Excerpt: When the World is Over

Prologue
Geneva, Switzerland

She walked with purpose, her sensible yet feminine heeled shoes softly clicking against the tiles. She held her head high, her face impassive, her blonde hair still curled into an immaculate bun at the nape of her neck and her lipstick shining ruby red as if she had just applied it. Her white coat, buttoned somewhat suggestively just below her breasts and just above her knees, accentuated rather than hid her figure, and when she walked her hips swung a little. She was deliberate, measured and controlled, and yet feminine, beautiful and unattainable; as she walked, they watched, and she knew they did.

She entered her office still in character. She carefully placed her coat upon the coat rack, instructed her personal assistant to close the door and step outside, and smoothed her grey skirt underneath her legs to avoid creasing it as she sat at her desk. As the door closed, however, and at the moment when she was alone, her head dropped and her body slumped. She removed her shoes, and that tiny hole in her stockings that was hidden around her toes became noticeable again.

“Souhund”, she snapped, as quietly as she could, in case someone could hear her through the practically soundproof doors that her clients had installed when she had been brought in to manage this project. She managed to suppress the tears that had sprung to her eyes, not because she wanted to but because she knew that the mascara she was wearing wasn’t as waterproof as its advertising campaign had claimed. In her business – more accurately, as a woman in her role in her business – she needed the ability to be controlled, collected, educated, a bitch to those she managed and demure to those who had hired her, masculine in personality but feminine in appearance, at all times. She had to be seen by her workers to be capable of making the hard decisions that had to be made. She had to be seen by the government representatives and large business sponsors that had put a lot of money into the project as someone who was articulate and capable enough to be trusted with something of that magnitude. Most of all, though, she had to be seen by the client to be someone who would give the right image but defer to their “better judgment” when they demanded it.

Unfortunately for Ana, she had just been required to attend a lengthy meeting where the client dictated his “better judgment” to her for more than five hours. The project was going well, he said, in such a decisive way that she knew she had to not only understand him but believe him. The project was ahead of budget and ahead of schedule, he said. At least she knew that part of his argument to be true. Yes, the project was ahead of time and ahead of money, and that seemed to be all that the rich American investors and their equally greedy government counterparts were interested in. Whether the project could be done in the least amount of time possible, with the least amount of money expended as possible. How soon they could all go out for an afternoon business lunch and guzzle wine and scotch and toast to their success, and how soon they could hold a press conference and announce to the world that they had done what nobody else had done before. Whether the project actually worked and whether it was safe – that was her problem to deal with, not theirs. The client expected and assumed that she was competent enough to keep the project continuing towards success, and beyond that assumption he did not want to know about the project itself. While he and his investors were to be entitled to claim the ultimate success of the project as their own, any failures were to be attributed entirely to her. Any uncertainty about the success of the project, where there was even the slightest hint that the project was not or would not be going well, became the subject of an impromptu meeting. At such a meeting, the cause for the uncertainty became her failure and where she was forced to justify the actions of herself and her team, and reassure the client they should remain on the project. However, despite being a brilliant economist, manager and all-round bullshit artist, the client had no technical scientific training and some days could not distinguish between his iPhone and his children’s Nintendo DS. Ana had learned at the beginning of her tenure that he would be more than willing to be “reassured” by her explanations of her technical work, if it meant that the investors wouldn’t realise that he didn’t know that the only words that he understood in her documents were the conjunctions.

She knew from the moment she was called away from the project floor that morning that the client wanted to see her about one of those failures. She dismissed the slightly panicked looks of her team, stopped briefly by her office to collect her project management folder, neatly colour coded into the different technical specifications, projections and other miscellaneous evidence that she could use to reassure the client, and had waited patiently at the client’s door until his personal assistant had allowed her to enter even though she knew that he was more than likely playing solitaire rather than completing urgent work. She had sat through “his” part of the meeting, where he almost demanded that the project was going well, that the investors were happy and that the project was on time and on budget, and she nodded and concurred in the proper way. She gave a presentation on the project status to him, skipping over the slight anomalies that had occurred in the previous six months, hoping that the slight discomfort that she was feeling was more to do with the fact that the meeting had gone over lunchtime than with the information that she was presenting. The client nodded and concurred in the proper way, and she felt relieved that she, again, had managed to escape the meeting with her image and therefore her job intact. She had just smoothed her skirt, preparing to stand and leave the office, when he leaned back on his chair, looked her in the eye and asked her about Greg. In the client’s eyes, her expression and demeanour did not change; he did not hear her small sigh and did not realise that she had settled back into the chair and physically prepared herself for a long meeting.

