Current Events > Sci-fi scenario where the Earth gets blasted by limitless relativistic bombs.

(+) Yeah! (+)

From The Killing Star, by George Zebrowski and Charles Pelegrino.

"In the forests below, lakes caught the first rays of the rising Sun and threw them back into space. Abandoning the two-dimensional sprawl of twentieth-century cities, Sri Lanka Tower, and others like it, had been erected in the world's rain forests and farmlands, leaving the countryside virtually uninhabited. Even in Africa, where more than a hundred city arcologies had risen, nature was beginning to renew itself. It was a good day to be alive, she told herself, taking in the peace of the garden. Then, looking east, she saw it coming -- at least her eyes began to register it -- but her optic nerves did not last long enough to transmit what the eyes had seen.

It was quite small for what it could do -- small enough to fit into an average-sized living room -- but it was moving at 92 percent of light speed when it touched Earth's atmosphere. A spear point of light appeared, so intense that the air below snapped away from it, creating a low-density tunnel through which the object descended. The walls of the tunnel were a plasma boundary layer, six and a half kilometers wide and more than 160 deep -- the flaming spear that Virginia's eyes began to register -- with every square foot of its surface radiating a trillion watts, and still its destructive potential was but fractionally spent.

Thirty-three kilometers above the Indian Ocean, the point began to encounter too much air. It tunneled down only eight kilometers more, then stalled and detonated, less than two-thousandths of a second after crossing the orbits of Earth's nearest artificial satellites.

Virginia was more than three hundred kilometers away when the light burst toward her. Every nerve ending in her body began to record a strange, prickling sensation -- the sheer pressure of photons trying to push her backward. No shadows were cast anywhere in the tower, so bright was the glare. It pierced walls, ceramic beams, notepads, and people -- four hundred thousand people. The maglev terminal connecting Sri Lanka Tower to London and Sydney, the waste treatment centers that sustained the lakes and farms, all the shops, theaters, and apartments liquefied instantly. The structure began to slip and crash like a giant waterfall, but gravity could not yank it down fast enough. The Tower became vapor before it could fall half a meter. At the vanished city's feet, the trees of the forest were no longer able to cast shadows; they had themselves become long shadows of carbonized dust on the ground.

In Kandy and Columbo, where sidewalks steamed, the relativistic onslaught was unfinished. The electromagnetic pulse alone killed every living thing as far away as Bombay and the Maldives. All of India south of the Godavari River became an instant microwave oven. Nearer the epicenter, Demon Rock glowed with a fierce red heat, then fractured down its center, as if to herald the second coming of the tyrant it memorialized. The air blast followed, surging out of the Indian Ocean -- faster than sound -- flattening whatever still stood. As it slashed north through Jaffna and Madurai, the wave front was met and overpowered by shocks rushing out from strikes in central and southern India.

Across the face of the planet, without warning, thousands of flaming swords pierced the sky..."

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Okay who wins that or goku

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MorbidFaithless posted...

Okay who wins that or goku

He could just instant transmission the Earth out of its way.

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an average class M planet gets blasted by limitless relativistic bombs

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Damn those Zentradi!

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Limitless Chad bombs

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Oh... wow. That is bad writing.

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008Zulu posted...

Oh... wow. That is bad writing.

Honestly, I kinda found it hard to understand what was supposed to be happening exactly as the bomb detonated.

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Kisai posted...

Honestly, I kinda found it hard to understand what was supposed to be happening exactly as the bomb detonated.

Whoever wrote it, it looks like they just inserted random physics terminology in to it, hoping it'd make them sound clever. But the general pacing and structure suck too.

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"We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth, The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallable logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.

It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 66 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 214 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first, crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our Observatories we watched a of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast-breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.

They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did no fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breech the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might that 68 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces, we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 84 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 44 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be travelling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighed heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.
The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had quietly self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure, safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Orchestrators to streamline the Gift's design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded in infrared against the distant void.

They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes. They abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purpose of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipotent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 106s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day-lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them to be simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their construction, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.

They had less than 22 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail if its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 1010 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet-side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission to upload countless masses with the necessary neural modification, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers, Those lacking the required hardware of the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.

The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 64s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles was paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.
Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent-sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete. From the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 106s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.

"We know you are out there, and we are coming for you."

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tl;dr

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I liked it, original POV thanks OP.

Turtlebread posted...

tl;dr

Thank you for your contribution. Maybe a picture book is more your speed.

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or maybe some people just don't care for pulpy sci-fi lol

Vyrulisse posted...

"We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth, The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallable logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.

It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 66 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 214 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first, crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our Observatories we watched a of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast-breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.

They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did no fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breech the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might that 68 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces, we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 84 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 44 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be travelling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighed heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.
The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had quietly self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure, safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Orchestrators to streamline the Gift's design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded in infrared against the distant void.

They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes. They abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purpose of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipotent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 106s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day-lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them to be simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their construction, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.

They had less than 22 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail if its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 1010 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet-side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission to upload countless masses with the necessary neural modification, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers, Those lacking the required hardware of the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.

The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 64s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles was paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.
Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent-sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete. From the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 106s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.

"We know you are out there, and we are coming for you."

Is there more to this?

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I can read close to 1,000 wpm at 100% comprehension, it took me four hours to read that block.

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MrKapowski posted...

Is there more to this?

No it was a one off little story that's been around for awhile. I liked it.

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treewojima posted...

or maybe some people just don't care for pulpy sci-fi lol

lmao then why would they come into this topic in the first place? Yikes!

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Vyrulisse posted...

No it was a one off little story that's been around for awhile. I liked it.

Yep it was interesting. I kinda wish the message the survivors sent at the end was different tho.

YA DUN GOOFED would have been amazing

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Earth is getting blasted my limitless bombs while shes getting blasted by limitless Chads.
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rods from god? or are the aliens just knocking asteroids at us from the oort cloud?

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monkmith posted...

rods from god? or are the aliens just knocking asteroids at us from the oort cloud?

Anti-matter powered rockets from 40 light years away. They picked up on our radio waves and decided we were too aggressive so they nipped it in the bud.

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ImAMarvel posted...

Is that a good book?

Also, relativistic weapons would be some real fucking shit. Good way to wipe out all life on a planet there.

Some parts are silly but I liked it.

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Verdekal posted...

Anti-matter powered rockets from 40 light years away. They picked up on our radio waves and decided we were too aggressive so they nipped it in the bud.

so wait, are these relativistic bombs or are they anti-matter bombs? reasonably sure the amount of anti-matter needed to send large relativistic bombs would be better used as the actual payload in these weapons.

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monkmith posted...

so wait, are these relativistic bombs or are they anti-matter bombs? reasonably sure the amount of anti-matter needed to send large relativistic bombs would be better used as the actual payload in these weapons.

Relativistic bombs are just projectiles traveling at very fast speeds. Like a super space cannonball. Doesn't need any intricate parts.

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