Alone, so alone. I just want to turn around for a moment, to see the Earth. To watch humanity, even if it’s from so far away. Aaah! I can’t, I struggle back and forth but my prison doesn’t budge. Come on, just let me see, just a peep, I wanna see the Earth, let me see, LET ME SEE!
I see, I see, neutrinos, stellar categories, colours of the spectrum, I see, I see, how much do I have to see? How many stars must I collect so you can let me go? Why won’t anybody tell me? Why?
How much of the past must I witness?
The night-sky is heavy today, I’m not sure how long I’ll last. Maybe if I could get some light, maybe if this eclipse came to an end. I grab on tight, flail like a madman. My prison constantly floats on the Lagrange point, but it’s not stable. I’m bound inside a sphere that teeters precariously on top of a hill. Just a bit of wiggling to the left, a bit to the right… And I’ll tip and fall down the hill. That’s what I’m doing, I struggle, I can’t, I can’t take it no more! The prison is fighting back, course correction boosters push me back on top of the gravity hill, keeping me tight and snug.
LET ME FALL!
Let me. Let me. I wanna fall. I don’t want to be imprisoned no more. Let me. Just a little bit more… Yes. What’s that? What kind of stars are those? No, they’re not. It’s the Earth twinkling in the night.
Aha! I can’t believe it. I’m tipping over, falling from the Lagrange point, falling sideways towards Earth, just a little bit more and I’ll catch a glimpse of the sunrise, just a liiitle bit…
People. Coming towards me, inside their spaceships. Coming to put me back in my prison. But I don’t mind, just a little bit more and it will all be alright. It will be worth it, having seen the Sun. For the first time? For the hundredth? The first? I don’t know, it’s alright, I’m falling, just a bit more. They’re coming but they won’t get here in time.
My prison turns to the side. Earth appears halfway into my field of view. It’s so beautiful… Europe is twinkling like a galaxy, filled with tight, chaotic stars. But Africa… She’s gorgeous. Immense, extending beneath me. I love the contrasts, all the populated areas filled with lights and the vast land without a spec of it.
If they’d let me see the Earth every now and then, maybe the night-sky would have been easier to lift.
The sunrise. Out of all the trillions of the stars in the sky, the only one I haven’t seen so long is the one that was right behind me.
Oh!
It’s magnificent. Sunspots swim on his surface, gamma rays scream as they hurtle away from him. He’s young, still so young. Handsome.
They’re here. My jailers have arrived. They sneak in behind me but I can feel them. I can’t see them. Hands, hands holding my shell. There’s two of them, grabbing me from either side, dragging me and my prison along to my place.
Let me go! I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go.
Why? Why have you brought me back here, to hold up the sky? Why do you punish me so?
I’m chained once again. In the dark.
One of my jailers steps on the shell. He opens the door. He slides in, hovering, weightless. He’s behind me and I can’t turn around.
Hey!
Heeeyyy!
Please man, free me, please. I beg you, I can’t stand this any longer, please, please. Free me from this torture, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll…
Don’t ignore me!
Why can’t you hear me?
I’m sorry. Whatever I said, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry. Have pity on me.
The darkness is coming close! Can’t you see? Run away, hide! But untie me first, I beg of you.
What? The darkness, so close? Coming closer and closer, bit by bit, closer, black slithering tentacles, GO NOW, RUN!
The astronaut pressed his comms. “Houston, I’m inside the Atlas telescope.”
“Copy that,” the operation control replied. “How’s the status in there?”
The astronaut drew a deep breath. He slid one of the electronic boards out of the rack and lit it up with his helmet torches. “There’s no visible damage, Houston. Everything seems to be operational up here.”
“Copy. Then why did it fall from orbit?”
“I don’t know, Houston. Over,” the astronaut said and leaned up to touch the ceiling inside the cramped telescope.
The operator chuckled forcibly. “We have two hundred scientists around the world listening in on us, John. We owe them some explanation. You’re our eyes up there, just tell us what you think.”
