Q: Will CERN awaken the Elder Gods?

Physicist: At the risk of over-simplifying the situation; yes, absolutely.

For years dark and unexplainable events have been the norm in particle accelerator laboratories around the world.  However, it was not until a meta-analysis of the 2001 “blood running up the walls incident” in Fermilab, the 1983 “unfortunate undead incident” in Daresbury, the 2011 “faster-than-light neutrino incident” at CERN, and the “howling vortex of pain effect” common to employees of KEK, that a subtle underlying pattern was uncovered.

In addition, some concerns were voiced when it became apparent that the user’s manual for the Large Hadron Collider had been written, entirely by accident, as a nearly verbatim translation of the Necronomicon.

But ultimately, the call for a comprehensive study by the NSF was sparked by an experiment by Dr. Damian “The Unblinking” Shoggoth (PhD., occult particle cosmology, music history), involving the ALTAS detector at CERN, and the still-beating hearts of three virgin employees.  While Dr. Shoggoth’s experiment successfully demonstrated an effective means of tauon generation, it also created a dark fissure between the Mortal World and the Dreaming.

Left: Director General of CERN, Rolf-Dieter Heuer. Right: the only known photograph of Damian Shoggoth

According to Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, “… strange experimental artifacts are just a part of doing [science].  When you hear screaming every time the beam is active you tend … to assume that it’s the result of some unknown mechanism; metal fatigue, poorly tuned resonators.  One-time events, like the combined terror of every human sacrifice … bleeding through from a dimension of pure agony is difficult to take into account, given our current scientific model.”.

For thousands of years particle accelerators have been used by isolated groups of occultists to commune with their Dark Lords.  The Toltec ziggurat reactor, the Stone Henge synchrotron, the Nuclear Pile at Miskatonic, and the Nazca linear accelerators are just a few examples.  But of course, with ever greater technology comes ever more violent violations of the natural order.  It wasn’t until accelerators capable of giga-electronvolt power came into common use, for example, that secret physicist covens discovered reliable methods for creating weakly-interacting neutrino–golems, to slay their enemies.

A neutrino-golem causing as much devastation as it can.

The findings of the NSF study show that when CERN is finally brought to full power it will almost certainly summon the Outsider, and begin the Age of Torment.

Said Heuer, “We’re living at the dawning of a new age of discovery, understanding, and unending darkness.  With any luck, by 2013 we’ll have confirmed or discomfirmed the existence of the Higgs boson and been devoured by our dread master, Lord Cthulhu.”

An awakened Cthulhu: the inevitable result of fundamental research.

But, I suppose time (what’s let of it) will tell.  The joy of science is in the surprise and the eldritch horror.

The “Tentacle Lovecraft” photo is from here.

The “Cthulhu rising” is from here.