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More from fwbrown61
For sure, there's lots to learn about
combat. Can spend your life at it.
Perhaps briefly.
But one lesson all soldiers know. Even
the most potent weapon is useless
in battle if it's not used in time.
In time, did you say...?
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
>>>>> THE WEAPON <<<<<
© Fred Brown, June 26/2013
Gotta lay down a plug for the good folks at Pimp My Gun.com. Wanna design your own
virtual firearms, these guys have a lovely sweet toolkit. Hey Ma, look what I made. :- )
Oh, and yet again Larry Niven gets a smidge o' credit. Let's see who figures out which
story that gun's cloned from. TY once more, Larry.
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
❱❱❱❱ NOTA BENE: This copy is in an enhanced, better-readable font, and can only be read on cyan screens.
The Standard text copy that's readable on dark screens is here: THE WEAPON -- Standard txt
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
Sitting in the big armchair, the diminutive fox fur scientist looked up timidly
at the two hulking camel fur soldiers that flanked him. The tan uniforms that
matched their fur were crisply militarily perfect. To be sure, they had intimidating
down perfect too.
The scientist gritted his muzzle. Any taller, and the office ceiling fan would
take their ears off. But giggle at that thought and he'd die instantly, no doubt
about it. If that wasn't what was going to happen anyway.
The office of the Supreme Dictator and Revered Leader was airy and
spacious, with wide armoured windows that looked out on the dusty Middle
Eastern capital city. The office was on the top floor of the Army's headquarters. A
good view was to be expected. Few dictators prefer sub-basement bunkers.
Sitting behind his heavy, expansive desk, the Supreme Dictator and Revered
Leader was dressed in a plain uniform that had no need of symbols of rank. He
scowled at the weapon sitting on the desktop in front of him. Then scowled even
more at the scientist, a look of disgust on his Doberman muzzle.
Perhaps all canines want to be the top dog? This one was definitively it.
Rumour had it he sometimes killed and ate his enemies himself.
"You... are full of crap, and inches away from being tortured to death," the
Supreme Dictator growled bluntly, sharp fangs visible. "You do know that, don't
you? Time travel is impossible. Cheap sci-fi that doesn't work, is all that so-called
Time-Jump theory is worth. For all that you physicists keep gnawing at it."
The Dictator poked a pen at the gun-like device on the desk. It had a pistol
grip, a small keypad and screen above the grip, and a large silvery ball-like thing
where a barrel should be. A short cylinder marked with a radiation symbol poked
down in place of a magazine.
"Impossible," the Dictator repeated with a grunt.
Standing beside the desk, the Minister of Science was in civilian clothes, a
fine suit that befitted his elite status in the government. He sighed, and tried to
keep his bunny ears from showing his frustration. If there was one thing he
really, really loathed about the Dictator, it was the dog's insufferable belief that
he knew everything about science.
"If he's wrong, and if he's wasted five years of money and work, I'll torture
him to death myself," the Minister said calmly. "But at least hear him out,
hmmm?"
The Dictator turned his gaze to the Minister. "How bloodthirsty of you, for a
bunny fur. Although if he's wrong you're not so far from a garotte yourself," the
Dictator glowered. "Time-Jump theory is total fiction."
"No it's not," the scientist said in a barely audible voice, with downcast eyes.
"I've solved it. Down to the last decimal point. It works."
The Minister bit his lip. Better furs than the scientist had died for far less
provocation than that. Careful, fox...
"Then explain it," the Dictator said sweetly. "And no math, and if there's one
word I don't understand you're an ex-physicist. As in dead and taxidermied,
although not necessarily in that order."
The scientist gulped. He cast a mute glance of appeal at the Minister.
"You explained it to me. Explain it to him," the Minister murmured. And
behind his back crossed the fingers of one paw. He'd seen the demonstration in
the lab. The mouse had vanished, then reappeared five minutes later. The
weapon did work.
Getting the Dictator to believe it, however, was a different, slightly riskier
matter.
"Einstein never could get around the limits of his relativistic theories of
space-time," the scientist began cautiously. "And he just hated quantum
mechanics. He couldn't reconcile himself to a theory that involved so much
uncertainty and probability at the atomic level."
"'God does not play dice with the Universe,'" the Dictator quoted.
"Exactly," the scientist nodded nervously. "And that attitude blocked him
from developing a theory of quantum gravity, which was what Einstein needed to
make relativity and quantum mechanics mesh with each other. But some
speculations that come from modern string theory hint that quantum gravity
could open the door to time travel, based on the concept of the wormhole. Except
it's only time travel to the future. At least at the moment. It turns out that God
does play dice, but won't permit us to go back for a do-over. For that we'd need
an entropy reversal machine, not a time machine."
The Dictator sniffed. "Wormholes. A special kind of singularity that can
tunnel through the structure of space-time on the macro scale. Thus violating the
lightspeed barrier to the transmission of information, yadda, yadda," the Dictator
said irritably. "This I know already. Don't try my patience."
The Minister of Science chuckled. "So you have been reading those copies of
Scientific American I keep leaving on your desk."
"I only read them for the comics," the Dictator snorted. To the scientist:
"You were saying?"
The scientist straightened up a bit. A note of pride entered his voice. He had
earned the right to some.
"I've solved quantum gravity. It's the key," the scientist said firmly, his
bushy tail behind the chair swishing a couple of times. "I'm able to create a
specific type of micro-wormhole in there"--he pointed to the silvery ball
shape--"And then modulate the field effects to project outwards to the target."
"And plink, what you aim at goes into the future," the Dictator scoffed, open
disdain on his muzzle.
The scientist met the Dictator's eyes, and with more certainty than was
probably wise. Not many dictators of any species are very enthusiastic about
hearing that somebody else is right, and they're not.
"Yes. It goes into the future," the scientist said steadily. "More testing
needed, but what I've done so far proves out. You have your weapon."
"Interesting," the Dictator mused. He picked up the weapon and pointed it at
the scientist. The Minister stiffened.
"So if you were an enemy soldier about to shoot me," the Dictator drawled,
"I could 'plink' you a few minutes into the future, sit back and have a smoke,
then have my AK ready when you reappear. Then shoot you in the head."
