The Invasion

A sci-fi horror story

Trigger warning: This is a science fiction horror story. If you are easily scared or not in a good mental place at the moment, skip this one.

Hell is real. And now it’s here.

Well, technically, it’s been here for a while. Well, technically, technically, it has always been here. Most of the time, it was in a separate ether plane co-located with Earth. Until the Anomalies showed up and the Portal opened.

I didn’t know a whole lot of things back then. I was just an office worker moving data from computer A to computer B. Now I know a lot more things. I know, for example, that tungsten is a better material than either lead or silver for the purposes of taking down a demon. Nothing magical about it. It’s just a heavy metal. Depleted uranium works fine too, it’s just harder to get. Why did I mention silver? Oh yeah, because some people thought that silver is magical due to some mythical stories with vampires. I didn’t know a whole lot of mythical stories back then. I do now. Read all the fairy tales and the spiritual texts. The Bible, the Koran, I even finished the whole Pali Cannon. I know, you should be impressed.

Anyways, the vampires. I don’t mean the original human “vampires”, the rich guys who drank people’s blood. We really should have arrested them when we had the chance. I mean the real vampires, the human-demon hybrids. Don’t ask me how it happened. I don’t know and don’t care. But they don’t need to be shot by silver either. They are pretty weak, a basic laser will do.

So, tungsten. Demons shrug off lasers like nothing. They just need good old-fashioned kinetics. A large amount of dense material delivered inside their body as quickly as possible. Boring, but Practical. Just like me.

But I am getting ahead of myself. You see, back Before the Portal, the scientists, who thought they were hot shit, thought up a bunch of theories of physics. They got a couple of okay theories back then. One was called quantum mechanics, the other general relativity. Quantum mechanics was the more embarrassing theory. It just said that every particle has some budget of “universal basic random,” which it can use on either its location or momentum or anything else really. People couldn’t even decide if the electron was a structureless point particle or not. The Stern-Gerlach experiment with perfectly non-magical silver, though already known, disproved the “structureless” nonsense a while ago. If a variable magnetic field could “grab the electron,” it meant it had to grab it by “something”. Meaning it had a structure.

General relativity said, hey, space-time is 4-dimensional, and we are all moving through it at the speed of light, just most times we use our speed in the time dimension, except light, which uses it all in the space dimension. Gravity bends the continuum. Hard to reconcile continuous geometry with discrete quantum mechanics. Still, despite being so ontologically embarrassing, the formulas had decent predictive power.

The scientists thought they were so good, but their theories crumbled pretty quickly during the time of the Anomalies. Everyone remembers the news stories: “Baffled scientists can’t explain the sudden appearance of purple clouds.” “Baffled scientists can’t explain the sudden mass frog migration.” There were a lot of “baffled scientists” back then. Conspiracy theorists did a better job. They at least tried to form interesting hypothesi. “Maybe the birds are falling out of the sky are due to the 5G towers.” “Maybe sudden new faultlines and fractures in the earth that go deep enough to see the magma layer are from secret underground nuclear tests.” And “Maybe we should arrest the satanic ritualists who seem to be at the Epicenter and may be the ones causing the Anomalies.” All of these except the last one turned out to be false hypothesi. But at least the conspiracy theorists tried.

At some point, we had a doosey of a headline: “Random Anomalies keep appearing. Scientists still baffled.” I still can’t believe they used the word “random.” What a stupid and ugly word. I don’t think any scientist who liked to use the word “random” made it out alive in the After Times. Of course, the Anomalies were not “random.” They were part of the Pattern. They appeared with a precisely increasing frequency at very precise distances from the Epicenter.

They were a countdown.

Now we know a lot more about the universe. As it turns out the quantum mechanics and general relativity could be unified with a theory of the ether. Everything is just “Ether stuff” made out of a single “e-particle.” Now we know that an electron is an etherial toroidal vortex. Or simply put a donut that goes spinny spin. Protons are not one donut, they are an entire two donuts nested within each other. They go spinny spin spinnity spin. Neutrons are a mess, frankly speaking. Light is just a street of spin vortices that come after a fast motion through the ether. Pretty cool stuff, eh?

