Journeys happen. They come and go. They repeat and intertwine with each other so such an extent that the blur of destinatiion is an automatic drive.

Through the vines of faces and avenues of lives and in the midst of all the confusion there lies an attraction of home that pulls ever stronger.

I once heard that jet-lag was a result of your soul trying to catch up with your body. I had landed 3 hours ago. Local time was 10PM but for me it was actually 4AM in my regular time zone. Desynchronosis was setting in hard and I walked around soul-less waiting to get my circadian rhythm back.

I was on flight 313J returning from Singapore to London on the eve of what was to be the most life changing event I was ever going to witness. The plane landed and I took the first steps onto home soil. No matter how many times you make a trip. No matter how many times you stray, home always feels right.

The air was thick with London congestion, the depth of frustrated drivers and senseless minds thriving through the haze of the reality. As much as I wanted to hate it I couldn't, it was part of me. However there was an air. An air of something that was unsettling to me. Something just wasnt right.

The next morning the weirdness continued. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Everything seemed an approximation of something else. I felt detached from what was happening around me. I opened the newspaper and became immersed in a story about a would-be saboteur arrested at the Hadron Collider in Switzerland who claimed that he was from the future and that he had travelled back in time to prevent the Collider from destroying the world.

There had been much talk over the past couple of months about the launch of the collider. Thousands of people had taken to the streets over the week declaring its evil power, and how once the atoms collided the earth will cease. I picked up the paper that was beside the half eaten toast on the breakfast bar and began to read the latest on the project. The headline sent a chill through me as I read the exclusive report, "Collider genius, dead"

Imagine if something happened at the Collider, I thought, something so big and of such massive consequence that we didn't even register it with our five physical senses. I shuffled in my seat uneasily as I took a gulp of my coffee. A singularity event of massive proportions, like a rip in the fabric of time. A point of no return careening us into an unknown universe of unparalleled repercussions.

A universe where we develop thought-act. As you think it it manifests in reality. Ideas would spread ever more rapidly, even the most radical becoming commonplace. Like boiling milk observed. What would become of man? I wondered. Would we sacrifice what we are to what we could become?

'But of couse, we would. As we always have done. Sacrifice our morals for short-lived pleasures, sacrifice our relationships for the possibility of finding more or better,' I thought.
The door bell rang. My sweetheart Persephone burst through the front door, the heavy oak doors slammed against the wall. She ran over and threw her arms around me. "Thank God you're okay!" she exclaimed, tears in her eyes. I wonder what happened out there.

"I'll get us some coffee", I said entering the kitchen. Persephone tried to get a handle on the moment. I returned with an earnest pot of coffee and two cups. She dried her eyes. "When did you get back, I was scared you'd changed into strange matter like the rest". "Last night, I said pouring the dark matter into the cup watching it swirl like a funnel. "The Collider created Strangelets....it converted parts of earth, people into strange matter".

"They assume wicked shapes, mostly shadow beings," she continued, "but they can still touch you, still hurt you." Persephone was shaking now. I grabbed a blanket on the couch and pulled it over her trembling body.
"I didn't know it was this serious. I didn't know CERN was that close to making it a reality." I stopped working on this project months ago when we discovered the adverse side effects. Why in God's name did they continue it?

"At ground zero, the scientists and equipment are twisted into fantastic configurations, the very topology and their inability to navigate complex knots and surfaces trapping the technicians in the collider’s cool halls," she continued. "Their cries become sounds in water, or are distant, far off, as if creeping through a labyrinth. They slowly starve to death before they find their way out."
"How do you know this?" I asked, incredulous.

She stared at me blankly, then whispered "I was there when it happened." Then she fainted.

The voices grew louder in my mind. Something malicious was creeping in. I loved Persephone. "I love Persephone, I love Persephone." "I love Persephone..." I continued saying these words, barely audible at this point, as I lifted my girlfriend onto the couch as she began to awake from the fainting spell. The patterns on the burgandy carpet swirled. That familiar anxious feeling was coming on. I was jilted. Everything, then, was insignificant. I looked into her green eyes, and, on that beloved 'homesoil' stated, "It's all happening now isn't it." Persephone laughed, shriekingly unfamiliar.