"That's one scenario. It's set for five minutes right now, but you can set it for
any span of time depending on the power supply," the scientist said as calmly as
he could manage. Since he was staring down the business end of his own
weapon.
"Really," the Dictator murmured. "And if it was set for 10,000 years I could
basically get rid of you as permanently as if I'd killed you. But you wouldn't be
dead. That has possibilities. Hmmm. Power supply. This little canister, labeled as
radioactive? Nuclear powered?"
"No. Just a small chip of Polonium-210. Cheap alpha emitter. Takes a few
alpha particles to catalyze the wormhole. A mini-sized particle accelerator would
be a waste of time, so to speak. Rechargeable next-gen Lithium battery in the
grip is the power supply."
"I see. Hmmm..."
The Dictator raised the weapon slightly and examined it. Then he lowered it
back down to aim at the scientist and fired.
There was a whine, a burst of actinic blue light, and the scientist
disappeared. The two camel fur soldiers recoiled in shock.
"AHHH!! NO!!" the Minister of Science yelped.
"Annnnd why not?" the Dictator grinned. "He'll be back in five minutes. Or so
he said."
The Dictator looked at the weapon again. "Although even if he's dead I must
say I am impressed so far."
Paws pulling at his ears, the Minister ground his teeth. "That thing in your
paw is only a prototype, and the fox you just plinked is the most brilliant
physicist the world, no, the Universe, has ever seen! If he were free in America
he'd need a dump truck to carry away the Nobel Prizes they'd shower on him!"
"Then it's a good thing he believes his wife and children are still alive and
hostage in prison, isn't it?" the Dictator said dryly. "If that didn't motivate him to
use top-quality parts in this contraption I suppose that's just too bad."
The Minister rolled his eyes. The Dictator laughed. "I think perhaps I will
have a smoke while we wait." The Dictator put the weapon down and reached for
the humidor full of fine cigars.
The Minister paled under his fur. "Ah, no, I wouldn't do that. He told me that
there shouldn't be anything much more dense than air in the volume of space
where something's going to materialize. If there is, there could be an explosion."
Slowly, the Dictator's eyebrows rose, as did his ears. "Could be an
explosion? As in how big?"
"Why don't we wait until he returns and ask him?" the Minister shot back,
then could have bitten his tongue off at the freezing look that came into the
Dictator's eyes.
That was not a look that many furs lived to see more than once.
Silence fell and dominated the office, broken only by the light clicking sound
of the Dictator's foreclaws drumming on the desk, and the not-sound of the camel
fur soldiers trying to muffle their frazzled nerves. The ubiquitous ceiling fan
hummed as they all waited.
Without warning, the scientist reappeared in the chair, accompanied by a
loud popping sound. The soldiers jumped. The scientist's red-furred muzzle had
just begun to twist in terror. Then he gasped upon realizing he was still alive.
"What was it like?" the Dictator said quietly.
"Instantaneous," the scientist gulped. "One second you were pointing the
weapon at me, and the next I'm here."
"But we haven't tested it on a person yet," the scientist added faintly.
"We have now," the Dictator smirked. "And something else. I'm told that if
there's too much matter in the space where you reappear, there's an explosion.
So. If I sent a brick five seconds into the future, then moved a second brick into
the space where the first was to come back, how big an explosion would I get?"
The scientist's eyes widened in alarm. "My lab! How did you know...?"
He caught himself. "Oh. That. Enormous, in the kiloton range at the very
least. Some nuclei in the atoms of the two bricks would be close enough together
to fuse. Atoms that tried to occupy exactly the same space would interfere with
each other at the level of their component quarks and ..."
But the scientist trailed off as the expression on the Dictator's muzzle
hardened.
"A nuclear-grade bomb that's made out of ordinary bricks and weighs barely
much more than that," the Dictator said slowly, eyes narrowed. "That is very
interesting. But how did I know what, and what about your lab?"
A terrible intensity of light flashed through the windows, brighter than a
thousand suns. The paintings on the far wall of the office exploded into flame.
Taller than everyone else, the two camel fur soldiers caught it full force, instantly
blind and also on fire from the waist up. They screamed and clawed at their eyes.
By coincidence sitting down, the scientist and the Dictator were spared. Luck
alone placed the Minister standing in the shadow of a pillar. Their blindness would
only be temporary.
Cold comfort. The shock wave arrived, a hurricane-blow concussion that
smashed the bulletproof windows into high-velocity shards, most of them slicing
the two soldiers into bloody ribbons. The entire building rocked on its foundations
as if in the throes of a Richter-10 earthquake. The ground shock from the
detonation probably peaked around that range.
That was nothing to the vast, obscene, roaring noise of destruction,
overwhelmingly deafening, that seemed to go on and on and on. It sounded like
Shaitan himself bellowing in demonic rage. And enjoying himself immensely as
he kicked over a whole city.
Then it was over, the maelstrom spent. The shaking and burning stopped,
the fires snuffed out by the force of the furious wind. Two fires, anyway.
In the shocked silence: "Nuclear strike. The infidel Israelis...," the Minister
moaned, as he picked himself up off the glass-covered floor. His suit wasn't
nearly as fine as it used to be.
"No," the scientist said, blinking to clear the spots from his vision. Not that
he'd had any more warning than anybody else, but quick reflexes had dove him
to cover in front of the heavy desk. "That was my lab going up."
The Minister didn't hear him. He stumbled towards an open window, which
at the moment was all of them. The weapon had been hurled off the desk. The
scientist reached for it. He tapped quickly on the keypad.
The Dictator had been thrown to the floor and knocked unconscious, but he
was a tough dog and recovered quickly. He shook his head a few times and sat
up. "What happened? Report!" he snapped.
"See for yourself. The damned Israelis...!" the Minister groaned. He was
looking out over the shattered city. The Dictator dragged himself up and leaned
forward to see.
The sheer horror of the thing froze them both to the core. An enormous
mushroom cloud boiled and roiled evilly as it rose slowly over the Western part of
the city. Mixed screams of pain and fear began to drift up from the street below.
The people and furs who could do so began leaving destroyed buildings. The ring
of firestorms ignited by the blast started to glow in the afternoon sky.