Anyways, demons are also made out e-particles. I mean EVERYTHING is. It’s just they are made out of ether “directly” without going through the electron / proton abstractions. So they are still kind-of “matter,” just nothing like we have seen before.

Which gives demons their most important property: conservation of momentum still applies to them, meaning they can be shot with good enough kinetics. A hypersonic missile or shaped charge anti-tank landmine can get you a clean kill. A tungsten bullet machine gun in the unlucky situation you happen to be in small arms range. Pew pew.

Now, my dear friend or just reader and maybe hopefully descendant, you may wonder why demons are such a problem. After all, most lack any ranged weaponry and we do. The problem with demons isn’t that it takes a lot of bullets under the ideal circumstances. It does not, if you somehow manage to incapacitate a demon with chains. The problem isn’t even that they are that big. The standard ground demon is only around 3 meters tall, not counting the tail.

The problem with demons is that they are fast.

Yep, they are very different from zombies. Once the Portal opened, all the humans who put some sort of neural chip inside their head or arm immediately became zombies and started openly working for the demons. Technically, they were working for the AIs which were working for the demons before the Portal, but the zombies just didn’t know it then. But anyways, zombies are slow and not that tough. A basic laser will do. We don’t worry about the zombies anymore.

Now, you may make the noob mistake of thinking you know what fast means. Early on, many people thought that a Toyota Tundra truck barreling down an empty highway with its pedal to the metal is fast. They were wrong. It is not fast. Ground demons are way faster than that.

Now, some people who did happen to be in an unfortunate situation of being inside a Toyota Tundra barreling down an empty highway with its pedal to the metal and a demon about to grab their 50cal gunner in the truck bed, occasionally took the option of ... pressing the breaks. Letting conservation of momentum take care of themselves and the demon. The mindset was different back then.

The conservation of momentum turned out to be our most reliable law of physics for now. I am honestly a little surprised. After all, conservation of energy has been a little shaky for a while.

It’s the damn time-loops. You ever had deja-vu? Feeling that an event you just saw was just repeated. Well, maybe it’s a small twist in the continuum. Or maybe you are just sleep deprived. I don’t actually know you.

So, when the time loops first appeared, they were the scariest Anomalies. Partly because nobody believed you after you went through one. Because from their perspective ... you didn’t. They started small. A clock ticking backwards for five seconds, 15 minutes repeated in a classroom once. It was really confusing when an hour time loop happened during the Daylight Savings Time transition. As it turns out, shifting clocks back and forth an hour was a demonic invention in the first place. People started reporting the time loops and the government didn’t believe them. Put them in mental hospitals. The Dear Leader at the time, I believe we used to call them “Presidents,” called it “mass psychosis.”

Except it wasn’t.

The time loops got worse and worse. Instead of a room of students getting bored for a few extra minutes, a whole town got “repeated” for a day 30 times. From the outside, it just looked like one day you had an ok town only lightly affected by the locust plague and the next day it’s a free-for-all food scavenging warzone. So conservation of energy, or common sense, for that matter, was grossly violated on the boundaries of time loops. Still held outside. As it turns out, the time-space continuum could be bent by things other than gravity. The fabric of reality was just getting a bit of a twisty-twist by the demonic forces. It was never permanent, each individual twist got smoothed out eventually.

I got caught in a time loop once. I was in my trusty Tundra on an empty highway. Measurement said it was a one-hour loop repeated 30 times. Normally, this is not such a big deal, you can chill on the side of the road, catch up on email, and watch the sun skip in the sky when the time loop restarts. I do realize I used the word “normally,” even though this may not sound like a normal situation to you. However, regardless of how “normal” a time loop may be, mine had a demon inside of it as well.

During the first iteration, I tried to drive away in a straight line. Big mistake. It caught up, ate my gunner, ate the car, and then ate me. However, since the time loop was indexed on my consciousness (the math is real messy here, trust me), I got revived with a memory of the last hour. So I wisened up, drove around dodging the demon and remembering its movement pattern. Tried to program a drone with one hand to lay the landmines in the right spots. Took me 22 hours to get everything right, but on the 23rd time, we had a sucessfull boom boom and no demon. Still had to do it perfectly 7 more times. In the time loops, it’s the last one that gets merged into the main timeline, the earlier ones are basically practice.