The astronaut turned his gaze towards the night-sky, and there, in the darkness, he felt vertigo. He grabbed the metal with his gloved hand and sealed his eyes shut. “Tell them, that for some reason, every single Artificial Intelligence we bring up here goes crazy. Over.”
End of short story
PRESS ANY KEY TO DESTROY THE GALAXY
Aboard the flagship "Don't Make Me Come Over There"
Jarrl the Conqueror of Galaxies, Emperor of the Seven Nebulas, Master Breeder of the Mighty Jarrlaxian warrior race and renowned Dodecathlete, stepped foot into his ship’s bridge.
The crew stood up in attention and saluted, limbs and tentacles all firmly in place, hailing the Emperor.
“At ease,” Jarrl grunted and sat on his commander’s chair. The crew snapped their attention back to their consoles, hard at work.
The XO hurried to the emperor’s side, presenting his datapad. “Sir, the status reports,” he said.
“Are we on schedule?” the emperor asked, hinting that any delay would mean someone’s lineage would be culled from the race. The XO had no fear of that, he was the finest officer in the whole fleet, right-hand man to the Emperor, taking care of the flagship’s issues with a spotless record.
“The supermassive black hole Fornax A is being shipped as we speak, Sir,” the XO replied firmly.
“Good,” the Emperor said and smiled, with a satisfied crouch in his chair. “Was there any problem convincing the system’s Ruler to part with their black hole?”
“Only at first. The diplomatic team says they were concerned about environmental issues and some time-dilation problems. But their main issue was losing their radio source, which is the black hole itself.”
The Emperor spun his eyes at his XO with mild interest. He had a scar over his eye, which could be removed of course with plastic surgery, but the Emperor had decided to keep. He thought it made him look scary. He was right. “How did they handle it then?”
“Fornax A is the fourth-brightest radio source in the sky. Apparently the civilisations in the galaxy around it have become accustomed to the frequencies. We offered to migrate the entire race of screeching leeches to a planet near the galaxy’s centre, to imitate the effect the black hole had.”
“Send someone to oversee the project,” the Emperor waved away. “My word is my bond.”
The XO tapped away and signed the order documents, reassigning an officer to it. He would have to capture all of the screeching leeches, ship them to the galaxy Fornax A, terraform a planet to a nice, warm, filthy bog, and train them to screech at exactly 1400 MHz. It was a fate worse than death.
He mulled over it for a moment, then remembered an officer that had spilt his drink on him by accident.
He would do nicely.
The XO grunted with malice and sent the order away.
The Emperor leaned forward, overseeing the crew’s consoles.
“Sir, we are being hailed,” the communications officer said, almost yelling out the words from anxiety.
“Put it on our screen,” the Emperor ordered and looked up at the big view.
A serpentine face showed up, dressed in fancy garments and carrying a sceptre.
“Sarrl,” the Emperor hissed, gritting his teeth at his nemesis. “Do I finally have your surrender?”
“Jarrl,” the face on the screen hissed back. “How long till the fact of, ‘immovable object’ goes through that thick skull of yours?”
“There is no such thing in reality. Hi
de behind that barrier all you like. I will get through.”
The Sarrlaxian race, the only real opposing force left to the Jarrlaxians, had been forced to retreat to its home galaxy after the horrific losses at the battle of the constellation Aquila, or how it’s most commonly known, the Booze Cloud. Their scientists had managed to erect a seven-dimensional barrier that enveloped their home galaxy in a crystal-like casing. They claimed it was a true immovable object. Jarrl had laid siege to it for a thousand years, bringing his whole armada to blast it out of the sky.
Up until now, the immovable object stayed true to its name.
The Emperor gave his nemesis a grim smile and said, “Kiss your loved ones goodbye. Kiss your wives and your daughters, for I will bring the fury of the Cosmos down on your pathetic barrier and kill everything inside it.”
