mad scientists

The world might end this afternoon.

It might be partly my fault.

How am I supposed to feel about that?

I suppose I ought to ask myself why. I do that sometimes. But there is never a simple answer. There is never a simple why. Today I don’t really bother with philosophical quandaries, the wind from the lake is too cold, and my thin coat does little to stop it. The Chicago Southside is an inhospitable place, run by gangs and filled with derelict buildings. I’ve long since stopped wearing my good coat when I go to work; instead I hunch my shoulders and lean into the wind like everybody else.

The derelict stadium looms against the grey heavens covered in a light dusting of early December snow, like an aging prostitute trying to put on her best face for her customers. It used to be the home of the university football team but was closed down years ago, as part of one man’s crusade against the philistine sports culture that had no place in the hallowed halls of learning. Now its bowels house death instead of sweaty young men, and I wonder whether bombs are preferable to football in the eyes of the university?

Not that they know we’re here. Not that anybody knows.

We’re all shadows, burying like rats under a major city, hiding like criminals. We were supposed to be based deep inside the forest, in a purpose-built facility with white walls and air conditioning. Instead we are huddled together under the west grandstand of the stadium, in the old rackets court. Things did not work out as planned. I don’t know the details, but from what I heard there was a strike amongst the workers that were supposed to build our base. The project would be delayed. And that was something we couldn’t afford.

At least not my boss. He’s a driven man. A genius, of course, we’re the finest collection of minds in this state, but he outshines us all. Terribly nervous though. I would be too. We all know he’s being followed. I suppose he knows too. He’s not to be trusted. He only works for us. Never one of us. At least that’s what they think. How much loyalty can a man have to a country he was not born in? I don’t know. They say he had to flee his home because of his wife. But who trusts a deserter, even if he’s deserted to your side? The clock is ticking, and results are needed, or that elusive green card will be nothing but a dream. There is a war going on after all. And we aim to win it.

That’s why we’re here. Inside a major city. The stadium was empty. It had room to spare. They say the project is perfectly safe. We all know it’s not. I asked my boss how far up this went, because sometimes you just want to know. He shrugged and said that it hadn’t gone very far. The director of the project had never bothered to ask permission. "Nobody knows how to evaluate the risks", he shrugged. "So if we ask, there is only one answer they can give us for the sake of the university and the city. No. And that would have been wrong."

The wrong answer. I pray that they are right in that.

I make my way through corridors and checkpoints, and shed my damp wool overcoat to pull on my lab coat instead.

It is time to break the world.

The tent inside the rackets court looks strangely sinister as I join the crowd of fellow scientists. We all know what’s inside; we have watched the pile grow daily. 400 tons of uranium charged graphite bricks are piled in a flattened sphere, each of them put there by hand. It was decided we couldn’t spare the manpower to do it ourselves, so a gang of locals were employed to. High school dropouts, a street gang called the Back of the Yards Boys. I wonder what they thought. Did they wonder sometimes, why a team of scientists wanted them to build a monument of shiny smooth black bricks in an abandoned stadium?

I would have. This is a monument to darker gods than mine.

The tent seems to be placed there more for our peace of mind than protecting the pile. Like a tabernacle it shields the arch of the covenant from unworthy eyes. Will we be struck down for daring to meddle with the powers of creation? I nod to the people I pass, but I don’t really see them. There are instruments to check, preparations to make. I am reminded of my first dance, so very long ago. How it felt, standing there in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving my sparse facial hair. The choices were between doom and triumph, back then it felt as if the world literally would have ended had I been spurned by the girl I had my eyes on. But I lived to tell the tale.

Will I live to tell this tale?

Inside the pile, the uranium eggs rest in a carefully calculated lattice formation. The slow, steady ticking of the Geiger counters reminds us all that, so far, the control rods keep them in check. It’s amazing that our lives hinge on a couple of 13 ft long two-by-fours coated with cadmium, but that is another one of life’s little ironies. Sometimes you have to see the inherent joke of your own existence. Otherwise you can’t be working here. On the altar of science we are all willing sacrifices.