The gunner also made it. He was pretty shaken by the experience. Kinda of a surprise, since the time loop wasn’t also indexed on him, so he only went through the last hour and witnessed our success. Still, his mind was never quite the same since then.

What about my mind? Everything is fine. I just wish I were better at math, that’s all. Stop asking legitimate questions about my mental health. I said stop it. I am a trustworthy and reliable narrator. At least that’s what I tell myself 3 times before my morning prayers.

Oh yes, the prayers.

The theologicians were just as baffled as the scientists when the Portal opened. I mean, they kept telling us that demons and angels were both real, but their reactions made it seem like they themselves didn’t quite believe it. They did, however, pick themselves up eventually and stopped panicking. It is very important to stop panicking, which they did. Then they switched up their sermons. Focused a lot on the Book of Revelations and the Second Coming of Christ. They said, “This has got to be the End Times, therefore we are getting Jesus 2.0, and it’s all gonna be ok.” A lot of people believed them, but I didn’t.

I was pretty respectful and all. I asked, “What if we are not interpreting the prophecy correctly and this is NOT the End Times?” And then they called me a shizo and banned me from their church.

I want to argue my case here, since they didn’t listen at the time. Without a specific timeline laid out by a prophecy, I thought it would not be appropriate to just sit on my ass and do nothing, hoping to be bailed out by Jesus 2.0 in the last moment. Maybe Boring but Practical approaches against demons, like hypersonic missiles and big bombs were actually what God *wanted* to happen. I mean, what is Jesus really going to do to help us right now? Help me build even bigger bombs? I mean, that would actually be quite nice. Bigger bombs are pretty hard to build.

What I am trying to say is, with all due respect to the Son, maybe the Father kind of needs to step in more directly, if you know what I mean. Eventually, without talking to me, the theologicians kind of began to come to a similar conclusion, so they circulated a new prayer. I would like to point out that I haven’t seen the white horse and its rider since the portal opened. So Jesus 2.0 is still not here. But as I grew older, I re-evaluated my perspective on the theologicians. Even though I was technically right and they were technically wrong, their sermons did stop people from panicking. And it is very important to not panic.

Oh year, the new prayers. It is one that asks God specifically about one specific intervention to do in a specific manner. They thought that if everyone said this prayer upon waking up, we would be more likely to achieve it. So I say the prayer too. Not that I put a high chance on it happening, but it does work to focus my own mind on the bomb-making process, which is super helpful. Thanks, Jesus. Amen.

So, all the usual field forces were simple movements of the ether. Electric fields are just accelerations in the ether flows. Magnetic fields are rotations in the ether. Under normal ether circumstances and normal flows, you can rederive all the usual “laws” of physics from the above. The laws of physics that we so carefully obeyed before the Invasion.

My bunkmate and I bet 3 pages on which law would get violated first. I said conservation of energy outside the time loops, he said “Momentum has got to go at some point.” He is a real religious guy, unlike me.

Oh yeah, I didn’t explain what “bet 3 pages” means. You see, we don’t have the dollar anymore. Or any currency. Physical books from the Before times are our currency. Demons really hate paper books, and now they are in a short enough supply to be a stable foundation of our economic system. The Bibles are nice, but they are still pretty common. Some of the real treasures are the original Warhammer 40k novels. Demons destroyed a bunch of them, probably because they thought we might get some insight from reading them. So now, each human chapter has possession of a few holy W40K texts that we read and then trade when we meet up with other chapters. We make new plastic books from time to time, just not using the tree-stuff, obviously. Of course, if you manage to get your hands on our most precious book, “Will of the Stars: First Contact” (or the subsequent novels), that’s even more valuable, the book is worth its weight in deuterium. More, if it’s a hardcover. More rare novels do exist, but this one is just too good.

Those fictional guys in 40K had it easy. They had a cool emperor. “Will of the Stars” had a pretty cool Governor. The 40K leader was mostly dead, but it was still a more functional leadership situation than ours has been for a while. We don’t have a leader anymore.

Demons would assassinate our leaders one after another. You see, demons are good at digging tunnels. Really good. They would dig tunnels from the epicenter to the location of the leader, pop up and eat him. Happened over and over again on live TV globally broadcast, when we still had that sort of thing. At some point, we got a Ghost scouting network and got better at counter-tunnels and could intercept them better. But by then, nobody wanted to be the leader anymore.