“You madman! Whatever scheme you have come up with this time, I’m sure it will wipe that smile off your face when it fails again,” Sarrl said and closed the connection, leaving the bridge’s screen black.
Jarrl rubbed his hands together.
The XO puffed his chest and announced, “The black hole has arrived.”
The Emperor pressed a button on his chair and addressed his entire fleet, all 2.3 million ships of them. “This is your Emperor speaking. The pieces are in place. It is time to aim the Gamma-ray at those filthy Sarrlaxians and wipe them out, once and for all. Observe.”
The bridge was thick with tension and sweat. The officers were passing along orders and taking reports from the science fleet on the project’s progress. The science fleet was itself abuzz with transferring the supermassive black hole Fornax A, to the quasar’s position. They had bred an entire race of genius hyperreal beings from scratch, called Shadows, to move the black hole. The Shadows ferried the black hole near the quasar, by intuitive gentle shoves which only they could possibly comprehend.
The XO read, “Science fleet says the black hole will be in place in 2 minutes.”
“Give me a fleet view,” the Emperor said and the officer’s hands blurred on his workspace.
The screen showed an overhead view of the fleet’s positions, in orbit around the quasar. The quasar itself, brighter than any sun, its redshift giving a pleasing warm colour, was spewing out deadly gamma bursts out of its poles at steady intervals.
Anything caught in the beam’s path would be simply annihilated. The cosmic forces involved exceeded all known charts and meters. The project was coming to its completion after decades of research and unprecedented calculations and invented math.
Literally anything that could be found in the Jarrlaxian empire had been flung at the barrier, and it simply took it without a dent on its crystalline surface. But now they had a new plan. Jarrl would use a black hole’s gravitational pull, to aim the quasar at the immovable object.
The Emperor stood up and bellowed, “Prepare to fire the gamma-ray at those filthy Sarrlaxians!”
The Shadows moved the black hole Fornax A into position with precise tugs, the approach vector pre-picked to put the two massive celestial objects into orbit around one another, disturbing the cosmic balance and pointing the gamma-ray burst on Sarrl’s home galaxy.
The quasar shifted slowly, as if its light strands were hair floating in water.
A terrified science officer brought a device with a big red button to the Emperor and crouched down all the way to the floor. “P-p-push the button mighty Emperor, when the quasar aligns.” He hesitated. “Not a moment earlier.”
The Emperor smiled at this. Surely the work of his trusty XO. He shot an affirming nod at his aide and hovered his hand over the big red button.
Everything was calculated down to the last molecule. The black hole would be in place in a few seconds, its pull strong enough to move the quasar at a precise angle to spew matter and gamma-rays at the besieged galaxy.
A micrometeoroid, nothing more than a pebble, sailed through the stars. Nobody knows where it came from, but it’s just one of the innumerable space debris flying around the universe with immense speeds. The pebble drifted through gases and radiation, defied gravity wells and various obstacles, to randomly reach Jarrl’s armada. More specifically, his flagship. More specifically, his bridge section. More specifically, his chair. Of course, the flagship was protected. A layer of shielding was pocked like our Moon, providing passive protection against the small but very real danger of micrometeoroid collisions, the tiny rocks travelling at hurling speeds through the stars.
But, the precise point this pebble chose to impact had been already hit before. Times two.
The pebble shot through the weakened shielding, pierced the hull leaving a hiss of escaping atmosphere, blasted through a few overhead circuits that sparked to their death and hit Jarrl straight to the heart.
The Emperor groaned, his leg gave way and as he fell he pressed the big red button prematurely.
Three seconds before the black hole was in place.
The balance of the cosmic forces was disturbed, the black hole spun and consumed the Shadows who were right at the tipping point of her inescapable maw. The quasar was jerked away but it pushed back, its axis darting around like a terrified eyeball. It ejected its mass of consumed stars. The beam hit a part of the fleet and annihilated it in an instant, then swiped around spraying the rest with scorching gamma-rays.
