THE SECOND SINGULARITY
 
 
     C T was taking a finite modeling course as part of a
group requirement.  In it, the singularity was a way of
theoretical life.  While Werner Heisenberg had ruled out long
ago as impossible that the singularity, an abrupt and defined
definition relating a phenomenon to a point, was a physical
possibility, C T still had uncertainties about the exact
nature of nature, and most specifically, what extreme
approaches to singularities the HHC might create now that it
was to be built.  The most disturbing of all was the magnetic
monopole.  In his junior year, electromagnetics taught all
about magnetic streamlines and their similarities to the
electrical lines of flux, but he never accepted the
nonexistence of monopoles, those analogs of electrons and
protons.  He could think about them, after all, and Maxwell's
equations needed only two small changes to accomodate a non-
zero divergence of magnetic flux and magnetic convection
current density as a result of the curl of the electric field
in Ampere's Law.
 
     "Could the HHC somehow create a monopole?"  was his
initial question, one based on healthy scientific inquiry.
Such a discovery would certainly open a new age of physics,
and the technological offspins would be even more immense.
The magnetic circuit would no longer be a circuit.
Transformer designs of high efficiency might open new vistas
of energy management.  C T's interest in being an HHC
researcher as soon as possible was based largely on entering
the ground floor of this new potential field of discovery.
He wanted to be like one of the men in a poster photograph he
saw on the wall of the nuclear physics laboratory.  There
was a large group of all the great scientists of Europe and
America, taken early in the century when relativity and
quantum mechanics were in their infancy.  Maybe such a photo
would be taken in a few more years and he'd be left out.  He
didn't think he had time to waste.
 
     But also in his obsession with the HHC's prospects for
finding monopoles was a serious concern for his own mortal
life, if not merely his psychological one.  Who could say
what pattern of interactions an intense monopole might create
in the HHC's high magnetic field?  The very existence of the
inductance presence in the collider ring would make any
magnetic impulse, even if not truly singular but very rapid,
capable of destroying the state, the country, the world.  He
was afraid to approach the faculty after Prof.  Urn's
chastisement.  The department knew him as a possible source
of trouble, and he was already warned that positions on the
HHC staff were to go to veteran physicists and engineering
scientists.
 
     Finite modeling let out at 15:40, and more questions
were accumulated in C T's mind during the lecture than could
possibly have been answered.  He understood the material but
not the subsidiary questions relating to the physical
significance of the singularity model.  He wondered what
limits the duration of any impulse.  Would the Uncertainty
Principle keep the world safe?  Heisenberg was wise to spend
his career in such areas as matrix methods of quantum
mechanics, not philosophy.  Professor Ramlin met with C T one
day when this difficulty became unbearable and told him, "Mr.
Prime, you're trying to solve for too many variables without
enough equations, and the equations you have are very
unsound.  The singularity is purely a simulation.  Model-
making which uses it is a branch of analysis that has no true
definition outside of its own structure of theorems and
proofs.  You must accept what known physical laws provide.
They, too, are based on sound mathematical principles."
 
     After that, C T left the matter alone where his
instructor was concerned.  But it troubled him still.  He
couldn't accept the thought that the HHC, that project he'd
done so much work to make a reality, might be the finality of
his life, maybe everyone's.  He thought of Rachel.  If he
went, how could she avoid following?  He came onto the main
concourse, moving towards the bridge leading to the Valley
Area.  The monopole in the biggest inductor in the world.
The monopole.  Nonzero divergence.  Magnetic convection.
 
     He saw himself on the first day of the collider's
operation as bicyclists passed him on the bridge and cars
passed under on Wayne Avenue.  The great consortium would be
there, in their conservative stances.  Nothing was new to
them.  Most of them had lived in the days of Robert
Oppenheimer and Edvard Teller's fame.  Some of them got their
starts in the Manhattan project.  C T wondered what these men
could possibly do to hold in their anxiety.  They knew of the
days when the bomb was being constructed and no one knew what
it might do.  It had been theorized that the nitrogen in the
air would combust upon the Los Alamos blast.  Could the cadre
at the controls be aware in a greater sense, like the atomic
weapons scientists who somehow knew there would be no burning
of the atmosphere?
 
     The monopole and the current impulse.  A huge current
impulse would occur in the greatest inductor in the world.
Faraday's Law would predict a massive electromotive force.
What would be the yield of such a force?  He walked past
DuPont Hall, where a young man in a sweatshirt was playing
the harmonica.  The blues, that sound he could never get from
his harmonica.  What did that young student know about the
harmonica that he didn't?
 
     There was press coverage at the start of this great HHC
startup, of course.  Video units and newspaper journalists
alike were getting all the reactions of the supreme
authorities.  "What do you think, Dr., will be the possible
future use of what the HHC shows?"
 
     "There could be new findings about nuclear interactions
that make the old style fission cores a thing of the past.
We might make new inroads towards controlled fusion.  Today's
test will produce some images of interactions.  The particles
we observe will tell us of the very substance of matter.  We
will have direct evidence to support or refute much of the
recent theory that improves upon the unifying work of
Einstein.  Since E = mc squared, when we learn of the
substance of matter, we learn better ways to make useful
energy of it."
 
     C T was heading towards the control center just outside
of campus.  He was running, hard.  They were about to start
the HHC, and there could be monopoles and current impulses in
the largest inductor in the world.  He came near the barbed
wire entrance, where sentries asked him for identification.
 
     "I'm C T Prime, physics senior.  I need to see the
research chief, right now!"
 
     "Facilities are closed to all personnel not engaged in
system startup," the guard rattled.  C T wondered if he liked
his job; did he know there would be no monopoles?
 
     The sound of transformers; 60-hertz hum, mounted.
Switches fired, by relays switched by relays.  The noise told
C T that the machine was starting.  Soon there might be
monopoles and current impulses in the largest inductor in the
world.  The singularity might not be true, but could Prof.
Ramlin argue with him?  How singular can an impulse be?
 
     A monopole and a current impulse in the largest inductor
in the world.
 
     "Congratulations, Mr. Prime," the dean said, releasing
his hand.  He meant it.

                                     * * * * *