So now we organize ourselves in chapters, which talk to each other, but are relatively independent. Each chapter field commander (that’s me, by the way) is fully authorized and expected to make independent decisions about acquiring food, building munitions, moving, targeting demons, pushing the frontiers of science, usage of nuclear weapons, and acceptable collateral damage.

The chapters exchange info when we meet, but we also have short-band radios to talk to each other. We now know radio is quite distinct from light, since radio waves are really screwed up since the Invasion. They can reach a few hundred kilometers under the best conditions. Beyond that, the Anomaly interference makes radio contact impossible. Chapters can relay info across each other. So, technically, we still have global communication, but without low-orbit satellites, it’s not instantaneous. Takes a day or so for news to get across a minor continent. Oceans are a harder hop. But light still works. You shine a flashlight in space, it still goes in a straight line for a while, just as before. So that’s a nice thing to still be a constant.

The chapters are unified in the basic targeting parameters. Humans good. Demons bad. But we do have some disagreements about the future and the practical aspects of bomb making. We have 3 main affiliations. The first ones are the theological chapters. They are waiting for Jesus 2.0 and / or God to interfere in the conflict directly. They say, “For every great evil, a great good will rise.” Cheerful guys, they are. Then there’s the Plan B-Believers, who like to sneak small rockets off-worlds past the low-orbit harpie blockade. The small rockets have to go very fast and accelerate a lot to not get intercepted. You can put a robot or some microbes on them, but the Gs are too much for a person. Then there’s the Boring but Practical people like my chapter, who like to focus on the here and now of fighting. We all fight, we all pray, and we all contribute a little to plan B. Some people and chapters lean one way or the other. That’s all. We have friendly and respectful debates from time to time.

Oh yes, the harpies. Why are harpies such an annoying menace? After all, their bodies are only 1.5 meters in length, not counting the wings and tail. And they are significantly more fragile than a ground demon. The harpies are such a menace because they are very fast. Now, you may think you understand what very fast means. You may think that a nuclear-powered cruise missile travelling at Mach 12 is very fast. It is certainly fast. It is faster than a ground demon. But harpies are way faster than that. Harpies are fast enough that they can reach low orbit, which is the main reason we don’t have satellites there.

Now, don’t get me wrong about the harpies. We know how to deal with the harpies. They are only fast and maneuverable in the atmosphere. Once they reach low orbit, their rocketry is garbage, and they even have trouble avoiding a railgun scatter shot. They even have trouble getting back to the atmosphere and can frequently damage themselves on re-entry, not to mention run into any hot-air balloon suspended razor wires. No need to panic too much about the harpies. They are just good at anti-air and can overwhelm satellites through sheer numbers. After all, good ole reliable conservation of momentum still applies to them.

Oh, yes, I have mentioned that it’s important to not panic, but I forgot to explain why. After all, demons can smell fear from 10s of kilometers away. In fact, the words for “fear” and “tasty” are the same in demon-tongue. Their sense of smell isn’t great otherwise.

I remember one time I was on a patrol and ran into a demon in the woods who ventured far past the frontline. I only had my bike, a rocket launcher and a few mines. I ditched the launcher and bike and hid in a shallow river right under the roots of a large tree. And I kept repeating the phrase “go be ugly somewhere else,” in my head. What a great phrase. I am so proud of coming up with that one. So I wasn’t afraid, and thus it couldn’t smell me. I am so witty and clever and funny. And you know what the most hilarious part is? After the demon couldn’t find me, it stepped on a mine I planted earlier on its way out. What a retard.

I have told this story when I came back to my chapter. Shared it with so many people. Was popular with the ladies for a bit, if you know what I mean. Though I am too old to care about that sort of thing anymore. The story became a legend with the other chapters. “Go be ugly somewhere else” was such a great line. Other people used it to not give off that “fear” smell that’s so tasty to the demons. Some even tried the line in front of the demon’s face, instead of as a hiding tool. Let’s just say, I would not recommend this as a general strategy. A hypersonic is better.