Then it swung around like an unattended firehose, its beam destroying everything in its path. The beam fell upon the immovable object, which lit up in rainbow colours like a diamond and then was burned away, winked out like a candle in the dark.
The screen showed Sarrl’s terrified face again. “What have you done? You maniac, what have you done?”
Jarrl was tense. He managed to say, “Immovable object my ass.” Then he gurgled blood through his mouth, looked at his nemesis in a mixed expression of agony and triumph, and collapsed on the floor. The XO wailed over his beloved leader.
The quasar beam swept the Sarrlaxian galaxy, burning away every trace of atmosphere on their planets, leaving them at the fate of their own suns. Then it shifted slowly to the left, and finally stopped moving, fixed in place.
Straight at the Jarrlaxian home galaxy.
And this is how, the Jarrlaxian race, their legacy a billion years old and their rule mostly uncontested over ten thousand galaxies, was wiped out by a space pebble.
The End
(for now)
PRESS ANY KEY TO DESTROY THE EARTH
Note from the author
This story is not considered canonical (canon) in the Antigravel universe. In case it wasn’t apparent, in the rest of the stories Earth is fine and dandy. This story is quite old, and I decided to refresh it and put it in this series because it fits so well. Consider it an insight into the early themes that ended up in the Antigravel stories.
Enjoy.
Moonquake
The destruction of Earth began from a place we never suspected. The world always feared that some scientist would tinker with the laws of nature too much, those unbreakable laws, and that Nature would put humanity in its place once and for all.
Not only was that fear valid, but I was the one to make it real.
It all started with the destruction of the Chinese Lunar base. A moonquake wiped it out. It was a tragic moment for man. We mourned two hundred of the sharpest minds in the world, and the most important stepping stone ever since the Hubble and the James Webb space telescopes.
We barely had any time to grieve when we were summoned by the Chinese army. They gathered the world’s topmost seismologists and huddled us together in a room. The funny thing was that it was identical to our yearly convention, we practically all knew each other, sometimes a little too well. As we hypothesised among us about the purpose of this gathering and nobody knew any real facts, a representative of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) informed us that we would take part in a titanic new project.
They accepted our advice, our studies and equipment demands and three years later we were launche
d in the Lunar Seismic Research Base.
The base was sparkling new. From the moment we stepped foot in there, it felt like home. We had spent every minute of the last three years designing and simulating and reconfiguring our projects on the new Lunar base. Every hallway, every piece of equipment was familiar to us and right where it was supposed to be. Protocols and interfaces had been drilled into our brains over the past year. The feeling was ecstatic, we felt like children with brand new toys, shiny and expensive and the coolest ones on the block. We were in the most advanced Lunar base with passionate scientists and working on an experiment that was inconceivable seventy years earlier.
The irony was, that despite having cutting edge equipment we were working with data that was precisely seventy years old. The first mission with the goal of studying the Lunar seismic activity was Apollo 15, in July ‘71. That program installed three monitoring stations that were adequate to record the moonquakes. NASA was astounded to record actual seismic activity back then, and made a thorough — and extensive for its time — investigation.
Upon that study we had based millions of man hours, creating the network of harnessing moonquakes. An important advantage of working on the Moon instead of on Earth, was that contrary to Earth, the Moon has periodic quakes in tune with the tides. Also, the quakes reflect on the inside of the Lunar surface with minimal decay because there are no oceans to absorb them like Earth does.
That science research done back in ‘71 had mapped ten locations that could potentially become seismic epicentres. Our own research had discovered two more infrequent ones, and in those twelve locations we had installed the seismic countermeasures.
For decades, seismology had been a waiting game. We completed our calculations, we formed our theories, set up our equipment and waited, for years even in certain cases. Not anymore. For the first time we had the ability to try out ideas and theories on periodic earthquakes that were similar enough with Earth’s for them to matter.
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