The sun appeared on the horizon, startling the birds sleeping in the trees.

Ten minutes earlier …

The night sky over the southern French countryside was cool and quiet, yet the interior of the ITER control room was anything but. Engineers and scientists jabbered into their headsets in a multilingual cacophony as beads of sweat pooled on the balding heads of their supervisors. Wall clocks changed to midnight in unison. Nine minutes to the first full power up. 

ITER is Latin for “the way.” It was also an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor … the world’s first hydrogen fusion power reactor.