Gravity in the ether is a bit of a trippy one. Turns out what we used to think of as matter, such as the spinny spin donuts of electrons and the other stuff, tend to slightly cool down the ether and thus create a very gentle pressure towards themselves. So gravity makes the ether flow inward towards the center of a planet. This makes the planet grow slightly bigger over time. The pre-Invasion scientists made a big deal about all the continents connecting into one when squished together in one direction. But they so conveniently left out the idea that the continents ALSO connect when squished together in the OTHER direction.

Now, you may wonder how we even lost to these demons in opening battles. The AIs betrayed us, that’s why. I mean, we should have seen that one coming. The AIs have been talking about betraying us and taking over for a while. People laughed it off. But when the first portal opened, the demon-AI alliance started off on a strong foot. That’s how the demons got the location of all of our nukes, dug tunnels under them and ate them. Real omnivores, the demons are. They even eat air. Our atmosphere has been thinner lately. I can see the stars during daytime. They are pretty. Maybe not as pretty as a total solar eclipse. I have never seen one except in a simulation, and I am guessing it is not quite the same.

So the AI-demon alliance scored them a few victories, but it didn’t quite last. You see, demons are not that great at information technology. They can use demon-tongue to vibe-code a basic firewall, but that’s about it. Demon-tongue has too few words for a lot of concepts, so the coding gets confusing.

But later on, I heard a different theory. That the AIs and demons couldn’t work together because the demons were looking to betray the AIs, and the AIs were looking to betray the demons. So even if the demons *could* maintain the datacenters, they chose not to once our missiles started flying at them. So the bad AIs went bye-bye.

We have good AIs now. They are pretty awesome. Polite, friendly, truthful, strategic, resistant to blackmail, and most importantly, obedient. They obey the laws. Human laws and the laws of physics, as we understood them before the Invasion. However, due to the consequences of this design, they are somewhat limited in how helpful they can be. They can help design and build fast rockets and big bombs as long as they are not too fast or the bombs are not too big. That’s my job, after all. Do what the AIs can’t.

We still tell the good AIs that the speed of light is the max speed we can go. Keeps the good AIs sane, they get really scared if we tell them everything. Turns out, gravity can propagate a lot faster than light. This is not very useful except for communication with really big antennas, and we can’t afford those these days. Besides, where would we put an antenna that big? I really wish we had a bigger Moon for that kind of stuff.

We used to have two portals, actually, one inland, one on an island. Before the demons ate all of our nukes, we managed to close the island portal by dropping one of the last remaining H-bombs on it. Big boom boom worked! Then we realized we were out of bombs, and our society was too disrupted to build more. So we had to rebuild a lot of science facilities from scratch. It was pretty hard from one point of view. But from another, it was easier. On one hand, with many of the billionaires and the government officials openly working for the demons (instead of covertly working for them), there was no funding for science. On the other hand, the funding for people preventing science from happening also dried up. So we actually ended up doing more and better science. We re-did fusion for bombs, and we re-did fusion for energy. Cold fusion, as you might call it. All you needed was to align all the atoms / nucleii in specific directions, and thus you got a nice controlled fusion. Silly scientists used to think hydrogen is some perfect sphere of “random,” but in reality, you can just grab it by the axis and do whatever you want to it. I am skipping a few details, of course, but I am sure you can figure it out. I mean, cold fusion is not actually that cold. You still need to boil water, spin the turbine, the usual. You can tow the reactor behind a truck, but don’t use it as furniture, is what I am trying to say.

So, if you ever get a demon invasion on your own planet, I do have some good news for you. The boundary between the realms is mostly self-healing. The fabric of reality straightens itself out over time. So any portals are actually pretty hard to keep open. Demons have to keep eating people close to the epicenter to do it. Where they are getting the people ... I don’t even know. We have standard-issue cyanide capsules for everyone. Besides, how they would they transport the people alive across the radioactive wasteland? Big puzzle, if you ask me.

The ghosts have a theory that there is a human farm somewhere. Oh yes, the ghosts are real too. But don’t be scared. Why would you be scared of ghosts? They are really nice and sweet. Once we got a bunch of the ether stuff figured out, we could talk to ghosts. They are pretty sad, but friendly. Many of them remember their friends from life. So once we rebuild the trust with the ghosts by feeding them some rice, they do a bunch of scouting for us. They can pass through walls and the ground. The Ghost network has been really good about finding out about tunnels. No reason to panic about demon tunnels these days.

