They called it a quantum microscope, which is meaningless but easy for mass media to spread around, I guess.
All I know is that the $33 million Herkimer scanning/transmission electron microscope our department installed last week makes the Titan Themis look like a pair of 3D specs. Resolution of a quarter of a hydrogen atom! No one has EVER seen anything so small, so clearly.
The Herkimer was slated mostly for viral ultrastructure and pathogenesis studies, both clinical and, I’m sorry to say, military. But you dance with whom brung you, and the scientific discoveries we would make would be worth it. Even the work we did as practice while we setting up was legendary. We had no doubt we would vastly increase humanity’s knowledge by the daily and learn something about ourselves in the meantime.
We spent the first week double-checking some previous EM work, as a check, and it performed flawlessly. The alien world of the microverse, a place of wonder and weirdness, snapped into crystal clarity.
We went deeper, looked more closely at the world around us than any human had ever been able to. It was impossible not to be changed, doing that.
Until Dr. Hartman suddenly flung himself away from the Herkimer in surprise. The room went quiet.
“Check me,” he said.
Dr. Knollska, the most senior researcher in the lab, walked over and took a long look. He straightened and stared at Hartman. “You did this.”
“I didn’t! I couldn’t! We do let have nanomanipulators that precise!” Hartman was openly crying now. “It was just… there! Everywhere!”
Knollska bent and looked again. This time, when he straightened, he crossed himself, and walked away.
I wasn’t fast enough to get in before the sudden rush to his workstation swarmed him, but it didn’t matter. Hartman just leaned forward and clicked his mouse.
The quantum microscope’s view abruptly appeared on the big screen. Every electron was amazingly clear and massive proton sailing majestically by was like being on a busy dock when the cruise ship went by.
It was glorious. It was amazing. It was–
On the side of every electron, stamped there smaller that any human could see, was a message. Every electron, the building blocks of our universe, was stamped “DEMO ONLY.”
Hartman shut it down. After a long moment, we all went home.