The Figure Eight

The Tevatron was a particle accelerator, located in Batavia, Illinois. Construction was started in 1968 with initial operations beginning in 1971. It was fully functional by 1979. However, the device was shut down in late 2010 due to budget cuts and the gearing up of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It was made up of a linear accelerator and two synchrotron rings for accelerating protons and electrons to a high energy state before they are smashed together. From high above (like Google Earth), it looks just like a figure eight. This was the outline that Jack Henry's mother described to him in the 29th century and it was the very same outline that Rome and Rei discovered from one kilometer up in the sky. Here is how I described it:

     “Here, you sit down,” Rome said to Ursay. He nodded and moved into the copilot’s seat.
     “I cannot explain it. You can only see this from high in the air. I will level off about one kilometer up.”
     The ground dropped below them quickly. Looking out the windshield, all they could see were blue skies and puffy white clouds.
     “We are now at sufficient height,” MINIMCOM said. He activated his ventral cameras and projected the ground below him. He then activated the MIDAR screen in ground penetrating mode and overlaid the sounding images onto the landscape.
     Immediately, Rei saw it; two gigantic circles, just barely touching with the out-of-place hill off to the side of the larger circle. From this height, it looked more like a lazy snowman than anything else with a long, arrow-straight scarf.
     “I don’t believe it,” Rei said. “So that’s where they hid the virus. No wonder.”
     “Where?” Rome said. “All I see are those two rings.”
     MINIMCOM flashed a glowing yellow highlighter around the two rings. “The smaller circle is a kilometer in diameter. The larger one is nearly two kilometers in diameter.”
     “Those two rings,” Rei said, pointing. “That’s the Tevatron. They buried the virus inside the goddamned Tevatron.”

The FermiLab campus still exists and it is possible that the main ring might be used again some time in the future. Whether it does or it doesn't, I found great pleasure in resurrecting it first for Wally Grey's team who used it to create quantum black holes and later the site of the Battle of Chicago. Even after the denizens of the Post Post-apocalypse destroyed all signs of the location, they could not disguise the figure eight, seen only from the sky.