The Trattorian physics department’s best and brightest eagerly awaited a revolutionary presentation by an ambitious and upstart physicist. Rumors had been spreading that she had solved the ultimate problem in physics and that after many months of mathematical verification she would present her work.
Dr. Liang strode towards the podium, smiling enthusiastically at her peers.
“Welcome, fellow Trattorian physicists. Today is an illustrious moment in the history of our careers, and our community. I have formulated a theory that unites both our beloved concepts gravity and quantum, into a single, elegant model that has the power to predict any experiment conducted in our universe. And how close are we to saying my theory is a law?” she asked, pinching her fingers together tightly. “That is how close we are- an infinitesimal distance. All that stands between Trattoria, and another Nobel Prize in Physics, is the discovery of a single particle, my creatively-named Liang’s boson. Find this elusive particle, and we will have the knowledge of the gods themselves.” Looks of approval and nodding started spreading amongst the scientists.
A scientist stood up and inquired “Your research papers indicate the mass of the Liang’s boson is many orders of magnitude greater than any other particle we have had to look for. After conducting my own calculations, I have determined that there is a significant possibility that in the process of looking for it we may create an explosion that would obliterate our local cluster of galaxies. Is this true?”
Dr. Liang shined a sweet and innocent smile, replying simply “The experiment would have to critically fail first.”
---
(Six months later)
Dr. Liang paused for a moment beside her two Secret Service guards. All that stood between her and the controls that would start her experiment were a few yards. It would be only a few minutes until her glory.
The control room itself was not much special- it was simply one of hundreds lining the circumference of the particle accelerator. Its only distinguishing feature was that she chose it to activate the accelerator from.
Suddenly, a Secret Service man’s earset buzzed.
“Yes, this is Agent Aegeus, how may I be of assistance?”
“This is Lieutenant Ashton warning of potential enemy intruders. A few have appeared to have infiltrated the FTL Hadron Accelerator despite our security measures.”
Agent Aegeus was incredulous. “How is this possible? The planet Soledad is completely cloaked amongst the stars and defended by a grand naval blockade...”
“Agent, this is not the time to be asking questions. They appear to have
“Our primary group of enemies is a group of protestors believing the experiment will cause the destruction of the universe. These scientifically ignorant nutjobs are well armed and should be treated with caution.
On the other hand, we have insane fundamentalist-Triangulist knights fighting for their pope. They claim the discovery of the Liang’s boson would be heresy and disprove the existence of a divine. Additionally, they lack modern weapons but be aware they have newfangled bullet-proof armor from GR 2010. Due to the immediate experiment we are unfortunately forbidden from supplying extra troopers until the experiment is completed or aborted. I wish you luck.”
Agent Aegeus complained “Damn protocol! Send us back up right awa...”
Dr. Liang: “Well, what are we waiting for? It looks like they have a few guards posted here already, so we should be fine.”
She and her guards then begin running in the general direction of the control room.
A few of the aforementioned soldiers disperse and move into position to engage the fundamentalist knights, firing as they charge.
While the others’ bullets merely bounce off the knights’ armor, a well-placed shot by the hardsuit downs their hero.
The other soldiers move towards the protestors.
One of the teenager protestors is put down, but the protestor hero stands firm.
“You’re not the only ones with guns, bitches!” the protesting hero angrily shouts through his megaphone. He swings his machine gun and attempts to fire it in an arc single-handedly at the Trattorian soldiers.
Alas, it was not meant to be, and the machine gun bursts into flame from overheating. The hero falls over, ashamed and demotivating his men.
The metal player is undeterred, and with the knowledge of Trattorians’ hatred of metal music begins riffing some tunes in front of the burning hero.
His metal feat works! The Trattorians are forced to drop their equipment and plug their ears in an attempt to drown out the awesomeness of the metal. One falls down and begins writhing on the floor in pain.
Everybody else is inspired by the metal and moves up without fear of death.
The fundamentalist knights, meanwhile, are undeterred by the loss of their leader. A knight mounts the horse and begins planning the defeat of the Trattorian’s superior technology.
Genius strikes him as he rears the horse in preparation of a charge...