"By the Prophet! That's at least a megaton groundburst!" the Dictator
gasped. "But they've never built anything more than tactical weapons..."
The Dictator blinked. Then he whirled around to stare at the scientist, who
had gotten to his footpaws. "Your lab!!" the Dictator hissed. "That was you!!"
The scientist raised the weapon and aimed it at the Dictator.
"I know my family is dead," he said shakily, and fired.
This time, the focused beam of warped space-time did not envelope the
Dictator, but rather punched a neat, clean, six-inch-round hole directly through
his chest. The scientist could see sky through it.
"Glup," the Dictator said, as blood gushed.
Then the Dictator simply folded up at the knees and keeled over. The
expression of shocked, stupid surprise on his muzzle was all the revenge the
scientist needed.
Four seconds later, a beating canine heart appeared in mid-air, sandwiched
between ribs and backbone, and precisely where the Dictator's chest cavity had
been a moment ago. A last spray of blood spurted, then the removed chunk of
almost surgically cut flesh fell on top of the dead Dictator with a wet squish, the
bones falling apart.
The Dictator's heart rolled to a red stop against the shoes of the stunned
Minister. The scientist hadn't mentioned this capability. Clearly, now he didn't
have to.
The scientist tapped at the keypad again. "Good-bye," he said to the
Minister. "Something else I didn't tell you. There's a tuning feature. Ensures I
won't come out inside a wall or something. Two million years ought to be safe
enough."
The scientist pulled the trigger and vanished.
The Minister stood silently for a long, long moment, and pondered the three
corpses at his footpaws.
Well. Quite a weapon indeed. One might even say they'd gotten their
money's worth.
The field-testing, however: Just a leetle on the expensive side.
The Minister of Science heaved a sigh and ran a paw over his ears. He shook
his head, then stepped over the Dictator's body, and walked out of the office
without a backward glance to begin the rebuilding.
--- Fin.
combat. Can spend your life at it.
Perhaps briefly.
But one lesson all soldiers know. Even
the most potent weapon is useless
in battle if it's not used in time.
In time, did you say...?
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
>>>>> THE WEAPON <<<<<
© Fred Brown, June 26/2013
Gotta lay down a plug for the good folks at Pimp My Gun.com. Wanna design your own
virtual firearms, these guys have a lovely sweet toolkit. Hey Ma, look what I made. :- )
Oh, and yet again Larry Niven gets a smidge o' credit. Let's see who figures out which
story that gun's cloned from. TY once more, Larry.
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
❱❱❱❱ NOTA BENE: This copy is in an enhanced, better-readable font, and can only be read on cyan screens.
The Standard text copy that's readable on dark screens is here: THE WEAPON -- Standard txt
............................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................
Sitting in the big armchair, the diminutive fox fur scientist looked up timidly
at the two hulking camel fur soldiers that flanked him. The tan uniforms that
matched their fur were crisply militarily perfect. To be sure, they had intimidating
down perfect too.
The scientist gritted his muzzle. Any taller, and the office ceiling fan would
take their ears off. But giggle at that thought and he'd die instantly, no doubt
about it. If that wasn't what was going to happen anyway.
The office of the Supreme Dictator and Revered Leader was airy and
spacious, with wide armoured windows that looked out on the dusty Middle
Eastern capital city. The office was on the top floor of the Army's headquarters. A
good view was to be expected. Few dictators prefer sub-basement bunkers.
Sitting behind his heavy, expansive desk, the Supreme Dictator and Revered
Leader was dressed in a plain uniform that had no need of symbols of rank. He
scowled at the weapon sitting on the desktop in front of him. Then scowled even
more at the scientist, a look of disgust on his Doberman muzzle.
Perhaps all canines want to be the top dog? This one was definitively it.
Rumour had it he sometimes killed and ate his enemies himself.
"You... are full of crap, and inches away from being tortured to death," the
Supreme Dictator growled bluntly, sharp fangs visible. "You do know that, don't
you? Time travel is impossible. Cheap sci-fi that doesn't work, is all that so-called
Time-Jump theory is worth. For all that you physicists keep gnawing at it."
The Dictator poked a pen at the gun-like device on the desk. It had a pistol
grip, a small keypad and screen above the grip, and a large silvery ball-like thing
where a barrel should be. A short cylinder marked with a radiation symbol poked
down in place of a magazine.
"Impossible," the Dictator repeated with a grunt.
Standing beside the desk, the Minister of Science was in civilian clothes, a
fine suit that befitted his elite status in the government. He sighed, and tried to
keep his bunny ears from showing his frustration. If there was one thing he
really, really loathed about the Dictator, it was the dog's insufferable belief that
he knew everything about science.
"If he's wrong, and if he's wasted five years of money and work, I'll torture
him to death myself," the Minister said calmly. "But at least hear him out,
hmmm?"
The Dictator turned his gaze to the Minister. "How bloodthirsty of you, for a
bunny fur. Although if he's wrong you're not so far from a garotte yourself," the
Dictator glowered. "Time-Jump theory is total fiction."
"No it's not," the scientist said in a barely audible voice, with downcast eyes.
"I've solved it. Down to the last decimal point. It works."
The Minister bit his lip. Better furs than the scientist had died for far less
provocation than that. Careful, fox...
"Then explain it," the Dictator said sweetly. "And no math, and if there's one
word I don't understand you're an ex-physicist. As in dead and taxidermied,
although not necessarily in that order."
The scientist gulped. He cast a mute glance of appeal at the Minister.
"You explained it to me. Explain it to him," the Minister murmured. And
behind his back crossed the fingers of one paw. He'd seen the demonstration in
the lab. The mouse had vanished, then reappeared five minutes later. The
weapon did work.
Getting the Dictator to believe it, however, was a different, slightly riskier
matter.
"Einstein never could get around the limits of his relativistic theories of
space-time," the scientist began cautiously. "And he just hated quantum
mechanics. He couldn't reconcile himself to a theory that involved so much
uncertainty and probability at the atomic level."
"'God does not play dice with the Universe,'" the Dictator quoted.
