Saeko traced the path of the light through the trees until a point where it seemed to darken; she stopped dead as the view of the giant crater opened up before them. Isogai continued for a few more steps before coming to a halt at the crater’s edge.
Saeko stood speechless, unable to process the change in the familiar landscape. The crater stood vast and silent, exuding a suffocating odor of freshly uncovered earth. From where she was standing, the gaping hole looked exactly like the figure zero.
A small cry escaped her lips, but Isogai’s reaction was more muted. Never having been to Herb Gardens before, the gaping hole simply looked to him like the beginnings of a construction site for a vast underground facility.
Hashiba had walked a quarter of a way around the rim of the crater. Kagayama stood with one foot against a shrub, peering over the edge. When Saeko and Isogai appeared around the corner they waved them over, feeling strangely jovial.
Saeko stepped forward to introduce Isogai but couldn’t seem to find her voice. Fortunately, Isogai stepped forward and introduced himself, shaking hands with Kagayama and Hashiba — a quick perfunctory shake for Kagayama, a more enthusiastic shake for Hashiba. Still clasping Hashiba’s hand, Isogai stepped towards the edge of the crater and scratched his nose with his other hand.
“That’s a pretty strong smell,” he observed.
“What do you make of it?” Hashiba managed to get free of Isogai’s grip and held his hands up as though in defeat.
“I guess I would have to say it’s a giant bowl-shaped hole in the ground.” Isogai smiled. His cheeks looked slightly flushed.
Hashiba realized that Isogai needed to be brought up to date with events, including the sudden appearance of the crater. Judging from the calm, they were probably the first people to have found it.
The crater looked like a circle at first sight, but a more careful look revealed that it was more of an oval. Its walls were wavy and pleated, like the plastic casing of a caramel custard, the kind you unmolded onto a plate, though this crater was more triangular, pyramid-shaped.
Saeko remembered that she had seen something similar before, during a driving holiday through England’s Peak District with her father. There had been these hills off the side of the road. Her father had explained that they were called “mounts”; they were not naturally formed and had been constructed for some purpose by the ancients. They had reminded Saeko of the mound-like shapes of Japan’s prehistorical tombs.
Isogai stood up straight and put on a serious face, licking his lips. “It looks like a meteor impact, but that’s not it, is it?”
“No recordings of any impact, it seems.” Hashiba explained that they had called the meteorological agency and confirmed that no tremors or vibrations had been recorded, nothing to indicate a meteor strike.
“So it just looks that way,” Isogai said to himself, approaching the crater’s edge. He bent forward and put a finger to the loose soil on the surface. “No external pressure, then. When did you say this appeared?”
“We’re not sure,” Hashiba answered. “Perhaps just an hour ago. At most half a day.”
“So the question is how it appeared.”
“Agreed. We have no idea. As far as we know, it just appeared out of the blue.”
“Okay. So it doesn’t seem to be a meteorite impact. And it’s doubtful that someone turned up with a digger and just dug the thing out.”
“Right.”
“Are you really sure about this? I mean, if that’s the case then we’re all in trouble here.” Isogai took a step closer to Hashiba, pointing a finger at him.
Hashiba was surprised by the accusatory gesture and looked across to Saeko, questioning. “What does he mean, trouble?”
Isogai unzipped the front of his jacket and placed his bag on the ground, as though preparing himself. Saeko preempted him.
“E=MC2.” Her voice was a whisper.
Isogai clapped his hands together and threw his head back; he was becoming increasingly excited by the developments. “Exactly! That’s the problem right there. E=MC2. Einstein’s equation taught us of the vast levels of energy concealed in ordinary matter. If you were to convert even a single gram of matter into pure energy you could instantly boil a stadium full of water. We all know how this translates into weaponry. A nuclear warhead releases a vast tumult of energy through mass atomic fission. Atomic fusion works to the same principles. Nuclear weapons only use a small amount of mass, but we all know the terrifying results. Now, there’s actually another, much more efficient way of releasing this energy: collisions with anti-matter.”
“Anti-matter?” Hashiba repeated subconsciously. He had heard the word before but wasn’t sure of the details.
“Matter is made up of atoms,” Isogai explained, “while atoms, in turn, are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. We know that there are also a set of anti-particles that have the same mass but demonstrate exact opposite electrical charges. When the universe began, these particles and anti-particles existed in equal numbers. For some reason, however, the anti-particles have disappeared. Particles and anti-particles are like pairs of identical twins, if you like. They look exactly the same but have completely opposite personalities. In basic terms you can think of a particle as having a plus-one value and an anti-particle as having a negative-one value. If you put the two together, each cancels out the other and you get a clean slate: zero. In other words, if they meet, they cease to exist.”
“And the existence of these anti-particles has actually been proven?” Kagayama asked, frowning.
“Not just proven. They’re actually being made using a high-energy particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.” Isogai explained how the machine worked and how the particles were kept separate from each other. The others stood listening. “Now, the particle accelerators are not the only places where anti-particles are being made. They’re also formed naturally in space. Occasionally, the particles formed in space have been known to enter our atmosphere. If the anti-particles were to reach the surface through a complex route involving electromagnetic waves and the earth’s internal structure, then it’s possible that they could bring about disappearances of people. Or the formation of a huge crater.
“But let’s think about this for a moment. If this crater was indeed created through the mass disappearance of soil … Well, you can probably see what I meant when I said that we’re all in trouble. Let’s say the 500,000 tons of earth here was transformed through a collision with anti-matter. The byproduct of that would be the immediate and ferocious release of an enormous amount of energy. We’re talking about the destructive equivalent of around 500 billion nuclear warheads. In other words, more energy than if the world’s entire stockpile of nuclear weapons were all detonated at once.”
The horrific destruction that would tear through the earth was beyond imagination, a veritable depiction of hell on earth. The planet would literally be ripped to shreds.
“Of course, if that was the case, I doubt we’d be standing around like this. The world would have ceased to exist the moment this crater was formed.”
The Earth still existed, that much was clear. Saeko kicked uneasily at the earth around her. The soil was soft and warm.
“So you’re saying that the crater was formed some other way, right?” Kagayama’s voice wavered slightly, as though he was afraid to hope.
“Not necessarily,” Isogai warned. “Maybe the world has been destroyed. Maybe we just haven’t noticed yet.”