A romanização oficial do filme indica que o plano era usar um acelerador de partículas para criar alguma forma de campo de alta energia, iluminando a areia e fazendo com que suas ligações interatômicas se quebrassem. Eles iriam então usar uma variedade de sensores para monitorar o que estava acontecendo.
O objetivo dos cientistas parece ter sido criar um feixe de energia capaz de ' desmolecularização total '. Eles teorizam que, embora estejam sendo informados de que estão conduzindo uma pesquisa pura, o feixe acabará sendo armado.
“Well, of…” Donnie looked surprised and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Of course it matters. I mean… total demolecularization… it’s…”
“They’ll weaponize it,” Michel said sourly. “Just you wait.”
“They keep saying it’s going to be just for molecular research,” Donnie protested, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced.
“They can keep saying a Big Mac is filet mignon, but it’s still gonna taste like a Big Mac,” a fourth scientist, Sean O’Shea, commented. He was walking into the lab and heard the tail end of the conversation. Tall and lean, he filled the room with his presence and said with quiet authority, “Gentlemen, ours is not to question why, and so forth and so on, you know the drill. Let’s get our baby up and running, shall we?”
He always referred to the project as “our baby.” Chafin suspected it was because he was more comfortable calling it that than “our future weapon of mass destruction.”
O silício parece ter sido planejado como um material de teste para determinar se o feixe e o campo estavam funcionando corretamente.
Knowing that the sign screamed DANGER! high energy particle physics test site! keep OUT! would not likely have made him feel any better.
Inside the research facility, the technicians studied the arrays on their computer screens. “Capacitators charged,” Ashley Michel said, satisfied at the results she was getting.
“Right,” said Chafin, confirming it. Then he saw something that didn’t look quite right, and he leaned toward Blaswell. “Donnie, got a little fluctuation on one.”
Adding his own concerns, O’Shea said, “There’s a change in the silicon mass.” Donnie considered the possibilities and reasonably concluded, “Probably a bird.” It made sense. Stupid birds saw the pile of sand at the base of the particle accelerator gun and didn’t know it was there to measure molecular bonding. They thought it was someplace convenient to build a nest and lay their eggs. “It’ll fly away when we fire it up.”