"Exactly," the scientist nodded nervously. "And that attitude blocked him
from developing a theory of quantum gravity, which was what Einstein needed to
make relativity and quantum mechanics mesh with each other. But some
speculations that come from modern string theory hint that quantum gravity
could open the door to time travel, based on the concept of the wormhole. Except
it's only time travel to the future. At least at the moment. It turns out that God
does play dice, but won't permit us to go back for a do-over. For that we'd need
an entropy reversal machine, not a time machine."
The Dictator sniffed. "Wormholes. A special kind of singularity that can
tunnel through the structure of space-time on the macro scale. Thus violating the
lightspeed barrier to the transmission of information, yadda, yadda," the Dictator
said irritably. "This I know already. Don't try my patience."
The Minister of Science chuckled. "So you have been reading those copies of
Scientific American I keep leaving on your desk."
"I only read them for the comics," the Dictator snorted. To the scientist:
"You were saying?"
The scientist straightened up a bit. A note of pride entered his voice. He had
earned the right to some.
"I've solved quantum gravity. It's the key," the scientist said firmly, his
bushy tail behind the chair swishing a couple of times. "I'm able to create a
specific type of micro-wormhole in there"--he pointed to the silvery ball
shape--"And then modulate the field effects to project outwards to the target."
"And plink, what you aim at goes into the future," the Dictator scoffed, open
disdain on his muzzle.
The scientist met the Dictator's eyes, and with more certainty than was
probably wise. Not many dictators of any species are very enthusiastic about
hearing that somebody else is right, and they're not.
"Yes. It goes into the future," the scientist said steadily. "More testing
needed, but what I've done so far proves out. You have your weapon."
"Interesting," the Dictator mused. He picked up the weapon and pointed it at
the scientist. The Minister stiffened.
"So if you were an enemy soldier about to shoot me," the Dictator drawled,
"I could 'plink' you a few minutes into the future, sit back and have a smoke,
then have my AK ready when you reappear. Then shoot you in the head."
"That's one scenario. It's set for five minutes right now, but you can set it for
any span of time depending on the power supply," the scientist said as calmly as
he could manage. Since he was staring down the business end of his own
weapon.
"Really," the Dictator murmured. "And if it was set for 10,000 years I could
basically get rid of you as permanently as if I'd killed you. But you wouldn't be
dead. That has possibilities. Hmmm. Power supply. This little canister, labeled as
radioactive? Nuclear powered?"
"No. Just a small chip of Polonium-210. Cheap alpha emitter. Takes a few
alpha particles to catalyze the wormhole. A mini-sized particle accelerator would
be a waste of time, so to speak. Rechargeable next-gen Lithium battery in the
grip is the power supply."
"I see. Hmmm..."
The Dictator raised the weapon slightly and examined it. Then he lowered it
back down to aim at the scientist and fired.
There was a whine, a burst of actinic blue light, and the scientist
disappeared. The two camel fur soldiers recoiled in shock.
"AHHH!! NO!!" the Minister of Science yelped.
"Annnnd why not?" the Dictator grinned. "He'll be back in five minutes. Or so
he said."
The Dictator looked at the weapon again. "Although even if he's dead I must
say I am impressed so far."
Paws pulling at his ears, the Minister ground his teeth. "That thing in your
paw is only a prototype, and the fox you just plinked is the most brilliant
physicist the world, no, the Universe, has ever seen! If he were free in America
he'd need a dump truck to carry away the Nobel Prizes they'd shower on him!"
"Then it's a good thing he believes his wife and children are still alive and
hostage in prison, isn't it?" the Dictator said dryly. "If that didn't motivate him to
use top-quality parts in this contraption I suppose that's just too bad."
The Minister rolled his eyes. The Dictator laughed. "I think perhaps I will
have a smoke while we wait." The Dictator put the weapon down and reached for
the humidor full of fine cigars.
The Minister paled under his fur. "Ah, no, I wouldn't do that. He told me that
there shouldn't be anything much more dense than air in the volume of space
where something's going to materialize. If there is, there could be an explosion."
Slowly, the Dictator's eyebrows rose, as did his ears. "Could be an
explosion? As in how big?"
"Why don't we wait until he returns and ask him?" the Minister shot back,
then could have bitten his tongue off at the freezing look that came into the
Dictator's eyes.
That was not a look that many furs lived to see more than once.
Silence fell and dominated the office, broken only by the light clicking sound
of the Dictator's foreclaws drumming on the desk, and the not-sound of the camel
fur soldiers trying to muffle their frazzled nerves. The ubiquitous ceiling fan
hummed as they all waited.
Without warning, the scientist reappeared in the chair, accompanied by a
loud popping sound. The soldiers jumped. The scientist's red-furred muzzle had
just begun to twist in terror. Then he gasped upon realizing he was still alive.
"What was it like?" the Dictator said quietly.
"Instantaneous," the scientist gulped. "One second you were pointing the
weapon at me, and the next I'm here."
"But we haven't tested it on a person yet," the scientist added faintly.
"We have now," the Dictator smirked. "And something else. I'm told that if
there's too much matter in the space where you reappear, there's an explosion.
So. If I sent a brick five seconds into the future, then moved a second brick into
the space where the first was to come back, how big an explosion would I get?"
The scientist's eyes widened in alarm. "My lab! How did you know...?"
He caught himself. "Oh. That. Enormous, in the kiloton range at the very
least. Some nuclei in the atoms of the two bricks would be close enough together
to fuse. Atoms that tried to occupy exactly the same space would interfere with
each other at the level of their component quarks and ..."
But the scientist trailed off as the expression on the Dictator's muzzle
hardened.
"A nuclear-grade bomb that's made out of ordinary bricks and weighs barely
much more than that," the Dictator said slowly, eyes narrowed. "That is very
interesting. But how did I know what, and what about your lab?"
A terrible intensity of light flashed through the windows, brighter than a
thousand suns. The paintings on the far wall of the office exploded into flame.
Taller than everyone else, the two camel fur soldiers caught it full force, instantly
blind and also on fire from the waist up. They screamed and clawed at their eyes.
By coincidence sitting down, the scientist and the Dictator were spared. Luck
alone placed the Minister standing in the shadow of a pillar. Their blindness would
only be temporary.