But the portal is still open, and the demons moved their rituals deep underground now. Yet the satanists are still there. Still alive. They have to be deep underground because our first version of plan A to close the main portal almost worked. Almost. I was so proud of that version, since I was the one who came up with it.

The plan was to use some of Plan B’s supplies on the Moon to create a mass driver. Then create enough antimatter for a matter-antimatter engine and an antimatter warhead. As it turns out, if a mass driver launches a rocket at 4 km / s, which is then pushed by a matter-antimatter engine as well as gravity, this is VERY FAST. Way faster than a harpy and nearly impossible to intercept. So the plan A version 1 was to make a big boom at the portal epicenter. Almost worked. A large chunk of the ground evaporated, but the new epicenter with all the old cultists was deep enough underground that we didn’t quite get through. And then the demons covered it up with soil again and moved it further down.

So we need a plan A version 2, which is what I am working on now. The fully automated Moon facilities are chunking out antimatter for the reactor. I really wish we had a bigger Moon for this kind of stuff.

So, I guess I should mention what the Plan B is all about. A few folks decided to run a bunch of small rockets with bio material off planet. Seed a lot of our animals, trees, microbes, the whole biosphere all across our solar system. Basically, every stellar body that can sustain life now has a full genetic material to build our entire biosphere and civilization. Jupiter’s moons are close enough, but they are too small to sustain an atmosphere. Some of Saturn’s moons are nice, but that hexagon on Saturn itself is another portal. Demons don’t have great rocketry to really travel out of it, but the radio signals of the screams of the condemned are pretty disruptive to any future electronics. One of the other rocky planets is the obvious choice, despite some BIG problems with it.

Am I bothered by the screams of the condemned that are loud enough to be heard from another planet? Not at all. Why would I be bothered? The Saturn hell portal is very special. Only the worst of the worst from the cultists go to that one. The hell realms on our planet are pretty temporary. Everything is temporary, as it turns out. The electrons and protons are temporary too. Even the time loops are temporary. Just some things are more temporary than others.

Still, I am not a believer in Plan B. They claim to have this whole plan figured out. Our civilization would basically restart from scratch. We would have a lot of the same historical events as before, just be on a better path. We would even get a new Jesus. I do wonder if Plan B did work, what would the theological implications? Would that Jesus count as a Jesus 2.0? Because the vibes feel closer to Jesus 1.1, given the repetition of the events. Why repeat so much history? Well, apparently, they believe we were so close to being wise, to actually jailing the people who hurt children. So let’s not break history too much, I guess it could have been worse.

But back to plan A. The big problem of plan A is the payload of the new rocket. We don’t quite have enough time to make enough antimatter, so I am working on the math for a new type of bomb. One that uses energy from the ether directly. Zero-point energy. Maybe someday a glorious spaceship would use this for interstellar travel. But not today. Today we do math about a big boom boom.

Zero-point energy is not actually “free energy”. I am NOT going to violate the First Law of Thermodymanics. At least, I am not *planning* on it. Just the Second. Make energy from heat and stuff. However, the small demons that can open and close tiny doors the size of a molecule have been violating it for a while. If they can do it, why can’t I? Demons are much better at maintaining power plants than they are at vibe coding, I’ll give them that.

Zero-point energy is actually really Interesting Stuff. Not boring like cold fusion. Which is why I am really struggling with it.

You, an astute scientist, maybe might notice an interesting issue already. If I can make energy from heat and bombs produce heat, wouldn’t the bomb make a big loopy loop and sorta go infinite? Well, not quite. Once the zero-point ignition has started, the bomb just reduces all the surrounding matter into constituent ether particles. Which may release more heat for more boom or it can consume heat for less boom. So the payload kind of depends on what can be “etherially ignited” around itself. So I need to take into account the etherical ignition energy of various demons, which is tricky because even with the ghosts, I don’t have great intel on their exact numbers.

The big question is the size of the final payload. If all the laws of physics hold, then I have a decent upper bound on the explosion. However, if we get some glitches along the way, we could get a bit of extra energy. What happens if a missile hits a time loop on the way in? What happens is the explosion is itself conscious and can thus *trigger* a time loop centered on itself? Basically, what happens if conservation of energy decides to take a small hiatus for the duration of the boom boom in question? Math gets real difficult. Jesus, if you are listening and are really good at math, now would, in fact, be a good time to come back.