Nobody eats very much at lunchtime.

The clock keeps ticking, but the minutes crawl by with agonizing slowness. Today is the day. The end of one world, and the birth of another. Will it be heaven? Will it be hell? Nobody knows, even if we tell ourselves we do. I meet the gaze of one of the men in the suicide team. His eyes are blank and strangely colorless. Has he made his will? Did he kiss his wife goodbye? They are all volunteers. In case the experiment goes wrong they will run inside and throw buckets of cadmium solution on the pile in hope of slowing the reaction down. They won’t be needed, everybody says. Nothing will go wrong.

But sometimes…

I walk up the stairs to the viewing balcony. It is filled with people, while the floor below is slowly emptying as the hour approaches. The tent stands there, implacable and massive. The Geiger counters tick like a choir of insane clocks, counting down. My boss is up here with us, his slide-ruler clutched in his hand as if it was a crucifix. Someone hands me an axe. If feels heavy in my hands. It is a fireman’s axe, but the edge is sharp enough to shave with. Why a fireman’s axe? Why not? Perhaps someone thought it was poetic.

If I have to use it, it will be to put out the fire that might end the world.

Gripping the hilt tightly, I walk over to the thin manila rope and stand there. It is stretched tightly over the balcony railing, and a single chop can sever it. In case the mechanism that moves the control rods fails, cutting this rope will cause them to drop down into the pile and save us all. Theoretically. Everything here is just theory today. Tomorrow it will be practice. If there is a tomorrow.

I am the last line of defense. I am the axe man. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this foolish in my entire life.

Silence descends upon us all as the control rods are removed, one by one. The Geiger counters start ticking louder, their voices merging to a static roar as the last rod is pulled out and the reaction begins. The neutrons emitted by the uranium 235 cascade out into the pile at seven percent of the speed of light, continuing the reaction. The graphite bricks barely slow them down. The chain reaction has begun, the roar grows louder. My palms are sweaty now, and suddenly the axe feels less of a joke. We have released the beast.

The reactor has gone critical.

The next few minutes are the longest ones I’ve lived through. Inside the tent, atoms split and reform in an unholy dance of creation and destruction. The balcony is so cold our breath forms clouds in the air. The bottles of Chianti stand forgotten. We are frozen in awe. The eye of god has opened, and we are not destroyed. Not yet.

After four minutes, the control rods are reinserted. The machinery works, and I drop the axe to the floor, my hands suddenly numb. The unshielded pile is quiet once more, but the Geiger counters keeps on ticking. Slower now, marking the seconds taken from our lives.

The world did not end today.

---

At 3:25 P.M. on December 2, 1942, the Atomic Age began inside an enormous tent on a rackets court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. There, scientists headed by the Italian expatriate Enrico Fermi engineered the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction inside Chicago Pile-1.

There was a crowd up there on the balcony, and then there were two:
Henri Fermi and Leo Szilard.
Szilard had started it all 1933 when he crossed Southampton road and the world cracked open and he realized how to make a nuclear reaction work on an industrial scale, and how to make a bomb. He knew then, in a flash of recognition that universal death might come to the world.

The remains of CP-1 is buried in a forest preserve not far from the Chicago airport. It is marked only by a square granite cube in a grassy field, marked: Caution: Do not dig.

CP-1 was a vital part of the Manhattan project; the aim was to find a way to produce the plutonium used inside the "Fat Man" bomb dropped over Nagasaki. People sometimes ask; why was not Hiroshima enough? Did the "Little Boy" not do the job? The debate rages on, but for me as a scientist the answer is a simple one:

Two cities. Two sites. Two kinds of bombs. Uranium and Plutonium. It would be a shame not to take the chance to test them both.

Sometimes the only answer to "why" is "why not?"

[To the best of my knowledge everything in this fiction entry is factual. I recommend listening to this radio documentary, where one will learn of such fascinating things as using nukes to build highways (project Ploughshare, and how one would possibly warn a culture 10 000 years in the future about the dangers of nuclear waste (hint: it ain't easy).]