Cold comfort. The shock wave arrived, a hurricane-blow concussion that
smashed the bulletproof windows into high-velocity shards, most of them slicing
the two soldiers into bloody ribbons. The entire building rocked on its foundations
as if in the throes of a Richter-10 earthquake. The ground shock from the
detonation probably peaked around that range.
That was nothing to the vast, obscene, roaring noise of destruction,
overwhelmingly deafening, that seemed to go on and on and on. It sounded like
Shaitan himself bellowing in demonic rage. And enjoying himself immensely as
he kicked over a whole city.
Then it was over, the maelstrom spent. The shaking and burning stopped,
the fires snuffed out by the force of the furious wind. Two fires, anyway.
In the shocked silence: "Nuclear strike. The infidel Israelis...," the Minister
moaned, as he picked himself up off the glass-covered floor. His suit wasn't
nearly as fine as it used to be.
"No," the scientist said, blinking to clear the spots from his vision. Not that
he'd had any more warning than anybody else, but quick reflexes had dove him
to cover in front of the heavy desk. "That was my lab going up."
The Minister didn't hear him. He stumbled towards an open window, which
at the moment was all of them. The weapon had been hurled off the desk. The
scientist reached for it. He tapped quickly on the keypad.
The Dictator had been thrown to the floor and knocked unconscious, but he
was a tough dog and recovered quickly. He shook his head a few times and sat
up. "What happened? Report!" he snapped.
"See for yourself. The damned Israelis...!" the Minister groaned. He was
looking out over the shattered city. The Dictator dragged himself up and leaned
forward to see.
The sheer horror of the thing froze them both to the core. An enormous
mushroom cloud boiled and roiled evilly as it rose slowly over the Western part of
the city. Mixed screams of pain and fear began to drift up from the street below.
The people and furs who could do so began leaving destroyed buildings. The ring
of firestorms ignited by the blast started to glow in the afternoon sky.
"By the Prophet! That's at least a megaton groundburst!" the Dictator
gasped. "But they've never built anything more than tactical weapons..."
The Dictator blinked. Then he whirled around to stare at the scientist, who
had gotten to his footpaws. "Your lab!!" the Dictator hissed. "That was you!!"
The scientist raised the weapon and aimed it at the Dictator.
"I know my family is dead," he said shakily, and fired.
This time, the focused beam of warped space-time did not envelope the
Dictator, but rather punched a neat, clean, six-inch-round hole directly through
his chest. The scientist could see sky through it.
"Glup," the Dictator said, as blood gushed.
Then the Dictator simply folded up at the knees and keeled over. The
expression of shocked, stupid surprise on his muzzle was all the revenge the
scientist needed.
Four seconds later, a beating canine heart appeared in mid-air, sandwiched
between ribs and backbone, and precisely where the Dictator's chest cavity had
been a moment ago. A last spray of blood spurted, then the removed chunk of
almost surgically cut flesh fell on top of the dead Dictator with a wet squish, the
bones falling apart.
The Dictator's heart rolled to a red stop against the shoes of the stunned
Minister. The scientist hadn't mentioned this capability. Clearly, now he didn't
have to.
The scientist tapped at the keypad again. "Good-bye," he said to the
Minister. "Something else I didn't tell you. There's a tuning feature. Ensures I
won't come out inside a wall or something. Two million years ought to be safe
enough."
The scientist pulled the trigger and vanished.
The Minister stood silently for a long, long moment, and pondered the three
corpses at his footpaws.
Well. Quite a weapon indeed. One might even say they'd gotten their
money's worth.
The field-testing, however: Just a leetle on the expensive side.
The Minister of Science heaved a sigh and ran a paw over his ears. He shook
his head, then stepped over the Dictator's body, and walked out of the office
without a backward glance to begin the rebuilding.
--- Fin.
Category All / General Furry Art
Species Vulpine (Other)
Size 374 x 374px
File Size 24.2 kB
We-ll, ya gotta admit, as weapons go this one packs a punch. :- )
Good thumbnail art for stories matters, for a ton of reasons. 'S why I post
two copies of a story, one as story sub and one as art sub.
The art sub thumbnail is much bigger, no?. Think this one hits the mark.
Glad you liked. More to come. Hope to make this a busy summer for
writing.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v 1.0
Good thumbnail art for stories matters, for a ton of reasons. 'S why I post
two copies of a story, one as story sub and one as art sub.
The art sub thumbnail is much bigger, no?. Think this one hits the mark.
Glad you liked. More to come. Hope to make this a busy summer for
writing.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v 1.0
Gracias and TY. Hard SF, and furry, and a new twist on time travel (or think it is).
Whee, what was I smoking? :- )
Da good stuff, is what. Yah, proud of this one. Glad you liked.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
Whee, what was I smoking? :- )
Da good stuff, is what. Yah, proud of this one. Glad you liked.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
Hee hee hee. Oh, dat's minor, compared to all the truly impossible questions about
time travel.
To an SF writer, time travel is like Mount Everest: Because it's there. And you gotta try it.
But, like most SF literary devices and tropes and conventions, close inspection reveals
that it doesn't make a helluva lot of sense at *all.*
Except you can get a ripping good story out of it, no? One that jumps off the page and
smacks the reader in the muzzle. I recommend John Varley's novel Millennium.
Wunnerful fireworks show regarding time travel; I'm not worthy.
And Varley answers your question too. Fanatically enormous computing resources would be
required, and are used in his story, to keep people from coming out inside a wall,
as said. Varley posits wormhole-type time travel that makes a connection/portal
between two times. Sweet idea, deployed to dramatic effect.
But by any reasonable guessestimate, it would take a universe full of computers to support
that. And a mega-high-powered AI to run it all (which Varley has). Oops, gettin'
complicated...
So add a little hand-waving to this story (us SF writers are good at that). Let's posit that a
proper theory of quantum gravity rests on a wholly new and higher-order concept of
space-time. Whazzat look like? Dunno. But the math would probably burn
your eyes out while rotating your tail.
That's what relativity did, as it subsumed the Newtonian concept of absolute space-time
into it's fiendish math. The doubly-fiendish math of quantum mechanics, on the
other paw, shows us that space-time at the quark level and below ain't nuthin'
like what we think it is on the macro scale. Go figure.
Quantum entanglement is God giggling at us. Oh yah, you're so smart, figure this one
out, ya arrogant primates. :- )
Have I had a iittle physics training? Yup. Enough to bend it into a pretzel for the sake of
a story, anyway. That the universe and everything in it exists in a relativistic 'framework'
is one thing. It suggests that to do time travel, you need information about
the universe's future or past state (especially re. the coordinates of walls).
Information that lightspeed says you can't have.
OR: Say the math of this higher-order space-time allows us to 'see' the universe in a way
that sidesteps lightspeed. As entanglement seems to do. Is there a higher-order
type of entanglement at play in the fine structure of reality? For the sake of
a less-ridiculous SF story, why not?
The micro-wormhole is created, and this amounts to a 'probe' of the universe's future
or past state. As to what the little computer in the gun does with this information
(or how it gets it), insert more hand-waving here. But it stands to reason that our
fox fur physicist must be a crackjack programmer too (wherever or whenever
he is).
The plausibility of time travel is far from a given. But if passes the reader's sniff test, the
story can rock. Got a couple other stories that use this Time-Jump maguffin, and
others planned. See Best Laid Plans... for more.
Fun idea; I like it. Hold onto yer tail. It's gonna get weird.*
FB.
* ('When the going gets weird, the weird get furry?' We-ll, not the worst
motto for this place. :- ) )
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
time travel.
To an SF writer, time travel is like Mount Everest: Because it's there. And you gotta try it.
But, like most SF literary devices and tropes and conventions, close inspection reveals
that it doesn't make a helluva lot of sense at *all.*
Except you can get a ripping good story out of it, no? One that jumps off the page and
smacks the reader in the muzzle. I recommend John Varley's novel Millennium.
Wunnerful fireworks show regarding time travel; I'm not worthy.
And Varley answers your question too. Fanatically enormous computing resources would be
required, and are used in his story, to keep people from coming out inside a wall,
as said. Varley posits wormhole-type time travel that makes a connection/portal
between two times. Sweet idea, deployed to dramatic effect.
But by any reasonable guessestimate, it would take a universe full of computers to support
that. And a mega-high-powered AI to run it all (which Varley has). Oops, gettin'
complicated...
So add a little hand-waving to this story (us SF writers are good at that). Let's posit that a
proper theory of quantum gravity rests on a wholly new and higher-order concept of
space-time. Whazzat look like? Dunno. But the math would probably burn
your eyes out while rotating your tail.
That's what relativity did, as it subsumed the Newtonian concept of absolute space-time
into it's fiendish math. The doubly-fiendish math of quantum mechanics, on the
other paw, shows us that space-time at the quark level and below ain't nuthin'
like what we think it is on the macro scale. Go figure.
Quantum entanglement is God giggling at us. Oh yah, you're so smart, figure this one
out, ya arrogant primates. :- )
Have I had a iittle physics training? Yup. Enough to bend it into a pretzel for the sake of
a story, anyway. That the universe and everything in it exists in a relativistic 'framework'
is one thing. It suggests that to do time travel, you need information about
the universe's future or past state (especially re. the coordinates of walls).
Information that lightspeed says you can't have.
OR: Say the math of this higher-order space-time allows us to 'see' the universe in a way
that sidesteps lightspeed. As entanglement seems to do. Is there a higher-order
type of entanglement at play in the fine structure of reality? For the sake of
a less-ridiculous SF story, why not?
The micro-wormhole is created, and this amounts to a 'probe' of the universe's future
or past state. As to what the little computer in the gun does with this information
(or how it gets it), insert more hand-waving here. But it stands to reason that our
fox fur physicist must be a crackjack programmer too (wherever or whenever
he is).
The plausibility of time travel is far from a given. But if passes the reader's sniff test, the
story can rock. Got a couple other stories that use this Time-Jump maguffin, and
others planned. See Best Laid Plans... for more.
Fun idea; I like it. Hold onto yer tail. It's gonna get weird.*
FB.
* ('When the going gets weird, the weird get furry?' We-ll, not the worst
motto for this place. :- ) )
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
I was more referring to the fact that the Earth spins at over one thousand miles per hour, it revolves around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. The sun orbits the milky way at a speed I don't know off the top of my head, but it's huge. The milky way hurtles through intergalactic space even faster than that. If you don't have some way to compensate for that, if you traveled just one second, in either direction, through time, you might still be within the circumference of Pluto's orbit when you die in the cold vacuum of space.
Sorry, didn't mean to rant, but that one of my biggest peeves with time travel, everyone assuming the planet is still going to be there on the other side, instead of trying to aim for where the planet was or will be.
Sorry, didn't mean to rant, but that one of my biggest peeves with time travel, everyone assuming the planet is still going to be there on the other side, instead of trying to aim for where the planet was or will be.
In a word, agreement. All time travel stories are loaded with hitches like that, and worse. Don't
forget that we live in a universe where space itself is expanding. In two million years, the
Earth is where, precisely? No way to know, precisely.
Ergo according to all logic, a certain fox fur scientist is now floating in space and breathing
void, not enjoying a beer in a dictator-free future. But given the dramatic logic of the
story, we are smoothly distracted from noticing this. I hope.
Ta-da, good triumphs furrily over evil, then ka-pop, vanishes to safety. Admit it, you
cheered when the Dictator got shot. A coda that shows our hero dying the hard
way: Nope, a downer ending, not gonna do it. Wouldn't be plausible. (Or
as good a story).
That said, some hand-waving 'cover' could be trowelled on in a future version to deal with
this particular hitch. And TY for mentioning, BTW. Could get a better story out of it.
Set the story start not in the office but in the elevator going up. The Minister and the
scientist get into a conversation about time travel, much to the bemusement
of the two soldiers.
The Minister is a character who would know something about time travel. And he and the
scientist are not quite antagonists. So what would the scientist say? To make the
Minister's ears (and ours) go <Poing?>
Try this: Newton assumed that space-time had certain characteristics, based largely on
Galileo's ideas about motion et al, then built a whole 'mechanics' around that. As in,
the suite of mathematical methods and techniques and concepts that would
give you accurate results to real-world problems about matter, energy, motion,
time, etc. All riotously successful, of course. Can't dis it.
Save that Newtonian mechanics poops out badly at high speeds and energies, and what about
electromagnetic radiation, and what does the speed of light have to do with the price
of apples? Well, said Einstein, maybe space-time isn't what Newton thought it was.
Meaning matter, energy, motion, time, etc., ain't what we thought either.
Enter relativistic mechanics, accompanied by many head explosions. Einsteinian space-time
is deeply weird and non-intuitive, quite alien to our common sense. Never mind. Gets
results. So long as you don't go looking under the hood of the average proton or
neutron or electron.
Oopsie: You looked. What quantum theory tells us most is that relativistic mechanics is
incomplete. There's more to space-time than meets the eye (sic). And our fox fur buddy
has figured out what's missing, and has worked out a radically new mechanics that
supersedes both relativistic and quantum math. The scientist will grafitti the key
equations on the elevator wall at this point.
Matter, energy, motion, time *really* aren't what we thought, in terms of this alleged
higher-order space-time. Ditto all the quantum nuttiness. The scientist will point
to an equation and say this is why entanglement works; really quite trivial. One of
the camel fur soldiers will murmur, oh yah, of course, it's all so simple now. Knew
it had to be something like that. :- )
Parmenides was right: The universe is a unity, but you need quantum gravity mechanics
to grok this. Matter, energy, motion, time, etc., are actually all one in higher-order
space-time, and here's the equation that shows how the equivalences and the
transforms work. As relativity shows how matter and energy are equivalent.
With a little help from C-squared.
So whazzit mean that two million years has passed, and the Earth has travelled
thousands of parsecs? A lot to us, who live in the universe and are made of
matter. But in higher-order space-time, the mechanics tells us Something
Completely Different (Ave Python).
Ergo the gun's computer knows this, takes the data returned by the micro-wormhole's
probe, and keeps the scientist's footpaws on Terra Firma, not somewhere in the Lesser
Magellenic Cloud. This story's gonna need some hefty computing power too, it seems,
but at least not as bad as Millenium. Intel and AMD are up to the job.
The scientist will point to the equations and say here are the three new fundamental constants
that do a way better job than the speed of light. Can you spell hyper-imaginary numbers?
(insert hand wave here). Knew that ya could. The idea of entaglement may be taken as a
metaphor. Time travel exploits the notion that in higher-order space-time, *everything's*
entangled, in a higher-order sense of the word. See equation four. Da numbers don't lie.
That physics degree I got from Hand-Waving University is sure paying off, huh? I'll have
my hand-waving Nobel Prize now. Stirred, not shaken. :- )
I'm almost certain I'll do more work on this thing. As with most of my short stories,
there may be a novel trying to claw its way out. Now to live long enough. Again, TY.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
forget that we live in a universe where space itself is expanding. In two million years, the
Earth is where, precisely? No way to know, precisely.
Ergo according to all logic, a certain fox fur scientist is now floating in space and breathing
void, not enjoying a beer in a dictator-free future. But given the dramatic logic of the
story, we are smoothly distracted from noticing this. I hope.
Ta-da, good triumphs furrily over evil, then ka-pop, vanishes to safety. Admit it, you
cheered when the Dictator got shot. A coda that shows our hero dying the hard
way: Nope, a downer ending, not gonna do it. Wouldn't be plausible. (Or
as good a story).
That said, some hand-waving 'cover' could be trowelled on in a future version to deal with
this particular hitch. And TY for mentioning, BTW. Could get a better story out of it.
Set the story start not in the office but in the elevator going up. The Minister and the
scientist get into a conversation about time travel, much to the bemusement
of the two soldiers.
The Minister is a character who would know something about time travel. And he and the
scientist are not quite antagonists. So what would the scientist say? To make the
Minister's ears (and ours) go <Poing?>
Try this: Newton assumed that space-time had certain characteristics, based largely on
Galileo's ideas about motion et al, then built a whole 'mechanics' around that. As in,
the suite of mathematical methods and techniques and concepts that would
give you accurate results to real-world problems about matter, energy, motion,
time, etc. All riotously successful, of course. Can't dis it.
Save that Newtonian mechanics poops out badly at high speeds and energies, and what about
electromagnetic radiation, and what does the speed of light have to do with the price
of apples? Well, said Einstein, maybe space-time isn't what Newton thought it was.
Meaning matter, energy, motion, time, etc., ain't what we thought either.
Enter relativistic mechanics, accompanied by many head explosions. Einsteinian space-time
is deeply weird and non-intuitive, quite alien to our common sense. Never mind. Gets
results. So long as you don't go looking under the hood of the average proton or
neutron or electron.
Oopsie: You looked. What quantum theory tells us most is that relativistic mechanics is
incomplete. There's more to space-time than meets the eye (sic). And our fox fur buddy
has figured out what's missing, and has worked out a radically new mechanics that
supersedes both relativistic and quantum math. The scientist will grafitti the key
equations on the elevator wall at this point.
Matter, energy, motion, time *really* aren't what we thought, in terms of this alleged
higher-order space-time. Ditto all the quantum nuttiness. The scientist will point
to an equation and say this is why entanglement works; really quite trivial. One of
the camel fur soldiers will murmur, oh yah, of course, it's all so simple now. Knew
it had to be something like that. :- )
Parmenides was right: The universe is a unity, but you need quantum gravity mechanics
to grok this. Matter, energy, motion, time, etc., are actually all one in higher-order
space-time, and here's the equation that shows how the equivalences and the
transforms work. As relativity shows how matter and energy are equivalent.
With a little help from C-squared.
So whazzit mean that two million years has passed, and the Earth has travelled
thousands of parsecs? A lot to us, who live in the universe and are made of
matter. But in higher-order space-time, the mechanics tells us Something
Completely Different (Ave Python).
Ergo the gun's computer knows this, takes the data returned by the micro-wormhole's
probe, and keeps the scientist's footpaws on Terra Firma, not somewhere in the Lesser
Magellenic Cloud. This story's gonna need some hefty computing power too, it seems,
but at least not as bad as Millenium. Intel and AMD are up to the job.