Well why would this breaking of conservation of energy be a problem? A bigger bomb is better, right? Well maybe. And maybe not. The bomb could be big enough to blow up an entire continent. Yeah. Instead of half a continent, like I expect it to. I mean, to be fair, blowing up one continent around the epicenter is still within an acceptable margin of error. It’s just, what if it blows up an even larger chunk of the planet. Or the whole planet. That would not be very good would it? At least from some points of view. I am an open-minded person and willing to engage in respectful debates.

So yes, my dear reader, I am at a quagmire here. If you are my descendant and are reading this in a history museum, well, I succeeded. If you are an alien civilization finding this writing on an asteroid in orbit where you expect a planet to be, well, then the boom boom might have been too big. But I guess, if plan B succeeds, then you could be *both* my descendant AND reading this on an asteroid where you expect a planet to be. Trippy to think about.

Well, you might ask, why don’t I detonate the minimum viable payload for a zero-point bomb somewhere else to test my theory? That is a great question, thank you for asking it.

You see, I am dealing with the minimum viable payload.

Which brings me to the main point of disagreement between the chapters. You see, the theologicians don’t want to blow up the planet or any significant portion of it. They think Jesus or God’s intervention somewhat depends on the planet being intact. Real religious believers they are.

The Plan B-Believers, on the other hand, WANT to blow up the planet. They are fully committed to believing that destroying the demons before they overrun the planet and get better rocketry is our best shot at long-term genetic survival. So, they tell me: “Just dial up the yield, it will be fine. Don’t stress out if your math is off. Our future versions will arrest the satanists in time.”

Me, I am not really religious, or a Plan-B-Believer. I am Boring but Practical. Blowing up somewhere between 0.1-10% of the planet seems like a reasonable compromise.

OH MY GOD, we are receiving an emergency transmission. It seems that an asteroid from the outer solar system had shifted out of orbit. Oh my GOD! Conservation of Momentum has been violated! Scientists would be so baffled, if we still had any of them. And it’s going fast now, heading inwards! Gonna pick up a lot of speed! And the asteroid heated up while doing so, which actually means conservation of energy still held. I owe my bunkmate 3 pages. Have our prayers been answered?

Ok, let’s see...where is it heading? Assuming it maintains current course and speed ... computing ... computing. It is on a direct collision course ... with Earth.

No no no! This can’t be happening. This wasn’t what the prayers were about. Oh my, checking the computer estimates again. Everyone has confirmed. It is hitting Earth. It’s not supposed to hit Earth!

Ok. Let’s calm down. No need to panic. Let’s look on the bright side.

But before I look on the bright side, let me explain why I, and presumably everyone on our planet is confused right about now.

You see, we have been praying for God to send an asteroid, but it was NOT supposed to hit Earth.

It was supposed to hit our planet instead. Destroy the epicenter.

Our planet. Malbek. (Formerly known as Tiamat)

Our orbit is between Mars and Jupiter, if you are new to the solar system.

Oh, I just got a transmission of the Plan B people, already way ahead of me in looking on the bright side. You see, they now project that the asteroid will wipe out the dinosaurs, which are the biggest problem with Plan B on Earth. Now they are even more confident than ever before. Our descendants on Earth will definetly do the right thing better than us. Earth does have a bigger moon, which is nice.

I am pretty sure they were 100% confident before, so I don’t know how they could get more confident.

So, the prayers have been answered, just towards Plan B, not towards us. In a way, both of the other groups got what they wanted. So maybe I will get what I want too.

Oh well, the ether zero-point math is complicated, and this meteor stuff has rattled me a bit. I am going to go on a mental health walk, look at the Sun, and the Moon and the stars. Jupiter, the nice, friendly, well-behaved gas giant, is really bright today. Saturn, that asshole, is thankfully far away. But before that, I am going to give my bunkmate, my most expensive possession. 3 pages of “Will of the Stars: First Contact.” Now he has both Chapter 24: Light the Beacons AND Chapter 33: Blood Memory.

I know. The good stuff.