And Then There Were Two (AFWC)

This is my entry for the ATS Against the Flow Writing Contest. Enjoy and please leave your comments and / or criticism. Not only is this a short story, but an open question to all members as well. If what happens in this story was plausible in some way, what should we, as a species do? Feel free to discuss.

And Then There Were Two

From CERN The Bulletin
Issue No. 74-56/2012 - Friday 30 November 2012

“It’s been three years and many upgrades since the LHC was brought online in 2009, and the earth is still here. No miniature black holes, no strangelets, and no big bang. The joint agreement with NASA reached in 2011 was a turning point for our studies and we are glad to report many new, intriguing finds, which are due to be released in the second quarter of next year.”

Excerpt from Reuters.com
April 20th 2013, Munich, Bavaria

“Meetings were again tense today as leaders attending the emergency G8 summit in Munich were still unable to come to any form of agreement regarding territory and government. Sources claim that both the United States and Russia left the discussion mid way through. No other information is available at this time.’

“To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” -Carl Sagan, 1996

...Continued...

[edit on 11/19/2009 by Juston]

[edit on 11/19/2009 by Juston]

Today is January 14th 2014.

My name is irrelevant, and so is my story I guess, as I can assure that there will be others.

Nevertheless, I have the time, and the desire to tell it as I see it…To give my color commentary in regards to the past 12 months or so.

Everyone who watched TV, saw movies, used the internet, read papers and magazines knew of the 2012 prophecy. You know which one I’m talking about. The one where hemispheres were supposed to be reversed, a mysterious planet was going to smack our own out of the solar system like a marble, the average Joe was going to become enlightened (I wish that would have happened!), et cetera, et cetera…You get the idea. Suffice to say, when most of the world woke up on their respective December 21st’s, 22nd’s, and 23rd’s and so on, nothing was different. Well, our planets population was a bit lower, due to wide spread panic and suicide, but not enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. I like to refer to the whole 2012 subject as an inadvertent media holocaust. Many unnecessary deaths caused by fear mongering by the main stream media.

But I digress…

Because something did happen, eventually. Whether or not it was related to the Mayan Long Count calendar or whatever is still up for debate, but most believe it’s just a coincidence at this point. And it didn’t occur in 2012.
On January 15th of 2013, time had a hiccup. Conventional time keeping mechanisms were unaffected of course, as these are just machines set to keep time as we know it. Yet the sun hung at its point in the sky at 1425 Greenwich Mean Time for about an hour, thus setting an hour later than scheduled. The Moon came out and set later, tides were later, planets crossed the zenith later. Calculations would show that our orbit slowed down for about 56 minutes. These 56 minutes were the most important minutes in the history of the human race.
The time slippage was hardly noticed by anyone, commented on perhaps (Gee Marylyn, it got dark late tonight huh?), but it didn’t really cause alarm to the majority of the populace, and for reasons still unknown, it was not reported on. It’s suspected there was a wide scale media blackout on the event, in hopes that the world governments (who I should point out did happen to notice), could put their best minds together to find out what exactly had just happened, and hopefully offer up a logical, safe explanation, in hopes that world wide panic would not break out as it did prior to the beginning of the new year.
While the politicians sat debating what to do, the on duty team for the LHC at CERN was busy. I’m not a particle physicist, or anything remotely close (my middle name should be “in laymen’s terms please”) but I’ll explain what I know as best as I can for this next part. At 1425 GMT, they LHC crew encountered quite a dilemma. While routinely colliding their particle beams and gathering data (still no Higgs Boson, I regret to say) something unexplainable happened. The beams seemingly switched direction and started to collide end to end rather than front to front. I understand that CERN published a statement some weeks after and, if you are interested then check it out, perhaps you can understand it better than me.
As you can imagine, NASA scientists were busy as hell at this point. With half of the organization being tapped by Congress for answers and the other half in calls with CERN (remember, they partnered with NASA in what was called an unusual move back in ’11), government inefficiency was at its finest. It was some time later that day when it was concluded that the events at the LHC are what caused our orbit to slow. It was assumed that the reversal of the beams caused a disturbance in the magnetic field or something along those lines and that there was no immediate cause for alarm. That was the case until the crew of the ISS finally made their daily report. Said report, if you are interested, can also be found all over the web. What they saw was heart stopping, breathtaking, amazing…yet a little unsettling.

Let me pause here for a moment, if I may.

Imagine if you will, a planet earth with no record of human life; a planet that has been allowed to evolve unmolested by intelligent hands and intelligent minds. No Panama Canal, no Great Wall of China. Mount Rushmore is nothing but a rocky cliff face. The most interesting thing in what we call Egypt is the Nile. No man made anything has ever graced its atmosphere. No human blood has been spilt out of anger. No religion to police it, and no police to uphold others laws. Picture the place you hang you hat as nothing but a rolling prairie, or muddy swamp, or frozen tundra with nothing to see around you but the horizon.

On January 16th 2013, about 56 minutes after the sun rose over our horizon, 186.4 million miles away (parallel to us, 1 AU from the Sun) a bluish planet appeared right behind, but a little above where the sun had just risen. (I’d like to note here that a few months later it was unanimously decided to shut down the LHC pending further review).