The scientist will point to the equations and say here are the three new fundamental constants
that do a way better job than the speed of light. Can you spell hyper-imaginary numbers?
(insert hand wave here). Knew that ya could. The idea of entaglement may be taken as a
metaphor. Time travel exploits the notion that in higher-order space-time, *everything's*
entangled, in a higher-order sense of the word. See equation four. Da numbers don't lie.
That physics degree I got from Hand-Waving University is sure paying off, huh? I'll have
my hand-waving Nobel Prize now. Stirred, not shaken. :- )
I'm almost certain I'll do more work on this thing. As with most of my short stories,
there may be a novel trying to claw its way out. Now to live long enough. Again, TY.
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
Ahh a very satisfying read.
Oh course I had a tonne of questions regarding this story and was tempted to ask them, but then I realised that I was just being my usual over-questioning and over-thinking self and decided to re-read the story and enjoy it all over again.
Which is a good thing because it quenched my desire that there could have been more backstory to go along with this. What led up to the scientist's family being kidnapped and killed? Why was there such a dire need to develop such a weapon? And did anyone think to put that poor Dictator's heart on ice so that it could possibly be put back in its appropriate chest cavity? These are questions that we may never know.
And we should never know. I was just being my usual bear for details and more story. And this one worked out just fine on its own. I was able to imagine the causes to my questions and more, and it made it that much more rewarding the second time around.
Also, I was going to make a few remarks regarding the entire time travel ray-gun theory, but seeing how you exhausted your theories with another poster, I felt it best to just sit back and remember everything I learned from 'The Philadelphia Experiment' and 'Back To The Future".
Besides, I've been working the last six years on trying to explain theories of slo-trans energy in one of my story series and still haven't gotten anywhere near explaining what it is or how exactly it works. That's what makes sci-fi so enthralling. You get to create without having to fully explain.
Excellent work as always my friend!
~Adrik
Oh course I had a tonne of questions regarding this story and was tempted to ask them, but then I realised that I was just being my usual over-questioning and over-thinking self and decided to re-read the story and enjoy it all over again.
Which is a good thing because it quenched my desire that there could have been more backstory to go along with this. What led up to the scientist's family being kidnapped and killed? Why was there such a dire need to develop such a weapon? And did anyone think to put that poor Dictator's heart on ice so that it could possibly be put back in its appropriate chest cavity? These are questions that we may never know.
And we should never know. I was just being my usual bear for details and more story. And this one worked out just fine on its own. I was able to imagine the causes to my questions and more, and it made it that much more rewarding the second time around.
Also, I was going to make a few remarks regarding the entire time travel ray-gun theory, but seeing how you exhausted your theories with another poster, I felt it best to just sit back and remember everything I learned from 'The Philadelphia Experiment' and 'Back To The Future".
Besides, I've been working the last six years on trying to explain theories of slo-trans energy in one of my story series and still haven't gotten anywhere near explaining what it is or how exactly it works. That's what makes sci-fi so enthralling. You get to create without having to fully explain.
Excellent work as always my friend!
~Adrik
Huzzah, another satisfied customer, as the vicar said to the prostitute (or was that the
other way around?)
Glad you liked. No sex in it, of course, meaning readership may be spartan. This is FA.
Why does that always take on the faint flavour of an epithet for me?
De nada. For a sequel I can always make our fox fur hero pop out in a brothel orgy room.
In two million years y'think hookers are gonna change? Physicists know harmonic
motion. I'll have him fix their trapeze. :- )
Call me purring-pleased that you wondered about the backstory (or lack of it). A tell, a tell
I say, that the story proper schmecked. No *room* for backstory, dammit, not without
this exploding into a novella.
To quote Billy Crystal from an old SNL sketch, jeeze, don't ya hate it when that happens? :- )
But if the characters connect well enough, are clear enough, are real 'n authentic enough,
the story action and the drama sweeps us up. Later we wonder. But not while reading.
There's fireworks going off. In this case, one BIG one.
Arguably this is a hallmark of the good short SF story. Clean, spartan, fast, heavy on the
Maguffin, and whaps the reader in the muzzle with a curve ball or ten. I've learned at the
footpaws of the masters.
Niven in particuler. This is the most Niven-esque piece I've ever written. Until the next
one. No Larry, if this cops an Ursa, I'm *not* sharing credit.
Heh. As for the Dictator, half the city's just been vaporized. Just a mild speculation,
but I think veeery few hospital transplant surgery's are gonna be open on Monday
morning. Some reassembly required, he says with a straight face (then snickers and
loses it).
Yah, I've got a bit of a fetish for nuclear weapons. What was our first clue? :- )
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
other way around?)
Glad you liked. No sex in it, of course, meaning readership may be spartan. This is FA.
Why does that always take on the faint flavour of an epithet for me?
De nada. For a sequel I can always make our fox fur hero pop out in a brothel orgy room.
In two million years y'think hookers are gonna change? Physicists know harmonic
motion. I'll have him fix their trapeze. :- )
Call me purring-pleased that you wondered about the backstory (or lack of it). A tell, a tell
I say, that the story proper schmecked. No *room* for backstory, dammit, not without
this exploding into a novella.
To quote Billy Crystal from an old SNL sketch, jeeze, don't ya hate it when that happens? :- )
But if the characters connect well enough, are clear enough, are real 'n authentic enough,
the story action and the drama sweeps us up. Later we wonder. But not while reading.
There's fireworks going off. In this case, one BIG one.
Arguably this is a hallmark of the good short SF story. Clean, spartan, fast, heavy on the
Maguffin, and whaps the reader in the muzzle with a curve ball or ten. I've learned at the
footpaws of the masters.
Niven in particuler. This is the most Niven-esque piece I've ever written. Until the next
one. No Larry, if this cops an Ursa, I'm *not* sharing credit.
Heh. As for the Dictator, half the city's just been vaporized. Just a mild speculation,
but I think veeery few hospital transplant surgery's are gonna be open on Monday
morning. Some reassembly required, he says with a straight face (then snickers and
loses it).
Yah, I've got a bit of a fetish for nuclear weapons. What was our first clue? :- )
FB.
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The FA Writers Directory v1.0
Comments