The hardsuit’s computer senses the motion of the horse but a moment too late. The horse and the hardsuit are on an obvious collision course and the pilot braces for the end...
...When he hears the sword whooshing past him and the horse landing with a thud. Though he had been knocked down, the hardsuit was still completely intact and had survived the narrow encounter.
The other knights move up at their slow and steady pace while the archer takes aim and fires.
The arrow does an unbelievable amount of damage, burrowing through the Trattorian soldier and still having enough overkill left over to take out the hardsuit. “What a lucky and enchanted bow!” the archer exclaims.
Dr. Liang runs towards the control center, dragging her redshirts along with her.
She bends over and enters the code for the center’s force field door. “I can’t seem to remember it...” as she guesses various permutations of the password. The guards wait around nervously as bullets and arrows fly past their shoulders.
“Now I recall!” Dr. Liang announced as the force field deactivated. Unfortunately, she and her redshirts had exhausted their move.
Almost immediately a cowardly soldier rushes in to safety, emptying his cartridge as he moved backwards.
Conveniently, the soldier scored a critical success and eliminated yet another armored knight!
Another soldier, jealous of his comrade’s achievement, attempts to take his anger out on a protestor.
He only succeeds in igniting his own hand (by crit-failing), however.
One of the protestors, a rough, country type of guy, charges towards a Secret Service agent in rage and bloodlust with a chainsaw.
While the chainsaw misses, his friend’s rifle doesn’t and eliminate’s one of Dr. Liang’s redshirts.
The rest of the protestors then move up. The guy with the Assyrian rifle fires but misses wildly.
The protestor hero, disgraced by his failure, rises once more only to discover his hair and shoulder on fire.
The remaining fundamentalist knights trudge slowly towards the battle. The archer decides to do something and fires another arrow.
The bow once again proves its superiority, ripping through a soldier and a protestor. Dr. Liang begins to feel somewhat concerned now that all of her redshirts are no longer.
She doesn’t worry for long, however, as she scrambles inside the control center and begins punching in the codes to start the experiment (one full action).
Another scientist, Dr. Yiang, interrupts her for a moment.
Dr. Yiang: “Hi Dr. Liang! I haven’t seen you since I got the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the cure for the peach virus. How have things been going since then?”
Dr. Liang: “Dr. Yiang, I don’t think it’s the best time to have a conversation right now. I’ll talk to you after I start the experiment, OK?”
She then continues typing in the codes, smiling all throughout.
Outside, the protestors are not content with giving up, and one is driven by bloodlust to attempt to blow up the control room wall. “That force-field door is impenetrable, but these concrete and steel walls are not!” he shouted.
It turns out they are, though, at least to dynamite.
Undeterred, the protestor grabs the bottle of maniac beer, shoves the burning Trattorian soldier into it, and combines fire with the Assyrian-rifle man.
Needless to say, the casualties are devastating. The old protestor dies, my newest sigfig dies, the two armed protestors are disrupted and so is Dr. Liang.
“Must...start...experiment.” mutters Dr. Liang as she gets back up and continues typing into her mac. A fellow scientist grabs a gun and returns fire at the protestors to no avail.
The two disrupted protestors get back up and shoot at the lone armed Trattorian.
The scientist’s head is rather unfortunately pink-misted, spraying blood over Dr. Liang’s mac, but ultimately she survives and presses enter on the last code.
“SUCCESS!” she cries towards the heavens. The particle accelerator begins whirring as the hadrons collide with each other and yield a menagerie of exotic particles. Dr. Liang’s mac notifies her of a single message, as a fellow scientist in another control module simply texts to her “Think we found it.”
By the end of the day, the results are confirmed, and Dr. Liang’s Theory of Everything becomes scientific fact. Siri visits her and personally congratulates her on her success. “Those stupid Scythians aren’t getting that Nobel Prize now!” Siri remarked. “I congratulate you on achieving the ultimate Trattorian dream, and I hereby promote you to chief scientist and director of all Trattorian science projects and operations.”
“Why thank you,” Dr. Liang replied in her melodious voice. She shined a sweet and innocent smile, as thoughts ran past her of the next stage of her plan...
Fourth Wall Stuff: