| abstract
| - Beneath a sky awash with lightning strokes, a Ferrari raced along rain swollen streets. Lester Knight Chaykin was behind the wheel, listening to heavy metal riffs on a Classic Rock station; he had changed the dial when the other station played a flash flood warning one too many times for his liking. Lester could feel the speed of the car as a taut pressure against his entire body. He enjoyed it—Lester had never done anything slow in his life. It had taken him only four years to get his Doctorate; it had taken him a mere six weeks to write his thesis; and he had brought the world's most complex scientific experiment from concept to prototype in just sixteen months. And now it was time to put the pedal to the metal and see how fast his experiment could move. A lightning bolt split a tree in a field thirty yards away. Lester didn't notice it. Bringing his Ferrari to a screeching halt, Lester suppressed an urge to run into the elevator. A man who was about the solve the fundamental mysteries of the universe had to learn dignity sooner or later. But Lester enjoyed living at a fast pace. The slowness of the elevator irritated him. The unnecessary delay of the security door deepened his frustration. He waded through the mess of papers, electronic cords, empty soft drink cans, and pizza boxes that was his workspace. Great minds are rarely tidy, he had once said. Lester flipped a switch and with a beep his computer jerked to life. He entered his password—more unnecessary security—and then had to input the parameters of his experiment. He waited for the computer to compile the data; a computer could calculate a trillion times faster than mortal man and it still would not have been fast enough for Lester. The storm outside struck the building twice. Again, Lester did not notice. The experiment was finally on-line. Atomic particles were driven in a magnetic field to nearly light speed, and then smashed into each other; from its Xray emissions, Lester would be able to reconstruct what happened when the universe was born. But other forces would be at work on this experiment tonight. As Lester leaned back and swallowed a cold soft drink, a bolt of lightning struck the building again. The bolt charged the particles that whipped around the atomic accelerator. Something extraordinary happened. The particles fused and exploded, opening a hole in time and space. The rift expanded like an explosion, breaking through the wall, and engulfing Lester. He had not expected anything like this. He felt like he was in a car that was suddenly accelerating to light speed; the pressure was unbelievable. The air had become lightning, and then with a flash, burst into nothingness. Only an empty space was left in the laboratory where Lester had been...
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)