What's important to note is that the process is not efficient like in antimatter reactions; energetic release is not the dominant product of the reaction. The particle degenerates matter, other larger particles. On the macroscopic scale I witnessed, nearly everything...disintegrates. Given that I sequestered these elementary particles from Oxygen, plus the results of this reaction, I'm giving this particle the colloquial name Oxygen Destroyer. It's not accurate, but it's the element that vilified my research, and gives me full appreciation of what this particle under suitable conditions can do to macroscopic environments. The events at the lab also seemed to have discounted prior calculations and predictions for an extreme burst of energy, until I double-checked my calculations..."

A low bumping sound came off the device in the back corner. The metal sheets outlining the sides of the fume hood began oscillating slightly, though not enough to endanger the trial. The young man returned back to his recording.

"I was wrong...very, very wrong. What I did in that lab...what could have happened...When I began these trials about an hour ago, I asked myself why there wasn't a much more energetic reaction. Upon further inspection of my entropy calculations, it appears my yields, the amount of particles I managed to isolate from Oxygen, were extremely low. Had the mistakes back at the university caused the device to sequester more particles into those metal orbs...the energy and degeneration that would have followed... could have evaporated me, the whole lab, the building. It could have evaporated the whole of Tokyo."

His heart beat raced at the bare, gritty reality of verbally articulating what haunted him for the last hour. His imagination generated a slew of images on the scope of death, fear, horror and destruction that could have been wrought by such a trivial, yet apocalyptic mistake. Shuddering when he compared it to the effects of a nuclear blast, he depressingly concluded in a moment's thought that he'd prefer a Tsar-sized nuclear blast compared to his device's potential.

"I've come to realize my curiosity is a driving component of my scientific mindset. My curiosity is what gave me my easy disposition for understanding the make-up of reality. It could have also just as easily... withered away thirteen million people. As unintentional as that was, I cannot afford to make such a mistake of such magnitude again. So, given that admission, an important question that could be asked by myself later on, or anyone who may see this one day, is...why is that machine behind me running another trial?"

He sheepishly grabbed a damp cloth at the corner of his desk and profusely rubbed his forehead and the sweat-saturated skin around his eye patch, smiling at the next set of thoughts pumping through his mind.

"I still believe my work, as dangerous to humanity as it could be, can also be of great benefit to it. Oxygen Destroyer, if applied properly, could be a major player in environmental remediation. Large scale waste facilities could effectively degenerate our species' left over filth to nothing. Global massive enviornmental problems such as the plastic gyres, superfund sights and oil spills might be amendable. It could pave the way for another revolution in the field of particle physics, the origins of the universe...the applications are truly unquestionable."

He stopped for a moment. His optimistic demeanor quickly melted away as his soul functioning eye grew a slight twitch, his face getting flustered and hot.

"More importantly, it could be beneficial to my country; the people of my country. After Awashimaura, I've always's had this subconscious, bedrock notion in my mind, this nagging want, more powerful that my scientific curiosity...to protect the people I love. I was powerless, helpless then. Now? Now I want to find some way to help ensure Japan could defend itself. Life in this part of the region has been on a knife edge for the last fifty years. No guarantee of peace? Of mind? My country can't rely on our allies to always fight our battles or defend us. We're so close to those who would do away with us in a millisecond if they had there way. My discoveries could altogether change the geopolitics of this region, to keep Japan safe. My experiences with their kind of evil has only strengthened my resolve."

He looked away, glancing at a torn photo of a small boy and a young woman, presumably his mother playing in the sand on a beach.

"Yet the kind of power and terror that I've uncovered...is it too much? If our government got hold of this discovery...if anyone got hold of my work...the filthy ones across from us, or anywhere... humanity would liquidate itself. Emiko is the only person I'd trust right now with this kind of information. She's... grounded, she's... practical, understanding. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me since...after Awashimaura. She... Emiko...I...I miss you," he whimpered, several tears slowly sliding down his right cheek. He grabbed the cloth and rubbed his face, trying to regain his composure.

"Emiko...she's been the only one I've really cared for...the only one that's cared for me. The warmth...the little parts of her that I adopted into my own character. I...I might be pushing her away...damn my crazed curiosity...DAMN MY CURIOSITY!DAMN MY TUNNEL-VISION! DAMN ME! I DON'T DESERVE HER! I-."

He wiped more tears of his right cheek. He felt a bit lightheaded and rubbed his temple, wishing he allowed himself some sleep. He lazily looked up at his diploma pinned on the wall sitting above the bench. He silently read to himself, "This Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Physics, presented by the Tokyo University of Frontier Sciences, is hereby awarded to Daisuke Serizawa."

"What hell have I brought on the world? What have I done Emiko?"