After dinner they did what most families might do on a weekend night — they watched a movie. Only here it was in a private movie theater and it was a clean release print of Dumbo. Richie sat between his mommy and daddy and was entranced by the color and the sound. Bill and Janice held hands across the back of the seats until their hands went numb. Janice liked having wine with her movie, and Bill enjoyed the president’s favorite, kettle corn.
Bill put Richie to bed. Tomorrow they would ride the horses and maybe fly a kite. It took all of five minutes and Richie was deep in the land of nod. Janice was already in the bedroom, reading the guest book. “Oh my God! Menachem Begin slept in this very room. Alan Dulles. Margaret Thatcher. Cynthia Nixon Cox. Sure that makes sense. Amy Carter! John D. Rockefeller. Bob Hope! This is so incredible.
Bill looked over her shoulder, grabbed the pen, and scribed, Mr. and Mrs. William Hiccock, and the date. He closed the book and said, “Now let’s make a little history of our own!”
Like kids, they jumped on the bed and practiced a kind of diplomacy that would surely cure all the ills of the world.
Having anything one could imagine for breakfast was a reality check that one was indeed in a most exalted place. Chocolate chip pancakes with a face made of cherries and whipped cream was set before Richie by the Navy steward. Janice had her ‘firm’, not runny Eggs Benedict done perfectly; Bill had the breakfast of astronauts, steak and eggs. At nine thirty, the horses were brought around. Being the parents of an eighteen-month-old, they were suddenly challenged with what to do with him?
Janice sighed, “I guess you can ride first; I’ll stay with Richie and go later.”
“That’s no fun; it’s about being together,” Bill said.
As they puzzled with the minor dilemma, one of the Marine guards quietly stepped away.
“Well, maybe we’ll ride some other time.” The resignation in Bill’s voice registered.
“No, Bill. You go, honey.”
Bill’s attention was suddenly totally taken by the Marine who reappeared leading a pony.
“Sir, I couldn’t help overhearing. I got a little guy of my own and this will work just fine if your boy can sit up by himself.”
“He’s a virtual genius at sitting up on his own, isn’t he, Daddy?” Janice said, her whole day starting to take shape.
“Corporal…?”
“Bradley, sir.”
“Thank you, Bradley. How does this work?”
“Well, if you don’t mind an easy walk on the trail, I’d be happy to lead the little cowboy here.”
“Oh, we couldn’t ask you to do that.” Janice said.
“Like I said, I got a little fella, just about his age, and I miss ’im. So you’d be doing me a favor.”
“Corporal, you’ve got the detail.”
Bill lifted Richie into the safety saddle on the miniature stallion, strapped him in, and then mounted his own horse. They rode at a walk through the beautiful trails and breathtaking routes that cut through the rolling hills and scenic valleys. Richie was given to outbursts of laughter as Mommy or Daddy’s horse would raise his tail and do what horses did when they raised their tail. His laughter settled into both parents like warm honey. They could see Corporal Bradley was trying to hide his bittersweet delight, no doubt imagining his own son laughing.
Taking it all in, Bill was prompted to say, “Bradley, if we ever get to come back to this unbelievable place, I’ll ask the boss if you can bring your son. The boys can play together and ride together. What’s your son’s name?”
“Darelle, and if you can get the president to okay that, you got a play date, sir!”
Lunch was as unbelievable as breakfast. Janice had mused about white truffles, and magically, linguini with shaved white truffles appeared. Bill finished off the best French dip roast beef he had ever had, and looked at his watch. It was quarter of two and the professor was due at two. He excused himself from the front porch table where the stewards had set up their lunch, leaving Janice and Richie reading a storybook.
In the visitor’s guest office, Bill fired up the computer and went onto his SCIAD network and had three flagged e-mails from particle physicists on the rings. He read all three e-mails and was actually three minutes late to the helipad where the Sikorsky and Dr. Roland Landau, professor of atomic science at University of California at Berkley was waiting.
“Sorry. I was up at the main house doing a little research, Professor.”
“No problem; thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Professor Landau said.
He was a tall, thin man with a white mustache and thick grey-white hair and steel-blue eyes. His broad shoulders and the way he carried himself told Bill he had probably played ball as a youth.
They made their way up to the main house into one of the meeting rooms and Bill closed the door. “Professor, your claim is, to say the least, astounding.”
“Yes, I am aware that I traversed very hallowed ground to reach my conclusion, but I think the peer review will show my methods are coherent and my hypothesis on firm footing.” The older man’s soft friendly eyes belied the fact that his brain was rapier sharp.
“What will you call this potential discovery?” Hiccock asked.
“There is no better name than that of our quest for all these decades — the God Particle.”
“Well, the Higgs Boson branch of particle physicists will be miffed, but I must say, if your protocol bears fruit, it is an appropriate moniker.”
“We may be on the precipice of an entirely new branch of science and understanding that will catapult man’s grasp of creation a thousand-thousand years. But please, Dr. Hiccock, don’t misunderstand me. I stand on the shoulders of the great Peter Higgs and his theoretical discovery of the boson. I feel my work is consistent with his findings and further advances that breakthrough work.”
Bill took in the professor; last week he had never heard his name, but soon he could be as well-known and revered as Einstein.
“I’m sorry, Professor, but I am still stuck on the fact that, until recently, I’ve never heard of you.”
“Of course, that’s understandable. Right after July 2012, when they found the resonance of the Higgs boson, I applied for a small research grant and was given unprecedented access to the data generated at Cern. It was during my analysis that I found the key to the next level of exploration.”
“May I ask?”
“I recognized anomalies in the decay of the particle that could be proof that the Higgs is not a fundamental particle.”
“Whoa. That’s an astounding thesis, Doctor.”
“If my postulate is correct, then extreme agitation would reveal properties that could open a whole new branch of particle physics.”
“So you want to use the next power level of the LHC to find evidence of a Techni-Force?”
“Yes, if the Higgs boson is not a fundamental particle, but in fact, made up of Techni-Quarks, then we might be able to shake them loose.”
“Or split it.”
“Well, if, as I believe, the Higgs is a product of super-symmetry, then a dark-matter companion to the particle may exist. So we wouldn’t be splitting it as much as shining a light on it to see it’s dark matter shadow, if you will.”
“That could tie together the Standard Model with the inconvenient paradoxes of the 2012 discovery.” Bill’s mind reeled with the possibilities, “I see now why you got the grant, Professor.”
“It all happened very fast from there. I presented to the board at LHC, and they approved my protocol to diagnose the particle under extreme force destabilization.”
“That’s quite a feat, reviewing terra-bytes of data and seeing something every other scientist in the world missed.”