Greg was an American, a member of the small delegation of minions and lackeys who had accompanied Jed Harrison, the biggest, richest and most demanding of the overseas investors, when he had arrived twelve months ago to inspect his investment. Greg had been the delegation’s scientific expert and he had more letters after his name than the actual letters that made up his name, however Greg was almost ten years younger than she was and looked like a sixteen-year-old. He had arrived in the country speaking only English and was arrogant enough to expect everyone else to fit in around his language difficulties, and still he treated Ana like she was his junior. On their first meeting, he had introduced himself with a warm handshake and a grin, then proceeded to swan around her area, poke and prod her experiment and disrupt her team without another word. On their second meeting, he had arrived at her desk unannounced and had instructed her to discontinue the project. He claimed that the experiment was unsafe, that the potential for causing irreparable damage to the team, the facility, the region and even potentially the Earth was too great. He listed the possibility of the creation of stable black holes, the possibility of releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere, he listed six or seven other wild theories that were either disproved or of such a low probability that their chances of actually occurring were so remote that they were not considered to be possibilities. She had asked him for a logical, highly structured report setting out his findings and their probabilities, and he had stated that he did not want to take formal action.
“In other words,” she had said in her most clipped tone, speaking English with a better American accent than he had, pausing for a moment to make sure he knew it. “In other words, your boss would end your career if you dared to recommend that he pull out of a multi-billion dollar project, particularly if you based your recommendation on theories that have already been disproved by CERN and the American Physical Society.”
“Those studies did not take account of…” he began to respond, but she cut him off.
“Unless I see some formal documentation from you, I am unable to act on your recommendations.”
“Even if it could potentially mean the end of the world?”
“Even then.”
She waved him out of her office but, when he didn’t leave, she stood and physically escorted him out. She was tall and strong, he was shorter and thinner, and he went without any argument. Whether deliberately or otherwise, he had left a copy of his private notes in a haphazard mess on her desk; deliberately, she had not drawn this to his attention when she had removed him from her office. She had to admit that, despite the lack of organisation in his thoughts and his record keeping, his research was particularly thorough and well-argued. He had taken factors into account that she had never considered and had never even attempted to explain to her team, much less the client, but she convinced herself that they were irrelevant, that Greg had misinterpreted the available data and that his probability predictions were greatly inflated. She couldn’t admit that he might have been more intelligent than he was. Still, the research stayed on her mind, she began to lose sleep over it, and she considered taking it to the client. Still, like Greg, she understood that her career would be over should she consider recommending that the project be ended for safety reasons, particularly based on the research of one lone American boy who, for all his qualifications, hadn’t yet reached his thirtieth birthday. At the end of the month, she opened her desk drawer and methodically referenced the file under O for opinions, cross-referenced with D for debunked, and hoped it stayed there.

Jed Harrison and his delegation eventually returned to America, but Greg stayed with the team. The client explained that Mr Harrison had made his corporation’s funding conditional on Greg’s continued involvement with the project. Ana accepted this decision as the client’s better judgment, explained it to her team as her final and unchangeable decision, and began eleven months of assigning Greg tasks as far away from potential research opportunities and potential investigative work, and as close to fetching coffee and filing documents, as she could.

When the first strange and unintended matter was created six months ago, she called it anomalous. With a project of this magnitude, there was certain to be events that had not been accounted for, that had not even been imagined. Covertly, she assigned Leon, her most senior team member, to investigate its potential for disaster, and she avoided Greg in the hallway. Publicly, she briefed the client on the exciting new possibilities that this new discovery could bring, posed for media stills with her team and the investors, and continued to believe in the project and its work. When her senior team member reported a very low risk of public harm caused by the anomaly, she ensured that, at the very least, her PA leaked the contents of the report to the media.

When the second and subsequent anomalies occurred, they increased in size, magnitude, frequency and danger. To the client, Ana promoted them as exciting, beneficial and intended. To her team, they were insignificant and could be ignored. As well as her managing duties, she now worked long hours with a small group of heavily experienced scientists, in order to determine the cause of the anomalies, and she distributed Greg’s original research for comment as a high security, highly classified internal memorandum. The research was largely condemned – the responses cited a lack of credible scientific evidence, the existence of irrelevant considerations and failure to take relevant considerations into account, arguments that CERN had discounted and arguments that made large assumptions that could not necessarily be substantiated. She had never had any occasion to disbelieve the advice and recommendations of her senior colleagues, and yet she wondered whether their response, like her own, stemmed from an unwillingness to admit that they might be wrong and someone else might be right.

When Greg walked into her office uninvited, as she had known he would, and silently presented her with the formal report that she had requested eleven months before, she, equally silently, placed her own report, with her colleagues’ reports attached as an appendix, on top of his. He skimmed through the executive summary, turned, and for the first time since she had met him he escorted himself out of the room. She knew now that he had gone straight to his boss. She was just thankful that he had not gone straight to the media.

