(Original Post: May 2, 2016)
The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN is offline after a short circuit – caused by a weasel. The unfortunate creature did not survive the encounter with a high-voltage transformer at the site near Geneva City. The LHC was running when a “severe electrical perturbation” occurred in the early hours of Friday morning. A spokesman for CERN said that the weasel did not get into the tunnels, just the electrical facilities.
Anti-accelerator activists have raised concerns of possible environmental effects created by the short circuit of what has been called the “world’s biggest science experiment”. Most notably, some activists are linking the timing of the particle accelerator’s shutdown with the appearance of an unusual electrical storm that occurred in the skies over the streets of Geneva City at approximately the same time. A forensic crime science assistant was critically injured during this storm when a bolt of lightning inexplicably broke through a window of the boy’s otherwise safe loft apartment and hurled him electrified into a shelving unit containing a variety of unspecified, multicolored forensic chemicals. Some activists are now blaming CERN for the boy’s condition.
“If Barry Allen dies, his blood is on CERN’s hands!” one unnamed activist shouted at the once famed genius behind the particle accelerator’s creation at a press conference event Saturday.
“CERN has failed this city…” added another, a brooding activist with smears of green grease paint across his eyes, a possible intimidation tactic to scare the CERN officials attempting to hold their press briefing.
“Wait, this isn’t a Marvel movie…” a strange older gentleman with grey hair and glasses commented in sequence, before wandering off mumbling to himself about homecomings and civil war.
Some activists have gone so far as to also blame CERN for several unusual tornado-like events that have been occurring at various banks and highways across the city since the particle accelerator’s shutdown, claiming that CERN has somehow opened a kind of “Pandora’s box” that could go so far as to change the physical properties of human beings as we now know them, creating strange, new “metahumans” that society has no systems in place to contain.
Of course, not everyone agrees with these activists.
“Despite what some alarmists are saying, there is no substantial evidence to prove the particle accelerator’s shutdown had any effect on the weather or citizens of the peaceful people of Geneva City,” quoted David Singh, a noted Captain in the Geneva City Police Department. “This is not a comic book. A hole in the space-time continuum doesn’t occur every time a science experiment shuts down. Give them a week to get this out of their system, and before long these same crazy people are going to be rambling on about some new nonsense, like freeze ray guns and time travel or something.”
While activists insist otherwise, it is currently true that no provable connection has been to date linking the unusual meteorological occurrences in Geneva City to any explicable phenomenon created by the particle accelerator shutdown. Geneva City Police have advised they will investigate any tangible links they can find between the two events, but advise citizens not to give in to paranoia.
“In the end, the stories you’re hearing from activists are nothing more than pilots for their own imagined works of fiction. Particle accelerators, while highly advanced, cannot cause the kind of supernatural, superheroish events some activists are describing. Barry Allen has links to members of our department, and we will take a personal hand in doing everything we can to make sure he recovers. But, worst case scenario, should Mr. Allen not make the full recovery we are hoping and expecting, our blue league of Justice won’t be any different as a result. We will still continue to fight crime and criminals like we always have done. Nothing has changed here. The future will attest to that ten years from now, I’m sure.”
When further asked about reports of a flaming half-weasel, half-man “Burning Rodent” also reportedly seen in Geneva City moments after the supposed death of the creature that chewed through a cable on CERN’s accelerator, Police Captain David Singh just shook his head and labeled such reports as “silly”.
(Please see http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36173247 for the original article, “Large Hadron Collider: Weasel Causes Shutdown”.)