What people saw when they glanced up into the sky that day looked like our own earth, just like it looks in pictures taken from the moon (but a little smaller). It didn’t take long for our observatories to train their scopes on our twin. In no time at all, images from around the world were everywhere showing a planet that looked and behaved exactly like our own. And I mean exactly.
Once again, there was panic, yet it was isolated and not as extreme as before. Most people were too fascinated and awestruck (albeit a bit confused) to be worried. Besides, our leaders were assuring us that everything was okay, and as always, religions had a palatable explanation as to what happened. In the end, the most widely accepted theory states that somehow, the reversal that occurred in the LHC caused some kind of time shift, and the product of this malfunction was the appearance of a seemingly twin planet opposite of us in our very own solar system. In the weeks following every space agency known was scrambling to send up probes (at an estimated 60 days travel time) to scout this planet.
By far, NASA was the most successful in the exploration of what was now being called Novus Terra. By using rovers based on Spirit and Opportunity, but greatly improved, they confirmed on March 17th 2013 what many had suspected.

...Continued...

[edit on 11/19/2009 by Juston]

[edit on 11/19/2009 by Juston]

This was an exact model of our home planet. Atmosphere, composition, etc…everything was the same. As an extra bonus, we found the same life, same biology as on earth. The only difference? At some point in its history, the chain of events that put humans in the timeline never happened. It’s as if someone took our planets entire history and removed all evidence that humans ever existed.
Shortly after the explorations of Novus Terra, an emergency G8 summit was declared to try to figure out exactly what to do next. These meetings have been going on for months now, with two nations (Russia and the U.S.) all but packing up and leaving the table. Many options have been proposed…A One Government Two Worlds being the most prevalent, yet nothing can be agreed upon. Sadly, we have been given a beautiful opportunity at life as a species, yet the power struggle continues, and it doesn’t look like it will stop. We are on the brink of a new chapter in history. Will we make it to Novus Terra? Or will our own nature as humans prevent us from peacefully coming to a resolution?

If I was a betting man, I’d like to say that we’ll make it. We always do, for better or worse.

Awesome! I think this would make a really good movie

Why, thank you.

I had a more ambitious timeline and draft in my head... a lot more ambitious, but I drank entirely too much coffee yesterday and, well, things just kinda took shape the way they did.

Perhaps next time I'll be more meticulous in my planning.

reply to post by Juston


i hear ya, I submitted an entry also while at work, so I had this big idea to start but through having to stop and start and stop and start due to work it came out a little different than what it initially planned to be, but i'm prould of it anyway

Imagine- a planet just like earth, but with" no history or evidence
that humans ever existed".

God, wouldn't that be great ? A second chance maybe ?

But I'd have to ask myself . . . are we capable of righting the wrong?

This was a great story! Thank you, and good luck.

Hey, thanks SIEGE. Ya that's the thing, whether or not we'd be able to take the second chance handed to us and do something worthwhile. Next short story will probably have something to do with this one.

Great story, if I heard this was at the cinemas I'd be there in a flash.

S&F

Great story, Juston!

The ending, and replies, are a lot more optimistic than I would be. I fear the very first thing humans would do, upon discovering Novus Terra, would be to nuke everything that moved, and then begin full-out mining and drilling operations. (Maybe I am being too cynical?)

It would be amazing to find an unpopulated world to gently explore. I often wish I could see what Manhattan looked like, in New York City, before a vast and ugly infrastructure was cut into the earth.

Your story was very thought provoking, and I greatly enjoyed it.

reply to post by Juston


Juston, I decided to take tonight and read all of the AFWC stories (I have three more to read). I have to say that your tale is my new favorite so far. I love the concept of a timeburp that creates an almost mirror Terra. And what does our species do about it? Same as it ever was....... fight and row about it, rather that realizing what an incredible gift it is -- a chance to do the right thing.

I'd like to believe that we choose to use it as a museum of what we could have done with our talents, and in an unprecedented and noble choice, humanity elects to leave the neo-Earth alone -- except for nonlanding studies -- until we can rebuild our current Earth into something nearly as wonderful.

Moving story, and I like how the narrator of the story doesn't know much about the physics that created the situation, but does their dangdest to explain it, just in case his is the only record left behind. It's a time of unsurpassed beauty, and potential horror. What if Terra#1 ends up in world war because of Terra #2? It would be just like us.

Will CERN be allowed to continue?

Great questions, great story!!

This was a great short story. I'm surprised it got so few replies. I suppose not to many users make it into the short story department. Everyone should read this as far as I'm concerned. If only just to reflect on what they might do in such a situation. The first idea that came to my mind after reading of the 'new earth' was, "where would I go first to claim ownership as my new home". This is probably what most governments would think as well. A first come, first served kind of thing. We would see a lot of flag placing going on as different countries made it to the new land.

reply to post by IllMannered



Thanks IllMannered

I agree, more people should check out this part of the site...Quite a few gems in here. Heck I didn't even know about it till a few months after I registered!

I took a break from ATS for a while, and came back for the start up of the HWWC, unfortunately, no time to write this time around.