Eternal Return

As he drove to work that morning, Collins experienced a vivid and prolonged sense of déjà vu. It began at the last set of traffic lights. Just when they turned green, and he hesitated, his car stalled, as he knew it would. At that moment the boy in the blue cap appeared and scooted across the road. If I hadn’t stalled, he thought, restarting the engine. At the security gate the guard began saying something about the car park and Collins, the hairs on the back of his neck tickling, realised he could have recited the other’s remarks, word for word, as he spoke them. Shaken now, he made his way to the office and, sure enough, the large-scale map of the complex had slipped its supports and lay crumpled on the floor.

A scientific man, Collins would normally have sought out the rational explanation for these bizarre sensations, but today there was no time. He had to remain focused. Today, in its inaugural run, they would activate the Super-Large Hadron Collider.