Somehow, she managed to convince the client that Greg’s ideas were appreciated but misguided, that the team had adequately addressed his issues and that she believed what the client needed her to believe – that the project was going well. The client would speak to Jed. She was advised to encourage Greg and offer to support his development and a manner of other things that indicated to her that she should patronise him so that one day he could be as knowledgeable and wise as her. As she left the room, her head held high and her face composed, for a brief moment she wondered if she had done the right thing.

Ana leaned down behind her desk to retrieve an apple from the bag stowed in her bottom drawer. She had considered leaving the building to buy a bar of good quality chocolate and a large creamy latte from the café down the street, and part of her told her that she deserved it. Still, she retrieved the apple and examined it, her brain attempting to convince her taste buds that they should accept the fruit as willingly as they would a chocolate. As she straightened up, however, she noticed that she was no longer alone in the room, that Greg was in her doorway watching her. She was suddenly aware that he had more than likely seen her bottom sticking up from behind her desk, and she smoothed her skirt down – a nervous gesture that she managed to disguise as an authoritative one. Her feet found her shoes and she stepped out from behind her desk, attempting to take control of the floor space.
“Greg,” she said finally, in English, with the hint of a foreign accent that she did not have the energy to hide. “I think that it is about time that you and I had a talk, do you agree?”
Greg did not respond, and Ana noticed for the first time how thin, pale and sick he looked. Alarmed, she reached for his arm, but instead of directing him to the door she led him to her own personal ergonomic chair. He sank back into her leather seat and closed his eyes; she, not willing to sit in the smaller visitor’s chair in case he thought he was suddenly in charge, perched on her desk and primly crossed her right leg over her left.
“I know it is a shock,” she said, in a soothing voice. “Particularly when you are used to being the top of your class at University and the star of your team at work. But sometimes you need to learn to defer to older people who have more experience with you, both in relation to the project and in general.”
She paused to let him have a chance to speak; he did not.
“Don’t consider this a failure,” she continued, even though by her standards it was. “You gave the team some valuable insight into the project that has helped us to understand the nature of the experiment. You acted conscientiously and with integrity in bringing your concerns forward, and if you want to return to America I would be happy to give you a letter of commendation to include with your resume.”
Greg sat up, but his eyes remained closed.
“You need to come down to the floor,” he said, his voice tired. “There has been an accident, we need your expertise.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head. “It’s bad.”
“Bad?” she asked, and he didn’t answer. She knelt before him, but he didn’t look at her. Her panic rising, she grabbed his arms and shook him, and he lazily opened his eyes.
“Bad as in something broke? Bad as in someone got hurt? Bad as in someone got killed?” she asked, her voice becoming more and more shrill as she went on. “For God’s sake, Greg.” She fought the urge to grab and shake him again.
“Bad as in the end of the world,” he said, and his eyes closed again. “That bad.”
She stared, paralysed, until she began to realise that he was speaking literally. “By when?” she asked.
“A month, give or take,” he said.
“Reversable?”
“Leon has assembled the team and they’re working on it, but he doesn’t think so at this stage. That’s why we need you.”
Ana slowly raised herself up and off her knees, straightened her top and smoothed down her skirt. She removed her coat from the coat rack and placed it over her shoulders, only fastening the buttons between the bottom of her breasts and her thighs. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror to make sure that her hair was still tied neatly at the base of her neck with no apparent strays, and that her lips still shone ruby red. She took her time, just so that Greg would think that she was back in control; appearance, now more than ever, was everything.
“Are you coming?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly.
“I don’t think I can,” he moaned, but he climbed out of her chair anyway and joined her at the door.
She smiled at him, her eyes full of a compassion that he, and nobody that he worked with, could ever remember seeing before. “Stay here and collect yourself. We can survive without your expertise for ten minutes.”
She felt a sudden tension between them, and she knew what he was thinking. She knew that he wanted to tell her that she had been “surviving” without his expertise for the last twelve months. He wanted to tell her that, had she listened to his expertise in the first place, the accident would not have happened. He didn’t say anything, and she was glad she didn’t.

She turned away from him, and walked out of her office and into the larger foyer area, where her PA and a number of other office workers were doing their best to make it look like they were working.
“Livia,” she said, leaning closely so that only her girl could hear, speaking English because she knew that most of the other girls wouldn’t understand. She knew that these measures would not stop the gossip and innuendo in the administrative room, but she hoped that they would buy her enough time so that she could leave the room without having to hear it.
“Get the client on the phone, tell him to call the investors and arrange a phone hookup for this afternoon, tell him to meet me on the floor in ten minutes, and tell him that it might be in our best interests to schedule a press conference tomorrow morning.”

With the excited chatter of the administrative assistants exploding around her, Ana walked towards the project floor. She walked with purpose, allowing her heels to click softly on the tiles and her hips to swing a little more unnaturally than usual. She was deliberate, measured and controlled, just in case they were watching her.